Free Legions of Antares by Alan Burt Akers Page A

inner rooms and chased out the people who wanted to fuss. We were already manumitting the slaves and arranging for their future welfare as free men and women. I had taken the precaution of finding out Hardil’s secret escape hole, and, stripping off the white robe, I wound the scarlet cloth about me and took up a cheap mineral oil lamp. Only a dagger would be needed. I crept out through the secret hole and, running fleetly in the night, reached the far windward end of the ship lines. I looked about.
    Each ship slumbered like a stricken behemoth. They might not in truth be stricken yet; very soon they would be. And when that happened I must be safely back in my chambers. The first ship caught at once, the dry wood crackling up in a flare and taking cordage and tarred wood and painted wood and all the gimcrack finery the Hamalians had spared to their despised flying sailers. The flames streamed in the wind. Three ships I fired, one after the other, and then the night watch started in yelling.
    Scurries of wind bore the flames down on the next ships in line. That would have to do. The succeeding ships would burn as readily as the first, and the wind would roar the flames on. I hurtled back to the secret hole and ducked in. A hammering on the door indicated Nulty considered the emergency of sufficient importance to wake me despite my instructions. I’d counted on that, knowing Nulty of old.
    The scarlet cloth went under the bed. The mineral oil lamp, out but still warm, went with it. I grabbed a simple green wraparound and opened the door. Lights and faces glared in.
    “Fire, notor! The ships burn!”
    I shouted. I shouted so that they would understand over the hubbub. “If the ships are doomed, then save the cargo! Unload our supplies and see they are safe!
Bratch!
”
    At the command bratch, they bratched, jumping as though I had branded them with words.
    Well, our people started in unloading the ships that were still unburned, hurling the bales and boxes out, ferrying the sacks, working like fiends. My orders had been to see the stuff was safe. I had said:
Our
supplies. See they are
safe.
    You do not need two good eyes to guide a donkey.
    Just how many supplies would be yielded up to the supply officers I could not judge. Precious little, I suspected. And every sack, every bale my folk spirited away was another item to add to the loss suffered by the Hamalian armed forces.
    Capital!
    Criminal, illegal, horrible — maybe. Gallant conduct in battle — no. But warfare — ah, yes!
    If a general is the best tactician and strategist in two worlds and does not understand logistics, he is doomed.
    Of the fifty ships the flames spared only five. The neatly mathematical mooring arrangements, inherent in Hamalian military techniques, simply provided the fires with fresh fuel, ship after ship. The five were successfully sailed off before the flames reached them. Afterwards there was a certain amount of difficulty over the supplies removed; but we straightened it all out. I walked down to the heaps of black refuse, shining and cindery, still smoking, smelling of charred hopes. These had once been ships. The memory of the way the fires leaped eagerly up, the crack and sizzle of the flames, the colors and the heat, burned in my brain. The whole episode had not been pleasant, except a blow had been struck against Hamal.
    “At least, we won’t starve next season,” remarked Nulty. And then he kept his own counsel.
    In a petty kind of revenge against his bad fortune, the Jiktar of the Supply Train had a shot at requisitioning our saddle flyers. The mirvols on the perching towers were a fine crop that season. I quickly disabused the man of that idea.
    “We need the saddle flyers to withstand the raids of the wild men from over the mountains. When the soldiers provide us with protection, then, mayhap, you may take our mirvols.”
    He tried to bluster and saw, by the laws, he was in the wrong. Oh, he threatened to return with a