Teela walked unarmed.
These two would have been waiting aboard the Impprobable but for the bargaining that had taken place that morning. It was Nessus's fault. Louis had used the puppeteer as his interpreter when he offered to sell Teela Brown to the swordsman Seeker.
Seeker had nodded gravely, and had offered one capsule of the Rmgworld youth drug, worth about fifty years of life.
"I'll take it," Louis had said. It was a handsome offer, although Louis had no intention of putting the stuff in his mouth. Certainly the drug had never been tested on anyone who, like Louis Wu, had been taking boosterspice for some one hundred and seventy years.
As Nessus afterward explained in the Interworld tongue, "I didn't want to insult him, Louis, or to imply that you held Teela cheaply. I raised his price. He now owns Teela, and you have the capsule to analyze when and if we return to Earth. In addition, Seeker will act as our bodyguard against any possible enemy, until we have possession of the shadow square wire."
"He's going to protect us all with his four-foot kitchen knife?"
"It was only to flatter him, Louis."
Teela had insisted on coming with him, of course. He was her man, and he was going into danger. Now Louis wondered if the puppeteer had counted on that. Teela was Nessus's own carefully bred good luck charm …
The sky would always be overcast this close to the Eye storm. In the gray-white noon light they filed toward a vertical black cloud tens of stories high.
"Don't touch it," Louis called, remembering what the priest had told him on his last visit to this city. A girl had lost some fingers trying to pick up the shadow square wire.
Close up, it still loooked like black smoke. You could look through it into the mined city, to see the windowed beehive-bungalows of suburbia and a few flat glass towers that would have been department stores if this were a world of human space. They were there within the cloud, as if a fire were raging in there somewhere.
You could see the black thread, if your eye was within an inch of it; but then your eye would water and the thread would disappear. The thread was that close to being invisibly thin. It was much too much like Sinclair monofilament; and Sinclair monofilament was dangerous.
"Try the Slaver gun," said Louis. "See if you can cut it, Speaker."
A string of sparkling lights appeared within the cloud.
Probably it was blasphemy. You fight with light? But the natives must have planned to destroy the strangers much earlier. When the Christmas lights appeared within the cloud of black thread, maniac shrieks answered from all directions. Men robed in particolored blankets poured from the buildings around, screaming and waving … swords and clubs?
The poor leucos, thought Louis. He flicked his flashlight-laser beam to high and narrow.
Light-swords, laser weapons, had been used on all the worlds. Louis's training was a century old, and the war he had trained for hadn't happened after all. But the rules were too simple to forget.
The slower the swing, the deeper the cut.
But Louis swung his beam in wide quick swipes. Men stumbled back, their arms wrapped around their abdomens, their golden fur faces betraying nothing. With many enemies, swing fast. Cut half an inch deep, cut many of them. Slow them down!
Louis felt pity. The fanatics had only swords and clubs. They hadn't a chance …
But one smashed a sword across Speaker's weapon arm, hard enough to cut. Speaker dropped the Slaver weapon. Another man snatched it and threw it. He was dead in the instant, for Speaker swiped at him with his good hand and clawed the spine out of him. A third man caught the weapon, turned, and ran. He didn't try to use it. He just ran with it. Louis couldn't hit him with the laser; they were trying to kill him.
Always swing across the torso.
Louis had killed nobody as yet. Now, while the enemy seemed to hesitate, Louis took a moment to kill the two men nearest him. Don't let the enemy close.
How were the others doing?
Speaker-To-Animals was killing with his hands, his good hand a claw for ripping, his bandaged one a weighted club. Somehow he could dodge a sword point while reaching for the man behind it. He was surrounded, but the natives would not press him. He was alien orange death, eight feet tall, with pointed teeth.
Seeker stood at bay with his black iron sword. Three men were down before him, and others stood back, and the sword dripped. Seeker was a dangerous, skillful swordsman. The natives knew about swords. Teela stood behind him, safe for the moment in the ring of fighting, looking worried, like a good heroine.
Nessus was running for the Improbable, one head held low and forward, one high. Low to see around corners, high for the long view.
Louis was unharmed, picking off enemies as they showed themselves, helping others when he could. The flashlight-laser moved easily in his hand, a wand of killing green light.
Never aim at a mirror. Reflecting armor could be a nasty shock to a laser artist. Here they'd apparently forgotten that trick.
A man dressed in a green blanket charged at Louis Wu, screaming, waving a heavy hammer, doing his best to look dangerous. A golden dandelion with eyes … Louis slashed green laser light across him, and the man kep coming.
Louis, terrified, stood fast and held the beam centered. The man was swinging at Louis's head when a spot on his robe charred, darkened, then flashed green flame. He fell skidding, drilled through the heart.
Clothing the color of your light-sword can be as bad as reflecting armor. Finagle grant that there be no more of those! Louis touched green light to the back of a man's neck …
A native blocked Nessus' flight path! He must have had courage to attack so weird a monster. Louis couldn't get a clear shot, but the man died anyway, for Nessus spun and kicked and finished the turn and ran on. Then -
Louis saw it happen. The puppeteer charged into an intersection, one head held high, one low. The high head was suddenly loose and rolling, bouncing. Nessus stopped, turned, then stood still.
His neck ended in a flat stump, and the stump was pumping blood as red as Louis' own.
Nessus wailed, a high, mournful sound.
The natives had trapped him with shadow square wire.
Louis was two hundred years old. He had lost friends before this. He continued to fight, his light-sword following his eyes almost by reflex. Poor Nessus. But it could be me next …
The natives had fallen back. Their losses must hav been terrifying from their own viewpoint.
Teela stared at the dying puppeteer, her eyes very big, her knuckles pressed against her teeth. Speaker and Seeker were edging back toward the Improbable -
Wait a minute. He's got a spare!
Louis ran at the puppeteer. As he passed Speaker, the kzin snatched the flashlight-laser from him. Louis ducked to avoid the wire trap, stayed low, and used a shoulder block to knock Nessus on his side. It had seemed that the puppeteer was about to start panic running.
Louis pinned the puppeteer and fumbled for a belt.
He wasn't wearing a belt.
But he had to have a belt!
And Teela handed him her scarf!
Louis snatched it, looped it, dropped it over the puppeteer's severed neck. Nessus had been staring in horror at the stump, at the blood pumping from the single carotid artery. Now he raised his eye to Louis's face; and the eye closed, and he fainted.
Louis pulled the knot tight. Teela's scarf constricted and closed the single artery, two major veins, the larynx, the gullet, everything.
You tied a tourniquet around his neck, doctor? But the blood had stooped.
Louis bent and lifted the puppeteer in a fireman's carry, turned, and ran into the shadow of the broken police building. Seeker ran ahead of him, covering him, his black sword's point tracing little circles as he sought an enemy. Armed natives watched but did not challenge them.
Teela followed Louis. Speaker-To-Animals came last, his flashlight-laser stabbing green lines where men might be hiding. At the ramp the kzin stopped, waited until Teela was safely up the ramp, then — Louis glimpsed him moving away.