Now they were close, terribly close, a good dozen of them rushing in on him. He sent a final snapped shot against them, dropped the bow, and grabbed up his ax. Swiftly the outlaws fell into a defending line: Rikard, Huw, and Jonak, the heaviest, standing shoulder to shoulder between the two great pillars; Leda and Chungti just behind them with pikes at the ready.
The first of the Copers hit Rikard with the furious velocity of a broad jump, ax swinging down against the chief's helmet. Rikard caught the blow on his own weapon's handle, twisted it down, and kicked the attacker in the belly. He bounced away, wide open for assault, but it wouldn't do to leave the line. The next was almost instantly on the outlaw, blade cleaving vacuum. Rikard's ax blurred down and crashed into the space helmet. The shock of the blow rammed home in his own muscles, but it had burst open the tough plastic. Air whirled out, white with frost, red with the blood that suddenly foamed from mouth and nose.
The enemy's own ax had dropped from his fingers as Rikard's blade smashed home, and clanged off the chief's helmet. Rikard smote at the warrior beyond, hit a metal shoulder plate, and dodged a counterblow. Leda thrust between him and Jonak, driving the pike home with a terrible force that split the Coper's suit at the belly. He lurched back, clutching futile hands against the streaming air, his face distorted with unheard screams.
Two of them were on Rikard now, ax and spear, blows clattering off his helmet and shoulder plates as he dodged and parried and hewed. He whirled his weapon over his head, brought it crashing down to break another helmet and the skull beneath, and his own yelling rang in his ears.
From the corner of one eye he saw Jonak fall. Snarling, he swung on the killer, his blow parried by the other axhead. "Go to Mars, you bastard!" he growled, and hailed blow after blow against the enemy's guard, a leaping dancing fury of steel that drove the fellow back until he was against a cliff. Rikard sprang in and slew him.
Panting, he whirled around to see that the Copers had broken his line, that they raged three or four about each of the survivors, thrusting and smiting, a flicker of light and hard metal against the monstrous blacknesses of shadow. Even as he watched, Chungti went down with a spear in him. Huw and Leda stood back to back, beating off the pack that snarled around them, and Rikard launched himself across the space between to fall on the Copers. He clove one helmet from behind, pitched another man aside, parried a thrust and kicked the thruster back, and joined his comrades.
A cloudiness of freezing moisture fogged his helmet, and Huw toppled against him. He stood over the body and struck home. Leda swept her pike in a wide arc, got it between a man's legs and tripped him, and stabbed him before he could rise. Then a Coper got between her and Rikard, threw his arms around her from behind and dragged her to the ground.
They closed in on Rikard, hemming him in a solid wall of armored bodies, bearing him down and holding him fast with four men on each arm. When they brought forth wire and began lashing his hands together he kicked out, rose to his feet and knocked them away as they came on him, until someone else tackled him and he went down once more.
Captured! By the living Earth, no clean death in battle, but captured!
He lay gasping the hot foul air of his suit, looking up to the crystal dark of heaven, a million needle-sharp stars and the ghostly glory of the Milky Way, up to Earth's huge blue disc, and the world, the Moon-world of witchlight and shadow and cruel fanged stone, reeled about him with his dismay. Captured!