Short Fiction - Poul Anderson (books to read for self improvement .TXT) 📗

They broke into a trot up the hill. Rounding a sharp turn in the street, they saw a close-ranked mass of warriors with spears aloft.

Guardsmen!

The two forces let out a simultaneous yell and charged at each other in the disorderly Khazaki fashion. It was beginning to lighten just a little; Anse could make out enough for purposes of battle. Hai-ah⁠—here we go!

He smashed into a leading guard, who stabbed at him with his long pike. The edge grazed off Anse’s heavy chain mail as the Earthling chopped out with his sword. He knocked the shaft aside and thrust in, hewing at the Khazaki’s neck. The guard intercepted the blow with his shield, and suddenly rammed it forward. The murderous spike on its boss thudded against the Terrestrial’s broad chest and the linked rings gave under that blow⁠—just a little, just enough to draw blood. Anse roared and chopped down across the other’s right arm. The Khazaki howled his pain and stumbled back.

Another was on the Earthling like a spitting cat. Swords hummed and clashed together. Leaping and dodging, the Khazaki lashed out with a blade like a flickering flame, and none of Anse’s blows could land on him.

The Khazaki leaped in suddenly, his edge reaching for the human’s unprotected throat. Anse parried with his sword, while his left fist shot out like an iron cannonball. It hit the native full in the face, with a crunch of splintering bones. The guard’s head snapped back and he fell to the blood-running street.

Janazik was fighting two at once, his sword never resting. He leaped and danced like the shadow of a flame in the wind, and he was laughing⁠—laughing! Anse hewed out, and one of the foemen’s heads sprang from its neck. Janazik darted in, there was a blur of steel, and the other guardsman toppled.

Axe and sword! Spear and dagger and flying arrows! The fight rolled back and forth between the darkling walls of houses. It grew with time; Volakech’s patrols were drawn by the noise, loyalists crouched in hiding heard of the attack and sped to join it. Anse and Janazik fought side by side, human brawn and Khazaki swiftness, and the corpses were heaped where they went.

A pike raked Anse’s hand. He dropped his sword and the enemy leaped in with drawn knife. Anse did not reach for his own dirk⁠—no human had a chance in a knife fight with a Khazaki⁠—but his arms snaked out, his hands closed on the native’s waist, and he lifted the enemy up and hurled him against another. They both went down in a crash of denting armor and snapping bones. Anse roared his war-cry and picked up his sword again.

Janazik leaped and darted and fenced, grinning as he fought, demon-lights in his yellow eyes. A spear was hurled at him. He picked it out of the air, one-handed, and threw it back, even as he fought another guardsman. The rebel took advantage of it to get in under Janazik’s guard. Swifter than thought, the warrior’s dagger was in his left hand⁠—and into the rebel’s throat.

Back and forth the battle swayed, roaring, trampling, and the rain mingled with blood between the cobblestones. Thunder of weapons, shrieking of wounded, shouting of challenges⁠—lightning dancing overhead!

Suddenly it was over.

Anse looked up from his last victim and saw that the confusion no longer snarled around him. The street was heaped with dead and wounded, and a few individual battles were still going on. But the surviving guardsmen were in full flight, and the victorious warriors were shouting their triumph.

“That was a fight!” panted Janazik. He quivered with feral eagerness. “Now on to the castle!”

“I think,” said Slavatozik thoughtfully, “that this was the decisive struggle as far as the city is concerned. Look at how many were involved. Almost all the patrols must have come here⁠—and now they’re beaten. We hold the city!”

“Not much good to us while Volakech is in the castle,” said Anse. “He need only sally forth with the Earth-weapons⁠—” He leaned on his sword, gasping great lungfuls of the cool wet air into him. “But where’s Ellen?”

“We’ve had heralds out shouting for her, as you suggested,” said Slavatozik. “Now that the city is in our control, she should come out. If not⁠—”

“⁠—then I know how to blow up the boat,” said Gonzales Alonzo bleakly. “If we can get inside the citadel to it.”

The loyalists were reassembling their forces. Warriors moved over the scene of battle, plundering dead guardsmen, cutting the throats of wounded enemies and badly mutilated friends. It was a small army that was crowding around Anse’s tall form.

His worried eyes probed into the dull gray light of the rainy dawn. Of a sudden, he stiffened and peered more closely. Someone was coming down the street, thrusting through the assembled warriors. Someone⁠—someone⁠—he knew that bright bronze hair.⁠ ⁠…

Ellen.

He stood waiting, letting her come up to him, and his eyes were hungry. She was tall and full-bodied and supple, graceful almost as a Khazaki, and her wide-set eyes were calm and gray under a broad clear forehead and there was a dusting of freckles over her straight nose and her mouth was wide and strong and generous and⁠—

“Ellen,” he said wonderingly. “Ellen.”

“What are you doing?” she asked. “What have you planned?”

No question of how he was, no look at the blood trickling along his sides and splashed over his face and arms⁠—well⁠—“Where were you?” he asked, and cursed himself for not being able to think of a better greeting.

“I hid with the family of Azakhagar,” she said. “I lay in their loft when the patrolmen came searching for me. Then I heard your heralds going through the streets, calling on me to come out in your name. So I came.”

“How did you know it wasn’t a trick of Volakech’s?” asked someone.

“I told the heralds to use my name and add after it⁠—well⁠—something that only she and I knew,” said Anse uncomfortably.

Janazik remained impassive, but he recalled that the phrase had been “Dougald