Anderson, Poul - The Earth Book of Stormgate by Anderson Poul

Author:Anderson, Poul
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf

“Therefore, to continue the fight, we must throw away our big shields and other new-fangled items, and revert to conventional air tactics. But this infantry is not well equipped for normal combat: we have few archers, for instance. Delp need only shelter on the rafts, behind his fire weapons, and for all our greater numbers we’ll be unable to touch him. Meanwhile he will have us pinned here, cut off from food and material. The excess war goods your mill produced are valueless lying up in Sahnenbrok. And there will certainly be strong reinforcements from the Fleet.”

“To hell with that!” shouted Wace. “We have the town, don’t we? can hold it against them till they rot!”

“What can we eat while they are rotting?” said Tolk. “You are a good craftsman, Eart’a, but no student of war. The cold fact is, that Delp managed to split our forces, and therefore he has already won.

I propose to cut our losses by retreating now, while we still can.” And then suddenly his manner broke, and he stooped and covered his eyes with his wings. Wace saw that the Herald was growing old. XIV

There was dancing on the decks, and jubilant chants rang across Sagna Bay to the enfolding hills. Up and down and around, in and out, the feet and the wings interwove till timbers trembled. High in the rigging, a piper skirled their melody; down below, a great overseer’s drum which set the pace of the oars now thuttered their stamping rhythm. In a ring of wing-folded bodies, sweat-gleaming fur and eyes

aglisten, a sailor whirled his female while a hundred deep voices roared the song:

“... A-sailing, a-sailing, a-sailing to the Sea of Beer, fair lady, spread your sun-bright wings and sail with me!”

Delp walked out on the poop and looked down at his folk.

“We’ll have many a new soul in the Fleet, sixty ten-days hence,” he laughed.

Rodonis held his hand, tightly: “I wish—” she began.

“Yes?”

“Sometimes ... oh, it’s nothing—” The dancing pair fluttered upward, and another couple sprang out to beat the deck in their place; planks groaned under one more huge ale barrel, rolled forth to celebrate victory. “Sometimes I wish we could be like them.”

“And live in the forecastle?” said Delp dryly.

“Well, no ... of course not—”

“There’s a price on the apartment, and the servants, and the bright clothes and leisure,” said Delp.

His eyes grew pale. “I’m about to pay some more of it.”

His tail stroked briefly over her back, then he beat wings and lifted into the air. A dozen armed males followed him. So did the eyes of Rodonis.

Under Mannenach’s battered walls the Drak’ho rafts lay crowded, the disorder of war not yet cleaned up in the haste to enjoy a hardbought victory. Only the full-time warriors remained alert, though no one else would need much warning if there should be an attack. It was the boast of the forecastle that a Fleet sailor, drunk and with a female on his knee, could outfight any three foreigners sober.

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