“Maybe,” Mic suggested hopefully, “uncorking that river was their biggest gun. When they saw that it didn’t work, they went into hiding, to let us gallop by—”
“We don’t know how their minds work,” Kana warned. “To some species—take ours for example—a failure such as that is merely a spur to try again. To another type it would signify that their Gods, or Fate, or whatever Power they believe in, is opposed and they should forget the whole project. The future may depend upon that Cos we freed and the report he makes. But we shall have to be prepared for anything.”
Soon after the march began the next morning they passed the site where the byll had been killed. The carcass had been torn apart and largely devoured by unseen scavengers in the night. But the severed head, with its toothed bill gaping, was a grim warning. One of the duties of the flankers was to keep close watch against sneak attacks from the carnivorous birds.
Close to mid-day they came upon a pool fed by water seeping through the left canyon wall, perhaps from the river flowing down the other fork. Here they filled their canteens after purifying the liquid and washed some of the dust from their hands and faces. This grit, borne by the wind, was in their mouths as they ate, inflamed their eyes, and sifted down between clothing and skin to prove a minor torture.
Alert to the danger which might come from above, the scouts reported a second major attack before it got underway. The Cos, relying upon methods which had served them well in the past, sent boulders crashing down. But none of the rough missiles killed, for those who attempted to so bombard the winding snake of the Horde’s advance were picked off by sharpshooting flankers and woolly bodies crashed along with the rocks while others fled. Ahead, on a mesa-like formation, was a rude fortification which so commanded their line of march that the Terrans dared not try to pass.
This time the Cos made no attempt to hide their presence. With the coming of evening beacons blazed in the fort—forming a barrier of light about it much as the camp lamps of the Combatants had done for them on the plains. There could be no storming this from below. Facing the Horde the rise to the mesa top was steep and an ominous row of boulders ready for use fringed the rim. Hansu whistled for a gathering.
“We have to take that fort,” he began baldly. “And there’s only one way in—from the top.” He took off his helmet and threw into it black and white pebbles. “Lot-choice—”
Lot-choice it was. Kana grabbed a pebble with the rest, holding it concealed in his hand until the word of command. In that moment he found that the stone he held was black, as was Rey’s—while Mic, to his disappointment, had a white one.
Hansu gave a detailed inspection to the band who were to make the climb. The volunteers stripped themselves of all trappings except one belt. Their rifles were slung over their shoulders and each man wore his sword-knife and carried five of the explosive fire cartridges.
They used the deep shadows at the floor of the canyon to cloak their withdrawal from the main command, back-tracking on their path of the afternoon to a point where the flankers had reported the cliffs scalable. There, utilizing the last scrap of twilight before the night clamped down, they started up. And, once on top, the fort lights not only provided them with a guide but a certain amount of illumination. Their advance was a slow creep. To run into a Cos sentry would be fatal. As a warning of that the Terrans had their sense of smell—luckily the wind blew toward them. The oily body odor of the Llor, distinguishable at several feet by off-world noses, was multiplied fourfold in that given off by the Cos. The mountaineers could literally be smelled out of ambush, a betrayal of which they were unaware.
The ominous reek filled Kana’s nostrils. He drew his legs under him and reached out to tap Rey’s shoulder, knowing that that silent warning would be passed down the crawling Terran line. A Cos was ahead, slightly to the left. With his head raised to follow the scent, Kana wriggled on. He felt Rey’s fingers on his ankle as the other joined him. The Cos must be located and eliminated, efficiently and without giving any warning to the fort.
Kana lined up a neighboring pinnacle with the lights of the fort. His nose told him that the Cos must be there, and it was a logical position from which to watch not only the cliff but the Horde below.
Then he saw what he was searching for—a blob of black outlined against the fort beacons, the hunched head and shoulders of the mountaineer sentry. Kana tensed for a spring as he unhooked the carrying strap of his rifle. With that timing and precision in attack he had been drilled in for most of his life, he uncoiled in a leap, bringing the strap about the woolly throat of the sentry. A single jerk in the proper direction and the Cos went limp. Kana eased the body to the ground with shaking hands. The trick had worked—just as the instructors had assured them that it would. But between trying it on a dummy and on a living, breathing creature there was a vast gulf of sensation. He pulled the strap away with a twitch and rubbed his hands along his thighs, trying to free his flesh from the feel of greasy wool.
“All right?”
“Yes,” he answered Rey and took the rifle the other offered him, making a business of re-attaching the strap.
There were no more sentries sighted. And at last the Terran force gained the point they wished—to the west and above the fort.
The center building of that eagles’ nest was familiar in shape, though in bad repair. When the Cos had taken over this stronghold they used for its core an earlier fortification or outpost erected by the Llor. The handful of brush and stone huts grouped around the half-ruined watchtower and the wall of loose stones were their own additions—neither displaying any great skill in military engineering.
From below sounded the shrilling of Terran battle whistles. And by the fires of the Cos they could see the white forms of the mountaineers manning the wall, levering into place their rocky ammunition, ready to roll it down to meet any frontal attack. Kana snapped open one of the fire cartridges and pitched it at the nearest brush-roofed hut.
To the yellow flames of the Cos beacons were added the bursting stars of the Terran fire balls, flaring up to turn the hut into an inferno. The startled Cos, caught between the Horde below and this new menace, ran back and forth. And that moment of indecision finished them, though the end did not come from the Terran attackers but from within their own stronghold.
Out of the fires a black shadow came to life, sweeping straight up into the night. It hovered over the fort and red death rained from it. Cos, their wool afire, plunged blind and screaming over the drop or ran to meet death head on. But the strange flying thing spiraled skyward, flitting over the valley to lay more bombs in the ranks of the Horde.
The Terrans on the heights tried to catch the swooping wing in the sights of their rifles, firing in wild fury at its outline. Under their concentrated blast the wing staggered, tried to level off, and then hurtled on into the night, leaving a scarlet path of destruction which not only engulfed the fortress of the Cos but the Horde pocketed below.
9 — SHOW OUR TEETH AND HOPE
At dawn the Terran force held the fort, but the price had been high. A quarter of the Horde had either died quickly in the bombing raid of the unknown aircraft or were granted grace for hideous wounds during the hours which followed. So the victory bore more the shade of a defeat.
“Where did the Cos get that wing?” Mic, his left arm a roll of shielding plasta-flesh to his shoulder, was not the only one to ask that.
The alien machine was proof that there must have been strangers hidden in the Cos stronghold, either inciting the mountaineers against the Terrans, or as spectators. Combatants inspected the ruins of the fort while parts of it still blazed, searching for evidence of the origin of the flyers, but the flames had left them no readable clues.
“That wing never got away unharmed,” Rey reiterated to any who would listen. “It must have crashed—it was sideslipping when it went out of sight!”
“Where there’s one of those,” Mic returned, “there’re probably more. Space demons! With those they can fly over and dust us whenever they want to! But why haven’t they done that before?”