The Overlords of War (6 page)

Instinctively Corson straightened to attention. But he was grotesquely aware of the unmilitary nature of his dress. And of the situation. He and Veran were no more than ghosts at this point in time. As for Antonella, she had not yet been bom.

“Lieutenant,” he said in a dull voice.

“I promote you captain,” Veran said solemnly, “by virtue of the authority bestowed on me by His Serene Highness the Ptar of Murphy!”

His voice became relatively cordial as he added, “Of course you’ll be made a field marshal when we’ve won the war. For the moment I can’t grant you a rank higher than captain because you’ve served in a foreign army. Speaking of which, you must be very pleased to have found a proper army again, a bunch of tough and reliable men. The short time you’ve spent by yourself on this world can’t have been much fun for you.”

Leaning close to Corson, he spoke in a lower tone.

“Do you think I could pick up any recruits on this planet? I could do with about a million men. And I’ll also need two hundred thousand pegasones. We can still save Aergistal!”

“I don’t doubt it,” Corson said. “But what’s a pegasone?”

“Our mounts, Captain Corson!” With an expansive gesture Veran indicated the eight Monsters.

“Oh, I have some great projects in mind, Captain,” he went on. “Great projects! I’m sure you’ll want to join me. In fact, after I’ve retaken Aergistal, what I plan to do is land on Naphur, take possession of the arsenals there, and dethrone that lousy crot the Ptar of Murphy!”

“To be quite candid,” Corson said, “I can’t see you finding many recruits on this planet. As for pegasones, though . . . Well, there’s one roaming around in the forest, but it’s completely wild.”

“Wonderful!” Veran said. He took off his helmet. His scalp had been shaved; now the hair was starting to grow again, it looked like a pincushion. His gray eyes, very deep-set, made Corson think of hard stones. His face was brown with a lifelong tan, crossed here and there by the marks of old scars. His hands were hidden by gauntlets of shiny flexible metal.

“Let me have your gun, if you please, Captain Corson,” he said.

Corson hesitated a moment. Then he offered the weapon butt-first to Veran, who took it with a brusque gesture. He looked it over, weighed it in his hand, and smiled.

“No more than a toy!”

He seemed to ponder awhile. Then he tossed it back to Corson who, taken by surprise, almost dropped it.

“In view of your rank and the signal service you performed for us, I think I can let you keep it. It goes without saying that it will be useless except against our enemies. But as I’m afraid it may not be enough to protect you, I’ll assign you two of my men.”

He beckoned, and two soldiers wearing light metal collars tramped forward and stood to attention.

“From now on you’re under the orders of Captain Corson here. Make certain he doesn’t fall into an ambush if he leaves the camp perimeter. And as to this hostage of his—”

“She will remain my responsibility, Colonel,” Corson cut in.

Veran’s hard eyes rested on him for a second.

“For the time being that is doubtless preferable. Just make sure she’s not allowed to wander around the camp. I don’t like breaches of discipline. Good, you may go.”

The two soldiers flanking Corson spun on their heels. Helpless, he copied them, giving Antonella a shove for the sake of appearances. They started to march away.

“Captain!”

The harsh voice of Veran stopped them short. It was tinged with sarcasm.

“I must say I wouldn’t have expected to find a soldier of your caliber so . . . sentimental! I’ll see you tomorrow.”

They moved on. The soldiers walked like robots, their rhythmical paces showing how their discipline was surviving their fatigue. Unconsciously Corson fell into step. He had no illusions about his status, despite his weapon and his escort—or rather because of them. He was a prisoner.

The soldiers led them toward a group of gray tents which men were setting up with brisk well-drilled movements. Beforehand, they had carefully sterilized the surface of the clearing. The dry ground was covered with a thin carpet of ash. Where the Ptar of Murphy’s troops had passed, grass must have a lot of trouble growing again.

One of the soldiers lifted the flap of a tent which had already been guyed and indicated that they were to enter. Inside, the furniture was basic. Inflatable chairs surrounded a metal plate floating on air which served as a table. Two narrow bunks completed the list. But the sparseness of this setting made Corson feel more at ease than the luxury of ornate Dyoto.

He let his mind wander for a moment. How would the inhabitants of Uria react to this invasion? Although Veran’s troops were few in number, it was certain they would meet with no serious resistance. Naturally, by one means or another the news would reach the

Council in the future, but they had no army. Perhaps they had already been wiped out. Question: how could a government survive in the future when the past it sprang from had been effectively annihilated? The Urians might never have considered that problem, but it looked as though they were going to find out the answer even before they realized it was a problem. In some ways this immediate threat overshadowed the menace of the Monsters which Veran’s civilization appeared to have tamed under the name of—what was it?—“pegasones.”

And here was something else far too extraordinary to be a coincidence. Veran had popped out of nowhere, claimed to know him, and said he needed two hundred thousand pegasones. In less than six months, if he managed to catch the offspring of the Monster which Corson himself had helped to dump on Uria, he would have eighteen thousand of them. In less than a year he could have even more than he was asking for. Under favorable conditions Monsters reproduced rapidly, and took only months to reach full growth.

No, there wasn’t a chance in a billion that Veran had arrived here by accident. But why should he need a wild pegasone?

Ah! Maybe because . . .

Maybe tame pegasones couldn’t reproduce? Back on Earth, long ago, oxen had been used for pulling carts and plows. Thanks to a minor operation, they were far more docile than a normal bull, which was a ferocious beast. It would account for everything very neatly if Veran’s pegasones had undergone some similar treatment. Certainly it would explain why he needed a wild—undoctored—Monster.

At last Corson turned his attention back to Antonella. She had sat down on one of the inflatable chairs. She was staring at her hands. Flat on the metal plate, they were trembling slightly. Now she glanced up and waited for him to say something.

He sat down opposite her. Her face was drawn, but she was showing no sign of panic. Altogether she was behaving much better than he had expected.

“There’s a good chance that someone’s eavesdropping on us,” he began abruptly. “I’ll say this to you anyway. Colonel Veran strikes me as a reasonable type. This planet needs to be put to rights. I’m sure nothing will happen to you so long as you respect his authority, and mine. Moreover your presence may be useful to his plans.”

He hoped she understood that he was not betraying her and that he would do all he could to get them out of this with whole skins, but that he could not say anything else for the time being. Veran would have other matters on his mind apart from spying on them, but he was not the sort of person to take risks. If Corson had found himself in Veran’s shoes, he would certainly have bugged this tent.

A soldier lifted the entrance flap and cast a suspicious eye around the interior. A second wordlessly brought in two platters and set them on the table. Corson recognized their contents at once; military rations had scarcely changed. After a couple of false starts he showed Antonella how to heat the cans by breaking a seal and then how to open them without burning her fingers. Cutlery was built into the cans, and he ate with a good appetite. To his great surprise Antonella copied him without hesitation. He was beginning to develop a certain respect for these Urian civilians.

Naturally their precog talent must help them to keep their heads. It warned them of imminent danger, so perhaps they could cause Veran’s soldiers more trouble than they were expecting.

Having finished his meal, Corson rose. He made for the exit, but glanced back at Antonella before leaving.

“I’m going to take a turn around the camp and see if Colonel Veran’s principles of site defense agree with what I was taught. Maybe my experience will be useful to him. Don’t leave this tent on any account. Don’t show yourself, even. Don’t turn in before I get back. The—ah—necessary conveniences are under the bunks. I won’t be gone for more than an hour.”

She looked at him without speaking. He tried to read from her expression whether she had mistaken his intentions. He failed. If she was pretending, then she deserved an acting prize.

As though they had been waiting for him, the two soldiers were standing by the exit. He stepped forward and let the flap fall without provoking the least reaction.

“I’m going to tour the campsite,” he said in an arrogant tone.

Instantly one of the soldiers clicked his heels and fell in at his side. Discipline was plainly well in force among Veran’s men. That reassured him about Antonella’s immediate fate. This camp was on a war footing and the commander would not let his control slacken by a single notch. He had acted sensibly in forbidding Antonella to move around the camp and leaving her in Corson’s charge. He had other concerns than erecting a prison for a single captive. Besides, the sight of a woman might cause trouble with the rank and file. If he hadn’t hoped to make use of her, Veran would have liquidated Antonella right away. Later, when the camp was properly secure and the men were off duty, it would be a different matter.

Corson drove away that unpleasant thought and looked about him. The blackened soil of the clearing formed a circle several hundred meters across. Around the perimeter soldiers were hammering in stakes and linking them together with a glittering wire. An alarm system? Corson decided not. The men who were unreeling the wire wore heavy insulated clothing. So it must be a defensive barrier, then —and, despite its apparent fragility, no doubt a formidable one.

About a hundred tents occupied most of the space this enclosed. Corson searched with his eyes for a tent larger than the rest, or flying a command pennant, but in vain. Veran’s headquarters post was indistinguishable from the tents of his men.

A little farther on, a dull vibration made the soles of his feet tingle. Veran must be digging out an underground refuge. No doubt of it: this man knew his job.

On the far side of the clearing Corson counted twenty-seven pegasones. Judging by the number of tents, Veran had about six hundred men with him. If the rank of colonel was to be taken in the same sense as it had been in Corson’s time, at the start of his campaign Veran would have had a force of between ten and a hundred thousand. Aergistal must really have been a disaster. The 623rd Cavalry Regiment of the Ptar of Murphy must have been virtually wiped out. Veran must have displayed inhuman determination to reestablish control over the survivors and make them set up this camp as though nothing had happened. And he must be possessed of phenomenal ambition—to say nothing of limitless arrogance—if he thought of continuing the fight.

The fact that he was letting Corson inspect his defenses unhindered indicated pretty clearly the type of man he was. So did his expressed intention to muster a million men and enlist them in his phantom army. Was he bluffing? Perhaps. Unless he had unsuspected resources. Which brought Corson to a question he was astonished at having neglected for so long.

Whom had Veran been fighting against at Aergistal?

The pegasones were not hobbled, but they remained so absolutely still that from a short distance they could have been mistaken for the stumps of enormous multicolored trees. Their six great paws, each ending in six fingers, looked like roots. The eyes which encircled their bodies halfway up, a little above Corson’s head, shone only with a wan and fleeting light. Now and then one of them uttered a little plaintive cry, followed by a grunt like a pig’s. One might have thought that they were chewing the cud. They had nothing in common with the wild beast which Corson had been trying to study before the destruction of the Archimedes. On their flanks, a complicated harness had left deep scars, as though a hot iron had been seared into tree bark.

How could they be mounted? At first sight no part of their bodies seemed adapted for a saddle. And how many men could each of them carry? Veran’s demands suggested a rough guide: a million men, two hundred thousand pegasones ... So one of these beasts could cany at least four men and their equipment. And what part would they play in combat? Up to now it hadn’t occurred to Corson to think of any other function except that of assault vehicles. Their mobility and their primitive ferocity would make them ideal for a ground battle. Their ability to foresee the immediate future and to move a second

away in time would make them targets almost impossible to hit. But these pegasones which Corson was looking at scarcely seemed to be fierce. He would have sworn, too, that they were completely without intelligence, the reverse of the wild specimen wandering the forests of this planet in search of an ideal spot to reproduce.

The use of a living steed in warfare was not an idea unknown to Corson. During the Earth-Uria war, on worlds that were being fought over, he had run across barbarian allies of the Terrestrials who rode reptiles, hippogriffs, or even giant spiders. But he was himself more accustomed to a mechanized army. What surprised him here was the coexistence of an advanced technology and animal steeds. What sort of terrain had they fought over at Aergistal?

He couldn’t imagine. If only planets had names which described them! Perhaps this mysterious world was rocky, a place of peaks and precipices bathed in a steely light. But it could just as well be a planet of green and smiling valleys. For a brief moment he had wondered whether the name might simply designate another part of Uria itself, but both Antonella and Floria had insisted that no war had even involved Uria for a thousand-odd years, let alone been fought on its surface.