Pro Page 6

  At first sight, to Harb at least, the city was unimpressive. In spite of himself, in spite of the satellite pictures he had seen of it, he had been expecting something castellated and forbidding; and with the problem of entering it continuing to go unsolved, his mental image had grown emotionally until he had been envisioning something like the Krak des Chevaliers, the ancient fortress built by the Knights Hospitallers of St. John back on Earth in Syria. But what appeared, when he at last , saw it, seemed nothing more than an untidy collection of mud-brick buildings crowning a hill, with a few stone edifices in the center of them, and a defensive wall wandering almost aimlessly about the slopes below. It was a wall that from this distance looked low enough to be stepped over by a long-legged adult.

  A second and longer look revised Harb’s opinion. In full view of Rajn and the others he dared not use the monocular he had hidden in his shield, to get a closer view, but even from where they viewed it, he was able to realize that the buildings he was looking at made up a population center at least twice the size of the walled city they had taken earlier. Also, the reason that the wall had seemed to wander crazily was actually because it was built to take advantage of natural small cliffs and vertical drops upon the hillside, which in many cases effectively doubled its height. Finally, the diminishing effect of distance had to be allowed for. The wall, he decided finally,must average well over four meters, and might well average five. Moreover, it seemed in very good repair.

  If Harb had lacked a certain amount of proper awe at first sight of the city, however, the forest natives surrounding him more than made up for it with their own reaction. A silence and motionlessness fell over the normally noisy canots as the city was revealed to them by the bend in the river, a silence that lasted until the sudden cessation of paddling began to result in canots drifting into each other at the whim of the river current.

  Collisions sparked arguments. Arguments broke the spell and paddles were dug in briskly once more. So they came to the river landing below the landward side of the hill; and the raiders boiled out to crowd that portion of the shore looking up the approach road to the city gates, which were already, prudently, closed.

  It was a measure of the reaction among the forest natives at the sight of the high city that they did not immediately go into their first rush against the objective as was usual with them on landing from their ships. Instead they stood around, talking among themselves, until Rajn mounted a keg carried ashore for that purpose and made a long speech.

  He began by painting an impressive picture of the might and wealth of the high city, drifted gradually into implying all sorts of compliments to the bravery of the expedition’s warriors for even considering an attack on it, and from there went on to explain that the city was sadly fallen away from its former power and actually was overripe for sacking—provided, of course, the sacking was attempted by heroes like those he now spoke to. Finally, he wound up by painting a picture of the valuables to be found in this formerly invincible stronghold. The forest natives began to yell with excitement and wave weapons in the air.

  Primitive the Homskarter king might be by human standards; but his speechmaking was effective. He built his audience to a high pitch of excitement and then capped it by suggesting that, since it was too late in the day to mount a serious attack on the city,they might nonetheless pretend to make an attack, so as to thoroughly frighten the defenders and take the heart out of them for the real assault which would becoming up tomorrow.

  The warriors howled and leaped about. Then, in an explosion of action, the customary first false rush erupted and was carried through with all the more gusto in that the falseness of it had been acknowledged and agreed upon beforehand. The invaders swarmed up to within an axe-throw of the wall. There was a great deal of shouting and threatening both on their part and on the part of the defenders. The city people, however, proved to be better supplied and more accurate with their throwing spears than the plains people customarily were; and after some minutes the forest natives withdrew to the edge of the river, and made ready to settle themselves for the night.

  Rajn immediately sent parties out to scour the countryside for local natives who could be questioned about the defensive arrangements and the number of fighters to be encountered within the city walls. Other groups were detailed to build ladders and men we resent out to find and bring back a tree trunk large enough to make a useful battering ram against the city gates. Meanwhile, the rank and file of the forest natives were busy sharpening their weapons, and discussing the situation. An unusual air of seriousness and determination pervaded the camp.

  Harb made a solitary tour completely around the hill to examine the city from all sides. This was not difficult to do on the landward side, but on the side that faced the place where the two rivers joined, the slope of the hill came steeply down to meet the water and he was forced to scramble along on his hands and knees in places, rather than risk sliding down into the water. He discovered little, however, except the impracticality of using the river confluence side as a slope up which an assault might be made. He was in a bad humor by the time he reached the more or less level ground facing on the other stream, and his mind was made up. The only solution was to divert the expedition from this unconquerable community to a more achievable goal.

  He had already given this some thought in the boat coming down, while he had been mentally reviewing the surrounding territory. Now he hunted up a dry patch of brush in which to make his personal bivouac and there, in privacy, activated the small library screen that was hidden under a plate of the shield’s inner face.

  The light of the day was already fading toward twilight and the screen had been necessarily miniaturized to fit in with all the other equipment he had wanted to hide in the shield; so he was forced to peer closely to make out details on the maps and satellite photos the screen produced for him. But he found that his personal memory had been reliable. About five days upstream on the river they had just joined,it found its source in a very large lake indeed. Out of sight of the shores of that lake, in its center, were a cluster of islands on which a separate kingdom had evolved, protected by the watery barrier around it, but with no other natural defenses.

  The islanders, according to the satellite survey,were a people who made their living in boats and who over the years, off the main raiding routes as they were, had gone untouched for some centuries.Their accumulation of riches, accordingly, should make even those of this high city look small and mean by comparison; and their unguarded islands should be vulnerable to the canot-borne forest raiders as they had never been to the armed forces of the other plains kingdoms.

  Harb covered the screen on his shield and went to seek a moment alone with Rajn, to suggest a change of target for the expedition. But Rajn’s eyes looked coldly at him.

  “Ill news,” said the king, “ill news is even a worse friend when it comes untimely.”

  The light from a nearby cooking fire—for the sun was down now and only a last flush of twilight stained the western sky—made Rajn’s face look shifting and bestial.

  “But, King,” said Harb, as winningly as he could, “only five days away—rich islands with no wall about them, and with no warriors accustomed, as these city warriors must be, to making a strong defense—”

  “A hungry man does not easily give up meat in hand on merely the promise of more meat five days hence,” said Rajn. “Outlander, you are somewhat late with this sort of news. I would not try to turn these fighters from this city now, even if that was what I wished myself.”

  He swung about and walked off a few steps, then paused and turned back.

  “I’ll look to hear a story of another sort from you by tomorrow noon,” he said, slowly. “A story that will please me better.”

  He turned away again. This time he kept going. Looking after the broad back and heavy shoulders, silhouetted against the last light of the sky, Harb felt a wary coldness. He might have hoped to bluff out the other forest natives if they should th
reaten to turn on him. But Rajn was too intelligent to risk bluffing. Enough of the primitive Homskarter weapons could overwhelm everything that Harb was carrying—and Harb suspected that Rajn had guessed this.

  The next day the assault went forward as soon as the sun was halfway up the sky and the last of the overnight mists from the river had cleared off the main slope. It was a serious and hard-pressed attack—even Harb was impressed by its earnestness. The battering ram reached the gates and even managed to split one of them, although the locks and hinges held.

  Several of the ladders that had been built were brought into position against the walls; and some of the attackers achieved the top of the walls, but were either killed or thrown off and the ladders pushed down. By noon, the attack was over. The forest natives retreated down the slope.

  Tempers, Harb knew, would be short among the unsuccessful raiders and probably Rajn’s as well. Harb made it a point to stay well clear of the expedition’s members as they settled down to drown their disappointment in drinking and recriminations. For something to do, he went out to make another surveying circuit of the hill; and found, to his pleasure, that the opposite side of it where the two rivers came together was now shadowed from the now hot sun by the height of the hill itself. The combination of shade and the cooling gurgling water only a dozen feet away from him was pleasant. Harb sat down to enjoy the unexpected comfort.

  The continuous sound of the water finally reminded him that he was thirsty. He got up and went to kneel on the bank and dip up water in his cupped hand to drink. The water was fresh and cool—and as he was drinking his third handful, illumination suddenly struck, so that he stood poised, the ignored water spilling forgotten, trickling down his forearm into his sleeve.

  Of course, he told himself, grimly! He had not been using basic common sense.

  The high city was obviously designed for defense against just such sieges as this. Along with the well-made wall and gates and the armed and ready condition of the populace, it must have reserves of food—and a water supply within the walls, so that the inhabitants could not be forced to surrender as a result of their own thirst. Ordinarily, that would mean wells had been dug within the walls. But wells could not be the solution here. The city on the hilltop was several hundred feet above the water table indicated by the two rivers here, and a second’s thought by Harb’s educated and civilized mind should have been enough to point up the fact that a society at this historical level would not yet have the skills to dig wells over two hundred feet deep, without the sides collapsing in on them. Nor could they draw up from such wells enough water to sustain a whole city.

  Harb cursed himself for an idiot.

  Of course, he should have seen the obvious answer. The basic rock of the hill was limestone. Limestone soft enough to be carved with iron tools, and which, as well, was prone to be cut and leached away by natural and surface and other waters, forming caves. There absolutely must be an interior set of caves, whether natural or improvised by the city dwellers, that led down inside the hill to the level of these rivers. That had to be the answer to where they were getting their drinking water, safely and out of sight of any attackers.

  And if there was indeed such a series of interior caves or vertical tunnels down to the river level, it could well be that there would be access to them underwater, here, at the foot of the hill.

  Seconds later, Harb had cut a sapling from the river’s edge and was probing the depth of the water just at the bank. The normally shallow rivers that joined here had scoured out a greater depth at their point of meeting. But just at the bank, where the face of the hill continued down underwater, Harb was overjoyed to discover depths of no more than two to three meters before the steep slope of the immediate underwater changed to a more leisurely descent to the greater depths farther out in the confluence.

  He peered down through the water. It was not clear enough for him to see the further bottom; but underwater visibility should be good enough for his needs. He stripped off his clothes and began an underwater search of the hill-face just below the water surface.

  The water felt icy cold at first touch, after the hot air, but it was actually not that bad, and he adjusted to it. Less than two hours later, with only three pauses to rest and warm himself on the bank above, he had located an opening a meter and a half down in the underwater bank, big enough for him to swim into. He came back up to his clothes and equipment to get a small fusion torch that would bum underwater.

  The torch was not ideally designed to be used as as ource of illumination in the below-surface dimness; but it would do. He dived back down with it and by its light examined the opening.

  The opening did not seem to go too deep under the hill; but there was no way of being sure how far in it led; or whether, if he should try to swim into it, he might not find himself trapped underwater with noway to turn about and with drowning inevitable. He thought longingly of the underwater breathing equipment he could have had included in with his other hidden tools, if it had only occurred to him that he would be faced with a situation like this one.

  Then inspiration came to him. He crowded his body into the opening, blocking out light from the open underwater behind him, and turned off the torch.It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust and he was just starting to feel that he must get back to breath and air, when he began to distinguish a dim,but unmistakable illumination ahead of him through the water.

  With bursting lungs, he backed out of the opening, and rose to the surface to breathe.

  After a moment, with a once more reoxygenated body, he dived again. This time he kept the torch off on his way down; and when he looked into the hole, he was able to adjust his eyes quickly enough to see that its further end was only about five meters further on and emerged into water with light glancing through it. He went back up, filled his lungs once more, dove down and swam boldly through the natural tunnel.

  He broke surface a second later in the still waters of a high-ceilinged grotto, into which light soared in thin rays from what seemed to be a number of tiny openings about its walls. As his vision adjusted further to this dim illumination, he saw a sort of ledge across some fifteen meters of water to his right, a ledge flanked by two unlit wall-torches and a fligh tof steps cut in the stone, leading up to some more strongly lit region above.

  Harb trod water for a second while he filled his lungs, then turned and dived again, out the tunnel and back up on to the bank outside.

  He went in search of Rajn, feeling a certain smugness. The smugness lasted until he came in sight of the cooking fire against which the bulk of the Homskarter king was recognizable. Then, for the first time, it occurred to Harb to wonder if the Homskarters could swim—or if perhaps they had some deep-grained taboo or fear of putting their heads under water. All at once the easy road to conquest of the high city which he had discovered did not look all that easy. But it was too late to go back and think the situation over again. Rajn had already caught sight of him.

  “Outlander! Here!” Rajn was calling.

  The king looked in a grim mood. As Harb came up, he found himself uncomfortably aware of the other’s dark eyes, deep-set under the heavy browridge and holding steadily fixed on Harb.

  “Well?” said Rajn, as Harb stepped before him. “What have you to tell me?”

  Harb gambled against the risk of triggering a temper reaction in the king before being given a chance to explain.

  “Nothing, King,” he said deliberately.

  “Nothing?” Rajn’s voice deepened. About the two of them the other Homskarters were silent and motionless, watching.

  “Nothing to tell you, King,” said Harb easily, “but something to show you. Will you come with me?”

  For a moment Rajn did not move or answer. Then he stepped forward.

  “Show me what you have to show,” he said. The nearby Homskarters moved forward also, but Rajn looked at them and they checked.

  “We will go alone,” he said. “Lead on, Outlander.” Harb condu
cted him to the spot on the bank above the entrance to the grotto; and began to strip off his clothes.

  “There’s a way into the mountain, King,” he said. “If you’ll come with me down under the water I can show it to you.”

  He was watching Rajn closely as he said this. If the king was no swimmer, or had any large fear of the water, now was the moment for Harb to discover it. But Rajn showed no hesitation whatever. He unstrapped his body armor and dropped it on the ground. He undid his sheathed sword from his belt and laid it with the armor. However, the belt itself, together with the long knife in its sheath that was still attached to the belt, he kept on.

  “Just below the bank here, King,” said Harb, “underwater, there is a hole into which we can swim that leads into a cave half-filled with water, inside the mountain. There are steps leading down into the cave from above and I believe that they lead up to the city. If you’ll follow me, I’ll show this cave to you.” He went down into the water and ducked under the surface without waiting for the Homskarter to answer. A second after there was a heavy splash and Rajn joined him. Crouched against the sloping underwater bank, Harb pointed to the entrance to the grotto. Without hesitation Rajn pushed past him and pulled himself into the dark opening.

  Harb felt a brief twinge of reluctant admiration, remembering how he himself had hesitated to enter that unknown aperture when he had first discovered it. But Rajn’s hair-dark legs were already disappearing into the opening. Harb followed him.

  They both broke surface inside the grotto—with some noise in that echoing interior, but happily there was no one from the city above waiting there who might have heard them. Harb pointed to the ledge with the unlit torches. They swam to it and pulled themselves out on its cold and slippery surface, which gleamed, like the stone walls about them, with condensed moisture.

  Rajn, however, paid no attention to the ledge or the torches but went directly to the steps and climbed up them for a short distance, peering into the gloom higher up. Unlike the grotto, dimly lit with light leaking in through what must be small apertures in the hillside, the steps evidently ascended through the solid interior limestone of the hill and a little way up them the darkness was complete. Rajn came back down the steps.