“Oggbad fights by—”
Hammell’s voice interrupted. “Your Grace! Look overhead!”
Roberts looked up to see three huge birds, their feathers blue underneath, winging past. He glanced at Kelty. “Do these birds often fly over the city?”
“Sometimes one alone. I never saw three together before.”
Roberts turned toward the ship. “Master of the Ordnance! Bring down those birds!” Roberts turned to his two wide-eyed human Barons. “Their form is but a physical envelope for Oggbad’s purpose. Now it begins.”
From the ship, a voice called, “Your Highness, this planet must have crystal on it, and Oggbad has found it! The guns are enwrangled!”
Roberts grappled blankly with the word “enwrangled,” then turned around, to see the big fusion guns aimed generally toward the birds, but apparently unable to aim precisely. The guns were moving in small circles around their true point of aim, and not one pointed directly at any of the birds.
“Then,” said Roberts, thinking fast, “it is Oggbad! Well, gentlemen, get your men quickly in hand. Remember, Oggbad’s first onset is the worst. I will shield you as best I may, and in the end we will win, because our cause is just. Now, get to cover! Quick!”
A terrific desire to fight was building up in Roberts, and, no doubt, in everyone else around. But only Roberts and Hammell knew that the same angry desire they felt was, in all likelihood, shared by the huge birds.
Suddenly, there was a fierce scream from overhead. Roberts looked up, to see the birds draw in their wings. At that same instant, he realized that their camouflage was far better than it seemed. He had seen three birds. But when they began to dive, their green upper feathers came into view, and there were nearly a dozen of them. At once a voice, so like Roberts’ own amplified voice that he thought it must be his, roared:
“Guards! We’ll fight on foot!”
This sounded valiant. It sounded heroic. It just suited the situation, except for one little detail:
There was no one left in the patrol ship.
Hammell already had his sword in one hand and his gun in the other. The patrol ship was already letting off futile bolts at the birds, its “enwrangled” guns doing no damage. So far as Roberts knew, there was nothing left in the ship but a couple of empty suits of battle armor. Meanwhile, from windows and doors, people were looking at him, the birds, and the patrol ship to see what would happen next.
Roberts, cursing himself, turned back toward the patrol ship, and braced himself to shout another order.
The patrol ship, somehow sunk deeply as if it were digging its way into the cracking concrete, disgorged from its hatch an armed man-sized figure in silver armor. Then another, and another, until there were half-a-dozen of them outside. Since they couldn’t be human, they must be roboid, controlled by the symbiotic computer. But where in the cramped interior, with so much space already taken up by guns and missile storage, was there room for the fabricating machinery and the stocks of materials? Was the ship so much more advanced than it seemed? Roberts looked around, hastily gave up trying to find the answer, and roared, “Have at the fiend!”
A huge shadow was sweeping over the ground, and now gigantic claws shot toward him. Roberts fired his fusion gun, sheared off one of the clawed feet with a savage stroke of his sword, was grappled and knocked backwards by the other, beheaded the bird, and landed in a tangled bloody mass of bone, sinew, and feathers. He pulled himself free, to find the air suddenly thick with birds of every description, fighting the people and each other. A moment later, carnivorous bats began to arrive, to dive at Roberts’ faceplate, bounce off, then cling to his armor, and squeak their teeth grittily over every bump and joint, in the hope of getting through into the flesh underneath.
The city’s loudspeaker system was booming, “Take cover! Get to the tunnels! The city is under attack! Get to the tunnels!”
Flying insects were all over the place now. The air was like fog. The screams of the people told of the attacks of every kind of flying pest known to the planet. It dawned on Roberts that Morrissey had been successful beyond their wildest dreams. If they weren’t careful, they might exterminate the very population they were trying to save.
Then the onslaught of another gigantic bird knocked Roberts back into the foam-covered entanglement of wires, mines, and sharp-edged strips of metal. Something seemed to snap inside him, and in a terrific outburst of anger, he sliced the bird in half, cut the entangling wires, and settled grimly to the work of slaughter.
He had killed half-a-dozen giant birds, and uncounted numbers of smaller birds and carnivorous gangbats, when Oggbad’s main force arrived on the scene.
Huge gray cats, ordinarily day-time creatures, loomed at him out of the gathering dusk. The computer’s roboid police, firing from windows and doorways, were suddenly confronted with gigantic beasts with armored bony snouts and tails like giant sledgehammers. Many-legged segmented creatures crawled up the sides of buildings, groped around out in the air, vanished within, and reappeared in the tunnels. Enormous snakes grappled with equally enormous armored metal caterpillars, and, as often as not, the snakes crushed or smashed some vital part before the guns of the metal caterpillars could kill the snakes. The street lights came on to light a scene out of a nightmare, a war amongst animals and machines, with no humans in sight but Roberts and Hammell, dripping blood, the golden coating of their armor chipped and dented, but swords and guns in hand and hewing to the task with such savage energy they seemed to be everywhere at once.
* * *
Toward dawn, a powerful amplified voice boomed out:
“The power of the fiend yields to the Duke! The usurper weakens!”
As daylight shone down on the bloody shambles, the same voice roared: “By command of the Duke, clear the tunnels of the enemy! The worst is over!”
By noon, dented roboid maintenance machines were dragging off the bodies of huge creatures in one direction, while towing disabled machines away in the other direction.
Kelty, covered with large and small bandages, beside an equally-bandaged figure with tattered lightning-bolts armband, was in a building along the boundary between the two parts of the city, listening attentively to Roberts, whose armor looked as if it had spent the last thousand years grinding along under a glacier. Roberts wasted no time finishing up the conference with his two subordinates.
“That’s how it is,” he said. “Now you’ve experienced it. Oggbad inspirited those beasts, using the arts of the Unseen Realms, and had he been able to calm their mutual distrust, it would have gone ill with us. Next time, he may have learned that lesson. By that time, our strength must encompass a portion of the forest itself, and all of the fields, lest he destroy the food supply. No man can rest easy while the fiend’s soul still cleaves to his body. Now, then. My duties do not allow me to oversee the details. Great affairs are afoot in the Empire, and I must see to them. But count on me to come back, to reward the diligent, destroy the faithless, cleanse by agony the souls of those ensnared by Oggbad—and, if possible, surprise the fiend himself when he expects it least.”
Kelty glanced at the fanatics’ leader, who looked back with the expression of someone tangled up in a legal matter that threatens to go on forever, but who is determined to find a way to somehow warp it around to his own advantage. This fit right in with the atmosphere of the Baron’s Council Hall, which was what Roberts had named the building. In this building, there was a mild, but nevertheless noticeable urge to think. Since Roberts had been in here, several patrolling guards had turned away uneasily, while others had briefly stepped in with an air of interest. Other parts of the city had other faint, but noticeable, suggestions of a desire to work, a desire to study, to relax, to worship, or to rest. For each place, a slight but definite atmosphere had been created, and was being maintained, by the want-generator. But that didn’t mean that it couldn’t readily get out of hand, if a person seriously misinterpreted the purpose of the desire.
“I hope,” said Roberts, noting the intensely-calculating look on the faces of his two human companions, “that there will be no warring among my vassals. In the Empire, it is our custom to submit such affairs to heavenly judgment. This we do by sending both disputants into the next world. We can get them there, but so far have found no way to get them back again. Now, gentlemen, I must leave for a time. Would that Oggbad were destroyed, but at least his material power and the strength of his coalition are broken. While you hold him here, we must smash the last of his confederates.” Roberts stood up. “Good-bye for now, gentlemen. I am sorry to be in such haste. But I’ll be back.”