The wizard gave
him an unconvincing smile and, not knowing what else to say, Springbuck dashed
off to
Lobo.
War is
delightful to those who have no experience in it.
DESIDERIUS ERASMUS
WHEN Springbuck reached the APC a
very angry Sergeant MacDonald was confronting a red-faced Van Duyn.
“Okay, okay,”
said the soldier. “We’ll go look for her but we aren’t taking you with us.
Thing is, I run
Lobo
and I don’t like people who try to tell me how to
do it, and you’re just a leetle bit too inclined in that direction, so you stay
here. We’ll take the kid there.” He gestured to the Prince. “And we’ll park
outside the village. Then whatsisname and I, Springbuck, will do one, repeat,
one fast dismounted scout. If we don’t find the woman, tough rocks; we’re not
sticking around.”
Van Duyn opened
his mouth to protest but closed it again at the set expression on the soldier’s
face. “Agreed,” he said, though there was that in his features which conveyed
his fury well enough.
Springbuck was
hustled into the track, his sword hilt catching on the narrow rear hatch. The
other crew members, already at their stations, gave him one cursory glance
before turning their attention to their trade. He studied the sinister-looking
black M-60 machine guns with interest and started when the big engine howled to
life. A rapid, persistent vibration made the entire APC quiver. The two side
gunners were nervously checking belts of linked ammunition in feeder trays as
Pomorski leaned closer and shouted into his ear to be heard over the engine.
“Stand up front there and hang on with both hands. Just stay out of our way.”
The gates were
thrown open and the Prince thrilled as the APC lurched ahead. He shouted to
Pomorski, “Where is Sergeant MacDonald?”
“He’s
ground-guiding us across the bridge, since we’re still in friendly territory. I
think.”
Once they’d
passed slowly and carefully over the drawbridge, Gil came swarming up over the
front of the track and lowered himself behind the .50 caliber.
Lobo
accelerated
and Springbuck found himself bouncing along through the gathering darkness,
fighting to keep his balance in the swaying machine. Too late, he remembered
his war mask, still back at the castle. He shrugged, thinking that it would
have been a bother in these cramped quarters anyway, and concentrated on appreciating
this singular ride.
The early
evening moon was quite bright as they hurtled down the meadow, and the Prince
wondered if the noise of their approach wouldn’t alert the enemy in Erub.
Lobo
slowed until it merely crawled along. The vibrations coming through his
boot soles made Springbuck’s feet itch, but he quickly forgot about it. When
the track had come to a stop and its engine fell quiet, he could hear, in the
new silence, cries, shouts, screams and curses. Evidently, the Erubites had
decided in their desperation to fight back at the ravaging troops.
“With all the
racket, I don’t think they’ve noticed us,” Gil said. “We’re still over half a
mile out and we came in without even blackout lights. Springbuck and I will go
in and look around. You guys stay put in this gully unless you hear shooting,
in which case I would be deeply grateful if you’d come and inquire after our
health.”
“Why don’t we
just take the track in?” Handelman wanted to know.
Gil, removing
his headset and helmet, shook his head. “I don’t like the way that town
looks—narrow streets and more likely than not all twists and turns. I don’t
want to chance getting
Lobo
stuck or lost. Besides, don’t you think we’d
attract attention?”
He slung Shorty
over his shoulder. The son of Surehand followed him over the side of the APC
and jumped down next to him in the sand of the gully. They set off toward Erub,
the open terrain making the sergeant ill at ease, a swipe of memory from his
days in Recon.
“Where do you
think she’ll go?” he asked Springbuck.
“It would be
the healer’s house, in the very center of town,” was the considered reply.
“Swell-oh.”
They went on
for a time and, when they were closer to the edge of Erub, stopped behind a
tree to study it. Gil took a strip of camouflage cloth out of his pocket and
tied it around his forehead to keep hair and perspiration out of his eyes and
cut any telltale gleam in the darkness. Then he remembered that his companion
wore gleaming leathers and had large areas of light, exposed skin and shiny
metal. Too late to rectify that now.
The fighting
seemed to be concentrated in the other end of the village. The two entered the
fringes of town undetected, shadowed against walls by the fires that had been
set there. They occasionally saw bodies lying dead or injured in the streets,
most of them civilians showing sword cuts or lance wounds. Women bore signs of
abuse and at least one child had been ferociously mistreated. Gil said nothing,
but his face was filled with revulsion and anger, and the Prince’s was not good
to look upon in its loathing.
They moved
cautiously toward the center of the village. Weaving in and out of doorways,
ducking into alleys, they encountered no other living thing until they stood at
the brink of the plaza. Springbuck found it hard to believe that the battle
which seemed to him now to be so long past had transpired here only the
preceding afternoon.
Gil, for his
part, reflected on the impossibility of the scene and his predicament. But, as
in his encounter with Neezolo Peeno, the order of precedence drilled into him
took over—first, survival; watch your tail and do the job, son; introspection
later; one thing at a time, or you’ll never live long enough to get anything
done.
“There,” said
his companion, pointing to a two-story house bordering the square. Two horses
were hitched in front of it. “That is the house of Gabrielle’s daughter, as
Andre described it to me. It is almost certain that there are soldiers in it.
Whether or not she will be, I cannot say.”
They were at
the walls of the house in one dash; Gil could see no reason to make their
approach by the numbers since the other could not provide cover fire for him.
Perhaps he should have brought Pomorski, but he hadn’t wanted to leave the
track any more undermanned than was absolutely necessary.
He leaned up
and peered over the sill of a low, opened window, He could see no one within
and drew back down to think for a moment.
“Now we go in.
I’ll take the downstairs and you check upstairs. If anything happens I yell and
you move out—and you do it right away, read me? Good. Your redhead is probably
on the second floor if she’s here at all, so look it over tight, but don’t take
all night doing it.”
The Prince
nodded, irritated by all this ordering, but a curious little spark of pleasure
ran through him with the words “your redhead.”
The American
settled his belt and shifted on his haunches. He said, “Right.” Then he was up
and on his way. Springbuck followed once again wondering if the single word had
been a mere signal or the other’s war cry.
Gil swung the
door open and covered the empty room, a large kitchen-living-dining space. The
Prince went up the rickety wooden stairs three at a time as Gil started to
search the rest of the house. The sergeant was about to go into a room at the
back of the building when he nearly ran into a cavalryman coming the opposite
way.
It may have
been that the man had heard him coming and was waiting for him; he jumped out
and almost caught Gil on his spear. The American dodged backwards desperately,
the quarters too close to get off a shot, but the spearblade slid along his
side, slicing open his flak jacket. Somehow, it hooked in the submachine gun
sling; as the man brought his weapon up sharply, the chopper was torn from
Gil’s grasp and sailed across the room.
The cavalryman
yelled a warning to some unseen companion but did not take his eyes from the
business at hand, which was Gil.
The business at
hand dropped into a defensive crouch. He didn’t realize it at the time, but he
was lucky; his opponent hadn’t carried his sword when he’d dismounted. When the
next thrust came, Gil did the only thing he could think of; he took it on with
tactics dictated by the manual on combatives against a rifle bayonet: block
with the forearm—he got sliced doing it; a deep, oblique step with both hands
on the foeman’s weapon, turn and twist—and he was honestly surprised when his
antagonist went flying past him. The other was no slouch, however, as Gil found
out. He was on his feet with a bounce, a long dirk in his hand.
The sergeant
shifted his grip on the spear and jumped in close, swinging at the man as if he
held a baseball bat. The other ducked as the spear whistled over his head and
cracked against the wall beside him and retaliated with a vicious slash. Again
the American barely avoided the disemboweling stroke. The spear’s head and a
full third of its shaft had broken off. Gil threw the stump at his foe and
reached around with his right hand, snatching out his survival knife from the
back of his belt, and went on guard. He would have tried for the chopper but
doubted that he could get to it before he was stabbed; the other might not know
what the submachine gun was, but he wouldn’t let such an opening go
unexploited.
The man’s armor
and helmet gave him a tremendous advantage in the fight, even allowing for
Gil’s flak jacket. Too, knife-fighting is an ignored art in the U.S. Army. But
one of Gil’s training cadremen had been a Ranger who, loathing the flashy,
impractical street styles, insisted his men learn the proper handling of edged steel.
Gil attacked
his opponent in a forward crouch, sidling and crow-hopping, knife held close to
his side in a fencing grip, left hand extended to block and parry, knees bent
and stomach clenched back, left foot foremost. It discomforted him when his
enemy took approximately the same position—a knowledgeable antagonist. Gil
closed watchfully, alert for an opening and keeping in mind the twin objectives
of speed and aggressiveness. The two circled, making feints and hand cuts, each
careful that he wasn’t backed into a corner. Gil was beginning to wonder if an
opening would present itself, if he would be able to deal with this horse
trooper, when a thumping ruckus reached his ears and he realized that it had
been going on for some time. He let his eyes stray to the stairs, for the
commotion was coming from the second floor, and in that instant the other made
his move.
It was
dangerous, expert; a swift, upward thrust, a snapping try for the soft abdomen;
and the American didn’t know if his fiberglass flak jacket would have stopped
it or not. He blocked instinctively with the outward edge of his left hand and
forearm, twisting to the right and using a poised left leg karate-style as a
backup. The hand block missed—the gash he’d caught from the spear was bleeding
badly now, slowing his left-hand moves; but the forearm connected with the
other’s wrist and arrested the thrust. Gil delivered a simultaneous knife chop
to the cavalryman’s left wrist, opening it to the bone and rendering it
useless. Though the wound was far from lethal, the pain and shock put the man
off balance. The American followed up instantly by driving the heel of his left
hand up hard beneath his enemy’s nose, a deathblow. It was only later that he
learned that many helmets featured nasal guards which would have made his move
ineffective.
As the armored
man reeled backward with a moan, Gil pursued him with a slash to the stomach to
make sure; the only dead enemy was one you could stomp your foot on. But
hauberk turned the knife and the sergeant stood over the body, wondering if it
were dead and for what reason he’d had to kill.
A wailing horn
brought him out of his unaccustomedly careless inattention. He spun to confront
another dragoon. There was no question of being able to stay alive with a knife
any longer. Gil backed to the wall where the submachine gun lay. He dropped his
blade and had Shorty in his hands before the knife hit the floor. The first
burst caught the dragoon in the midsection and folded him up like a cot.
Gil sprang to
the foot of the stairs and called, “Springbuck! God’s sake, let’s go!”
While the
outlander engaged the guard on the first floor, the Prince dashed up the
stairs, grabbing for the hilt of his sword. He reached the landing with Bar and
his parrying dagger ready. A commander of cavalry, a full-ranked rittmaster, had
been standing guard, waiting with a broad-bladed rapier in hand.
Springbuck
engaged him and the rittmaster proved to be a marvelous swordsman, lithe as an
otter and strong of wrist. Their blades wove and danced, contested for
right-of-way and warded each other in a dialogue of light and ringing metal.
The Prince remembered little of the match, worried as he was about Gabrielle.
Overturned furniture, shouts and curses mixed with an appallingly fast
interplay of points which left Springbuck’s left leg bleeding; all these things
were confused. But the rittmaster bore only his rapier, and so, inevitably,
Springbuck blocked with his parrying dagger and found clear way for Bar. Once
again the strange blade bit flesh with a preternatural keenness, cleaving muscle
and tissue as if they were custard.
He seized a
handful of the dying man’s tabard and pulled his face close. “Where is
Gabrielle deCourteney?” he demanded.
“Gone with
Ibn-al-Yed, who left me here to do you murder, my Prince, and I have failed.
Well fought, sir, though if you’d been without your main-gauche this day, I
wonder—” And the rittmaster died.
The victor was
suddenly aware that a female corpse reposed on the bed. The dead woman was
perhaps thirty, with graying temples and a peaceful face which held lines of
laughter and kindness. Her throat had been slit. He stared down at her for a
moment, knowing that this must be Gabrielle’s daughter Foraingay, and was
brought anew to awareness of the enchantress’s age. Then there was a burst of
gunfire, and he heard Gil’s yell. “Springbuck! God’s sake, let’s go!”