The Fabulous Riverboat

Then an arrow went through his left arm, and a man braver, or more foolhardy, than the rest stepped under bis ax and thrust a rapier into his thigh. The butt end of the shaft came back and broke his jaw and then the reversed ax severed his head. Joe could still walk, but he was losing blood fast. Sam ordered him to retreat to the other side of the hill, where the badly wounded were being treated.

Joe said, "No! I ain't going!" and he fell to his knees with a groan.

"Get back there! That's an order!" Sam screamed, and he ducked, though it was too late, as a bullet whistled by his ear and smashed to bits against the side of an irontree. Some of the plastic must have ricocheted; he felt a stinging in his arm and calf.

Joe managed to heave himself up, like a sick elephant, and shambled off. Cyrano de Bergerac appeared from the darkness; he was covered with gunpowder smoke and streaked with blood. He held the basket hilt of a long, thin, bloody rapier in one hand and a pistol in the other. Behind him, equally dirty and bloody, her long dark hair loose behind her, was Livy, She carried a pistol and a bag of ammunition, and her function was to reload the pistols. Seeing Sam, she smiled, her teeth white in the powderblackened face.

"My God, Sam! I thought you were dead! That rocket against your house... !" "I wish you were behind me in this," he said.

That was all he had time to say, though he would not have said anything more, whatever the case. The enemy came back in another charge, slipping and sliding up over the piles of the fallen or leaping over them. The bowmen by then were out of ammunition, and the pistoleers had only a few more charges. But the enemy had about expended its powder too, though it had more arrows.

Joe Miller was gone, but Cyrano de Bergerac tried to make up for it and came close to doing so. The man was a demon, seemingly as thin and as flexible and as swift as the rapier he wielded. From time to time, he shot the pistol with his left hand into an opponent's face and then lunged with the rapier, thrusting into another. He would toss the gun behind him, and Livy would stoop and pick it up and reload. Sam thought, briefly, of what a change had come about in Livy. He had never suspected her potentiality for action under conditions like these. That frail, often sickly, violence-loathing woman was coolly performing duties that many men would have run from.

Among them me, he thought, if I had any time to think about it.

And especially now that Joe Miller was not by his side to protect him physically and to give him moral support, both of which he needed badly.

Cyrano thrust beneath a shield which a shrieking Wahhabi Arab lifted too high in his frenzy, and then Livy, seeing that she had to do it, that Cyrano could not, held the pistol in both hands and fired. The hammer made the barrel swerve, she brought it back into line, smoke and flame spurted out, and an Arab fell back with his shoulder torn off.

A massively built Negro leaped over the body with his ax raised in both hands and Cyrano, withdrawing the blade from the first man before he hit the ground, ran the axman through the adam's apple.

Then the enemy retreated down the hill again. But now they waited while the big dark-gray amphibian, like a Merrimac on wheels, huffed toward them. Lothar von Richthofen pushed against Sam who stepped aside when he saw the aluminum-alloy tube and the rocket with its ten-pound warhead. A man knelt while Lothar loaded the rocket into the bazooka and then aimed it. Lothar was very good at this, and the rocket sailed down, its fiery arc ending against the front of the amphibian, its bull's eye the single beam of light in its nose. Smoke covered it, and then the wind carried that away. The amphibian had stopped, but it came on now, its turrets turning and the steam guns lifting.

"Well, that was the last one," Lothar said. "We might as well get to hell out of here. We can't fight that. Who should know better than we, heh?"

The enemy was re-forming behind the armored vehicle. Many of them were uttering the ululating cries which the Ulmaks, the pre-Amerinds across The River, made during charges. Apparently, Hacking had enlisted those Ulmaks not yet conquered by Iyeyasu.

Suddenly, Sam could not see as well. Only the fires from the burning houses and from the open hearths and smelters, which were still operating, enabled him to see anything at all. The rain clouds had come as swiftly as they always did, like wolves chasing the stars, and within a few minutes it would rain savagely.

He looked around him. Every attack had thi

There was still fighting going on to the north and the south on the plains and the hills along the plains. But the shooting and the cries had lessened.

The plains seemed to be darker than ever with the enemy.

He wondered if Publiujo and Tifonujo had joined the invasion.

He took a last look at the giant hull of the Riverboat with its two paddle-wheels, half hidden beneath the scaffolding and behind the colossal cranes. Then he turned. He felt like weeping, but he was too numbed. It would be some time before the tears would come.

It was more likely that his blood would run out before then, after which there would be no tears. Not in this body, anyway.

Guided by the fires of a dozen scattered huts, he stumbled down the other side. Then the rains smashed down. And, at the same tune, a tentacle of the enemy ran toward them from the left. Sam turned and pulled the trigger of his flintlock, and the rain, of course, drowned out the spark. But the enemy's pistols were also rendered useless, except as clubs.

They came at the Parolandanoj with their swords and spears and axes. Joe Miller lunged forward, growling with a voice as deep as a cave bear's. Though wounded, he was still a formidable and terrifying fighter. By the flashes of lightning and the rumbling of thunder, his ax cut them down. The others jumped in to help him, and in a few seconds the Soul Citizen survivors decided they had had enough. They would run off and wait for reinforcements. Why get killed now when victory was theirs?

Sam climbed two more hills. The enemy attacked from the right. A wing had broken through and raced on ahead to cut down the men and take the women captive. Joe Miller and Cyrano met them, and the attackers ran away, slipping and sliding through the wet roots of the cutaway grass.

Sam counted the survivors. He was shaken. There were about fifteen. Where had they all gone? He would have sworn that at least a hundred had been with him when he ordered them to cut and run for it.

Livy was still close behind Cyrano. Since the guns were no good now, she kept at Cyrano's back and helped him with a spear thrust when she could.

Sam was cold and wet. And he was as miserable as Napoleon must have been on the retreat from Russia. All, all gone! His proud little nation and its nickel-iron mines and its factories and its invulnerable amphibians with their steam guns and its two airplanes and the fabulous Riverboat! All gone! The technological triumphs and marvels and the Magna Carta with the most democratic constitution any country had ever known and the goal of the greatest journey ever to be made! All gone! And how? Through treachery, base treachery!

At least, King John had not been part of the betrayal. His palace had been demolished and he along with it, in all probability. The Great Betrayer had been betrayed.

Sam quit grieving then. He was still too frozen with the terror of battle to think much about anything except survival. When they got to the base of the mountain, he led them north along it until they were opposite the dam. A lake about a quarter of a mile long and a half a mile wide was before them. They cut down along it, coming after a while to a thick concrete wall across the top of which they walked. Then they were on top of the dam itself.