B403 Glory Road Sec3

Rufo’s longhorse followed us onto the grassy verge Star picked for picnicking. He was still limp as a wet sock and snoring. I would have let him sleep but Star was shaking him.

He came awake fast, reaching for his sword and shouting, “A moi! M’aidez! Les vaches!” Fortunately some friend had stored his sword and belt out of reach on the baggage rack aft, along with bow, quiver, and our new foldbox.

Then he shook his head and said, “How many were there?”

“Down from there, old friend,” Star said cheerfully. “We’ve stopped to eat.”

“Eat!” Rufo gulped and shuddered. “Please, milady. No obscenity.” He fumbled at his seat belt and fell out of his saddle; I steadied him. Star was searching through her pouch; she pulled out a vial and offered it to Rufo. He shied back.

“Milady!”

“Shall I hold your nose?” she said sweetly.

“I’ll be all right. Just give me a moment . . . and the hair of the dog.”

“Certainly you’ll be all right. Shall I ask milord Oscar to pin your arms?”

Rufo glanced at me appealingly; Star opened the little bottle. It fizzed and fumes rolled out and down.

“Now!”

Rufo shuddered, held his nose, tossed it down.

I won’t say smoke shot out of his ears. But he flapped like torn canvas in a gale and horrible noises came out.

Then he came into focus as suddenly as a TV picture. He appeared heavier and inches taller and had finned out. His skin was a rosy glow instead of death pallor. “Thank you, milady,” he said cheerfully, his oice resonant and virile. “Someday I hope to return the favor.”

“When the Greeks reckon time by the kalends,” she agreed.

Rufo led the longhorses aside and fed them, opening the foldbox and digging out haunches of bloody eat. Ars Longa ate a hundredweight and Vita Brevis and Mors Profunda even more; on the road these beasts need a high-protein diet. That done, he whistled as he set up table and chairs for Star and myself.

“Sugar pie,” I said to Star, “what’s in that pick-me-up?”

“An old family recipe:

‘Eye of newt and toe of frog,

‘Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

‘Adders fork and blind-worm’s sting,

‘Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing–‘ ”

“Shakespeare!” I said. “Macbeth.”

” ‘Cool it with a baboon’s blood–‘ No, Will got it from me, milord love. That’s the way with writers; they’ll steal anything, file off the serial numbers, and claim it for their own. I got it from my aunt–another aunt–who was a professor of internal medicine. The rhyme is a mnemonic for the real ingredients which are much more complicated–never can tell when you’ll need a hangover cure. I compounded it last night, knowing that Rufo, for the sake of our skins, would need to be at his sharpest today–two doses, in fact, in case you needed one. But you surprised me, my love; you break out with nobility at the oddest times.”

“A family weakness. I can’t help it.”

“Luncheon is served, milady.”

I offered Star my arm. Hot foods were hot, cold ones chilled; this new foldbox, in Lincoln green embossed with the Doral chop, had equipment that the lost box lacked. Everything was delicious and the wines were superb.

Rufo ate heartily from his serving board while keeping an eye on our needs. He had come over to pour the wine for the salad when I broke the news. “Rufo old comrade, milady Star and I are getting married today. I want you to be my best man and help prop me up.”

He dropped the bottle.

Then he was busy wiping me and mopping the table. When at last he spoke, it was to Star. “Milady,” he said tightly, “I have put up with much, uncomplaining, for reasons I need not state. But this is going too far. I won’t let–”

“Hold your tongue!”

“Yes,” I agreed, “hold it while I cut it out. Will you have it fried? Or boiled?”

Rufo looked at me and breathed heavily. Then he left abruptly, withdrawing beyond the serving board.

Star said softly, “Milord love, I am sorry.”

“What twisted his tail?” I said wonderingly. Then I thought of the obvious. “Star! Is Rufo jealous?”

She looked astounded, started to laugh and chopped it off. “No, no, darling! It’s not that at all.

Rufo–Well, Rufo has his foibles but he is utterly dependable where it counts. And we need him. Ignore it. Please, milord.”

“As you say. It would take more than that to make me unhappy today.”

Rufo came back, face impassive, and finished serving. He repacked without speaking and we hit the road.

The road skirted the village green; we left Rufo there and sought out the rumormonger. His shop, a crooked lane away, was easy to spot; an apprentice was beating a drum in front of it and shouting
teasers of gossip to a crowd of locals. We pushed through and went inside.

The master rumormonger was reading something in each hand with a third scroll propped against his feet on a desk. He looked, dropped feet to floor, jumped up and made a leg while waving us to seats.

“Come in, come in, my gentles!” be sang out. “You do me great honor, my day is made! And yet if I may say so you have come to the right place whatever your problem whatever your need you have only to speak good news bad news every sort but sad news reputations restored events embellished history rewritten great deeds sung and all work guaranteed by the oldest established news agency in all Nevia news from all worlds all universes propaganda planted or uprooted offset or rechanneled satisfaction guaranteed honesty is the best policy but the client is always right don’t tell me I know I know I have spies in every kitchen ears in every bedroom the Hero Gordon without a doubt and your fame needs no heralds milord but honored am I that you should seek me out a biography perhaps to match your
matchless deeds complete with old nurse who recalls in her thin and ancient and oh so persuasive voice the signs and portents at your birth–”

Star chopped him off. “We want to get married.”

His mouth shut, he looked sharply at Star’s waistline and almost bought a punch in the nose. “It is a pleasure. And I must add that I heartily endorse such a public-spirited project. All this modern bundling and canoodling and scuttling without even three cheers or a by-your-leave sends taxes up and profits down that’s logic. I only wish I had time to get married myself as I’ve told my wife many’s the time. Now as to plans, if I may make a modest suggestion–”

“We want to be married by the customs of Earth.”

“Ah, yes, certainly.” He turned to a cabinet near his desk, spun dials. After a bit he said, “Your pardon, gentles, but my head is crammed with a billion facts, large and small, and–that name? Does it start with one ‘R’ or two?”

Star moved around, inspected the dials, made a setting.

The rumormonger blinked. “That universe? We seldom have a call for it. I’ve often wished I had time to travel but business business business–LIBRARY!”

“Yes, Master?” a voice answered.

“The planet Earth, Marriage Customs of–that’s a capital ‘Urr’ and a soft theta.” He added a five-group serial number. “Snap it up!”

In very short time an apprentice came running with a thin scroll. “Librarian says careful how you handle it, Master. Very brittle, he says. He says–”

“Shut up. Your pardon, gentles.” He inserted the scroll in a reader and began to scan.

His eyes bugged out and he sat forward. “Unbeliev–” Then he muttered, “Amazing! Whatever made them think of that!” For several minutes he appeared to forget we were there, simply giving vent to: “Astounding! Fantastic!” and like expressions.

I tapped his elbow. “We’re in a hurry.”

“Eh? Yes, yes, milord Hero Gordon–milady.” Reluctantly he left the scanner, fitted his palms together, and said, “You’ve come to the right place. Not another rumormonger in all Nevia could handle a project this size. Now my thought is–just a rough idea, talking off the top of my head–for the procession we’ll need to call in the surrounding countryside although for the charivari we could make do with just townspeople if you want to keep it modest in accordance with your reputation for dignified simplicity–say one day for the procession and a nominal two nights of charivari with guaranteed noise levels of–”

“Hold it.”

“Milord? I’m not going to make a profit on this; it will be a work of art, a labor of love–just expenses plus a little something for my overhead. It’s my professional judgment, too, that a Samoan pre-ceremony would be more sincere, more touching really, than the optional Zulu rite. For a touch of comedy relief–at no extra charge; one of my file clerks just happens to be seven months along, she’d be glad to run down the aisle and interrupt the ceremony–and of course there is the matter of witnesses to the consummation,
how many for each of you, but that needn’t be settled this week; we have the street decorations to think of first, and–”

I took her arm. “We’re leaving.”

“Yes, milord,” Star agreed.

He chased after us, shouting about broken contracts. I put hand to sword and showed six inches of blade; his squawks shut off.

Rufo seemed to be all over his mad; he greeted us civilly, even cheerfully. We mounted and left. We had been riding south a mile or so when I said, “Star darling–”

“Milord love?”

“That ‘jumping over the sword’–that really is a marriage ceremony?”

“A very old one, my darling. I think it dates back to the Crusades.”

“I’ve thought of an updated wording:

‘Jump rogue, and princess leap,

‘My wife art thou and mine to keep!’

“–would that suit you?”

“Yes, yes!”

“But for the second line you say:

‘–thy wife I vow and thine to keep.’

“Got it?”

Star gave a quick gasp. “Yes, my love!”

We left Rufo with the longhorses, giving no explanation, and climbed a little wooded hill. All of Nevia is beautiful, with never a beer can nor a dirty Kleenex to mar its Eden loveliness, but here we found an outdoor temple, a smooth grassy place surrounded by arching trees, an enchanted sanctuary.

I drew my sword and glanced along it, feeling its exquisite balance while noting again the faint ripples left by feather-soft hammer blows of some master swordsmith. I tossed it and caught it by the forte.

“Read the motto. Star.”

She traced it out. ” ‘Dum vivimus, vivamus!’–‘While we live, let us live!’ Yes, my love, yes!” She kissed it and handed it back; I placed it on the ground.

“Know your lines?” I asked.

“Graved in my heart.”

I took her hand in mine. “Jump high. One . . . two . . . three!”

When I led my bride back down that blessed hill, arm around her waist, Rufo helped us mount without comment. But he could hardly miss that Star now addressed me as: “Milord husband.” He mounted and tailed in, a respectful distance out of earshot.

We rode hand in hand for at least an hour. Whenever I glanced at her, she was smiling; whenever she caught my eye, the smile grew dimples. Once I asked, “How soon must we keep lockout?”

“Not until we leave the road, milord husband.”

That held us another mile. At last she said timidly, “Milord husband?”

“Yes, wife?”

“Do you still think that I am ‘a cold and clumsy wench’?”

“Mmm . . .” I answered thoughtfully, ” ‘cold’–no, I couldn’t honestly say you were cold. But ‘clumsy’–Well, compared with an artist like Muri, let us say–”

“Milord husband!”

“Yes? I was saying

“Are you honing for a kick in the belly?” She added, “American!”

“Wife . . . would you kick me in the belly?”

She was slow in answering and her voice was very low. “No, milord husband. Never.”

“I’m pleased to hear it. But if you did, what would happen?”

“You–you would spank me. With my own sword. But not with your sword. Please, never with your sword . . . my husband.”

“Not with your sword, either. With my hand. Hard. First I would spank you. And then–”

“And then what?”

I told her. “But don’t give me cause. According to plans I have to fight later. And don’t interrupt me in the future.”

“Yes, milord husband.”

“Very well. Now let’s assign Muri an arbitrary score of ten. On that scale you would rate–Let me hink.”

“Three or four, perhaps? Or even five?”

“Quiet. I make it about a thousand. Yes, a thousand, give or take a point. I haven’t a slide rule.”

“Oh, what a beast you are, my darling! Lean close and loss me–and just wait till I tell Muri.”

“You’ll say nothing to Muri, my bride, or you will be paddled. Quit fishing for compliments. You know hat you are, you sword-jumping wench.”

“And what am I?”

“My princess.”

“Oh.”

“And a mink with its tail on fire–and you know it.”

“Is that good? I’ve studied American idiom most carefully but sometimes I am not sure.”

“It’s supposed to be tops. A figure of speech, I’ve never known a mink that well. Now get your mindon other matters, or you may be a widow on your bridal day. Dragons, you say?”

“Not until after nightfall, milord husband–and they aren’t really dragons.”

“As you described them, the difference could matter only to another dragon. Eight feet high at the houlders, a few tons each, and teeth as long as any forearm–all they need is to breathe flame.”

“Oh, but they do! Didn’t I say?”

I sighed. “No, you did not.”

“They don’t exactly breathe fire. That would kill them. They hold their breaths while flaming. It’s wamp gas–methane–from the digestive tract. It’s a controlled belch, with a hypergolic effect from an enzyme secreted between the first and second rows of teeth. The gas bursts into flame on the way out.”

“I don’t care how they do it; they’re flame-throwers. Well? How do you expect me to handle them?”

“I had hoped that you would have ideas. You see,” she added apologetically, “I hadn’t planned on it, I didn’t expect us to come this way.”

“Well–Wife, let’s go back to that village. Set up in competition with our friend the rumormonger–I’ll bet we could outgabble him.”

“Milord husband!”

“Never mind. If you want me to kill dragons every Wednesday and Saturday, I’ll be on call. This flaming methane–Do they spout it from both ends?”

“Oh, just the front end. How could it be both?”

“Easy. See next year’s model. Now quiet; I’m thinking over a tactic. Ill need Rufo. I suppose he has killed dragons before?”

“I don’t know that a man has ever killed one, milord husband.”

“So? My princess, I’m flattered by the confidence you place in me. Or is it desperation? Don’t answer, I don’t want to know. Keep quiet and let me think.”

At the next farmhouse Rufo was sent in to arrange returning the longhorses. They were ours, gifts from the Doral, but we had to send them home, as they could not live where we were going–Muri had promised me that she would keep an eye on Ars Longa and exercise her. Rufo came back with a bumpkin mounted on a heavy draft animal bareback–he Kept shifting numbly between second and third pairs of legs to spare the animal’s back and controlled it by voice.

When we dismounted, retrieved our bows and quivers, and prepared to hoof it, Rufo came up. “Boss, Manure Foot craves to meet the hero and touch his sword. Brush him off?”

Rank hath its duties as well as its privileges. “Fetch him.”

The lad, overgrown and fuzz on his chin, approached eagerly, stumbling over his feet, then made a leg so long he almost fell. “Straighten up, son,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Pug, milord Hero,” he answered shrilly. (“Pug” will do. The Nevian meaning was as rugged as Jocko’s jokes.) “A stout name. What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“A hero, milord! Like yourself.”

I thought of telling him about those rocks on the Glory Road. But he would find them soon enough if ever he tramped it–and either not mind, or turn back and forget the silly business. I nodded approvingly and assured him that there was always room at the top in the Hero business for a lad with spirit–and that the lower the start, the greater the glory . . . so work hard and study hard and wait his opportunity. Keep his guard up but always speak to strange ladies; adventure would come his way. Then I let him touch my sword–but not take it in hand. The Lady Vivamus is mine and I’d rather share my toothbrush.

Once, when I was young, I was presented to a Congressman. He had handed me the same fatherly guff I was now plagiarizing. Like prayer, it can’t do any harm and might do some good, and I found that I was sincere when I said it and no doubt the Congressman was, too. Oh, possibly some harm, as the youngster might get himself killed on the first mile of that road. But that is better than sitting over the fire in your old age, sucking your gums and thinking about the chances you missed and the gals you didn’t
tumble. Isn’t it?

I decided that the occasion seemed so important to Pug that it should be marked, so I groped in my pouch and found a U.S. quarter. “What’s the rest of your name. Pug?”

“Just ‘Pug,’ milord. Of house Lerdki, of course.”

“E. C.” to “Easy” because of my style of broken-field running–I never ran harder nor dodged more than the occasion demanded.

“By authority vested in me by Headquarters United States Army Southeast Asia Command, I, the Hero Oscar, ordain that you shall be known henceforth as Lerdki’t Pug Easy. Wear it proudly.”

I gave him the quarter and showed him George Washington on the obverse. “This is the father of my house, a greater hero than I will ever be. He stood tall and proud, spoke the truth, and fought for the right as he saw it, against fearful odds. Try to be like him. And here”–I turned it over–“is the chop of my house, the house he founded. The bird stands for courage, freedom, and ideals soaring high.” (I didn’t tell him that the American Eagle eats carrion, never tackles anything its own size, and will soon be extinct–it does stand for those ideals. A symbol means what you put into it.)

Pug Easy nodded violently and tears started to flow. I had not presented him to my bride; I didn’t know that she would wish to meet him. But she stepped forward and said gently, “Pug Easy, remember the words of milord Hero. Treasure them and they will last you all your life.”

The lad dropped to his knees. Star touched his hair and said, “Stand, Lerdki’t Pug Easy. Stand tall.”

I said good-bye to Ars Longa, told her to be a good girl and I would be back someday. Pug Easy readed back with longhorses tailed up and we set out into the woods, arrows nocked and Rufo eyes-behind. There was a sign where we left the yellow brick road; freely translated it read: ALL HOPE ABANDON, YE WHO ENTER HERE.

(A literal translation is reminiscent of Yellowstone Park: “Warning–the varmints in these woods are not tame. Travelers are warned to stay on the road, as their remains will not be returned to their kin. The Lerdki, His Chop.”)

Presently Star said, “Milord husband–”

“Yes, pretty foots?” I didn’t look at her; I was watching my side and a bit of hers, and keeping an eye overhead as well, as we could be bombed here–something like blood kites but smaller and goes for the eyes.

“My Hero, you are truly noble and you have made your wife most proud.”

“Huh? How?” I had my mind on targets–two kinds on the ground here: a rat big enough to eat cats and willing to eat people, and a wild hog about the same size and not a ham sandwich on him anyplace, all rawhide and bad temper. The hogs were easier targets, I had been told, because they charge straight at you. But don’t miss. And have your sword loosened, you won’t nock a second shaft.

“That lad, Pug Easy. What you did for him.”

“Him? I fed him the old malarkey. Cost nothing.”

“It was a kingly deed, milord husband.”

“Oh, nonsense, diddycums. He expected big talk from a hero, so I did.”

“Oscar my beloved, may a loyal wife point it out to her husband when he speaks nonsense of himself? I have known many heroes and some were such oafs that one would feed them at the back door if their eeds did not claim a place at the table. I have known few men who were noble, for nobility is scarcer far than heroism. But true nobility can always be recognized . . . even in one as belligerently shy about showing it as you are. The lad expected it, so you gave it to him–out noblesse oblige is an emotion felt
only by those who are noble.”

“Well, maybe. Star, you are talking too much again. Don’t you think these varmints have ears?”

“Your pardon, milord. They have such good ears that they hear footsteps through the ground long before they hear voices. Let me have the last word, today being my bridal day. If you are–no, when you are gallant to some beauty, let us say Letva–or Muri, damn her lovely eyes! –I do not count it as nobility; it must be assumed to spring from a much commoner emotion than noblesse oblige. But when you speak to a country lout with pigsty on his feet, garlic on his breath, the stink of sweat all over him, and pimples on his face–speak gently and make him feel for the time as noble as you are and let him hope one day to be your equal–I know it is not because you hope to tumble him.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Boys that age are considered a treat in some circles. Give him a bath, perfume him, curl his hair–”

“Milord husband, is it permitted for me to think about kicking you in the belly?”

“Can’t be court-martialed for thinking, that’s the one thing they can’t take away from you. Okay, I prefer girls; I’m a square and can’t help it. What’s this about Muri’s eyes? Longlegs, are you jealous?”

I could hear dimples even though I couldn’t stop to see them. “Only on my wedding day, milord husband; the other days are yours. If I catch you in sportiveness, I shall either not see it, or congratulate
you, as may be.”

“I don’t expect you’ll catch me.”

“And I trust you’ll not catch me, milord rogue,” she answered serenely.

She did get the last word, for just then Rufo’s bowstring went Fwung! He called out, “Got ‘im!” and then we were very busy. Hogs so ugly they made razorbacks look like Poland-Chinas–I got one by
arrow, down his slobbering throat then fed steel to his brother a frozen second later. Star got a fair hit at hers but it deflected on bone and kept coming and I kicked it in the shoulder as I was still trying to free my blade from its cousin. Steel between its ribs quieted it and Star coolly nocked another shaft and let fly while I was killing it. She got one more with her sword, leaning the point in like a matador at the moment of truth, dancing aside as it came on, dead and unwilling to admit it.

The fight was over. Old Rufo had got three unassisted and a nasty goring; I had a scratch and my bride was unhurt, which I made sure of as soon as things were quiet. Then I mounted guard while our surgeon took care of Rufo, after which she dressed my lesser cut.

“How about it, Rufo?” I asked. “Can you walk?”

“Boss, I won’t stay in this forest if I have to crawl, Let’s mush. Anyhow,” he added, nodding at the worthless pork around us, “we won’t be bothered by rats right away.”

I rotated the formation, placing Rufo and Star ahead with his good leg on the outside and myself taking rear guard, where I should have been all along. Rear guard is slightly safer than point under most conditions but these weren’t most conditions. I had let my blind need to protect my bride personally ffect my judgment.

Having taken the hot spot I then went almost cross-eyed trying not only to see behind but ahead as well, so that I could close fast if Star–yes, and Rufo–got into trouble. Luckily we had a breathing spell in which I sobered down and took to heart the oldest lesson on patrol: You can’t do the other man’s job. Then I gave all my attention to our rear. Rufo, old as he was and wounded, would not die without slaughtering an honor guard to escort him to hell in style–and Star was no fainting heroine. I would bet long odds on her against anyone her own weight, name your weapon or barehanded, and I pity the man who ever tried to rape her; he’s probably still searching for his cojones.

Hogs didn’t bother us again but as evening approached we began to see and oftener to hear those giant rats; they paced us, usually out of sight; they never attacked berserk the way the hogs had; they looked for the best of it, as rats always do.

Rats give me the horrors. Once when I was a kid, my dad dead and Mother not yet remarried, we were flat broke and living in an attic in a condemned building. You could hear rats in the walls and twice rats ran over me in my sleep.

I still wake up screaming.

It doesn’t improve a rat to blow it up to the size of a coyote. These were real rats, even to the whiskers, and shaped like rats save that their legs and pads were too large–perhaps the cube-square law
on animal proportions works anywhere.

We didn’t waste an arrow on one unless it was a fair shot and we zigzagged to take advantage of such openness as the forest had–which increased the hazard from above. However, the forest was so dense that attacks from the sky weren’t our first worry.

I got one rat that tailed too closely and just missed another. We had to spend an arrow whenever they got bold; it caused the others to be more cautious. And once, while Rufo was drawing a bow on one and Star was ready with her sword to back him up, one of those vicious little hawks dived on Rufo.

Star cut him out of the air at the bottom of his stoop. Rufo hadn’t even seen it; he was busy nailing brother rat.

We didn’t have to worry about underbrush; this forest was park-like, trees and grass, no dense undergrowth. Not too bad, that stretch, except that we began to run out of arrows. I was fretting about that when I noticed something. “Hey, up ahead! You’re off course. Cut to the right.” Star had set course for me when we left the road but it was up to me to hold it; her bump of direction was erratic and Rufo’s no better.

“Sorry, milord leader,” Star called back. “The going was a trifle steep.”

I closed in. “Rufo, how’s the leg?” There was sweat on his forehead.

Instead of answering me, he said, “Milady, it will be dark soon.”

“I know,” she answered calmly, “so time for a bite of supper. Milord husband, that great flat rock up ahead seems a nice place.”

I thought she had slipped her gears and so did Rufo, but for another reason. “But, milady, we are far ehind schedule.”

“And much later we shall be unless I attend to your leg again.”

“Better you leave me behind,” he muttered.

“Better you keep quiet until your advice is asked,” I told him. “I wouldn’t leave a Horned Ghost to be eaten by rats. Star, how do we do this?”

The great flat rock sticking up like a skull in the trees ahead was the upper surface of a limestone boulder with its base buried. I stood guard in its center with Rufo seated beside me while Star set out wards at cardinal and semi-cardinal points. I didn’t get to see what she did because my eyes had to be peeled for anything beyond her, shaft nocked and ready to knock it down or scare it off, while Rufo watched the other side. However, Star told me later that the wards weren’t even faintly “magic” but were within reach of Earth technology once some bright boy got the idea–an “electrified fence” without the fence, as radio is a telephone without wires, an analogy that won’t hold up.

But it was well that I kept honest lockout instead of trying to puzzle out how she sat up that charmed circle, as she was attacked by the only rat we met that had no sense. He came straight at her, my arrow past her ear warned her, and she finished him off by sword. It was a very old male, missing teeth and white whiskers and likely weak in his mind. He was as large as a wolf, and with two death wounds still a red-eyed, mangy fury.

Once the last ward was placed Star told me that I could stop worrying about the sky; the wards roofed as well as fenced the circle. As Rufo says, if She says it, that settles it. Rufo had partly unfolded the foldbox while he watched; I got out her surgical case, more arrows for all of us, and food. No nonsense about manservant and gentlefolk, we ate together, sitting or sprawling and with Rufo lying flat to give his leg a chance while Star served him, sometimes popping food into his mouth in Nevian hospitality.

She had worked a long time on his leg while I held a light and handed her things. She packed the wound with a pale jelly before sealing a dressing over it. If it hurt, Rufo didn’t mention it.

While we ate it grew dark and the invisible fence began to be lined with eyes, glowing back at us with the light we ate by, and almost as numerous as the crowd the morning Igli ate himself. Most of them I judged to be rats. One group kept to themselves with a break in the circle on each side; I decided these must be hogs; the eyes were higher off the ground.

“Milady love,” I said, “will those wards hold all night?”

“Yes, milord husband.”

“They had better. It is too dark for arrows and I can’t see us hacking our way through that mob. I’m afraid you must revise your schedule again.”

“I can’t, milord Hero. But forget those beasts. Now we fly.”

Rufo groaned. “I was afraid so. You know it makes me seasick.”

“Poor Rufo,” Star said softly. “Never fear, old friend I have a surprise for you. Again such chance as this, I bought Dramamine in Cannes–you know, the drug that saved the Normandy invasion back on Earth. Or perhaps you don’t know.”

Rufo answered, ” ‘Know’? I was in that invasion, milady–and I’m allergic to Dramamine; I fed fish all the way to Omaha Beach. Worst night I’ve ever had–why, I’d rather be here!”

“Rufo,” I asked, “were you really at Omaha Beach?”

“Hell, yes, Boss. I did all of Eisenhower’s thinking.”

“But why? It wasn’t your fight.”

“You might ask yourself why you’re in this fight, Boss. In my case it was French babes. Earthy and uninhibited and always cheerful about it and willing to learn. I remember one little mademoiselle from Armentieres”–he pronounced it correctly–“who hadn’t been–”

Star interrupted. “While you two pursue your bachelor reminiscences, I’ll get the flight gear ready.” She got up and went to the foldbox.

“Go ahead, Rufo,” I said, wondering how far he would stretch this one.

“No,” he said sullenly. “She wouldn’t like it. I can tell. Boss, you’ve had the damnedest effect on Her. More ladylike by the minute and that isn’t like Her at all. First thing you know She will subscribe to Vogue and then there’s no telling how far it will go. I don’t understand it, it can’t be your looks. No offense meant.”

“And none taken. Well, tell me another time. If you can remember it.”

“I’ll never forget her. But, Boss, seasickness isn’t the half of it. You think these woods are infested. Well, the ones we are coming to–wobbly in the knees, at least I will be–those woods have dragons.”

“I know.”

“So She told you? But you have to see it to believe it. The woods are full of ’em. More than there are
Doyles in Boston. Big ones, little ones, and the two-ton teen-age size, hungry all the time. You may fancy
being eaten by a dragon; I don’t. It’s humiliating. And final. They ought to spray the place with
dragonbane, that’s what they ought to do. There ought to be a law.”

Star had returned. “No, there should not be a law,” she said firmly. “Rufo, don’t sound off about things you don’t understand. Disturbing the ecological balance is the worst mistake any government can make.”

Rufo shut up, muttering. I said, “My true love, what use is a dragon? Riddle me that.”

“I’ve never cast a balance sheet on Nevia, it’s not my responsibility. But I can suggest the imbalances that might follow any attempt to get rid of dragons–which the Nevians could do; you’ve seen that their technology is not to be sneered at. These rats and hogs destroy crops. Rats help to keep the hogs down by eating piglets. But rats are even worse than hogs, on food crops. The dragons graze through these very woods in the daytime–dragons are diurnal, rats are nocturnal and go into their holes in the heat of the day. The dragons and hogs keep the underbrush cropped back and the dragons keep the lower limbs trimmed off. But dragons also enjoy a tasty rat, so whenever one locates a rat hole, it gives it a shot of flame, not always killing adults as they dig two holes for each nest, but certainly killing any babies–and then the dragon digs in and has his favorite snack. There is a long-standing agreement, amounting to a
treaty, that as long as the dragons stay in their own territory and keep the rats in check, humans will not
bother them.”

“But why not kill the rats, and then clean up the dragons?”

“And let the hogs run wild? Please, milord husband, I don’t know all the answers in this case; I simply know that disturbing a natural balance is a matter to be approached with fear and trembling–and a very versatile computer. The Nevians seem content not to bother the dragons.”

“Apparently we’re going to bother them. Will that break the treaty?”

“It’s not really a treaty, it’s folk wisdom with the Nevians, and a conditioned reflex–or possibly instinct–with the dragons. And we aren’t going to bother dragons if we can help it. Have you discussed tactics with Rufo? There won’t be time when we get there.”

So I discussed how to loll dragons with Rufo, while Star listened and finished her preparations. “All right,” Rufo said glumly, “it beats sitting tight, like an oyster on the half shell waiting to be eaten. More dignified. I’m a better archer than you are–or at least as good–so I’ll take the hind end, as I’m not as agile tonight as I should be.”

“Be ready to switch jobs fast if he swings around.”

“You be ready, Boss. I’ll be ready for the best of reasons–my favorite skin.”

Star was ready and Rufo had packed and reslung the foldbox while we conferred. She placed round garters above each knee of each of us, then had us sit on the rock facing our destination. “That oak arrow, Rufo.”

“Star, isn’t this out of the Albertus Magnus book?”

“Similar,” she said. “My formula is more reliable and the ingredients I use on the garters don’t spoil. If you please, milord husband, I must concentrate on my witchery. Place the arrow so that it points at the cave.”

I did so. “Is that precise?” she asked.

“If the map you showed me is correct, it is. That’s aimed just the way I’ve been aiming since we left the road.”

“How far away is the Forest of Dragons?”

“Uh, look, my love, as long as we’re going by air why don’t we go straight to the cave and skip the dragons?”

She said patiently, “I wish we could. But that forest is so dense at the top that we can’t drop straight down at the cave, no elbow room. And the things that live in those trees, high up, are worse than dragons. They grow–”

“Please!” said Rufo. “I’m airsick already and we’re not off the ground.”

“Later, Oscar, if you still want to know. In any case we daren’t risk encountering them–and won’t; they stay up higher than the dragons can reach, they must. How tar to the forest?”

“Mmm, eight and a half miles, by that map and how far we’ve come–and not more than two beyond that to the Cave of the Gate.”

“All right. Arms tight around my waist, both of you, and as much body contact as possible; it’s got to work on all of us equally.” Rufo and I settled each an arm in a hug about her and clasped hands across her tummy. That’s good. Hang on tight.” Star wrote figures on the rock beside the arrow.

It sailed away into the night with us after it.

I don’t see how to avoid calling this magic, as I can’t see any way to build Buck Rogers belts into elastic garters. Oh, if you like, Star hypnotized us, then used psi powers to teleport us eight and a half miles. “Psi” is a better word than “magic”; monosyllables are stronger than polysyllables–see Winston Churchill’s speeches. I don’t understand either word, any more than I can explain why I never get lost. I just think it’s preposterous that other people can.

When I fly in dreams, I use two styles: one is a swan dive and I swoop and swirl and cut didos; the other is sitting Turk fashion like the Little Lame Prince and sailing along by sheer force of personality.

The latter is how we did it, like sailing in a glider with no glider. It was a fine night for flying (all nights in Nevia are fine; it rains just before dawn in the rainy season, they tell me) and the greater moon silvered the ground below us. The woods opened up and became clumps of trees; the forest we were heading for showed black against the distance, much higher and enormously more imposing than the pretty woods behind us. Far off to the left I could glimpse fields of house Lerdki.

We had been in the air about two minutes when Rufo said, “Pa’don me!” and turned his head away. He doesn’t have a weak stomach; he didn’t get a drop on us. It arched like a fountain. That was the only incident of a perfect flight.

Just before we reached the tall trees Star said crisply, “Amech!” We checked like a heli and settled straight down to a three-fanny landing. The arrow rested on the ground in front of us, again dead. Rufo returned it to his quiver. “How do you feel?” I asked. “And how’s your leg?”

He gulped. “Leg’s all right. Ground’s going up and down.”

“Hush!” Star whispered. “Hell be all right. But hush, for your lives!”

We set out moments later, myself leading with drawn sword, Star behind me, and Rufo dogging her, an arrow nocked and ready.

The change from moonlight to deep shadow was blinding and I crept along, feeling for tree trunks and praying that no dragon would be in the path my bump of direction led. Certainly I knew that the dragons slept at night, but I place no faith in dragons. Maybe the bachelors stood watches, the way bachelor baboons do. I wanted to surrender that place of honor to St. George and take a spot farther back.

Once my nose stopped me, a whiff of ancient musk. I waited and slowly became aware of a shape the size of a real estate office–a dragon, sleeping with its head on its tail. I led them around it, making no noise and hoping that my heart wasn’t as loud as it sounded.

My eyes were doing better now, reaching out for every stray moonbeam that trickled down–and something else developed. The ground was mossy and barely phosphorescent the way a rotten log sometimes is. Not much. Oh, very little. But it was the way a darkroom light, almost nothing when you go inside, later is plenty of light. I could see trees now and the ground–and dragons.

I had thought earlier, Oh, what’s a dozen or so dragons in a big forest? Chances are we won’t see one, any more than you cath sight of deer most days in deer country.

The man who gets the all-night parking concession in that forest will make a fortune if he figures out a way to make dragons pay up. We never were out of sight of one after we could see.

Of course these aren’t dragons. No, they are uglier. They are saurians, more like tyrannosaurus rex than anything else–big hindquarters and heavy hind legs, heavy tail, and smaller front legs that they use either in walking or to grasp their prey. The head is mostly teeth. They are omnivores whereas I understand that T. rex ate only meat. This is no help; the dragons eat meat when they can get it, they prefer it. Furthermore, these not-so-fake dragons have evolved that charming trick of burning their own sewer gas. But no evolutionary quirk can be considered odd if you use the way octopi make love as a comparison.

Once, far off to the left, an enormous jet lighted up, with a grunting bellow like a very old alligator. The light stayed on several seconds, then died away. Don’t ask me–two males arguing over a female, maybe. We kept going, but I slowed after the light went out, as even that much was enough to affect our eyes until our night sight recovered.

I’m allergic to dragons–literally, not just scared silly. Allergic the way poor old Rufo is to Dramamine but more the way cat fur affects some people.

My eyes were watering as soon as we were in that forest, then my sinuses started to clog up and before we had gone half a mile I was using my left fist to rub my upper lip as hard as I could, trying to kill a sneeze with pain. At last I couldn’t make it and jammed fingers up my nostrils and bit my lips and the contained explosion almost burst my eardrums. It happened as we were skirting the south end of a truck-and-trailer-size job; I stopped dead and they stopped and we waited. It didn’t wake up.

When I started up, my beloved closed on me, grasped my arm; I stopped again. She reached into her pouch, silently found something, rubbed it on my nose and up my nostrils, then with a gentle push signed that we could move on.

First my nose burned cold, as with Vick’s salve, then it felt numb, and presently it began to clear.

After more than an hour of this agelong spooky sneak through tall trees and giant shapes, I thought we were going to win “home free.” The Cave of the Gate should be not more than a hundred yards ahead and I could see the rise in ground where the entrance would be–and only one dragon in our way and that not in direct line.

I hurried.

There was this little fellow, no bigger than a wallaby and about the same shape, aside from baby teeth four inches long. Maybe he was so young he had to wake to potty in the night, I don’t know. All I know is that I passed close to a tree he was behind and stepped on his tail, and he squealed!

He had every right to. But that’s when it hit the fan. The adult dragon between us and the cave woke up at once. Not a big one–say about forty feet, including the tail.

Good old Rufo went into action as if he had had endless time to rehearse, dashing around to the brute’s south end, arrow nocked and bow bent, ready to loose in a hurry. “Get its tail up!” he called out.

I ran to the front end and tried to antagonize the beast by shouting and waving my sword while wondering how far that flame-thrower could throw. There are only four places to put an arrow into a Nevian dragon; the rest is armored like a rhino only heavier. Those four are his mouth (when open), his eyes (a difficult shot; they are little and piggish), and that spot right under his tail where almost any animal is vulnerable. I had figured that an arrow placed in that tender area should add mightily to that “itching, burning” sensation featured in small ads in the backs of newspapers, the ones that say AVOID SURGERY!

My notion was that, if the dragon, not too bright, was unbearably annoyed at both ends at once, his coordination should go all to hell and we could peck away at him until he was useless, or until he got sick of it and ran. But I had to get his tail up, to let Rufo get in a shot. These creatures, satchel-heavy like old

T. rex, charge head up and front legs up and balance this by lifting the tail.
The dragon was weaving its head back and forth and I was trying to weave the other way, so as not to be lined up if it turned on the flame–when suddenly I got my first blast of methane, whiffing it before it lighted, and retreated so fast that I backed into that baby I had stepped on before, went clear over it, landed on my shoulders and rolled, and that saved me. Those flames shoot out about twenty feet. The grown-up dragon had reared up and still could have fried me, but the baby was in the way. It chopped off the flame–but Rufo yelled, “Bull’s-eye!”

The reason that I backed away in time was halitosis. It says here that “pure methane is a colorless, odorless gas.” The GI tract methane wasn’t pure; it was so loaded with homemade ketones and aldehydes that it made an unlimed outhouse smell like Shalimar.

I figure that Stars giving me that salve to open up my nose saved my life. When my nose clamps down I can’t even smell my upper lip.

The action didn’t stop while I figured this out; I did all my thinking either before or after, not during. Shortly after Rufo shot it in the bull’s-eye, the beast got a look of utter indignation, opened its mouth again without flaming and tried to reach its fanny with both hands. It couldn’t–forelegs too short–but it tried. I had returned sword in a hurry once I saw the length of that flame jet and had grabbed my bow. I had time to get one arrow into its mouth, left tonsil maybe.

This message got through faster. With a scream of rage that shook the ground it started for me, belching flame–and Rufo yelled, “A wart seven!”

I was too busy to congratulate him; those critters are fast for their size. But I’m fast, too, and had more incentive. A thing that big can’t change course very fast, but it can swing its head and with it the flame. I got my pants scorched and moved still faster, trying to cut around it.

Star carefully put an arrow into the other tonsil, right where the flame came out, while I was dodging. Then the poor thing tried so hard to turn both ways at both of us that it got tangled in its feet and fell over, a small earthquake. Rufo sank another arrow in its tender behind, and Star loosed one that passed through its tongue and stuck on the fletching, not damaging it but annoying it dreadfully.

It pulled itself into a ball, got to its feet, reared up and tried to flame me again. I could tell it didn’t like me.

And the flame went out.

This was something I had hoped for. A proper dragon, with castles and captive princesses, has as much fire as it needs, like six-shooters in TV oaters. But these creatures fermented their own methane and couldn’t have too big a reserve tank nor under too high pressure–I hoped. If we could nag one into using all its ammo fast, there was bound to be a lag before it recharged.

Meanwhile Rufo and Star were giving it no peace with the pincushion routine. It made a real effort to light up again while I was traversing rapidly, trying to keep that squealing baby dragon between me and the big one, and it behaved like an almost dry Ronson; the flame flickered and caught, shot out a pitiful six feet and went out. But it tried so hard to get me with that last flicker that it fell over again.

I took a chance that it would be sluggy for a second or two like a man who’s been tackled hard, ran in and stuck my sword in its right eye.

It gave one mighty convulsion and quit.

(A lucky poke. They say dinosaurs that big have brains the size of chestnuts. Let’s credit this beast with one the size of a cantaloupe–but it’s still luck if you thrust through an eye socket and get the brain right off. Nothing we had done up to then was more than mosquito bites. But it died from that one poke. St. Michael and St. George guided my blade.)

And Rufo yelled, “Boss! Git fer home!”

A drag race of dragons was closing on us. It felt like that drill in basic where you have to dig a foxhole, then let a tank pass over you.

“This way!” I yelled. “Rufo! This way, not that! Star!” Rufo skidded to a stop, we got headed the same way and I saw the mouth of the cave, black as sin and inviting as a mother’s arms. Star hung back; I shoved her in and Rufo stumbled after her and I turned to face more dragons for my lady love.

But she was yelling, “Milord! Oscar! Inside, you idiot! I must set the wards!”

So I got inside fast and she did, and I never did chew her out for calling her husband an idiot.

The littlest dragon followed us to the cave, not belligerently (although I don’t trust anything with teeth that size) out more, I think, the way a baby duck follows anyone who leads. It tried to come in after us, drew back suddenly as its snout touched the invisible curtain, like a kitten hit by a static spark. Then it hung around outside, making wheepling noises.

I began to wonder whether or not Stars wards could stop flame. I found out as an old dragon arrived right after that, shoved his head into the opening, jerked it back indignantly just as the kid had, then eyed us and switched on his flame-thrower.

No, the wards don’t stop flame.

We were far enough inside that we didn’t get singed but the smoke and stink and heat were ghastly and just as deadly if it went on long.

An arrow whoofed past my ear and that dragon gave up interest in us. He was replaced by another who wasn’t convinced. Rufo, or possibly Star, convinced him before he had time to light his blowtorch. The air cleared; from somewhere inside there was an outward draft.

Meanwhile Star had made a light and the dragons were holding an indignation meeting. I glanced behind me–a narrow, low passage that dropped and turned. I stopped paying attention to Star and Rufo and the inside of the cave; another committee was calling.

I got the chairman in his soft palate before he could belch. The vice-chairman took over and got in a brief remark about fifteen feet long before he, too, changed his mind. The committee backed off and bellowed bad advice at each other.

The baby dragon hung around all during this. When the adults withdrew he again came to the door, just short of where he had burned his nose. “Koo-werp?” he said plaintively. “Koo-werp? Keet!” Plainly he wanted to come in.

Star touched my arm. “If milord husband pleases, we are ready.”

“Keet!”

“Right away,” I agreed, then yelled, “Beat it, kid! Back to your mama.”

Rufo stuck his head alongside mine. “Probably can’t,” he commented. “Likely that was its mama we ruined.”

I didn’t answer as it made sense; the adult dragon we had finished off had come awake instantly when I stepped on the kid’s tail. This sounds like mother love, if dragons go in for mother love–I wouldn’t know.

But it’s a hell of a note when you can’t even kill a dragon and feel lighthearted afterwards.

We meandered back into that hill, ducking stalactites and stepping around stalagmites while Rufo led with a torch. We arrived in a domed chamber with a floor glazed smooth by unknown years of calcified deposit. It had stalactites in soft pastel shades near the walls and a lovely, almost symmetrical chandelier from the center but no stalagmite under it. Star and Rufo had stuck lumps of the luminescent putty, which is the common night light in Nevia at a dozen points around the room; it bathed the room in a soft light and pointed up the stalactites.

Among them Rufo showed me webs. “Those spinners are harmless,” he said. “Just big and ugly. They don’t even bite like a spider. But–mind your step!” He pulled me back. “These things are poisonous even to touch. Blindworms. That’s what took us so long. Had to be sure the place was clean before warding it. But now that She is settig wards at the entrances I’ll give it one more check.”

The so-called blindworms were translucent, iridescent things the size of large rattlesnakes and slimy-soft like angleworms; I was glad they were dead. Rufo speared them on his sword, a grisly shishkebab, and carried them out through the entrance we had come in.

He was back quickly and Star finished warding. “That’s better,” he said with a sigh as he started cleaning his blade. “Don’t want their perfume around the house. They rot pretty fast and puts me in mind of green hides. Or copra. Did I ever tell you about the time I shipped as a cook out of Sydney? We had a second mate aboard who never bathed and kept a penguin in his stateroom. Female, of course. This bird was no more cleanly than he was and it used to–”

“Rufo,” said Star, “will you help with the baggage?”

“Coming, milady.”

We got out food, sleeping mats, more arrows, things that Star needed for her witching or whatever, and canteens to fill with water, also from the foldbox. Star had warned me earlier that Karth-Hokesh was a place where the local chemistry was not compatible with human life; everything we ate or drank we must fetch with us.

I eyed those one-liter canteens with disfavor. “Baby girl, I think we are cutting rations and water too fine.”

She shook her head. “We won’t need more, truly.”

“Lindbergh flew the Atlantic on just a peanut butter sandwich,” Rufo put in. “But I urged him to take more.”

“How do you know we won’t need more?” I persisted. “Water especially.”

“I’m filling mine with brandy,” Rufo said. “You divvy with me, I’U divvy with you.”

“Milord love, water is heavy. If we try to hang everything on us against any emergency, like the White Knight, we’ll be too weighted down to fight. I’m going to have to strain to usher through three people, weapons, and a minimum of clothing. Living bodies are easiest; I can borrow power from you both. Once-living materials are next; you’ve noticed, I think, that our clothing is wool, our bows of wood, and strings are of gut. Things never living are hardest, steel especially, yet we must have swords and, if we still had firearms, I would strain to the limit to get them through, for now we need them. However, milord Hero, I am simply informing you. You must decide–and I feel sure I can handle, oh, even half a hundredweight more of dead things if necessary. If you will select what your genius tells you.”

“My genius has gone fishing. But, Star my love, there is a simple answer. Take everything.”

“Milord?”

“Jocko set us out with half a ton of food, looks like, and enough wine to float a loan, and a little water. Plus a wide variety of Nevia’s best tools for killing, stabbing, and mayhem. Even armor. And more things. In that foldbox is enough to survive a siege, without eating or drinking anything from Karth-Hokesh. The beauty of it is that it weighs only about fifteen pounds, packed–not the fifty pounds you said you could swing by straining. I’ll strap it on my own back and won’t notice it. It won’t slow me down; it may armor me against a swing at my back. Suits?”

Star’s expression would have fitted a mother whose child has just caught onto the Stork hoax and is wondering how to tackle an awkward subject. “Milord husband, the mass is much too great. I doubt if any witch or warlock could move it unassisted.”

“But folded up?”

“It does not change it, milord; the mass is still there–still more dangerously there. Think of a powerful spring, wound very tight and small, thus storing much energy. It takes enormous power to put a foldbox through a transition in its compacted form, or it explodes.

I recalled a mud volcano that had drenched us and quit arguing. “All right. I’m wrong. But one question–If the mass is there always, why does it weigh so little when folded?”

Star got the same troubled expression. “Your pardon, milord, but we do not share the language–the mathematical language–that would permit me to answer. As yet, I mean; I promise you chance to study if you wish. As a tag, think of it as a tame spacewarp. Or think of the mass being so extremely far away–in a new direction–from the sides of the foldbox that local gravitation hardly matters.”

(I remembered a time when my grandmother had asked me to explain television to her–the guts, not the funny pictures. There are things which cannot be taught in ten easy lessons, nor popularized for the masses; they take years of skull sweat. This be treason in an age when ignorance has come into its own and one man’s opinion is as good as another’s. But there it is. As Star says, the world is what it is–and doesn’t forgive ignorance.)

But I was still curious. “Star, is there any way to tell me why some things go through easier than others? Wood easier than iron, for example?”

She looked rueful. “No, because I don’t know myself. Magic is not science, it is a collection of ways to do things–ways that work but often we don’t know why.”

“Much like engineering. Design by theory, then beef it up anyhow.”

“Yes, milord husband. A magician is a rule-of-thumb engineer.”

“And,” put in Rufo, “a philosopher is a scientist with no thumbs. I’m a philosopher. Best of all professions.”

Star ignored him and got out a sketch block, showed me what she knew of the great tower from which we must steal the Egg of Phoenix. This block appeared to be a big cube of Plexiglas; it looked like it, felt like it, and took thumbprints like it.

But she had a long pointer which sank into it as if the block were air. With its tip she could sketch in three dimensions; it left a thin glowing line whenever she wanted it–a 3-dimensional blackboard.

This wasn’t magic; it was advanced technology–and it will beat the hell out of our methods of engineering drawing when we learn how, especially for complex assemblies such as aviation engines and UHF circuitry–even better than exploded isometric with transparent overlays. The block was about thirty inches on a side and the sketch inside could be looked at from any angle–even turned over and studied from underneath.

The Mile-High Tower was not a spire but a massy block, somewhat like those stepped-back buildings in New York, but enormously larger.

Its interior was a maze.

“Milord champion,” Star said apologetically, “when we left Nice there was in our baggage a finished

sketch of the Tower. Now I must work from memory. However, I had studied the sketch so very long that I believe I can get relations right even if proportions suffer. I feel sure of the true paths, the paths that lead to the Egg. It is possible that false paths and dead ends will not be as complete; I did not study them as hard.”

“Can’t see that it matters,” I assured her. “If I know the true paths, any I don’t know are false ones. Which we won’t use. Except to hide in, in a pinch.”

She drew the true paths in glowing red, false ones in green–and there was a lot more green than red. The critter who designed that tower had a twisty mind. What appeared to be the main entrance went in, up, branched and converged, passed close to the Chamber of the Egg–then went back down by a devious route and dumped you out, like P. T. Barnum’s “This Way to the Egress.”

Other routes went inside and lost you in mazes that could not be solved by follow-the-left-wall. If you did, you’d starve. Even routes marked in red were very complex. Unless you knew where the Egg was guarded, you could enter correctly and still spend this year and next January in fruitless search.

“Star, have you been in the Tower?”

“No, milord. I have been in Karth-Hokesh. But far back in the Grotto Hills. I’ve seen the Tower only from great distance.”

“Somebody must have been in it. Surely your–opponents–didn’t send you a map.”

She said soberly, “Milord, sixty-three brave men have died getting the information I now offer you.”

(So now we try for sixty-four!) I said, “Is there any way to study just the red paths?”

“Certainly, milord.” She touched a control, green lines faded. The red paths started each from one of the three openings, one “door” and two “windows.”

I pointed to the lowest level. “This is the only one of thirty or forty doors that leads to the Egg?”

“That is true.”

“Then just inside that door they’ll be waiting to clobber us.”

“That would seem likely, milord.”

“Hmmm . . .” I turned to Rufo. “Rufe, got any long, strong, lightweight line in that plunder?”

“I’ve got some Jocko uses for hoisting. About like heavy fishing line, breaking strength around fifteen hundred pounds.”

“Good boy!” “Figured you might want it. A thousand yards enough?”

“Yes. Anything lighter than that?”

“Some silk trout line.”

In an hour we had made all preparations I could think of and that maze was as firmly in my head as the alphabet. “Star hon, we’re ready to roll. Want to whomp up your spell?”

“No, milord.”

“Why not? ‘Twere best done quickly.”

“Because I can’t, my darling. These Gates are not true gates; there is always a matter of timing. This one will be ready to open, for a few minutes, about seven hours from now, then cannot be opened again for several weeks.” I had a sour thought. “If the buckos we are after know this, they’ll hit us as we come out.”

“I hope not, milord champion. They should be watching for us to appear from the Grotto Hills, as they know we have a Gate somewhere in those hills–and indeed that is the Gate I planned to use. But this Gate, even if they know of it, is so badly located–for us–that I do not think they would expect us to dare it.”

“You cheer me up more all the time. Have you thought of anything to tell me about what to expect? Tanks? Cavalry? Big green giants with hairy ears?”

She looked troubled. “Anything I say would mislead you, milord. We can assume that their troops will be constructs rather than truly living creatures . . . which means they can be anything. Also, anything may be illusion. I told you about the gravity?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Forgive me. I’m tired and my mind isn’t sharp. The gravity varies, sometimes erratically. A level stretch will seem to be downhill, then quickly uphill. Other things . . . any of which may be illusion.”

Rufo said, “Boss, if it moves, shoot it. If it speaks, cut its throat. That spoils most illusions. You don’t need a program; there’ll be just us–and all the others. So when in doubt, kill it. No sweat.”

I grinned at him. “No sweat. Okay, well worry when we get there. So let’s quit talking.”

“Yes, milord husband,” Star seconded. “We had best get several hours’ sleep.”

Something in her voice had changed. I looked at her and she was subtly different, too. She seemed smaller, softer, more feminine and compliant than the Amazon who had fired arrows into a beast a hundred times her weight less than two hours before.

“A good idea,” I said slowly and looked around. While Star had been sketching the mazes of the Tower, Rufo had repacked what we couldn’t take and–I now noticed–put one sleeping pad on one side of the cave and the other two side by side as far from the first as possible.

I silently questioned her by glancing at Rufo and shrugging an implied, “What now?”

Her answering glance said neither yes nor no. Instead she called out, “Rufo, go to bed and give that leg a chance. Don’t lie on it. Either belly down or face the wall.”

For the first time Rufo showed his disapproval of what we had done. He answered abruptly, not what Star said but what she may have implied: “You couldn’t hire me to look!”

Star said to me in a voice so low I barely heard it, “Forgive him, milord husband. He is an old man, he has his quirks. Once he is in bed I will take down the lights.”

I whispered, “Star my beloved, it still isn’t my idea of how to run a honeymoon.”

She searched my eyes. “This is your will, milord love?”

“Yes. The recipe calls for a jug of wine and a loaf of bread. Not a word about a chaperon. I’m sorry.”

She put a slender hand against my chest, looked up at me. “I am glad, milord.”

“You are?” I didn’t see why she had to say so.

“Yes. We both need sleep. Against the morrow. That your strong sword arm may grant us many morrows.”

I felt better and smiled down at her. “Okay, my princess. But I doubt if I’ll sleep.”

“Ah, but you will!”

“Want to bet?”

“Hear me out, milord darling. Tomorrow . . . after you have won . . . we go quickly to my home. No more waitings, no more troubles. I would that you knew the language of my home, so that you will not feel a stranger. I want it to be your home, at once. So? Will milord husband dispose himself for bed? Lie back and let me give him a language lesson? You will sleep, you know that you will.”

“Well . . . it’s a fine idea. But you need sleep even more than I do.”

“Your pardon, milord, but not so. Four hours’ sleep puts spring in my step and a song on my lips.”

“Well . . . ”

Five minutes later I was stretched out, staring into the most beautiful eyes in any world and listening to

her beloved voice speak softly in a language strange to me . . .

Rufo was shaking my shoulder. “Breakfast, Boss!” He shoved a sandwich into my hand and a pot of beer into the other. “That’s enough to fight on and lunch is packed. I’ve laid out fresh clothes and your weapons and I’ll dress you as soon as you finish. But snap it up. We’re on in a few minutes.” He was already dressed and belted.

I yawned and took a bite of sandwich (anchovies, ham and mayonnaise, with something that wasn’t quite tomato and lettuce)–and looked around. The place beside me was empty but Star seemed to have just gotten up; she was not dressed. She was on her knees in the center of the room, drawing some large design on the floor.

“Morning, chatterbox,” I said. “Pentacle?”

“Mmm–” she answered, not looking up.

I went over and watched her work. Whatever it was, it was not based on a five-cornered star. It had three major centers, was very intricate, had notations here and there–I recognized neither language nor script–and the only sense I could abstract from it was what appeared to be a hypercube seen face on.
“Had breakfast, hon?”

“I fast this morning.”

“You’re skinny now. Is that a tesseract?”

“Stop it!”

I made a leg. “Your pardon, milady.”

“Don’t be formal with me, darling. Love me anyhow and give me a quick kiss–then let me be.”

So I leaned over and gave her a high-caloric kiss, with mayonnaise, and let her be. I dressed while I finished the sandwich and beer, then sought out a natural alcove just short of the wards in the passage, one which had been designated the men’s room. When I came back Rufo was waiting with my sword belt “Boss, you’d be late for your own hanging.”

“I hope so.”

A few minutes later we were standing on that diagram, Star on pitcher’s mound with Rufo and myself at first and third bases. He and I were much hung about, myself with two canteens and Star’s sword belt (on its last notch) as well as my own, Rufo with Star’s bow slung and with two quivers, plus her medic’s kit and lunch. We each had longbow strung and tucked under left arm; we each had drawn sword. Star’s tights were under my belt behind in an untidy tail, her jacket was crumpled under Rufo’s belt, while her buskins and hat were crammed into pockets–etc. We looked like a rummage sale. But this did leave Rufo’s left hand and mine free. We faced outward with swords at ready, reached behind us and Star clasped us each firmly by hand. She stood in the exact center, feet apart and planted solidly and was wearing that required professionally of witches when engaged in heavy work, i.e., not even a bobby pin. She looked magnificent, hair shaggy, eyes shining, and face flushed, and I was sorry to turn my back.

“Ready, my gallants?” she demanded, excitement in her voice.

“Ready,” I confirmed.

“Ave, Imperatrix, nos morituri te–”

“Stop that, Rufo! Silence!” She began to chant in a language unknown to me. The back of my neck prickled.

She stopped, squeezed our hands much harder, and shouted, “Now!”

Sudden as a slammed door, I find I’m a Booth Tarkington hero in a Mickey Spillane situation.

I don’t have time to moan. Here is this thing in front of me, about to chop me down, so I run my blade through his guts and yank it free while he makes up his mind which way to fall; then I dose his buddy the same way. Another one is squatting and trying to get a shot at my legs past the legs of his squad mates. I’m as busy as a one-armed beaver with paperhangers and hardly notice a yank at my belt as Star recovers her sword.

Then I do notice as she kills the hostile who wants to shoot me. Star is everywhere at once, naked as a frog and twice as lively. There was a dropped-elevator sensation at transition, and suddenly reduced gravitation could have been bothersome had we time to indulge it.

Star makes use of it. After stabbing the laddie who tries to shoot me, she sails over my head and the head of a new nuisance, poking him in the neck as she passes and he isn’t a nuisance any longer.

I think she helps Rufo, but I can’t stop to look. I hear his grunts behind me and that tells me that he is still handing out more than he’s catching.

Suddenly he yells, “Down!” and something hits the back of my knees and I go down–land properly limp and am about to roll to my feet when I realize Rufo is the cause. He is belly down by me and shooting what has to be a gun at a moving target out across the plain, himself behind the dead body of one of our playmates.

Star is down, too, but not fighting. Something has poked a hole through her right arm between elbow and shoulder.

Nothing else seemed to be alive around me, but there were targets four to five hundred feet away and opening rapidly. I saw one fall, heard Zzzzt, smelled burning flesh near me. One of those guns was lying across a body to my left; I grabbed it and tried to figure it out. There was a shoulder brace and a tube which should be a barrel; nothing else looked familiar.

“Like this, my Hero.” Star squirmed to me, dragging her wounded arm and leaving a trail of blood. “Race it like a rifle and sight it so. There is a stud under your left thumb. Press it. That’s all–no windage, no elevation.”

And no recoil, as I found when I tracked one of the running figures with the sights and pressed the stud. There was a spurt of smoke and down he went. “Death ray,” or Laser beam, or whatever–line it up, press the stud, and anyone on the far end quit the party with a hole burned in him.

I got a couple more, working right to left, and by then Rufo had done me out of targets. Nothing moved, so far as I could see, anywhere.

Rufo looked around. “Better stay down, Boss.” He rolled to Star, opened her medic’s kit at his own belt, and put a rough and hasty compress on her arm.

Then he turned to me. “How bad are you hurt, Boss?”

“Me? Not a scratch.”

“What’s that on your tunic? Ketchup? Someday somebody is going to offer you a pinch of snuff. Let’s see it.”

I let him open my jacket. Somebody, using a saw-tooth edge, had opened a hole in me on my left side below the ribs. I had not noticed it and hadn’t felt it–until I saw it and then it hurt and I felt queasy. I strongly disapprove of violence done to me. While Rufo dressed it, I looked around to avoid looking at it.

We had killed about a dozen of them right around us, plus maybe half that many who had fled–and had shot all who fled, I think. How? How can a 60-lb. dog armed only with teeth take on, knock down, and hold prisoner an armed man? Ans: By all-out attack.

I think we arrived as they were changing the guard at that spot known to be a Gate–and had we arrived even with swords sheathed we would have been cut down. As it was, we killed a slew before most of them knew a fight was on. They were routed, demoralized, and we slaughtered the rest, including those who tried to bug out. Karate and many serious forms of combat (boxing isn’t serious, nor anything with rules)–all these work that same way: go-for-broke, all-out attack with no wind up. These are not so much skills as an attitude.

I had time to examine our late foes; one was faced toward me with his belly open. “Iglis” I would call them, but of the economy model. No beauty and no belly buttons and not much brain–presumably constructed to do one thing: fight, and try to stay alive. Which describes us, too–but we did it faster.

Looking at them upset my stomach, so I looked at the sky. No improvement–it wasn’t decent sky and wouldn’t come into focus. It crawled and the colors were wrong, as jarring as some abstract paintings. I looked back at our victims, who seemed almost wholesome compared with that “sky.”

While Rufo was doctoring me, Star squirmed into her tights and put on her buskins. “Is it all right for me to sit up to get into my jacket?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Maybe they’ll think we’re dead.” Rufo and I helped her finish dressing without any of us rising up above the barricade of flesh. I’m sure we hurt her arm but all she said was, “Sling my sword left-handed. What now, Oscar?”

“Where are the garters?”

“Got em. But I’m not sure they will work. This is a very odd place.”

“Confidence,” I told her. “That’s what you told me a few minutes ago. Put your little mind to work believing you can do it.” We ranged ourselves and our plunder, now enhanced by three “rifles” plus side arms of the same sort, then laid out the oaken arrow for the top of the Mile-High Tower. It dominated one whole side of the scene, more a mountain than a building, black and monstrous.

“Ready?” asked Star. “Now you two believe, tool” She scrawled with her finger in the sand. “Go!”

We went. Once in the air, I realized what a naked target we were–but we were a target on the ground, too, for anyone up on that tower, and worse if we had hoofed it. “Faster!” I yelled in Stars ear.
“Make us go faster!”

We did. Air shrilled past our ears and we bucked and dipped and side-slipped as we passed over those gravitational changes Star had warned me about–and perhaps that saved us; we made an evasive target. However, if we got all of that guard party, it was possible that no one in the Tower knew we had arrived.

The ground below was gray-black desert surrounded by a mountain ringwall like a lunar crater and the Tower filled the place of a central peak. I risked another look at the sky and tried to figure it out. No sun. No stars. No black sky nor blue–light came from all over and the “sky” was ribbons and boiling shapes and shadow holes of all colors.

“What in God’s name land of planet is this?” I demanded.

“It’s not a planet,” she yelled back. “It’s a place, in a different sort of universe. It’s not fit to live in.”

“Somebody lives here.” I indicated the Tower.

“No, no, nobody lives here. That was built just to guard the Egg.”

The monstrousness of that idea didn’t soak in right then. I suddenly recalled that we didn’t dare eat or drink here–and started wondering how we could breathe the air if the chemistry was that poisonous. My chest felt tight and started to burn. So I asked Star and Rufo moaned. (He rated a moan or two; he hadn’t thrown up. I don’t think he had.)

“Oh, at least twelve hours,” she said. “Forget it. No importance.”

Whereupon my chest really hurt and I moaned, too.

We were dumped on top of the Tower right after that; Star barely got out “Amech!” in time to keep us from zooming past.

The top was flat, seemed to be black glass, was about two hundred yards square–and there wasn’t a fiddlewinking thing to fasten a line to. I had counted on at least a ventilator stack.

The Egg of the Phoenix was about a hundred yards straight down. I had had two plans in mind if we ever reached the Tower. There were three openings (out of hundreds) which led to true paths to the Egg–and to the Never-Born, the Eater of Souls, the M.P. guarding it. One was at ground level and I never considered it. A second was a couple of hundred feet off the ground and I had given that serious thought: loose an arrow with a messenger line so that the line passed over any projection above that hole; use that to get the strong line up, then go up the line–no trick for any crack Alpinist, which I wasn’t but Rufo was.

But the great Tower turned out to have no projections, real modern simplicity of design–carried too far.

The third plan was, if we could reach the top, to let ourselves down by a line to the third non-fake entrance, almost on level with the Egg. So here we were, all set–and no place to hitch.

Second thoughts are wonderful thoughts–why hadn’t I had Star drive us straight into that hole in the wall?

Well, it would take very fine sighting of that silly arrow; we might hit the wrong pigeonhole. But the important reason was that I hadn’t thought of it.

Star was sitting and nursing her wounded arm. I said, “Honey, can you fly us, slow and easy, down a couple of setbacks and into that hole we want?”

She looked up with drawn face. “No.”

“Well. Too bad.”

“I hate to tell you–but I burned out the garters on that speed run. They won’t be any good until I can recharge them. Not things I can get here. Green mug-wort, blood of a hare–things like that.”

“Boss,” said Rufo, “how about using the whole top of the Tower as a hitching post?”

“How do you mean?”

“We’ve got lots of line.”

It was a workable notion–walk the line around the top while somebody else held the bitter end, then

tie it and go down what hung over. We did it–and finished up with only a hundred feet too little of line out of a thousand yards.

Star watched us. When I was forced to admit that a hundred feet short was as bad as no line at all, she said thoughtfully, “I wonder if Aaron’s Rod would help?”

“Sure, if it was stuck in the top of this overgrown ping-pong table. What’s Aaron’s Rod?”

“It makes stiff things limp and limp things stiff. No, no, not that. Well, that, too, but what I mean is to lay this line across the roof with about ten feet hanging over the far side. Then make that end and the crossing part of the line steel hard–sort of a hook.”

“Can you do it?”

“I don’t know. It’s from The Key of Solomon and it’s an incantation. It depends on whether I can remember it–and on whether such things work in this universe.”

“Confidence, confidence! Of course you can.”

“I can’t even think how it starts. Darling, can you hypnotize? Rufo can’t–or at least not me.”

“I don’t know a thing about it.”

“Do just the way I do with you for a language lesson. Look me in the eye, talk softly, and tell me to remember the words. Perhaps you had better lay out the line first.”

We did so and I used a hundred feet instead of ten for the bill of the hook, on the more-is-better principle. Star lay back and I started talking to her, softly (and without conviction) but over and over again.

Star closed her eyes and appeared to sleep. Suddenly she started to mumble in tongues.

“Hey, Boss! Damn thing is hard as rock and stiff as a life sentence!”

I told Star to wake up and we slid down to the setback below as fast as we could, praying that it wouldn’t go limp on us. We didn’t shift the line; I simply had Star cause more of it to starch up, then I went on down, made certain that I had the right opening, three rows down and fourteen over, then Star slid down and I caught her in my arms; Rufo lowered the baggage, weapons mostly, and followed. We were in the Tower and had been on the planet–correction: the “place”–we had been in the place called Karth-Hokesh not more than forty minutes.

I stopped, got the building matched in my mind with the sketch block map, fixed the direction and location of the Egg, and the “red line” route to it, the true path.

Okay, go on in a few hundred yards, snag the Egg of the Phoenix and go! My chest stopped hurting.

“Boss,” said Rufo, “Look out over the plain.”

“At what?”

“At nothing,” he answered. “Those bodies are gone. You sure as hell ought to be able to see them, against black sand and not even a bush to break the view.”

I didn’t look. “That’s the moose’s problem, damn it! We’ve got work to do. Star, can you shoot left-handed? One of these pistol things?”

“Certainly, milord.”

“You stay ten feet behind me and shoot anything that moves. Rufo, you follow Star, bow ready and an arrow nocked. Try for anything you see. Sling one of those guns–make a sling out of a bit of line.” I frowned. “We’ll have to abandon most of this. Star, you can’t bend a bow, so leave it behind, pretty as it is, and your quiver. Rufo can sling my quiver with his; we use the same arrows. I hate to abandon my bow, it suits me so. But I must. Damn.”

“I’ll carry it, my Hero.”

“No, any clutter we can’t use must be junked.” I unhooked my canteen, drank deeply, passed it over. “You two finish it and throw it away.” While Rufo drank, Star slung my bow. “Milord husband? It weighs nothing this way and doesn’t hamper my shooting arm. So?”

“Well–If it gets in your way, cut the string and forget it. Now drink your fill and we go.” I peered

down the corridor we were in–fifteen feet wide and the same high, lighted from nowhere and curving away to the right, which matched the picture in my mind. “Ready? Stay closed up. If we can’t slice it, shoot it, or shaft it, we’ll salute it.” I drew sword and we set out, quick march.

Why my sword, rather than one of those “death ray” guns? Star was carrying one of those and knew more about one than I did. I didn’t even know how to tell if one was charged, nor had I judgment in how long to press the button. She could shoot, her bowmanship proved that, and she was at least as cool in a fight as Rufo or myself.

I had disposed weapons and troops as well as I knew how. Rufo, behind with a stock of arrows, could use them if needed and his position gave him time to shift to either sword or Buck Rogers “rifle” if his judgment said to–and I didn’t need to advise him; he would.

So I was backed up by long-range weapons ancient and ultramodern in the hands of people who knew how to use them and temperament to match–the latter being the more important. (Do you know how many men in a platoon actually shoot in combat? Maybe six. More likely three. The rest freeze up.) Still, why didn’t I sheathe my sword and carry one of those wonder weapons?

A properly balanced sword is the most versatile weapon for close quarters ever devised. Pistols and guns are all offense, no defense; close on him fast and a man with a gun can’t shoot, he has to stop you before you reach him. Close on a man carrying a blade and you’ll be spitted like a roast pigeon–unless you have a blade and can use it better than he can.

A sword never jams, never has to be reloaded, is always ready. Its worst shortcoming is that it takes great skill and patient, loving practice to gain that skill; it can’t be taught to raw recruits in weeks, nor even months.

But most of all (and this was the real reason) to grasp the Lady Vivamus and feel her eagerness to bite gave me courage in a spot where I was scared spitless.

They (whoever “they” were) could shoot us from ambush, gas us, booby-trap us, many things. But they could do those things even if I carried one of those strange guns. Sword in hand, I was relaxed and unafraid–and that made my tiny “command” more nearly safe. If a C.O. needs to carry a rabbit’s foot, he should–and the grip of that sweet sword was bigger medicine than all the rabbits’ feet in Kansas.

The corridor stretched ahead, no break, no sound, no threat. Soon the opening to the outside could no longer be seen. The great Tower felt empty but not dead; it was alive the way a museum is alive at night, with crowding presence and ancient evil. I gripped my sword tightly, then consciously relaxed and flexed my fingers.

We came to a sharp left turn. I stopped short. “Star, this wasn’t on your sketch.”

She didn’t answer. I persisted, “Well, it wasn’t. Was it?”

“I am not sure, milord.”

“Well, I am. Hmm–”

“Boss,” said Rufo, “are you dead sure we entered by the right pigeonhole?”

“I’m certain. I may be wrong but I’m not uncertain–and if I’m wrong, we’re dead pigeons anyhow. Mmm–Rufo, take your bow, put your hat on it, stick it out where a man would IOOK around that corner if he were standing–and time it as I do look out, but lower down.” I got on my belly.

“Ready . . . now!” I sneaked a look six inches above the floor while Rufo tried to draw fire higher up.

Nothing in sight, just bare corridor, straight now.

“Okay, follow me! We hurried around the corner.

I stopped after a few paces. “What the hell?”

“Something wrong Boss?”

“Plenty.” I turned and sniffed. “Wrong as can be. The Egg is up that way,” I said, pointing, “maybe two hundred yards–by the sketch block map.”

“Is that bad?”

“I’m not sure. Because it was that same direction and angle, off on the left, before we turned that corner. So now it ought to be on the right.”

Rufo said, “Look, Boss, why don’t we just follow the passageways you memorized? You may not remember every little–”

“Shut up. Watch ahead, down the corridor. Star, stand there in the corner and watch me. I’m going to try something.”

They placed themselves, Rufo “eyes ahead” and Star where she could see both ways, at the right-angle bend. I went back into the first reach of corridor, then returned. Just short of the bend I closed my eyes and kept on.

I stopped after another dozen steps and opened my eyes. “That proves it,” I said to Rufo.

“Proves what?”

“There isn’t any bend in the corridor.” I pointed to the bend.

Rufo looked worried. “Boss, how do you feel?” He tried to touch my cheek.

I pulled back. “I’m not feverish. Come with me, both of you.” I led them back around that right angle some fifty feet and stopped. “Rufo, loose an arrow at that wall ahead of us at the bend. Lob it so that it hits the wall about ten feet up.”

Rufo sighed but did so. The arrow rose true, disappeared in the wall. Rufo shrugged. “Must be pretty soft up there. You’ve lost us an arrow. Boss.”

“Maybe. Places and follow me.” We took that corner again and here was the spent arrow on the floor somewhat farther along than the distance from loosing to bend. I let Rufo pick it up; he looked closely at the Doral chop by the fletching, returned it to quiver. He said nothing. We kept going.

We came to a place where steps led downward–but where the sketch in my head called for steps leading up. “Mind the first step,” I called back. “Feel for it and don’t fall.”

The steps felt normal, for steps leading downward–with the exception that my bump of direction told me that we were climbing, and our destination changed angle and distance accordingly. I closed my eyes for a quick test and found that I was indeed climbing, only my eyes were deceived. It was like one of those “crooked houses” in amusement parks, in which a “level” floor is anything but level–like that but cubed.

I quit questioning the accuracy of Star’s sketch and tracked its trace in my head regardless of what my eyes told me. When the passageway branched four ways while my memory showed only a simple branching, one being a dead end, I unhesitatingly closed my eyes and followed my nose–and the Egg stayed where it should stay, in my mind.

But the Egg did not necessarily get closer with each twist and turn save in the sense that a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points–is it ever? The path was as twisted as guts in a belly; the architect had used a pretzel for a straight edge. Worse yet, another time when we were climbing “up”
stairs–at a piece level by the sketch–a gravitational anomaly caught us with a lull turn and we were suddenly sliding down the ceiling.

No harm done save that it twisted again as we hit bottom and dumped us from ceiling to floor. With both eyes peeled I helped Rufo gather up arrows and off we set again. We were getting close to the lair of the Never-Born–and the Egg.

Passageways began to be narrow and rocky, the false twists tight and hard to negotiate–and the light began to fail.

That wasn’t the worst. I’m not afraid of dark nor of tight places; it takes a department store elevator on Dollar Day to give me claustrophobia. But I began to hear rats.

Rats, lots of rats, running and squeaking in the walls around us, under us, over us. I started to sweat and was sorry I had taken that big drink of water. Darkness and closeness got worse, until we were crawling through a rough tunnel in rock, then inching along on our bellies in total darkness as if tunneling out of Chateau d’If . . . and rats brushed past us now, squeaking and chittering.

No, I didn’t scream. Star was behind me and she didn’t scream and she didn’t complain about her wounded arm–so I couldn’t scream. She patted me on the foot each time she inched forward, to tell me that she was all right and to report that Rufo was okay, too. We didn’t waste strength on talk.

I saw a faint something, two ghosts of light ahead, and stopped and stared and blinked and stared again. Then I whispered to Star, “I see something. Stay put, while I move up and see what it is. Hear me?”

“Yes, milord Hero.”

“Tell Rufo.”

Then I did the only really brave thing I have ever done in my life: I inched forward. Bravery is going on anyhow when you are so terrified your sphincters won’t hold and you can’t breathe and your heart threatens to stop, and that is an exact description for that moment of E. C. Gordon, ex-Pfc. and hero by trade. I was fairly certain what those two faint lights were and the closer I got the more certain I was–I could smell the damned thing and place its outlines.

A rat. Not the common rat that lives in city dumps and sometimes gnaws babies, but a giant rat, big enough to block that rat hole but enough smaller than I am to have room to maneuver in attacking me–room I didn’t have at all. The best I could do was to wriggle forward with my sword in front of me and try to Keep the point aimed so that I would catch him with it, make mm eat steel–because if he dodged past that point I would have nothing but bare hands and no room to use them. He would be at my face.

I gulped sour vomit and inched forward. His eyes seemed to drop a little as if he were crouching to charge.

But no rush came. The lights got more definite and wider apart, and when I had squeezed a foot or two farther I realized with shaking relief that they were not rat’s eyes but something else–anything, I didn’t care what.

I continued to inch forward. Not only was the Egg in that direction but I still didn’t know what it was and I had best see before telling Star to move up.

The “eyes” were twin pinholes in a tapestry that covered the end of that rat hole. I could see its embroidered texture and I found I could look through one of its imperfections when I got up to it.

There was a large room beyond, the floor a couple of feet lower than where I was. At the far end, fifty feet away, a man was standing by a bench, reading a book. Even as I watched he raised his eyes and glanced my way. He seemed to hesitate.

I didn’t. The hole had eased enough so that I managed one foot under and lunged forward, brushing the arras aside with my sword. I stumbled and bounced to my feet, on guard.

He was at least as fast. He had slapped the book down on the bench and drawn sword himself, advanced toward me, while I was popping out of that hole. He stopped, knees bent, wrist straight, left arm back, and point for me, perfect as a fencing master, and looked me over, not yet engaged by three or four feet between our steels.

I did not rush him. There is a go-for-broke tactic, “the target,” taught by the best swordmasters, which consists in headlong advance with arm, wrist, and blade in full extension–all attack and no attempt to parry. But it works only by perfect timing when you see your opponent slacken up momentarily.

Otherwise it is suicide.

This time it would have been suicide; he was as ready as a tomcat with his back up. So I sized him up while he looked me over. He was a smallish neat man with arms long for his height–I might or might not have reach on him, especially as his rapier was an old style, longer than Lady Vivamus (but slower thereby, unless he had a much stronger wrist)–and he was dressed more for the Paris of Richelieu than for Karth-Hokesh. No, that’s not fair; the great black Tower had no styles, else I would have been as out of style in my fake Robin Hood getup. The Iglis we had killed had worn no clothes.

He was an ugly cocky little man with a merry grin and the biggest nose west of Durante–made me think of my first sergeant’s nose, very sensitive he was about being called “Schnozzola.” But the resemblance stopped there; my first sergeant never smiled and had mean, piggish eyes; this man’s eyes were merry and proud.

“Are you Christian?” he demanded.

“What’s it to you?”

“Nothing. Blood’s blood, either way. If Christian you be, confess. If pagan, call your false gods. I’ll allow you no more than three stanzas. But I’m sentimental, I like to know what I’m killing.”

“I’m American.”

“Is that a country? Or a disease? And what are you doing in Hoax?”

” ‘Hoax’? Hokesh?”

He shrugged only with his eyes, his point never moved. “Hoax, Hokesh–a matter of geography and accent; this chateau was once in the Carpathians, so ‘Hokesh’ it is, if ’twill make your death merrier.
Come now, let us sing.”

He advanced so fast and smoothly that he seemed to apport and our blades rang as I parried his attack in sixte and riposted, was countered–remise, reprise, beat-and-attack–the phrase ran so smoothly, so long, and in such variation that a spectator might have thought that we were running through Grand Salute.

But I knew! That first lunge was meant to kill me, and so was his every move throughout the phrase. At the same time he was feeling me out, trying my wrist, looking for weaknesses, whether I was afraid of low line and always returned to high or perhaps was a sucker for a disarm. I never lunged, never had a chance to; every part of the phrase was forced on me, I simply replied, tried to stay alive.

I knew in three seconds that I was up against a better swordsman than myself, with a wrist like steel yet supple as a striking snake. He was the only swordsman I have ever met who used prime and octave–used them, I mean, as readily as sixte and carte. Everyone learns them and my own master made me practice them as much as the other six–but most fencers don’t use them; they simply may be forced into them, awkwardly and just before losing a point.

I would lose, not a point, but my life–and I knew, long before the end of that first long phrase, that my life was what I was about to lose, by all odds.

Yet at first clash the idiot began to sing!

“Lunge and counter and thrust,

“Sing me the logic of steel!

“Tell me, sir, how do you feel?

“Riposte and remise if you must

“In logic long known to be just.

“Shall we argue, rebut and refute

“In enthymeme clear as your eye?

“Tell me, sir, why do you sigh?

“Tu es fatigue, sans doute?

“Then sleep while I’m counting the loot.”

The above was long enough for at least thirty almost successful attempts on my life, and on the last word he disengaged as smoothly and unexpectedly as he had engaged.

“Come, come, lad!” he said. “Pick it up! Would let me sing alone? Would die as a clown with ladies watching? Sing! –and say good-bye gracefully, with your last rhyme racing your death rattle.” He banged his right boot in a flamenco stomp. “Try! The price is the same either way.”

I didn’t drop my eyes at the sound of his boot; it’s an old gambit, some fencers stomp on every advance, every feint, on the chance that the noise will startle opponent out of timing, or into rocking back, and thus gain a point. I had last fallen for it before I could shave.

But his words gave me an idea. His lunges were short–full extension is fancy play for foils, too dangerous for real work. But I had been retreating, slowly, with the wall behind me. Shortly, when he re-engaged, I would either be a butterfly pinned to that wall, or stumble over something unseen, go arsy-versy, then spiked like wastepaper in the park. I didn’t dare leave that wall behind me.

Worst, Star would be coming out of that rat hole behind me any moment now and might be killed as she emerged even if I managed to kill him at the same time. But if I could turn him around–My beloved was a practical woman; no “sportsmanship” would keep her steel stinger out of his back.

But the happy counter-thought was that if I went along with his madness, tried to rhyme and sing, he might play me along, amused to hear what I could do, before he killed me.

But I couldn’t afford to stretch it out. Unfelt, he had pinked me in the forearm. Just a bloody scratch that Star could make good as new in minutes–but it would weaken my wrist before long and it disadvantaged me for low line: Blood makes a slippery grip.

“First stanza,” I announced, advancing and barely engaging, foible-a-foible. He respected it, not attacking, playing with the end of my blade, tiny counters and leather-touch parries.

That was what I wanted. I started circling right as I began to recite–and he let me:

“Tweedledum and Tweedledee

“Agreed to rustle cattle.

“Said Tweedledum to Tweedledee

“I’ll use my nice new saddle.”

“Come, come, my old!” he said chidingly. “No stealing. Honor among beeves, always. And rhyme and scansion limp. Let your Carroll fall trippingly off the tongue.”

“I’ll try,” I agreed, still moving right. “Second stanza-

“I sing of two lasses in Birmingham,

“Shall we weep at the scandal concerning them?”-

–and I rushed him.

It didn’t quite work. He had, as I hoped, relaxed the tiniest bit, evidently expecting that I would go on with mock play, tips of Hades alone, while I was reciting.

It caught him barely off guard but he failed to fall back, parrying strongly instead and suddenly we were in an untenable position, corps-a-corps, forte-a-forte, almost tete-a-tete.

He laughed in my face and sprang back as I did, landing us back en garde. But I added something. We had been fencing point only. The point is mightier than the edge but my weapon had both and a man
used to the point is sometimes a sucker for a cut. As we separated I flipped my blade at his head.

I meant to split it open. No time for that, no force behind it, but it sliced his right forehead almost to
eyebrow. “Touche” he shouted. “Well struck. And well sung. Let’s have the rest of it.”

“All right,” I agreed, fencing cautiously and waiting for blood to run into his eyes. A scalp wound is the bloodiest of flesh wounds and I had great hopes for this one. And swordplay is an odd thing; you don’t really use your mind, it is much too fast for that. Your wrist thinks and tells your feet and body what to do, bypassing your brain–any thinking you do is for later, stored instructions, like a programmed computer.

I went on:

“They’re now in the dock
“For lifting the–”

No help to me–A right-handed fencer hates to take on a southpaw; it throws everything out of balance, whereas a southpaw is used to the foibles of the right-handed majority–and this son of a witch was just as strong, just as skilled, with his left hand. Worse, he now had toward me the eye undimmed by blood.

He pinked me again, in the kneecap, hurting like fire and slowing me. Despite his wounds, much worse than mine, I knew I couldn’t go on much longer. We settled down to grim work.

There is a riposte in seconde, desperately dangerous but brilliant–if you bring it off. It had won me several matches in 6pee with nothing at stake but a score. It starts from sixte; first your opponent counters. Instead of parrying to carte, you press and bind, sliding all the way down and around his blade and corkscrewing in till your point finds flesh. Or you can beat, counter, and bind, starting from sixte, thus setting it off yourself.

Its shortcoming is that, unless it is done perfectly, it is too late for parry and riposte; you run your own chest against his point.

I didn’t try to initiate it, not against this swordsman; I just thought about it.

We continued to fence, perfectly each of us. Then he stepped back slightly while countering and barely
skidded in his own blood.

My wrist took charge; I corkscrewed in with a perfect bind to seconde–and my blade went through his body. He looked surprised, brought his bell up in salute, and crumpled at the knees as the grip fell from his hand. I had to move forward with my blade as he fell, then started to pull it out of him.

He grasped it. “No, no, my friend, please leave it there. It corks the wine, for a time. Your logic is sharp and touches my heart. Your name, sir?”

“Oscar of Gordon.”

“A good name. One should never be killed by a stranger. Tell me, Oscar of Gordon, have you seen Carcassonne?”

“No.”

“See it. Love a lass, kill a man, write a book, fly to the Moon–I have done all these.” He gasped and foam came out of his mouth, pink. “I’ve even had a house fall on me. What devastating wit! What price honor when timber taps thy top? ‘Top?’ tap? taupe, tape–tonsor! –when timber taps thy tonsor. You shaved mine.”

He choked and went on: “It grows dark. Let us exchange gifts and part friends, if you will. My gift first, in two parts: Item: You are lucky, you shall not die in bed.”

“I guess not.”

“Please. Item: Friar Guillaume’s razor ne’er shaved the barber, it is much too dull. And now your gift, my old–and be quick, I need it. But first–now did that limerick end?”

I told him. He said, very weakly, almost in rattle, “Very good. Keep trying. Now grant me your gift, I am more than ready.” He tried to Sign himself.

So I granted him grace, stood wearily up, went to the bench and collapsed on it, then cleaned both blades, first wiping the little Solingen, then most carefully grooming the Lady Vivamus. I managed to stand and salute him with a clean sword. It had been an honor to know him.

I was sorry I hadn’t asked him his name. He seemed to think I knew it.

I sat heavily down and looked at the arras covering the rat hole at the end of the room and wondered why Star and Rufo hadn’t come out. All that clashing steel and talk–I thought about walking over and shouting for them. But I was too weary to move just yet. I sighed and closed my eyes-

Through sheer boyish high spirits (and carelessness I had been chided for, time and again) I had broken a dozen eggs. My mother looked down at the mess and I could see that she was about to cry. So I clouded up too. She stopped her tears, took me gently by the shoulder, and said, “It’s all right, son. Eggs aren’t that important.” But I was ashamed, so I twisted away and ran.

Downhill I ran, heedless and almost flying–then was shockingly aware that I was at the wheel and the car was out of control. I groped for the brake pedal, couldn’t find it and felt panic . . . then did find it–and felt it sink with that mushiness that means you’ve lost brake-fluid pressure. Something ahead in the road and I couldn’t see. Couldn’t even turn my head and my eyes were clouded with something running down into them. I twisted the wheel and nothing happened–radius rod gone.

Screams in my car as we hit! –and I woke up in bed with a jerk and the screams were my own. I was going to be late to school, disgrace not to be borne. Never born, agony shameful, for the schoolyard was empty; the other kids, scrubbed and virtuous, were in their seats and I couldn’t find my classroom. Hadn’t even had time to go to the bathroom and here I was at my desk with my pants down about to do what I had been too hurried to do before I left home and all the other kids had their hands up but teacher was calling on me. I couldn’t stand up to recite; my pants were not only down I didn’t have any on at all if I stood up they would see it the boys would laugh at me the girls would giggle and look away and tilt their noses. But the unbearable disgrace was that I didn’t know the answer!

“Come, come!” my teacher said sharply. “Don’t waste the class’s time, E.G. You Haven’t Studied Your Lesson.”

Well, no, I hadn’t. Yes, I had, but she had written “Problems 1-6” on the blackboard and I had taken that as “1 and 6”–and this was number 4. But She would never believe me; the excuse was too thin. We pay off on touchdowns, not excuses.

“That’s how it is, Easy,” my Coach went on, his voice more in sorrow than in anger. “Yardage is all very well but you don’t make a nickel unless you cross that old goal line with the egg tucked underneath your arm.” He pointed at the football on his desk. “There it is. I had it gilded and lettered clear back at the beginning of the season, you looked so good and I had so much confidence in you–it was meant to be yours at the end of the season, at a victory banquet.” His brow wrinkled and he spoke as if trying to be fair. “I won’t say you could have saved things all by yourself. But you do take things too easy. Easy–maybe you need another name. When the road gets rough, you could try harder.” He sighed. “My fault, I should have cracked down. Instead, I tried to be a father to you. But I want you to know you aren’t the only one who loses by this–at my age it’s not easy to find a new job.”

I pulled the covers up over my head; I couldn’t stand to look at him. But they wouldn’t let me alone; somebody started shaking my shoulder. “Gordon!”

“Le’me ‘lone!”

“Wake up, Gordon, and get your ass inside. You’re in trouble.”

I certainly was, I could tell that as soon as I stepped into the office. There was a sour taste of vomit in my mouth and I felt awful–as if a herd of buffaloes had walked over me, stepping on me here and there. Dirty ones.

The First Sergeant didn’t look at me when I came in; he let me stand and sweat first. When he did look up, he examined me up and down before speaking.

Then he spoke slowly, letting me taste each word. “Absent Over Leave, terrorizing and insulting native women, unauthorized use of government property . . . scandalous conduct . . . insubordinate and obscene language . . . resisting arrest . . . striking an M.P.–Gordon, why didn’t you steal a horse? We hang horse thieves in these parts. It would make it all so much simpler.”

He smiled at his own wit. The old bastard always had thought he was a wit. He was half right.

But I didn’t give a damn what he said. I realized dully that it had all been a dream, just another of those dreams I had had too often lately, wanting to get out of this aching jungle. Even She hadn’t been real. My–what was her name? –even her name I had made up. Star. My Lucky Star–Oh, Star, my darling, you aren’t!

He went on: “I see you took off your chevrons. Well, that saves time but that’s the only thing good about it. Out of uniform. No shave. And your clothes are filthy! Gordon, you are a disgrace to the Army of the United States. You know that, don’t you? And you can’t sing your way out of this one. No I.D. on you, no pass, using a name not your own. Well, Evelyn Cyril my fine lad, we’ll use your right name now. Officially.”

He swung around in his swivel chair–he hadn’t had his fat ass out of it since they sent him to Asia, no patrols for him. “Just one thing I’m curious about. Where did you get that? And whatever possessed you to try to steal it?” He nodded at a file case behind his desk.

I recognized what was sitting on it, even though it had been painted with gold gilt the last time I recalled seeing it whereas now it was covered with the special black gluey mud they grow in Southeast Asia. I started toward it. “That’s mine!”

“No, no!” he said sharply. “Burny, burny, boy.” He moved the football farther back. “Stealing it doesn’t make it yours. I’ve taken charge of it as evidence. For your information, you phony hero, the docs think he’s going to die.”

“Who?”

“Why should you care who? Two bits to a Bangkok tickul you didn’t know his name when you clobbered him. You can’t go around clobbering natives just because you’re feeling brisk–they’ve got rights, maybe you hadn’t heard. You’re supposed to clobber them only when and where you are told to.”

Suddenly he smiled. It didn’t improve him. With his long, sharp nose and his little bloodshot eyes I suddenly realized how much he looked like a rat.

But he went on smiling and said, “Evelyn my boy, maybe you took off those chevrons too soon.”

“Huh?”

“Yes. There may be a way out of this mess. Sit down.” He repeated sharply, ” ‘Sit down,’ I said. If I had my way we’d simply Section-Eight you and forget you–anything to get rid of you. But the Company Commander has other ideas–a really brilliant idea that could close your whole file. There’s a raid planned for tonight. So”–he leaned over, got a bottle of Four Roses and two cups out of his desk, poured two drinks–“have a drink.”

Everybody knew about that bottle–everybody but the Company Commander, maybe. But the top sergeant had never been known to offer anyone a drink–save one time when he had followed it by telling his victim that he was being recommended for a general court-martial.

“No, thanks.”

“Come on, take it. Hair of the dog. You’re going to need it. Then go take a shower and get yourself looking decent even if you aren’t, before you see the Company Commander.”

I stood up. I wanted that drink, I needed it. I would have settled for the worst rotgut–and Four Roses is pretty smooth–but I would have settled for the firewater old–what was his name? –had used to burst my eardrums.

But I didn’t want to drink with him. I should not drink anything at all here. Nor eat any-

I spat in his face.

He looked utterly shocked and started to melt. I drew my sword and had at him.

It got dark but I kept on laying about me, sometimes connecting, sometimes not.