Harry Harrison: The Technicolor Time Machine

Any doubt about the peaceful nature of the visit had now vanished. As each boat landed the occupants dragged it up onto the shore and took out spears, bows, and soft quivers of stubby, stone-headed arrows. Barney concentrated on close-ups, Gino would be filming the entire action, and he could see the details of the weaponry in entirely too much detail.

“Ottar,” Dallas said, “tell your people to get under cover and keep their heads down.”

Ottar grumbled but issued the order. The Viking personality did not adjust easily to the concept of defense, but it was not completely suicidal. The defenders inside the walls were outnumbered at least twenty to one and even the combative northmen were forced to respect the odds. The first arrows hummed by and a spear thudded into the wood just below the camera. Barney dropped down and pushed the lens through a chink between two logs. It limited his field of vision—but was a good deal healthier.

“Coward weapons,” Ottar muttered. “Cowards. No way to fight.” He rattled his ax angrily against his shield. The Vikings scorned the use of the bow and arrow and believed only in the value of shock tactics and hand-to-hand fighting.

An impasse was reached when all the boats had unloaded and the Cape Dorset men surged around the log palisade looking for a way in. Some of them tried to climb the wall, but instant decapitation or dismemberment by the flashing Viking axes quickly halted this. The attackers waved their weapons and shrieked in their high-pitched voices, while the humming whistle of the bullroarers rose above all the other sounds. There was a small knot of men, to the rear of the others, that Dallas pointed out.

“Looks like the chiefs or whatever there. Dressed different, some kind of fur outfits with fox tails hanging off them.”

“Medicine men, more likely,” Barney said. “I wonder what they’re up to?”

There was a concerted stir of action that appeared to be organized by the men in fur-fringed outfits. Under their direction some of the attackers were running to the nearby forest and returning laden with branches.

“Are they going to try and break the wall down?” Barney said.

“Worse than that, maybe,” Dallas said. “These Dorsets, do they know anything about fire?”

“They must. Jens told me that fire pits and ashes were found in the ruins of their houses.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Dallas said gloomily, and pointed to the base of the wall where a mound of brushwood was being piled up.

All of the Viking spear poking and sword and ax waving was to no avail; the pile mounted higher. A minute later a man burst from the group of leaders in the rear, running through the shouting mob carrying a flaming torch. Viking spears rained down around him, but as soon as he was close enough he whirled the torch so it flared up and threw it in a high arc into the mound of brushwood. The dry wood crackled and flamed and smoke billowed out.

“I can put a stop to this whole thing right now,” Dallas said, bending to open the steel boxes before him.

“No,” Ottar said, putting out a restraining hand. “They want fight, we fight. We take care of that fire.”

“Maybe—but you’ll get butchered doing it.”

“Butcher some too,” Ottar said with a wicked grin as he started down from the wall. “And Barney wants good pictures of fighting Indians.”

Barney hesitated, but it was impossible to ignore the meaning in Dallas’s level, expressionless stare. “Sure I want a movie,” he burst out. “But not at the expense of anyone’s life. Let Dallas handle them.”

“No,” Ottar said, “we’ll give you a good fight for your movie.” He roared with laughter. “Do not look so sad, my gamli vinr , [22] Old friend. we fight for ourself too. You will go soon and when we are alone we want these skraelling to remember what northmen are like in battle.” Then he was gone.

“He’s right,” Dallas said. “But if he gets into trouble we oughta be ready to get him out.” He opened the largest box and took out a weatherproof loudspeaker and a coil of insulated wire. “I’m going to put this up as far along the wall as the wire will reach.”

“What is it?”

“The speaker for this curdler unit. Let’s see how the natives act when they get a blast of this.”

Ottar had massed all of his righting men inside the gates, leaving just the women and the bigger children to man the walls. Two women stood ready to swing the gates open and, Barney saw with a shock, one of them was Slithey. He had thought her safe back in the camp. He shouted to her at the same moment Ottar raised his ax and his words were lost in the roar of Viking voices as the gates swung wide and the northmen rushed out.

This was the kind of fighting the Vikings did the best—and enjoyed the most. In a howling, compact mass they burst forth and crashed into the Cape Dorset. The superior numbers of the Dorset made no difference, for there was little or nothing they could do to fight these northern butchers, impregnable behind their shields and metal helms. Butchers is what they were, and their short swords and axes chopped and hewed through Dorset weapons and flesh.

The Cape Dorset broke and ran, they could do nothing else. They fled before the unstoppable advance of the blood-drenched killers. But, as the two groups separated, a space opened between them and the character of the battle changed. Swift spears plunged into the mob of Vikings, while arrows rattled against their shields. One man fell, with a spear through his leg, then another. The Cape Dorset began to realize what had happened and stayed clear, letting their weapons speak for them. The Vikings could not get to grips with the enemy—and close contact was the only way they could fight. In a few moments the tide would turn. They would be surrounded and picked off and killed, one by one.

“If you can do anything,” Barney said, “now’s the time, Dallas.”

“Roger. I got the only set of ear plugs so if I was you I would put my fingers in my ears.”

Barney started to answer him as Dallas threw the switch, and his voice and all the other sounds were instantly obliterated. As the wailing, sense-destroying thunder of the curdler exploded out there, there was nothing else he could do except jam his fingers into his ears and clutch at his head. Dallas nodded with satisfaction and dug smoke and tear-gas grenades out of the other box. With a professional, straight-armed pitch, he began lobbing them over the wall.

With his hands clamped tightly to his head, Barney turned painfully and looked down. In those few seconds the scene had changed completely. The curdler and the bombs were as strange to the Vikings as to the attackers, but their reaction had been their natural one of drawing into an even tighter defensive knot. But not so with the Cape Dorset. They were overwhelmed by panic. The fearful noise tore at their ears. Pillars of choking smoke sprang up all around them and they could not breathe and they could not see. Without conscious thought or decision, they broke and ran for the boats. Where, a minute before, there had been an attacking army, there was now only a mob of fleeing, struggling figures and a scattering of motionless dark bodies on the ground. It was all over. The mob on the beach struggled for possession of the boats and a few last figures stumbled through the clouds of tear gas after them.

Ottar’s men stood together, facing outward and ready to take on all enemies, human or supernatural. The ones who had been blinded by the tear gas were just as ready to fight as the others. Their courage was magnificent.

When Dallas switched off the curdler the silence seemed to beat in waves and Barney’s ears were numb and still filled with that incredible and sense-destroying sound. He slowly let his arms fall and straightened up. The Cape Dorset were vanquished and fleeing, there was no doubt of that: the Viking warriors had lowered their shields as they realized this and were waving their weapons victoriously. Dallas’s voice seemed to come from a great distance, through many layers of cotton batting, as he pointed toward the truck still stationed on the hill above.