Ice Dragon

There were nearly thirty of the soldiers gathered in the clearing around Leyndt and Blade now, and footsteps audible even over their undisciplined chatter told of more coming. Blade knew that if he could somehow get loose, there would be enough soldiers to get in each other's way, and if he could only get hold of a beamer, he would leave a sizable hole in the Conciliator force before they brought him down. And he could give Leyndt a quick, merciful death instead of watching her die by inches. But how to get loose!

Again he strained until the bindings cut into his flesh and the cords of his muscles stood out as though sculptured, using all his strength. And this time he felt the tautness of the bonds relax. A trifle, but enough to give him hope. The soldiers were still milling about, too intent on looking at Leyndt and contemplating what they were going to do to that lovely, helpless, bare body. They now had Leyndt spread-eagled in the traditional fashion, one man holding each limb. A fifth stepped forward, and even from the rear Blade could see the man was unfastening his trousers.

Then the man fell forward onto Leyndt, but with his pants still fastened and a blood-rimmed bone-dotted hole in the lower part of his back. He let out a gurgling scream and began kicking wildly. The four men holding Leyndt bounced to their feet, the anticipation and lust in their eyes changing in split seconds into fear. The other soldiers stared in all directions, waving their beamers.

Then three things happened at once. Three more soldiers toppled, two with holes in their chests and the third with half his skull blown away. Leyndt scrambled to her feet and sprinted for cover, the soldiers too surprised and distracted to grab her. And Blade surged forward, straining against his bonds until they creaked-and, snapped.

His arms were numb but his legs drove him forward, pumping like pistons. He crashed into the press of the soldiers before a single one of them could lift a beamer, moving so fast and hitting so hard that the sheer impact of his body sent half a dozen of them sprawling off their feet. He dropped onto the chest of one with both knees, crushing in his ribs, butted a second in the head. His arms were working again now; he grabbed two more soldiers by the backs of their collars and smashed their heads together like a housewife cracking eggs, then threw them away. The others could perhaps have burned him down where he stood, but they were afraid of hitting their comrades, or perhaps just afraid. The invisible snipers were still picking off soldiers; Blade felt more than once the wheet of a bullet sailing past his ear. As the soldiers scattered, Blade picked up a beamer and sprinted for the same bushes that he had seen Leyndt dive into. A soldier heading for the same goal did not move fast enough, and Blade used the beamer to chop him squarely in half.

As he dove under cover, a bullet seared across his thigh, the pain making him grit his teeth, and he heard the crackle of beamers rise more loudly than ever before behind him, toward the main buildings, and sudden, chopped-off screams as the beamers tore men apart. The fighting there had suddenly flared up also; were the same people that were picking off the soldiers out here also at work there?

For a moment Blade was wild with frustration. Wounded or not, he wished he could do something useful in this battle besides keep his head down to avoid having it drilled by his own side, something that would account for another half-dozen Conciliator soldiers. But the snipers were shooting so furiously into the area that moving around would have been suicide.

Leyndt had finally fainted; Blade felt to make sure her heart was still beating. Since she was not seriously hurt he stopped worrying about her and concentrated on sca

One did; Blade dropped him with his second charge-for a moment he had forgotten that a beam weapon has no recoil, and overcompensated enough to throw his first shot off target. He thought of going out and retrieving the man's beamer as a spare for himself or a weapon for Leyndt, but too many wildly aimed bullets were still slapping through the branches and into tree trunks and whipping up clumps of turf. He didn't know who the attacking marksmen were, but he was certainly prepared to greet them as friends. He found it hard to believe they could be Union people, unless-

There was an explosion of half a dozen rifles going off all at once, making echoes bounce from tree to tree, and a silence following that broken only by a single groaning voice. Then a figure darted out into the clearing, a beamer in one oversized hand and a large conventional-looking rifle slung over his bowed back. Blade gri

«Blade, the battle is over. Come out!»

Chapter 9

Stramod had been as competent a commander as the now very dead Conciliator leader had been an inept one. He had made full use of one of his most-cherished projects, a long-secret series of tu

Blade's thigh wound was only a shallow flesh wound, painful as it was. Leyndt, newly clothed and conscious, treated it with dressings and tissue-restoring salves, and assured Blade that it would heal within a few days if he could manage to stay off the leg. Stramod laughed harshly at that. Leyndt looked at him, somewhat puzzled.

«But surely; Stramod, now that they know our strength, they'll think twice before attacking again?»

«I doubt it. If they sent a whole company against us the first time, they must know or suspect this is a major base of our Union. And if they suspected it at first, they know it now. The only thing that gives us more than an hour or two of safety is that it should take them some time to assemble a larger attacking force. I doubt if they will try with a single company again. And by the time they arrive with a legion, we and everything we can carry on our backs must be well away from here.»

Leyndt opened her mouth as if to protest, and Stramod frowned at her. «Doctor, you must know that in such a situation the Action Leader commands.»

«I know,» she said slowly. «But-after so many many months here, undisturbed, not ru

«I understand,» said Stramod more gently than Blade would have believed possible for him. «And that is not all. If this attack seems to be part of a general campaign against the Union, which it well may be, we must flee entirely outside Graduk lands. We must get Blade and Nilando with their knowledge of how to fight the Ice Dragons to a safe place. And the only such now will be among the Treduki. Even the most fanatical Conciliators will not urge a search of five hundred Treduk villages for our people. It would take the whole army twenty years, and half of it would die in the searching. We must flee.»

Leyndt sighed and nodded. Blade felt much sympathy for her, and took her gently in his arms, in spite of Stramod's frown. She had barely been rescued from the nightmare of mass rape, to be told that she must now flee and take up at best the life of a guerrilla sheltering among primitive people many thousands of miles from all she was used to. Stramod pushed the evacuation forward as rapidly and as efficiently as he had pushed his men forward to the surprise attack. The Conciliator soldiers were dragged into the basement so that no air search would see them lying about and so sound the alarm, stripped of all usable gear and clothing, then piled into one of the tu