Chapter III

For five days and nights, the magniship crept through the mountains. Over jagged peak and snow-draped hump they floated swiftly. At its rails stood keen-eyed men who strained their sight peering across the barren plains beyond, and fingered shining weapons. Occasionally, they ran wet tongues around dry lips, for the mark of death lay strong upon them.

There was no jollity at meals, except where Flane ate. Morosely, the men stared at one another, and bent to their plates. A pall hung over the ship, bathing those who rode it.

Flane was different. He still laughed and jested, and spent the moonlit nights walking the deck with Aevlyn.

"What use to brood?" he asked her. "Our fate is written somewhere, perhaps in that great cave where dwells the All-High that the Princess Gleya told me of. He sits there and watches all our deeds enacted before him."

"I would like to go and peer over His shoulder to see our immediate future," the girl sighed, clinging to Flane.

"Seeing it would not change it," said Flane. "Not knowing, but doing and fighting every inch of the pathway through life--that's what counts!"

He looked at the blade with the seven stars in it, holding it up so that moonlight made it glimmer.

"This is what counts--holding a sword in your hand and using it to fight for what is right and just. It's like a key to your own future. When you hold it, you can't fail!"

Aevlyn pressed against him, whispering, "I wish I were of your race, Flane. You never admit defeat, even if you have already failed!"

Flane grunted, "Failed? Just because we didn't have time to raise that army at Moornal? We take a different path, that's all. It may lead to the same goal. Who knows?"

* * * * *

On the morning of the sixth day, a lookout yelped. Flane leaped to the rail, clung to it with strong, supple hands. His eyes glinted with excitement.

The host of the Darksiders lay like a swollen shadow along the ground. It seethed and moved in restless waves, flowing forward. Big vans and wagons were piled high with spears and arrows, pulled by draft-_megathons_ whose manes flowed in the wind. On war-_megathons_ and on foot the Darksiders surged like an irresistible wave across the plains. On high waved their _kaatra_-tail banners. Here and there a pennon whipped like a striking lash in the breeze. And their engines of war, their catapults and mangonels, trundled along at the same swift pace.

"They will overflow the Klarnvan cities," whispered Flane to himself. "There is nothing on all Klarn that can stop that horde--except my violet-gun. And even that--" he shook his head dubiously, staring at the vast throng below.

On board the magniship there was great activity. Men ran back and forth, reaching for weapons, shouting hoarsely.

Now the horde had seen them. A roar went up from the assembled throats, the howl of a wolf on sighting its prey. Lifted lances shook, sunlight glistening from their sanded tips. Here and there a bow was raised, and an arrow fitted to its string. The tailed banners danced in the hands of the standard-bearers.

"Let me speak to them," Flane said to Harth who nervously fingered a dagger in his belt. "I may dissuade them from their venture. If only I had the key to the Machine! Then, indeed, would I have a weapon to bargain with!"

He wound his legs in a plaited rope and was dangled over the side, below the flat keel of the ship. He swayed in the wind, the violet-gun at ease in his hands.

A Darksider with a wolfskin wrapped around him bellowed upwards, racing underneath him, trying to stab him with his spear. Flane grinned and shouted, "Peace, Darksider. I come to offer terms."

A group of mounted outlanders rode toward him. They sat their saddles easily, bending as their steeds curvetted.

"The people of Moornal desire to dwell in peace with the Darksiders," shouted Flane. "We look for the key to the Machine. If we find it, the Machine's power will be given to all."

A Darksider roared laughter, turning to his companions, gesturing a hairy arm at Flane.

"The hanging one offers peace. We will make peace, after we have wetted our blades in his flesh, and the flesh of all his kind!"

They laughed hoarsely and took turns heaving war-lances at Flane where he hung in the ropes. One of the spears came so close to him he could have reached out and caught it. Flane sighed and lifted the violet-gun. He did not want to slay these men. But he had to. They needed a lesson.

He sighted along the barrel and pressed the button. From the mouth of the gun the lavender flame came with a swoosh and dropped around the outlanders. It lay among them like the overflow of a rainbow, scintillating and glowing. Then it dissipated.

Where the mounted Darksiders had stood and hurled their spears there was only a blotch of darkened ground. Even the long grasses were gone.

"Oww!" howled the thousands who watched with fear stamped upon their faces. "Oww! Here is the magic of the Klarnva come to eat us up!"

Some of them wheeled their mounts to run, but a great fellow whose fair blonde hair spilled to his shoulders, lifted a gnarled club in his hand and rallied them.

"What?" he roared. "Do we flee before one man? Feather me an arrow in his hide so that he will drop that flaming thing he holds. Then _we_ may use it."

Arrows carried farther than did spears. Flane scampered back up the ropes as shafts started to slither in among the cordage. He put a hand on the rail and swung over. Panting, he stood and stared at the horde that raced for them.

"Arrows and spears will never take the ship," he said, "but those war-engines might."

He called to Harth, "Pass the ship over their machines. I must destroy them."

Flane went to the rail and leaned on it, watching the ground slide under him. Now they were over the assembled tribes, skimming low. The war-engines were just beyond them. Flane lifted his gun, held it in readiness.

He fired once.

A massive catapult went violet, and disappeared.

He fired again, and again.

Mangonels flared, fading.

* * * * *

But now the Darksiders were using their rocks against the magniship. Great jagged stones came crashing and bouncing on the deck. Men screamed, caught under them. Flesh was mashed, and ran red blood. One rock pierced the sides of the ship and clattered inside it, rolling and tumbling. Men moaned in the depths of the vessel, where the stone had gone.

Flane thinned his lips and fired faster, and faster.

One by one he encompassed the engines with the violet fire, and one by one they flared and disappeared.

Now there were none left, and Flane turned from the rail with a sigh of satisfaction.

He stood stock-still, staring.

The deck of the magniship listed at a peculiar angle. It was difficult to walk on it, for one side was lifted toward the sky, and the other pointed down toward earth. He had been so engrossed in his destruction of the war-engines, that he had not noticed.

The horde roared its triumph.

"She sinks! She sinks! She is coming toward us! Now we shall have the gun!"

Flane went across the deck with flying feet. He caught at a stanchion, swung in through an open door, shouting, "Lift it! Lift her nose."

Aevlyn was pale, watching him beside Harth who stared unseeingly at the man in the doorway.

Aevlyn whispered, "It's no use, Flane! Those rocks they hurled swept away the red magnetic balls on the port side of the ship. We're done for. We can't stay up much longer."

"We can stay up long enough to get to the mountains," Flane rasped, pointing to where the green-and-brown hills rose toward the clouds. "There we can make a stand. The Darksiders can come at us only a few at a time. We can hold out until help comes from Moornal. It is our only hope."

Harth slapped the table with the palm of his hand, violently, so that a quill and an inkbottle bounced a little.

"Sheer madness!" he bellowed, rising swiftly to his feet. "Now I have listened to you, Flane of Klarn, and I have given you your way. But from now on, it shall be Harth of Moornal who says what we shall do."

Flane's fingers opened and closed. His green eyes flared hotly, and he opened his mouth to snarl fierce words. Then Aevlyn was before him, the perfume of her auburn hair delicate in his nostrils, looking up at him. Her brown eyes begged with his.

Flane sighed, "And what are those orders, Harth?"

"We flee back to Moornal. We raise an army and--"

Flane chuckled, "Idiot! I thought the ship was broken."

"We can bargain with the Darksiders. They may yet give us terms."

Flane took him by the arm and led him to the port window. They had an unobstructed view of the plains from there. They saw the shaggy _megathons_ racing with their bellies to the ground while their riders shook pennoned lances over their heads, charging. A sword blade glowed red in the sun, lifted into the air. A thundering of hooves rocked the ground. Voices bellowed, roared their hate.

"Those are no warriors to give quarter. Not after what we have done to their leaders and their engines of war!" Flane rasped.

He hit Harth across the chest with the back of his hand.

"Man, man! You bear weapons. Do you know how to use them?"

Harth nodded sullenly, watching the Darksiders come nearer and nearer. He showed his teeth in a mirthless grin.

"They think us easy meat," Harth said softly. His eyes began to burn.

"We could find a cave somewhere in those mountains," Flane went on, his eyes keen on Harth's face. "We could make a stand there. It could be so costly that the Darksiders might leave us, so as not to miss the _mekniks_."

Harth turned to him with a chuckle. "You are a sly dog, Flane. You persuade a man that his death is a marvelous thing. Ah, well. You may be right. We'll do as you say, as usual. I see no other course."

Flane leaped from the cabin, sped along the tilting deck on the starboard side, half-running on the wall of the cabin. He shouted the men out of their battle stations, swept them up in the whirl of his own enthusiasm.

"Overboard with everything movable! Heave it over. Retain only food and weapons. Everything else goes. We've got to get the ship up that mountain!"

Aevlyn ran to him, to be near him, and to spur on the men with her presence. She put soft white hands to lamps and cushions, carrying them to the rail and casting them. Chairs and tables were borne by the men who formed quick-moving lines at Flane's directions. Soon the cabins lay stripped and bare, except for the men who clustered in them, polishing and sharpening swords and lances.

Flane went with Aevlyn to the prow of the magniship, hearing Harth bellow orders to the helmsman.

Inch by inch the crippled vessel went up. Scraping past the tops of trees, grating its keel on a jagged lip of rock, it mounted steadily. The trees fell away below, yielding place to massive rocks that lay piled and scattered on one another like sleeping kittens. Like giants slain and scattered in battle lay the boulders.

"There!" shouted Flane, pointing.

* * * * *

A bare space towered above the tossed rocks, flat on top and jagged at the sides. A steep path rose sharply to the level of the empty mesa, up which three men could walk abreast. It was the only means of entrance to the fortress of stone, for behind it, as though sheared by a gigantic sword, the cliff was cut away. Behind the mesa dropping thousands of feet straight down, a gorge was sliced into the mountain.

"We could hold that mesa forever," Flane grinned, "given enough food and water. Only three men can come at us at once. There is no way of retreat, except by falling to our deaths in the gorge."

Even Harth grunted, "It isn't so bad. A man could die a good death there, with his weapons red with his enemy's blood. As we all probably will."

Flane sighed, "If only we could get word to the Klarnva in Moornal and Yeelya! Then our stand here would be worth while. It would give the cities time to unite, to put an army in the field."

Aevlyn was buckling on a cape fitted with cabin-mail at breast and shoulder. She said suddenly, "One man might make Moornal in the magniship. He could spread word."

"You!" said Flane and Harth in one breath, but Aevlyn came close to Flane and shook her red mop of hair.

"No. I stay with Flane. I will never be separated from him again. Send another. I will not go."

Flane cajoled and begged and finally commanded, but Aevlyn bubbled laughter between her full red lips, and patted his hands. Her fiery hair swirled as she shook her head, brown eyes a-dance.

"I stay with you, Flane, come death or life! Now stop, for time grows short. Pick another who knows the ship and let him go."

Harth and Flane shrugged at each other and selected a man whose arm had been broken by a catapult stone. They gave him food and drink, and fastened him to the helm of the ship, but his weapons they took from him. He could not use them, and there were men who would be desperately in need of extra weapons soon.

"All Klarn rides your ship," Flane told him. "Summon the men of Yeelya, too. You will not be in time to rescue us, but you may bring the threat of the Darksiders to a sorry finish."

One after the other they dropped from the ship as it skimmed the mesa. Swords in one hand and violet-gun in the other, Flane landed cat-like and was up, racing toward the sloping adit to the level rock. A few of the Darksiders could be seen in the distance, coming up over a ridge, pointing lances toward them, shouting.

Aevlyn stood with hands clasped to her breasts, staring after the drifting ship as it dipped into the gorge. It bounced a little as an air current caught at it, then slipped along the channel between the cliffs that an ancient river had eaten away in the solid rock.

"May the All-High have him ever in His sight," she whispered.

An arrow whined past her. She turned, seeing Flane at the approach to the mesa, deflecting them, one after another, with the glittering sword in his hand. Now the Darksiders were howling up the slope, racing on foot, leaping from _megathon_ to stone, waving swords and axes.

Flane met them, grinning. His steel slipped and slithered past their guards, drinking deep in chests and thighs.

The leading Darksiders would have fallen back, but now the horde was on them, and a swirling maelstrom of battle-maddened men drove in low for the kill. Only three of them could come at once up that slope, but they came on in a steady wave that climbed over the bodies of the fallen, throwing spears, slashing down and upwards with sword and battle-axe.

Flane fought until the breath whistled in his throat, until his arms were scarred with wounds, and ran red blood. Someone yanked on him, pulled him from the press, and he stood sobbing for air as Aevlyn dabbed a dry cloth at his cuts. When she offered him white wine in a copper flagon, he drank deep; with the back of his hand he dried his mouth and grinned at her.

"It will be night presently," she whispered. "Then the men will have a rest."

"So soon?" questioned Flane blankly, looking at the sun.

"You fought for hours there," Aevlyn smiled, kneeling to ease a dying man's pains. "Some grumbled that you sought all the glory for yourself."

Flane chuckled, looking out at the tribes that hemmed them in, building camps and fires, and erecting _kaatra_-hide tents. He whispered savagely, "Glory enough for all at this fight." He shook his head, and his green eyes narrowed. "There are many of them," he said slowly. "Too many."

He lifted the violet-gun and carried it to a jagged edge of rock; rested it in a crotch of stone, leaning cheek against the wooden stock. He smiled mirthlessly to himself, thinking: I will reduce some of that number, now. His finger pressed the button of the gun and a lavender flame swept from the muzzle toward the assembled horde. Bolt after bolt he fired, carefully, until the ullulating wail of the stricken Darksiders reverberated from the cliffs.

The violet-gun clicked and made odd sounds.

* * * * *

Flane stared at it, wondering. The thought that it might need fuel to work never occurred to him. He looked on the gun as supernatural, and anything as mundane as ammunition for it was as foreign to his mind as the stars.

There might be one more blast left, he reasoned, and gave it to Aevlyn.

It was dark now, and the three moons of Klarn swam slowly into the sky. Red fires dotted the stone plateau before the mesa, where Darksiders squatted or sat, eating. On the mesa, men hastily bolted food and ran back to the entrance, drying their weapons. There was no concerted night attack; there was worse, for soon the arrows began to arch among them. Biting into leg and arm and chest, at random, the steel-tipped shafts scattered the men, which sword and axe could not do. Soon they were all huddled behind the uplifting rocks at the mesa-edge, where the shafts could not follow.

A surprise attack caught a faceful of defending blades, and broke away, as a wave from the seawall.

Dawn found the men of Moornal bloody and weary, but the hot sunlight drove new strength into hack-weary arms and they met each new attack with cries of scorn and defiance. Flane was everywhere: standing for long hours in the pass, his sword singing; encouraging his men by the magical slaughter of his blade, slapping them on backs, encouraging, cajoling, commanding....

All day and all night they made their stand. Baked by the day and frozen by the night, they grew gaunt and haggard, as lean as hunting wolves, and as dangerous. Men did not talk on the mesa now. They lifted lips in silent snarls. They cast dark glances from under lowering brows. Their hands grew used to the hilt of sword and the haft of lance. Some could scarcely unbend their fingers long enough to eat.

Of the lot, Flane looked most wolfish. His black hair drooped untended, loose on his shoulders. His uniform was cut and torn, disclosing blooded skin, brown flesh ripped by axe and sword-edge. But his muscles still rolled as before, and the blade in his hand was a portal to beyond for any who came face to point with it.

Aevlyn slept close to him during the night, tending the wounds received during the day. Under hot sunlight she was always at his call, with water and with cheer, for the men who were most in need of either.

On the next day, the Darksiders withdrew in order, going down the ramp and assembling on the flat plateau. Flane leaned on his sword and stared out over their heads, at a horseman who spurred his mount across the tumbled rocks, lifting him in a jump.

"A _meknik_," Flane rasped, spitting. "Now the All-High must indeed be smiling, for the fates could have no worse in store for us. They have come to join the Darksiders."

A man, naked to the waist and bearing a broken lance in his hand as a stabbing spear, laughed gutturally, "Good! I've wanted to take a few of them with me when I went."

Flane smiled mirthlessly, "You'll have your wish, if the water holds out."

He looked around, biting his lips. The axes and swords and arrows of the Darksiders had been busy. Of the original forty who dropped to the mesa, there were but six who stood erect; and of them, one was a woman. Harth lay shorn from shoulder to navel on the rocks below. He had met his hero's death. All of them were wounded. Even Aevlyn had a red rag wrapped about an arm. Flane breathed harshly.

They had made a stand, they had!

_Aie!_ Let the harpers tell of this battle!

* * * * *

Flane glanced at his blade. It was chined and nicked, and hung by a needle of steel to the hilt. Laughing shortly, he tapped it against a lip of rock and watched it drop onto the stones below. He went and drew the blue-hilted sword from the ornate scabbard and shook it in the air.

"By the dead hand that held you, you'll quench your thirst this day, you blue beauty!" he howled.

The _mekniks_ were pouring onto the rocky plain now, and the Darksiders greeted them with cries of delight. Beside Flane, Aevlyn said bitterly, "Thousands more against us!"

Flane laughed, "The odds even, darling!"

He rested on his blade, watching the big blonde Darksider who led most of the attacks with a gnarled club in his hand, walk toward them. Two _mekniks_ paced at his side.

"Surrender, Flane of Klarn," the blonde said. "We offer safe conduct to you all."

Flane laughed in his face.

"The _mekniks_ would never let me live, Darksider," he replied. "Better a death in the open air than a dagger under the ribs on a dark night while I sleep."

He saw the _mekniks_ scowl at him. The Darksider said, "We will come and take you!"

"Then come, club-swinger! My sword whispers to me that it wants to look beneath your skin."

The club-bearer waved an arm, and archers trotted forward, to form a circle around him. The Darksider waved at the mesa, crying, "Sweep that spot for me. The time for play has ended!"

* * * * *

Flane went white. This was what he dreaded--a flight of war-arrows to keep the passage clear while the Darksiders attacked. In the press of battle the archers could not fire, for their arrows would fell their own men as well as defenders. But with an arrow storm to clear the way, and then an attack in force--

"Fall back!" he shouted.

The arrows whistled, coming at them. Some broke against rock uprights, some dropped and skidded along the mesa floor. One or two found flesh and dead men fell, to fight no more.

Flane whispered, "Four left. Four and Aevlyn."

With his red left arm, he shoved her behind him, blue-hilted sword deflecting an arrow. Slowly he backed against the sheer gorge. A man dropped at his feet, the arrow still humming in his back. Another man, caught by a thrown spear, slipped over the edge of the gorge, and plunged downward, screaming.

Flane and the man standing beside him looked at each other and chuckled grimly.

"It was a good fight, Flane."

"We stood them off two days and a night," agreed Flane. "They'll put us in their legends, the Darksiders will. They like brave men."

The man laughed, "As a ghost I'll come to their winter campfires and listen to their bards extolling us. It will be a reward, in a way."

Club in hand, the blonde Darksider was leaping toward them, a line of axemen and archers at his back. Before them the Darksiders saw two men, and a girl with hair the color of a sunset. In her white hands she held the violet-gun. The two men were bloody and fierce, unshaven, in rags. Swords glimmered in their hands as they stood waiting. They had fought well, but the time for play was over.

"Take them," cried the club-bearer.

But Flane astounded them by coming in himself, bent low, right arm up and swinging. His blade came and went, and where it had been, the knees of a dying man buckled. Uniform in tatters, brown skin dyed red, he was a miracle of speed and sureness--and slaughter.

Behind him Aevlyn watched, dangerous as a tigress whose kittens are threatened. The violet-gun came up, covering Flane's back.

Men drove in for that unprotected back, daggers lifted. The violet-gun belched once, and then it died. But that once was enough. The lavender fire sizzled and flared, and it ate up the men and their weapons. But Flane had already whirled, and his sword stabbed out, toward the purple flame.

The blade swam in the amethyst mist; glowed brightly, shimmering with opalescent hues. With staring eyes, Flane watched the steel dissipate into drifting powder.

He held half a sword in his hand.

A cry of alarm broke from the lips of the Darksiders. They eyed the half-blade, mouths open in awe. From guard and pommel it coruscated blazing whiteness as the sun caught at the seven globes inside the blue stuff. Like suns those points of whiteness glittered ... _like stars_!

"The prophecy!" howled the Darksiders.

"He bears the stars in his hand!"

"He holds the key to the Machine!"

The blonde Darksider stared at him, frowning. He let the club fall until its knotted end hit the stone.

"Is it true, Flane of Klarn?" he whispered. "Is that sword the key to the Machine, as the prophecy has said?"

Flane looked at the sword, at the blue hilt with its blazing pinpricks of light, at the diamond-shaped blade that was half a blade, now--

It was the truth!

The diamond blade was key to the Machine! Fool, fool, not to have guessed! Its diamond shape, and the star-formed guard, and the dead body beneath the spaceship: the Keeper, of course! The stars in the hilt for the prophecy, and the blade for the key!

"Yes," he cried hoarsely, "oh, All-Highest, yes!"

The blonde Darksider dropped the club and knelt before Flane, lowering his head. A great rustling was heard, as the other Darksiders knelt with him. Only the _mekniks_ drew aside, muttering.

"You are him for whom the Darksiders have prayed, year in and year out," he said. "You are the saviour who is to come, to unite Darksider and Klarnvan. You bear the key!"

Flane heard Aevlyn sobbing behind him, as he lifted the sword and stared at it. He felt like weeping, too. For the diamond-shaped blade was only half a blade, now. The violet fire had eaten it up. The key to the Machine was in his hand at last, but it was a ruined key!

The Darksider was bowing and saying, "I swear fealty to the bearer of the sun-starred sword, for he shall be my Keeper."

Behind him the others roared out the ancient oath, their voices lifting triumphantly.

"By the grip that plunges home the blade, by the hand that is turned away to ward off evil, by the voice of the Machine, I swear my oath and pledge my faith. I am obedient. I am true. I am his who bears the sword!"

The rolling echo of the oath was swept into silence, but still Flane stared at the broken sword in his hand.

A ruined key!

_There was no hope, now!_

Flane stood with legs apart and flung his head to the blue sky and howled his laughter like a madman, until froth grew in the corners of his mouth, and tears rolled down his cheeks....