The Ringworld Throne r-3 Page 3

  Vala couldn’t see anything yet. For the Grass Giants it would be no darker, but these plains were their home. A crossbow whispered, and something pale stood up and fell over. The wind picked up … that wasn’t wind.

  Song.

  “Look for white,” Forn called unnecessarily. Kay fired, changed guns, fired.

  It was well that the cruisers were spaced far apart. The flash of their handguns was blinding. Vala thought it over, while the fire balloons in her eyes faded. Then she rolled under the cruiser and pulled the flamer and the net bag of fistbombs after. Let the cruiser shield her eyes from the flash.

  And the cannon?

  They were firing around her. Her sight was back. There, a pale hominid shape. Another. She could see twenty and more! One fell, and the rest backed away. Already most of them must be beyond crossbow range. Their song plucked at her nerves.

  “Cannon,” Barok commented, and she closed her eyes just as he fired.

  Fire was trying to light in the stubble. There were pale bodies, six … eight. Thirty or forty vampires stood in plain view, still in gun range, she thought.

  Why would men with crossbows fear vampires? Because nobody had ever seen so many vampires together!

  It was bizarre, insane. How could so many feed themselves?

  High Rangers Trading Group had died in a tower in a deserted city, forty-three falans ago. High Rangers had fought no more than fifteen, that night. Killed no more than eight. All the rest had died, and only a fluke had saved Valavirgillin.

  She remembered the song wafting up from the street. The vampires pale, naked, beautiful. The terror. High Rangers had fired from tenth-floor windows, and posted sentries down along the stairwell. One by one the sentries had disappeared, and then—

  Kay said, “The wind’s blowing right.”

  Barok said, “Cannon.”

  She clenched her eyelids against the flash. Barok’s cannon roared, then one from farther away, barely heard.

  Barok’s voice was faint. “They could circle.”

  “They’re not sapient,” Kay said.

  To left, another distant cannon fired. To right, another.

  Vampires carried no tools, wore no clothing. Reach into the lovely wealth of ash-blond hair on a vampire’s corpse: you would find too much hair around a small, flat skull. They built no cities, formed no armies, invented no encircling movements.

  But the warriors on the wall were buzzing among themselves, pointing, firing bolts into the dark to spin and starboard and antispin.

  “Kay? They’ve got noses.”

  Barok looked down. Kay said, “What?”

  “They don’t have a battle plan,” Valavirgillin said. “They’re just avoiding the smell of fifteen hundred Grass Giants served by a primitive sewer system. It’s the same smell that brought them here! When they get upwind of that, the smell won’t bother them anymore. And then we’ll be downwind from them.”

  “I’ll get Whandernothtee to move his cruiser around,” Barok said, and ran.

  Vala bellowed after him. “Cloth and alcohol!”

  He came back. “What?”

  “Pour fuel into a towel, just a splash. Tie it around your face. It keeps the scent out. Tell Whand!”

  Kay spoke from overhead. “I still have targets here. Boss, they’re not in throwing range. You go tell Anth to move. Tell him about towels and fuel. Then the Grass Giants might not know, either. Boss? Remember I wanted to show them some use for fuel?”

  Idiot. She splashed a towel for herself and took two more with her. This could turn urgent.

  In the dark, with a drop on either side, she had to watch her footing. It had stopped raining. The song of the vampires rode the wind. She breathed alcohol fumes from the towel around her face. It made her dizzy.

  She heard distantly, “Cannon.” Closed her eyes, waited for the roar, walked on toward a square shadow. She called, “Anthrantillin!”

  “He’s busy, Vala.” Taratarafasht’s voice.

  “He’ll be very busy, Tarfa. The vamps are circling round. Get your towels out, splash them with fuel, tie them over your mouths. Then move the truck a sixth around the arc.”

  “Valavirgillin, I take my orders from Anthrantillin.”

  Fool woman. “Get the cruiser into place or you can both tell it to the Ghouls. Get a towel on Anth, too. But first give me a fuel jar for the giants.”

  Pause. “Yes, Valavirgillin. Do you have enough towels?”

  ***

  The fuel jar was heavy. Valavirgillin was terribly conscious of the weapons she wasn’t holding. When the big shape loomed before her, she was embarrassingly relieved.

  The Grass Giant didn’t turn. “How goes the defense, Valavirgillin?”

  Vala said, “They’re circling us. You’ll smell them in a minute. Tie this—”

  “Fowh! What stink is that?”

  “Alcohol. It moves our cruisers, but it may save us. Tie this around your neck.”

  The guard didn’t move, didn’t look at her. He wouldn’t insult an alien guest. So: Valavirgillin has not spoken.

  She didn’t have time for games. “Point me toward the Thurl.”

  “Give me the cloth.”

  She threw it to him underhand. He snorted in disgust, but he was tying it around his neck. He pointed then, but she’d already seen the shine of the Bull’s armor.

  ***

  The Bull looked at the cloth in her hands even as he backed away from the stink. “But why?”

  “You don’t know about vampires?”

  “Stories come to us. Vampires die easily enough, and they don’t think. As for the rest … should the cloth cover our ears?”

  “Why, Thurl?”

  “So that they cannot sing us to our deaths.”

  “Not sound. Smell!”

  “Smell?”

  Grass Giants weren’t idiots, but … they’d been unlucky. First somebody has to live through a vampire attack. Even if a child survives, he won’t know why the adults all went away. She, Kay, someone should have raised this subject, no matter the rush.

  “Vampires put out a mating scent, Thurl. Your lust rises and your brain turns off and you go.”

  “The stink of your fuel, it cures the problem? But isn’t there another problem? We hear of you Machine People and your empire of fuel. You persuade other hominid species to make alcohol for your wagons. They learn to drink it. They lose interest in work and play and life itself, anything but the fuel, and they die young.”

  Vala laughed. “Vampire scent does all of that before you can take a hundred breaths.” Still, the Thurl had a point. Do we want crossbowmen drunk while vampires circle the wall?

  “Is fuel better? Try strong herbs?”

  “When can you pick these herbs? I have fuel now, not tomorrow.”

  The Bull turned from her and began bellowing orders. Most of the males were on the wall now, but women began running. Bales of cloth appeared. Women climbed up the wall and along the top to the cruisers. Vala waited with what patience she could muster.

  The Bull roared, “Come!” He entered an earthen building, the second largest.

  It was fabric stretched over the top of a dirt wall and one central pole. Here were tall heaps of dried grass, but other plants too, a thousand scents. The Bull crushed leaves under her nose. She shied back. A different leaf; she sniffed gingerly. Another.

  She said, “Try all of those, but try fuel too. We’ll find out what works best. Why do you store these?”

  The Bull laughed. “Flavoring, these, pepperleek and minch. Woman eats this, makes her milk better. Did you think we eat only grass? Wilted or sour grass needs something for taste.”

  The Bull gathered armfuls of plants and strode out bellowing. She could have heard his roar in Center City, she thought. His voice and the women’s, and presently the scuff of their big feet as they climbed.

  Vala retrieved her fuel bottle and climbed after.

  From the top she watched the big shadows, warriors motionless, women
moving among them distributing impregnated towels. Vala intercepted a big, mature woman. “Moonwa?”

  “Valavirgillin. They kill by smell?”

  “They do. We don’t know what smell protects best. Some men already have alcohol-scented towels. Leave them those, give the Thurl’s plants to the rest. We’ll see.”

  “See who dies, eh?”

  Vala walked on. The alcohol fumes were making her a little giddy. She could handle it, and for that matter her towel was nearly dry.

  This morning Vala had been thinking that Forn was mature enough to practice rishathra, or perhaps to mate straight off. Forn had beaten that prediction. She could hardly be remembering the smell of vampires. She’d recognized the scent of a lover!

  That old scent of lust and death was into Valavirgillin’s nose and nibbling on her brain.

  The Grass Giant warriors were still shadows amid the moving shadows of women. But … they were fewer.

  The Grass Giant women had noticed, too. Breathy screams of rage and fear; then two, four, ran down the embankment shouting for the Thurl. Another ran the wrong way down, moaning, out onto the stubbly field.

  Vala moved among the remaining defenders, sloshing fuel on towels. Women, men, whoever she could find. Haste would kill. Fuel would protect. Herbs? Well, the smell of the Thurl’s herbs might last longer.

  In every direction she could see pale hominid shapes. So little detail. You had to imagine what they looked like; and with the scent tickling your hindbrain, you saw glorious fantasies.

  They were closer. Why wasn’t she hearing guns? She’d reached Anthrantillin’s cruiser. Up onto the running board. “Hello? Anth?”

  The payload shell was empty.

  She used the trick lock and climbed into the payload shell.

  All gone. No damage, no trace of a fight; just gone.

  Soak a towel. Then: the cannon. The vampires were bunching nicely to spin. Bunching around Anth or Forn or Himp, somewhere down there? It didn’t matter. She fired and saw half of them fall.

  ***

  Sometime during that night she heard a repeated whisper of sound. “Anthrantillin?”

  “Gone,” she said, and couldn’t hear her own voice. She screamed, “Gone! It’s Valavirgillin!” and barely heard that. Her bellow, his bellow, reduced to whispers by the cannon’s ear-shattering roar.

  It was time to move the cruiser. The vampires had pulled way back here, they’d learned not to bunch, but she might find fresh prey elsewhere. Guns weren’t needed on the starboard and spin sides. Upwind from the vampires, crossbows would reach them.

  “It’s Kay. Are they all gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re low on firepower. You?”

  “Plenty.”

  “We won’t have any fuel come morning.”

  “No. I set all mine out and told the women about it. I thought—Moonwa, the Grass Giant who was forcing towels on the warriors—teach her to use the cannon? Do we want—”

  “No, Boss, no. Secrets!”

  “Take too long to train her anyway.”

  Kay’s head rose into the cannoneer’s chamber. He pulled out a jug of gunpowder, hefted it with a grunt. “Back to work.”

  “Do you need smallshot?”

  “Plenty of rocks.” He looked at her. Froze. He set the jug down.

  She slid down. They moved together.

  “Should have soaked that towel again,” she said unsteadily. It was her last coherent thought for some time.

  He, not Vala, Kay wriggled out of the door and splashed into mud in a blowing rain. Vala followed, to snatch him back.

  He ripped her shirt off. She pressed herself against him, but he howled and ripped it again, and turned in her arms, and turned back with two dripping half shirts and pushed one into her face and one into his own.

  She breathed deeply of alcohol fumes. Choked. “All right.”

  He gave it to her. He tied the other around his own neck. “I’m going back,” he said. “You’d better fight your gun alone. Under the—”

  “—circumstances.” They laughed shakily. “Are you safe? Alone?”

  “Have to try it.”

  She watched him go.

  She should never. Never. Never have mated with another man. Her mind, her self had washed away in a tide of lust. What would Tarb think of her?

  Mating with Tarablilliast had never been so intense.

  But now her mind was flowing back. She was mated.

  She lifted the towel to her face. The alcohol went straight to her head and cleared it, unless that was an illusion. She looked along the wall and saw big shadows, too few, but some. Hominid shapes in the black fields were also fewer, but very close. They were taller, more slender than her own species. They sang; they implored; they were bunched almost beneath the cruiser.

  She climbed up and loaded her cannon.

  Chapter 2

  Recovery

  A pale light was growing, lighter to spin. The song was over. Vala hadn’t heard a crossbow twang in some time. Vampires had become hard to find.

  Unnoticed, the dreadful night had ended.

  If she had ever been this tired, exhaustion must have wiped the memory clean. And here was Kaywerbrimmis asking, “Do you have any smallshot left?”

  “Some. We never got our gravel.”

  “Barok and Forn were both gone when I got back to the cruiser.”

  Vala rubbed her eyes. There didn’t seem to be anything to say.

  Whandernothtee and Sopashintay came up leaning on each other. Whand said, “What a night.”

  Spash said, “Chit liked the singing overmuch. We had to tie him up. I think I put too much fuel, in his towel. He’s sleeping like … like I would if I could just—” She hugged herself. “—just stop jittering.”

  Sleep. And several hundred Grass Giant males were expecting—”I couldn’t handle rishathra now,” Vala said. She’d put off the memory of mating with Kay. That could have consequences.

  Kaywerbrimmis said, “Sleep in the cruisers. At least for tonight. Hello—” His hand on her shoulder turned her around.

  Company. Nine Grass Giants and a suit of silver armor had come among them. You could see their exhaustion, and smell it. The Thurl asked, “How is it with you Machine People?”

  “Half of us are missing,” Valavirgillin said.

  Whand said, “Thurl, we never expected so many. We thought we had weapons for anything.”

  “Travelers tell that vampires sing us to our doom.”

  Kay said, “Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.”

  “We were prepared for the wrong enemy. Vampire scent! We never guessed. But we’ve set the vampires running!” the Thurl boomed. “Shall we hunt them through the grass?”

  Whand threw up his arms and staggered away.

  Vala and Kay and Spash looked at each other. If Grass Giant warriors could still fight … Whand was done, used up, but someone had to stand up for the Machine People.

  They trailed the warriors down into the wet stubble.

  Shapes stirred at the foot of the wall. Two hominids, naked. Crossbows and guns swung around. Arms batted them aside, voices barked. No! Not vampires! A big woman and a little male were helping each other to stand.

  Not vampires, no. A Grass Giant woman and—“Barok!”

  Sabarokaresh’s face was slack with a terror too deep to touch surface. He looked at Valavirgillin as if she were the ghost, not he. Half mad, dirty, exhausted, scarred, alive.

  I thought -I– was tired! Vala thumped his shoulder, glad to feel him solid under her hand. Where was his daughter? She didn’t ask. She said, “You must have quite a tale to tell. Later?”

  The Thurl spoke to the crossbowman, Paroom. Paroom led / pulled Barok and the Grass Giant woman up the slope.

  The Thurl moved at a trot, away from the wall, to starboard-spin. His people followed, and then the Machine People. A night of sleepless terror and wild mating had left them all without strength.

  They passed va
mpire corpses. None of their beauty survived into death. A Grass Giant stopped to examine a female skewered by a crossbow. Spash stopped too.

  Vala remembered doing that, forty-three falans ago. First you smell rotting flesh. Then the other scent explodes under your mind—

  The Grass Giant lurched clear. He stayed head down, vomiting, then slowly straightened, still hiding his face. Spash straightened suddenly, then wobbled toward Vala and hid her face against her shoulder.

  Valavirgillin said, “Spash. You haven’t done anything, love. It feels like you want to mate with a corpse, but that’s not your mind talking.”

  “Not my mind. Vala, if we can’t examine them, we can’t learn about them!”

  “It’s part of what makes them so scary.” Lust and the smell of rotting meat do not belong together in one brain.

  Vampires near the wall had crossbow bolts in them. Farther out, they were chewed by balls or smallshot. Vala saw that Machine People had scored as many kills as a hundred times as many Grass Giants.

  Two hundred paces beyond the wall, they weren’t finding vampires any more. Dead Grass Giants lay naked or half clothed, gaunt, with sunken eyes and cheeks, and savage wounds in their necks, wrists, elbows.

  That slack face … Vala had seen this woman run out into the dark hours ago. Where were the wounds? Her throat seemed untouched. Left arm thrown wide, wrist unmarred; right arm across her body, no blood on the rucked-up tunic … Vala stepped forward and lifted her right hand.

  Her armpit was torn and bloody. A Grass Giant man turned and wobbled back toward the wall, retching.

  Big woman, small vampire. Couldn’t reach her neck. Spash is right, we have to learn.

  Farther along, bright cloth lay near the grass border. Vala began to run, then stopped as suddenly. That was Taratarafasht’s work suit.

  Vala picked it up. It was clean. No blood, no ground-in dirt. Why had Tarfa been brought so far? Where was she?

  The Thurl had outrun his party by a good distance. He’d almost reached uncut grass. How much did that armor weigh? He scrambled up a ten-pace-high knoll, then paused at the top, waiting while the rest straggled up.

  “No sign of vampires,” he said. “They’ve gone to cover somewhere. Travelers say they can’t stand sunlight …?”