Gordon Dickson - The Right to Arm Bears

After disposing of his wife’s uncle and his wife, Souse-Nose rapidly threw down the well, according to the song, a number of other relatives, some neighbors he didn’t like, a hammer that had dropped on his toe the week before, the family cooking pot (because it was empty)—and then proceeded to start throwing down the well various individuals among the marching villagers themselves, as the singers began to pick on each other.

It was all apparently hilariously funny to the Dilbians—but at the same time, Bill felt a slight shiver run down his back. The song was a humorous song, but it was also a grimly humorous one, and the tone in which it was sung was very nearly more grim than it was humorous. In fact, for all the comedy in the words, Bill realized that what he was listening to was the Dilbian equivalent of a war song. The villagers were working themselves up emotionally for combat with the outlaws. For the first time, Bill began to feel some misgivings about the forces he had set in motion. Leaning forward, he spoke into the Hill Bluffer’s right ear.

“Bluffer—” he said. “Bluffer, listen to me for a moment, will you. I’d like to ask you something—”

But he might as well have been speaking to some ten-foot-high boulder rumbling at the head of an avalanche. The Bluffer was roaring out the song about Souse-Nose with the rest, completely carried away by it.

Bill sat back in the saddle, abruptly prey to a new fear. If the Bluffer was beyond his control—how about Flat Fingers and the rest of the villagers? The rolling chant of the voices around him was hypnotic—even Bill himself felt his breath coming quicker and the blood pounding in his ears.

He was still fighting for self-control, when the Bluffer beneath him, with the other leaders of the village party, rounded the turn into the narrow ravine that led down to the entrance to the valley, and stopped.

Before them, the gates in the stockade were already shut and barred, and the heads of outlaws, as well as the upper rims of shields were showing over the points at the upper end of the upright logs which made up the stockade. There was nothing surprising in finding the valley prepared in this way. Singing and marching as they had been, the villagers undoubtedly had been heard a good half-mile or more off. Now, a few furry arms swung in the air above the stockade, and a few good-sized stones sailed toward the front rank of the villagers—but fell short. In reply, the villagers crowded into the narrow entrance of the valley and began to sing about outlaws being thrown down the well. The outlaws shouted back insults and challenges, but the solid chorus of the villagers overwhelmed them.

—chanted the villagers.

Meanwhile, Flat Fingers had ceased singing and was rapidly issuing orders. A team of axmen had already headed off into the woods nearby, and the sound of chopping could occasionally be heard in the moments of relative silence between the singing of the villagers and the insults hurled by the outlaws. Shortly, there was the crash of falling timber—followed by a male-voiced cheer that drowned out even the singing.

Then the sound of chopping began again. Shortly, the team returned, carrying at least thirty feet of tree trunk two feet in diameter. Here and there along the trunk, they had left the stubs of branches for handholds. But most of those carrying the logs simply had one large hairy arm wrapped around it, and they grinned savagely at each other and at the outlaws.

The Bluffer squatted down and let Bill slip off his back. Bill started to approach Flat Fingers—but at this moment there was a sudden crashing sound from the forest behind them, as if a second tree was falling and everybody turned around. A moment later, a second party came trotting up, carrying a second trunk stripped down to little stubs of branches for handholds.

“No you don’t!” roared Flat Fingers, waving them back. “One at a time! Here, lay that other pole up against the side of the cut, and give us some room.”

The blacksmith’s huge finger indicated the vertical rock wall that formed one side of the narrow entrance to the valley. Reluctantly, the second batch of Dilbians leaned their log up against this and fell back.

“All right, the rest of you!” shouted the Bluffer to the rest of them standing around. “Here we go! Ready with those rocks!”

Bill had noticed these others arming themselves with rocks—and in some cases, the very ones that had been thrown at them from behind the stockade. Now, looking again, he saw that almost everyone who was not on the battering-ram crew had at least two or three of these missiles in his or her hands.

“Shields, here!” bellowed Flat Fingers. Those of the battering-ram crew who already had shields swung them up into position overhead. The rest hastily borrowed shields from friends or relatives standing around and did likewise.

“All right, then!” cried the blacksmith, taking his place at the head of the battering-ram crew. “Here we go-o-o…”

The last word ended in a long, drawn-out howl, as the battering-ram crew started off at full speed toward the gate of the stockade. In a black furred wave behind them, surged the rest of the Dilbians—but they surged only to within throwing distance of the stockade wall, and began to loose a literal barrage of rocks.

The heads of the outlaws to be seen above the points of the stockade ducked hastily down out of sight as the first flight of stones reached them. They stayed down. Meanwhile, the battering-ram crew was carrying on full tilt for the gate in the very center of the stockade. For a moment, they seemed to be galloping away and making no progress. But a moment later, they loomed over the gate, and a second later, they struck it. The results were all but unbelievable.

The gate split from top to bottom with a sound like a crack of thunder. But this was the least spectacular of the results of the impact. The battering-ram crew, shaken loose by the impact, piled up against the gate and the walls of the stockade themselves, like so many Dilbian-furred missiles. As a result, not merely the gate but the whole stockade wall quivered and shook like a fence of saplings.

There were glimpses of hairy arms thrown in the air briefly above the stockade’s points, as the outlaws on the catwalk inside were shaken loose and dumped backward. Evidently, not one of them up there had been able to retain his grip, for although the stones had stopped flying from the crowd of Muddy Nosers, not one head made its reappearance above the stockade wall.

“ All right—up and at it !” Flat Fingers was shouting, down by the gate, as he scrambled himself to his feet. “ On your feet and let’s hit it again !”

The battering-ram crew recollected itself, picked up its log, and began to swing its front end rhythmically against the cracked gate. With each blow, the entrance to the valley resounded, and gate and wall shivered together. Slowly the crack widened, and another crack split the door into three pieces. Around Bill, back at a stone’s throw distance from the gate, the rest of the villagers were going wild with triumph, and the din was deafening.

A cold feeling clutched suddenly at Bill’s chest. He had not fully imagined the violence and excitement that surrounded him now. He had not planned to get outlaws and villagers killed or maimed—

The sudden, hard poke by something rigid behind him, sent him stumbling forward half a step. He spun about, swiftly and angrily, to find himself confronting Sweet Thing. She was carrying a rectangular shield and a sword slung in its supporting strap, both of which were too small for any Dilbian’s use.