John Rackham (15 page)

spun around and directed the cold jet full
into Bragan's face.

"Wipe away that grin, Zorgan!" he ordered.

Bragan put up his hand to divert the jet,
shook water from his face, and stared at the hulking Scartanni grimly. "It
would take more than water to do it, Scartanni. More than anything you can
do."

So fast that it took him a long time to work
it out afterward, a whole series of petty irritations boiled up in his mind
and took concrete form. He saw Yarrow stiffen and toss away the hose-pipe, and
then come forward on eager feet.

"We have heard talk," he said,
"from Hork, who is but a youth, about what a mighty fighter you are,
Zorgan. I think it is all wind, that you are only a man, and a skinny one at
that." It was a deliberate insult.

Bragan was less in bulk than Yarrow, but not
in any sense undersized, and the weeks of hard labor had toughened him. This
man was asking for a lesson, and it fell in nicely with the way Bragan felt.
The barrier between himself and Ryth had grown perilously frail. Perhaps this
would help to remind her that he was, still, the enemy. To Yarrow he said,
"You've finished your work here?"

"It's ail done. Man's work, Zorgan. Not for you."

"It would be for me if I crippled you
before
it was finished."

"Cripple me? What with, Zorgan—big
words?" Yarrow came closer, a bit too close. Bragan reached out, saw
Yarrow hoist an arm to fend off the blow, and smacked him flush on the nose
with his other fist. It wasn't a damaging blow, just intended to hurt. It
succeeded in shocking Yarrow into an instant and murderous rage. He went back a
step then came in swinging clumsily, and Bragan danced around him, through the
flail of arms, chopping and hitting as he liked, making the big man look a
fool. He made Yarrow grunt to a kidney-jab, then sank a hard right into his
stomach to curl him up, straightened him with a knee in the face, then chopped
once, twice across pectoral muscles and Yarrow stood with his arms hanging and
his face a mass of blood, gasping for breath. Bragan felt Ryth grab his aim,
turned to see her gray
eyes
blazing at him in fury.

"What
are you doing this for?"

"He provoker! me. He asked for it, and
he got it. Excuse me—"

He pushed her gently away because Belven,
from the far end of the log-train, had seen and was comuig on the run. He was
bigger than Yarrow, if not so tall, and immense across the shoulders. Bragan
eyed him with respect, but it wasn't needed. Belvan's idea was a mad bull-rush.
Bragan let him go by, fended off a grasping hand, danced a light tap to an
ankle and watched the big man plunge on and down into a skidding heap on the
grass. Getting up was an effort, but he made it and came lumbering back, pawing
the air with huge hands. Bragan waited for him, took hold of one of those
hands, and heaved, whirled, grunted with effort, and Bel-van sailed through the
air a short and disastrous flight, and then lay still.

"You've killed
him!" Ryth gasped, and he shook his head.

"I
think not. Put the hose on him." He watched her move to the hose, and
jerked aside just in time to avoid a savage blow from Yarrow, who had caught up
a length of lumber intended to chock the logs on the drag. Six feet of
three-inch timber whistled through the air as Yarrow made another swipe.
Bragan sneered as he evaded the blows.

"Only
a man, Scartanni? You need a club to beat me? Two of you?" He snatched a
moment to shout to Ryth. "See this? Tell the fool to put down his weapon
and yield, before I take it from him and hurt him with it!"

Yarrow
snarled and grew crafty, grabbed the timber and jabbed with it instead of
swinging. He couldn't have done worse. Bragan chose his moment, fended off a
jab, walked around it fast, laid hold and heaved to jerk the big man off
balance, then leaned on the timber so that Yarrow went pitching over it into a
heap on the grass.

Then
he marched forward smartly, rapped Yarrow over the skull and snapped, "Get
up. Get on your contraption. Take your friend with you. And if you come back
this way again and see m
3,
call me 'Lord!' " Yarrow snarled his
defiance and Bragan cracked him again, harder this time. "Yield, you fool,
or I'll break your head!"

Yarrow
cursed again, then grudgingly said, "I yield, Zor-gan.
This
time!"

"And eveiy time, if yon come against me.
Now, get your stupid friend up there with you, and go!"

As
the drag grumbled away through a gap in the bushes he tossed the improvised
club onto the last log-pile, watched it vanish out of sight. Then he turned to
see Ryth looking at him with a strange expression in her eyes.

"For the first
time," she whispered, "I am afraid of you."

"You've
nothing to fear from me, Ryth, so long as you remember that I am the enemy,
and don't provoke me."

"You were terrible. So
calm and smiling, not angry."

"That's
the way it has to be in a fight. Stay calm; use your head. If you get angry,
lose your temper, you've lost everything. There's another bit of strategy for
you, if you like."

For
once she was not eager to grasp information. She was silent over lunch, and
reserved during the rest of the afternoon as he helped her douse the
tree-stumps with a foul-smelling liquid that seethed its way into the wood and
dissolved it into jelly-like pulp. By the time evening came the silence
between them had grown almost to an issue, so that he had to break it down
somehow. He did it roughly because there was no other way.

"Do
you still think you have any hope of beating Zor-gan?" he asked.

"For the first
time," she admitted, "I doubt."

"And-?"

"Just
doubt. It makes no difference otherwise. Denzil"—her voice took on a tone
he had never heard before, a strange raptness—"everyone on Scarta knows,
from babyhood, that death may strike from the sky at any time, without sense or
reason. That there is nothing to be done but prepare, and otherwise use every
moment to the full." She paused and he waited, unwilling to disrupt her
thread. "Then you came. From the sky. You didn't strike like death and
destruction. You struck with words, and threats. And, for the very first time,
we of Scarta had the chance to strike back. We struck. We broke you and found
you were just men, with machines."

"I don't understand what you're talking
about."

"Why should you? But when you tell us
that death will strike again, that's not new. That changes nothing. Until you
go on to tell us that the death and destruction to come will be by men and
machines, like you. Then it
is
different.
Then we know we can strike back. Again. And we will!"

"There's
something behind what you're saying, Ryth. Something I don't get. Strike back?
At what?"

He
knew he was on the verge of something important, but she suddenly gathered
herself up from the grass and said, "You would not understand if I told
you. And it doesn't matter, anyway." And with that she went away to her
room, leaving him to scratch his head and wonder.

Later, in the dark of night, the answer came
to him in
a
form he had never dreamed of. He was well
asleep, possibly dreaming, but any visions he might have had were destroyed and
forgotten as a steel-throated klaxon burst into horrible sound and brought him
bolt upright on his cot as it shredded the night-silence into hideous clamor.
He had barely a second to realize that someone had cunningly pitched that note
so as to be murderously abrasive to every nerve in his body, when Ryth appeared
at his door like a pink-naked wraith, eyes staring and her face strained. She
charged straight in, grabbed for his foot, shook him, snapped, "You hear
the alarm? Come on! After me!"

The urgency in her voice sliced through his
sleepy inertia, stopped all questions, brought him up out of his cot on the run
and after her as she fled frantically across the living room, butted the outer
door open with her shoulder and scurried through. Pounding after, he saw her
race across the narrow grass patch, heading for the stone bridge, but veering
at the last moment.
Tunnel,
he thought.
Gutter. Air raid?

He
saw her run full-tilt up to the edge of the gutter and then launch herself in
an odd sideways fall, dropping down out of sight. It was all done so fast that
he was himself launched into a similar helpless drop before the panic struck
him and he cringed, expecting to crash down onto solid stone. Instead he fell
some eight feet into the thick hairy strands of a woolen net, which bounced him
gently then rolled him down a slope. Back toward the house, he realized, as he
went over and over, and then cannoned softly into her warm nakedness, felt her
hand grab his tightly to help him to his feet.

The
klaxon snarled here, too, almost drowning the click as she found a
light-switch. He squinted, finding himself in
a
gray stone runnel exactly like those under Stopa. "Come!" She
dragged his hand and they went a dozen steps to reach a small chamber where
there was a wooden bench and a big bundle of bedding stuffed against the wall
at one end. "Sit here, with me!" she said, settling herself and tugging
at his hand He sat, noticing now that she was shaking like a leaf in the wind,
and death-white. Instinct drove him to put a strong arm around her and hug her
tight, even as he winced against the hideous bray of the alarm.

"What is it, Ryth? What's
happening?"

She turned and pressed herself against him
like a scared child, burrowing her face into his chest. "The gods awake
from their uneasy sleep!" she whimpered, and he opened his eyes wide.

"The gods?" He
could scarcely believe his ears.

"Denzil!"
She thrust back enough to lift her face to him. "This may be goodbye for
us. So, just in case—" and she shifted her clinging arms to circle his
neck and draw his face down to hers, her mouth settling on his in eager
abandon. His heart leaped in his chest enough to hurt and all his sense went
glimmering into confusion at her ardent embrace.

Goodbye?
Was it the end of the world? To an air raid alarm? He had barely formed the
thought when the heavy bench under him bucked up and sideways violently, so
that she was flung off balance against him. And then down with a bone-shaking
thump. A split second later came a gargantuan roar and boom, and the crack, of
some enormous impact close by. Stunned, he heard the shrill wail of noise that
followed the trail of whatever that had been. The harsh lights blinked, the
klaxon hiccuped but went on screaming, and he struggled to get his balance
again, clinging to Ryth.

"What the—" he started to growl,
and another giant-sized hammer-blow battered the solid ground into leaping
shock-waves, toppling him, making him cringe. Fine dust swirled around the
lights. Roaring echoes reverberated in the tunnel. Again came that insane shock
of immense energy slamming into the ground, jolting him, making his head ring
with the aftermath of sonic booms and echoes.

And now
the faint stink of sulphur, too. He wrapped his arms tight around her and felt
dull rage at his helplessness. There came another enormous impact, and tiien
two more, shaking the solid ground, ravaging the air with senseless bangs and
bellowing thunder. And then, mercifully, the klaxon changed its note and
dwindled down into a sobbing,
a
wailing,
and then into silence. The echoes were still there, but only in his head. He
stirred, put a finger in his ear in
a
vain
attempt to discharge the ringing tone, and drew
a
deep breath, his first in several minutes.

Then Ryth stirred, eased herself free, pushed
him gently away, took a breath as deep as his and brushed the hair from her
face. Her gray eyes were like pools of smoke.

"Not
this time," she whispered. "The gods strike, and miss, and I still
live."

"It's all over?"

"For this time, yes. The alarm has
stopped. That's the end of it, for this time."

He began to shake, clenched his fists against
his thighs to stop it, and saw that she was shaking too. He felt angry again.

"Now,
look!" he growled. "What
was
that,
and why? And let's not have any of that stuff about the gods, if you don't
mind."