The Brave Free Men (19 page)

From the rear the Cansume officers, somewhat insulated, blew
Advance
on their bugles; the line of shields moved forward, step by step. The Roguskhoi likewise lunged ahead and more futile grenades were thrown. Shields on the left wing sagged, leaving the Brave Free Men without protection. For half a second they hesitated, then charged, plunging against the instant hail of scimitars, which cut down man and pacer before they had moved twenty feet. Nonetheless grenades were thrown by dying arms; Roguskhoi disappeared in dust and flame.

The rest of the line sagged but cohered. A bugle blared
Charge;
the militia, now demoralized, faltered and broke too soon; again the shields fell aside, leaving the Brave Free Men exposed to the whirling scimitars. The survivors charged; pikes struck into copper chests. Explosion I dust, fumes, stench; a melee. Bludgeons pounded; gargoyle faces scowled and bellowed; grenades lofted over the line of battle, generating explosions, fountains of dust, whirls of detached arms and legs. A hideous din rose and fell: furious bugles, Roguskhoi grunts and bellows, the wild braying of wounded pacers, the despair of dying men. . . . The dust settled. Dead were half the Roguskhoi and all the Brave Free Men. The Cansume militia fled back into Waxone. The Roguskhoi moved slowly forward; then, altering direction, turned aside into Ferriy.

Finnerack made an anguished report of the battle. "There lay the best of Shant, in a mire of black blood! When they might have drawn back, they refused; from pride they charged to their deaths. Freedom they had earned so well: to what avail?"

Etzwane was surprised by the intensity of Finnerack's grief. "We know now that our men are as brave as the men of old," said Etzwane. "All of Shant will know this as well."

Finnerack seemed not to have heard. He paced back and forth, clenching and unclenching his hands. "The militia failed. They were traitors; they would go to cut withe, had I their judgment."

Etzwane said nothing, preferring not to divert Finnerack's emotion toward himself. Finnerack never would be allowed judgment of anyone.

"We can't fight the creature's at close range,"

said Finnerack. "What of our technists? Where are their weapons?"

"Sit down; control your distress," said Etzwane. "I will tell you of our weapons. The technists are impeded by great forces which must be regulated. A sliver of material hurls itself at enormous speed, and thereby produces a very large recoil. For use as hand weapons the slivers must be made almost invisibly thin, and to absorb the recoil a ballast is ejected to the tear. The projectiles reach the ultimate limit of cold in expanding, otherwise they would instantly destroy themselves; rather, they .drive a gust of hot air ahead which augments the impact. I have seen tests of fixed cannon; up to a range of a mile the guns will be most deadly. Beyond this distance the projectile erodes to nothing.

"The guns I have seen are by no means light or compact, owing to the necessary ballast. Possibly smaller weapons can be contrived; this is not yet certain. The large weapons are possible, but these must be braced against a tree, or a great stone, or thrust-poles, and hence are not so convenient. Still progress has been made.

"In addition, we are producing most ingenious glass arrows. The heads contain an electret, which upon impact produces an electric charge, which in turn detonates a disabling or even lethal charge of dexax. The problem here, I am told, is quality control.

"Finally, we are producing rocket guns: very simple, very cheap devices. The tube is cemented glass fiber, the projectile is ballasted either with a stone cylinder or an impact-detonated charge of dexax. This is a short-range weapon; accuracy is not good.

"All in all, there is cause for optimism."

Finnerack sat stock-still. He had become a man as different from the shaggy brown creature of Camp Three as that man was from the Ferd Finnerack of Angwin Junction. His frame had filled out; he stood erect. His hair, no longer a sun-crisped mat, clung to his head in golden-bronze ringlets; his features jutted forth without compromise; the mad glare of his eyes had become a blue glitter. Finnerack was a man without warmth, humor, forgiveness, and very few social graces; he wore only the black of implacability and doom, an idiosyncrasy which had earned him the soubriquet "Black Finnerack."

Finnerack's energy was boundless. He had reorganized the Discriminators with savage disregard for old procedures, previous status, or tenure, arousing not so much resentment as astonishment and awe. The Intelligence Agency became his own; in every city of Shant he established sub-agencies, linked by radio to Garwiy. The Brave Free Men he took even more completely to himself, and wore a Brave Free Man uniform (black rather than pale and dark blue) to the exclusion of all his other clothes.

The Brave Free Men had instantly excited the imagination of all Shant. To Garwiy came men by the hundreds, of all ages and sorts, in numbers far beyond Etzwane's capacity to de-torc. He took

Ifness' machine to Doneis, who called in a team of electronic technists. Gingerly they disassembled the case to peer down at the unfamiliar components, the exact engineering, the inexhaustible power cells. Such a machine, they decided, detected electron movement and generated magnetic pulses to cancel the flow.

After numerous experiments the technists were able to duplicate the function of Ifness' mechanism, though in no such compact package. Five of the devices were installed in the basement of the jurisdictionary; teams of functionaries worked day and night removing torcs from persons accepted into the corps of Brave Free Men. Finnerack himself screened the applicants; those whom he rejected often made a furious protest, for which Finnerack had a stock reply: "Bring me the head of a Roguskhoi and his scimitar; I'll make you a Brave Free Man." Perhaps once a week one of the rejected applicants returned contemptuously to hurl head and scimitar at his feet, whereupon Finnerack, without comment, kicked head and scimitar into a chute and took the man into the corps. Of those who attempted a Roguskhoi head and failed, no one knew the number.

Finnerack's energy was so furious that Etzwane sometimes felt himself an onlooker rather than a participant in the great events. The situation reflected the efficiency of his own leadership, he told himself. So long as affairs proceeded in a correct direction, he could make no complaint. When Etzwane put questions, Finnerack responded clearly, if tersely, seeming neither to welcome nor to resent Etzwane's interest: a fact which, if anything, increased Etzwane's uneasiness; did Finnerack consider him futile, a man whom events had overtaken and passed by?

Mialambre Octagon had taken his Justice of Shant teams out into the cantons; Etzwane received reports of his activities from incoming intelligence dispatches.

The news of Dystar was less circumstantial. Occasionally word came from some far place, always to the same effect: Dystar had come, he had played music of unimaginable grandeur, exalting all who heard, and then he had gone his way.

Finnerack had disappeared. At his rooms in the Pagane Tower, at the Jurisdictionary, at the Brave Free Men camps, Finnerack was nowhere to be found.

Three days passed before he returned. To Etzwane's questions Finnerack at first made evasive remarks, then declared that he had been "looking over the countryside, taking a rest."

Etzwane put no further questions, but he was far from satisfied. Was there a woman in Finnerack's life? Etzwane thought not. His actions were uncharacteristic. Finnerack returned to work with his old verve, but Etzwane thought him a trifle less certain, as if he had learned something to perplex or unsettle him.

Etzwane wanted to know about Finnerack's activities, but would have been forced to call on the

Intelligence Agency for help, which seemed not only inappropriate but foolish. . . . Must he then organize a second, competing intelligence system to bring him his information? Ridiculous!

The day after Finnerack's return Etzwane visited the technist workshops along the Jardeen estuary. Doneis took him along a set of benches where the new guns were in production. "Projectiles of pure Halcoid Four-One have not proved practical," said Doneis. "They expand almost instantaneously, producing unacceptable recoil. We have tried three thousand variations, and now use a stuff which expands at about one-tenth the speed of Four-One. In consequence the weapon requires only a thirty-pound ballast. Halcoid-Prax additionally is harder and less susceptible to atmospheric friction. The new splint is still no larger than a needle. . . . Here the trigger is fitted into the stock. . . . These are the elastic bands which prevent the ballast from flying to the rear. . . . The electret is inserted; the ballast is installed. . . . The mechanism is tested. . . . Here is the firing range, where the sights are mounted. We find that the weapon has an-essentially flat trajectory across its entire range which is slightly in excess of a mile. Do you care to test this gun?"

Etzwane picked up the weapon, rested it upon his shoulder. A yellow dot in the optical sights, directly in front of his eye, indicated the impact area.

"Drop the magazine into this socket, throw this clamp. When you press the trigger the ballast will strike the electret, producing an impulse which stimulates the splint. Be prepared for the recoil; brace yourself."

Etzwane peered through the lens and placed the yellow dot on the glass target. He pressed the yellow button, to feel an instant shock which thrust him backward. Down the range appeared a streak of white fire, impinging upon the now shattered target.

Etzwane put down the weapon. "How many can you produce?"

"Today we will finish only twenty, but we should soon triple this number. The principal problem is ballast. We have requisitioned metal from all Shant, but it is slow in arriving. The Director of Material Procurement informs me that he has the metal but transportation is not available. The Director of Transportation tells me to the contrary. I don't know which to believe. In any event we are not getting our metal."

"I'll take care of the matter," said Etzwane. "You'll get your metal in a hurry. Meanwhile, I have a somewhat different problem for your attention: a pair of Roguskhoi imps, probably six months to a year old, already vicious, already alert to the presence of women. I think we should learn how and why they are so stimulated, what processes. are involved. In short, are they affected visually, by odor, telepathically, or how?"

"I understand precisely. The problem is one of obvious importance. I will put our biologists to work at once."

Etzwane conferred first with the Aesthete Brise, the Director of Transportation, then with Aun Sharah. As Doneis had averred, each blamed the other for the lack of massive amounts of metal in Garwiy. Etzwane went, into explicit detail and concluded that the problem was one of priority. Aun Sharah had preempted the available ships to transport food to the refugee-swollen maritime cantons.

"The health of the people is important," Etzwane told Aun Sharah, "but our first concern is killing Roguskhoi, which means metal to Garwiy."

"I understand all this," Aun Sharah replied shortly. His complacent ease had gone, his complexion had lost its smooth tone. "I do the best that I can; remember, this is not my chosen occupation."

"Is this not true of all of us? I am a musician; Mialambre is a jurist; Brise is an Aesthete; Finnerack is a withe cutter. We are all fortunate in our versatility."

"Possibly true," said Aun Sharah. "I hear you have greatly changed my old Discriminators."

"We have indeed. All Shant is changing: I hope not for the worse."

The Roguskhoi swept on through north-central and northeast Shant, roaming at will through Cansume, most of Marestiy, and large parts of Faible and Purple Stone. Three times they attempted to swim the River Maure into Green Stone; on each occasion the regional militia put forth in fishing boats to pelt the invaders with dexax grenades. In the water the Roguskhoi were helpless; men knew the exhilaration of slaughtering their previously invincible opponents. The successes, however, were not real; the Roguskhoi were insensitive both to their own losses and to the human exultation; they marched thirty miles upstream to Opalsand, where the Maure flowed only three feet deep, and crossed in force. Their intent clearly was to sweep through Green Stone, Cape, Galwand, and Glirris and grind the survivors against the Roguskhoi forces already in Azume. They would thereby destroy millions of men, capture millions of women, and control all northeast Shant—a disaster of unthinkable proportions.

Etzwane conferred with Finnerack, Brise, and San-Sein, this last the nominal commander of the Brave Free Men. Approximately two thousand Brave Free Men had now been armed with halcoid guns: a corps which Finnerack had intended to dispatch through Fairlea into the Hwan foothills of Sable, to hold Seamus and Bastern and to ambush and harass the Roguskhoi as they came down from the Hwan. The northeast, so he declared, must be written off; he saw no profit in desperate half-measures doomed to failure. For the first time Etzwane took issue with Finnerack on a major decision; to Etzwane a lack of reaction in the northeast meant the betrayal of millions; he found the idea unacceptable. Finnerack was unmoved. "Millions must die; the war is bitter. If we are to win