Norman Spinrad - The Iron Dream

Thus speaking, Feric emptied his lungs, sucked in a great breath of air, hoisted the drinking horn to his lips, and poured a great swallow of heavy, powerful ale directly down his throat. When he had filled his mouth and throat to the choking point, he gulped the brew down, while continuing to decant more ale into his mouth on its heels. The second great mouthful immediately followed the first down Feric’s gullet while he poured a third; thus he established a rapid rythm of pouring and swallowing so that the aie gushed from the drinking horn to his mouth, down his throat, and into his stomach in a constant torrent.

Faster and faster, Feric gulped the strong dark ale, nearly on the verge of choking, for he felt both (he building ache in his lungs and the cool metal of Stopa’s cocked pistol against the back of his neck. His head began to spin and his knees to grow weak, both from lack of breath and surfeit of brew. But he summoned up his last reserves of will from the core of his being and felt the psychic power fight back heroically against the pain in his chest, the gorge in his throat, and the spongy feeling in his knees. He redoubled his efforts, gulping down what seemed like oceans of ale. After an eternity measurable only by the roaring in his ears, the pain in his chest, the pistol at his head, and the choking torrent of ale in his mouth and throat, the horn finally gave up its last drop.

Exhaling a great rush of stale air, Feric tossed the empty drinking horn end over end into the press of Black Avengers, who roared their manly approval of the feat while Stopa put aside his pistol and regarded Feric with a certain grudging respect.

For his part, Peric spent this respite drawing in great gasps of air as the iron slowly returned to his knees. The great bonfire behind Stopa sent clouds of orange smoke and flickers of brilliance up as an offering into the black sky; around each torch in the circle was a sparkling aura.

“Not a bad brew,” Feric finally said when he had caught his breath. “Perhaps you’d care to try it?”

The Avengers howled their approval of this notion gleefully and one of them tossed the great drinking horn back to Feric while Stopa fumed in silent rage. Feric dipped the horn into the keg and handed Stopa a brimming measure.

Stopa fairly yanked the horn out of Feric’s hands, raised it to his lips in the same motion, and drew one hasty breath before swilling the ale down in great gulps and slobbers which distributed a good portion of the stuff on his jerkin and beard. He ended his quaffing with a series of unesthetic chokes, coughs, and retches, but nonetheless was able to upend a drinking horn out of which no liquid spilled.

Stopa tossed away the drinking horn and stood panting in the orange glow like a great beast of prey, his eyes inflamed with drink and rage, his muscles standing out in bands, his black leather jerkin shining in the firelight where the ale clung to it.

“We’ll see! We’ll see!” Stopa roared somewhat drunkenly. “You like the taste of ale, do you, Jaggar? Well let’s see how you like the taste of fire! Set up the gauntletl Bring him a bike! The Test of Fire!”

At once the Avengers broke ranks and made for the torches staked in the ground, each man uprooting his own spear of flame. They quickly arranged themselves into two parallel rows of about twenty men to a side, with just enough distance between them so that there was a corridor of relative safety a scant yard wide between them when they extended their torches at full arm’s length toward each other. The wind-whipped flames of the torches danced tantalizingly through this narrow aisle, enlivening even this thin path through the gauntlet with intermittent tongues of fire.

An engine roared to life in the darkness beyond reach of the firelight, and a moment later a motorcycle with crimson enamel and great chromed fins sporting black swastikas in white circles was driven to one end of the flaming corridor by an Avenger in a black leather jerkin on which was sewn a white swastika in a red circle. The Avenger dismounted and put the cycle up on its stand; the engine, however, was left running, thrumming with power, rumbling its challenge.

“I’ll stand at one end of the line,” Stopa shouted loudly, as much for the Avengers’ benefit as for Feric’s, “and you, Jaggar, will drive Sigmark’s cycle through the fire to my side. Any real Avenger can do it; our hides are too tough to be scorched by anything short of the sky fire of the ancients.” At this, the twin lines of Avengers cheered and waved their torches grandly overhead.

Slowly and deliberately, Feric made his way to the motorcycle which called out to him with its great metallic voice from the head of the gauntlet of fire. Through the flashing and flickering flames of the fiery corridor, he could see Stopa glowering at him in a sullen, drunken rage, the insolence on his reddened face a deliberate challenge to Feric’s manhood. Feric determined that he would do more than merely survive this ordeal in the face of such an attitude; he would grab the moment and fling it back in Stopa’s arrogant face. Thus would the simple but spirited fellow be notified of his true station.

The Avenger known as Sigmark gave Feric a short briefing on the mechanics of driving the motorcycle: slap down on the lever under your left foot and you engage gears of successively higher ratio, twist the right steering grip for throttle, under the right foot and right hand were controls for the front and rear brakes respectively, while the lever under the left hand worked the clutch. It all seemed straightforward enough.

Feric mounted the metal stallion and gripped the steering bars firmly in his hands. He disengaged the clutch, twisted the right handgrip; instantly the engine howled and he could feel its power surge through the very bones of his body. This seemed to establish an immediate rapport with the machine, as if it were an extension of his own flesh, as if the incredible force generated by the screaming engine were coursing directly through his soul. In this moment, Feric possessed the iron conviction that this steed was fully capable of carrying him through the fire unscathed, and that he was just as capable of making the ride as the circumstances demanded—resolutely, with utter confidence, and without for an instant flinching. This was not a test of physical prowess so much as one of heroism. A true hero would emerge untouched, but one ounce of cowardice or hesitation would result in disaster. Feric could not but admire the instincts of men who had contrived such a perfect test of true manhood.

Without further hesitation, Feric eased the motorcycle off its stand, leaned as low over its petrol tank as possible so that he was fairly hanging by his outstretched arms from the steering bars, gunned the engine into a terrible roar which sent waves of power pulsing through his body, slammed the machine into gear with a resolute application of his booted foot, and dropped in the clutch.

Spewing stones and dirt and lifting its front wheel off the ground for an instant, the motorcycle sprang forward.

Unflinchingly confident in the unity of man and machine which he felt with his flesh and his soul, Feric steered the cycle straight for the corridor of fire. Far from being frightened, he felt a certain exhilaration, a manly thrill, at rushing resolutely and heroically into the flames.

With a rush, Feric was enveloped in a universe of intense heat, orange flame, and hurtling speed; nothing but these elementals existed for him and they blended together into a raw essence of power that filled his being and fed the grandeur of his spirit. His only thought was to keep the throttle wide open and hold his steed on an arrow-straight path. He felt neither pain nor fear, only a sense of riding the juggernaut of destiny; indeed it seemed but an instant before he burst through the flames and emerged, singed but unharmed, on the other side.