Gene ducked behind a boulder as ambushing yalim archers made quick work of the remaining hrunt. Then the rest of the cohort swarmed down for the mopping up, letting out whooping war cries.
It was short work. Turning his back on the grisly business of head-taking, Gene peered up the hill and saw Yerga, the Captain of the Royal Guard, come out from behind a ridge of sandstone.
Yerga was grinning at him, and Gene didn’t like it. The grin was half sneer, half triumphant gloat. There was bad blood between Gene and Yerga, had been from the start. Yerga was the Queen’s favorite — had been, that is, until Gene’s arrival.
Gene could now see Yerga’s stratagem in all its ingenuity. Yerga would have come up a winner on every throw of the dice. Send inexperienced Gene out on patrol. Gene could hardly refuse such a mission. If he gets killed, fine. If he’s spotted and followed, again, he’ll probably lose his life, and he’ll have served his function in flushing out the hruntan raiding party that had been giving the tribe trouble recently. If, as it happened, he turns up in dire need of rescue, that very same raiding party hot on his tail, he’ll look silly and lose face, if he doesn’t buy the farm that way, too. Check and mate.
Gene could only admire such a well-thought-out screw job. It was hard, though, because now he had to listen to Yerga regaling the cohort with endless jokes at his expense.
Yes, hadn’t the Strange New One looked the fool hightailing across the wastes like a frightened yethna (small ground-dwelling mammal).
Hoots.
No, it was not usually a good idea to wave greetings to the hrunt and let them know you’ve come to observe them.
Guffaws.
Yes, it had been very hospitable of Gene to invite the hrunt to midday meal.
Howls!
And so on and so forth. Gene didn’t mind it so much, but he didn’t like the fast slide down the pecking order that this ragging would doubtless cause. That was the way of this tribe. Lose face once and you might as well pitch your tent in the slit latrine, for all the respect you’d get.
There was a possibility of retrieving the situation, although Gene didn’t care for the method. It was harsh medicine. But when he considered the alternative — a loss of face perhaps catastrophic enough to leave only suicide or self-exile (same difference) as the only honorable recourse — he realized he had no choice. He would have to challenge Yerga.
Gene suffered in silence all the way back to Winter Camp, a collection of tents and leantos pitched at the foot of a twin-peaked crag. Nearby lay the mouth of a cave, wherein the Queen usually dwelt. The tribe usually summered in sparsely forested mountains off to the east.
The yalim tribes had been nomads for centuries. The plains were dotted with ruins, attesting to many attempts at something better, but no yalim civilization to date had withstood hruntan depredations. Which was a shame, because the yalim were truly capable of civilization.
The yalim wouldn’t remain nomads forever, if Gene had anything to say about it. He was determined somehow to precipitate a move into one of the Umoi cities, preferably Zond. What the Umoi had abandoned, their underpeople, the yalim, would inherit. Would, that is, it the yalim could overcome strong taboos about the abodes of the Old Gods. Legend had it that a body could die simply from looking at an Umoi city. Gene had his work cut out for him.
But for now, he faced a harder and much more unpleasant task: dealing with Yerga.
Gene looked up toward the mouth of the Royal Caves — the Queen and her ladies-in-waiting were the only tribe members who lived indoors. No one showed. The High Mistress usually greeted the troops when they returned from battle.
Gene dismounted, tethered his voort, and checked the beast’s wounded rump. The thick leathery hide was almost like armor. The lance had barely penetrated muscle underneath. Barring infection, the animal would live.
Had Gene been wearing gauntlets, he would have thrown one or two down, but in this neck of the woods the accepted way of calling a guy out was to rip down his tent. Gene went directly to Yerga’s campsite and did this thing.
The whole tribe held its breath. Yerga looked slowly about, then faced Gene and drew his sword, smiling a crooked, evil little smile.
Gene got the distinct feeling that he had walked the rest of the way into Yerga’s trap. He wondered now why he had ever thought he could best Yerga in a swordfight. This was not the castle, and the spell that gave Gene his talent was not operative here. But, as was the case with the translation spell, there was some carryover. Even without the spell, Gene had felt evenly matched with Yerga.
Now that there was no turning back, though, he had his doubts.
These things were best done quickly. Gene drew his sword, approached his opponent, and got even more worried. Now Yerga’s satisfied smile confirmed Gene’s suspicions that it had all been planned this way. But there was no hope of rescue, and no remedy except to turn tail and run. The rover was out in the desert somewhere, pinned under hundred-ton boulders. Zond was powerless to help. He was trapped in a backwater universe, bound by its peculiar laws. He would have to make the best of things, or die trying. Of course, the latter was the more likely possibility.
Yerga sprang at him, and Gene sidestepped a wicked lunge that nicked his rib cage. The crowd ohhed at the sight of first blood.
Not the greatest of beginnings, Gene thought. I’ve already half-defeated myself.
Gene countered with a series of feints and lunges, but Yerga’s masterly parrying left no opportunity. Then Yerga went back to the offensive, and Gene had to dance over an open campfire to get away.
Kicking out a hot coal that had wedged in his sandal, Gene got angry, mostly with himself. He had dug a fine psychological hole for himself, one of his gravest faults, on Earth as well as here. If he was to lose this fight, he was determined not to be defeated by his own self-doubt.
Gene attacked savagely, if not expertly, and sheer momentum drove Yerga back. Soon, though, the captain countered effectively, and broke the brunt of Gene’s offensive.
Thereafter it was give-and-take, neither combatant able to gain the upper hand.
Gene wished mightily for magic. It was hard to get used to the notion that there was none here. At least he didn’t think there was any. Maybe Sheila could tap whatever unseen forces were available. But this was probably a hard-science universe; and besides, Sheila was worlds away.
He missed her, and Linda, too. Two powerful magicians, those girls.
Again, Gene felt an unfocused resentment that his powers were relatively feeble, and only came on him inside the castle. But why? What was different about his case? It wasn’t fair.
He rejected that note of defeatism as well. Fair, hell. The universe — the universes weren’t fair. If he could only summon the will, the power. He knew what he felt like when the gift was upon him. If he could re-create that feeling in himself, perhaps the power of suggestion …
Yerga’s renewed attacks brought him back to the task at hand. Gene fought back strongly, gaining confidence and power with every stroke. Maybe Yerga was showing his age, or maybe it was just the fortunes of war, but the tide of battle seemed to be shifting. Yerga’s smile was gone, replaced by a look of grim concern.
The mortal combat went on and on, its deadly choreography carrying them across the length and breadth of the camp. Gene’s swordsmanship continued to improve, and Yerga’s confidence eroded precipitously.
At length, Yerga knew he was bested, and seemed to give up except for desperate parrying and backstepping. Gene maneuvered him toward a latrine. Yerga looked behind at the last second, tried to leap backward over it. His foot slipped into the hole and he fell, slamming his head against the side of the ditch.