Upon him, from Lige a leaden hail.

All Belgium flew up at his throat in flame

Till at her gates amazed his legions quail."

The allied leaders standing next to him on the ramparts looked at him with a kind of horrified admiration. Here was a new twist to the strange, savage, barbarian killer who was their new ally.

The crisis immediately around them had pa.s.sed, the situation was now under control and their staff officers began to return. Broadax and Hans and their squad of marine bodyguards came staggering up after having barely saved one building. Broadax and Hans moved up to stand beside their commander. Both they and their monkeys were singed and smoldering in various locations. Melville felt guilty about not having gone into "harm's way" with them, but he had decided it was important to stay here with his allied commanders.

"Funny thing 'bout eyebrows," muttered Hans, as he and his monkey launched tobacco juice over the edge of the battlements. "Ya never miss 'em 'til they's gone." Looking out at the blazing cauldron of death and horror across the river, Hans chuckled happily. "Urban renewal," he muttered, "prob'ly an improvement." Then he recited an old sailor's ditty, "Red sky at night, sailor's delight."

"Hah!" chuckled Broadax, she and her monkey both smoking from several places besides her cigar, "Red sky at night, the whole d.a.m.ned city's alight! An' a whole bunch of them cur b.a.s.t.a.r.ds with it."

The Sylvan and Stolsh commanders, and their returning staff, looked in consternation at the human warriors' frank pleasure. "Gentlefolk," said one Sylvan staff officer in a braided, forest green uniform, "dost thou feel no remorse, no empathy for the suffering we have inflicted here today?"

Melville looked at him with feral eyes, thinking of the row of graves on Broadax's World. "A great leader of ours, a man named Winston Churchill, in similar circ.u.mstances, put it this way. 'If you will not fight when you can easily win, without bloodshed, and if you still will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly, you may well come to the moment when you will have no choice but to fight with the odds against you, and you have only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, simply because it is better to perish as warriors than to live as slaves.' "

The staff officer looked at him with a puzzled yet kindly expression. "We know that a captain's communication with his Ship can have a powerful effect, and we know that war can scar a man. Please forgive me, captain, I mean no offense; but surely, sir, war and communion with thy Ship hast seared thy soul? Otherwise how canst thou say that anyone deserves that?"

Melville returned a flat stare. "They'd do the same thing to you, your families, and everything that you love, without hesitation. It does you credit that you have remorse, that's what makes you superior to them. But it also does you credit that you are willing to fight them with every means at your disposal. You didn't ask them to come here. You didn't invade them. People find in war what they seek. They sought death and destruction, and they have found it." Looking out across the river, he mused, "Efficient, thorough, strong, and bravea"his vision is to kill.

Force is the hearthstone of his might, the pole-star of his will.

His forges glow malevolent: their minions never tire

To deck the G.o.ddess of his l.u.s.t whose twins are blood and fire."

There was a long silence, then he whispered, "Reap what thou hast sown, O enemy mine. Thou hast taught me to hate. Thou hast l.u.s.ted for blood and fire, now slake thy thirst."

Everywhere thrill the air

The maniac bells of War.

There will be little of sleeping to-night;

There will be wailing and weeping to-night;

Death's red sickle is reaping to-night:

War! War! War!

Chapter the 12th.

Siege: Smote, and Smote Again

So strong in faith you dared

Defy the giant, scorn

Ign.o.bly to be spared,

Though trampled, spoiled, and torn,

And in your faith arose

And smote, and smote again,

Till those astonished foes

Reeled from their mounds of slain . . .

Still for your frontier stands

The host that knew no dread,

Your little, stubborn land's

Nameless, immortal dead.

Laurence Binyon

"To the Belgians"

Now the battle was begun in earnest.

Piers, with their access to Flatland and two-s.p.a.ce, usually appear on high ground. Ambergris was an aquatic world with the Piers appearing on opposite ends of the world's one, long, low mountain range. Movement from the Lower Pier to the Upper Pier, here at AiEe, was mostly on high ground where the Guldur were at an advantage. Once they moved off this high ground they'd be in swamps, seas, and archipelagos where the aquatic Stolsh had an enormous advantage.

For hundreds of miles up and down stream, AiEe was the only point where the River Grottem was bridged, the only place where the river didn't have vast swamps on both banks. If the Guldur were coming across the river this was the only place it could be done without months of effort and vast amounts of engineering work to build roads and bridges in the swamps, where the Stolsh would be at a great advantage. The Guldur knew this, and they were not that stupid. So they selected the lesser of two evils and attacked head-on, struggling across the water and up the bluffs.

The low gray walls around Ai didn't so much loom over the river as lurk, clinging to the bluffs as though they were worried someone might try to steal them. Now their centuries of paranoid, stony diligence was paying off. They'd finally caught a thief, and they would make them pay.