Friends (2013) - Adams, Robert

/ have heard it. but I don’t know.

*We wish to look for them. I’ll take you with me, on my back, if you wish.

Krai Raus-son considered it. Raus had long since died, and his mother too. His friend and mentor, Glaze, had been murdered. And Garva, who would have been his friend if he had lived through this night. Who or what was there to keep him here at Peony and Phlox?

I'll go, Krai Spoke unhesitatingly. I’m not afraid.

The Swordsman Smada

by John Steakley

John Steakley has led a busy life. He has been a stock-car racer, a semipro football player, a private detective, an actor, a car salesman, and, of course, a writer. He has been writing for the movies for the last nine years, has completed one novel, Armor, and is awaiting publication of another, entitled Vampires.

It made sense that we were there.

It just made sense. That’s how come we could accept it so easily. It was where we were supposed to be. It just made sense.

At least, that’s what we thought before the slaughter began.

Lanny and me—that’s Lanny Weaver, my best friend— were big into the Horseclans like you can’t believe. Like even I can’t believe, looking back on it. We ate ’em and drank ’em and talked ’em! God, how we talked ’em! We’d stay up all night all the time talking Horseclans stuff. And of course we always ended up talking about how neat it would be to really be there, really live in that world. To know Bili the Axe personally and hang out with him. And Milo. We wanted to meet Milo Morai more than anybody, of course. But we didn’t really care if we never even saw him if we could just be there ! Hot damn! Really be there! Carrying swords and petting prairiecats and wenching and just traveling around kicking ass whenever we wanted to without any cops or anybody to bug us. The Horseclans world was infinitely better than our own, we believed, and we talked about that a lot, too.

We dressed like ’em, too. We had tunics and stuff. And chain mail made special by some retired army tank guy in Richmond, Virginia. And swords, too, made by the same dude. We had everything. Really. Daggers and stuff. Wineskins. Leggings.

And we wore them. At science fiction conventions and at meetings of our club and at SCA tournaments, which is really how all this happened. What, as Lanny said, “tipped us over the edge.”

Anyway . . . you know what the SCA is? The Society for Creative Anachronism? If you know about Horseclans you probably know about them. But anyway, the SCA are a bunch of folks heavy into medieval life-styles. They dress up like those days, women too, and they have big feasts and tournaments where knights fight to establish the pecking order and determine who the king is. The king is the best fighter of everybody and he gets his choice of queen, which is sorta how the trouble got started, except Lanny and me weren’t trying to be king—it wasn’t that big a tournament. We were just trying to get laid.

You see, there were these two new girls just moved to town. They were sisters and they were . . . well, dynamite-looking. Gorgeous. And sexy, too. Really sexy. Blondes. I’ve always loved blondes. Lanny, too. So we set out to win their hands in trial by combat. And they’d made it real clear that it could be done. Win more than their hands, if you get what I’m driving at. Oh, those two were really something. They had us huffing and puffing. And they were eating it up the whole time. They had every dude in the club ready to kill himself—or anybody else—to get some of what they were offering. And the girls loved that, too. The funny thing was, we didn’t care. I mean, we knew what it said about those two if they liked causing all that trouble and strife and the rest of it. But we didn’t care. They would smile these smug little smiles—dimples and the rest—and then wag away real slow and we’d just stand there like idiots until they were out of sight.

And then we’d go practice like crazy. Huffing and puffing and pawing the ground.

Then the tournament came. It was in the spring and everything was real and pretty and we were all camped out in the country with trailers and tents and stuff. It was really nice.

Sunshine and green grass and long flowing dresses and the like.

And we—Lanny and me—we were ready. Ready and psyched up and, most important of all, in shape. We had been working out together all winter long. Before the two sisters even showed up, even. 1 mean—we were ready.

And then the Incredible Hulk showed up and entered the tournament.

We called him the Incredible Hulk because . . . well, if you’d seen him you would too. His real name was Something Jones but he went by Bubba.

No kidding. Bubba.

But the point is, he was as big as a house. Slow as hell. Much slower than Lanny and me—but then that was our big deal, speed, and always had been. We were faster than any of the rest of them. And strong, like I said, because we were in shape from working out all that time. Stronger than most and faster than anybody and . . .

And it didn’t help. Bubba pounded us both. Badly. I mean, really. We must’ve struck him ten times for every time he hit us, but the thing is, every time he hit one of us we’d bounce. It was frustrating as hell. Not to mention painful. Of course, you really couldn’t get hurt too badly with masking-taped cane swords. All the weapons had to be taped up heavily. That was part of the rules. Nobody wanted to get skewered. But, see, that was the point. While we were getting dribbled by this guy we kept thinking: If this was real, we’d have killed him ten minutes ago.

But none of that made any difference. Bubba won and won so decisively that he got both sisters and then to top it all off was loud and obnoxious about it and then rude and crude to the girls, and you know what? They didn’t even seem to mind. They let him get away with it. He was a jerk and clumsy and loud, but . . .

But he had won.

Dammit!

The party afterward wasn’t much fun. Lanny and I spent most of it gritting our teeth. Oh, we were nice and all—what choice did we have? But it wasn’t much fun. Maybe it was that awful mead stuff we were drinking that somebody had made in his garage. Or maybe it was watching Bubba feeling up both girls in public.

Anyway, we left. Supposedly to go back to our trailer and get the tequila, but mostly just to get away from the rest and talk.

Only we didn’t. We sat there across from each other, both covered with grass stains and humiliation, and didn’t say a word for several minutes.

Then Lanny spoke: “Mr. Felix?”

“Yes, Mr. Weaver?”

“Let’s get dressed.”

1 grinned, said: “Yeah!”

And we did. Put on our best tunics, not the junk we wore for tournaments. The realistic stuff. The chain mail and the rest.

And the real swords. And the real daggers.

And then we opened the bottle of tequila and took a swig apiece, toasting ourselves, and stepped outside.

It was the next part that I don’t understand. I mean, there was a lot of it I didn’t understand at the time and still don’t. But what happened next has always been a mystery to me. I mean, how could we be so stupid and naive not to . . .