Piers Anthony: Steppe

Alp returned the creature's gaze dully. Demons were always fairest of speech when they intended mischief! He grunted.

"I knew it!" one of the others said. "Stupid. Can't orient."

"Terrified, more likely," another said. "Primitives are normally superstitious, afraid of sorcery. All his life on the plains he never experienced anything like this in his narrow existence. Give him a chance. We've invested heavily to fetch him here."

"Understatement of the century!" the third muttered. "A time-snatch of a millennia and a half—we'll all be broke if this doesn't pan out!"

"I'm in debt already," the last muttered.

A millennia and a half, Alp thought. Millennium, correctly; the demon usage did not precisely match the helmet language. Significant? In his terms, at any rate, fifteen hundred years, or thirty lifetimes. But time stretched two ways. Was it the period before man had arisen on the plains, or after man had passed?

"Speak, warrior," the demon in front said. "We wish to know about you and your society." There was that in his manner that suggested insincerity. The language of facial expression and bodily posture transcended man-demon distinctions.

"Uhg," Alp said, still feigning ignorance. They didn't want to know about him nearly as badly as he wanted to know about them! Obviously they were not omniscient, and they also thought they could lie to him, which meant they could be fooled themselves. What did they really want?

"All for nothing!" the first of the three demons said. "We gambled our entire Game fortunes on this ridiculous snatch from the past—and fetched a moron!"

The leader refused to give up. "You are from a great culture, warrior. We are your friends. Tell us who your leader was— is . Your king."

So the creature wanted information about the Uigur empire—not knowing that it had fallen or that the Khagan had been slain. Obviously the magic helmet could not extract information the same way it projected it. These were political spies of some sort who had an interest in worldly power. Why?

And the one behind had verified that Alp was from the demons' past—making these entities of the time after the downfall of man. They should know, therefore, the full history of the steppe region and have no need to ask him. Another indication that they were concealing the whole truth. This was no more and no less than he had expected from demons, whose nature did not change from year to year and whose purposes seldom aligned with those of true men.

The leader shrugged. "He won't respond. I suppose we had better return him to stasis while we consider—"

The Galactic nearest the spell-box reached toward it.

Alp launched himself, knowing he could wait no longer. He clubbed the leader-demon with the hardened side of his hand in passing, knocking it back, and dived for the box.

He was too late. The other demon's hand was already on it, turning the knob. Alp's body went dead.

But momentum carried him forward. He crashed into the box and the demon behind it. Both toppled over. There was a startled cry, a crackling sound, a moment of intense pain—and Alp was free again.

He saw a curtained window—but the remaining two Galactics stood between him and it. Alp had no bow, no arrows and no blade. He charged them anyway, kicking at one while butting the other. Then he leaped through the aperture.

Alp had not really expected to discover the plains of his homeland outside, for he knew the land of demons differed from mortal geography. In one region there was a magnetic mountain that snatched all metal away from men who rode by; in another the sun shone brightly at midnight. So he was prepared for something unusual here.

Still, he was amazed. The curtain was not physical, neither of wool nor horsehide; rather it was a tingling surface like that of a chill river. The notion of taking a bath was dismaying! And beyond this barrier were no trees, ger or desert sands, but a complex canyon of many colors.

It had to be the nether region of the gorge he had fallen into, though he had never imagined it could be so vast and splendid! Bright boulders rolled along narrow channels, and lights rose and fell inside the opposite canyon wall.

No—his new understanding told him that the boulders were cars—wheel-less wagons able to roll uphill without being hauled by horses. The lights were in antigravity elevator shafts: magic hoists that carried men up and down without weight. Demon tricks, of course, called "science." He had no inherent fear of it, but he realized that he should treat it with extreme caution. A living demon killed men for the mere joy of it, but magic science acted without joy or sorrow.

Alp was naked, weaponless, and horseless. Was Surefoot here? He saw no bones. And of course he had already decided that his mount would not be here in hell, not even in the hell for horses. That was the nature of man's hell: to be without horse and weapon.

His appraisal of the canyon had taken only an instant, but already the scuffling sounds in the chamber behind made it clear that the Galactics were coming after him. That was the system of hell too: perpetual pursuit, and torture upon capture. But now he knew that not all demons had the same specific objectives; most likely the other demons of this realm had other warriors to torment and would ignore him. If he could kill the four assigned to him, as he had killed the four Kirghiz, he would have no quarrel with those outside.

Kill? Not precisely. His Galactics were associated with the Game, and in that context the act of killing did not accomplish the usual relegation to an afterworld. There were strange things about this Game—but he didn't have time to work it out now, though it was all in his helmet-sponsored memory. He had to move.

He ran down the channel he found himself on. Above it were other channels, and below it were more, like ropes stretched the length of the canyon. This was a street in a city—neither road nor town like any he had known in life. Karabalgasun was a city, and it had streets, but the houses were not tall and the roads were flat on the ground. The cities of the far places he had read about were similar: Changan in China, the Middle Kingdom; Babylon in the southwest.

Now he realized that the path itself was moving! He had stepped onto a woven mat being dragged along, and it was carrying him along with it, as though he rode the back of a monster serpent.

As he moved, the other demons on the pathway began to take notice of him. He would have observed them sooner had he not been distracted by the awesome depths of the canyon opening below him as he moved out. There was no bottom to it!

The females—dainty of limb, thin of face and fair of complexion—for demons—averted their eyes modestly. The males scowled. Nakedness was a taboo here, he realized—or a mark of subservience. That was why he had been stripped. Hell overlooked no torture! He had to get clothing, so that he could conceal his status and pass among the demons unrecognized.

"Hey, you!" one of them called in the demon-tongue, Galactic. It was a guard, a police official.

Alp saw that the creature was armed, so he stopped. He stepped into an alcove on the side, to get off the moving belt. They did not use swords here, or bows, or even daggers, but they had effective magic weapons nonetheless. Most effective! He would have to plumb his new knowledge for details, because he was already aware that the fighting instruments he had known would be almost useless in this situation.

"What stunt is this?" the guard demanded. "You drunk or crazy?"

Alp knew he would have to make his first speech in the new language. His own Uigur vocabulary would instantly give him away. This demon was neither friend nor enemy, but an officer of law charged with maintaining order in hell. His question was rhetorical, as there was no alcohol or insanity in this framework. A proper answer might actually place the guard on Alp's side.