Norman Spinrad - The Iron Dream

The Avengers waved their torches and cheered wildly as Feric circled back toward Stopa. For his part, Feric was determined that this little game had not been truely played out as yet; he had avoided losing easily enough, but he would not be satisfied until he had actually won.

As he brought the motorcycle up beside Stopa, he bellowed a challenge: “Ride back with me, Stopa, if you dare!”

A veritable pantheon of expressions chased each other across Stopa’s drunken countenance: anger, fear, defiance, rage.

“Come on Stopa, don’t let the fire get cold,” Peric japed. “If you’re not man enough, just tell me!”

With a guttural shout of fury and defiance, Stopa leaped up onto the motorcycle behind Feric. Before the Avenger leader had the chance to utter a more heroic salutation, Feric gunned the engine and the cycle sped forward into the flames.

Once more Peric was enveloped in a world of triumphant fire and juggernaut speed; once more the motorcycle emerged from the tunnel of flame with its burdens singed but unharmed.

The Avengers broke ranks and danced a wild cannibal rite of shouts and flaming torches around the motorcycle as Ferio brought it to a screaming halt, rammed it up onto its stand, and, simultaneously with Stopa, dismounted.

Stopa regarded Feric with as much respect as fury now.

Clearly, he was now convinced that he was involved in a test of will and heroism with a man who at the very least was his unquestioned equal. A lesser man might have now acknowledged the fact with some comradely gesture and backed out of the situation gracefully, with but slight loss of honor.

But to his credit, Stopa’s outrage was unabated; he was clearly determined in his own heroic fashion to play out this contest for spiritual and physical supremacy to its conclusion, regardless of the futility of his cause.

“The final ordeal is the Test of Steel, Jaggar!” he shouted for all to hear. “We have it out with truncheons between us. Ordinarily, I only play with the mouse in question until I am satisfied that he is worthy or decide that he isn’t and slay him. If I required each new Avenger to defeat me in combat, we’d never welcome a new brother, since no man has ever proven himself my equal with the truncheon.”

Stopa paused and fixed Feric with a cold bloodshot stare in which malice and grudging admiration had fused to icy determination. Something in the psychic aura generated by this confrontation caused the Avengers to give over their shouting and cavorting and stare silently at their leader and his bold challenger.

“But in your case, Jaggar,” Stopa continued, “we’ll do things in better style. Instead of bruising each other around like playful brats, we’ll fight to the death. You and me all the way with steel truncheons, Jaggar. The better man wins his life.”

The silence now took on a more somber cast; the banter and rough good humor which had accompanied the initiation thus far quite suddenly evaporated as each man present realized that his own fate was enmeshed with the outcome of the duel that was about to begin. Feric did not need to be told that he who defeated the old leader became the new; by no other means save fortuitous death of the old leader could power change hands in a band such as this. This law was written deep in the true human genes; indeed it was even more primeval than that—it was a law intrinsic to protoplasm itself, the basic canon of evolution, the rule of the strongest. Bogel shot Feric a cold and then a fiery look, indicating that he was aware of the full import of the situation, and that his faith in Feric was iron hard and unshakable.

“Bring a weapon!” Stopa ordered. “Bring the Steel Commander!”

Seven burly Avengers retired from the firelight and disappeared into the darkness. Almost at once, one of them returned bearing a battered old truncheon of respectable length and girth, its stainless steel shaft somewhat tarnished and marked with myriad battle scars. The truncheon bearer presented this hoary weapon to Feric.

Upon closer inspection, Feric discerned that this corroded truncheon had once bom elaborate etchings of serpents on its shaft, that the headpiece which at first had seemed to be a plain steel ball had once been enameled with the likeness of a great eye. Feric hefted the weapon with his right hand. It was much lighter than he would have chosen, but it had good balance and was nearly a yard long. He cut a swam through the air with the weapon; the arc felt true, the momentum sumcient to smash a skull to flinders with a direct hit. A battered but honorable truncheon; it would do.

Stopa now drew his own weapon and whirled it through the air a few times. Feric regarded it closely now. Stopa wielded a truely heroic truncheon. It was a full six inches longer than the weapon given Feric, and, judging from the way Stopa swung it, was perhaps as much as a quarter again as heavy. The steel shaft was plated with brilliant chromium, and the headball was carved in the likeness of the skull motif Stopa seemed to favor. The handle was of black leather wound over wood. Clearly, Feric had been handed a truncheon in no way the equal in size or style of that wielded by his opponent; just as clearly, however, it would have been the action of an unmanly poltroon to protest the situation aloud.

As Feric and Stopa completed their preparatory swings of their truncheons, a great huffing could be heard approaching the firelit area; then the other six Avengers became visible, groaning strangely under what seemed the negligible weight of the wooden pallet they bore on their collective shoulders.

But when they reached the spot where Feric and Stopa stood regarding each other, and laid the pallet on the earth between them, Feric gasped once in amazement and understood all.

The pallet was covered with spotless black velvet and upon it, in all its incredible glory, rested the Great Truncheon of Stal Held, the lost sceptre of royal power, the Steel Commander!

In mere physical appearance alone, the Great Truncheon was breathtaking. Its handle had been carved out of one great chunk of the ancient milky substance known as ivory and was padded not with leather but with some soft arcane substance that yet had the gloss of ruby. The shaft was a gleaming rod of some tarnishless metal fully four feet long and thick around as a man’s forearm, etched all around with rich red traceries of lightning strokes, a motif which made the huge shaft appear as if it had but recently been quenched in blood. The oversize headball was a life-sized steel fist, and a hero’s fist at that. Upon the third finger of this metal hand was a ring bearing the signet of a black swastika in a white spot surrounded by a circle of crimson fire, the colors as vivid as if they had been applied hours ago instead of centuries.

Feric stared at the mystic truncheon in unabashed wonder. “Do you realize what that weapon is?” he said softly.

Stopa grinned smugly at Feric, but he could not keep awe from softening somewhat the ferocity of his features.

“It’s the Steel Commander,” he said. “Once the old Kings of Heldon drew their power from it. Now it’s the property of the Black Avengers!”

“It’s the property of all Heldon!” Feric roared.

“We found it in a cave deep in the Wood when all you worms thought it lost forever!” Stopa snarled, albeit clearly defensively. “It’s ours now!” He laughed sardonically.

“If you want it, Jaggar, why don’t you just pick it up and carry it away?”

The assembled Avengers laughed at this, but not without a good deal of uneasiness; their simple but true instincts told them that the Steel Commander and the ancient arts which had forged it were hardly a proper matter for jest.

For his part, Feric appreciated the irony of Stopa’s words perhaps more keenly than did the Avenger himself.