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A LITTLE EDGE

By S. Kye Boult

Illustrated by Vincent Di Fate

There can be situations in which War is the only possible answer— and Peace negotiations completely impossible. Where annihilation of the enemy is the only answer—

* * * *

Baron Amarson always heard a silent fighting scream from the stuffed Drak head whenever he turned up the lights and saw it come out of the darkness. His ears pointed rigidly, the hair on the back of his neck and head and around his mouth stiffened as the fear instincts armed his nerves and bloodstream for combat. The tight alertness was not a bad feeling for the start of the day and Amarson always enjoyed the emotions, even if they were unnecessary. He was in his war room at Flight Base 12, many miles from the nearest live Drak. The one he was looking at had lost all interest in killing and eating Amarson two years ago when it became a trophy instead of a deadly enemy.

The Drak head, mounted over the war map board, glared down out of malevolent oval eyes. It was mounted with the feathers on the sides of the head sleeked back as though by a wind. The head was cocked to one side and the curved orange beak half open. The effect was of a Drak diving to attack anyone who stood in front of the war board. In this case, this morning, it was Amarson and the Ambassador Theiu of the River People to the south.

Amarson was in uniform, the leather of a flight leader. His jacket was a deep brown, only a shade darker than the skin of his head and hands. It bore an insignia of arms that told his family rank and the shoulder badges of a Flight Commander. The ambassador was a civilian, dressed in a pale-blue coverall over a silver gray skin that looked slightly wet. He was visibly nervous.

“You will forgive a guest, Baron Amarson,” he said, “but that is a barbaric trophy.”

Amarson looked down at the round gray head beside him. The Riverman was less than half his height.

“Trophy, Ambassador Theiu?” He had been studying the map intently and did not understand.

“The Drak,” said the little man. “It looks ready to kill.” He pulled a flask from a pocket in his coverall and sprayed water over his head, nervously wiping his flat nose and wide eyes with one hand. The hand was webbed.

“Oh, yes,” Amarson looked up. “The taxidermist was a genius. Makes you want to fight just looking at it, doesn’t it?”

“You perhaps, Baron.” The ambassador used his spray again. “I am forced to remember that the Draks consider me very good to eat. I would rather be in a deep pool.

“Do you always use this ... thing, to inspire your combat flights?”

“Yes,” Amarson said. “There is the enemy and the land he controls. I can stand in front of one wall and hate them both.

“Don’t worry about this Drak. Ambassador. See, we have clipped his wings.” He gestured across the top of the map. The Drak’s two great leather wings, severed from his body, were spread against the wall.

“Forget the trophy and look at my map. There in the north, the mountain peaks marked with purple striping, are the great Alp stronghold of the Draks. My fliers cannot get at them in those canyons and peaks. Below that is the jungle barrier. It also shows as Drak territory, although we can send ground troops, our Jungle Patrols, into that area.”

“As soon as you leave the Drak fly back in and then attack the Valley farms,” the ambassador finished. “I have read the complaints.”

“The only thing I can hold is the air over the Valley. My bases are the triangles.” Amarson indicated a curve of numbered triangles arcing between the jungle and the valley plain. “Bases Number I and Number II cover your River People in the east. I have two more flights based west of me here and the coast of the Mud Sea. Base XII is nearest to the Drak mountain passes.”

The ambassador became paler at that reminder of his danger. At the tip of each of the mounted Drak wings he could see the large metal XII’s—the number of Amarson’s own field.

“We hold the air, when the Drak fly hunting patrols,” Amarson said. “The people of the plain and your cities to the south are getting all the protection we can give them.”

“You have cities in the plain too, Baron?”

“Yes, and they are on the frontier, close to the Drak,” Amarson growled. “The Drak hunt us for food, too, Ambassador.”

“But they don’t find you so easy to pick up and carry away,” the ambassador sprayed his head again. “We are small and light.”

“And we tend to fight back,” Amarson snapped, then he went on contritely. “Sorry, Ambassador, that was unworthy. Your Rivermen craftsmen give us the weapons to fight Draks and we have made treaties to fight Draks for you and the Valley People. Well, that’s where our honor lies. We fight Draks, kill Draks. My business is fighting back.

“And fighting back is what I am going to do today.”

With a quick movement Amarson drew a straight yellow line from the Number XII triangle, east and north, across the coast and out into the Mud Sea, behind the mountains. At the end of his line was a group of islands, Drak held. He wrote course numbers and times along the line and then signed his name directly below the triangle: Leon Amarson Baron Rufus, Commanding.

“That’s the first attack order I’ve signed in three months,” he said. “Defensive patrols! The best of my men are getting killed on defensive patrols.”

“You know we must have the Draks driven away during these months,” the ambassador said.” I was against your flight when it was proposed. An attack now may bring them down on us during the harvest. I know you need to try this new weapon, but the Valley harvest and our Fish Catch are vital to the war at this time. We must be supplied before the Drak swarm.”

“Holding the Valley and the River is not my idea of war.” Amarson’s lips parted in a snarl along the length of his long nose and head. His ears twitched up and his eyes narrowed. He clenched his fists and moved his feet inside his flight boots. The leather of his flight gear creaked as his leg muscles tightened and relaxed.

The ambassador shifted away from him a bit. For a moment the expression on Amarson’s face was very much like the one on the mounted Drak head. The ambassador was remembering old legends about the time when Amarson’s people had also found the small Rivermen very good to eat. The memories did not help his nervousness.

“May I disagree, even as a guest, Baron,” he said. “The Drak are not at war. It takes two sides opposed in national pride to make a war. The Draks are only hunting. They consider us a food supply only, Baron. They harvest us the way we harvest the riverfish; without thought, communication, warning, or declaration of war. They simply kill; to eat. Your fliers, I suspect, are considered a specially dangerous kind of game animal.

“Oh, I know they wear armor, use weapons, and can think and fight, but they truly are not making war.” “War!” Amarson growled. “What we do isn’t war either.”

“The Draks are back there in the hills breeding, now. In three months they will swarm out. Every Drak that can fly will head south looking for food. Then you’ll get your war, Ambassador, as we have every season. They will fly to kill and we will be driven back to the river. War? That’s not war!

“Look at the map. I can’t get into the mountains to finish the fight. My fliers can’t stay in the air in the passes and canyons. The Draks only come out in small groups to hunt, or to attack, my fliers. Then they swarm. They kill us in the air with swords and spears, but it isn’t war. I kill Draks because they always attack and will kill me if I don’t, but it isn’t war!” He slammed his hands together to control his anger.

“For six years now, I have fought them like this, futilely. I have seen cooked half eaten bodies left by the Drak after the swarm. Permit me my honor, Ambassador. There is no honor in being someone’s reluctant supper. I have more honor fighting a war to kill all Draks, everywhere. So I must call our fight a war. I am a warrior, not just an angry food animal!”

A clear bell rang three times. Amarson shook his head and relaxed visibly.

“It is almost sunrise. Will you come to the Shrine with me Ambassador? Our chants this morning dedicate us to combat, but you are welcome.

“This war of ours has little honor in it except the protection of the lives of the Valley and River People. The Shrine pledges us to that, even when we use the Warrior’s Rites.” Without waiting for a reply he turned and walked into the adjoining Shrine. Time enough for brooding and philosophy later; this morning he had to lead an attack to kill Draks.

All of his Flight were kneeling before the Shrine, waiting for the first light of the Father Sun to shine on the altar.

Above the altar were the representations of the two suns and the World, hanging in the divine three-body position. The Father Sun was a great disk of red crystal fully as large as the golden globe of the planet behind it. The Younger Sun was a small ball, barely two fingers in diameter. It caught the light of the altar fires and sparkled as it turned. At the ritual time the sunlight from the Younger Sun would turn it into a golden ball of flame.

The adjutant, as eldest-to-them-all, began the chant of the rising. The silver hair along his mouth and beside his ears gleamed the honor of his age as he lit the new altar flames for his prayer.

Suddenly Amarson whirled, brushed the ambassador out of his path, and strode out of the stone Shrine onto the flight field. The artificial emotion of the Shrine made his breath stop in his throat. His moodiness, the talk with the ambassador, demanded a return to basics. He wanted to dedicate himself to the rising ritual out here in the open. He wanted to see the physical rise of the Father Sun, the brightness of the Younger Sun, and wait with upraised eyes for the Rite of Pausing, as the Younger Sun stopped in the sky.

Today was a day for greeting the Father Sun in the open and alone. This morning the Flight flew to attack Draks and some of his men would die. It would be under his leadership that they died, and he wanted to feel that they died as men, warriors, not as food for obscene winged Draks. So he felt a need for the old rituals, out here in the open under the sun, as it was done before man learned to fly into the red and yellow sky of the dual suns.

The deep darkness gave way slowly to the dim red glow that preceded the rising of the giant red sun. The Father Sun rose first of the two suns. It came up slowly, ponderously. It literally covered the horizon as its giant size was magnified by the thick air near the ground.

Amarson picked up the chant from inside the Shrine. The deep red light glowed on the silver disks at his shoulders as he passed his hands over them and across his heart, then back to his lips in the ritual of the morning greeting. Inside the Shrine, Amarson’s men performed the same ritual as the red light glowed in the disk of the Father Sun above the altar.

Before Amarson, Base XII became visible in the morning light. He faced a wide square field of open ground planted with multicolored grasses to confuse Drak eyes and hide it from the air. To his left crouched a line of five fliers, their motors rumbling in the stillness. Beside the wings of these fliers stood a group of groundsmen. Amarson felt them watching him intently, even though he did not permit himself to look at them.

Slowly he knelt on both knees and held out his arms in the old gesture of the ancient ritual. Out of the corner of his eye he saw three of the older men follow him to their knees, then he could see no more. The small yellow Younger Sun rose. It jumped swiftly over the hills and arced up one eighth of the way to the zenith. There it appeared to stop and hang in the sky to wait for the stately arise of its giant partner. This was the Rite of Pausing.

At first the yellow light filled Amarson’s eyes, then as the sun rose, the light from it shrank until the sun was a pale moonlike star at the pausing. The fading yellow light left the deep red color of the Father Sun to bathe the field and buildings. The Father rose higher.

The kneeling figures continued the movements of the ritual. The ceremony was an ancient challenge to the Drak. A warrior kneeling in the open like this would be instantly attacked by the first Drak to see him. It had been a way for untried warriors to kill Draks and gain much honor.

Even now, Amarson found himself looking at the sky with all his senses alert. There would be instant, unthinking combat if a Drak flew over. The nearest Drak was in the jungle at the base of the Alps, but the instinct to kill Draks burned violently during the ritual. Amarson’s pulse pounded in time to the chants.

Guided by the words of the chant, Amarson lowered his eyes to his hands. The skin on his closed fists had turned a pulsing blood red in the light of the sun. Slowly he opened his fists and let the red palms face the sun.

“The blood of my enemies on my hands, before your next light,” he chanted, for so the old ritual ran. “Blood from the Father will be returned in blood.”

He ran out the claws on his fingertips. The red light covered them with blood also. His skin shivered as he forced an outward calm against the racing pulse and rising emotions that swelled in him.

Aargh, a really barbaric ritual, he thought. The little ambassador must be washing his face continuously at this. I wonder if he’s ever seen our rituals before.

“Father bring me to the blood for my hands. Blood that only stains the hands!”

He completed the ritual and sheathed his claws. Already the light was fading, as the Father Sun moved up through the thicker air on the horizon and the morning light took on its normal orange-yellow color.

Amarson overrode his pounding heart, calmed his thoughts and stood up. He forced himself to walk slowly over to the line of waiting fliers.

Emerdan, the chief groundsman, came to meet him. The man’s hair was iron-white even in the morning light, and like the adjutant the hair at his mouth was bearded as an indication of age as well as rank. The knees of his uniform were spotted with two disks of dust. Amarson noted the dust and knew his own uniform was marked the same way. This old soldier would be one of the ones to kneel in the old ways, of course he would. The pride of men like this was to be expected; counted on.

“How many fliers do you have for me today, Chief?” He held his voice to an even conversational tone.

“Five on the line, Baron.” The groundsman flung a hand in a wave to indicate the flapping tents hidden in the trees. “Seven in the tents for repairs, three out by mid-passage and the rest before dark. The tents will be empty and ready for these five when you bring them back, my lord.”

“I may not bring them all back, old man,” Amarson said. “But have the other fliers ready for tomorrow. We will use them.”

The groundsman swung his hand upward and placed it on Amarson’s shoulder insignia in a salute to acknowledge the order.

“The men know you cannot bring them all back, sir,” he said. “They follow you to fight the Draks. Still they follow you; you still lead the pack, Baron.”

“I still lead,” Amarson nodded. “And I lead men not cubs. If they were cubs, I would bring them all back. Because they are men it is part of my honor to spend their lives.”

“The fact that they are men, sir, that gives them lives to spend with honor. They fight Draks like demons.”

“I know, Chief,” Amarson smiled. “I can’t complain about the men I lead.” He shook his head sadly. “I only complain about the lack of fliers. It’s not a very heroic thought, no honor in it at all, but I would spend more lives if I could bring back the fliers. We have more demon men of honor, than machines of war.”

“The blood only stains the hands.”

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