“What wondrous faith is this of which the hearer speaks?”
“I see no miracle.”
Then the flier swooped down low over the riders, released two flares, turned on
its searchlight, and circled slowly to observe the scene. All around
Horazzorgio, metal figures were hurling themselves to the ground and adding to a
rising chorus of terrified voices.
“We believe! We believe!”
“Behold the Enlightener, the Chosen One!”
“Spare us sinners, O Dragon. We repent! We repent!”
Even the Enlightener was astounded by the efficacy of his own words.
“All this, and with such economy of effort?” he murmured to his horse as he
stared disbelievingly. “I must truly be inspired.”
“What’s going on down there?” Clarissa demanded, totally bemused. “Karl, what in
hell did you say to that guy?”
Price was looking worried. “Why are they all falling off their horses?” he
asked. “Are they okay? What’s happening to them?”
“They look as if they’re worshipping Moses,” Abaquaan said incredulously. “He’s
waving that videocopy you gave him.”
Zambendorf had gone very quiet. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he continued
staring at the screen. At last he said in a faraway voice, “They’re all dressed
very similarly, which suggests they’re soldiers. And this is a part of Padua,
isn’t it.”
“So?” Clarissa asked.
“Galileo says that the Paduan horse-guards are among the most zealous and
fanatical soldiers anywhere on this part of Titan,” Zambendorf replied. “Yet
we’ve just demolished a whole squadron of them . . . and without a single one of
the weapons that Arthur is yelling that he has to have—which we’d have a hard
job getting our hands on anyway, even if we thought it was the right way for him
to go.”
Silence fell for a few seconds while the others absorbed what he had said. At
last Price asked him, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Zambendorf frowned, rubbed his beard, and looked back at the screen. “Believe it
or not, but I’ve absolutely no idea, Vernon,” he replied candidly. “I do have a
strange feeling, however, that we might just have stumbled on the answer to
Arthur’s problem with the Druids.”
29
AT ONE END OF A SPECIALLY CLEARED AREA THAT STRETCHED THE full length of the
walled grounds behind Kleippur’s residence, the Carthogian infantry sergeant lay
prone with a captured Waskorian projectile hurier fitted snugly against his
shoulder and one arm partly extended to support its length. He sighted along its
top tube at the first of the red disks along the far wall, aimed carefully, and
squeezed the small firing lever with a finger of his other hand. The hurier
barked and kicked vigorously, and in the same instant most of the red disk at
the far end of the grounds disappeared. The sergeant repeated the process
rapidly while Kleippur and Dornvald watched grimly with a small group of
Carthogian officers and military advisers. In short order, a small ice boulder
exploded; a piece of outer wall cut from an organic building disintegrated into
pulp; and two sets of standard-issue Carthogian body armor mounted on full-size
dummies at the end of the line were reduced to shreds. Dornvald signaled to the
far end of the grounds, and soldiers who had been standing well back from the
line of fire moved forward to collect the target plates.
“There can be no protection against this,” Lofbayel whispered to Thirg, who was
looking on numbly. “Those soldiers were doomed from the moment they set out to
pursue the Waskorians. The outcome was a foregone conclusion.”
“Truly,” Thirg agreed. “Just as Horazzorgio and the Kroaxians were doomed from
the moment they chose to set foot in the Meracasine. And now the whole of
Carthogia is surely doomed.”
Lumian weapons such as these which a Carthogian raiding party led by Dornvald
had seized deep inside Waskorian territory, had been the cause of the disasters
that had befallen the Carthogians recently in rapid succession. A routine border
patrol had failed to return, and the force sent to look for it had been almost
annihilated in a Waskorian ambush. Then the Waskorians had attacked a border
fort which fell after putting up a stiff fight. A small band of survivors