Science Fiction - Daily Short Stories

The Barbarians - Algis Budrys

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Duration:: 58m
Broadcast on:: 01 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

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Just head over to Sall Good Media dot com and sign up to start your free trial today. No ads, no interruptions, just pure, immersive audio content. Don't miss out. Transform your listening experience with Sall Good Media. Visit Sall Good Media dot com and start your free trial now. We can't wait for you to join our audio community. Happy listening. The Barbarians by Algis Budres. History was repeating itself. There were moats and nobles in Pennsylvania and vassals in Manhattan, and the Barbarian hordes were overrunning the land. It was just as he saw the Barbarian's squat black tankette lurch hurriedly into a nest of boulders that young Julian Joffrey realized he had been betrayed. With the muzzle of his own cannon still hot from the shell that had jammed the Barbarians turret, he had yanked the starboard track lever to wheel into position for the finishing shot. All around him, the remnants of the Barbarians invading army were being cut to flaming ribbons by the armored vehicles of the Seaboard League. The night was shot through by billows of cannon fire and the din of laboring engines, guns, and rent metal was a cacophonic climax to the Seaboard League's first decisive victory over the inland invaders. Young Joffrey could justifiably feel that he would cap that climax by personally accounting for the greatest of the inland Barbarians, the Barbarian general himself. He trained his sights on the scarlet bear paw painted on the skewed turret's flank and laid his hand on the firing lever. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of another tankette rushing up on his port's side. He glanced at it, saw its graceful handcrafting, and knew it for one of the league's own. He could even see the insignia, the mailed heel trampling a stand of wheat, Harold Dugald of the neighboring thief. Joffrey was on coldly polite terms with Dugald. He had no use for the other man's way of treating his serfs. And now he felt a prickle of indignant rage at this attempt to usurp a share of his glory. He saw Dugald's turret begin to traverse and hastily tried to get the finishing shot into the Barbarians' tankette before the other leaguesmen could fire. But Dugald was not aiming for the Barbarian. First, he had to eliminate Joffrey from the scene entirely. When he fired at almost point-blank range, the world seemed to explode in Julian's eyes. Somehow, no whistling shard of metal actually hit him. But the tankette, sturdy as it was, could not hope to protect him entirely. He was thrown viciously into the air, his ribs first smashing into the side of the hatch, and then he was thrown clear onto the rocky ground of the foothills. Agonized, stunned to semi-consciousness, he lay feebly beating at his smoldering tunic while Dugald spun viciously by him, almost crushing him under one tread. He saw Dugald's tankette plunge into the rocks after the Barbarian, and then, suddenly, the battle was beyond him. Dugald, the Barbarian, all the thundering might that had clashed here on the eastern seaboard of what had long ago been the United States of America. All of this had suddenly, as battles will, whirled off in a new direction and left Julian Joffrey to lie hurt and unconscious in the night. He awoke to the trickle of cold water between his teeth. His lips bit into the threaded metal of a canteen top and a huge arm supported his shoulders. Broad shoulders and a massive head loomed over him against the stars. A rumbling, gentle voice said, "Alright, lad, now swallow some before it's all wasted." He peered around him in the night. It was as still as the bottom of a grave, nothing moved. He drew a ragged breath that ended in a sharp gasp, and the rumbling voice said, "Ribs?" He nodded and managed to strangled, "Yes." "Shouldn't wonder," the stranger grunted, "I saw you pop out of your tank like a cork coming out of a wine bottle." "That was a fair shot, he hit you. You're lucky." A broad hand pressed him down as the memory of Dugald's treachery started him to struggling to his feet. "Hold still, lad. We'll give you a chance to catch your breath and wrap some bandages around you. You'll live to give him his due, but not tonight. You'll have to wait for another day." There was something in the stranger's voice that Joffrey recognized for the quality that made men obey other men. It was competence, self-assurance, and even more the calm expression of good sense. Tonight Joffrey needed someone with that quality. He sank back grateful for the stranger's help. "I'm Julian Joffrey of Joffreon," he said, "and indebted to you. Who are you, stranger?" The darkness rumbled to a deep, rueful laugh. "In these parts, lad, I'm not called by my proper name. I'm hod-savage, the barbarian. And that was a fair knock you gave me." "Young Joffrey, silence lasted for a long while. Then he said in a flat, distant voice, "Why did you give me water if you're going to kill me anyway?" The barbarian laughed again, this time in pure amusement. "Because I'm not going to kill you. Obviously you're too good a can in here to be dispatched by a belt knife." "No, no, lad. I'm not planning to kill anyone for some time. All I want right now is to get out of here and get home. I've got another army to raise to make up for this pasting you leaguesmen have just given me." "Next time you won't be so lucky," Joffrey muttered. "We'll see your hide flapping in the rain if you're ever foolish enough to raid our lands again." The barbarian slapped his thigh. "By God!" he chuckled. "I knew it wasn't some ordinary veal-fed princeling that out-maneuvered me." He shook his head. "That other pup had better watch out for you if you ever crossed his path again." "I lost him in the rocks with ease to spare. Bad luck, your shot smashed my fuel tanks or I'd be half way home by now." The rolling voice grew low and bitter. "No sense waiting to pick up my men. Not enough of them left to make a corporal's guard." "What do you mean if I ever crossed Dugald's path again? I'll have him called out to trial by combat the day I can ride a tank at once more." "I wouldn't be too sure, lad," the barbarian said gently. "What does that look like over there?" Chafri turned his head to follow the shadowy pointing arm and saw a flicker of light in the distance. He recognized it for what it was, a huge campfire with the league's men's tankettes drawn up around it. "They're dividing the spoils. What prisoners there are to work the mills. Whatever of your equipment is still usable. Your baggage train and so forth. What of it?" "Ah, yes. My baggage train," the barbarian muttered. "Well, we'll come back to that. What else do you suppose they're dividing?" Chafri frowned. "Why, nothing else. Wait," he sat up sharply, ignoring his ribs. "The feasts of the dead nobles." "Exactly. Your ramshack a little league held together long enough to whip us for the first time. But now the princelings are dividing up and returning to their separate holdings. Once there they'll go back to peering covetously at each other's lands and maybe raid amongst themselves a little until I come back again. And your is poor as a church-mouse at this moment, lad. No thief. No lands. No title. Unless there's an heir." Chafri shook his head distractedly. "No. I've not wed. It's as you say. And just try to get your property back. No. No, it won't be so easy to return unless you'd care to be a serf on your own former holding." "Doogold would have me killed," Chafri said bitterly. "So there you are, lad. The only advantage you have is that Doogold thinks you're dead already. You can be sure of that, or it would have been an assassination and not me that woke you. That's something. At least it's a beginning. But you'll have to lay your plans carefully and take your time. I certainly wouldn't plan on doing anything until your body's healed and your brains had time to work." Young Chafri blinked back the tears of rage, the thought of losing the town and Lance his father had left him was almost more than his hot blood could stand. The memory of the great old keep that dominated the town with its tapestryed halls and torchlit chambers was suddenly very precious to him. He felt a sharp pang at the thought that he must sleep in a field tonight, like some skulking outlaw. While Doogold quite possibly got himself drunk on Chafri on wine and snored his headache away on the thick furs of Chafri's bed. But the barbarian was right. Time was needed, and this meant that to a certain extent at least his lot and savages were thrown in together. The thought came to Chafri that he might have chosen a worse partner. "Now, lad," the barbarian said, "as long as you're not doing anything else, you might as well help me with my problem." The realization of just exactly who this man was came sharply back to young Chafri. "I won't help you escape to your own lands if that's what you mean," he said quickly. "I'll take good care of that myself when the time comes," the man answered dryly. "Right now, I've got something else in mind. They're dividing my baggage train, as you said. Now, I don't mind that, seeing as most of it belonged to them in the first place. I don't mind it for this year, that is. But there's something else one of your cockrels will be wanting to take home with him, and I have a mind not to let him. There's a perfectly good woman in my personal trailer, and I'm going to get her. But if we're going to do that and get clear of this country by morning, we'd better get to it." Like every other young man of his time and place, Chafri had a clear-cut sense of duty regarding the safety and well-being of ladies. He had an entirely different set of attitudes towards women who were not ladies. He had not the slightest idea of which to apply to this case. What sort of woman would the barbarian take to battle with him? What sort of woman would the inland barbarians have, generally? He had very little knowledge to go on. The Inlanders had been appearing from over the westward mountains for generations, looting and pillaging almost at will, sometimes staying through the winter, but usually disappearing in the early fall, carrying their spoils back to their mysterious homelands on the great Mississippi plain. The seaboard civilization had somehow kept from going to its knees, in spite of them, in this last generation. Even though the barbarians had THE barbarian to lead them, the seaboard league had managed to cobble itself together. But no one in all this time had ever actually learned or cared much about these vicious, compactly organized raiders. Certainly no one had learned anything beyond those facts which worked to best advantage on a battlefield, so young Julian Joffrey faced his problem. This perfectly good woman of the barbarians, was she in fact a good woman, a lady, and therefore entitled to aid in extremity from any and all gentlemen? Or was she some camp follower entirely worthy of being considered a spoil of combat? Well, come on, lad, the barbarian rumbled impatiently at this point. Do you want that do-golden-join her tonight, along with everything else? And that decided Joffrey. He pushed himself to his feet, not liking the daggers in his chest, but not liking the thought of do-gald's pleasures even more. Let's go, then. Good enough, lad, the barbarian chuckled. Now let's see how quietly we can get across to the edge of that fire. They set out, none too quietly, with the barbarians heavy bulk lurching against Joffrey's lean shoulder on occasion, and both of them uncertain of their footing in the darkness. But they made it across without being noticed, just two more battle-sore figures in a field where many such might be expected, and that was what counted. The noise and confusion attendant on the dividing of the spoils was an added help. They reached the fringes of the campfire easily. It was very interesting the way history had doubled back on itself, like a worm regrowing part of its body, but regrowing it in the wrong place. At one end of the kink of the fresh pink scar was a purulent hell of fire and smoke that no one might have expected to live through, yet people had, as they have a habit of doing. And at the other end of the kink in time, Julian Joffrey's end, Harold Dugal's time, the barbarian's day. There were keeps and motes in Erie, Pennsylvania, vassals in New Brunswick, and a great stinking warren of low half-timbered houses on the island of Manhattan. If it had taken a few centuries longer to recover from the cauterizing sun-bombs, these things might still have been, but they might have had different names, and human history might have been considered to begin only a few hundred years before. Even this had not happened. The link with the past remained. There was a narrow cobbled path on Manhattan with sewage oozing down the ditch in its center, which was still Fifth Avenue. It ran roughly along the same directions as Old Broadway, not because there was no one who could read the yellowed old maps, but because surveying was in its second childhood. There was a barge running between two ropes stretched across the Hudson, and this was the George Washington Bridge Ferry, so it was only a kink in history, not a break. But Rome was not rebuilt in a day. Hod savage the barbarian, the man who had come out of the hinterlands to batter on civilizations badly mortared walls, clamped his hand on Julian Joffrey's arm, grunted, jerked his head toward the cluster of nobles standing beside the campfire and muttered, "Listen." Joffrey listened. The nobles were between him and the fire, and almost none of them were more than silhouettes. Here and there a man faced toward the fire at such an angle that Joffrey could make out the thick arch of an eyebrow, the jut of a cheek or the crook of a nose. But it was not enough for recognition. All the nobles were dressed in battle accoutrements that had become stained or torn. Their harness had shifted, their tunics were askew, and they were bunched so closely that the outline of one man blended into the miss-shaped shadow of the next. The voices were hoarse from an afternoon's bellowing. Some were still drunk with the acid fire of exhausted nerves and were loud. Others drained. Mumbled in the background like a chorus of the stupid, gesticulating mumbling, shouting, shadowed, lumped into one knot of blackness lighted by a ruddy cheekbone here, a gleaming brow there above an eye socket as inky and blank as a bottomless pit. They were like something out of the guan and misty ages before the earth had had time to form completely. Two arguing voices rose out of the mass. Those three barbarian tankettes are mine, I say. Yours when I lie dead, they surrendered to me. Because I pounded them into submission. Into submission, indeed, you sculpt around their flanks like a lame dog, and now that I've taken them, you want your bone. You were glad enough to see me there when the battle was hot. Call me a dog again, and I'll split you like a rat on a pitchfork. No one else in the group of nobles paid the two of them any attention. No one had time to spare for any quarrel but his own, and the whole squabbling pile of them looked ready to fly apart at any moment, to draw sidearms and knives and flair into spiteful combat. The barbarian spat quietly. "There's your seaboardly, lad. There's your convocation of free men. Step out there and ask for your lands back. Care to try?" We've already decided that wouldn't be wise, Joffrey said irritably. He had never cared much for these inevitable aftermaths to battle, but it made him angry to have an inland barbarian make pointed comments. "I suppose it's different when you win, eh?" "Not very, but then we're not civilized. Let's get moving, lad." Silently they skirted the fire and made their way toward the parked vehicles of the barbarian's captured supply train. The ground was rough and covered by underbrush. More than once the barbarian stumbled into Joffrey making him clench his jaw against the pain in his chest, but he saw no point in saying anything about it. "There she is," the barbarian said in a husky growl. Joffrey peered through the brush at an armored trailer whose flat sides were completely undecorated except for a scarlet bear paw painted on the door. A lantern gleamed behind the slit windows and the barbarian grunted with satisfaction. She's still in there. Fine. We'll have this done in a couple of seconds. In spite of the incongruity, Joffrey asked curiously, "What's a second?" "A division of time, lad. One-sixteenth of a minute." "Oh, what on earth would you want to measure that accurately for?" "Forgetting women out of trailers in a hurry, lad. Now, let's look for centuries." There were two guarding the trailer, men at arms from dugal holding. Joffrey noticed, carrying shotguns and lounging in the shadows. One of them had a wine-skin. Joffrey heard the gurgle plainly and the other was constantly turning away from the trailer to listen to the shrieks and shouting coming from among the other vehicles of the train, where other guards were not being quite as careful of their master's new property. "I see they found the quartermaster's wagons," the barbarian said dryly. "Now, then, lad. You work away toward the right there, and I'll take the left. Here, take my knife. I won't need it." The barbarian passed over a length of steel as big as a shortsword, but oddly curved and sharpened down one side of the blade. "Stab, if you can, but if you have to cut, that blade will go through a man's forearm. Remember, you're not holding one of those overgrown daggers of yours." "And just why should I kill a man for you?" "Do you think that man won't try to kill you?" Joffrey had no satisfactory answer to that. He moved abruptly off into the brush, holding the barbarian's knife and wondering just how far he was obligated for a bandaged chest and half a pint of water. But a man's duty to his rescuer was plain enough, and besides, just what else was there to do. The blame for it all went squarely back to do gold, and Joffrey did not love him for it. He slipped through the bushes until he was only a few yards from the man who had the wineskin and waited for the barbarian to appear at the opposite end of the trailer. When it happened, it happened quite suddenly, as these things will. One moment the other century was screening his neck for another look at what was going on elsewhere. The next he was down on his knees, croaking through a compressed throat with the barbarian's arm under his chin and a driving knee ready to smash at the back of his neck again. Joffrey jumped forward toward his own man. The man at arms had dropped his wineskin in surprise and was staring at what was happening to his comrade. When he heard Joffrey come out of the underbrush, the face he turned was white and oddly distended with shock as though all the bones had drained out of it. He might have appeared fierce enough ordinarily, but things were happening too fast for him. Joffrey had never killed anyone but a noble in his life, not intentionally and at close range in any case. The completely baffled and helpless look of this one somehow found time to remind him that this was not after all one of his peers, that the man was hopelessly outclassed in fair combat or in anything else for that matter. Joffrey did not stop to weigh the probity of this idea. It was the central tenet of his education and environment. Furthermore, there was some truth in it. He couldn't kill the man. He swept up his arm and struck the flat of the barbarian's broad knife against the side of the guard's head and bold the man over with his rush. But the guard had a hard skull. He stared up with glazed but conscious eyes and squalled, "Lord Joffrey!" Joffrey hid him again, and this time the guard stayed down but the damage was done. Scrambling to his feet Joffrey ran over to the barbarian who was letting the other guard ooze to the ground. "We'll have to hurry," Joffrey panted, "before that man comes back to his senses." The barbarian gave him a disgusted look but nodded. "Harry we shall." He lurched to the trailer door and slapped it with the flat of his hand. "Let's go, Micah!" There was a scrambling sound inside the trailer and the light went out. The door slid open and Joffrey found himself staring at the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She was life almost to the point of boyishness, even though she was clearly some years older than Joffrey. She had short hair, the color of hammered copper, high cheekbones and tawny eyes. She was wearing a tunic and short trousers and there was an empty pistol holder strapped around her waist. Obviously she was not a lady. But it was much too late for Joffrey to care about that. She stopped in the doorway, shaking her head slowly at the barbarian. "I swear, Hod," she said in a low, laughing voice, "one of these days you won't come back from the dead and I'll be surprised." It was close enough this time, the barbarian crowd. He jerked his head toward Joffrey. That young buck over there knows how to handle his enemies. Once he learns what to do about his friends, I may have to retire. Micah urged her burning eyebrows. "Oh, what's the story behind that? I'd like to know." "We can always talk," Joffrey said a little edgily, "but we can't always find an empty tankette." "Quite right, lad," the barbarian said. "I saw some vehicles parked over that way." "Those belong to the nobles. There ought to be some captured ones of yours somewhere around here." "With plenty of guards on them, no thanks." "That didn't trouble you earlier." Micah, as you may have noticed, is more than a tank. This time the prize isn't worth it. I'd rather just slip over to where I can get transportation for the choosing. Not with my help." The barbarian looked at him and grunted. He seemed oddly disappointed. "I would have bet the other way," he muttered. Then the shaggy head rose and he circled Micah's waist with one arm. "Alright, I'll do it without your help." "Is Micah trained to drive a tankette and fight at the same time?" "No." "Then you'd better do it my way. You'd make a poor showing kicking drive levers with a broken leg." Joffrey nodded toward the barbarian's right shin. "It's been that way since before you picked me up, hasn't it?" "I saw it wobble when you need that man at arms." Micah looked at the barbarian sharply, wary on her face, but the man was chuckling. "Alright, Bucko, we'll do it your way." "Fine." Joffrey wasn't so sure it was. Suddenly he was committed not only to helping the barbarian escape, but also to escape with him. He was faintly surprised at himself. But there was something about the man, something worth saving no matter what. And there was the business now of having been recognized. Once Dukob learned he was still alive, there would be a considerable amount of danger in staying in the vicinity. Of course, he had only to stoop over the unconscious guard with the barbarian's knife. With a quick motion, he tossed the weapon back to its owner. That one was an easy choice, Joffrey thought. Simply stealing, or was it recapturing a tankette and using it to drive away with Micah and the barbarian didn't mean he had to go all the way to the barbarian lands with them. Let the guard revive and run to do golf with the news. All Joffrey had to do was to remove himself a few miles, find shelter and bite his time. One recaptured barbarian tankette might not even be missed. And the guard might not be believed. Well, that was a thin hope. But in any case, no one had any reason to suspect the barbarian was still alive. There'd be no general pursuit. Well, maybe not. There was a man at arms choked to death by a stronger arm than Joffrey's, and it was the barbarian's woman who would be missing. There might be quite a buzz about that. Joffrey shook his head in impatient annoyance. This kind of life demanded a great deal more thinking than he was accustomed to. All these unpredictable factors made a man's head spin. And then again, maybe they didn't. The thing to do was to act, to do what would get him out of here now and leave him free tomorrow to do whatever thinking tomorrow demanded. With a little practice, too, thinking would undoubtedly come more easily. All right, he said decisively. Let's get moving over in that direction and see if the guards haven't gotten a little careless. He motioned to Micah and the barbarian and began to lead the way into the underbrush. He thrust out a hand to pull a sapling aside and almost ran full tilt into Harold DuGald. DuGald was almost exactly Joffrey's age and size, but he had something Joffrey lacked. A thin-lipped look of wolfish wisdom. His dark eyes were habitually slitted and his mouth oddly off-center, always poised between a mirthless grin and a snarl. His long black hair curled under at the base of his skull and his hands were covered with heavy gold and silver rings. There was one for each finger and thumb and all of them were set with knobby precious stones. His lips parted now and his long white teeth showed plainly in the semi-darkness. "I was coming back to inspect my prizes," he said in a voice like a fine-bladed saw chuckling through a soft metal. "And look what I've found." The open mouth of his heavy hand-made side pistol pointed steadily between Joffrey's eyes. "I find my erstwhile neighbor risen from the dead and in the company of a crippled enemy and his Lehman. Indeed, my day is complete." The one thing Joffrey was not feeling was fear. The wire-thin strand of his accumulated rage was stretched to breaking. Somewhere far from the forefront of his mind he was feeling surprise and disappointment. He was perfectly aware of Dugald's weapon of what it would do to his head at this range, but Joffrey was not stopping to think, and Dugald was a bit closer to him than he ought to have been. Joffrey's hand seemed to leap out, one tore the pistol out of Dugald's hand and knocked it spinning. The other cracked, open-palmed against the other man's face, hard enough to split flesh and start the blood trickling down Dugald's cheek. The force of the combined blows sent to God's staggering. He fell back, crashing into a bush and hung against it. Stark, fear shone in his eyes. He screamed, "Dugald, Dugald, to me, to me!" For a second everything went silent. Nobles, quarreling, guards, roistering among the captures. Suddenly, the battlefield was still. Then the reaction to the rallying cry set off an entirely different kind of hubbub. The sound now was that of an alerted pack of dogs. Once more Joffrey swept his hand across Dugald's face, feeling his own skin break over the knuckles, but there was no time for anything else. Now they had to run, and not in silence. Now everything went by the board, and the nearest safety was the best. Behind them, as they tore through the brush, they could hear Dugald shouting, "That way, the barbarians with him!" The barbarian was grunting with every step. Micah was panting. Joffrey was in the lead, his throat burning with every breath, not knowing where he was leading them, but trying to skirt around the pack of nobles that would be running toward them in the darkness. He crashed against plated metal. He peered at it in the absolute darkness this far from the fires and torches. "Tanket!" he said hoarsely. Empty. They scrambled onto it, Joffrey pulling at the barbarian's arm. Down, Micah inside, ought to be room between steering posts and motor. He pushed the woman down through the hatch and dropped back to the ground. He ran to the crank, clipped to one track housing and thrust it into place. "You, you'll have to hang on to the turret," he panted to the barbarian. "Help me start!" He wound furiously at the starting crank until he felt the flywheel spin free of the ratchet and then engaged the drive shaft. The tankette shuttered to the sudden torque. The motor resisted, turned its shaft, reluctantly spun the magneto, ignited, stuttered, coughed, and began to roar. The headlights flickered yellowly, glowed up to brightness as the engine built up revolutions. The barbarian clinging to the turret with one arm pushed the choke control back to halfway and advanced the spark. Joffrey scrambled up the sharply pitched rear deck, clawing for hand holds on the radiator tubing and dropped into the turret seat. He took the controls, kicked at the left side track control without caring for the moment whether Micah was in the way or not. Spun the tankette halfway round and pulled the throttle out as far as it would go. Its engine clamoring, its rigid tracks transmitting every shock and battering them, the tankette flogged forward through the brush. There was gunfire booming behind them and there were other motors sputtering into life. There was no one among the nobles to drive as well as Joffrey could, certainly no one who could keep up with him at night in country he knew. He could probably depend on that much. He lit the carbide lamp over the panel. Joffrey looked at the crest, worked into the metal and laughed. He had even managed to steal do-galls tankette. You slept through your alarm, missed the train, and your breakfast sandwich, cold. 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We hope to see you over there. By morning, they were a good 50 miles away from where the battle had been fought. They were almost as far as the Delaware River, and the ground was broken into low hills, each a little higher than the last. Joffrey had only been this far away from home a few times before his father's death, and then never in this direction. Civilization was not considered to extend this far inland. When a young man went on his travels preparatory for the day when he inherited his father's holdings and settled down to maintain them, he went along the coast, perhaps as far as Philadelphia or Hartford. Joffrey had always had a lively interest in strange surroundings. He had regretted the day his journeys came to an end, not that he hadn't regretted his father's passing even more. Now, as dawn came up behind them, he could not help turning his head from side to side and looking at the strangely-humped land, seeing for the first time a horizon which was not flat. He found himself intrigued by the thought that he had no way of knowing what lay beyond the next hill, that he would have to travel and keep traveling to satisfy a perpetually renewed curiosity. All this occupied one part of his mind. Simultaneously, he wondered how much farther they'd travel in this vehicle. The huge 16-cylinder inline engine was by now delivering about one-fourth of its rated 50 horsepower, with a good half of its spark plugs hopelessly fouled and the carburetor choked by the dust of yesterday's battle. They were very low on shot and powder charges for the two-pounder turret cannon as well. The tankette had, of course, never been serviced after the battle. There was one good thing. Neither had their pursuers. Looking back, Joffrey could see no sign of them, but he could also see the plain imprint of the tankette steel cleats stretched out behind them in a betraying line. The rigid, unsprung track left its mark on hard stone as easily as it did in soft earth. The wonder was that the tracks had not quite worn themselves out yet, though all the rivets were badly strained and the tankette sounded like a barrel of stones tumbling downhill. The barbarian had spent the night with one arm thrown over the cannon barrel, and the fingers of his other hand hooked over the edge of the turret hatch. In spite of the tankette's vicious jousting, he had not moved or changed his position. Now he raised one hand to comb the shaggy hair away from his forehead, and there were faint, bloody marks on the hatch. "How much farther until we're over the mountains?" Joffrey asked him. "Over the… lad, we haven't even come to the beginning of them yet." Joffrey grimaced. "Then we'll never make it, not in this vehicle." "I didn't expect to. We'll walk until we reach the past. I've got a support camp set up there." "Walk! This is impossible country for people on foot. There are intransigent tribesmen all through this territory." "How do you know? How do I know? Why… everybody knows about them?" The barbarian looked at him thoughtfully, and with just the faintest trace of amusement, "Well, if everybody knows they're intransigent, I guess they are. I guess we'll just have to hope they don't spot us." Joffrey was a little nettled by the barbarian's manner. It wasn't after all, as if anybody claimed there were dragons or monsters or any other such oceanic thing living here. This was good, solid fact. People had actually come up here, tried to bring civilization to the tribes, and failed completely. They were, by all reports, hairy, dirty people equipped with accurate rifles. No one had bothered to press the issue, because obviously it was partly worth it. Joffrey had expected to have trouble with them, but he had expected to meet it in an armored vehicle. But now that the mountains had turned out to be so far away the situation might grow quite serious, then the barbarian didn't seem to care very much. "Well, now lad," he was saying, "if the tribesmen are that bad, maybe your friends and nobles won't dare follow us up here." "They'll follow us," Joffrey answered flatly. I slapped Dugold's face. "Oh, oh, I didn't understand that. Code of Honor, that sort of thing. All the civilized of pertinences." "It's hardly funny." "No, I suppose not. I don't suppose it occurred to you to kill him on the spot." "Kill a noble in hot blood?" "Sorry. Code of Honor again. Forget I mentioned it." Joffrey wrangled under the barbarians, barely concealed amusement. To avoid any more of this kind of thing, he pointedly turned and looked at the terrain behind them, something he ought to have done a little earlier. Three tankettes were in sight, only a few miles behind them, laboring down the slope of a hill. And at that moment, as though riveted iron had a dramatic sense of its own, their tankette coughed, spun lazily on one track as the crankshaft paused with a cam squarely between positions and burned up the last drops of oil and alcohol in its fuel tank. Joffrey and Micah crouched down in a brushy hollow. The barbarian had crawled up to the lip of the depression and was peering through a clump of weeds at the oncoming trio. "That seems to be all of them," he said, with a turn of his head. "It's possible they kept their speed down and nursed themselves along to save fuel. They might even have a fuel wagon coming up behind them. That's the way I'd do it. It would mean these three are all we can expect for a few hours anyway, but that they'll be heavily reinforced sometime later." "That will hardly matter," Joffrey muttered. Micah had found Dugal's personal rifle inside the tankette. Joffrey was rolling cartridges quickly and expertly using torn-up charges from the turret cannon. He had made the choice between a round or two for the now immobile heavy weapon and a plentiful supply for the rifle and would have been greatly surprised at anyone's choosing differently. The barbarian had not even questioned it, and Micah was skillfully casting bullets with the help of the hissing alcohol stove and the bullet mold included in the rifle kit. There was plenty of finely ground priming powder, and even though Joffrey was neither weighing the charges of cannon powder, nor measuring the diameter of the cartridges he was rolling, no young noble of any pretensions whatsoever could not have done the same. The rub lay in the fact that none of this was liable to do them much good. If they were to flee through the woods, there would certainly be time for only a shot or two when the tribesmen found them. If the rifle was to be used against the three nobles, then it was necessary in all decency to wait until the nobles had stopped, climbed out of their tankettes, equipped themselves equally, and a mutual ground of battle had been agreed upon. In that case, three against one would make short work of it. The better chance lay with the woods and the tribesmen. It was the better chance, but Joffrey did not relish it. He scowled as he dropped a primer charge down the rifle's barrow, followed it with a cartridge, took a cooled bullet from Micah, and tamped it down with the ramrod until it was firmly gripped by the collar on the cartridge. He took a square of clean flannel from its compartment in the butt and carefully wiped the lenses of the telescopic sight. "Can I stop now?" Micah asked. Joffrey looked at her sharply. It had never occurred to him that the woman might simply be humoring him, and yet that was the tone her voice had taken. Truth to tell, he had simply handed her the stove pig-led and mold and told her to go to work. He looked at her now, remembering that he'd been hurried and possibly brusque. It ought not to matter, though it did, since she was hardly a lady entitled to courtesy. She hardly looked like anything after hours crouched inside the tankette. Her copper hair was smeared with grease, disarranged, and even singed where she had presumably leaned against a hot fitting. Her clothes were indescribably dirty and limp with perspiration. She was quite pale and seemed to be fighting nausea, hardly surprising, with the exhaust fumes that must have been present in the compartment. Nevertheless, her hair glinted where the sun struck it, and her lifeless was only accented by the wrinkled clothing. Overaccented, Joffrey thought to himself as he looked at the length of limb revealed by her short trousers. He flushed. "Of course, thank you." He looked at the pile of finished bullets. There were enough of them to stand off an army provided only the army did not shift about behind rocks and trees as the tribesmen did, or was not equally armed as the nobles would be. Yet a man had to try to the end. "You don't expect this to do much good," he said to the woman. Micah grinned at him. "Do you?" "No, frankly, but why did you help me?" "To keep you busy?" "I see." He didn't. He scooped the bullets up, put them in one pocket and dropped the cartridges in another. He stood up. "There wasn't any point in letting you get nervous," Micah explained. "You can be quite a deadly boy in action if what I've seen and heard about you was any indication. I didn't want you killing any of our friends." She was smiling at him, without any malice whatsoever, rather with a definite degree of fondness. Joffrey did not even feel resentful at this business of being casually managed as though he were liable to do something foolish. But he scrambled up to the place beside the barbarian in a burst of tense movement and looked out toward the approaching tankettes. What Micah had just said to him and the cryptic smile on the barbarian's face and a thought of Joffrey's own had all fitted themselves together in his mind. There was no reason, really, to believe that barbarians would be hostile to barbarians, and certainly the inland raiders could not have returned year after year without some means of handling the mountain tribes. Friendship, or at least in alliance, would be the easiest way. And out on the slope of the nearest hill, bearded men in homespun clothing were rolling boulders down on the advancing tankettes. The slope of the hill was quite steep and the boulders were massive. They tumbled and bounded with a speed that must have seemed terrifying from below, tearing great chunks out of the earth. They rumbled down on the tankettes while the tribesmen yelled with blood-curdling ferocity and fired on the tankettes with impossible rapidity. With respectable marksmanship, too. The nobles were swerving their vehicles frantically from side to side, trying to avoid the boulders, but their ability to do so was being destroyed by bullets that ricocheted viciously off the canted four-peak plating. All three of them were blundering about like cattle attacked by stinging insects, only the lead tankette was still under anything like intelligent control. It lurched away from the three boulders in succession, swinging on its treads and continuing to churn its way up the hillside. Joffrey saw the other two tankettes struck almost simultaneously. One took a boulder squarely between its tracks and stopped in a shower of rock fragments. The track cleats bit futilely at the ground, the vehicle stalled, the boulder jammed against it. The impact did not seem to have been particularly severe, but the entire body of the tankette had been buckled and accordioned. Possibly only the boulder zoned bulk between the tracks had kept them from coming together like the knees of a gourd ox. It was impossible to tell where in that crushed bulk the turret and its occupant might be. The other tankette took its boulder squarely in the flank. It began to roll over immediately, hurtling back down the hill its driver half in and half out of its turret at the beginning of the first roll. Tankette and boulder came to rest together at the bottom of the hill, the stone nosing up against the metal. Joffrey looked at the scene with cold fury. "That's no fitting way for a noble to die!" The barbarian, who was sprawled out and watching calmly nodded his head. "Probably not," he said dispassionately, "but that other man's giving a good account of himself." The remaining tankette was almost in among the tribesmen. It had passed the point where a rolling boulder's momentum would be great enough to do much damage. As Joffrey watched, the man in the turret yanked his lanyard and a solid shot boomed through the straggled line of bearded men. If it had been grape or canister, it might have done a good deal of damage, but the cannon had been loaded with Joffrey's tankette in mind, and the tribesmen only jeered. One of them dashed forward under the cannon's smoking muzzle and jammed a wedge-shaped stone between the left-side track and the massive forward track roller. The track jammed, broke, and whipped back in whistling fragments. The tankette slewed around a while, the unarmed tribesmen danced out of the way. The noble in the turret could only watch helplessly. Apparently, he had no sidearm. Joffrey peered at him as the tribesmen swarmed over the tankette and dragged him out of the turret. It was too galled, and Joffrey's arm still tingled from the slap that had knocked the pistol irretrievably into the night-shadowed brush at the battlefield. "What are they going to do to him?" he asked the barbarian. "Make him meet the test of fitness, I suppose." "Fitness?" Joffrey did not get the answer to his question immediately. The woods all around him were stirring, and bearded men in homespun carrying fantastic rifles were casually walking toward him. The barbarian pushed himself up to his feet without any show of surprise. "Howdy," he said. "Figgered you were right around." One of the tribesmen, a gaunt, incredibly tall man with a grizzled beard knotted. "I've seen you making signs while you was hanging off that tank before. Got a mark?" The barbarian extended his right arm and turned his wrist over. A faint double scar crossed at right ankle, showed in the skin. The tribesmen peered at it and grunted. "Old one." "I got it twenty years ago when I first came through here," the barbarian answered. "Double two. Ain't many of those." "My name's Hod Savage." "Oh," the tribesmen said. His entire manner changed. Without becoming servile, it was respectful. He extended his hand. "Simon Weatherby," he and the barbarian clasped pants. "That your woman down there?" the tribesmen asked, nodding toward Micah. "That's right." "Good enough." For the first time, Weatherby looked directly at Joffrey. "What about him?" The barbarian shook his head. "No mark." The tribesmen nodded. "I've figured from the way he was acting." He seemed to make no particular signal. Perhaps none was needed, but Joffrey's arms were suddenly taken from behind and his wrists were tied. "We'll see if we can't get him a mark today," Weatherby said. He looked to his left where other men were just pushing dugald into the ring they had formed around the group. Seeing as there's two of them, one of them ought to make it. Joffrey and dugald stared expressionlessly at each other. The barbarian kept his eyes on Joffrey's face. "That's right," he said. "Can't have two men fight to the death without one of them coming out alive, usually." The tribesmen lived in wooden cabins tucked away among trees and hidden in narrow little valleys. Joffrey was surprised to see windmills and wire fencing for the cattle pastures that had joined their homes. He was even more interested in their rifles, which the tribesmen told him were repeaters. He was puzzled by the absence of a cylinder, such as could be found on the generally unreliable revolvers one saw occasionally. The tribesmen were treating both him and dugald with a complete absence of the savagery he expected. They were being perfectly matter-of-fact. If his hands had not been tied, Joffrey might not have been a prisoner at all. This puzzled him as well. A prisoner, after all, could not expect to be treated very well. True, he and dugald were nobles, but this could not possibly mean anything to persons as uncivilized as mountain tribesmen. Yet somehow the only thing that was done was that all of them, the tribesmen, the barbarian mica dugald and he made their way to Weatherby's home. A number of the tribesmen continued on their way from there, going to their own homes to bring their families to watch the test. The remainder stayed behind to post-guard. Dugald was put in one room and Joffrey in another. The barbarian and mica went off somewhere with Weatherby, presumably to have breakfast. Joffrey could smell food-cooking somewhere toward the back of the house. The smell sat intolerably on his empty stomach. He sat for perhaps a half an hour in the room, which was almost bare of furniture. There was a straight-backed chair in which he sat a narrow bed and a bureau. Even though his hands were still tied behind his back, he did his best to search the room for something to help him, though he had no idea of what he would do next after he managed to escape from the room itself. The problem did not arise, because the room had been stripped of anything with a sharp edge on which to cut his lashings and of anything else he might put to use. These people had obviously held prisoners here before, and he sat back down in his chair and stared at the wall. Eventually, someone opened the door. Joffrey looked over and saw that it was the barbarian. He looked at the inlander coldly, but the barbarian did not seem to notice. He sat down on the edge of the bed. "On top of everything else," he began without preamble, "I've just finished a hearty breakfast. That ought to really make you mad at me." "I'm not concerned with you or your meals," Joffrey pointed out. The barbarian's eyes twinkled. "It doesn't bother you by getting your help and then not protecting you from these intransigent tribesmen?" Hardly, I'd be a fool to expect it. "Would you now?" "Look, Bucko. These people live a hard way of life. Living on a mountain is a good way not to live comfortably. But it's a good way of living your own way if you can stand the gaff. These people can. Every one of them. They've got their marks to prove it. Every last one of them has fought it out face to face with another man and proved his fitness to take up space in this territory. See? It's a social code. And they'll extend it to cover any stranger who doesn't get killed on his way here. If you can get your mark, you're welcome here for the rest of your life. They keep their clan stock fresh and vigorous that way. And it all has the virtue of being uniform, just rigid code that covers every man in the group. These barbarian cultures aren't ever happy without a good code to their name, you know. Yours seems to lack one. The barbarian chuckled. "Oh, no. We've got one all right, or you'd never have had me to worry you. Nothing we like better than a good, talented enemy. You know, these people here in the mountains used to be our favorite enemies. But so many of us wound up getting our marks. It just got to be futile. Once you're in, you know, you're a full-fledged clan member. That sort of divided our loyalties. The problem just seemed to solve itself, though. We understand them. They understand us. We trade back and forth. Hell, it's all one family." Joffrey frowned. "You mean they got those rifles from you?" "Sure. We're full of ingenuity. For barbarians, that is. Not in the same class with you. Seaboard nobles, of course, but we poke along." The barbarian stood up and his expression turned serious. "Look, son. You remember that knife of mine you borrowed for a while? I'll have to lend it to you again in about twenty minutes. Your friend Dougal's going to have one just like it and your left arms are going to be tied together at the wrists. I hope you remember what I happened to tell you about how to use it because under the rules of the code I'm not allowed to instruct you." And Joffrey was left alone. There was a hard-packed area of dirt in front of Weatherby's home, and now its edges were crowded with tribesmen, many of whom had brought their women and children. Weatherby, together with a spare, capable-looking woman and with the barbarian and Micah, sat on his porch. One of the tribesmen was wrapping Joffrey's and Dougal's forearms together. Joffrey watched him with complete detachment. He stole a glance over toward Weatherby's porch, and it seemed to him that Micah was tense and anxious. He couldn't be sure. The fingers of his right hand gripped the half of the barbarian's knife. He held it up with his thumb along the blade, knowing that if he drew his arm up to stab downward or back to slash, Dougal would have a perfect opening. It was his thought, remembering that razor-keen blade that he ought to be able to do plenty of damage with a simple underhand twist of his arm. He did not look down to see how Dougal was holding the knife he'd been given. That would have been unfair. The crowd of watching tribesmen was completely silent. This was a serious business with them, Joffrey reflected. The tribesmen tying their wrists had finished the job. He stepped back. Any time after I say go, you boys set to it. Anything goes, and dead man loses. If you don't fight, we kill you both. For the first time since their capture, Joffrey looked squarely into Dougal's slit eyes. "I'm sorry we have to do this to each other in this way, Dougal," he said. "Go," the tribesmen shouted and jumped back. Dougal spat at Joffrey's face. Joffrey twitched his head involuntarily, realized what he'd done and threw himself off his feet, pulling Dougal with him and just escaping the downward arc of Dougal's plunging knife. The momentum of Dougal's swing combined with Joffrey's weight pulled him completely over Joffrey's shoulder. The two of them jerked abruptly flat on the ground. Their shoulders wrenched, sprawled out facing each other and tied together like two cats on a string. The crowd shouted. Joffrey had landed full on his ribs and for a moment he saw nothing but a red mist. Then his eyes cleared and he was staring into Dougal's face. Dougal snarled at him and pawed out with his knife at the advantage now because he could stab downward. Joffrey rolled and Dougal'd perforce rolled with him. The stab missed again and Joffrey on his back jabbed blindly over his head and reached nothing. Then they were on their stomachs again. Dougal'd was panting, his face running wet. The long black hair was full of dust and his face was smeared. If ever Joffrey had seen a man in an animal state, that was what Dougal'd resembled. Joffrey thought wildly. Is this what a noble is? "I'll kill you!" Dougal bated him and Joffrey's hackles rose. "This is not a man," he thought. "This is nothing that deserves to live." Dougal's arms snapped back, knife poised and drove downward again. Joffrey suddenly coiled his back muscles and heaved on his left arm, yanking himself up against Dougal's chest. He snapped his hip sideways and Dougal's knife missed him completely for the third and fatal time. The Barbarian's knife slipped upward into Dougal's ribcage and suddenly Joffrey was drenched with blood. Dougal's teeth bit into his neck, but the other man's jaws were already slackening. Joffrey let himself slump and hoped they would cut this carrion away from him as soon as possible. He heard the crowd yelping and felt the Barbarian plucking the knife out of his hand. His arm was freed and he rolled away. "By God, I knew you had this stuff!" the Barbarian was booming. I knew they had to start breeding men out on the coast sooner or later. "Here, give me your other wrist." The blade burned his skin twice each way, once for victory and once for special aptitude. And then Micah pressed a cloth to the wound. She was shaking her head. "I've never seen it done better. You're a natural-born fighter lad. I've got one of my sisters all picked out for you." Joffrey smiling up at the Barbarian a little ruefully. "It seems you and I'll be going back to the coast together next year." "Had it in mind all along, lad," the Barbarian said. "If I can't lick 'em, I'll be damned if I won't make 'em join me." "It's an effective system," Joffrey said. "That it is, lad, that it is. And now, if you'll climb up to your feet, let's go get you some breakfast." "End of the Barbarians" by Aldous Budres. Hey there, it is Ryan Seacrest with you. 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