The Many-Coloured Land - 1 (53 page)

"Don't worry about it, Claude," Felice said.

And so he stopped.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Half-dozing in the dead hour before dawn, Moe Marshak and the other human troops on duty in Finiah had mistaken the first blast of the photon weapon for a lightning stroke. The thin green beam had lanced out of the stars, barely missing the Rhineside wall that the gray-torc garrison manned and demolishing an adjacent mess hall inside the compound. Marshak was still gaping at the flames consuming the wreckage when Claude's second shot struck the Number Ten bastion squarely, breaching the fortification not a dozen meters from Marshak's station. Great blocks of granite flew in all directions and the air boiled with smoke and dust Oil tubs that held the watch fires spilled in the concussion and sent blazing rivulets racing down the cracked walkway.

When Marshak was able to get a grip on himself, he rushed to look through one of the embrasures. There in the fog-blurred waters below were the boats.

"Alert!" he shouted aloud; and then his mind sent the alarm on the declamatory mode, amplified by his gray torc.

Manhak: Invasion viaRhine! Wallbreach StationTen! Captal Wag: Howthehellmany be there Moe? Howmany boats? Manhak: Wholefuckin river FULL!! Eightyhundred who can count damnfog bastards everywhere Firvulagboats but let-mesee yes! LOWLIVES TOO! Repeat Lowlives + Foe invading. Landings! Rocks swarming damnfuckers penetrating breach estimate hole maybeninemeters max.

Comet Formby: All troopsofwatch to StationTen. General alert RhineGarrison to arms. Dutyobservers scan/report Defensiveunits to wallstations... CANCELCANCELCAN-CEL! Defensiveunits to garrisoncompound! Invader penetration compound!

Commander Seaborg: Lord Velteyn. Alert. Firvulag and human invasion force has penetrated the city fortifications at breached Number Ten Station. Countering.

Lord Velteyn of Finiah: Kinfolk arise and defend! Flyers to saddle! Na bardito! Na bardito taynel o pogekdne!

Chief Burke and Uwe Guldenzopf led the mob of Vosges Low-lives and outland volunteers up the steep rampart and across the tumbled nibble of the breakthrough. Vitredur arrows and crossbow bolts rained down from the battlements, but until the defenders could redeploy at ground level, the invaders would have a brief advantage. As bad luck would have it, the breach was within the grounds of the principal Finiah garrison. In addition to the confusion caused by the mess hall conflagration, which was spreading to adjoining structures, a chaliko stable had been broken open by falling debris and numbers of the great animals were loose.

Three soldiers ran from the guardhouse at the compound gate. "Take 'em," yelled Burke, and howling desperados fell upon the little force and cut it to pieces. "Out of here! Into the city streets! and get this gate off the hinges!"

Troops were pouring from the barracks, some with their armor only half strapped on. Free-for-all clashes erupted everywhere in the murk as invaders scrambled through the broken wall while the human minions of the Tanu strove to press them back. The irregulars trying to unhinge the gates were attacked and overwhelmed, and soldiers swung the heavy metal grille shut, locking it.

"We're sealed in!" Chief Burke jumped on top of an overturned feed wagon. His face and upper torso were painted in the old war patterns and he had the wing feather of a fire-eagle thrust into his knotted, iron-colored hair. "Hit the sonnofabitches! Get that gate back open! This way!"

He saw Uwe fall beneath a sword-wielding gray-torc and leaped down, brandishing the wide tomahawk Khalid Khan had forged for him. The blade sank into the soldier's crested bronze kettle-helmet as though it were made of pasteboard. Burke hauled the body off to find Ouldenzopf lying flat on his back, one hand clutching his breast and an expression of agony on his bearded face.

Burke knelt. "Did he nail you, bubi?"

Struggling up on one elbow, Uwe groped inside his buckskin shirt Bone-colored bits gleamed in the lurid light "Only my second-best meerschaum, dammit."

The Lowlives remained hemmed in, unable to break out of the area in the immediate vicinity of the garrison complex. Those crowded in the breach were pressed both by the defenders and by their own comrades coming up from the beachhead. A wall of panic arose. Some invaders fell and were trampled. A garrison officer wearing a silver torc and full blue-glass body armor directed a unit of halberdiers that advanced upon the stalled irregulars. Sweeping crystal blades mowed down the packed, shrieking throng.

And then the monsters came to the rescue.

High on the steep slope of rubble shone the wavering nightmare shape of a three-meter albino scorpion, the illusionary aspect of Sharn the younger, general of the Firvulag. From the minds of the exotics came a mighty wave of terror and dread that overloaded the telepathic circuits of the gray torcs and sent their wearers writhing into madness. Sharn himself could smite the enemy at a range of nearly twenty-five meters; others of his advancing company might not have auras so formidable, but woe to the Foe who fell into their clutches!

Hideous trolls, spectres, manticores, shambling dark presences seized the soldiers in spine-crunching embraces, sank fangs into unarmored throats, even rent men limb from limb. Some of the exotics were capable of flinging bolts of psycho-energy that broiled troops in their bronze cuirasses like lobsters in the shell. Other Firvulag harassed with sheets of astral fire, streams of nauseating ichor, or brain-crippling illusions. The great hero Nukalavee the Skinless, wearing his aspect of a flayed centaur with blazing eyes, howled until enemy soldiers fell writhing to the ground, eardrums split and minds reduced to near-idiocy. Another champion, Bles Four-Fang, invaded the headquarters of the garrison, caught up the silver commander named Seaborg, and appeared to devour him, armor and all, while the dying officer calmly broadcast final telepathic orders to his subordinates directing the troops now making a last stand at the gate opening into the inner city Seaborg's aides blunted their vitredur weapons against Bles's scaly illusory hide, only to be eaten alive in turn for their temerity. By the time the monster had downed the last adjutant, the headquarters building was afire and the invasion force swarmed in Finiah's streets. So Bles withdrew in good order, picking his teeth with a silver spur. His appetite had only been whetted, and the morning was young.

Vanda-Jo was still overseeing the last wave of volunteers embarking from the staging area when Lord Velteyn and the Flying Hunt took to the air. Shouts of fear came from the crowd as they saw the glowing knights mount up from the city across the water. One man yelled, "The bleeders're coming for us!" and jumped into the Rhine. A fiasco was averted when Vanda-Jo tongue-lashed the outlanders for their cowardice, pointing out that the Hunt was circling high above Finiah, bent on some more urgent objective.

"So into the boats and quit farting around!" she bellowed. "You don't have to be afraid of Velteyn and his flying circus any more! Did you forget our secret weapon? We've got iron! You can kill Tanu now, even easier than you can kill those traitor human torcers that do their dirty work!"

Eyeballs rolled anxiously in the half-light. The Firvulag skipper in the two-masted shallop nearest Vanda-Jo glowered in dwarfish impatience. "Hurry it up, spiritless earthworms, or we'll sail to the war without you!"

Suddenly a column of emerald light stabbed down from apparently empty sky in the axis of the wheeling Hunt, striking a low knoll within the city across the Rhine. Orange-and-white fire fountained up at the point of impact, and seconds later, the sound of a rolling detonation sped over the river.

"The mine!" somebody shouted. "The barium mine's blowing up! God, it looks like a volcano erupting in there!"

As if the bombardment had been a signal, another gout of flame belched up from the farthest reaches of Finiah, back where the peninsula narrowed to a small neck connecting the city to the mainland.

"See that?" Vanda-Jo was exultant "The second wave of spooks have landed opposite our main beachhead! That female Firvulag general named Ayfa is attacking from the Black Forest side. Now will you shitheads get a move on?"

The men and women on the dock hoisted their iron-tipped spears into the air and yelled. They pounded down the spindly gangplanks into the waiting boats so eagerly that the small craft rocked and nearly swamped.

On the other side of the Rhine, flames made a scarlet track on the dark water. The faerie lamps of blue and green and silver and gold that had outlined the splendid Tanu City of Lights began to wink out.

Velteyn, Lord of Finiah, pulled up the reins of his chaliko and hung in midair, shining like a magnesium flare. The nobles of his Flying Hunt, eighteen male and three female knights, all glowing red. drew in their mounts to surround him. His thought-thrust was nearly incoherent with frustration and rage:

Gone! The flying machine is gone. .. and yet my lightnings surely penetrated its belly. Kamilda! Send your farsense seeking it.

... It recedes from us Exalted Lord. Ah Tana at a speed unprecedented! It drops behind the brow of the Vosges and beyond my perception. My Lord if I ascend to a great height...

Stay Kamilda! More urgent threats confront us below. Look all of you! Look what the Foe has done! O the shame the pain the havoc! Down to the ground all of you. Each to command a mounted party of chivalry in defense of our City of Lights!

Na bardito taynel o pogekône!

The fighting moved steadily inland from the Rhineside break. Two hours after dawn, the western front was strung throughthe gardens of the pleasure dome, on the very outskirts of the Tanu quarter.

Moe Marshak had reloaded his quiver several times from those of fallen comrades. He had wrenched the gaudy crest from his bronze helmet early on and then rolled in filth to camouflage the shine of his cuirass. Unlike certain of his luckless fellows, he had deduced quickly that the Firvulag would be able to detect telepathic communication, and so he made no attempt to contact his officers for orders. Maintaining a quiet mind, he went his lone way, keeping out of monster range as he skulked Finiah's byways, potting Lowlives with cool economy while dodging hysterical ramas and noncombatants. Marshak had already taken out at least fifteen of the enemy, plus two bareneck civilians he had caught looting a gray-torc of its weaponry.

Now Marshak slipped into the long porch that formed the perimeter of the pleasure dome. Hearing one of the distinctive Lowlife yodels, he concealed himself behind thick ornamental shrubs and nocked one of the serrated war arrows in his compound bow.

In the next instant an unexpected diversion came from within the building. The stained glass from a pair of French doors perhaps five meters away from the soldier shivered to atoms from the impact of some heavy object. There were screams and a rumbling sound. Long hands all adorned with rings fumbled with the jammed catch. Other hands shook the bent framework. The angle was such that Marshak could not clearly see the people trapped inside, but their cries of terror and dismay reached both his mind and ears, as did the uncanny warbling of the thing pursuing them.

"Help! The door's struck! And it's coming!"

Help us! Helphelphelp us! HELP US!

The blanket coercive summons of a Tanu overlord clutched at Marshak's consciousness. His gray torc compelled obedience. Forsaking his hiding place, he ran to the door. On the other side, pressed against the mangled copper fretwork, were three female denizens of the pleasure dome and their tall Tanu client, whose handsome violet and gold robes proclaimed him an official of the Farsensor Guild. He presumably lacked the coercive or psychokinetic potential to fend off the apparition that was now poised in an inner doorway, ready to strike.

The Firvulag wore the appearance of a gigantic hell-grammite, a larval water insect with clashing razor-sharp mandibles. The brute's head was nearly a meter wide, while the long segmented body, slick with some stinking secretion, seemed to fill the corridor behind it.

"Tana be thanked!" cried the Tanu. "Quickly, my man! Aim for its neck!"

Marshak raised his bow, shifted position to avoid the struggling women, and let fly. The glass-tipped shaft sank for most of its length between chitinous plates behind the creature's scissoring jaws. Marshak heard the Firvulag utter a telepathic bellow. Without hurrying he drew two more arrows and sent them into the hellgrammite's glittering orange eyes. The insectile form wavered, became insubstantial . . . and then the awful thing was gone and a dwarf in black obsidian armor lay dead on the floor, throat and eyesockets transfixed.

The soldier used his vitredur short sword to pry open the ruined latch. Pleasure surges engendered by the grateful exotic throbbed along his pelvic nerves in the sweet, familiar reward. When the nobleman and his disheveled companions were freed, Marshak saluted, right fist pressed against his heart.

"I am at your service, Exalted Lord."

But the farsensor dithered. "Where are we to go? The route to House Velteyn is cut off!" His abstracted expression showed that he was scanning about with his mind's eye.

"Well, we can't go back inside," said the most petite of the pleasure dome inmates, a black woman of exquisite contours and sharp voice. "The damn muffers are crawling out of the woodwork!"

"Oh, Lord Kolitcyr," squealed a teary blond. "Save us!"

"Silence!" commanded the Tanu. 'I'm attempting to, but no one will respond to my summons!"

The third woman, thin and empty-eyed, her provocative attire half torn from her bony shoulders, sank down on the pavement and began to laugh.

Kolitcyr gasped. 'The dome is surrounded! I call, but Lord Velteyn's knights are in the thick of battle!... Hah! The invaders cringe and retreat before the coercive might of Tanu chivalry! The Goddess be thanked, there are many more powerful than I!"

A great jarring thump came from inside the pleasure dome. Distant cries became louder. More glass broke and a rhythmic pounding began.

"They're coming! The monsters are coming!" Once again, the blonde burst into hysterical tears.

"Soldier, you must lead us..." The Tanu scowled, shook his head as if to clear it. "Lead us to the Northern Watergate! There may be a boat..."