Working from two sides, Ludmilla and Takashi’s platoons were ravaging the Utuku right. Their javelins were now used up; they were wielding the assegai. Fifteen hundred gukuy warriors were now nothing more than a hooting mob, milling about in confusion, their mantles rippling red and ochre, while less than two hundred and fifty human warriors continued their systematic slaughter. Only three human casualties had been suffered so far—and Indira had been relieved to see one of them hobbling off the field under her own power. Winny Mbateng, she thought it was.
Thank God. Even if your daughter’s crippled from the injury, Janet, there will be a place for her. Adrian has been howling for help.
Indira saw an Utuku piper take aim at one of the human warriors. She caught her breath—then released it a moment later, when the piper’s aim was thrown off by the press of the mob around her.
It’s ironic. The gukuy consider pipers nothing more than auxiliaries. But they’re what I fear most. Those darts have a range of thirty yards, blown by a gukuy with a powerful siphon. And they’re quite accurate within half that distance. Light, of course. Even against a thin-skinned human they can’t do much damage unless they strike the eyes or the throat. The light armor which our warriors wear is probably enough to turn most darts, as well as absorbing some of the shock of a flail-blow.
But if they ever learn how utterly vulnerable we are to animal product—
“Ghodha—and Rottu. Do any gukuy armies use poisoned darts?”
Rottu’s mantle remained gray, but Ghodha’s rippled orange.
“No, Inudira,” replied Rottu. “There are a few small clans of savages in a swamp far to the southeast who are reputed to use poisoned darts. But no civilized people does so. Not even the barbarians. Not even the Utuku. It is a foul abomination in the eyes of Uftu and Kaklo alike. And the war goddess of the Utuku as well.”
Indira was simultaneously relieved—and intrigued. Goloku, in her teachings, had not attempted to deny or undermine the existence of the old religious pantheons. She had simply absorbed them within a new and profoundly more philosophical approach to reality.
Like Vedanta Hinduism. Sort of. Oh, stop trying to find an exact analogy, Indira. There is none. The Way is unique to itself—and better, I think, that any of the great religions of Earth. I can think of no Terran religion, at least, which from the outset based itself on the principles of dialectics rather than formalism.
She remembered the schismatic Patriarchs of the later Roman empire. The persecution of the Arian heretics, and the Nestorians, and the Monophysites. And the rigid Aristotelean logic of the medieval churchmen. And the Inquisition; and Bruno burning at the stake. And Galileo’s trial.
Perhaps that much we can avoid. Ushulubang and I, together, can sow much salt in the ground of future dogma.
Then she remembered the statue at Fagoshau which Ushulubang had shattered with her flail.
But neither she nor I will live forever. And it is indeed true, as Goloku said, that beings will always lapse into the error of the Answer.
She straightened her slender shoulders.
But we can try. And, in failing, shorten the road to the future. And its pain.
And stop day-dreaming about the future! There’s enough agony on today’s road.
She forced her eyes back to the plain. The human platoons were continuing their butchery, like a well-oiled machine of destruction.
God, these kids are good. It’s amazing how well they’re carrying out my proposal—which they only heard two days ago.
The night she made her decision to throw their strength to the aid of the Kiktu, Indira had spoken to the little army of human warriors. She had told them the story of the battle of Liegnitz, in a place called Poland. There, Subedei’s Mongols had met the forces of European chivalry under the command of Duke Henry of Silesia. Those forces included knights from all the major militant orders as well as Henry’s own troops—Knights Templar, Teutonic Knights, Knights Hospitaler.
She had described the European knights. Heavily armored, dangerous at close quarters. And—very slow; easily confused by any tactics beyond a simple, direct charge.