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terrible force. Great claws shredded membranous wings, beaks nipped away
antennae and skulls, while tiny swords cut with incredible skill.
It took a moment for Jon-Tom and his friends to identify
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THE HOUR OF THE GATS
the new combatants, cloaked as they were by the concealing night. It was the
size of the great glowing eyes that soon gave the answer.
"The Ironclouders," Caz finally announced. "Bless my soul but I never thought
to see the like. Look at them wheel and bank, will you? It's no contest."
The word was passed up and down the ranks. So entranced were the warmlanders
by the sight of these fighting legends that some of them temporarily forgot
their own defensive tasks and thus were wounded or killed.
The inhabitants of the hematite were better equipped for night fighting than
any of the warmlanders save the few bats.
The previously unrelenting aerial assault of the Plated Folk was shattered.
Fragmented insect bodies began to fall from the sky. The only reaction this
grisly rain produced among the warmlanders beneath it was morbid laughter.
By morning the destruction was nearly complete. What remained of the Plated
Folk aerial strength had retreated far up the Pass.
A general council was held atop the wall. For the first time
in days the warmlanders were filled with optimism. Even the suspicious
Clothahump was forced to admit that the tide of battle seemed to have turned.
"Could we not use these newfound friends as did the
Plated Folk?" one of the officers suggested. "Could we not employ them to drop
our own troops to the rear of the enemy forces?"
"Why stop there?" wondered one of the exhilarated bird officers, a
much-decorated hawk in light armor and violet and red kilt. "Why not drop them
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in Cugluch itself? That would panic them!"
"No," said Aveticus carefully. "Our people are not pre-
pared for such an adventure, and despite their size I do not think our owlish
allies have the ability to carry more than a
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Alan Dean Foster
single rider, even assuming they would consent to such a
\ proposition, which I do not think they would.
"But I do not think they would object to duplicating the actions of the Plated
Folk fliers in assailing opposing ground
forces. As our own can now do."
So the orders went out from the staff to their own fliers and thence to those
from Ironcloud. It was agreed. Wearing dark goggles to shield their sensitive
eyes from the sun, the owls and lemurs led the rejuvenated warmlander
arboreals in dive after dive upon the massed, confused ranks of the Plated
Folk army. The result was utter disorientation among the insect soldiers. But
they still refused to collapse, though the losses
they suffered were beginning to affect even so immense an army.
And when victory seemed all but won it was lost in a single heartrending and
completely unexpected noise. A sound shocking and new to the warmlanders, who
had never heard anything quite like it before. It was equally shocking but not
new to Flor and Jon-Tom. Though not personally exposed to
it, they recognized quickly enough the devastating thunder of dynamite.
As the dust began to settle among cries of pain and fear, there came a second,
deeper, more ominous rumble as the entire left side of the Jo-Troom wall
collapsed in a heap of
shattered masonry and stone. It brought the great wooden gates down with it,
supporting timbers splintering like fire-
crackers as they crashed to the ground.
"Diversion," muttered Flor. "The aerial attack, the para-
chutists, the beetles... all a diversion. Bastardos; I should have remembered
my military history classes."
Jon-Tom moved shakily to the edge of the wall. If they'd
been on the other side of the Gate they'd all be dead or maimed now.
Small white shapes were beginning to emerge from the
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THE HOUR Or THK GATE
ground in front of the ruined wall. Waving picks and short swords they cut at
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the legs of startled warmlander soldiers.
Like the inhabitants of Ironcloud they too wore dark goggles to protect them
from the sunlight.
"Termites," Jon-Tom murmured aloud, "and other insect burrowers. But where did
they get the explosives?"
"Little need to think on that, boy," Clothahump said sadly.
"More of Eejakrat's work. What did you call the packaged thunder?"
"Explosives. Probably dynamite."
"Or even gelignite," added Flor with suppressed anger.
"That was an intense explosion."
Sensing victory, the Plated Folk ignored the depradations of the swooping
arboreals overhead and swarmed forward. Nor could the hectic casting of spears
and nets by the Weavers hold them back. Not with the wall, the fabled ancient
bottle-
neck, tumbled to the earth like so many child's blocks.
It must have taken an immense quantity of explosives to undermine that massive
wall. It was possible, Jon-Tom mused, that the Plated burrowers had begun [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]