They Fly at Ciron by Samuel R. Delany Read Free Book Online

shaking him.
    “What is it—ow! What—?”
    “Come on,” she insisted, surprised when she could not hear her own voice for the whining. “Come on!” she shouted, only realizing it was a shout from the feel in her throat. Kern had already opened the door, rushed out—
    Rahm neared the common, where men and women had begun to gather. As he sprinted up the side street, someone grabbed his arm, spun him back, hissed: “Rahm . . !” Then: “Where is Ienbar?”
    Bewildered, he stepped back.
    “For God’s sake,Rahm! Where’s Ienbar?”
    “Naä? He’s…at the burial meadow.”
    “Rahm. We have to leave—all of us. Right now!” “Leave? But why?”
    “The Myetrans are coming! Didn’t you hear them? They want you to surrender.”
    “I heard. Naä, what does this ‘surrender’ mean—”
    “Oh, Rahm… !” Then, suddenly, she was running away into the dark.
    Puzzled, Rahm turned back to the gathering in the common.
    A few people still dug forefingers in their ears. The drums were louder. From the eastern fields another light struck. Something—a long line of somethings—was moving toward the common. The sweeping beams threw shadows over the beets, the grain, the kale, all bending in the night wind.
    Children and mothers and uncles and cousins looked at one another.
    “Why do they come across the field? They’ll damage the harvest.”
    “There are so many of them that they couldn’t fit on the road.”
    “Such late visitors—and so many. Will we have food for them all? They walk so strangely…”
    Grain stalks snapped under the boots in time to the drums. As searchlights swung away, in the inadequate light from the nail paring of a moon, straining to see among the armored figures, Rahm thought to look for his friend from the morning—and, there, thought he saw him: only a moment later, he saw another tall, cloaked figure. Then another. Among the armedmen advancing, a number wore the uniform Kire had worn. Some rode nervous horses; others came on foot. Their capes, despite the wind, hung straight behind them, heavy as night. Above them all, on rolling towers, the searchlights moved forward.
    With the others, Rahm waited in the square.
    Soon, with their mobile light-towers, the soldiers had marched to the common’s near edge. The ground was fully lit. Villagers squinted. On a horse stepping about before the visitors, a bearded man in brown leather, wearing a single glove, barked at the short silver rod in his bare hand:
    HALT!
    Everyone looked up, because the word echoed and reechoed from the black horns high on the moving light towers. The soldiers stopped marching. The drums stilled.
    The man with the silver rod rode forward. The villagers fell back. The man spoke again. Again his voice was doubled, like thunder, from the horns:
    SURRENDER TO THE FORCES OF MYETRA!
    Around Rahm, people looked at one another, puzzled. Then Kern, the quarryman, who was not really shy—only very quiet—stepped forward.
    “Welcome to you…” he said, uncertainly. Then, which was almost twice as much as Kern ever said, he added: “Welcome, visitors in the night.”
    “Are you the leader here?” the mounted man demanded.
    Kern didn’t answer—because, as Rahm knew, Kern wasn’t anyone’s leader.(He was not even an elder—none of whom, Rahm noticed, seemed to have arrived yet.) Kern frowned back at the villagers behind him.
    Someone called out:
    “No—he’s not!”
    Which made a dozen people—including Rahm—laugh. Rahm whispered to Mantice who was standing beside him, “That’s Tenuk,” though stocky Mantice knew it was plowman Tenuk being funny as much as Rahm did. They both grinned.
    “You speak for the people here,” the mounted man said, which was funny in itself because Kern probably wouldn’t say anything more now. But the man spoke as though he’d heard neither Tenuk’s “No” nor the laughter. “You are the leader!” While his horse stepped about, he pushed the silver rod into his