Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [295]
The steel springs of the bow gave a humming sound, and the traveler block clattered. The shaft flew out, over a yard long, a thin steel rod with metal feathering at the end; it went in a flat trajectory and imbedded itself in the figure below. The hands jerked convulsively, then were still. They hadn't seen the face. At least this one hadn't screamed.
"There's another. About forty yards to the left," Wagoner said. "I'll take that one."
"Thanks." Harvey turned away. It was too damned personal. Rifles would be better. Or machine guns. A machine gun was very impersonal. If you shot someone with a machine gun, you could persuade yourself that the gun had done it. But the crossbow had to be wound with your own musclepower. Personal.
There was nothing else to do. The valley was death to enter. In the cold night the mustard had condensed, and now small streamers of the yellow gas were sometimes visible. No one could enter that valley. They could leave the enemy—thank God all the Stronghold wounded had been taken out before the gas attack, although Harvey knew that Al Hardy would have ordered the attack even if they hadn't been—they could leave the enemy wounded, or they could kill them. And they couldn't spare rifle or machine-gun ammunition for the purpose. The crossbow bolts were recoverable. After the first good rain, or after a few days of warmth, the gas would be dispersed.
It made good fertilizer. So would the dead. Battle Valley would be good cropland next spring. Now it was a slaughterhouse.
We won. Victory. Harvey tried to recall the elation he'd felt the night before, the sense of life he'd had when he woke in the morning, and he knew he'd be able to. This was horrible work, but it was needed. They couldn't leave the Brotherhood's wounded to suffer. They'd die soon enough anyway; better to kill them cleanly.
And it was the last. No more wars. Now they could build a civilization. The Brotherhood had done the Stronghold's work: They had cleared out much of the area near the Stronghold. It wouldn't take a big expedition to go looking for salvage. Harvey kept his thoughts on that: on what they could find, on the wonders out there that they could search for and bring home.
When he heard the bow, Harvey turned back. His turn. Let Brad be alone for a moment.
The blood typing was done, and she'd visited the wounded. That had been tough, but not as bad as she'd thought. She knew why, but she didn't think about it.
It wasn't too bad in the hospital, because the worst cases had already died. Maureen wondered if they'd been … helped. Leonilla and Doc Valdemar and his psychiatrist wife, Ruth, knew their limits, knew that many who had inhaled mustard or taken gut shots were finished because they didn't have the drugs and equipment it would take to save them, and the mustard cases would end up blind anyway, most of them. Had the doctors been more than choosers of the slain? Maureen didn't want to ask.
She left the hospital.
In City Hall they were preparing for a party. A victory celebration. And we damned well deserve it, Maureen thought. We can mourn the dead, but we have to go on living, and these people have worked and bled and died for this moment: for the celebration that said the fighting was over, that the Hammer had done its worst and now it was time to rebuild.
Joanna and Rosa Wagoner were shouting with joy. They'd got a lamp burning. "It works!" Joanna said. "Hi, Maureen. We've got the lamp burning on methanol."
It didn't give off much light, but it would do. At the end of the big central book-lined room some of the children were setting up punch bowls. Mulberry wine, really quite good (well, not too bad); a case of Cokes someone had saved. And there would be food, mostly stew, and you didn't want to know what was in it. Rats and squirrels weren't really very different kinds of animals, nor did cat taste much different from rabbit. There wouldn't be many vegetables in the stew. Potatoes were scarce and terribly valuable.