All right, Valduma. We’re monkeys. We’re noisy and self-important, compromisers and trimmers and petty cheats, we huddle away from the greatness we could have, our edifices are laid brick by brick with endless futile squabbling over each one—and yet, Valduma, there is something in man which you don’t have. There’s something by which these men have fought their way through everything you could loose on them, helping each other, going forward under a ridiculous rag of colored cloth and singing as they went.
Fine words, added his mind. Too bad you don’t really believe them.
He grew aware of Helena’s anxious eyes on him. “What’s the matter, darling?” she asked gently. “You look ill.”
“Tired,” he said. “But we can’t have so very far to go now—”
“Look out!”
Whirling, he saw the pillars of the house to the right buckle, saw the huge stone slabs of the roof come thundering over the top and streetward. For a blinding instant he saw Valduma, riding the slab down, yelling and laughing, and then she was gone and the stone struck.
They were already running, dropping their burden of the hurt and fleeing for safety. Another house groaned and rumbled. The ground shook, flying shards stung Donovan’s back, echoes rolled down the ways of Drogobych. Someone was screaming, far and faint under the grinding racket.
“Forward. Forward!” Helena’s voice whipped back to him, she led the rush while the city thundered about her. Then a veil of rising dust blotted her out, he groped ahead, stumbling over fallen pillars and cornices, hearing the boom around him, running and running.
Valduma laughed, a red flame through the whirling dust. Her spear gleamed for his breast, he grabbed it with one hand and hacked at her with his sword. She was gone, and he raced ahead, not stopping to think, not daring.
They came out on a great open plaza. Once there had been a park here, and carved fountains, but nothing remained save a few leafless trees and broken pieces. And the spaceships.
The spaceships, a loom of metal against the dark stone beyond, half a dozen standing there and waiting—spaceships, spaceships, the most beautiful sight in the cosmos! Helena and Wocha were halted near a small fast Comet-class scoutboat. The surviving Terrans ran toward them. Few, thought Donovan sickly, few—perhaps a score left, bleeding from the cuts of flying stone, gray with dust and fear. The city had been a trap.
“Come on!” yelled the woman. “Over here and off this planet!”
The men of Drogobych were suddenly there, a ring about the ship and another about the whole plaza, crouched with their weapons and their cat’s eyes aflame. A score of hurt starvelings and half a thousand un-men.
A trumpet blew its high note into the dusking heavens. The Arzunians rested arms, expressionless. Donovan and the other humans continued their pace, forming a battle square.
Morzach stood forth in front of the scoutship. “You have no further chance to escape,” he called. “But we want your services, not your lives, and the service will be well rewarded. Lay down your weapons.”
Wocha’s arm straightened. His ax flew like a thunderbolt, and Morzach’s head burst open. The Donarrian roared and went against the enemy line.
They edged away, fearfully, and the Terrans followed him in a trotting wedge. Donovan moved up on Wocha’s right side, sword hammering at the thrusts for his ribs.
An Arzunian yelled an order which must have meant “Stop them!” Donovan saw the outer line break into a run, converging on the knot of struggle. No flying spears this time, he reflected in a moment’s bleak satisfaction—tearing down those walls must have exhausted most of their directing energies.
A native rushed at him, sword whistling from behind a black shield. Donovan caught the blow on his own plundered scute, feeling it ring in the bones of his arm, and hewed back. His blade screamed close to the white teeth-bared face, and he called a panting salutation: “Try again, Davleka!”
“I will!”
The blows rained on his shield, sang viciously low to cut at his legs, clattering and clanging, whistle of air and howl of iron under the westering sun. He backed up against Wocha’s side, where the Donarrian and the woman smote against the airlock’s defenders, and braced himself and struck out.
Davleka snarled and hacked at Donovan’s spread leg. The Ansan’s glaive snaked forth against his unshielded neck. Davleka’s sword clashed to earth and he sprawled against the human. Raising his bloody face, he drew a knife, lifted it, and tried to thrust upward. Donovan, already crossing blades with Uboda, stamped on his hand. Davleka grinned, a rueful crooked grin through the streaming blood, and died.
Uboda pressed close, working up against Donovan’s shield. He had none himself, but there was a dirk in his left hand. His sword locked with Donovan’s, strained it aside, and his knife clattered swiftly for an opening.
Helena turned about and struck from her seat. Uboda’s head rolled against Donovan’s shield and left a red splash down it. The man retched.
Wocha, swinging one of his swords, pushed ahead into the Arzunians, crowding them aside by his sheer mass, beating down a guard and the helmet or armor beyond it. “Clear!” he bellowed. “I got the way clear, lady!”
Helena sprang to the ground and into the lock. “Takahashi, Cohen, Basil, Wang-ki, come in and help me start the engines. The rest of you hold them off. Don’t give them time to exert what collective para power they have left and ruin something. Make them think!”
“Think about their lives, huh?” Wocha squared off in front of the airlock and raised his sword. “All right, boys, here they come. Let ’em have what they want.”
Donovan halted in the airlock. Valduma was there, her fiery head whirling in the rush of black-clad warriors. He leaned over and grabbed a spaceman’s arm. “Ben Ali, go in and help start this crate. I have to stay here.”
“But—”
Donovan shoved him in, stood beside Takahashi, and braced himself to meet the Arzunian charge.
They rushed in, knowing that they had to kill the humans before there was an escape, swinging their weapons and howling. The shock of the assault threw men back, pressed them to the ship and jammed weapons close to breasts. The Terrans cursed and began to use fists and feet, clearing a space to fight in.
Donovan’s sword clashed against a shield, drove off another blade, stabbed for a face, and then it was all lost in the crazed maelstrom, hack and thrust and take the blows they give, hew, sword, hew!
They raged against Wocha, careless now of their lives, thundering blows against his shield, slashing and stabbing and using their last wizard strength to fill the air with blades. He roared and stood his ground, the sword leaped in his hand, metal clove in thunder. The shield was crumpled, falling apart—he tossed it with rib-cracking force against the nearest Arzunian. His nicked and blunted sword burst against a helmet, and he drew the other.
The ship trembled, thutter of engines warming up, the eager promise of sky and stars and green Terra again. “Get in!” bawled Donovan. “Get in! We’ll hold them!”
He stood by Wocha as the last crewmen entered, stood barring the airlock with a wall of blood and iron. Through a blurring vision, he saw Valduma approach.
She smiled at him, one slim hand running through the copper hair, the other held out in sign of peace. Tall and gracious and lovely beyond his knowing, she moved up toward Donovan, and her clear voice rang in his darkening mind.
Basil—you, at least, could