Джеффри Лорд: Dimension Of Dreams

It was the body of a man in his thirties, at a rough guess, but Blade knew that in the darkness all his guesses would be very rough indeed. The dead man wore a full beard, and his hair reached his shoulders. Both beard and hair were ragged and greasy. The man's skin was so coated with soot and grease that it was impossible to tell its color. He looked lean, like a track runner, but not emaciated. There was no sign of weapons or gear on or near him.

Now Blade realized that he would have no need to fear advanced weapons. Whoever the people living in the city or at least roaming about in it might be, they had sunk far into barbarism. Which did not make them less dangerous. Far from it. Primitive peoples were even more likely than civilized ones to believe that stranger equals enemy and react accordingly. He would have to approach even more cautiously. And finding anything worth bringing home in this dimension would be a matter of luck. He stood up and as he did so; he saw lights moving amid the ruins along the riverbank.

He counted five of them moving toward him in an irregularly spaced line across the ruins. They bobbed up and down as though their bearers were stumbling and lurching across the mounds of rubble. All shone with a flickering, yellowish glow that to Blade suggested hand-carried torches. He could not yet make out what or who carried them. But he did not wish to be detected prematurely. He lay flat on the roadway behind a thick clump of the thistles, gripped his mace, and waited.

In a minute four more torches joined the original five, two at either end of the line. The new arrivals appeared to be moving inward so that all nine would form a semicircle opening toward the river and the bridge. A moment later Blade saw movement among the piles of debris that spilled onto the far end of the bridge. Two more torches flared in the darkness, and then shrill screams rose in the wind, followed by savage howls of triumph.

What was happening up ahead might be perfectly right and proper, but Blade doubted it. In any case, he wasn't going to assume anything without taking a closer look. He rose from cover and sidled forward in a half-crouch, keeping low and hopefully invisible in the darkness until he was within fifty feet of the end of the bridge. In the area of yellow light thrown out on the rubble-strewn ground by the torches, he could see clearly what was happening.

There were eighteen men in the semicircle facing the river, nine of them holding torches and the other nine holding long pointed metal rods, spear-fashion. All eighteen had the dirty, shaggy look of the last body Blade had found. Some wore the full tunic-kilt outfit, some only the kilt, and a couple were barefoot and wore only ragged loincloths. All eighteen had their eyes turned inward, riveted on the five people in the middle of the semicircle, who seemed to be held there by fear-paralyzed limbs and the threat of the uplifted spears around them.

The five wore full tunics with embroidered patches, kilts with large pouches hanging from black metal link belts, and sandals. Two of them seemed to be women, judging by their long hair, and they also wore broad-rimmed hats. The three men were clean-shaven and short-haired. The clothes of all five were spotless except for dust they had picked up in their frantic scramble over the rubble in the flight from their pursuers. There was no sign of weapons on any of them. The hands they raised to their enemies, clasping and unclasping in agonies of fright, were empty and clean.

Before Blade could see more, the armed men in the semicircle made their move. The ones carrying torches jabbed them into crevices in the piles of rubble to keep them upright and burning. Then they drew efficient if clumsy-looking swords from cloth scabbards on their belts and advanced toward the cowering captives. The then with the spears hefted their weapons in both hands, holding them high with points slightly down, ready to either stab or throw. Blade began to wonder just how barbaric the bearded men were. They seemed to have developed fairly sophisticated tactics and weapon techniques.

One of the swordsmen was almost within striking distance of the five. The captives were looking at him like birds charmed by a snake. Blade wondered if they were drugged, feeble-minded, or just too frightened to defend themselves. Five people, even in such a situation, should have had some way of at least taking a few of their enemies with them. But these five were apparently going to sit there and let themselves be butchered like the proverbial stalled ox. Blade wondered if there was any point in trying to help people so obviously incapable of helping themselves.

Then the lead swordsman took the extra step needed to bring him within striking distance and swung his sword at the nearest of the five. Not with the edge but with the flat of the blade. The man tried to duck at the last split second, but he was too late. The flashing metal smashed into his head with a whunk clearly audible to Blade, and the man sprawled on the ground.

As if the first blow had been a signal, other swords men now leaped forward, their swords glinting in the torchlight. The other two men crumpled. Then the first swordsman reached down, grabbed one of the women by her hair, and jerked her to her feet. One of the others reached for her belt, hands fumbling at the clasp, and jerked it and her kilt off in one motion. There was suddenly a sour taste in Blade's mouth and stomach. He knew he wasn't going to crouch in the shadows and the thistles and watch mass rape no matter who the «good guys» might be. He began a stealthy creep forward as the men stripped the remaining garments from the woman and threw her to the ground. Blade knew he would not be able to do much beyond creating a diversion to enable the woman to get away. But that should be possible with surprise on his side.

But suddenly his chances of taking them by surprise vanished as the second woman broke from her trance, leaped to her feet, and dashed straight toward him. As she plunged out onto the bridge, she caught sight of Blade flattening himself in the thistles. In an instant she stopped dead, let out a wild scream of terror, and before Blade could shout or move to stop her, she dashed to the edge of the bridge and threw herself off. The warriors, turning at the sound of the scream and staring at the woman, also caught sight of Blade. He saw two of them raise their spears as the leader, who had been about to fall on the first woman, sprang to his feet and turned toward the bridge.

Blade knew that his only chance now was to get to close quarters before the spearmen could turn him into a porcupine, then rely on his superior strength and skill. He sprang to his feet and charged straight at the leader, whirling his mace around his head so that it was a gilded blur in the torchlight, screaming at the top of his lungs. The leader took one tremendous leap backward, putting himself beyond the range of Blade's savage swing. One of the other men standing over the woman wasn't so lucky. Blade's mace smashed into his temple, and he flew through the air and landed six feet from where he took off. His companion swung his sword up in a flashing arc, but Blade knocked it out of his hand with one swing of the mace and smashed in his forehead on the return swing.

For a moment the other swordsmen backed off from Blade, and the spearmen had a clear shot at him. But the spearmen were unnerved by his size and ferocity and the speed with which he had killed two of the swordsmen. And his leaping, whirling figure made a poor target in the flickering torchlight. He felt spears dart past his body and legs and heard them bang metallically on the road. Then he bellowed, «Run, you fool!» to the nude woman on the ground. Without waiting to see whether she obeyed or even heard him, he charged the spearmen, mace still whirling in one hand, a sword snatched up from one of his victims now flashing in the other.