boy in action, if what I've seen and heard
about you is any indication. I didn't want you killing any of our
friends." She was smiling at him without any malice whatsoever; rather,
with a definite degree of fondness. Geoffrey did not even feel resentful
at this business of being casually managed, as though he were liable to
do something foolish.

But he scrambled up to a place beside The Barbarian in a burst of tense
movement, and looked out toward the approaching tankettes. What Myka had
just said to him, and the cryptic smile on The Barbarian's face, and a
thought of Geoffrey's own, had all fitted themselves together in his
mind.

There was no reason, really, to believe that barbarians would be hostile
to barbarians, and certainly the inland raiders could not have returned
year after year without _some_ means of handling the mountain tribes.
Friendship, or at least an alliance, would be the easiest way.

And out on the slope of the nearest hill, bearded men in homespun
clothing were rolling boulders down on the advancing tankettes.

The slope of the hill was quite steep, and the boulders were massive.
They tumbled and bounded with a speed that must have seemed terrifying
from below. Tearing great chunks out of the earth, they rumbled down on
the tankettes while the tribesmen yelled with bloodcurdling ferocity and
fired on the tankettes with impossible rapidity. With respectable
marksmanship, too. The nobles were swerving their vehicles frantically
from side to side, trying to avoid the boulders, but their ability to do
so was being destroyed by bullets that ricocheted viciously off the
canted forepeak plating. All three of them were blundering about like
cattle attacked by stinging insects. Only the lead tankette was still
under anything like intelligent control. It lurched away from three
boulders in succession, swinging on its treads and continuing to churn
its way up the hillside.

Geoffrey saw the other two tankettes struck almost simultaneously. One
took a boulder squarely between its tracks, and stopped in a shower of
rock fragments. The track cleats bit futilely at the ground. The vehicle
stalled, the boulder jammed against it. The impact did not seem to have
been particularly severe; but the entire body of the tankette had been
buckled and accordioned. Possibly only the boulder's own bulk between
the tracks had kept them from coming together like the knees of a gored
ox. It was impossible to tell where,