Dusk was deepening into darkness and he called Chiara again. "They"ll turn on their searchlights any minute and make the town as light as day," he said. "If you can keep them blacked out until some of us have reached the ship, I think we"ll have won."
"They"ll be kept blacked out," Chiara said. "With some flint-headed arrows left over for the Gerns."
He called Lake and Craig, to be told they were ready and waiting.
"But we"re having h.e.l.l keeping the unicorns quiet," Craig said. "They want to get to killing something."
He pressed the switch of the communicator but it was dead. They had, of course, transferred to some other wave length so he could not hear the commands. It was something he had already antic.i.p.ated....
Fenrir and Sigyn were still obediently inside the doorway, almost frantic with desire to rejoin him. He spoke to them and they bounded out, snarling at three Gerns in pa.s.sing and causing them to blanch to a dead-white color.
He set Tip on Sigyn"s shoulders and said, "Sigyn, there"s a job for you and Tip to do. A dangerous job. Listen--both of you...."
The yellow eyes of Sigyn and the dark eyes of the little mocker looked into his as he spoke to them and accompanied his words with the strongest, clearest mental images he could project:
"Sigyn, take Tip to the not-men thing. Leave him hidden in the gra.s.s to one side of the big hole in it. Tip, you wait there. When the not-men come out you listen, and tell what they say.
"Now, do you both understand?"
Sigyn made a sound that meant she did but Tip clutched at his wrist with little paws suddenly gone cold and wailed, "_No!_ Scared--scared----"
"You have to go, Tip," he said, gently disengaging his wrist. "And Sigyn will hide near to you and watch over you." He spoke to Sigyn. "When the horn calls you run back with him."
Again she made the sound signifying understanding and he touched them both in what he hoped would not be the last farewell.
"All right, Sigyn--go now."
She vanished into the gloom of coming night, Tip hanging tightly to her.
Fenrir stood with the fur lifted on his shoulders and a half snarl on his face as he watched her go and watched the place where the not-men would appear.
"Where"s Freckles?" he asked Jimmy.
"Here," someone said, and came forward with Tip"s mate.
He set Freckles on his shoulder and the first searchlight came on, shining down from high up on the cruiser. It lighted up the area around them in harsh white brilliance, its reflection revealing the black shadow that was Sigyn just vanishing behind the ship.
Two more searchlights came on, to illuminate the town. Then the Gerns came.
They poured out through the airlock and down the ramp, there to form in columns that marched forward as still more Gerns hurried down the ramp behind them. The searchlights gleamed on their battle helmets and on the blades of the bayonets affixed to their rifle-like long range blasters.
Hand blasters and grenades hung from their belts, together with stubby flame guns.
They were a solid ma.s.s reaching halfway to the stockade before the last of them, the commanding officers, appeared. One of them stopped at the foot of the ramp to watch the advance of the punitive force and give the frightened but faithful Tip the first words to transmit to Freckles:
"The full force is on its way, Commander."
A reply came, in Freckles" simulation of the metallic tones of a communicator:
"The key numbers of the confiscated blasters have been checked and the disturbance rays of the master integrator set. You"ll probably have few natives left alive to take as prisoners after those thirteen charges explode but continue with a mopping up job that the survivors will never forget."
_So the Gerns could, by remote control, set the total charges of stolen blasters to explode upon touching the firing stud?_ It was something new since the days of the Old Ones....
He called Chiara and the other groups, quickly, to tell them what he had learned. "We"ll get more blasters--ones they can"t know the numbers of--when we attack," he finished.
He took the blaster from his belt and laid it on the ground. The front ranks of the Gerns were almost to the wall by then, a column wider than the gap that had been blasted through it, coming with silent purposefulness.
Two blaster beams lanced down from the turrets, to smash at the wall.
Dust billowed and thunder rumbled as they swept along. A full three hundred feet of the wall had been destroyed when they stopped and the dust hid the ship and made dim glows of the searchlights.
It had no doubt been intended to impress them with the might of the Gerns but in doing so it hid the Ragnarok forces from the advancing Gerns for a few seconds.
"Jim--black out their lights before the dust clears," he called.
"Joe--the horn! We attack now!"
The first longbow arrow struck a searchlight and its glow grew dimmer as the arrow"s burden--a thin tube of thick lance tree ink--splattered against it. Another followed----
Then the horn rang out, harsh and commanding, and in the distance a unicorn screamed in answer. The savage cry of a prowler came, like a sound to match, and the attack was on.
He ran with Fenrir beside him and to his left and right ran the others with their prowlers. The lead groups converged as they went through the wide gap in the wall. They ran on, into the dust cloud, and the shadowy forms of the Gerns were suddenly before them.
A blaster beam cut into them and a Gern shouted, _"The natives!"_ Other beams sprang into life, winking like pale blue eyes through the dust and killing all they touched. The beams dropped as the first volley of arrows tore through the ma.s.sed front ranks, to be replaced by others.
They charged on, into the blue winking of the blasters and the red lances of the flame guns with the crossbows rattling and strumming in answer. The prowlers lunged and fought beside them and ahead of them; black h.e.l.l-creatures that struck the Gerns too swiftly for blasters to find before throats were torn out; the sound of battle turned into a confusion of raging snarls, frantic shouts and dying screams.
A prowler shot past him to join Fenrir--Sigyn--and he felt Tip dart up to his shoulder. She made a sound of greeting in pa.s.sing, a sound that was gone as her jaws closed on a Gern.
The dust cloud cleared a little and the searchlights looked down on the scene; no longer brilliantly white but shining through the red-black lance tree ink as a blood red glow. A searchlight turret slid shut and opened a moment later, the light wiped clean. The longbows immediately transformed it into a red glow.
The beam of one of the turret blasters stabbed down, to blaze a trail of death through the battle. It ceased as its own light revealed to the Gern commander that the Ragnarok forces were so intermixed with the Gern forces that he was killing more Gerns than Ragnarok men.
By then the fighting was so hand to hand that knives were better than crossbows. The Gerns fell like harvested corn; too slow and awkward to use their bayonets against the faster Ragnarok men and killing as many of one another as men when they tried to use their blasters and flame guns. From the rear there came the command of a Gern officer, shouted high and thin above the sound of battle:
"Back to the ship--leave the natives for the ship"s blasters to kill!"
The unicorns arrived then, to cut off their retreat.
They came twenty from the east and twenty from the west in a thunder of hooves, squealing and screaming in their blood l.u.s.t, with prowlers a black wave going before them. They struck the Gerns; the prowlers slashing lanes through them while the unicorns charged behind, trampling them, ripping into them with their horns and smashing them down with their hooves as they vented the pent up rage of their years of confinement. On the back of each was a rider whose long spear flicked and stabbed into the throats and bellies of Gerns.
The retreat was halted and transformed into milling confusion. He led his own groups in the final charge, the prearranged wedge attack, and they split the Gern force in two.
The ship was suddenly just beyond them.
He gave the last command to Lake and Craig: "_Now_--into the ship!"
He scooped up a blaster from beside a fallen Gern and ran toward it. A Gern officer was already in the airlock, his face pale and strained as he looked back and his hand on the closing switch. He shot him and ran up the ramp as the officer"s body rolled down it.
Unicorn hooves pounded behind him and twenty of them swept past, their riders leaping from their backs to the ramp. Twenty men and fifteen prowlers charged up the ramp as a warning siren shrieked somewhere inside the ship. At the same time the airlocks, operated from the control room, began to slide swiftly shut.
He was through first, with Fenrir and Sigyn. Lake and Craig, together with six men and four prowlers, squeezed through barely in time. Then the airlocks were closed and they were sealed in the ship.