West Of The Sun, Edgar Pangborn [world of reading txt] 📗

beard. "Few got by, oh my, yes. Tamisraa's girls fixed 'em—had to club m' rifle—dirty cave man—no fear, Paul—no fear! Muscle man with an empty head. They had—couple bowmen with 'em—no harm done." No harm? Was he unaware of the broken arrow shaft below his ribs, deeply bedded, with dark blood oozing around the wood? "They quit, Paul?"

"They haven't quit." He looked south, seeing why they wouldn't quit.

"Tamisraa got a bad one—throat." Sears coughed painfully. "I sent her to Doc—he's just back of those trees. And my pets, Paul, my olifants, why, they're standing fast, boy. With Abara, bless him—'bout half mile north. You can't beat 'em. We must figure some way to ferry 'em over to the island—must—they're people, those olifants——"

"You go to Doc yourself, Jocko, and fast. That——"

"Oh, that, that. Mere prac'l dem'stration nobody loves fat man——"

The Vestoians would not quit because of what was coming half a mile away in the south under a cloud of brown wings, coming fast. The horde would be ignoring the omasha, striking them aside, spearing them when there was time, granting them the necessary toll for passage, and coming fast. Oh, they would be less than six thousand now—somewhat less. Meanwhile the remnant from the boats was waiting, regrouping, drawing breath, readying itself for the climax of massacre, maybe deliberately postponing it until Lantis of Vestoia, Queen of the World, could arrive to enjoy it. Paul tried again to count his people in the sturdy half circle. Black Elis was striding[135] among them, a great stick in each hand, rumbling comfort and encouragement, and none of them shrank away from him.

It looked like less than seven hundred. A hundred lost at the knoll; forty, Wright said, in the first skirmish at the camp; twenty in Samiraa's night expedition. Perhaps three hundred in this last wave of the battle. And Samiraa herself; Duriaa; Tamisraa wounded, Pakriaa insane with grief; Lisson and Surok dead. Lame Kamisiaa—Paul could not find her. Abro Brodaa—still calm, unhurt, competent. Very well—seven hundred against somewhat less than six thousand of the land army, somewhat less than four thousand from the boats.

How I dreamed! There would be no southward drive to the island. The omasha alone made it an absurdity. He had been idiotic to imagine it.

Pakriaa broke her spear across her knee. She walked out into the meadow toward the advancing swarm. She looked back stupidly at Paul's shout, and Nisana ran to her, crying out in the old language. Pakriaa, with no change of expression, lunged at the captain, striking flat-handed across her face, forcing her back until Paul reached them to interfere and Sears caught Pakriaa's wrist, mumbling, "Come now—come with me, princess."

"I am no princess."

"I call you so," Sears said clearly, and speaking with sternness for possibly the first time in his life. "Now come with me."

Paul stammered, "Have Doc get that damned arrow out of you. Then he's to start north with the wounded—at once."

"North." Sears nodded.

"There are no gods," said Pakriaa.

"Yes, north. We'll catch up with you."

"I thought of you as a god."

"Think of me as a friend who loves you. It is better." She went with him, stumbling as Paul had never seen her do, and when the leaves closed behind them it seemed to Paul that there was surely the cloud of another world. She might have been a small girl going for a walk in the woods with her grandfather....

There was no lifeboat above that rolling swarm. Ed[136] Spearman must have——No time to think about it.

But he had to, a little. Spearman was forced down by lack of fuel and killed. Or forced down, isolated somewhere, miles away. Or he had kept good watch of the fuel gauge until there was just enough for another trip to the island and had gone—right, reasonable, what he ought to have done, what Paul would have ordered him to do if he could have.... Paul turned to Brodaa. "Your sister Kamisiaa—I don't see her——"

"My lame sister is dead." Her eyes were shrewd, counting. "We have more than seven hundred. Two hundred of them bowmen."

"Bring them all to the woods. Spread the bowmen at the edge: they will meet the first charge with arrows, nothing else, and then join our retreat. Send a hundred spearwomen to guard and help Tocwright's group: they will go straight north. Send another hundred through the villages to save what they can—the children, the old—and take them west and north to join the others. All the rest will stay with you and me and Elis to fight in the rear—delay and confuse—fighting retreat, Brodaa. I see nothing else."

"Nothing else," she said evenly. "As you say...."

Elis was with him, waiting under the trees, and Nisana, who said, "No gods? There must be other gods. Not Ismar...."

Elis watched the meadow over the crouching bowmen. "Within you, Captain. The god within you made you save the life of my friend. I saw that. I even think I begin to understand. But that might be vanity."

[137]

6

A sorry day moved into evening, and when evening became an approach to moonless dark, this day of retreat was in Paul's mind a passage of distorted images, true or false.

True that he was now limping through forest stillness between Nisana and a skinny ghost who was Christopher Wright and Wright carried Pakriaa, who moaned at times like a child with a nightmare, and up ahead were five white drifting mountains, one of them ridden by a man who was silent in pain, Sears Oliphant. It might or might not be true that at some time during the day Paul had thrashed on the ground with a broken head in front of some squalling danger until black arms swept him up away from—whatever it was.

Tejron and the two other giant women Karison and Elron, and Mijok, still lived. Elis was walking behind Paul, unhurt; therefore the mind of Elis would still be probing at the borderland of known and unknown, searching and incorruptible. All true. Apparently true that the gash in Paul's side had stiffened, his right leg was knotting itself in some unimportant distress, and his bandaged forehead no longer throbbed.

The first contact with the Vestoian land army had been a swift skirmish and ordered withdrawal. Abro Brodaa's archers had crumpled the first enemy charge. After that the Vestoians had crashed into the woods with no caution, driven by the horror of brown wings that still pursued them. Paul had had a final glimpse of the green headdress of Lantis, Queen of the World; his two shots before the rifle jammed had not touched her. Once, under cover of the trees, the Vestoians had paused to reorganize, giving Paul's[138] retreating force a little time and distance and the help of forest obscurity.

The spearwomen sent ahead to clear the villages had poured through Pakriaa's settlement and Brodaa's, rounding up old people, children, and the chattering pack of male witches, sending them west to join Wright's group of wounded—if they could find it. But at the third village upstream—it had been Abro Samiraa's—there was delay. Perhaps the people had refused to go where there were giants. Paul's rear guard had halted south of the village to protect the evacuation; here the Vestoians caught up with them.

They had fought it out for two hours in the misery of bush and brier and purple vine outside the village ditch, while the jungle world steamed in the growth of mid-morning. Paul's horizon had narrowed to the knot of fighters who stayed with him—Nisana, Brodaa, Elis, an unknown black-skirted soldier who fell at his feet with a bleeding mouth. Somewhere in that hell he had lost his rifle. It was Brodaa (this must be true, for it was Elis who told him of it)—Brodaa who had guided them out of the trap, regrouped the remnant of the rear guard north of Samiraa's village while the Vestoians paused to set that village afire and rejoice over its dying.

Paul could remember that regrouping: black Elis had set him on his feet, supporting him till he could walk. There were many twittering, mad-eyed bowmen among the survivors. Brodaa had sent runners to give the other three villages a final warning; she herself decided against trying to reach them with this fragment of an army numbering less than three hundred. The only way to save anything at all was to flee north, join Wright's group, hope that the remaining villages would delay the conquerors and that at least some of their non-combatants could scatter before Lantis, Queen of the World, took them for slaves, meat, and sacrifice.

The rest of the day had been a running, a harsh drive into country unknown even to Elis. There had been, for Paul and Elis at least, a breath of second wind when they found the tracks of the olifants. They had caught up with Wright's refugees in the early afternoon, but there could be no pause, even though it was quiet here at the edge of[139] forest and western meadow and the sound of screaming in the villages was an hour behind them....

Paul noticed that he was naked except for ammunition belt and an empty holster. Perhaps his present clarity of mind was the true madness, the earlier fog of pain and anger the mind's more natural climate. But one might as well reason and take stock. He remembered the map. Was it saved? No matter: a copy had been flown to the island with Dorothy and the baby.

I have a woman who loves me; I have a daughter. I have my life.

On his left, just visible in twilight beyond a meadow turning brilliant with blue fireflies, there were the low western hills, the hills rotten with the burrows of kaksmas, and they were nearer, much nearer than he had ever seen them except from the lifeboat. (But Ed Spearman went there; he walked in the hills alone and found iron ore, and now he is——Never mind where he is. If the charlesite was giving out he did right to fly to the island and abandon us. What else could he do?) Well, it was right too that the hills should be nearer: the edge of the forest slanted northwest, narrowing the meadow. And this far north the hills were smaller, more broken up. Yet it would not do to approach them closely: even the least of the hills (so pygmy and giant tradition said) could be the dwelling place of day-blind ratlike killers numerous enough to destroy this entire party and still be hungry. The retreat must struggle north until the hills were well behind, shut away by level jungle—where the kaksmas still might come, to be sure, but only to the distance of half a night's journey from their burrows. "Doc—can you estimate what distance we've made since we caught up with you?"

"Maybe twenty miles," the old man said. "In more time than Argo once needed to travel twenty million miles. What is man?"

"Man? A mathematical absurdity.... Aren't you tired? I could carry Pakriaa a while."

"No, I'm not tired, son. I like to have her...."

Rifles—in the beginning there had been only five, and one shotgun. The shotgun had been taken to the island. Dorothy and Ann had their pistols there, too. Paul's rifle was lost. Lisson's had been lost when she died. That[140] should leave three. Wright had one slung at his back. Peering up ahead, Paul saw another in the red-brown hand of the young giantess Elron. Sears must have lost his. So two at least remained. And one automatic—Wright's. "Those two new recruits Mijok brought——I'm in a fog—I only just remembered——"

"Lost," said Wright, staring ahead. "The boy didn't understand. He ran into the mess on the beach like a horse running into a fire. That was before you got back from the south. The other had more sense. Saw the pygmies spilling out of the boats and ran for the woods. Naturally we didn't try to hold him. Perhaps he's reached his home territory. I hope so."

Behind him Elis spoke softly: "It was not very far, Doc. When we reach the island and start the new settlement——"

"Oh, Elis——"

"When that has been done I'll come back and find him, give him the words—him and many others. I promise you that. Let me believe it."

"Believe it, Elis. But the boy Danik is dead. He was bright, curious. He should have lived 150 years."

"We overtake mystery," Elis said, "and leave it behind."

"Men have never overtaken the mystery of untimely death."

"There is chaos," said Elis. "Chance. Mystery is great jungle around a small clearing. I accept that. We make a wider clearing."

Paul felt Nisana's finger hook over his. Pakriaa groaned, perhaps in sleep. The darkness had blotted away the hills; even the small shape of Nisana was growing too dim. Elis said,