“No, Squirtmuck, no!”
But it was already too late. Squirtmuck, propelled by some incomprehensible flight of froogear fancy, had suddenly and forcefully thrown away the entire bag.
*
The bar dropped outside the door. All stood back as the chimaera entered, carrying fruit. Kelvin felt strange, watching it. The head called Mervania still seemed to him to be that of a beautiful coppery-haired woman, a roundear at that.
Thank you, Kelvin.
The male head, Mertin, could have been on the shoulders of any of the soldiers he had directed against Rowforth in the silver-serpent frame.
Forget it, foodstuff!
The dragon head reminded him all too clearly of the dragons with golden scales that he himself had slaughtered.
GWROOOOFU
While the beast as a whole reminded him of nothing so much as a--
The chimaera had entered, while he was thinking. Now it elevated its deadly tail. Kelvin hastily suppressed his thoughts. The monster dumped its load of nectarfruit into the trough. It smelled lusciously good. Even though he knew it was fattening, he could hardly wait to start eating.
He edged away from the wall, his feet seeming to have a mind of their own. Suddenly he was running, right past the chimaera to the open doorway.
Mervania's pretty head dipped toward his as he passed. “Going somewhere, little toothsome?” she inquired sweetly.
He put on the skids, without knowing why. Now he was standing right beside the monster, with the female human face almost near enough to kiss.
“Well, if you feel that way, Kelvin-- ” she started, amused.
Kelvin, astonished, realized that she would kiss him, even though she intended to eat his flesh later. Because she liked to play with her food.
Suddenly Stapular acted. “Go!” he shouted, and grabbed the tip of the sting, which was now pointed at the ceiling.
There was a flash, as from a close lightning bolt. Kelvin found himself weak and gasping and tingling all over, just outside the door. His feet must have carried him here! Inside the cellar his brother and father lay sprawled, unconscious or dead.
Amazingly, the chimaera too was down. Only Stapular was alive and moving. “Quickly, before it comes to!”
“What?” Kelvin struggled with the thought. His feet wanted to carry him, but he could hardly stand.
“The electricity in this confined space took them all out. But I'm not certain how long before they wake! Hurry!”
Abruptly he was remembering. Stapular waving his fingers at him, implanting a course of action deep within his head.
Kelvin ran to the fence and grabbed a post. The post, slippery and solid, resisted his strength, but he was determined. Then the gauntlets took over and wrenched it from the ground.
“Come on! Get your posterior in motion!” Stapular cried.
He was to run with it back to the chimaera. He was to raise it like a great dragonspear and drive it deep into every living eyesocket the monster possessed! He--
He stood there, his weapon poised before Mervania’s fallen face. She looked almost angelic, her eyes closed, her features relaxed. She had been about to kiss him. Drive the point into one of those lovely eyes?
How could he? The chimaera was helpless. It might be a monster, but Mervania was as womanly as any woman he had known, with the possible exception of his own mother. And his wife. Yet here he stood, feet wide apart, tip of the greenish-tinged sting raised above her face, his eyes and muscles concentrating hard on her coppery--
“Now, stupid, now!” Stapular ordered.
Something snapped. Kelvin trembled and pointed the sting away from the lovely face.
“Ineffective Minor World fool!” Stapular screamed. He charged across and took hold of the shaft. “I'll do it myself! I should have known better than to trust a lesser creature to do something important!” He pulled.
Kelvin resisted, pulling back with the strength of the gauntlets.
“You fool, you idiot, you brainless nothing!” Stapular yelled. “Can't you see that it's about to wake?”
True, surely. Yet Kelvin did not yield. “No, Stapular! I can't do it this way! We only want to escape.”
“That's all you want, maybe, you imbecile! I want more!” Stapular exerted considerable strength, and it was as if he wore magic gauntlets of his own. Kelvin was pulled off balance, but his gauntlets maintained their grip.
“Let go! Let go! Let go!” They fell together, struggling over possession of the copper sting. They rolled over and over on the floor, with Stapular's unexpectedly heavy weight and the armor pressing hard against his simple rustic body coverings.
Then they were up against the trough, and Stapular was bending him back. The edge of the trough struck his head and he saw stars. Then--
Stapular had the sting! He held it poised above the Grumpus head, searching out the dragon's eyeball and its path to the brain. Kelvin had killed dragons that way, and Stapular had learned from his telling, if he hadn't known it before.
“Die, beast!” Stapular said. His body tensed.
Without realizing how he did it, Kelvin was upon him. One incredible leap propelled somehow by his gauntlets; then he and the hunter were going over on the floor. Again they were rolling, fighting for control.
“You fool! You moron! You Minor World trash!”
Kelvin paid no attention to the words. He saved his breath for the combat. It was almost as though the gauntlets had taken weird control over the whole of him. To destroy the monster should be his greatest desire, yet now it was as if his greatest wish were to save the chimaera.
The great beast stirred. An arm with a man's hand on it reached out and grabbed the shaft of the sting where Kelvin and Stapular held it.
“Let go that!” Mertin said. The scorpiocrab claws clicked warningly.
Stapular did not let go. Thus he remained in place as the huge claws reached out, took him around the middle, and lifted him into the air.
“Now see what you've done!” Stapular cried. “Minor World idiot!”
Kelvin released the sting. With a quick motion he brought out his sword. He swished it at the pincer and then struck. Copper gleamed brightly where his blade bit. The pincer would have a scar, but that was as deeply as his blade penetrated. At the same time he felt the shock of impact from wrist to shoulder. Ouch! His arm felt numb!
“You really must not fight!” Mervania said. “You really must not.” Her head was awake now, staring at him.
Suddenly the hunter had hold of his own left wrist. He pulled at the transparent gauntlet. It came off-- along with the entire hand.
Kelvin blinked, but the sight remained. Where the man's wrist should have been was a metallic something that could hardly be bone.
From the foreshortened arm a ruby laser flashed out. It cut through one of the pincers. The pincer and Stapular hit the floor simultaneously.
“Now you'll see!” Stapular said, rising and pointing the stump. “I came prepared! It was planned that I be the last, and hide this until the last moment! I didn't want to have to reveal my nature, but this Minor World scum forced my hand.” He glanced briefly at the hand he had removed. “Now, Chimaera-- “
Mervania screamed. Mertin made an exclamation of dismay. Grumpus growled. If a monster could tremble, this one was doing so.
Casually Stapular lanced off the second pincer. With his back against the wall, immune from being grabbed, he could proceed to cut off every arm and head.
“Listen, Minor World being,” Stapular said. “You wouldn't have it the conventional way! You had to make me ruin my cover! Now listen to the death cries of the last known surviving chimaera in all the frames!”
“No, no!” Mervania cried. It sounded very much like a woman's pleading, and indeed there were tears in her eyes.
Kelvin could not have said how it happened. Suddenly he raised, reversed, and flung his sword forward. It was the gauntlets’ doing. For the moment the gauntlets appeared to have chosen a stran
ge side.
The sword turned in the air, the point coming to the fore. The blade penetrated Stapular's throat precisely in the middle. Stapular looked surprised. Then he raised his intact hand and yanked the sword partway out.
Something black gushed forth. Alien blood? No, not blood at all, Kelvin realized. Oil! Stapular was what his father called a robot!
Whatever it was, the fluid was necessary for the thing's functioning. As it poured out, Stapular collapsed. He could not function without oil pressure any better than a living creature could function without blood pressure.
*
“You have saved us! You have saved us!” Mervania exclaimed, and even Grumpus growled something that sounded appreciative. Monsters valued their lives as much as other folk did.
Now John Knight and Kian were opening their eyes, returning to bewildered consciousness.
“It was all a trick!” Mervania babbled indignantly. “A trick of the hunters!”
“That thing never would have tasted right!” Mertin said with disgust. “It would have given Grumpus indigestion.”
“GROOOOMTH!” the dragon head agreed with a disgusted expression.
Kelvin looked quickly to his father and brother, and back to the faces of their captor. Now they were in for it, he thought. Now they were all going to be rewarded in the worst possible way for his colossal stupidity and for the gauntlets’ interference. Now they had no way to escape being eaten by the chimaera.
Grumpus snapped his big jaws and darted forth his forked tongue as if hungry already.
CHAPTER 14
Turnings
St. Helens prepared himself for death, as well as he was able. He expected a spear to be rammed through him or a knife slitting his throat. Yet even as this child-king who was not a child screamed “Kill him!” the witch opened her eyes and stared piercingly at the men holding him.
“No, precious,” she said, her eyes flicking back to the child. “He must be a prisoner.”
“He killed you!” the child shrilled.
“Not yet, precious. Not yet. Please, darlings, humor me. My kind are hard to kill.” With those words the old woman ceased speaking and closed her eyes as though for death.
St. Helens heard a sword snick out of a scabbard. She had spoken too late, or died too early, he thought. Now the brat-king would have his understandable revenge.
“No!” the little guy ordered. “Don't kill him! Put him in the dungeon! As for Helbah, take her in!”
“But-- “
At that moment a large houcat, very black, ferocious of eye, leaped from behind the second young king and ran to Helbah's apparent corpse. For one moment St. Helens felt the sharp yellow eyes, and heard the wickedest, deepest, longest-drawn hiss he'd ever heard from anything feline. Then the houcat was on the corpse, breathing in and out against Helbah's worn mouth.
Suddenly the houcat stiffened all over. Then it collapsed like a black, empty bag. The blackness stayed there and seemed even to be melting as a soldier jerked St. Helens’ arm.
Now there were two corpses, he thought. Witch's and witch's familiar. But whatever else he might think of her, he knew that the witch had saved his life.
The soldiers rushed him away.
*
Lomax steadied his young resolve as he looked up and down the line of survivors of the recent fight. They had lost only about a dozen men in addition to St. Helens, but twenty more were wounded seriously enough to be sent home. The remainder, Lomax determined, were going to cross that border again. But first there was this other matter.
“All right! Who did it! Who fired that crossbow bolt! Who violated the truce?”
No one spoke. All the Hermans remained impassive, while the mercenaries were interested rather than apprehensive. Judging from appearances, none here were guilty.
“You, Phillip, did you-- “
He was going to say “see someone do it?” but the boy interrupted him.
“Yes, I did it! I did it! I'm the one!”
“YOU! But why?” His head swam even as he asked it.
“St. Helens plays chess! He knows you have to take out the dark queen!”
“You've killed him! You're responsible for his death!”
“He's my greatest friend! Oh, Lomax, please, please hang me as he asked!”
Lomax shivered. “You really-- “
“Please. I did it for him. I did it for all of us. So that we could win. The same as when Kelvin destroyed Melbah in Aratex.”
“Damn!” Lomax said, pained and unenthusiastic. The kid really did think it a game! Doubtless he thought that afterward the dead simply woke up and resumed living, ready to play the game again. Kids!
“Please,” Phillip repeated. “It was my dearest friend's last request. He was not only my dearest friend, he was my only friend!”
Lomax shook all over, unable to stop himself. “You really want me to give that order? You really want to hang by your neck and choke, your eyeballs bugging out? You want to die?”
“Yes.”
He considered it. He liked Phillip in spite of himself. Would St. Helens really want him dead? St. Helens had saved the former figurehead king of Aratex from death, and had treated him as a friend. Should he, could he now follow what had been St. Helens’ command?
“NO!” he said forcefully. “That'd be too easy on you! You have to go back with us into Kance! You have to fight the enemy and make up for what you've done!”
“Oh, thank you, thank you, kind, gentle friend!”
Was that for refusing to hang him, or for visiting on him presumably worse punishment? There were tears in the boy's eyes, but his voice was not devoid of sneaky triumph. What game was he really playing?
Well, the reality of battle would sweat that out of him, if it didn't kill him first.
St. Helens, Lomax thought in what was almost a prayer, I promise you will be avenged even if it costs every one of our lives!
*
The phantoms were not coming now, Mor thought. They'd quit appearing and disappearing in midbattle. Yet his men were losing, losing badly, and not to witchcraft.
He finished off the Klinglander he was fighting and then wheeled his horse. Dead and dying men lay everywhere, and yes, the tide of battle had definitely turned.
It galled him to do it, but there was no alternative. He lifted the horn to his lips and blew the signal for retreat.
Their only consolation, he thought, was that in the forests grew bloodfruit for the treatment of the wounded. Before this war was over, the magical fruit would save a lot of lives.
Thinking grimly of the surgery that would have to be set up, Mor turned his horse. A forest with bloodfruit was reasonably close behind.
*
Zoanna stared into her crystal and laughed a most unbeautiful laugh that Rowforth found deliciously chilling.
“Look! Look!” she ordered.
He was looking. He saw the witch who controlled the kingdoms of Klingland and Kance lying motionless without a visible sign of life. There was that black houcat lying on her face, melting into it. There were the Kancian soldiers dragging a bewildered St. Helens away.
“Does this mean we've won?” he asked. He felt stupid asking a woman about anything, even Zoanna. He felt particularly stupid now, knowing that he had done nothing to direct the battles or secure the triumph.
“We will have won if she never recovers,” Zoanna said. “We must see that she doesn't.”
“You will use more magic?”
“Magic won't be needed in the war. Of course my not helping our side will mean many more casualties. Some of those will be our former enemies.”
“A shame,” he said smugly. “They'll fight their hearts out and never know why.”
“Yes, they'll die for us, one way or another. Those who survive the battles may have to die later.”
“Slowly, with our help, and with much pain.”
“Of course. That is what we both want.”
They embraced, the battles revealed
by the crystals fading from their minds. Soon, he thought, there was going to commence the fulfillment of all his dreams. It would be brutally, bloodily, ghastlily glorious.
*
Lester Crumb imagined that he was back fighting the Queen's Guardsmen, with Kelvin's Knights of the Roundear. Then he opened his eyes and found that the man bending over him wore a different uniform. He strove to think, to reorient, and then it came, the pain of the wound high in his chest. Where was Jon? Jon had saved his life and then gone on to become his wife. What had happened?
Different war. Different battle. Different circumstances. Jon was far away. Safe. Oh, he hoped she was safe!
A gnarled hand mopped at his brow. He felt the sweat that was all over his face, soaking his undergarments, the blanket he lay upon. Overhead was the roof of a tent. The tent was flapping dismally in a wind that howled like disembodied souls slain in battle.
“We were fighting Kance soldiers,” he said. “I fell. Someone saved me. It was almost like another battle when I was unhorsed.”
“Save your strength, Commander.”
Commander? Him? He could hardly remember. His head hurt and pounded like a drum beaten to announce someone's death. Oh, if only Jon were here to hold him! He tried remembering the officer's name. Klumpecker, that was it! Lieutenant Karl Klumpecker from Throod.
He looked into the deep blue eyes, noting the blond hair and the smile so typical of Throod mercenaries. Big shoulders, too, and a strong frame, though not quite as great in these departments as his father.
“Did we win the battle?”
“No, Commander, we lost.”
Somehow he thought he'd say that. “Many casualties?”
“I'm afraid so, Commander. On both sides.”
“Can we win the war?”
“Eventually, Commander. When Commander Reilly and the Hermans and your father and his troops and ours all reach the caps.”
“Yes, the caps.” Insane business, two capitals in one. Governed, theoretically, by two very slowly maturing boys. Governed in fact by a witch identical in appearance to the one Kelvin had destroyed in Aratex. Would Kelvin soon return? Would he return as in Aratex to put everything right? When he had started this adventure he had been certain. Now wounded, now defeated in battle, he was no longer certain of anything.