Джеффри Лорд - Return To Kaldak

He bent down, gripped her by the hair, and pulled her face up to his. «No fear,» he said sharply. «I know what to do now. Give me your-«He pointed at her pistol, pretending not to know the word for it. She shook her head.

«You-«

«Get down!» Blade shouted, pushing her back into the shaft and flinging himself over the mouth. The whistle of the incoming mortar shell rose to a deafening screech. A moment later the explosion crashed against Blade's ears. Fortunately it seemed to come from the other side of the wall to his left.

Then the wall sagged, split and cracked into its original stones, and collapsed. The roar drowned out the battle, and the dust was so thick Blade could hardly see ten feet. He lay across the mouth of the shaft until the wall subsided into a pile of rubble, in spite of Sparra's curses from below.

As the dust cloud thinned, Blade saw that at least one of the estate's defenders had been unlucky. The man lay across one block of stone with another on his legs. From the way he was lying, Blade knew his back was broken and his legs crushed. His magazine rifle lay intact beside him, though so did an ammunition pouch. Blade scooped them up, while the man whimpered and begged someone to kill him. Sparra now had enough control of herself to do as he asked.

Her pistol shot seemed to waken the battle around them again. Something exploded among the tumbled stones of the wall. This time Sparra didn't need urging to hit the dirt. Blade stayed down until he'd inspected the rifle. As he'd thought, it was very much like an early twentieth-century army rifle-bolt-action, with a rectangular magazine holding seven rounds. He'd won marksmanship contests with an Enfield not too different from this; he knew he could make himself unpleasant to the Tribesmen with it.

Then Sparra's pistol went off almost in his ear. He looked up and saw dark figures running toward them across the rubble. Or at least they were trying to run. The bad footing reduced them to an undignified stumble. It also slowed them considerably. Sparra fired again, and shouted to Blade, «Tribesmen, you idiot! Or were you one of them?»

Blade started shooting. He dropped two men before the others started to duck, and a third as he spent a little too long looking for cover. Then bullets whistled around Blade as the others opened fire. The shooting seemed fairly random, but Blade was afraid of ricochets off the stones lying all around.

He put his mouth close to Sparra's ear. «We'll have to stay down for a bit. If they charge, you go back down the shaft. I can hold them off better with the rifle.»

She looked at him, dark eyes enormous in a face pale with caked dust. She seemed bewildered at Blade's transformation from half-wit into soldier. Well, there'd be time enough to sort things out if they both lived through the night! At least he was doing his fighting in front of a witness who might be persuaded to keep her mouth shut.

Blade refilled the magazine from the loose rounds, found another filled magazine in the pouch, and put that ready to hand. He now had fourteen rounds ready to stand off any rush by what looked like less than ten men. With Sparra's pistol as well, that should be enough, even in the darkness. Blade would still have given a lot for a submachine gun or one of the laser rifles.

The rifle fire from the Tribesmen began to die away. Blade heard scrabbling noises and hoped they were retreating. The battle noise continued, but now from farther away. It sounded as if the Tribesmen had attacked simultaneously all around the estate, hoping to overwhelm the defenders by surprise and sheer weight of numbers. Now that the defense was rallying, they were moving their new attack to where the first rush had found weak spots. That was better tactics than Blade had ever heard of the Tribesmen using. Either they'd found a war chief who knew modern warfare, or they were getting leadership as well as weaponry from Doimar. Neither was a very pleasant idea.

Blade again suggested that Sparra should go back down the shaft. «They'll need word of how things are here,» he pointed out.

«Yes, but if the Tribesmen attack again and kill you, things will change. So my information will be useless back at the Great House. My gun will not be useless here.»

Blade gave up. Sparra was a soldier with a sense of duty just as strong as his, not a woman to be protected. At least she'd adjusted to the idea that he could be treated as a rational adult. He'd have to be careful, though, not to make it appear that his memory was coming back too fast.

Then a steamboat whistle sounded from the river, and a rocket shot up against the sky, trailing green fire. A moment later the darkness gave way to dazzling white light, as a cluster of flares burst high over the estate.

Blade counted at least a dozen Tribesmen in sight. Some flinched at the glare, then froze in position. Others, less well trained, jumped up. Among them were two carrying a thick black tube on a tripod. To Blade, it looked like a heavy laser. Snap-shooting, he picked off one of the men. The other stayed up a little too long, trying to keep the laser from smashing on the rocks. Blade's second shot and Sparra's pistol bullet hit him almost together. He went down, and the laser fell on top of him.

«Cover me,» whispered Blade, handing the rifle to Sparra. Then he dashed across the rubble toward the laser. Surprise kept the Tribesmen from shooting until he was picking it up. The first shots were wild, and Sparra picked off two men who rose to aim better. Then the flares died, and before the Tribesmen's eyes could readjust to the darkness Blade was back under cover with his prize.

«That's Doimari Oltec,» said Sparra grimly. She examined it. «And it's fully charged, too- I think-«She broke off to shoot at a Tribesman who'd jumped up and was running off to the left. He screamed and went down.

«I hope you got him,» said Blade. «I think he was a messenger, sent to warn reinforcements that we've got the laser. If you got him, they may be walking right into our sights in a bit.»

«And if a message gets through?»

«Then we'll probably have mortars or grenades coming over soon. You're sure you don't want to get away while you still can?»

She bit him gently on the ear. «No-and do you remember your name now, my friend? If I am going to die with you, I'd like to know it.»

«Call me Voros. That sounds more right than anything else.»

«All right, Voros. I don't care what the Laws or the Monitor might say, I would always think I was a coward if I left you now.» Blade squeezed her hand, and they settled down to wait, no longer a man and a woman but just two infantrymen waiting for the enemy.

They didn't have to wait long. A whistle blew in the darkness, then a more solid part of that darkness began to move toward them. As it came closer, it broke up into individual Tribesmen, their faces and ragged clothing darkened but each holding a shiny new rifle. Some of the rifles even had bayonets. Moving out ahead of them was a single figure with a whistle on a cord around his neck and a short-barreled laser in his hand. Blade held his breath. If anyone warned that officer even now-

No one passed the word, and the Tribesmen paid for it. As the Tribesmen who'd taken cover rose to join their comrades, Blade raised the laser and opened fire. His first blast hit the officer and the whole squad behind him. One of them must have been carrying demolition charges. He exploded as the laser hit him, and grisly pieces of his body rained down. The squad behind him froze, and Blade cut them down before they could move. Then both he and Sparra were firing into the confused mass of men coming on behind the two point squads.

Perhaps the Tribesmen were new warriors who'd never before faced point-blank laser fire. Or perhaps the surprise and the loss of their officer confused them. In any case, they turned and ran after only a minute of Blade's laser work. They fired a few wild shots, but after another demolition man blew up they stopped doing even that. Five minutes after the attack began, it was over. There wasn't a living Tribesman in sight, except a few moaning wounded, writhing among the far more numerous corpses. The stench of burned flesh and ozone was strong enough to turn even Blade's cast-iron stomach.