Alan Akers - Fliers of Antares

Perhaps, the treacherous whisper crossed my mind, perhaps I was still in the rock hut of the Heavenly Mines, and I had imagined I had seen and spoken with the scorpion, and all this was pure hallucination. A quoffa cart rumbled along the road, and the apim sitting in the front with a straw in his mouth and a wide hat pulled low over his forehead looked real enough. Naked as I was, I must accost him. He wore a shirt and trousers, a fashion quite often seen on Kregen, and I would face some quizzing, I felt sure. But it had to be done.

The white dust of the road puffed under the six pads of the quoffa, and his huge, patient, wise old face cheered me as I stepped out. This was a crossroads. A tall tree stood in one corner of the cross, and a blackened thing hung from a branch, chained and gruesome. I perked up. Directly across the angle of the road stood an inn, whose white walls and red roof leaned lazily against the sunlight, the windows winking in the sun. A table and a bench stood outside. I fancied I might find information there, if I could not stand a drink and a piece of vosk pie.

The red roof of the inn was new, for the tiles were unpitted and still full of color, but the far end gable roof showed older tiles, darkened and cracked here and there.

This was a mystery, this whole occurrence, so unlike anything that had happened before. The peacefulness of the scene, the calmness of the surroundings, even the thing in the gibbet to indicate that law was upheld and troubles past, all drew together to make me believe that something strange was happening.

I stepped out and opened my mouth to shout to the apim in the quoffa cart — and a blue radiance swept about me and a violent wind seemed to whirl me head over heels. I was still standing upright and on the same spot, but my impressions whirled chaotically. I saw the quoffa cart spin around, the tree bend and sway, the fields ripple and run as though a great and silent wind scored them flat. I struggled to draw breath in that glowing azure radiance.

I gasped.

The quoffa cart had gone. The tree had changed, for its foliage was now of early season, and not of autumn. And the inn! Its roof was now old all over, darkened cracked tiles where before had been new tiles. The fields had shrunk, for instead of ripe and golden grain they now showed the beginning shoots of new garden growths.

The Star Lords sent their blue radiance about me and I felt myself falling; I thought in my terror that I had failed to accomplish what I had been sent here to do. And I knew the Everoinye would punish failure with instant dismissal. I was on my way back to Earth!

“No!” I screamed out. This was not fair! This was to set a task without clue, without sign, without hope. Then I could scream no more. For the solid ground returned once more under my feet, the old inn, the new shoots in the fields, the burgeoning tree, all flashed again before my eyes. But now there was a change, a drastic change.

The inn was on fire. Flames shot from the roof, cracking and tumbling the tiles away as beams fell. The windows glowed with the violence of the fire within. All about me rose that horrid screeching of men locked in mortal combat.

I had no time to thank Zair. For this — this horror, this screaming and screeching, this clang of iron weapons on armor, this noise of battle — this scene was my scene, may Zair forgive me. Now I knew I was where I must be in order to fulfill my destiny on the world four hundred light-years from the world of my birth.

Diffs were attacking the inn.

They pranced about it, shooting quarrels into the fire through the smashed windows, running and laughing and cutting down other diffs who struggled to break a way through that iron ring. Any thought that I might be hurling myself into the fight on the wrong side had to be dispelled. The Star Lords had tested me in that way before; I had been tested through my own stiff-necked pride, and had hitherto had the good fortune to pick the right side. Now I felt that the devils so wantonly attacking the inn must be my adversaries. Those within might have been a coven or a gathering of criminals, but I doubted it. As I had struck when I had taken Sosie na Arkasson from her tree of suffering, so I struck now. I ran into the fray.

The diffs pranced and screeched, but I was able to trip one in half-armor and gaudy orange robes, to thump him as he went down, and so possess myself of a thraxter.

Is it a sin to confess, as I do, that the feeling of a sword-hilt once more in my fist uplifted me, gave me a thrilling sense of completeness? This proves without the shadow of a doubt that I am an incomplete man, a shadow man, a weakling, dependent on the shallow symbol of a sword for my moral and spiritual sustenance. Oh, yes, all that — but on Kregen a sword means life to its owner. Or, as is the way of two worlds, death. .

My prowess as a fighting-man gives me pleasure only when that skill may be used to ends which are in themselves worthy. The protection of the weak has seemed to me to be such a worthy end. But the judgment of worthiness remains with me, alone, and therefore in the eyes of everyone else must be suspect.

I saw these four-armed diffs attacking the blazing inn. I heard the shrieks and yells from within, and witnessed other four-armed diffs attempting to break out, and being shot down as they ran and stumbled; so it seemed right to me that I should assist those trapped in the inn. All these thoughts of a schoolboy philosophy flashed through my mind in the moment that I scooped the thraxter, blocked a blow from a yelling halfling who tried to decapitate me, and thrust him through above his lorica. I turned swiftly, ducking my head so that a crossbow bolt flicked by above, and leaped for the clump who were attempting to smash down the door, almost enveloped in a blaze of sparks and flame. They had a tree trunk and they ran and swung with great and agile viciousness. These four-armed halflings were superb fighting-men.

The lenken door groaned back from bronze hinges. Then I was into the battering-ram group, laying about me, and catching them completely unawares. They dropped the log. They carried thraxters in their right upper hands; but their other three hands had been occupied with the log, and it seems to me now that small fact perhaps saved my life. They were fantastic fighters. I had to skip and jump, to parry and block more than I could hack and thrust. But they went down, first one and then two, and two more as I caught the knack.

Others came running, holding shields balanced high on their two left arms. The streaming light of the twin Suns of Scorpio poured down on the scene and the blaze of the burning inn shed a ghastly wavering light into that sunshine. There would be no quick and easy escape into the shadows. As I fought I took stock of these four-armed diffs.

“He is only apim, by Zodjuin of the Rainbow!” A magnificent halfling yelled his anger that his men were being thus thwarted. He wore an iron-banded lorica that had been let out to its full extent, and a pair of gray trousers, with a broad, orange cummerbund wrapped around his waist, and a swirling orange and blue cloak fastened by jeweled golden brooches. He wore no helmet and his coppery hair gleamed in the light, cut into a helmet-shape itself, with a fillet of silver confining the curls across his forehead. He waved his thraxter with his upper right hand and hurled a stux with his lower right. He threw the stux with great skill and precision. I slipped it and cut down a diff who attempted to run me through. Things were becoming more interesting by the mur, by Zair!

A man I had chopped at and who had slid his thraxter across barely in time, so that instead of having his head laid open had been merely slashed down his face, yelled back hoarsely.