Poul Anderson - The Man Who Counts

Trolwen still had overwhelming numerical superiority. He could choke the sky with his warriors, pinning the Drak’honai to their decks to await sea-borne assault. So far, thought Wace, Diomedes’ miserly gods had been smiling on him. It couldn’t last much longer.

He followed the first Lannacha wave, which had flown to clear a bridgehead on the raft. He sprang from the ice-floe when it bumped to a halt, grasped a massive timber, and scrambled up the side. When he reached the top and unlimbered his tomahawk and shield, he found himself in a line of warriors. Smoke from the burnings elsewhere stung his eyes; only indistinctly did he see the defending Drak’honai, pulled into ranks ahead of him and up on the higher decks.

Had the yelling and tumbling about overhead suddenly redoubled?

A stumpy finger tapped him. He turned around to meet Van Rijn’s porcine gaze.

“Whoof and whoo! What for a climb that was! Better I should have stayed, nie? Well, boy, we are on our own now. Tolk just sent me word, the whole Drak’ho Expeditionary Force is in sight and lolloping here ward fast.”

Briefly, Wace felt sick. Had it all come to this, a chipped flint in his skull after Delp’s army had beaten off the Lannachska?

Then he remembered standing on the cold black beach of Dawrnach, shortly before they sailed, and wondering aloud if he would ever again speak with Sandra. “I’ll have the easy part if we lose,” he had said. “It’ll be over quickly enough for me. But you—”

She gave him a look that brimmed with pride, and answered: “What makes you think you can lose?”

He hefted his weapon. The lean winged bodies about him hissed, bristled, and glided ahead.

These were mostly troopers from the Mannenach attempt; every ice ship bore a fair number who had been taught the elements of ground fighting. And on the whole trip south to find the Fleet, Van Rijn and the Lannacha captains had exhorted them: “Do not join our aerial forces. Stay on the decks when we board a raft. This whole plan hinges on how many rafts we can seize or destroy. Trolwen and his air squadrons will merely be up there to support you.”

The idea took root reluctantly in any Diomedean brain. Wace was not at all certain it wouldn’t die within the next hour, leaving him and Van Rijn marooned on hostile timbers while their comrades soared up to a pointless sky battle. But he had no choice, save to trust them now.

He broke into a run. The screech that his followers let out tore at his eardrums.

Wings threshed before him. Instinctively, the untrained Drak’ho lines were breaking up. Through geological eras, the only sane thing for a Diomedean to do had been to get above an attacker. Wace stormed on where they had stood.

Lifting from all the raft, enemy sailors stooped on these curious unflying adversaries. A Lannacha forgot himself, flapped up, and was struck by three meteor bodies. He was hurled like a broken puppet into the sea. The Drak’honai rushed downward.

And they met spears which snapped up like a picket fence. No few of Lannach’s one-time ground troopers had rescued their basketwork shields from the last retreat and were now again transformed into artificial turtles. The rest fended off the aerial assault — and the archers made ready.

Wace heard the sinister whistle rise behind him, and saw fifty Drak’honai fall.

Then a dragon roared in his face, striking with a knife-toothed rake. Wace caught the blow on his shield. It shuddered in his left arm, numbing the muscles. He lashed out a heavy-shod foot, caught the hard belly and heard the wind leave the Drak’ho. His tomahawk rose and fell with a dull chopping sound. The Diomedean fluttered away, pawing at a broken wing.

Wace hurried on. The Drak’honai, stunned by the boarding party’s tactics, were now milling around overhead out of bowshot. Females snarled in the forecastle doors, spreading wings to defend their screaming cubs. They were ignored: the object was to capture the raft’s artillery.

Someone up there must have seen what was intended. His hawk-shriek and hawk-stoop were ended by a Lannacha arrow; but then an organized line peeled off the Drak’honai mass, plummeted to the forecastle deck, and took stance before the main battery of flamethrowers and ballistae.

“So!” rumbled Van Rijn. “They make happy fun games after all. We see about this!”

He broke into an elephantine trot, whirling the great mallet over his head. A slingstone bounced off his leather-decked abdomen, an arrow ripped along one cheek, blowgun darts pincushioned his double cuirass. He got a boost from two winged guards, up the sheer ladderless bulkhead of the forecastle. Then he was in among the defenders.

“ Je maintien drai!” he bawled, and stove in the head of the nearest Drak’ho. “ God sent the right!” he shouted, stamping on the shaft of a rake that clawed after him. “ From, from, Kristmenn, Krossmenn, Kongsmenn!” he bellowed, drumming on the ribs of three warriors who ramped close. “ Heinekeri’s Bier!” he trumpeted, turning to wrestle with a winged shape that fastened onto his back, and wringing its neck.

Wace and the Lannachska joined him. There was an interval with hammer and thrust and the huge bone-breaking buffets of wing and tail. The Drak’honai broke. Van Rijn sprang to the flamethrower and pumped. “Aim the hose!” he panted. “Flush them out, you bat-infested heads!” A gleeful Lannacha seized the ceramic nozzle, pressed the hardwood ignition piston, and squirted burning oil upward.

Down on the lower decks, ballistae began to thump, catapults sang and other flamethrowers licked. A party from the ice ship reassembled one of their wooden machine guns and poured darts at the last Drak’ho counterassault.

A female shape ran from the forecastle. “It’s our husbands they kill!” she shrieked. “Destroy them!”

Van Rijn leaped off the upper deck, a three-meter fall. Planks thundered and groaned when he hit them. Puffing, waving his arms, he got ahead of the frantic creature. “Get back!” he yelled in her own language. “Back inside! Shoo! Scat! Want to leave your cubs unprotected? I eat young Drak’honai! With horseradish!”

She wailed and scuttled back to shelter. Wace let out a gasp. His skin was sodden with sweat. It had not been too serious a danger, perhaps… in theory, a female mob could have been massacred under the eyes of its young… but who could bring himself to that? Not Eric Wace, certainly. Better give up and take one’s spear thrust like a gentleman.

He realized, then, that the raft was his.

Smoke still thickened the air too much for him to see very well what was going on elsewhere. Now and then, through a breach in it, appeared some vision: a raft set unquenchably afire, abandoned; an ice vessel, cracked, dismasted, arrow-swept, still bleakly slugging it out; another Lannacha ship laying to against a raft, another boarding party; the banner of a Lannacha clan blowing in sudden triumph on a foreign masthead. Wace had no idea how the sea fight as a whole was going — how many ice craft had been raked clean, deserted by discouraged crews, seized by Drak’ho counterattack, left drifting uselessly remote from the enemy.

It had been perfectly clear, he thought — Van Rijn had said it bluntly enough to Trolwen and the Council — that the smaller, less well equipped, virtually untrained Lannacha navy would have no chance whatsoever of decisively whipping the Fleet. The crucial phase of this battle was not going to involve stones or flames.

He looked up. Beyond the spars and lines, where the haze did not reach, heaven lay unbelievably cool. The formations of war, weaving in and about, were so far above him that they looked like darting swallows.