"We'd appreciate it if you'd come along with us." This request was made by a stocky blond fellow in the middle of the group. His beard seemed to continue right down into his naked chest, as did the drooping mustache. In fact, he displayed so much hair that Jon-Tom wondered in the darkness if he really was human and not one of the other furry local citizens.
That led him to consider the unusual homogeneity of the group. Up till now, every gathering of locals he'd encountered, whether diners or merchants, sailors or pedestrians, had been racially mixed.
He looked backward. The lot who'd been trailing them had spread out to block any retreat back up the street and yes, they were also wholely human, and similarly armed.
"That's nice of you," Caz said, replying to the invitation, "but we have other plans of our own." He spoke for all his companions. Jon-Tom casually swung his staff around from his back, slipped the duar out of the way. Talea's hand dropped to her sword. There was some uneasy shuffling among the humans confronting them.
"I'm sorry. We insist."
"I wish you would encyst," said Flor cheerfully, "preferably with something cancerous."
The insult was lost on the man, who simply blinked at her. Both clusters began to crowd the travelers, edging in from front and back.
There was a light metallic sound as Talea's sword appeared in her hand. "First one of you rodents lays a hand on me is cold meat."
In the dim light from the oil lamps Jon-Tom thought she looked lovelier than ever. But then, so did Flores Quintera.
She'd assumed an amazonian stance with her own short sword and mace held expectantly in front of her, the light gleaming off the saw teeth lining the steel.
"Ovejas y putas, come and take us... if you can."
"Ladies, please!" protested Caz, aghast at the manner in which his attempted diplomacy was being undermined from behind. "It would be better for all of us if... excuse me, sir." He'd been glancing back at Talea and Flor but had not lost sight of their opponents. One of them had jumped forward and attempted to brain the rabbit with a small club, whereupon Caz had hopped out of the way, offered his apologies, and stuck out a size twenty-two foot. His assailant had gone tumbling over it.
"Dreadfully sorry," murmured Caz. His apology did nothing to stem the rush which followed as the two groups of encircling humans attacked.
The narrowness of the street simplified defensive tactics. The set-upon arranged themselves back to back in a tight circle and hacked away at their antagonists, who threw themselves with shocking recklessness against swords and knives. The light and sweat and screaming swam together around Jon-Tom. The duar was a heavy weight bouncing under his arm as the blunt end of his staff-club sought out an unprotected face or groin.
It occurred to him that a little magic might have frightened off their assailants. He cursed himself for not thinking of it earlier. It was too late now for singing. He couldn't stop defending himself long enough to swing the duar around.
Three frustrated attackers were trying to get beneath his enormous reach. He held them off with the club. One slipped underneath the staff and raised a mace. Jon-Tom thumbed a stud on the staff and flipped it around in an arc as he'd been shown. The spring-loaded spearpoint sliced across the mace-wielder's thighs. He collapsed, moaning and holding his legs.
Something dark covered Jon-Tom's eyes as he was hit from below and behind. Flailing wildly with the staff, he went over backward. The staff intercepted something yielding, which yelped once.
A heaviness pressed down on his senses as well as his eyes. Then everything turned to mush, including the noise of fighting. His thoughts swam sluggishly as though he were trying to think through Jell-O. Dimly he could still make out shrieks and screams from the continuing battle, but they sounded faint and far away. He recognized the high-pitched challenge of Talea alternating with Mudge's taunts and curses. Flor was yowling war cries in an interesting mixture of English and Spanish. The last sight he'd glimpsed before the black cloth or bag or whatever it was had been slipped over his head showed a starlit sky mottled with clearing rain clouds and a sickle moon beaming bluely down between peaked roofs that overhung the street like cupped hands. He hoped they were formed in prayer for him.
Then even that wish faded, along with the remnant of his consciousness....
XX
At first he thought a fly had somehow tumbled into his brain. It was beating against the sides, trying to get out. When the fly-feeling gave way to a certainty that the buzzing came from elsewhere, he opened his eyes and hunted for its source.
An oil lamp burned on a simply hewn wood table. A gruff announcement came from someone unseen.
"He's awake!"
This was followed by the pad-padding of many feet. Jon-Tom struggled to a sitting position. Gravity, or something, tried to pull off the back of his head. He winced at the pain. It slowly dribbled away, down his neck and into oblivion.
He discovered he was sitting on the edge of a cot. In the dim lamplight he could now make out the familiar shapes of his staff and duar leaning against the far wall of the room.
Flanking his possessions were two of the humans who'd attacked him. One wore a bandage across his forehead and over one ear. The other exhibited a deep purple bruise and knot over his right eye. His mouth also showed signs of having been cut.
Normally an execptionally pacific person, Jon-Tom experienced an uncharacteristic surge of pleasure at this evidence of the damage he and his companions had done. He'd made up his mind to make a rush for the club-staff when a door opened on his left and half a dozen people marched in.
Leaning forward, he was disappointed to discover he could see nothing past the door except a dimly lit corridor, though he could hear distant conversation.
The new arrivals stationed themselves around the room. Three of them took up positions in front of the door while another closed it behind them. Two additional lamps were lit. Everyone in the room looked very determined. Another trio sat down at the table. Someone brought a few roughly forged goblets and a couple of plates piled high with steaming meat and a close relative of boiled potatoes.
There were no windows in the room. The only light came from the three oil lamps and the crack beneath the door. Captors and captive examined each other with interest for long minutes.
Then one of the three seated at the table spoke to him, and Jon-Tom recognized the blond spokesman who had confronted him in the street.
"You hungry?" Jon-Tom shook his head. "Thirsty?" Again the negative motion, accompanied by a smile and an obscene gesture. Jon-Tom was not thinking like a would-be lawyer now. He was still light-headed and maybe just a little crazy.
His actions and silence did not seem to upset his interrogator, who shrugged and said, "Suit yourself. I am." He picked up a potato-thing and spread some sort of transparent glaze over it, using a spoon set in a small jar. Taking a bite out of it, he chewed noisily. Glaze slid down his chin and onto his chest.
When he'd finished half the tuber he looked again at Jon-Tom. Then he asked bluntly, "Head hurt?"
"You know goddam well it does," Jon-Tom told him, feeling of the lump that was maturing on the back of his skull.
"We're sorry about that." And to Jon-Tom's surprise the man sounded honestly contrite. "But you wouldn't come with us voluntarily, and we didn't have much time to talk. Patrol could've come along."
"If you've been facing twelve armed people in an unfamiliar street, would you have gone along?"
The blond smiled wryly. "I suppose not. We're not much on tact, I guess. But it was imperative you come with us, and we had to get you away from the animals."
That made Jon-Tom take another anxious look around the room. No question about it, he was the sole captive present.
"Where are the others? Where are my friends?"
"Where we left them. Scattered around the alleys of the Loose Quarter. Oh, they didn't seem badly hurt," he added when Jon-Tom looked ready to rise from the cot. "Far less so than our own people. We simply
led the fight away from you once we had you drugged and under control."
"Why me?" He leaned back against the rock wall. "What's so interesting about me?"
The stocky speaker peered hard at him. "It is said that you are a wizard, a spellsinger, from another world." He seemed at once skeptical and yet anxious to have that skepticism disputed.
"Yes... yes, that's right." Jon-Tom stretched out his arms and waved his fingers. "And if you don't let me out of here in ten seconds I'm going to turn you all into mushrooms!"
The leader shook his head, looking down at the floor and then up again to smile at Jon-Tom. He clasped both hands together on his lap.
"Any spellsinger requires his instrument to make magic." He nodded in the direction of the closely guarded duar. "You threaten emptily. I had heard that you controlled a river dragon. That plus your admission just now is proof enough for me."
"How do you know that I'm controlling the dragon? Maybe I'm just trying to frighten you into releasing me. Clothahump the turtle is still back at our barracks, and he's a powerful wizard, much more powerful than I am. Maybe he's controlling the dragon and even now setting up a spell to dissolve all of you like so much tea."
"We know of the hard-shelled bumbler who accompanied you. We know also that he and the great dragon are even now arguing absurdities back in the harbor barracks. We know this not through magic but through our well-organized and loyal network of observers and spies." Again the smile. "Sometimes that is worth more than magic."
Network, Jon-Tom thought? What's this talk of spies and networks? Something else, something about the attitude of the people in the room, their attacking with nonlethal weapons, all bespoke something deeper than your everyday garden-variety robbers.
"Who do you spy for? Aren't you all citizens of the city or county of Polastrindu?"
"By birth," admitted the man, and there were murmurs of agreement from the others in the room, "but not by inclination, or belief."
"You're losing me."
"We don't want to do that," said the man, unclasping his hands. "We want you to join us."
"Join you? In what? I haven't got time to join anything else. I'm already into something vitally important to your whole world." He started to recite Clothahump's warning about the coming cataclysm.
"The Plated Folk are readying their greatest invasion of these lands in their history, and they have--"
"We know all that," said one of the other guards impatiently.
Jon-Tom gaped at the woman who'd spoken. She was one of the trio blocking the doorway. "You know?" Nods of assent came from several of the others.
"But I thought... Clothahump said he was the only one perceptive enough to... but how do you know?"
"Patience," the blond urged him. "All will be explained.
"You asked if we were not citizens of the city, and what we wanted you to join us for. We are citizens of this city, yes, and we are something more, we believe. As for what we want you to join, I have already told you. We want you to join us."
"What the hell do you mean by 'us'? Some kind of political organization?"
The man shook his head. "Not really. Us. Us... we humans." He spoke patiently, as though explaining to a child.
"I still don't follow you."
The man looked in exasperation at his companions, then once more back at Jon-Tom. "Listen to me carefully, spellsinger. For tens of thousands of years mankind has been compelled to exist as a lowly equal with the animals. With the hordes of stinking, smelly, hairy beasts who are obviously our inferiors." This was said with casual disregard for his own unkempt mat of fur. "With those who are destined to be damned together with the rats and mice they so readily discriminate against themselves."
Jon-Tom didn't reply. The man almost pleaded with him. "Surely you have felt the inequality, the unnaturalness of this situation?" He paced in front of Jon-Tom's cot, occasionally shaking clenched fists at him.
"We are more than animals, are we not? Clearly nature has intended us to be superior, yet some unnatural force or circumstance has held us back from achieving our birthright. The time to change that is near. Soon mankind shall inherit this world, as nature intended him to!"
"You're talking, then," said Jon-Tom slowly, "about a race war?"
"No!" The stocky leader turned angrily on him. "This is to be a war for the race, for the human race, to place it in its rightful position as leader of civilization." He leaned near, stared searchingly into Jon-Tom's face. "Tell me then, spellsinger: do the humans of your other-world exist equally with the animals?"
My God, Jon-Tom thought in panic. What do I say? How perceptive are they? Can they detect, through magic or otherwise, if I lie? And if so, and they learn the truth, will they use that to gather support among the humans here for their own hateful plans?
But are they after all so hateful? Do you hate what this man is saying, Jon-Tom, or do you hate the thought that you might agree with him?
"Well?" the man prompted.
No reply was worse than anything he might say, he decided. "The humans I've met are no more than the equal of the other animals here in size and intelligence. Some have shown themselves to be a damnsight less so. What makes you think you're so superior?"
"Belief, and inner knowledge," came the instant reply. "This cannot be the way nature meant things to be. Something is wrong here. And you have not yet answered my question about the relationship between humans and animals in your world."
"We're all animals together. Intelligence is the determining factor, and the other persons I've met here have been pretty much equal in intelligence."
"Ah... the other animals you've met here. What about your own world's 'animals'?"
Jon-Tom's voice rose in frustration. "God damn you, shape and size has nothing to do with it!"
"It confirms what the dream raiders told us," murmured someone in the back of the room. There were other unintelligible whispers, smug and self-satisfied. Jon-Tom found them unsettling.
"Anyway, I won't join you." He folded his arms. "I doubt that many will. I know plenty of humans already who can tell the difference between civilized and uncivilized, between intelligent and ignorant, without having to think about it, and it hasn't a fucking thing to do with body odor. So you can take your 'belief' and 'inner knowledge' and stuff it! Those are the kinds of groundless, half-assed reasons dictators have used throughout history for discriminating against others, and I don't want anything to do with it.
"Besides, humans are just another mammalian minority here. Even if they all went nuts and joined you, you're far too outnumbered to even think the kind of genocide you're contemplating has a chance of success."
"You're right on all counts," agreed the leader, "except one."
"I don't think I overlooked anything."
"Perhaps it would be better if I explained." The voice had a hoarseness to it that suggested a severe cold or laryngitis. The man who'd spoken stepped out into the light. He was as thickset as the leader and even more hirsute. Long black hair flowed below his shoulders, and his beard almost obscured his face. Brown and blue leathers were draped tentlike on his body.
Jon-Tom was by now almost too furious to think straight. "Who the hell are you, jack?" He was thinking of Mudge and Clothahump, of the aristocratic but friendly Caz, and the acerbic Pog. The idea that this motley mob of near barbarians considered themselves good enough to lord it over his new-won furry friends was almost more than he could stomach.
"My identity is perhaps better shown than stated," said the black-haired shape as he reached up and carefully removed his head.
The skull thus revealed was smaller than a human head, but occupied almost as much volume because of the bulging, bright green compound eyes. The chitin was bright blue spotted with yellow patches. A slash of maroon decorated the mandibles. Antennae drooped toward Jon-Tom. They were constantly in motion, alternating like a swimmer's arms.
It spoke again, the same harsh, rasping tone. The mouth did not move. Jo
n-Tom realized the insect was generating a crude approximation of normal speech by controlling the flow of air through its breathing spicules.
"I am Hanniwuz," said the apparition huskily. "This suit I wear is necessary lest the locals kill me on sight. They bear an unreasoning hatred for my people and have persecuted us for thousands of years."
Jon-Tom had recovered from the initial shock of the revelation. "The way I hear it, it's your people who have been doing the hating, trying to invade and enslave the locals for millennia."
"I will not deny that we seek control, but we do not seek conquest. It is for our protection. We require security of some kind. The warm-landers grow constantly stronger. One day their hatred will overwhelm their lethargy and they will arise en masse to massacre the Plated Folk. Do we not have the right to self-defense?"
Oh boy, Jon-Tom thought: history and legalisms. He felt suddenly at home. "Don't try and bullshit me. Whenever one nation claims it requires 'secure borders' with another, that border is usually the far border of the neighboring country and not the common one. That 'border' country gets swallowed up, and the secure borders have to be moved outward again, and then again. It's a never ending process. Security may never be satisfied that way, but greed usually is."
The insect's head swiveled to look up at the blond man. "Spellsinger or not, I think this one more dangerous than useful. I do not think he will be of use to us." Jon-Tom went cold and still.
"No, he's not as positive as he sounds." The leader turned imploringly, smilingly back to the lanky youth. "Please tell Hanniwuz you'll join us."
"I don't see the connection between you two."
"The Plated Folk recognize that among the warmlanders only we humans think like they do. Only we have the ability to make war with detachment and then to govern properly. That's our natural right, and the Plated Folk are willing to recognize that. If we help them, they will allow us to rule in their stead. That will give them the security they seek."