The Dragon Masters Read online

  Still — in their arrogance might they not overlook the possibility of so insolent an act?

  Indecision tugged Joaz forward and backward. And now a barrage of explosive pellets split open the spire which housed his apartments. The reliquarium, the ancient trove of the Banbecks, was about to be destroyed. Joaz made a blind gesture, jumped to his feet, called the closest of his dragon masters. “Assemble the Murderers, three squads of Termagants, two dozen Blue Horrors, ten Fiends, all the riders. We climb to Banbeck Verge, we descend Clybourne Crevasse, we attack the ship!”

  The dragon master departed; Joaz gave himself to gloomy contemplation. If the Basics intended to draw him into a trap, they were about to succeed.

  The dragon master returned. “The force is assembled.”

  “We ride.”

  Up the ravine surged men and dragons, emerging upon Banbeck Verge. Swinging south, they came to the head of Clybourne Crevasse.

  A knight at the head of the column suddenly signaled a halt. When Joaz approached he pointed out marks on the floor of the crevasse. “Dragons and men have passed here recently.”

  Joaz studied the tracks. “Heading down the crevasse.”

  “Yes.”

  Joaz dispatched a party of scouts who presently came galloping wildly back. “Ervis Carcolo, with men and dragons, is attacking the ship!”

  Joaz wheeled his Spider, plunged headlong down the dim passage, followed by his army.

  Outcries and screams of battle reached their ears as they approached the mouth of the crevasse. Bursting out on the valley floor Joaz came upon a scene of desperate carnage, with dragon and Heavy Trooper hacking, stabbing, burning, blasting. Where was Ervis Carcolo? Joaz recklessly rode to look into the entry port which hung wide. Ervis Carcolo then had forced his way into the ship! A trap? Or had he effectuated Joaz’s own plan of seizing the ship? What of the Heavy Troopers? Would the Basics sacrifice forty warriors to capture a handful of men? Unreasonable — but now the Heavy Troopers were holding their own. They had formed a phalanx, they now concentrated the energy of their weapons on those dragons who yet opposed them. A trap? If so, it was sprung — unless Ervis Carcolo already had captured the ship. Joaz rose in his saddle, signaled his company. “Attack!”

  The Heavy Troopers were doomed. Striding Murderers hewed from above, Long-horned Murderers thrust from below, Blue Horrors pinched, clipped, dismembered. The battle was done, but Joaz, with men and Termagants, had already charged up the ramp. From within came the hum and throb of power, and also human sounds — cries, shouts of fury.

  The sheer ponderous bulk struck at Joaz; he stopped short, peered uncertainly into the ship. Behind him his men waited, muttering under their breath. Joaz asked himself, “Am I as brave as Ervis Carcolo? What is bravery, in any case? I am completely afraid: I dare not enter, I dare not stay outside.” He put aside all caution, rushed forward, followed by his men and a horde of scuttling Termagants.

  Even as Joaz entered the ship he knew Ervis Carcolo had not succeeded; above him the guns still sang and hissed. Joaz’s apartments splintered apart. Another tremendous volley struck into the Jambles, laying bare the naked stone of the cliff, and what was hitherto hidden: the edge of a tall opening.

  Joaz, inside the ship, found himself in an antechamber. The inner port was closed. He sidled forward, peered through a rectangular pane into what seemed a lobby or staging chamber. Ervis Carcolo and his knights crouched against the far wall, casually guarded by about twenty Weaponeers. A group of Basics rested in an alcove to the side, relaxed, quiet, their attitude one of contemplation.

  Carcolo and his men were not completely subdued; as Joaz watched Carcolo lunged furiously forward. A purple crackle of energy punished him, hurled him back against the wall.

  From the alcove one of the Basics, staring across the inner chamber, took note of Joaz Banbeck; he flicked out with his brach, touched a rod. An alarm whistle sounded, the outer port slid shut. A trap? An emergency process? The result was the same. Joaz motioned to four men, heavily burdened. They came forward, kneeled, placed on the deck four of the blast cannon which the Giants had carried into the Jambles.

  Joaz swung his arm. Cannon belched; metal creaked, melted; acrid odors permeated the room. The hole was still too small. “Again!” The cannon flamed; the inner port vanished. Into the gap sprang Weaponeers, firing their energy guns. Purple fire cut into the Banbeck ranks. Men curled, twisted, wilted, fell with clenched fingers and contorted faces. Before the cannon could respond, red-scaled shapes scuttled forward: Termagants. Hissing and wailing they swarmed over the Weaponeers, on into the staging chamber. In front of the alcove occupied by the Basics they stopped short, as if in astonishment. The men crowding after fell silent: even Carcolo watched in fascination. Basic stock confronted its derivative, each seeing in the other its caricature. The Termagants crept forward with sinister deliberation; the Basics waved their brachs, whistled, fluted. The Termagants scuttled forward, sprang into the alcove. There was a horrid tumbling and croaking; Joaz, sickened at some elementary level, was forced to look away. The struggle was soon over; there was silence in the alcove. Joaz turned to examine Ervis Carcolo, who stared back, rendered inarticulate by anger, humiliation, pain and fright.

  Finally finding his voice Carcolo made an awkward gesture of menace and fury. “Be off with you,” he croaked. “I claim this ship. Unless you would lie in your own blood, leave me to my conquest!”

  Joaz snorted contemptuously, turned his back on Carcolo, who sucked in his breath, and with a whispered curse, lurched forward. Bast Givven seized him, drew him back. Carcolo struggled, Givven talked earnestly into his ear, and Carcolo at last relaxed, half-weeping.

  Joaz meanwhile examined the chamber. The walls were blank, gray; the deck was covered with resilient black foam. There was no obvious illumination, but light was everywhere, exuding from the walls. The air chilled the skin, and smelled unpleasantly acrid: an odor which Joaz had not previously noticed. He coughed, his eardrums rang. A frightening suspicion became certainty; on heavy legs he lunged for the port, beckoning to his troops. “Outside, they poison us!” He stumbled out on the ramp, gulped fresh air; his men and Termagants followed, and then in a stumbling rush came Ervis Carcolo and his men. Under the hulk of the great ship the group stood gasping, tottering on limp legs, eyes dim and swimming.

  Above them, oblivious or careless of their presence, the ship’s guns sent forth another barrage. The spire housing Joaz’s apartments tottered, collapsed; the Jambles were no more than a heap of rock splinters drifting into a high arched opening. Inside the opening Joaz glimpsed a dark shape, a glint, a shine, a structure — then he was distracted by an ominous sound at his back. From a port at the other end of the ship, a new force of Heavy Troopers had alighted — three new squads of twenty men each, accompanied by a dozen Weaponeers with four of the rolling projectors.

  Joaz sagged back in dismay. He glanced along his troops; they were in no condition either to attack or defend. A single alternative remained: flight. “Make for Clybourne Crevasse,” he called thickly.

  Stumbling, lurching, the remnants of the two armies fled under the brow of the great black ship. Behind them Heavy Troopers swung smartly forward, but without haste.

  Rounding the ship, Joaz stopped short. In the mouth of Clybourne Crevasse waited a fourth squad of Heavy Troopers, with another Weaponeer and his weapon.

  Joaz looked to right and left, up and down the valley. Which way to run, where to turn? The Jambles? They were nonexistent. Motion, slow and ponderous in the opening, previously concealed by tumbled rock, caught his attention. A dark object moved forth; a shutter drew back, a bright disk glittered. Almost instantly a pencil of milky-blue radiance lanced at, into, through the end disk of the Basic ship.

  Within, tortured machinery whined, simultaneously up and down the scale, to inaudibility at either end. The luster of the end disks vanished; they became gray, dull; the whisper of power and life previously pervading the ship gave way to dead qu
iet; the ship itself was dead, and its mass, suddenly unsupported, crushed groaning into the ground.

  The Heavy Troopers gazed up in consternation at the hulk which had brought them to Aerlith. Joaz, taking advantage of their indecision, called, “Retreat! North — up the valley!”

  The Heavy Troopers doggedly followed; the Weaponeers however cried out an order to halt. They emplaced their weapons, brought them to bear on the cavern behind the Jambles. Within the opening naked shapes moved with frantic haste; there was slow shifting of massive machinery, a change of lights and shadows, and the milky-blue shaft of radiance struck forth once more. It flicked down; Weaponeers, weapons, two-thirds of the Heavy Troopers vanished like moths in a furnace. The surviving Heavy Troopers halted, retreated uncertainly toward the ship.

  In the mouth of Clybourne Crevasse waited the remaining squad of Heavy Troopers. The single Weaponeer crouched over his three-wheeled mechanism. With fateful care he made his adjustments; within the dark opening the naked sacerdotes worked furiously, thrusting, wedging, the strain of their sinews and hearts and minds communicating itself to every man in the valley. The shaft of milky-blue light sprang forth, but too soon: it melted the rock a hundred yards south of Clybourne Crevasse, and now from the Weaponeer’s gun came a splash of orange and green flame. Seconds later the mouth of the sacerdotes’ cavern erupted. Rocks, bodies, fragments of metal, glass, rubber arched through the air.

  The sound of the explosion reverberated through the valley. And the dark object in the cavern was destroyed, was no more than tatters and shreds of metal.

  Joaz took three deep breaths, throwing off the effects of the narcotic gas by sheer power of will. He signaled to his Murderers. “Charge! Kill!”

  The Murderers loped forward; the Heavy Troopers threw themselves flat, aimed their weapons, but soon died. In the mouth of Clybourne Crevasse the final squad of Troopers charged wildly forth, to be instantly attacked by Termagants and Blue Horrors who had sidled along the face of the cliff. The Weaponeer was gored by a Murderer; there was no further resistance in the valley, and the ship lay open to attack.

  Joaz led the way back up the ramp, through the entry into the now dim staging-chamber. The blast-cannon captured from the Giants lay where his men had dropped them.

  Three portals led from the chamber, and these were swiftly burned down. The first revealed a spiral ramp; the second, a long empty hall lined with tiers of bunks; the third, a similar hall in which the bunks were occupied. Pale faces peered from the tiers, pallid hands flickered. Up and down the central corridor marched squat matrons in gray gowns. Ervis Carcolo rushed forward, buffeting the matrons to the deck, peering into the bunks. “Outside,” he bellowed. “You are rescued, you are saved. Outside quickly, while there is opportunity.”

  But there was only meager resistance to overcome from a half-dozen Weaponeers and Trackers, none whatever from twenty Mechanics — these, short thin men with sharp features and dark hair — and none from the sixteen remaining Basics. All were marched off the ship as prisoners.

  Chapter XIII

  Quiet filled the valley floor, the silence of exhaustion. Men and dragons sprawled in the trampled fields; the captives stood in a dejected huddle beside the ship. Occasionally an isolated sound came to emphasize the silence: the creak of cooling metal within the ship, the fall of a loose rock from the shattered cliffs; an occasional murmur from the liberated Happy Valley folk, who sat in a group apart from the surviving warriors.

  Ervis Carcolo alone seemed restless. For a space he stood with his back to Joaz, slapping his thigh with his scabbard tassel. He contemplated the sky where Skene, a dazzling atom, hung close over the western cliffs, then turned, studied the shattered gap at the north of the valley, filled with the twisted remains of the sacerdotes’ construction. He gave his thigh a final slap, looked toward Joaz Banbeck, turned to stalk through the huddle of Happy Valley folk, making brusque motions of no particular significance, pausing here and there to harangue or cajole, apparently attempting to instill spirit and purpose into his defeated people.

  In this purpose he was unsuccessful. Presently he swung sharply about, marched across the field to where Joaz Banbeck lay outstretched. Carcolo stared down. “Well then,” he said bluffly, “the battle is over, the ship is won.”

  Joaz raised himself up on one elbow. “True.”

  “Let us have no misunderstanding on one point,” said Carcolo. “Ship and contents are mine. An ancient rule defines the rights of him who is first to attack. On this rule I base my claim.”

  Joaz looked up in surprise, and seemed almost amused. “By a rule even more ancient, I have already assumed possession.”

  “I dispute this assertion,” said Carcolo hotly. “Who —”

  Joaz held up his hand wearily. “Silence, Carcolo! You are alive now only because I am sick of blood and violence. Do not test my patience!”

  Carcolo turned away, twitching his scabbard tassel with restrained fury. He looked up the valley, turned back to Joaz. “Here come the sacerdotes, who in fact demolished the ship. I remind you of my proposal, by which we might have prevented this destruction and slaughter.”

  Joaz smiled. “You made your proposal only two days ago. Further, the sacerdotes possess no weapons.”

  Carcolo stared as if Joaz had taken leave of his wits. “How then did they destroy the ship?”

  Joaz shrugged. “I can only make conjectures.”

  Carcolo asked sarcastically, “And what direction do these conjectures lead?”

  “I wonder if they had constructed the frame of a spaceship. I wonder if they turned the propulsion beam against the Basic ship.”

  Carcolo pursed his mouth dubiously. “Why should the sacerdotes build themselves a spaceship?”

  “The Demie approaches. Why do you not put your question to him?”

  “I will do so,” said Carcolo with dignity.

  But the Demie, followed by four younger sacerdotes and walking with the air of a man in a dream, passed without speaking.

  Joaz rose to his knees, watched after him. The Demie apparently planned to mount the ramp and enter the ship. Joaz jumped to his feet, followed, barred the way to the ramp. Politely he asked, “What do you seek, Demie?”

  “I seek to board the ship.”

  “To what end? I ask, of course, from sheer curiosity.”

  The Demie inspected him a moment without reply. His face was haggard and tight; his eyes gleamed like frost-stars. Finally he replied, in a voice hoarse with emotion. “I wish to determine if the ship can be repaired.”

  Joaz considered a moment, then spoke in a gentle rational voice. “The information can be of little interest to you. Would the sacerdotes place themselves so completely under my command?”

  “We obey no one.”

  “In that case, I can hardly take you with me when I leave.”

  The Demie swung around, and for a moment seemed as if he would walk away. His eyes fell on the shattered opening at the end of the vale, and he turned back. He spoke, not in the measured voice of a sacerdote, but in a burst of grief and fury. “This is your doing! You preen yourself, you count yourself resourceful and clever; you forced us to act, and thereby violate ourselves and our dedication!”

  Joaz nodded, with a faint grim smile. “I knew the opening must lie behind the Jambles; I wondered if you might be building a spaceship; I hoped that you might protect yourselves against the Basics, and so serve my purposes. I admit your charges. I used you and your construction as a weapon, to save myself and my people. Did I do wrong?”

  “Right or wrong — who can weigh? You wasted our effort across more than eight hundred Aerlith years! You destroyed more than you can ever replace.”

  “I destroyed nothing, Demie. The Basics destroyed your ship. If you had cooperated with us in the defense of Banbeck Vale this disaster would have never occurred. You chose neutrality, you thought yourselves immune from our grief and pain. As you see, such is not the case.”

  “And meanwhi
le our labor of eight hundred and twelve years goes for naught.”

  Joaz asked with feigned innocence, “Why did you need a spaceship? Where do you plan to travel?”

  The Demie’s eyes burst with flames as intense as those of Skene. “When the race of men is gone, then we go abroad. We move across the galaxy, we repopulate the terrible old worlds, and the new universal history starts from that day, with the past wiped clean as if it never existed. If the grephs destroy you, what is it to us? We await only the death of the last man in the universe.”

  “Do you not consider yourselves men?”

  “We are as you know us — Above Men.”

  At Joaz’s shoulder someone laughed coarsely. Joaz turned his head to see Ervis Carcolo. “‘Above Men’?” mocked Carcolo. “Poor naked waifs of the caves! What can you display to prove your superiority?”

  The Demie’s mouth drooped, the lines of his face deepened. “We have our tands. We have our knowledge. We have our strength.”

  Carcolo turned away with another coarse laugh. Joaz said in a subdued voice, “I feel more pity for you than you ever felt for us.”

  Carcolo returned. “And where did you learn to build a spaceship? From your own efforts? Or from the work of men before you, men of the old times?”

  “We are the ultimate men,” said the Demie. “We know all that men have ever thought, spoken or devised. We are the last and the first. And when the under-folk are gone, we shall renew the cosmos as innocent and fresh as rain.”

  “But men have never gone and will never go,” said Joaz. “A setback yes, but is not the universe wide? Somewhere are the worlds of men. With the help of the Basics and their Mechanics, I will repair the ship and go forth to find these worlds.”

  “You will seek in vain,” said the Demie.

  “These worlds do not exist?”

  “The Human Empire is dissolved; men exist only in feeble groups.”

  “What of Eden, old Eden?”

  “A myth, no more.”

  “My marble globe, what of that?”