Lords of Creation Page 8

  He slept that night under the stars, wolfing down a strip of dried beef from the saddle-bag in the morning. By nightfall the following day, he knew he must be near the battle zone, unless he had lost the way. Flickering campfires appeared abruptly, around a turn, halfway up the slope of a broad hill—the Norak forces.

  Ellory announced himself at the sentry line, dismounted, and strode among tired muttering soldiers, eating before their campfires. Many uniforms were blood-splotched. Here and there a crudely-bandaged man lay stolidly with his wounds. The day hours had seen a skirmish.

  Mal Radnor rose startled from among his officers gathered around a fire.

  “Humrelly!” he grunted. “Why are you here?”

  “To offer my good right arm, as you once put it, in the service of Norak!” returned Ellory, drawing himself up, though he creaked in every joint. “And this—a metal weapon!”

  He raised the sword, glinting in the firelight.

  Mal Radnor stared at it with a half sneer. A slow smile came to his lips.

  “We will see,” he said pointedly, “if the man from the miraculous past can battle as well as make trinkets.”

  At dawn, still stiff and sore from his hard ride, Ellory stood beside Mal Radnor, at the crest of the hill, looking out over the territory where they would battle soon. In a long line to right and left stretched the thousands of men, tensely awaiting the enemy.

  “We have been driven back steadily,” muttered Mal Radnor. “In a month, if this continues well have our backs against the Hudson River. We must stop them!”

  He glanced at Ellory, mockingly.

  “You will perhaps swing the tide of battle today, with your metal stick?”

  Ellory said nothing. The sword did look small and ineffective, beside their huge clubs, maces and spears. Understanding nothing of metal or its properties, they failed to be impressed in any way.

  Mal Radnor chafed impatiently, taunting the enemy under his breath. He was a tall, splendidly-muscled specimen of young manhood, legs and arms bare for free action. Ellory did not compare unfavorably. He was slightly taller, broader. His muscles had been kept in trim, in the twentieth century, with tennis, rowing and handball. And he had been toughened by the past week’s labors with the bellows.

  Stone-age warrior and twentieth-century scientist, they stood together, a pair of stalwarts.

  And when, suddenly, the enemy appeared and Mal Radnor gave the command to attack, they mounted and galloped shoulder to shoulder down the slope. The war chief, Mal Radnor always led his legions to battle, as military leaders had before the advent of large-scale scientific wars.

  Ellory, as in a dream, found himself on a powerful black charger, flying like the wind down the valley slope. A warrior, armed only with an untested sword, charging to battle in a stone-age war!

  There was little thought of strategy, in this primitive struggle. Over their heads, as they thundered along, sang darting arrows, plunging into the ranks of the enemy. Arrow fire returned. The two lines of cavalry met with a shock. Horses wheeling and snorting, hand-weapons came into play. Then the infantry swarmed up from both sides, with spears, clubs and stone-headed maces.

  The melee settled down to hours of slow, grim butchery.

  Riding down the slope, Ellory had felt cold.

  Arrows had slithered past his ears, singing of death. Out of the corner of his eye, he had seen a horse stumble here and there, throwing its rider. Or, more often, a feather-tufted arrow-end appeared miraculously sticking from a man’s chest and his riderless horse plunged on.

  As his spirited charger reared and wheeled, meeting the Quoise cavalry line, Ellory had begun swinging his sword automatically with his right hand, holding the reins tightly with his left.

  Still stiff and cold, he felt detached from the actual battle. His swinging sword met nothing.

  Then, suddenly, a huge blood-stained mace loomed in his face. Blindly, he cut with his sword. He felt the crunch of steel through wood and the stone-headed weapon was deflected past his ear.

  A startled face peered at him for a moment, and then the Quoise had jerked a great club from his pommel and lifted it high. Ellory and fate were face to face.

  Instinctively, knowing he could not shear through the thick club so easily, Ellory thrust forward with his sword. The hard, edged metal stabbed through leather and shoulder and the club dropped from nerveless fingers. The Quoise fell back, hors de combat.

  Ellory looked at the blood on his sword, stunned.

  For the first time in his life, twentieth century or fiftieth, he had drawn blood, wounded a fellow human being. For an instant he was weak with nausea. Then, abruptly, fire burned through his veins. This was battle, combat, and the devil take the hindmost!

  Gripping his sword-handle firmly, yelling amid the terrific clash and din, Ellory drove his horse into the thickest of the melee.

  Time stood still.

  Ellory’s bright sword flashed in the sunlight, weaving a pattern of light. Many more times he drew blood. But he avoided taking life. He took a savage delight in merely nicking each opponent, or chopping his wooden weapon in two with a tremendous sweep of his blade.

  Thrust, cut, jab, in lightning strokes—it was sheer artistry. The artistry of a metal weapon against clumsy heavy stone and wood. All their weapons carried weight at the killing end, and were thus top-heavy for fast action. Ellory’s sword, with its heavy handle and light, but deadly blade, outclassed them easily.

  All day the battle raged on.

  Ellory remembered only hazily that he dropped back now and then for a breathing spell. Then up into the “front line” again, confounding the enemy wherever he met them.

  But he was also aware that the Norak forces in general were steadily pressed back by the Quoise, he with them. The long battle line crawled up the slope, over the hill, and down the other side where the Norak army had camped the night before. By nightfall, when darkness brought temporary armistice, the Quoise were in possession of the new territory.

  Ellory’s mind cleared from battle weariness, as he rested on his elbow before a campfire. The singing energy that had driven him all day drained out. He suddenly recalled the moans, the hoarse shouts, wounds gushing, the reek of sweat, horses and freshly spilt blood.

  He conquered a sick feeling, as he saw Mal Radnor’s face over him.

  The young war chieftain had a bandage over one arm. “I see you did not win the day for us, Humrelly, with your 20th-century magic!” he said tauntingly.

  “I have one less wound than you!” Ellory snapped back. “In fact, none at all.”

  He stood, faced the stalwart chieftain. “I’ll go into battle with you, day after day, and prove it was no accident!”

  That, Ellory saw, was the only course that could impress their Stone-age psychology. So he thought.

  Mal Radnor pondered a moment.

  “I watched you all day long, as often as I could,” he said slowly, reluctantly. Then, surprisingly, he reached out to grip Ellory’s shoulder.

  “You are a man, Humrelly. I misjudged you. More—”

  He stooped to pick up Ellory’s sword. His eyes glittered as he hefted it. Then he swung it down on a log, biting deep into the wood. Other men were watching.

  “Humrelly!” Mal Radnor’s voice was almost childishly eager. “Can you make more of these metal sticks? With these, we can win, instead of being driven back by the more numerous Quoise!”

  A hoarse shout of approval came from the surrounding warriors. Ellory suddenly realized he had gained a small fame, in one day, with the sword. It was likely, too, that in the enemy’s camp they were talking over the strange man who could not be killed or harmed because of his magic wand that shone so queerly in the sun.

  “In a month,” promised Ellory, “I can supply your whole army with meta
l weapons.”

  “Then go!” exclaimed Mal Radnor. “I will send a personal message back to Jon Darm, giving you all the supplies you need!”

  And Ellory basked in the thought that he had won a place in the fiftieth century that was already unique.

  Chapter 12

  EDICT FROM THE SKY

  The ruins of New York, undisturbed for an age, frowned down upon the activity of the next month. Ellory was superintendent of an embryo steel mill. With a staff of older men who had not gone to the wars as helpers, he set up a dozen large clay smelting pans. Wagon loads of charcoal fed roaring fires. Tons of red oxide yielded tons of pouring metal. The clang of steel on steel resounded as swords were shaped.

  Ellory also devised a pike-head, to be attached to a short wooden handle. With these, the heaviest of wooden clubs could be splintered in two with one blow. Also skulls. A few days within the monthly time limit he had set for himself, the first wagon-load of the new weapons was being readied.

  And barely in time, for that night a messenger came clattering up from Mal Radnor. Bitterly contesting every inch of the way, the Norak forces now had their backs to the Hudson River. Another day’s fighting would find them retreating to the nearer shore, the war over and lost.

  Ellory took the wagon-load across himself, that same night. The weighty metal very nearly sank the raft ferry. At dawn, he drove his oxen up the New Jersey shore toward the battlefield.

  Struggle had already begun, when he arrived at the crest of a knoll. Ellory clanged two metal swords together and the sharp sound penetrated the dull roar of battle.

  It was, Ellory thought dramatically, like the proverbial shot that was heard around the world, in a past age.

  Mal Radnor, quick-thinking, withdrew part of his forces and led them to the wagon. Ellory passed out swords and pikes without explanation. Men of action, they would quickly find the way to use them most effectively.

  “Hold them off, today, at all odds, Mal Radnor!” Ellory shouted. “Tomorrow, I’ll have enough weapons for half your forces.”

  Mal Radnor wheeled his mount. A thousand strong, the newly armed battalion swept back into battle. Ellory watched for a time. Metal flashed in the sunlight. The war-cry of the Noraks became stronger. The resistless advance of the enemy slowed down.

  Already the magic of metal was asserting itself.

  At dawn the next day, having run his steel mill full blast all night, Ellory delivered five more wagon loads, and for the first time since the border war had begun, the enemy was fought to a standstill.

  At dawn of the third day, twenty thousand Norak troops, swinging their sabers and pikes, charged down on twice their number of panic-stricken Quoise and utterly routed them.

  In the following two weeks, the Quoise retreated. Periodically they turned at bay, only to quail before the crushing threat of metal.

  And the war was over with the new Norak border fifty miles within former enemy land!

  Ellory and Mal Radnor, side by side, led the returning army in their victory march through the capital city, decorated with gold and green bunting, its streets filled with dancing, singing people. From a balcony of the Royal House, Chief Jon Darm delivered a speech of eulogy.

  Colorful though it all was, Ellory’s thoughts wandered. The war was such a small, unimportant phase of what he hoped to do. He had yet to solve the secret of the glowing wax, institute science of some sort, find out more about the strange civilization of Antarctica. One of their rocket craft had circled over the final battle, like an aerial question mark, apparently in observation. What did that mean?

  Though he tried to avoid it, Ellory’s eyes and thoughts fastened on Sharina. She stood on the balcony beside her father, cool, lovely, white-robed, angelic. Was she staring down at him, or at Mal Radnor? Mal Radnor, of course. Now that he had his nuptial war-victory, they would be married. Ellory had forged the wedding ring himself, out of steel. One of fate’s little tricks.

  Ellory started out of a trance. Mal Radnor had stepped back, facing him, raising his sword as a signal. Thousands of other swords flashed up in the sunlight, in salute to Ellory.

  Then Jon Darm’s deep voice:

  “For your great part in this victory, Humrelly, I appoint you Warlord of Norak, second in command to none!”

  That evening, while he danced the stately, easily-learned steps of their dance with Sharina at a festive ball, the girl looked at him strangely.

  “You have only been with us four months, Humrelly,” she said softly, “and now you are Warlord!”

  “To tell the truth, angel,” he said, grinning. “I haven’t the least idea what to do about it.”

  “There won’t be much to do about it until the next war.” The girl smiled.

  “In the meantime,” Ellory said, “I’ll work on the glowing wax.”

  “It was brave of you to fight in that battle, with the first sword,” Sharina pursued. “Mal Radnor told me about it. He said you fought magnificently!”

  Ellory glowed a little. Somehow, mutual esteem had grown between the two young men through the campaign.

  “He didn’t do so badly himself,” Ellory murmured. He went on earnestly, looking into her eyes. He had made up his mind about something, and now was the time to say it. “Mal Radnor will make you a good husband, Sharina.” He hoped his voice was casual. “The marriage will be held soon?”

  She nodded, avoiding his eyes.

  “In a month.”

  She was as suddenly looking at him, then.

  “Humrelly—”

  Ellory prepared to interrupt, to avoid another situation, but interruption came from a different source. Suddenly a drone beat down from the skies.

  Sharina’s eyes widened.

  “An Antarkan ship landing!” she explained wonderingly.

  They went out to look.

  It was not yet dark. The great ship circled once, as warning to clear the square, then came down like a striking eagle. Ellory was with Jon Darm and the others when they advanced to the landed craft.

  The hatch opened and ErMalne, Lady of Lillamra, stepped out.

  Ellory caught his breath. In the twilight glow, her white beauty gleamed softly, like that of a moon goddess. How incredible to think of her as the one who had so recently taken slaves into her ship!

  Jon Darm bowed and murmured the usual greeting, surprise in his voice at this unheralded visit between the appointed times.

  The eyes of the Lady ErMalne flicked about, at the decorated buildings, and within the open doors of the Royal House, at the signs of festivity.

  “You are celebrating what, Jon Darm?” she asked.

  “We have won a border war against the Quoise.”

  “Your petty little border wars!” said the Lady of Lillamra, in an amused tone. “They burn like little flames all over this Outland. I suppose you wouldn’t be happy without them. But, Jon Darm—”

  Her voice hardened a little. “You had metal weapons! We saw one of the battles, accidentally, while cruising. Where did you make them—at the ruins? I thought so. You are not to use them again, Jon Darm, do you understand? We do not permit it.”

  A Medieval ruler forbidding his subjects to better themselves in any small way. Telling them they must not take one least little step forward. Ellory saw in that how vicious was the attitude Antarka held toward what they called the “Outland.”

  The Antarkan girl—she seemed in her early twenties—changed from arrogance to curiosity.

  “What genius among you found the way to produce them?”

  Behind its mild guise, the question bristled with threat. Ellory sensed that, in the stony silence that followed. But the Antarkan girl quickly read unwitting glances at Ellory. She faced him, her eyebrows lifting slightly.

  “You?”

  Ellor
y made no sign.

  “I remember you!” she said suddenly. “You are the one, last time, who was insolent. You are—what is the name?—Humrelly, the herdsman! And now you have produced metal weapons?”

  Ellory thought of denying it, but felt his face flushing under her searching, canny eyes. Yet he kept silent.

  “Answer me!” she demanded coolly. “If not—”

  She slipped a tubular weapon from her jacket, aimed it at him.

  A gasp of horror came from the others and they shrank back. Ellory stood his ground unflinchingly, pulses beating with rage. Gun or no gun, he wouldn’t let a snip of a girl make him cringe. Though he knew it was a fool thing to do, he dared her with his eyes.

  Dared her to fire.

  She didn’t. She slipped the gun back into her jacket. Her eyes had just the briefest admiration in them—and wonder.

  “It would be senseless to kill you,” she said imperturbably.

  “One last chance. Speak now or go to Antarka as prisoner.” Sem Onger’s fingers squeezed Ellory’s arm, in warning against that fate. Whatever it would mean, Ellory himself decided he didn’t want it. Swiftly, he reviewed how much he could say, and how little.

  “Yes, I found the way to make the weapons, Lady ErMalne,” he said.

  “How?”

  “By burning the red dust around the ruin towers with green wood and charcoal. It happened accidentally once, when I built a fire at the foot of the tower. I saw molten matter run and cool to a hard mass.” He shrugged. “I thought it would make good weapons, and so it proved.”

  The Antarkan girl was still staring at him fixedly.

  “For a herdsman, you are amazingly clever,” she said, with a half mocking note. “Tell me, why do you use green wood in the process?”