Roland Green - Great King_s war

As he left the road, he heard Phrames calling out that the Great King wished to ride apart with his scouts and pray to the gods of this homeland for guidance. If he'd thought there was anyone home, Kalvan would have done exactly that. However, neither the late Rev. Morrison's determination that his only son follow him into the ministry nor the here-and-now baker's dozen of gods and goddesses had altered his basic agnosticism.

What he was doing probably wasn't any more rational than praying, but it worked better for him. He intended to ride up to the four-foot thick hemlock standing below a little cliff that marked the place where Kalvan had left otherwhen Pennsylvania on May 19, 1964 and wound up here in the Five-now Six Kingdoms. The hemlock marked the site of the farmhouse where an escaped murderer had been holed up. A murderer who'd escaped jail, come home to this ramshackle farmhouse and beat on his wife until she'd escaped and told a neighbor. According to his wife, Bill Kirby had a rifle and a grudge against the State Police.

Kalvan had been skulking toward the yellow farmhouse, his hand close to the butt of his.38 Colt, with fellow Pennsylvania State Policemen Steve Kovac, Larry Stacey and Jack French, when he was scooped up by the cross-time flying saucer. He wondered what they thought about his disappearance…probably thought he'd turned tail and ran, Dralm-blast it!

Kalvan didn't like that at all; he'd never run from a fight in his life. One thing was true: no one back home had seen hide nor hair of him since he'd been picked up by that a cross-time saucer. Other than Aunt Harriet, there was no one to miss him back home; he'd broken up with Kate over six months before he disappeared. Last he'd heard, she was engaged to a dentist… She'd always fretted over the danger of police work; he'd never known how right she was!

Of course, Kate had imagined dangers closer to home than here-and-now, where medicine was of the barber and leech variety and one was as likely to get run over by a runaway Conestoga wagon as die peacefully in bed. Not a lot of old folks here-and-now…

Still, climbing the cliff and visiting the tree calmed him down when he needed calming, and sometimes gave him an idea for the solution of some particularly knotty problem. Call it his touchstone to the past. Kalvan had visited this spot three times since his arrival here-and-now; on this, his fourth visit, he needed a relaxing place to ponder events more than ever. Next year's battles would determine whether or not the fledgling Great Kingdom he'd created would endure or end in an orgy of blood-letting and burning…

This spot was also where Kalvan had started to write his Journal-maybe a foolish conceit, but it helped keep his perspective on who he had been, a little over a year ago-Corporal Calvin Morrison, Pennsylvania State Policeman-and who he was now: Great King Kalvan I of Hos-Hostigos.

"Over here, Your Majesty!" Hectides the old wolf-hunter and scout cried out.

He pushed past a low hanging chestnut tree and there before him was the little cliff and the big hemlock with the deep three-foot wide X Kalvan had carved into the trunk with his knife on his first return visit; he had wanted to mark it so that he would recognize it twenty years from now. Already Hectides had two of his hunters clearing the snow out of the fire pit that they'd built on their last visit. When the pit was just bare stone, they brought straw, twigs and some firewood. Within minutes the old wolf hunter was using his tinderbox to light a fire at the base of the cliff and soon had a roaring fire. The scouts fanned out to keep watch and, as soon as his fingers thawed over the fire, Kalvan took out his quill pen and lambskin parchment and began to write. Journal – Corporal Calvin Morrison Winter – 1965 – January 29th, plus or minus a day or two. I'm glad I decided to write this diary now while my memories of 'former life' are still vivid; I'm afraid, after a decade or two here-and-now, my experiences of the earth I grew up on will begin to fade and recede much like a long dream. Someday when I'm an old man-should I be so lucky!-these entries will help convince me that I am not the Dralm-sent Kalvan that everyone believes me to be. Or that my previous life was not some fever dream… Thus, this permanent record in English so no one else can 'accidentally' read it and have me sent to the local equivalent of a loony bin, which far exceeds the horror of those state institutions in far away Pennsylvania. The journal entries I've been making during the past few months have helped me reconstruct my childhood and early life. As much as I despise the current double-speak and gobbledygook that passes for 'psycho-therapy' back home, these diary entries about my childhood, my college years at Princeton, my military service in Korea and my time as a Pennsylvania State Policeman have improved my morale. They have also helped to clear my mind of the doubts that were plaguing me at the onset of winter, when the day-to-day crises of kingship were no longer keeping me preoccupied, and I once again began to try to 'analyze' the event that catapulted me here-and-now. No matter how unlikely it seems, the truth is I was 'picked up' by some kind of cross-time flying saucer and dropped off on a world far different than my own, both in history and technological development. I can still see in my mind's eye the flicker of other worlds passing overhead through the iridescent dome of the saucer, which means there must be millions of 'alternate' earths. My friend, Steve Kovac, who used to read 'Analog Science Fiction Magazine,' would loan me the magazines after he finished reading them, and during long nights in the barracks, when I had trouble sleeping, I would read them. So I'm not unfamiliar with the idea of alternate worlds; however, it's a long road from Altoona to Piccadilly Circus! Especially, when the saucer pilot-some kind of military officer in a green uniform-tries to shoot you with a long-barreled soldering iron! It was a combination of quick reflexes and luck that got me out of that saucer alive; still, I hope that pilot took a good one from my Colt Official Police. I don't know what the Sideways Police Service does about unauthorized 'pickups,' but I suspect it isn't preferential treatment with kid gloves. No, I must have killed him or there would have been someone from that outfit snooping around Hostigos, trying to pick me up. The probabilities of what might happen to me, should they 'pick me up' are not thoughts to aid in either good digestion or a good night's rest. If that sounds paranoid, well, living in an era where paranoia is a survival tool will do that to one. The day started out as an ordinary duty day at the barracks, when we got a call from old man Gustav that Bill Kirby had come back to his wife's place and shot it up pretty good-

"Your Majesty, sorry to interrupt," Hectides said, pointing up at the fast-moving and darkening clouds. "A storm could be upon us in half a candle, and there's still wolves about."

Kalvan's horse snorted as if to punctuate the wolf hunter's words.

"You're right, Hectides, we should be getting back to the main party." Whatever ideas might come here couldn't be worth risking his neck, or even his horse. Good mounts weren't easy to replace in Hostigos, and wouldn't be for quite some time.

Kalvan mounted his horse, then rode back downstream followed by Hectides and his scouts. He returned faster than he'd come, because as he turned off the stream the howl of a wolf floated down from a nearby hill. The horse whinnied nervously; Kalvan had to tug on the reins to keep him from breaking into a trot.

Count Phrames met Kalvan by the road with an I-told-you-so expression on his face. "Your Majesty, I beg you not to ride out like this again while we are in wolf country. So much depends upon your safety-"