“Yes, sir.” The captain flung back his head.
“RUN FOR IT!”
Monnik suddenly found himself alone on the battlefield. The kingmen had vanished into the river. His own troops were so many pairs of heels dwindling fast up the hillside. The multiple whine was closing on him like a cyclone. A sudden sense of urgency gripped Monnik and moved him up the hillside in a blur of speed.
A whining noise followed right behind him and suddenly caught up.
A red-hot knitting needle seemed to pass back and forth through Monnik with simultaneous discharges of about twenty thousand volts.
Monnik let out a yell and suddenly began to really move. He passed his men as if they were standing still, miraculously bolted uphill between innumerable tree trunks without hitting any, and plunged down a steep ravine. Ear-splitting yells burst out to the rear, and on the way down the ravine, his men started to pass him. Then Monnik hit the water amidst a whining noise, screams, the roar of guns let off in panic, flying rocks, chunks of dirt and moss, and somebody’s left boot with no foot in it. The water suddenly went up his nose, a submerged rock hit him on the chin, and a sensation like fifty poisoned fishhooks passed through his exposed right shoulder.
When Monnik came to, he was done up in bandages, and lying on a cot somewhere in the pitch blackness.
“Great space,” he croaked. He sat up, and somewhere in the distance he could hear intermittent dull explosions. He tried to get up, felt dizzy and nauseated, and sat down again. He leaned back, and never even felt himself hit the cot.
The next thing he knew, it was broad daylight.
An orderly with a bulging white patch over his face brought him in some hot broth. Monnik forced down the broth and sent for a member of his staff. A staff officer came in looking as if he had spent the night being rolled around in an oil drum.
“Good afternoon, sir,” said the staff officer shakily.
“Afternoon?” growled Monnik.
“Yes, sir.”
Monnik squinted around. He had some trouble seeing, as his face and one side of his head was swollen up. “What happened?” he said, propping himself up.
“Well, sir, the second section of the Guard found us in the bottom of the ravine and dragged us out. At that, we lost about half a dozen men drowned.”
Monnik lay back dizzily. “What about the kingmen?”
“Some of them made it across the river, sir. The ones on the other side, at the guns, ran away when the kites started drifting over them. After they ran away, a man-sized thing with flippers came up out of the river, set down a cylinder, took off the flippers and a kind of face mask, and turned into an Earthman that walked past the line of guns carrying a sack. As he passed the guns, he reached into the sack and slapped something onto the left wheel of each gun-carriage. He went back into the water, and all of a sudden a section blew out of each left-hand wheel of the kingmen’s cannons.” The officer paused and added, “The kingmen aren’t going anywhere with those guns, sir, till they get the wheels fixed.”
“Where are our guns?”
“In position, sir. Dropping whip-shot on the other side of the river every time they try to get at their guns.”
A pleasant warm sensation built up in Monnik. “Well,” he said, “what was it that blew up the bridge?”
“The Earthmen drifted some explosives under it in a little raft.”
Monnik’s bruised lips creased into a grin.
“And what was that racket last night?”
“That was the Earthmen, too, sir. They were on the other side putting bombs in culverts and setting off fuel dumps. The kingmen were a little rattled from what had happened earlier in the day, it was a dark night, and they couldn’t do much to stop it. The patrols are boiling over there today, though, and I’d hate to set foot on the other side tonight.”
“Help me up,” said Monnik. “A situation like this should be taken advantage of.”
With one arm across the staff officer’s shoulders, Monnik got out of the room. He was vaguely conscious that it took three of them and a swearing doctor to load him back on the cot again.
After a nightmarish interval, Monnik awoke to again find it dark. A distant uproar suggested to him that despite the bristling patrols, the Earthmen must once more be busy on the enemy side of the river. Feeling that things were in good hands, Monnik drifted into a deep, restful sleep.
The next morning, Monnik awoke feeling refreshed. He found that if he moved slowly, and was careful not to touch or bump various parts of his body, he was able to get around with only an occasional spell of dizziness. He went to his headquarters, to find worried officers clustered around the map table. A brief glance showed him the reason. The kingmen were gathering in great force around the wide loop of the river near the center of his front.
“What’s this about?” he demanded.
“Sir, the Earthmen have been operating from that river bend. Last night, there was a terrific uproar on the kingmen’s side of the river. It sounded like they’d split up into two teams and were having a private war. I guess they were, too. The Earthmen told us they let animals called ‘rabbits’ loose over there, with ‘noisemakers’ strapped to them. Every ten or twelve bounds there would be a loud bang from the noisemaker. Then the rabbit would run and there would be more bangs. In the dark, the kingmen fired at the rabbits, and there were so many kingmen on patrol they couldn’t help firing near each other, and a few of them got hit, and others fired back, and one thing led to another and pretty soon they were calling out the reinforcements. Well, sir, as we see it, their commander has had about all he can take, and he’s going to end everything by brute force. The troops were coming in from all over this morning. They’re a little short on artillery, but they’ve got a lot of transport, even if they do have to use alternate roads, and they’re massing fast.”
Monnik glanced at the map. “You think they’ll try to smash through our center and crush each half in turn?”
“Yes, sir. You can see, here, they’ve brought up some more pontoon bridges. They must be bringing those in from all over the planet. And they’ve got what artillery they can still move. If they once get a good grip on this side of the river, it’s going to be rough.”
“Can we bring our artillery back along that road to the base of this loop of the river?”
“Not too well, sir. That road hasn’t drained dry yet. We’d get bogged down again. Sir, the Earthmen asked us to pull back, fortify these hills back here, and fight to the death on that line if the kingmen get over. But we aren’t to advance in any circumstances. We couldn’t do it, sir, on our own authority, but if you think—”
Monnik nodded. “Pull them back. Once that attack opens up, they’ll never stop it.” He frowned. “What about the old bridgehead—the first one? Is that still holding out?”
“No, sir. The Earthmen flew their kites over it yesterday, and that caused so much panic our men got in and cleaned them out.”
“Good. Then we don’t have that to worry about. All right, we’ll have to thin our men out some to the north, and rush all we can down here where the kingmen are going to get through. Get the artillery ready to move on short notice. Switch Karrif and Hossig to the south and put Karrif in overall command. When the kingmen come over that river to crack our center, I want to smash their left, swing around and hit them from the rear. We’ve got to give Karrif the bulk of our transport, and check with our observation posts and the Earthmen to see what roads on the other side are usable.”
“Sir, we can use our transport to switch troops down from the north, and at the same time our other trucks and ground cars can be rushing back and forth from the south, too. But the men can lie down while the trucks are headed south, and coming north we can set up dummy props like the Earthmen use, and then the kingmen will think we’re moving troops north, instead of south.”
“Good. All right, get to work.” Monnik glanced at the map, and then the phrase “dummy props like the Earthmen use” really penetrated his consciousness. Puzzled, he asked the nearest officer about it.
“Oh, yes, sir,” said the officer. “You see, sir, they’re trying to bluff the kingmen. They’ve got a lot of dummies made out of rubber that they blow up to large size, and weight down with dirt. Why, there are dummy guns, dummy soldiers, dummy ground-cars, and imitation marching sounds coming out of loud-speakers. They said, sir, it was one of their favorite effects.”