Short Fiction by Poul Anderson (free ebook novel .txt) 📕

“Why are you walking so far from the road?” she asked.

“Oh serving as outrider, maybe,” he said, resuming his stride. She fell into step beside him. “Up here you get a wider view.”

“Do you think we have much further to go, Basil?”

He shrugged.

“We’d never have come this far without you,” she said, looking down at her scuffed boots. “You and Wocha and Takahashi.”

“Maybe the Empire will send a rescue mission when we don’t come back,” he suggested.

“No doubt they will. But they can’t find one little star in this immensity. Even thermocouples won’t help, the Nebula diffuses radiation too much. And they’d be blundering into the same trap as we.” Helena looked up. “No, Basil, we’ve got to fight our way clear alone.”

There was a long stretch of thicket growing on the hillside. Donovan went along the right of it, cutting off view of the army. “You know,” he said, “you and those boys down there make me feel a lot kinder toward the Empire.”

“Thank you. Thank you. We⁠—” She took his arm. “It’s a question of unifying the human race, ultimately this whole region of stars, and⁠—Oh!”

The beasts were suddenly there in front of them, lean black things which snarled with mouths of hunger. One of them circled toward the humans’ flank, the other crouched. Donovan yanked his sword clear.

“Get behind me,” he snapped, turning to face the approaching hunter.

“No⁠—back to back⁠—” Helena’s own blade rasped from its sheath. She lifted a shout for help.

The nearest animal sprang for her throat. She hacked wildly, the blade twisted in her hand and scraped the muzzled face. Jaws clamped on the edged steel and let go with a bloody howl. Donovan swung at the other beast, the blow shuddered home and it screamed and writhed and snapped at his ankles.

Whirling, he turned on the thing which had launched itself at Helena. He hewed, and the animal wasn’t there, his blade rang on naked stone. A weight crashed against his back, he went down and the teeth clamped on his shoulder.

Helena swung. The carnivore raised its head to snarl at her, and she gripped the sword in both hands and stabbed. It threshed wildly, dying, spewing blood over the hillside. The other wounded creature disappeared.

Helena bent over Donovan, held him close, her eyes wild. “Are you hurt? Basil. Oh Basil, are you hurt?”

“No,” he muttered. “The teeth didn’t have time to work through this heavy jacket.” He pulled her head down against his.

“Basil, Basil!”

He rose, still holding her to him. Her arms locked about his neck, and there were tears and laughter in her voice. “Oh, Basil, my darling.”

“Helena,” he murmured. “I love you, Helena.”

“When we get home⁠—I’m due for furlough, I’ll retire instead⁠—your house on Ansa⁠—Oh, Basil, I never thought I could be so glad!”

The massive thunder of feet brought them apart. Wocha burst around the thicket, swinging his giant ax in both hands. “Are you all right, boss?” he roared.

“Yes, yes, we’re all right. A couple of those damned wolf-like things which’ve been plaguing us the whole march. Go on back, Wocha, we’ll join you soon.”

The Donarrian’s ape-face split in a vast grin. “So you take a female, boss?” he cried. “Good, good, we need lots of little Donovans at home!”

“Get on back, you old busybody, and keep that gossiping mouth shut!”

Hours later, Helena returned to the army where it was making camp. Donovan stayed where he was, looking down at the men where they moved about gathering wood and digging fire-pits. The blazes were a note of cheer in the thickening murk.

Helena, he thought. Helena. She’s a fine girl, wonderful girl, she’s what the thinning Family blood and I, myself, need. But why did I do it? Why did I talk that way to her? Just then, in the strain and fear and loneliness, it seemed as if I cared. But I don’t. She’s just another woman. She’s not Valduma.

The Twilight murmured, and he saw the dim sheen of metal beside him. The men of Drogobych were gathering.

They stood tall and godlike in helmet and ring-mail and night-black cloaks, leaning on swords and spears, death-white faces cold with an ancient scorn as they looked down on the human camp. Their eyes were phosphorescent green in the dark.

Donovan nodded, without fear or surprise or anything but a sudden great weariness. He remembered some of them from the days when he had been alone in the bows of the ship with the invaders while his men cowered and rioted and went crazy in the stern sectors. “Hello, Morzach, Uboda, Zegoian, Korstuzan, Davleka,” he said. “Welcome back again.”

Valduma walked out of the blood-hued twilight, and he took her in his arms and held her for a long fierce time. Her kiss was as cruel as a swooping hawk. She bit his lips and he tasted blood warm and salt where she had been. Afterward she turned in the circle of his arm and they faced the silent men of Drogobych.

“You are getting near the city,” said Morzach. His tones were deep, with the chill ringing of struck steel in them. “It is time for the next stage.”

“I thought you saved some of us deliberately,” said Donovan.

“Us?” Valduma’s lips caressed his cheek. “Them, Basil, them. You don’t belong there, you are with Arzun and me.”

“You must have projected that game where we could spot it,” went on Donovan, shakily. “You’ve kept us⁠—them⁠—alive and enabled us to march on your city⁠—on the last inhabited city left to your race. You could have hunted them down as you did all the others, made sport of them with wild animals and falling rocks and missiles shooting out of nowhere, but instead you want them for something else. What is it?”

“You should have guessed,” said Morzach. “We want to leave Arzun.”

“Leave it? You can do so any time, by yourselves. You’ve done it for millennia.”

“We can only go to the barbarian fringe stars. Beyond them it is a greater distance to the next suns than