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

to right and left, guarding his flanks yelling as her blade drove home.

Donovan shook himself and trotted warily over to where a tide of Arzunians raged about a closely-drawn ring of Impies. The humans were standing firm, driving each charge back in a rush of blood, heaping the dead before them. But now spears were beginning to fall out of the sky, driven by no hand but stabbing for the throats and eyes and bellies of men. Donovan loped for the sharp edge of the hills, where they toppled to the open country in which the fight went on.

He scrambled up a rubbled slope and gripped a thin pinnacle to swing himself higher. She was there.

She stood on a ledge, the heap of spears at her feet, looking down over the battle and chanting as she sent forth the flying death. He noticed even then how her hair was a red glory about the fine white loveliness of her head.

“Valduma,” he whispered, as he struck at her.

She was not there, she sat on a higher ledge and jeered at him. “Come and get me, Basil, darling, darling. Come up here and talk to me!”

He looked at her as Lucifer must have looked back to Heaven. “Let us go,” he said. “Give us a ship and send us home.”

“And have you bring our overlords back in?” She laughed aloud.

“They aren’t so bad, Valduma. The Empire means peace and justice for all races.”

“Who speaks?” Her scorn flamed at him. “You don’t believe that.”

He stood there for a moment. “No,” he whispered. “No, I don’t.”

Stooping, he picked up the sheaf of spears and began to crawl back down the rocks. Valduma cursed him from the heights.

There was a break in the combat around the hard-pressed Terran ring as the Arzunians drew back to pant and glare. Donovan ran through and flung his load clashing at the feet of Takahashi.

“Good work,” said the officer. “We need these things. Here, get into the formation. Here we go again!”

The Arzunians charged in a wedge to gather momentum. Donovan braced himself and lifted his sword. The Terrans in the inner ring slanted their spears between the men of the outer defense. For a very long half minute, they stood waiting.

The enemy hit! Donovan hewed at the nearest, drove the probing sword back and hammered against the guard. Then the whirl of battle swept his antagonist away, someone else was there, he traded blows and the howl of men and metal lifted skyward.

The Terrans had staggered a little from the massive assault, but it spitted itself on the inner pikes and then swords and axes went to work. Ha, clang, through the skull and give it to ’em! Hai, Empire! Ansa, Ansa! Clatter and yell and deep-throated roar, the Arzunians boiling around the Solar line, leaping and howling and whipping out of sight⁠—a habit which saved their lives but blunted their attack, thought Donovan in a moment’s pause.

Wocha smashed the last few who had been standing before him, looked around to the major struggle, and pawed the ground. “Ready, lady?” he rumbled.

“Aye, ready, Wocha. Let’s go!”

The Donarrian backed up to get a long running space. “Hang on tight,” he warned. “Never mind fighting, lady. All right!”

He broke into a trot, a canter, and then a full gallop. The earth trembled under his mass. “Hoooo!” he screamed. “Here we come!”

Helena threw both arms around his corded neck. When they hit it was like a nuclear bomb going off.

In a few seconds of murder, Wocha had strewn the ground with smashed corpses, whirled, and begun cutting his way into the disordered main group of the Arzunians. They didn’t stand before him. Suddenly they were gone, all of them, except for the dead.

Donovan looked over the field. The dead were thick, thick. He estimated that half the little Terran force was slain or out of action. But they must have taken three or four times their number of Arzunians to the Black Planet with them. The stony ground was pooled and steaming with blood. Carrion birds stooped low, screaming.

Helena fell from Wocha’s back into Donovan’s arms. He comforted her wild sobbing, holding her to him and murmuring in her ear and kissing the wet cheeks and lips. “It’s over, dear, it’s over for now. We drove them away.”

She recovered herself in a while and stood up, straightening her torn disarray, the mask of command clamping back over her face. To Takahashi: “How are our casualties?”

He reported. It was much as Donovan had guessed. “But we gave ’em hell for it, didn’t we?”

“How is that?” wondered Cohen. He leaned against Wocha, not showing the pain that jagged through him as they bandaged his wounded foot except by an occasional sharp breath. “They’re more at home with this cutlery than we, and they have those damned parapsych talents too.”

“They’re not quite sane,” replied Donovan tonelessly. “Whether you call it a cultural trait or a madness which has spread to the whole population, they’re a wild bloodthirsty crew, two-legged weasels, and with a superiority complex which wouldn’t have let them be very careful in dealing with us. No discipline, no real plan of action.” He looked south over the rolling moorland. “Those things count. They may know better next time.”

“Next time? Fifty or sixty men can’t defeat a planet, Donovan,” said Takahashi.

“No. Though this is an old dying race, their whole population in the city ahead, and most of it will flee in panic and take no part in any fighting. They aren’t used to victims that fight back. If we can slug our way through to the spaceships they have there⁠—”

“Spaceships!” The eyes stared at him, wild with a sudden blaze of hope, men crowding close and leaning on their reddened weapons and raising a babble of voices. “Spaceships, spaceships⁠—home!”

“Yeah.” Donovan ran a hand through his yellow hair. The fingers trembled just a bit. “Some ships, the first ones, they merely destroyed by causing the engines to run loose; but others they brought