Jack Vance - Big Planet

“They might come up under the raft.”

Glystra nodded. “It’s a chance. Would you rather stay here?”

“No.”

Corbus stretched out his long arms. “Let’s get busy.”

Glystra looked at the sky. “An hour of light. Enough to get us across, if things go well. Ketch, you go back down, take the whole party, zipangotes and all, down to the beach under the bluff. Naturally, keep clear when things start coming. We’ll send the wall down; if it lands in the river, make it fast to the shore, so it won’t float away.”

Ketch swung himself back down to the ground.

Glystra turned back to the wall. “We’ve got to get this over before they figure out what we’re up to.” He looked over the side. Twenty feet below was the edge of the bluff, then another fifty feet, almost straight down, to the beach.

“There won’t be any toe-hold to the wall. It should go over almost of its own weight.”

“Fifty feet of it ought to be enough,” said Corbus. “The wood is light stuff.”

“It’s not how much we need, it’s how much we can get. I don’t think they’ll stand still when we get to work.”

Along the beach below they saw the string of zipan-gotes, with Ketch, Pianza, Bishop, Cloyville and the three girls.

Glystra nodded to Corbus, drew his knife, slashed at the fiber rope binding the top of the wall. A sudden outraged screeching came from behind. Apparently from nowhere appeared four old women, white creatures with straggling pink-gray hair, howling and gesticulating. A number of Magicker men, lean, white-skinned, daubed around their shoulders with green paint, appeared behind them.

The coarse rope parted. “Now,” said Glystra. He aimed his ion-shine, squeezed the button. Once—twice—three times. Three holes down the vertical crack took the place of the pegs. Setting their shoulders to the top of the posts, they pushed out. The wall leaned, creaked, moved no further.

“Below,” panted Glystra. “There’s more lashings halfway down.” He crouched, peered into the dimness under the roof. “We’ll have to shoot blind… You break your side, I’ll do mine.”

Two shafts of pale purple light, crackling power. A tongue of fire licked up the punky side of the timbers, died in a charred smoulder.

The wall sagged, creaked. “Now,” panted Glystra, “before they get their army up here… Don’t go over with it!”

The wall lurched, swept grandly out, fell, landed top-down on the beach, stood a second, sagged outward, slapped into the river with a smash of foam.

Glystra caught a glimpse of Ketch scrambling out with a bit of line, then turned to meet the onrush of a line of the Magickers—gaunt men, naked except for the G-string at their loins. They chattered furiously, but danced back like nervous prize-fighters when they met his eye.

The women screeched, bawled, bellowed, wailed, but the men only made tentative movements forward. Glystra threw a glance down to the river. The wall—now a raft— floated free, pulling at the rope Ketch had made fast. Cloyville and Pianza stood on the shore looking up. Glystra yelled down, “Lead the animals aboard, tie them in the middle.”

Bishop called up something Glystra did not catch; he had been distracted by the scene in the room immediately below the roof where he stood, a room now open to the air where the wall had fallen away. Glystra’s throat contracted, his stomach twitched… Twenty children hung by their hair two feet off the ground. Stone weights were suspended from their feet. Wide-eyed, silent, the children stared from bulging eyes into the new openness, silent except for a hoarse breathing.

“Making tall ones out of short ones,” came Corbus’ cool voice.

“Look farther down,” said Glystra in a low voice. “In the room next lower.”

Corbus threw a glance toward the prancing Magickers, peered down under the roof. “Can’t see too well… It’s confused… Oh—”

Glystra turned away. The Magickers were stealthily sliding closer. “Get back! Back!” he said flatly. “Or I’ll cut your legs out from under you.” In a lower voice he said, “I guess it wouldn’t make any difference to you if you’ve all gone through—that…”

But his words were not heard, or if heard, not heeded. Goaded by the frenzied calls of the old women, the Magickers, lips drawn back from their long teeth, were prancing forward, a step at a time. One began to scream—a quavering fierce screech—which the entire line picked up. Suddenly they all were brandishing four-foot pikes tipped with black horny barbs.

“Looks like we’ll have to kill a few,” said Glystra between tight lips, “unless they’ll scare…” He aimed the ion-shine at the roof, blasted a hole in the roof at the feet of the nearest Magicker.

The Magicker never shifted his gaze. His eyes had become fixed, saliva bubbled at his mouth.

“They’re crazy—hysterics,” muttered Glystra. “Poor devils, I don’t like it”

Step by step the Magickers advanced, jerkily, one motion at a time. Behind came the hoarse shrieks of the Hags, and behind—the far glory of Big Planet sunset. Orange, flaring gold.

Too close. Suddenly desperate, Glystra called in a deadly voice, “Two steps more, I’ll kill the lot of you”

One step—two steps—pikes raised in gangling arms.

Glystra squeezed the button. Gaunt forms flapped on the roof.

Hags screamed horror, leapt across the roof to the stairs, black warlock silhouettes, with tatters of cloth flying behind.

Glystra went to the edge, looked over. He yelled down, “Get a line ready, and make it fast to what’s coming down next.”

Corbus was looking up the pole. “We’d better drop the whole works, pole and all. Otherwise the cable will snap past so fast they won’t be able to see it. Notice—three of those guy-lines run to the top, three to the buckle-point at the middle. If we cut off the three at top, the pole should snap off nice and neat.”

Glystra examined the magazine of his ion-shine, squinting in the failing light. “Got to go easy on the power. There’s not too much soup in this one.” He aimed, squeezed the button.

Three gray cables sang, fell twisting like snakes over the roofs of Edelweiss. The pole snapped like a carrot. From the cupola came wild shrieks of fright. “God!” said Glystra. “I’d forgotten all about them”

The pole crashed almost at their feet; the crying stopped abruptly.

Corbus called over the side, “Here it comes… Heads up!”

The tension of the cable dragged the stub across the roof, over the edge of the bluff.

“Lay hold of it!” Glystra yelled. “Make it fast to the raft!” He started to scramble down the wall, past the strung-up children, past the first floor, where he would not look. Corbus was at his heels. They ran along the bluff, found a place to scramble down to the beach.

“Hurry,” yelled Pianza. “Our shore line can’t take all the strain; it’ll go in a minute.”

Glystra and Corbus waded out into the river, scrambled up on to the cool soft timbers. “Let ’er go.”

The raft drifted free. Behind them the bluff made a black smear across the afterglow, and perched high was Edelweiss, bereft and forlorn with the stump of its broken pole. “Poor devils,” said Glystra.

The raft floated out on the river, carried downstream by the current but tethered to the opposite shore by the cable of the broken high-line.

“Ah,” sighed Cloyville, dropping his heavy posterior to the logs. “Peace—quiet—it’s wonderful!”

“Wait till you get to the other side before you rejoice,” said Ketch. “There’s still the griamobots.”

Cloyville rose swiftly to his feet. “I’d forgotten about them. My Lord! Where are they?… If it’s not one thing it’s another”