“Etienne,” Lyra said gently, “you’re not thinking clearly. You never do when you lose your temper.”
“So enlighten me.”
“This town lies just over the ridge ahead.” She stared meaningfully at the hydrofoil.
Realization brought embarrassment with it, though the Tsla did not perceive it. “Just ahead. We have plenty of battery power and we don’t have to lift too high.” Lyra nodded, turned to the Tsla. “These ice demons. They wouldn’t happen to be the Na, would they?”
“What other demons of the ice are there? I thought thee knew.” Tyl gestured toward the boat with his snout. “Thee will use thy spirit boat to help us?”
“To help you, yes, and ourselves, since we have to get it into Jakaie somehow. You know what to do?” Tyl nodded and moved with the porters to climb aboard. The Redowls followed.
“You wanted to see this legendary third race, the one that inhabits the Guntali,” Etienne reminded her as they mounted the ladder. “Looks like you’re going to have your chance.”
“I’m not sure I like the circumstances, but it doesn’t appear we have much say in the matter.”
They checked out the boat’s systems carefully. It had been several days since the repellers had been used. But the hydrofoil lifted easily off the ground and started forward on its cushion of air. The wooden platform hung beneath the hull, the huge heavy wheels spinning aimlessly. Bindings groaned but held.
Jakaie had better be as close as the Brul had indicated, Lyra thought as she guided them toward the notch in the rocks. Otherwise they’d have to squat down somewhere until the cells recharged the batteries.
Jakaie was built into a flank of Aracunga. The architecture was similar to Turput’s but much heavier construction seemed to be the rule. The buildings boasted fewer windows. At that altitude the Tsla needed to conserve heat.
Off to the north lay irrigated fields filled with soil laboriously collected from notches and arroyos where it had gathered. The wall was the most obvious difference between Jakaie and Turput. It was an impressive wall; a good six or seven meters high but not especially thick.
Apparently Jakaie was high enough for creatures of the Guntali to mix with those of the Tsla ecological zone. Including, it seemed, the Na. He tried to visualize the Na in his mind’s eye, using variations of the Mai-Tsla pattern—a bipedal, mammalian type. And that much was true. But the ways in which the new form diverged from those previously encountered caused the small hairs on the back of his neck to tense.
Several gates broke the town wall and no more than two dozen Na battered away at the largest. That two dozen Na would take on an entire town said more for their ferocity and disposition than all the fears expressed by the Brul.
Jakaie was large enough to harbor anywhere from five hundred to a thousand inhabitants, all of whom not only were on the defensive but appeared to be losing the battle. Tsla bodies were visible outside the wall. There was no sign of dead Na though one individual did sit some distance away from the fight. A big male, it was festooned with spears and arrows and was busily engaged in plucking them from his body as if they were so many bee stings.
As they watched from the straining hydrofoil, the gate gave way under the steady pounding from rocks and small trees. The Tsla inside scattered as the Na rushed in among them, and screams of terror pierced the clear mountain air. “Thee must hurry, Learned Ones, or many will die!” Swd called from the foredeck.
“We’re moving as fast as we can,” Etienne told him through the speaker membrane. “This boat wasn’t designed for rapid travel out of the water.”
Many primitives would have paused at the sight of so alien an object as the flying boat coming toward them. Not the Na. Either they did not possess sufficient imagination to be fearful of strange new shapes or else they were too confident in their own irresistible strength. A few bellowed in the hydrofoil’s direction as it crossed over the wall, but the assault continued.
The hydrofoil bucked and rolled uneasily as they began to pass over homes and streets. It wasn’t designed to compensate for such uneven terrain. Everyone aboard was glad when Etienne finally set the boat down in a parklike area near the center of Jakaie. A few anxious faces, flexible snouts aquiver, peeked out at them from shuttered windows and portholes. The noise of fighting could be heard clearly. Etienne checked his pistol as Lyra urged him to hurry. “What, in a rush to shoot some more natives?” he chided her. “How are you going to justify that in your report?”
“If this town’s devastated we won’t be able to find the help we’ll need to get us down to the river again.”
“What makes you think the Tsla here have any interest in helping us? This isn’t Turput.” He scrambled down the boarding ladder.
“Because we’re going to endear ourselves to them by helping to repel this attack. Not that I wouldn’t help them anyway.” She started toward the broken gate and he had to hurry to keep up with her.
Anxious to protect her precious Tsla, he mused. But she was right about one thing: they’d do it if they had to or not. Tyl and the porters had become more than natives during the journey Upriver from Turput. They’d become friends.
Tyl and the three porters were offered arms by oldsters and adolescents. Only Homat did not accompany the reinforcements. He remained with the hydrofoil because between his bulky clothing and the temperature he’d have been useless in a fight.
It was not as if they hadn’t encountered violence on Tslamaina before Jakaie, but it was still a shock to stumble onto the decapitated body of a female Tsla lying in the street. The head was nowhere around and the sounds of combat were very close.
After the Na broke through, the Tsla retreated to their strong buildings to harry the invaders with spears and arrows. Etienne and his party rounded the side of one such structure and halted only a few meters from a cluster of ten or twelve farmers who were trapped against the wall by a pair of Na. The farmers were holding the attackers off with long pikes and sharp tools, yet it was apparent that if something wasn’t done quickly the Na would pick them apart one by one.
Etienne had no time to admire Tyl’s bravery as their guide darted forward, weaving with the waddling gait of his kind, to cut at the leg of one Na with a curved blade. It did not penetrate the leathery skin very deeply and he had to retreat in a hurry, leaving his weapon behind.
But the Na had felt it, grunted, muttered something unintelligible, then reached down to pluck the weapon from its ankle. The creature was four meters tall and covered with a thick, shaggy pelt. Its clothing was crude—heavy sandals of some unknown leather, a leathery vest and breastplate, and a kilt of some similar material. A bone knife hung from a cord tied around the waist, the blade almost as tall as Lyra. As its main weapon, the Na clutched a club which had once been a tree of respectable size. It was panting heavily and a dark tongue lolled from a corner of its mouth. That made sense. An inhabitant of the Guntali would have little use for sweat glands.
Without a word Etienne moved to his left, Lyra to the right. As he ran he fired. Thick hair was burned black on the back of a pillarlike thigh. The Na howled and turned its attention away from the desperate farmers.
The creature’s forehead was very low and its blunt snout seemed incapable of advanced expression, but there was no mistaking that snarl of hatred. It displayed four canines, two upper, two lower. The remaining front teeth appeared to have been filed to sharp points. One did not have to be an experienced biologist to realize the Na did not exist on a diet of vegetables.
It uttered something in words of single syllables as it brought the massive club down faster than Etienne would have guessed possible. He dove wildly behind a small wagon piled high with some kind of vegetation. The club made kindling of the wagon and splinters bit at Etienne’s exposed face. As he rolled to his feet he thought suddenly, What am I doing here? I should be behind a desk at a university, grumbling over sophomoric student reports and wondering who’s going to show at the next faculty get-together.
There was no time for regretful contemplation. The club swung parallel to the pavement and he heard it whoosh as he ducked and it missed the top of his skull by centimeters. Then a big hand was reaching for him, six treelike fingers with hooked nails at the tips.
He stumbled backward, away from that menacing grasp, firing as he fell. The bolt passed between the forefinger and first thumb to strike the Na in the left eye. It let out a thunderous howl, dropped the club and fell to its knees, shaking violently. The Na was dead by the time it hit the ground.
Etienne tried to rejoin his companions, only to find his path blocked by the other Na. It charged forward and brought its own club down with both hands. Etienne barely missed being pulped by diving behind a nearby wall.
Freed of the need to ward off two attackers, the farmers fanned out behind the survivor. Pikes and spears and scythes stabbed and cut at muscles and tendons. The Na roared and bellowed, frustrated in its attempt to locate the snoutless Tsla who had slain his companion. As a great tendon was finally cut, the beast fell to one knee swinging the club in a wide arc to kill a pair of Tsla who’d closed too quickly.
But now that the Na was down it no longer seemed so massive or invulnerable. Etienne took careful aim and fired at the base of the skull. The bone was so thick that it prevented the charge from penetrating to the spine, but the shock was sufficient to temporarily paralyze the creature and send it tumbling the rest of the way to the street.
It did his heart good, though Lyra would surely not have approved, to watch the peaceful, philosophic Tsla jump all over the body and start hacking it to pieces. Knowing that his help was needed elsewhere, he left the surviving farmers to their butchery.
He needn’t have worried. The Na were in full retreat, harried by the persistent townsfolk. He spotted Yulour atop a crop-loading ramp and climbed up beside him.
“You don’t fight here, Yulour?”
“No, Learned One,” said the slow-witted porter. “I want to help, but Teacher Tyl tell me no. He say, I would only end up hurting myself.”
