Orion Shall Rise (75 page)

Thereafter, as the night wore on, they danced together as much as decency allowed, or a bit more, and various foolishness which concerned no one else passed between them. Toward sunrise the orchestra was dismissed and the guests, hiding yawns behind well-bred hands, began to take their departure.

“How dreary to stand and receive farewells,” whispered Tresa. “Let them think I went to bed already.” She took Ruori’s hand and slipped behind a column and thence out onto a balcony. An aged serving woman, stationed to act as duenna for couples that wandered thither, had wrapped up in her mantle against the cold and fallen asleep. Otherwise the two were alone among jasmines. Mists floated around the palace and blurred the city; far off rang the
“Todos buen”
of pikemen tramping the outer walls. Westward the balcony faced darkness, where the last stars glittered. The seven tall topmasts of the Maurai
Dolphin
caught the earliest sun and glowed.

Tresa shivered and stood close to Ruori. They did not speak for a while.

“Remember us,” she said at last, very low. “When you are back with your own happier people, do not forget us here.”

“How could I?” he answered, no longer in jest.

“You have so much more than we,” she said wistfully. “You have told me how your ships can sail unbelievably fast, almost into the wind. How your fishers always fill their nets, how your whale ranchers keep herds that darken the water, how you even farm the ocean for food and fiber and…” She fingered the shimmering material of his shirt. “You told me this was made by craft out of fishbones. You told me that every family has its own spacious house and every member of it, almost, his own boat … that even small children on the loneliest island can read, and have printed books … that you have none of the sicknesses which destroy us … that no one hungers and all are free—oh, do not forget us, you on whom el Dío has smiled!”

She stopped, then, embarrassed. He could see how her head lifted and nostrils dilated, as if resenting him. After all, he thought, she came from a breed which for centuries had given, not received, charity.

Therefore he chose his words with care. “It has been less our virtue than our good fortune, Doñita. We suffered less than most in the War of Judgment, and our being chiefly Islanders prevented our population from outrunning the sea’s rich ability to feed us. So we—no, we did not retain any lost ancestral arts. There are none. But we did re-create an ancient attitude, a way of thinking, which has made the difference—science.”

She crossed herself. “The atom!” she breathed, drawing from him.

“No, no, Doñita,” he protested. “So many nations we have discovered lately believe science was the cause of the old world’s ruin. Or else they think it was a collection of cut-and-dried formulas for making tall buildings or talking at a distance. But neither is true. The scientific method is only a means of learning. It is a … a perpetual starting afresh. And that is why you people here in Meyco can help us as much as we can help you, why we have sought you out and will come knocking hopefully at your doors again in the future.”

She frowned, though something began to glow within her. “I do not understand,” she said.

He cast about for an example. At last he pointed to a series of small holes in the balcony rail. “What used to be here?” he asked.

“Why … I do not know. It has always been like that.”

“I think I can tell you. I have seen similar things elsewhere. It was a wrought-iron grille. But it was pulled out a long time ago and made into weapons or tools. No?”

“Quite likely,” she admitted. “Iron and copper have grown very scarce. We have to send caravans across the whole land, to Támico ruins, in great peril from bandits and barbarians, to fetch our metal. Time was when there were iron rails within a kilometer of this place. Don Carlos has told me.”

He nodded. “Just so. The ancients exhausted the world. They mined the ores, burned the oil and coal, eroded the land, until nothing was left. I exaggerate, of course. There are still deposits. But not enough. The old civilization used up the capital, so to speak. Now sufficient forest and soil have come back that the world would try to reconstruct machine culture—except that there aren’t enough minerals and fuels. For centuries men have been forced to tear up the antique artifacts, if they were to have any metal at all. By and large, the knowledge of the ancients hasn’t been lost; it has simply become unusable, because we are so much poorer than they.”

He leaned forward, earnestly. “But knowledge and discovery do not depend on wealth,” he said. “Perhaps because we did not have much metal to cannibalize in the Islands, we turned elsewhere. The scientific method is just as applicable to wind and sun and living matter as it was to oil, iron, or uranium. By studying genetics we learned how to create seaweeds, plankton, fish that would serve our purposes. Scientific forest management gives us adequate timber, organic-synthesis bases, some fuel. The sun pours down energy which we know how to concentrate and use. Wood, ceramics, even stone can replace metal for most purposes. The wind, through such principles as the airfoil or the Venturi law or the Hilsch tube, supplies force, heat, refrigeration; the tides can be harnessed. Even in its present early stage, paramathematical psychology helps control population, as well as—no, I am talking like an engineer now, falling into my own language. I apologize.

“What I wanted to say was that if we can only have the help of other people, such as yourselves, on a worldwide scale, we can match our ancestors, or surpass them … not in their ways, which were often shortsighted and wasteful, but in achievements uniquely ours….”

His voice trailed off. She wasn’t listening. She stared over his head, into the air, and horror stood on her face.

Then trumpets howled on battlements, and the cathedral bells crashed to life.

“What the nine devils!” Ruori turned on his heel and looked up. The zenith had become quite blue. Lazily over S’ Antón floated five orca shapes. The new sun glared off a jagged heraldry painted along their flanks. He estimated dizzily that each of them must be three hundred feet long.

Blood-colored things petaled out below them and drifted down upon the city.

“The Sky People!” said a small broken croak behind him. “Sant’sima Marí, pray for us now!”

Loklann hit flagstones, rolled over, and bounced to his feet. Beside him a carved horseman presided over fountain waters. For an instant he admired the stone, almost alive; they had nothing like that in Canyon, Zona, Corado, any of the mountain kingdoms. And the temple facing this plaza was white skywardness.

The square had been busy, farmers and handicrafters setting up their booths for a market day. Most of them scattered in noisy panic. But one big man roared, snatched a stone hammer, and dashed in his rags to meet Loklann. He was covering the flight of a young woman, probably his wife, who held a baby in her arms. Through the shapeless sack dress Loklann saw that her figure wasn’t bad. She would fetch a price when the Mong slave dealer next visited Canyon. So could her husband, but there wasn’t time now, still encumbered with a chute. Loklann whipped out his pistol and fired. The man fell to his knees, gaped at the blood seeping between fingers clutched to his belly, and collapsed. Loklann flung off his harness. His boots thudded after the woman. She shrieked when fingers closed on her arm and tried to wriggle free, but the brat hampered her. Loklann shoved her toward the temple. Robra was already on its steps.

“Post a guard!” yelled the skipper. “We may as well keep prisoners in here, till we’re ready to plunder it.”

An old man in priest’s robes tottered to the door. He held up one of the cross-shaped Meycan josses, as if to bar the way. Robra brained him with an ax blow, kicked the body off the stairs, and urged the woman inside.

It sleeted armed men. Locklann winded his oxhorn bugle, rallying them. A counterattack could be expected any minute. … Yes, now.

A troop of Meycan cavalry clanged into view. They were young, proud-looking men in baggy pants, leather breastplate and plumed helmet, blowing cloak, fire-hardened wooden lances but steel sabres—very much like the yellow nomads of Tekkas, whom they had fought for centuries. But so had the Sky People. Loklann pounded to the head of his line, where his standard bearer had raised the Lightning Flag. Half the
Buffalo’s
crew fitted together sections of pike tipped with edged ceramic, grounded the butts, and waited. The charge crested upon them. Their pikes slanted down. Some horses spitted themselves, others reared back screaming. The pikemen jabbed at their riders. The second paratroop line stepped in, ax and sword and hamstringing knife. For a few minutes murder boiled. The Meycans broke. They did not flee, but they retreated in confusion. And then the Canyon bows began to snap.

Presently only dead and hurt cluttered the square. Loklann moved briskly among the latter. Those who weren’t too badly wounded were hustled into the temple. Might as well collect all possible slaves and cull them later.

From afar he heard a dull boom. “Cannon,” said Robra, joining him. “At the army barracks.”

“Well, let the artillery have its fun, till our boys get in among ’em,” said Loklann sardonically.

“Sure, sure.” Robra looked nervous. “I wish they’d let us hear from them, though. Just standing around here isn’t good.”

“It won’t be long,” predicted Loklann.

Nor was it. A runner with a broken arm staggered to him.
“Stormcloud,”
he gasped. “The big building you sent us against … full of swordsmen. … They repulsed us at the door—”

“Huh! I thought it was only the king’s house,” said Loklann. He laughed. “Well, maybe the king was giving a party. Come on, then, I’ll go see for myself. Robra, take over here.” His finger swept out thirty men to accompany him. They jogged down streets empty and silent except for their bootfalls and weapon-jingle. The housefolk must be huddled terrified behind those blank walls. So much the easier to corral them later, when the fighting was done and the looting began.

A roar broke loose. Loklann led a dash around a last corner. Opposite him he saw the palace, an old building, red-tiled roof and mellow walls and many glass windows. The
Stormcloud
men were fighting at the main door. Their dead and wounded from the last attack lay thick.

Loklann took in the situation at a glance. “It wouldn’t occur to those lardheads to send a detachment through some side entrance, would it?” he groaned. “Jonak, take fifteen of our boys and batter in a lesser door and hit the rear of that line. The rest of you help me keep it busy meanwhile.”

He raised his red-spattered ax. “A Canyon!” he yelled. “A Canyon!” His followers bellowed behind him and they ran to battle.

The last charge had reeled away bloody and breathless. Half a dozen Meycans stood in the wide doorway. They were nobles: grim men with goatees and waxed mustaches, in formal black, red cloaks wrapped as shields on their left arms and long slim swords in their right hands. Behind them stood others, ready to take the place of the fallen.

“A Canyon!” shouted Loklann as he rushed.

“Quel Dío wela!”
cried a tall grizzled Don. A gold chain of office hung around his neck. His blade snaked forth.

Loklann flung up his ax and parried. The Don was fast, riposting with a lunge that ended on the raider’s breast. But hardened six-ply leather turned the point. Loklann’s men crowded on either side, reckless of thrusts, and hewed. He struck the enemy sword; it spun from the owner’s grasp.
“Ah, no, Don Miwel!”
cried a young person beside the calde. The older man snarled, threw out his hands, and somehow clamped them on Loklann’s ax. He yanked it away with a troll’s strength. Loklann stared into eyes that said death. Don Miwel raised the ax. Loklann drew his pistol and fired point blank.

As Don Miwel toppled, Loklann caught him, pulled off the gold chain, and threw it around his own neck. Straightening, he met a savage thrust. It glanced off his helmet. He got his ax back, planted his feet firmly, and smote.

The defending line buckled.

Clamor lifted behind Loklann. He turned and saw weapons gleam beyond his own men’s shoulders. With a curse he realized—there had been more people in the palace than these holding the main door. The rest had sallied out the rear and were now on his back!

A point pierced his thigh. He felt no more than a sting, but rage flapped black before his eyes. “Be reborn as the swine you are!” he roared. Half unaware, he thundered loose, cleared a space for himself, lurched aside and oversaw the battle.

The newcomers were mostly palace guards, judging from their gaily striped uniforms, pikes, and machetes. But they had allies, a dozen men such as Loklann had never seen or heard of. Those had the brown skin and black hair of Injuns, but their faces were more like a white man’s; intricate blue designs covered their bodies, which were clad only in wraparounds and flower wreaths. They wielded knives and clubs with wicked skill.

Loklann tore his trouser leg open to look at his wound. It wasn’t much. More serious was the beating his men were taking. He saw Mork sunna Brenn rush, sword uplifted, at one of the dark strangers, a big man who had added a rich-looking blouse to his skirt. Mork had killed four men at home for certain, in lawful fights, and nobody knew how many abroad. The dark man waited, a knife between his teeth, hands hanging loose. As the blade came down, the dark man simply wasn’t there. Grinning around his knife, he chopped at the sword wrist with the edge of a hand. Loklann distinctly heard bones crack. Mork yelled. The foreigner hit him in the Adam’s apple. Mork went to his knees, spat blood, caved in, and was still. Another Sky Man charged, ax aloft. The stranger again evaded the weapon, caught the moving body on his hip, and helped it along. The Sky Man hit the pavement with his head and moved no more.

Now Loklann saw that the newcomers were a ring around others who did not fight. Women. By Oktai and man-eating Ulagu, these bastards were leading out all the women in the palace! And the fighting against them had broken up; surly raiders stood back nursing their wounds.