Larry Niven: The Ringworld Throne

“Thurl,” Kaywerbrimmis said carefully, “Farsight Trading has come to help.”

“Good. What are you, Machine People? We hear of you.”

“Our Empire is mighty, but we spread through trade, not war. We hope to persuade your people to make fuel for us, and bread, and other things. Your kind of grass can make good bread; you might like it yourselves. In return we can show you wonders. The least are our guns. These handguns, they’ll reach farther than your crossbows. For close work we have flamers—”

“Killing-things, are they? Our good luck that you have come. Yours, too, to reach cover. You should move your guns to the wall now.”

“Thurl, the big guns are mounted on the cruisers.”

The wall stood twice the height of a Machine Person. But Valavirgillin remembered a local word. “Ramp. Thurl, is there a ramp that leads up the wall? Will it carry our cruisers?”

The day’s colors were turning charcoal-gray. It was starting to rain. Far above these clouds, the shadow of night must have nearly covered the sun.

And there wasn’t any ramp, until the Thurl bellowed his orders. Then all the huge males and females broke from their labor and began moving earth.

Vala noted one woman climbing, guiding, shouting. Big, mature, with a voice to shatter rocks. She caught a name: Moonwa. Perhaps the Thurl’s primary wife.

Metal payload shell and metal motor, and wide timber running boards a hand thick: a cruiser was heavy. The ramp tended to crumble. The cruisers went up one by one, with the wall brushing their right sides and ten Grass Giant males lifting and steadying on the left. How would they get the cruisers down ?

The top was as wide as a cruiser wheelbase. Sentries guided them. “Face your weapons starboard-spin. Vampires come from there.”

The wagonmasters placed their vehicles, then met to confer. Kay asked, “Whand, Anth, what do you think? Shrapnel in the cannon? They might bunch up. They often do.”

Anthrantillin said, “Have the giants gather some gravel. Save our shot. This will be handgun work, though. Spread out?”

Whandernothtee said, “That’s what the giants want.”

“Me, too,” Kaywerbrimmis said.

Vala said, “The Grass Giants have crossbows. Why are they worried? Crossbows won’t have the reach of guns, but they’ll outreach vampire scent.”

The wagonmasters looked at each other. Anth said, “Grass eaters—”

“Oh, no. Elsewhere they’re considered scary fighters,” Whand said.

Nobody answered.

Whandernothtee’s cruiser and Anthrantillin’s rolled off in opposite directions. They were almost invisible in the rain and dark before the Grass Giant warriors stopped them.

Kaywerbrimmis said, “Barok, you on the cannon, but keep your guns handy. I’m on handguns. Forn, reload.” She was too young to be trusted to do more. “Boss, do you like the flamer?”

Vala said, “They’ll never get that close. I throw pretty good, too.”

“Flamer and fistbombs, then. I hope we do get to use the flamer. It’d help if we could show them another use for alcohol. Grass Giants don’t need our fuel, they pull their own wagons. Vampires aren’t intelligent, are they?”

“The ones near Center City aren’t.”

Forn said, “In most languages it’s vampires , not Vampires . They take the prefix for animals.”

Language wasn’t Kay’s interest. “Do they charge, Boss? One big wave?”

“I only fought vampires once.”

“That’s one more than me. I hear stories. What was it like?”

“I was the only survivor,” Valavirgillin said. “Kay? Just stories? Do you know enough to use towels and fuel?”

Kay’s brow furrowed. “What?”

— and Vala’s head whipped around at a sentry’s bass call.

All was shadows now, and a sound that might be wind through taut cords, and the whisper of crossbows. The Grass Giants were being chary of their bolts. Bullets weren’t replaceable, either, where there was no client race to make more.

Vala couldn’t see anything yet. For the Grass Giants it would be no darker, but these plains were their home. A crossbow whispered, and something pale stood up and fell over. The wind picked up… that wasn’t wind.

Song.

“Look for white,” Forn called unnecessarily. Kay fired, changed guns, fired.

It was well that the cruisers were spaced far apart. The flash of their handguns was blinding. Vala thought it over, while the fire balloons in her eyes faded. Then she rolled under the cruiser and pulled the flamer and the net bag of fistbombs after. Let the cruiser shield her eyes from the flash.

And the cannon?

They were firing around her. Her sight was back. There, a pale hominid shape. Another. She could see twenty and more! One fell, and the rest backed away. Already most of them must be beyond crossbow range. Their song plucked at her nerves.

“Cannon,” Barok commented, and she closed her eyes just as he fired.

Fire was trying to light in the stubble. There were pale bodies, six… eight. Thirty or forty vampires stood in plain view, still in gun range, she thought.

Why would men with crossbows fear vampires? Because nobody had ever seen so many vampires together!

It was bizarre, insane. How could so many feed themselves?

High Rangers Trading Group had died in a tower in a deserted city, forty-three falans ago. High Rangers had fought no more than fifteen, that night. Killed no more than eight. All the rest had died, and only a fluke had saved Valavirgillin.

She remembered the song wafting up from the street. The vampires pale, naked, beautiful. The terror. High Rangers had fired from tenth-floor windows, and posted sentries down along the stairwell. One by one the sentries had disappeared, and then-

Kay said, “The wind’s blowing right.”

Barok said, “Cannon.”

She clenched her eyelids against the flash. Barok’s cannon roared, then one from farther away, barely heard.

Barok’s voice was faint. “They could circle.”

“They’re not sapient,” Kay said.

To left, another distant cannon fired. To right, another.

Vampires carried no tools, wore no clothing. Reach into the lovely wealth of ash-blond hair on a vampire’s corpse: you would find too much hair around a small, flat skull. They built no cities, formed no armies, invented no encircling movements.

But the warriors on the wall were buzzing among themselves, pointing, firing bolts into the dark to spin and starboard and antispin.

“Kay? They’ve got noses.”

Barok looked down. Kay said, “What?”

“They don’t have a battle plan,” Valavirgillin said. “They’re just avoiding the smell of fifteen hundred Grass Giants served by a primitive sewer system. It’s the same smell that brought them here! When they get upwind of that, the smell won’t bother them anymore. And then we’ll be downwind from them .”

“I’ll get Whandernothtee to move his cruiser around,” Barok said, and ran.

Vala bellowed after him. “Cloth and alcohol!”

He came back. “What?”

“Pour fuel into a towel, just a splash. Tie it around your face. It keeps the scent out. Tell Whand!”

Kay spoke from overhead. “I still have targets here. Boss, they’re not in throwing range. You go tell Anth to move. Tell him about towels and fuel. Then the Grass Giants might not know, either. Boss? Remember I wanted to show them some use for fuel?”

Idiot . She splashed a towel for herself and took two more with her. This could turn urgent.

In the dark, with a drop on either side, she had to watch her footing. It had stopped raining. The song of the vampires rode the wind. She breathed alcohol fumes from the towel around her face. It made her dizzy.