Springbuck, for
his part, saw five bewildered faces studying him and the Keep’s other temporary
inhabitants. The leader of these foreigners, the one who’d made the decision to
come along with him to the castle, was fairly young, perhaps the youngest of
the five who rode this nonesuch machine. He had brown hair cropped short, fair
skin burned by the sun and premature age lines bracketing his mouth. Of the
others, one was a big husky fellow with a lantern jaw and a curling mustache,
another a frail-looking and pallid sort of individual who wore the same sort of
little lenses as Van Duyn—glasses. This one was addressed as Olivier while the
fourth, a rather short, heavily built, acned man, was called Handelman. But
most amazing of all was the one who pulled himself up to sit on an open hatch at
the front of the vehicle—the Prince hadn’t caught his name in their
conversation—for he was completely brown. Or at least, his hands, neck and face
were, and his black hair curled tightly to his head.
Springbuck was
phrasing a hundred questions in his mind when the deCourteneys and Van Duyn
reached his side. The Americans didn’t miss the holstered pistol at Van Duyn’s
belt as he asked peremptorily, “Which of you is in charge here?”
“I am.
MacDonald, sergeant, U.S. Army. Mind if I ask your name, pal?”
“Edward Van
Duyn. I imagine that you and your friends are confused as to your present
situation. I’ll try to explain your circumstances to you in terms you can
comprehend and allay your misgivings, since your dilemma is, no doubt, quite
beyond your, er, grasp.”
Gil stood, arms
akimbo, and replied airily, “Uh-uh, not so. Fact is, you’re all under my guns
and I’m going to start knocking this rock outhouse down around your ears unless
I get a whole lot of answers in a big hurry.”
Van Duyn was
plainly annoyed by this, but didn’t pursue the topic. “If you’d care to step
inside, Sergeant, I shall be happy to clarify matters for you.”
Gil hesitated,
then decided that there was little he could do until he found out what in the
world had happened to them, how the Nine-Mob had gotten here and where here
was.
“Okay,” he
conceded, “wait a sec while I tell the crew what’s going on.” He clambered back
aboard
Lobo
and had Woods take the .50 caliber, then squatted in
conference with the burly grenadier and second-in-command.
“So, loan me
your hog, Ski, and keep an eye on things till I get back. If I don’t show, say,
in thirty minutes, do whatever strikes you as best, although I can’t imagine
what the hell that would be. We just can’t do anything until we dope out what’s
happened to us.”
He took the
other’s .45 automatic and slipped it into his belt under his jungle fatigue
jacket. Pomorski watched dubiously. “Pardon my candor,” he said, “but this
quixotic foray of yours is not particularly bright. Just load up on hardware
and charge out all dewy-eyed and shooting, that’s your style, MacDonald.”
Gil felt the
heat of his own face as anger sent his blood racing. Friction with the
gregarious Pomorski was a frequent problem. With two years of college,
light-hearted Pomorski was better educated. He was also a former football
player and dangerous with bare hands and feet; neither of them was certain who
would win if they fought. They’d drifted into a sort of rivalry as dominant
personalities in the crew.
“Dewy-eyed, my
aching, dying ass,” Gil whispered fiercely. “If you’ve got any alternatives,
any at all, let’s hear them.”
Pomorski stared
at him for a moment, looked conspicuously at Gil’s three stripes and his own
spec-four patch, and shrugged. “Gunboat diplomacy,” he grumbled, and climbed back
up through the cargo hatch.
Gil removed his
flak jacket, followed him up and jumped to the ground. He faced Van Duyn,
though his eye rested for an instant on the breathtaking woman at the man’s
side. “After you,” he said. “I’m all ears, to put it very moderately.”
They set off
across the courtyard and up the broad steps which led to the double doors of
the castle’s main hall. This was being used as a sort of communal
cooking-living area, and Gil didn’t miss hints that it was a temporary camp.
There were cobwebs in the roof beams and the dust of long disuse was almost
everywhere. Aromatically, it reminded him of a barn. Meat was being broiled
over flames in an enormous fireplace, the only source of heat and light in the
room aside from slits of windows set high in the walls. Other culinary
preparations were being made by four or five young women and one dowdy
specimen.
The curious and
ill-smelling crowd—
he probably was not too fragrant his own self
—had
fallen away as they had entered the hall, and now Van Duyn preceded him to a
staircase leading to the upper levels of the building. With them went the
woman, the rider who’d met
Lobo
and a short, fat, thuggish-looking man
who reminded Gil of a dockworker.
The staircase
and the corridor at its top were surprisingly narrow and built, like the rest
of the structure, of brownish stone. Mold smeared across the ceiling, walls and
floor. They entered a modestly spacious room furnished with a large table,
several panlike things on tripods, live coals still glowing in them, a few odd
stools and rotting tapestries. Complicated designs and polygons were drawn on
the floor. There was a small fireplace, now dark and empty. Van Duyn showed Gil
to a stool and took another for himself, while the young rider perched one
buttock on the table and swung his leg idly and the girl and dockworker sat
together on a window bench.
Van Duyn smiled
heartily, unconvincingly, and rubbed his hands together.
“Firstly,” he
began, “I will introduce my illustrious companions. That bravo there at the
table is Prince Springbuck, and these are Gabrielle and Andre deCourteney. I
believe I have already introduced myself.”
The soldier
nodded as Springbuck studied him, this alien who commanded the metal
war-machine. Sergeant MacDonald, if that was his true rank and naming, was
attired all in olive green, pants and jackets of some thin material. He’d been
wearing a heavier vest of some sort, but had left that in his machine. He had
many large pockets about his clothes and wore boots of faded green canvas and
black leather, with corrugated soles. He’d plainly passed much time on strange
roads and there was red dust upon him and his clothes. On his upper arm he wore
three chevrons and at his right shoulder was a small emblem, a cavalry saber,
point uppermost, picked out in black against an olive background. Springbuck
wondered if the man were an accomplished swordsman to bear such a symbol, not
knowing that it was simply the 32d’s regimental crest.
“Well, from the
look of you men,” said Van Duyn, maintaining his false joviality, “I’d say we
plucked you out of that Asian mess.”
“I’m in no
position to know what you mean by
plucked,
but we were on duty near Phu
Loi about half an hour ago, or so it seems to me,” Gil replied. “Now what I
want to know is, how were we brought here? And if it was you that did it, I
want you to send us back.”
Van Duyn, with
a condescending air that the sergeant found extremely abrasive, continued, “My
dear boy, you and your, er, comrades and your armored car have been brought
here by a process which I need not explain, even if you had the faculties to
absorb it, which you don’t. Events taking place here concern you not in the
least but for this one fact: in order to be returned to your former place and
time in the scheme of things, you will do one small job for me tomorrow
morning. In the evening we’ll send you back to that foolish war. In fact, it
will be as if you were never interrupted.”
The prince and
the deCourteneys winced, sensing that Van Duyn was taking the wrong tack
altogether. Andre shifted uneasily on his window seat and seemed about to
speak.
But the soldier
was on his feet, the stool kicked backward. “You highhanded old bastard,” he
said levelly. “If you can send us back, you’re going to do it now, or I swear
I’ll grease you right here.” He grabbed a double handful of Van Duyn’s shirt,
yanking the older man to his feet. The scholar’s hands darted up to seize the
sergeant’s, and work one of those cunning, disabling tricks. The other three
there, expecting to see Van Duyn restrain or injure Gil, were startled at what
followed. The sergeant avoided the grasping hands with two short, vicious
chops, the sides of his hands hacking away his opponent’s wrists. He snapped
his fisted left hand, knuckles cocked outward, up into Van Duyn’s face just
underneath the nose—but controlled what could as easily have been a death
stroke—and drove a stiff-fingered right into the solar plexus, finishing with a
hammer blow to the exposed neck as the other went down in a heap.
The Prince and
the deCourteneys were on their feet, and Springbuck swept Bar from its sheath.
Stepping forward to separate the soldier from his antagonist, he was unprepared
to see Gil jump back, nearly tripping on his overturned stool, and claw the .45
from his belt.
The two faced
each other in frozen tableau, the Prince with the gleaming length of cold edge
poised close, near enough for a lethal flourish, and the sergeant with his
pistol leveled at Springbuck’s heart. They held their positions so for some
seconds, neither truly sure of what the other would prove capable. The son of
Surehand recognized the gun as being, like Van Duyn’s, a fearsome weapon. Gil,
on the other hand, knew that the gleaming sword was a fraction of a second from
his throat. Van Duyn began to wheeze and attempted to sit up.
“I didn’t hit
him as hard as I could have,” Gil said, stepping backward a pace and bringing
his back up against the wall. Gabrielle broke the frieze as she rushed to see
to Van Duyn. Gil swung the muzzle of his pistol to cover her, but his eyes
didn’t leave the Prince.
“Stay back.
He’ll be okay in a minute, but if you give me any grief I’ll have to hurt him
and maybe you, too. Someone could get zapped.”
She hissed at
him and the sergeant knew he’d made a deadly enemy. Andre took her hand and
restrained her from calling the bluff. Springbuck wavered, uncertain whether to
attack or sheathe his blade. Finally, he withdrew a pace or so and lowered his
point. Gil relieved Van Duyn of his Browning as the other sat rubbing his neck where
the hammer blow had caught him.
Gil, trying to
sound calm, said, “Now you—I told you that I want some answers. It could be
you’d mind your manners and chat more if we play this game over at my house.”
He uncocked the
.45 and, without losing track of what the others were doing, deftly took Van
Duyn’s left hand and wrist in a harsh come-along hold. Battered and subdued as
he was, the older man came to his feet at the irresistible pressure.
Gil turned to
the others. “Okay, he and I are going for a parley in
Lobo.
Don’t try to
stop us and keep clear of the track once we’re in it. I don’t know if any of
you have been told, but my friends and I could kill everyone in this gravel
heap just like I blew away that joker in the meadow.”
“Let them go,”
Andre advised his sister and Springbuck. “We have no hope anyway unless Edward
can convince them to help us.”
This last
puzzled Gil, but he took quick advantage of the wizard’s attitude to hustle Van
Duyn out and down the stairway, being on guard against any attempt the other
might have been inclined to make at tripping him or otherwise trying to escape
or resist.
The women were
the only ones remaining in the hall, and they made no move to stop him, but
stood gawping in amazement at the sergeant and his prisoner. One of the main
doors was still ajar, but when the two reached the courtyard, they found that
many of the locals were gathered there around the APC, some of them holding or
wearing swords or other weapons, primitive but deadly. Woods was leaning over
the .50 cupola chatting amiably with two young girls who were giggling shyly
and blushing.
The sergeant
barked his name and Woods’ gaze came to him. The driver assessed the situation
and reacted instantly. Traversing and depressing the machine gun, he brought it
to bear on the crowd to Gil’s left, calling to Olivier as he did. Olivier,
already behind his gun, covered the group to the track commander’s right.
Pomorski popped his head up through the cargo hatch, cursed and ducked back
down to open the rear hatch.
“Tell your
friends,” Gil grated to his captive, “to stay away from
Lobo.
We’re
going in.”
Van Duyn did
so, and the twenty or so Erubites moved away from the track and permitted Gil
to drag his unwilling guest to it. The rear of the boxlike APC was designed to
be lowered by winch cable to serve as a ramp. There was a smaller hatch set
into it, and it was this that Pomorski unlatched. Gil thrust Van Duyn through
headfirst and the grenadier caught the dazed man up effortlessly and slammed
him into one of the two interior benches set along the walls, covering him
casually with the submachine gun.
Gil confronted
the crowd outside, pistol in hand. “We’re not going to hurt him,” he said. “We
just want him to tell us a few things.”
The people
looked at one another doubtfully. At last a man stepped forward and said, “You
may rest assured that if you give hurt to our teacher, we will try as best we
can to kill you, and in any case you’ll have the wrath of the sorceress
Gabrielle deCourteney and her brother to contend with.”
Sorceress?
Rather than
bandy words, Gil backed to the rear hatch and slid through it. Pomorski was
sitting in the bench opposite Van Duyn, very relaxed. When it hit the fan, the
sergeant reflected, the spec-four never balked or asked dumb questions. Demands
of violence pushed aside all rivalry and debate.
“What’s the
problem?” Pomorski asked mildly.