Fliers of Antares Read online

  I opened my eyes and the blue radiance fell away.

  Above me blazed the twin Suns of Scorpio.

  And — the red sun preceded the green across the sky!

  Immediately I knew I was caught once more in a time loop cast by the Star Lords. Once again I had been thrown into the past. I could take great comfort from that, for my Delia was not waiting for me now in trembling apprehension, and whatever I had to do here — wherever here was — could be done and I might then rejoin my beloved and she would not have spent a single extra day in sorrow over my fate. Also, I knew, and the knowledge brought a shivery feeling of insecurity over me, that somewhere on the face of Kregen, I, Dray Prescot, was at this very minute fighting or drinking, slave or free, struggling on or living it up in luxury. At this very minute somewhere over the horizon a Dray Prescot that was me was walking and talking, fighting, and, perhaps, loving, and I own I found it all most weird, to be sure.

  Then — why then the obvious thought occurred. If I was back to certain times past, there might be two Dray Prescots battling on the surface of Kregen!

  In Valka I had been thrown into a time loop.

  I could be in the Hostile Territories right now, fighting on in our long journey with Seg, Thelda, and glorious Delia at my side; and at the same time I could be in Valka, fighting to free my island from the aragorn — and, at the same time, here I was, naked and weaponless as usual, ready to undertake some great new task.

  I shivered a little at the power of the Star Lords.

  I, Dray Prescot, who called them onkers and rasts and cramphs!

  From my experiences in the Heavenly Mines I had emerged in reasonable condition, completely hairless, for the Hamalians with their rigid adherence to the rules shaved the slaves once a sennight, and without the brands on chest and back. I had to acknowledge that forethought to the Star Lords, although as I knew my dip in the Pool of Baptism in the River Zelph of Aphrasöe as well as giving me a thousand years of life and phenomenal powers of recuperation also enabled my skin to slough off brand marks. Sometimes, as when I had been a hauler for the Emperor’s barges, that had not been too comfortable an attribute.

  Unlike most of my previous transitions to various unfriendly locations of Kregen, this time I had not landed slap bang in the midst of danger, action, and headlong adventure.

  Around the Heavenly Mines stretched the Barrens, a deadly waste of desert and near-desert. All food had had to be imported. I stood up slowly, taking stock of my situation. Around me now extended broad fields, heavy with corn, with brilliant flowers blooming in the hedgerows alongside narrow lanes. A house or two showed red-tiled gables, and smoke drifted lazily from tall twisted chimneys. A flock of birds — ordinary Earth-like birds — swooped and squawked about a clump of trees remarkably like elms. Had the two brilliant suns of Antares not blazed down from the sky above I might have thought myself back at home, in a rich and golden autumn with all the goodness of the harvest to be gathered in.

  This situation, then, was like no other that had confronted me on arrival on Kregen.

  I could see at once the dangers here, the difficulties. Perhaps, if the truth was told, more danger for me existed in this apparently peaceful scene than in the damned Heavenly Mines of Hamal.

  Did I tread the soil of Havilfar? Had I been taken back to Vallia, or to Turismond? Segesthes, perhaps? Or, a continent I had touched only at the tip of Erthyrdrin, Loh? The thought crossed my mind that I might have been deposited in one of the remaining three continents; but I had no information of value on them, and no one of the people of this grouping knew much of them; they were foreign and strange beyond the understanding of ordinary men and women.

  A mirvoller flew out from the trees and passed across the sky and, without having to think, I took cover in a hedge. The mirvol flew effortlessly, and I caught the wink of weapons from its rider. The flyer passed out of sight.

  As far as I knew mirvols were found only in Havilfar. So I felt reasonably sure I was still in Havilfar. If this was a game the Star Lords were playing with me, I knew only too well it was a deadly game, and failure would result in death or a fate worse than death, if you will pardon the expression, in my return to Earth.

  Perhaps, the treacherous whisper crossed my mind, perhaps I was still in the rock hut of the Heavenly Mines, and I had imagined I had seen and spoken with the scorpion, and all this was pure hallucination.

  A quoffa cart rumbled along the road, and the apim sitting in the front with a straw in his mouth and a wide hat pulled low over his forehead looked real enough. Naked as I was, I must accost him. He wore a shirt and trousers, a fashion quite often seen on Kregen, and I would face some quizzing, I felt sure. But it had to be done.

  The white dust of the road puffed under the six pads of the quoffa, and his huge, patient, wise old face cheered me as I stepped out. This was a crossroads. A tall tree stood in one corner of the cross, and a blackened thing hung from a branch, chained and gruesome. I perked up. Directly across the angle of the road stood an inn, whose white walls and red roof leaned lazily against the sunlight, the windows winking in the sun. A table and a bench stood outside. I fancied I might find information there, if I could not stand a drink and a piece of vosk pie.

  The red roof of the inn was new, for the tiles were unpitted and still full of color, but the far end gable roof showed older tiles, darkened and cracked here and there.

  This was a mystery, this whole occurrence, so unlike anything that had happened before. The peacefulness of the scene, the calmness of the surroundings, even the thing in the gibbet to indicate that law was upheld and troubles past, all drew together to make me believe that something strange was happening.

  I stepped out and opened my mouth to shout to the apim in the quoffa cart — and a blue radiance swept about me and a violent wind seemed to whirl me head over heels. I was still standing upright and on the same spot, but my impressions whirled chaotically. I saw the quoffa cart spin around, the tree bend and sway, the fields ripple and run as though a great and silent wind scored them flat.

  I struggled to draw breath in that glowing azure radiance.

  I gasped.

  The quoffa cart had gone. The tree had changed, for its foliage was now of early season, and not of autumn. And the inn! Its roof was now old all over, darkened cracked tiles where before had been new tiles. The fields had shrunk, for instead of ripe and golden grain they now showed the beginning shoots of new garden growths.

  The Star Lords sent their blue radiance about me and I felt myself falling; I thought in my terror that I had failed to accomplish what I had been sent here to do. And I knew the Everoinye would punish failure with instant dismissal. I was on my way back to Earth!

  “No!” I screamed out. This was not fair! This was to set a task without clue, without sign, without hope.

  Then I could scream no more. For the solid ground returned once more under my feet, the old inn, the new shoots in the fields, the burgeoning tree, all flashed again before my eyes.

  But now there was a change, a drastic change.

  The inn was on fire. Flames shot from the roof, cracking and tumbling the tiles away as beams fell. The windows glowed with the violence of the fire within. All about me rose that horrid screeching of men locked in mortal combat.

  I had no time to thank Zair. For this — this horror, this screaming and screeching, this clang of iron weapons on armor, this noise of battle — this scene was my scene, may Zair forgive me. Now I knew I was where I must be in order to fulfill my destiny on the world four hundred light-years from the world of my birth.

  Diffs were attacking the inn.

  They pranced about it, shooting quarrels into the fire through the smashed windows, running and laughing and cutting down other diffs who struggled to break a way through that iron ring. Any thought that I might be hurling myself into the fight on the wrong side had to be dispelled. The Star Lords had tested me in that way before; I had been tested through my own stiff-necked pride, and
had hitherto had the good fortune to pick the right side. Now I felt that the devils so wantonly attacking the inn must be my adversaries. Those within might have been a coven or a gathering of criminals, but I doubted it. As I had struck when I had taken Sosie na Arkasson from her tree of suffering, so I struck now.

  I ran into the fray.

  The diffs pranced and screeched, but I was able to trip one in half-armor and gaudy orange robes, to thump him as he went down, and so possess myself of a thraxter.

  Is it a sin to confess, as I do, that the feeling of a sword-hilt once more in my fist uplifted me, gave me a thrilling sense of completeness? This proves without the shadow of a doubt that I am an incomplete man, a shadow man, a weakling, dependent on the shallow symbol of a sword for my moral and spiritual sustenance. Oh, yes, all that — but on Kregen a sword means life to its owner.

  Or, as is the way of two worlds, death . . .

  My prowess as a fighting-man gives me pleasure only when that skill may be used to ends which are in themselves worthy. The protection of the weak has seemed to me to be such a worthy end. But the judgment of worthiness remains with me, alone, and therefore in the eyes of everyone else must be suspect.

  I saw these four-armed diffs attacking the blazing inn. I heard the shrieks and yells from within, and witnessed other four-armed diffs attempting to break out, and being shot down as they ran and stumbled; so it seemed right to me that I should assist those trapped in the inn.

  All these thoughts of a schoolboy philosophy flashed through my mind in the moment that I scooped the thraxter, blocked a blow from a yelling halfling who tried to decapitate me, and thrust him through above his lorica. I turned swiftly, ducking my head so that a crossbow bolt flicked by above, and leaped for the clump who were attempting to smash down the door, almost enveloped in a blaze of sparks and flame. They had a tree trunk and they ran and swung with great and agile viciousness. These four-armed halflings were superb fighting-men.

  The lenken door groaned back from bronze hinges. Then I was into the battering-ram group, laying about me, and catching them completely unawares. They dropped the log. They carried thraxters in their right upper hands; but their other three hands had been occupied with the log, and it seems to me now that small fact perhaps saved my life. They were fantastic fighters. I had to skip and jump, to parry and block more than I could hack and thrust. But they went down, first one and then two, and two more as I caught the knack.

  Others came running, holding shields balanced high on their two left arms.

  The streaming light of the twin Suns of Scorpio poured down on the scene and the blaze of the burning inn shed a ghastly wavering light into that sunshine. There would be no quick and easy escape into the shadows. As I fought I took stock of these four-armed diffs.

  “He is only apim, by Zodjuin of the Rainbow!” A magnificent halfling yelled his anger that his men were being thus thwarted. He wore an iron-banded lorica that had been let out to its full extent, and a pair of gray trousers, with a broad, orange cummerbund wrapped around his waist, and a swirling orange and blue cloak fastened by jeweled golden brooches. He wore no helmet and his coppery hair gleamed in the light, cut into a helmet-shape itself, with a fillet of silver confining the curls across his forehead. He waved his thraxter with his upper right hand and hurled a stux with his lower right. He threw the stux with great skill and precision. I slipped it and cut down a diff who attempted to run me through. Things were becoming more interesting by the mur, by Zair!

  A man I had chopped at and who had slid his thraxter across barely in time, so that instead of having his head laid open had been merely slashed down his face, yelled back hoarsely.

  “He may only be apim, Kov Nath, but he fights like a devil of the Yawfi Suth!”

  “Stick him, you yetches, and have done!” This Kov Nath whirled his sword at me, commanding, demanding. “We must break in and make sure Ortyg Fellin Coper is truly dead. His men will be here soon! Hurry, you rasts, hurry!”

  A blazing mass tumbled from the roof then, falling from the porch, and we all skipped aside. Kov Nath yelled savage commands. His men closed in. There were something like twenty of them, and I knew this was no longer a pleasant muscle-exercising afternoon’s romp. Twenty diffs with four arms each meant something more than eighty to two, for the combinations offered by the four-armed configuration are interesting and deadly. So I fought and leaped and jumped and kept the door.

  Stuxes hissed past me, and those I did not snatch from the air and return from whence they came in best Krozair tradition thunked splinteringly into the lenken door. How much longer could this go on? My thraxter gleamed a foul and bitter red, now, with the blood of these diffs. They did not seem to reck the consequences of attack; they bore in vengefully, and only by the utmost exertions could I stop the final lethal thrust.

  A crossbow bolt tore into my side. I ignored that. Kov Nath, raging, rushed forward. He had snatched up a shield and grasped it in his two larboard hands, while his two starboard fists wrapped around a sword that was, I swear, longer than those great Swords of War of the Blue Mountains in distant Vallia.

  A window broke outward and a four-armed diff sprang out, wielding a sword, cursing, followed by two more. They charged into the attackers. All thee of them were smoldering, their cloaks and trousers smoking.

  “Now by the blood of Holy Djan-kadjiryon!” yelled Kov Nath. “You will all die!”

  He charged.

  Even in the shock of the engagement I thought he would do better to grip that unwieldy longsword in his two upper fists, or his two lower, so as to get the triangular leverage so important in two-handed play. But he was skilled and quick and vicious, and I skipped and parried and gonged my thraxter uselessly on his shield. He tended to keep the shield covering him and did not use it, as I taught my men, to thrust out and so use as an offensive weapon in its own right.

  He, like them all, had taken no notice of my appearance. I had two arms only, and was therefore apim. My nakedness, my shaved head, my hairless body, appeared to them as merely a part of the custom of my people. We circled, and against my will I was forced from the door.

  I leaped in with a fierce and savage lunge, ducked, felt that damned great sword go whistling over my head, and tried to stick him through the thigh. But the shield rim clanked across, and that rim was bound in iron, not brass.

  “By Zodjuin of the Rainbow! You fight like a leem!”

  I did not waste breath answering but got myself back to the splintered door and held him off yet again. I had to allow my fighting instincts full play. There had to be a way of beating him. While he leaped and sprang so agilely before me and I ducked and weaved in my turn his men would not chance a stux throw or the loosing of a bolt. This gave me heart.

  The three men who, on fire, had charged into the fight were fully occupied. They were yelling and screeching strange oaths at one another, calling on outlandish gods and devils, and the way these four-armed diffs fought filled me with admiration. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation and wherever on Havilfar I might be, I had landed in a country of warriors, by Vox!

  Kov Nath drew back a space, and I saw a face at the window at my side. At first I imagined a monstrous mouse-face looked at me. There were brilliant dark eyes, a trembling tender nose above wide white whiskers, and a small mouth which showed small even teeth in evident terror at the fire-filled scene outside. A scarlet velvet cap with a jaunty white feather stuck lopsidedly in it covered this diffs head. He squeaked.

  “May all the Warrior Gods of Djanduin aid you now, apim!”

  So now I knew where I was. And, as before, the very sound of that name, Djanduin, struck a responsive chord in me. I had experienced the same uncomprehending but thrilling spark of uplift when I had first heard the name Strombor and the name Valka. And now — Djanduin!

  Perhaps all that has happened in the intervening years has given me a false hindsight; perhaps the names of Strombor and Valka and Djanduin and — but they must wait
for now — ring and thunder in my head so much, enough to echo back over the years. All I know is that as the mouse-faced little diff yelled at me, the name Djanduin struck shrewdly. These four-armed diffs were Djangs. I had used their national weapon, the djangir, on a notable occasion in the arena of Huringa.

  A crossbow bolt shattered into the window frame and the little diff jumped, squealing.

  “Get your head down, onker!” I roared at him, and with the thraxter belted a stux out of the air. The keen iron point would have pierced him just where his whiskers joined beneath the quivering nose and above the trembling mouth.

  “Mother Diocaster!” he yelped, and vanished.

  The fire-fanned flames lay their burning hair across the inn and more of the roof fell in; but I was heartened to note that the splintered lenken door and the smashed window with the crossbow bolt embedded in the frame lay upwind. Here was a tiny portion of hope for the cause in which I fought. That I had no idea what that cause was all about added a spice I — thinking of the Star Lords — did not relish.

  The far end of the inn was now doomed. I continued to fight, keeping a circle about the door, and with an evil cunning drawing Djangs in for combat so that they would screen me with their own bodies from their comrades’ shooting.

  Kov Nath, with his smooth helmet-head of coppery hair, tried again to get at me with that confounded great sword of his and I had to leap and then bend double to avoid the crunching back-handed swing. I circled him to his left, flickering the thraxter in and out like the tongue of a risslaca of the Ocher Limits, and then darting back and trying to cut him up in his right side. But those two damned right arms of his kept whacking the great sword about so that I had to take it on my blade and let a supple wrist twist slide it free. When, with the fighting-man’s instinctive attack following defense, my blade merely scraped across his shield I grew hopping mad.

  “Sink me!” I burst out. “You’re a bonny fighter, Kov Nath!”