Филип Фармер - The Stone God Awakens

There were other dangers besides flying bat-men. An armoured car drove up, and a human hopped out and ran up to him. He ordered Ulysses to report to the Neshgai officer in the car. Ulysses did so, and found Bleezhmag, the equivalent of a colonel in the armoured car corps, waiting there by the open door. Bleezhmag had a deep gash across his forehead, a light cut across his trunk and a hole in his left arm. His human soldiers had gotten out of the car and were shooting wooden bolts from wooden crossbows.

"I have orders from the Grand Vizier to take you out of the danger zone, wherever that is," he said. He leaned out and looked up at the great-winged figures flickering from darkness to the glare of burning gas. "We're been hit twice on the roof by bombs, but aside from temporary deafness, we haven't suffered. Get in!"

"I can't desert my men!" Ulysses said.

"Oh, yes you can!" Bleezhmag said. He trumpeted impatiently — perhaps a trifle hysterically — through his proboscis.

"It's not just the Dhulhulikh! The other Tree peoples are in on this raid! They're not a horde, if our information is correct, but they are a large body, and they've formed a spearhead which has swept through most of our defences in this area! They're being held up now, but they won't be kept back long!

The Grand Vizier says they're probably intent on getting you! They can't hope to take the city! But they could get you!"

Something nudged the darkness aside and revealed itself as another armoured car. Like the first, it looked like a wheeled tortoise. The curved roof was made of three layers of thick densely grained wood over a thick layer of plastic. The sides were double-walled and contained doors and slitholes. It held a driver, an officer, and six archers. Though there had been no thought of its withstanding explosives when it was built some years before, it had proved capable of shrugging off the small bombs of the bat-men.

Ulysses crouched near the door while the crossbowmen stood outside to cover him. Then he gestured at Awina to run out to him. She did so, almost ending up as a recipient of a poisoned arrow. This missed her by several inches, and then she was by his side. A bowman was lucky enough to hit the bat-man who had flown in to shoot at Awina. His bolt caught the bat-man in his arm, pinning it to his side. The bat-man screamed and dropped his bow and then fluttered down. Another bolt struck deep into his ribs just as his feet touched the ground.

"Get in!" Ulysses said to Awina. He spoke to Bleezhmag. "I will go if you will see that the rest of my people are transported, too."

"Very well," Bleezhmag said.

Ulysses gestured at his men under the tree, and those still on their feet helped the wounded to get across the open area to the cars. Either the bat-men had exhausted their supply of missiles or they were too respectful of the bowmen. They did not try to attack the group while it was unprotected.

The cavalcade moved out onto the road at twenty miles an hour. The headlights were not bright compared to those on the cars of Ulysses' time; they illuminated the road perhaps twenty feet ahead of them. Ulysses asked Bleezhmag why the lights were on. They would only attract the invaders, and they were not really needed, since the drivers knew this road well.

"I have no orders to turn them off," the Neshgai said. He was slumped down in his seat and breathing heavily through his mouth. The blood was still running from his wounds.

Ulysses was standing on the seat beside him, which had held another Neshgai officer, presumably left behind because he was dead or incapacitated. On Ulysses' right was a Neshgai driver. Behind him, in the space in the centre, Awina and seven Wufea were crowded together. The archers peered out through the slits into the darkness half-lit by the beams of the vehicles behind them.

"You have no orders?" Ulysses said. "Are you forbidden to turn them off unless you get orders to do so?"

Bleezhmag nodded. Ulysses said, "I am ordering you to turn off the lights. It may be too late now, but do so anyway."

"I am an armoured car corpsman, and you are an officer of the air force," the Neshgai said. "You have no authority over me."

"But I have been entrusted to you!" Ulysses said. "You are charged with delivering me to the capital. My life is in your hands! By not turning off the lights, you are endangering me! Not to mention my personnel, for whose lives I am responsible!"

"No orders," Bleezhmag said drowsily, and he died.

Ulysses spoke into the transceiver box. "Commander Singing Bear, speaking for Colonel Bleezhmag, who has delegated his authority to me because of his wounds. Turn off the lights!"

A moment later, the cavalcade rolled over the highway in the darkness. The road was whitish enough for them to follow it at a fifteen-mph speed, and Ulysses had hopes that they might get to the capital unattacked.

He pressed the button markedHQ in the Neshgai symbol on the side of the box. This would cause pressure on a nerve spot in the vegetable organism, and the frequency band would be shifted.

He got no reply to his repeated demands to be put through to the Grand Vizier or the general of the army. Even when he identified himself, he failed to get a response. He switched back to the frequency used among the cars and told the operator in the car behind him to send requests to HQ. Then he turned in on all the frequencies available to the transceiver, hoping to find out how the defence was coming. He heard a number of conversations, but he was left as confused as those he listened in on. Then he tried to cut in on some of these with the hope that he could get his request relayed to HQ, but he failed.

The Neshgai driver, peering through the slit, said, "Commander! I see something on the field just ahead!"

Ulysses told him to hold his speed and he looked through the slit. He saw a number of pale figures advancing swiftly across the fields, evidently intending to cut the train off. He switched on the lights, and the figures became somewhat clearer. Eyes gleamed redly in the reflection, and the paleness became leopard-spotted bipeds with tails. They held spears and round objects, which must be bombs. How had The Tree people gotten gunpowder?

He spoke into the transceiver. "Enemy on the right! About thirty yards, I'd say! Full speed ahead! Run over them if they get in the way. Archers, fire at will!"

The first of the running leopard-men got to the road. A red glow suddenly appeared, and then a sputter of fire. He had opened a firebox and applied it to the fuse of a bomb. The fire described an arc as the bomb flew toward the lead car. A crossbow twanged, and a bolt shot out of the front right slit. The enemy screamed and fell. There was a thump against the roof, and then an explosion that rocked the car and half-deafened them. But the bomb had bounced off the roof and onto the road by the side of the car. The car kept on going.

Other figures rushed up, some with spears and a few with open fireboxes and bombs. The spearmen tried to thrust their weapons through the slits, and the bombardiers tossed their weapons at the side of the car.

The spearmen fell, pierced by bolts. Bombs struck and bounced off the sides and the roof and blew up on the road, doing more harm to the enemy than to the carmen.

Then the lead car was past them, and the survivors were attacking the other cars. More than half of the enemy was left dead or wounded. One leopard-man, running desperately, leaped upon the sloping roof of the last car. He placed a bomb on the roof, leaped off, and was shot in the back. The bomb blew the two top layers off and cracked the third. The occupants could not hear for some time, but they were unharmed.

When the cavalcade rolled into the city, they found a few buildings burning and some minor damage. The bat-men had dropped bombs and shot down soldiers and civilians in the streets. A suicide team had flown through the windows of the fourth story of the palace (which had not been barred, though order had been given two weeks before to do so). They had killed many people with their poisoned arrows but had failed to kill the ruler and the Grand Vizier. And all except two of the team had died.