"I'm going now," Iwaldi said. "It can't hurt to tell you that I'll be in Stonehenge for the winter solstice to attend XauXaz's funeral!"
Doc Caliban was surprised when he heard this, but he did not show it.
"Yes, XauXaz's funeral! " Iwaldi snarled. "You didn't know that, did you? His body has been kept in a big box in a London warehouse. It'll be shipped to Salisbury and then taken to the ruins of Stonehenge, where the Nine will hold the funeral ceremonies for him! And I'll be there, though uninvited! I'll kill all of them! Old Anana! Ing! All of them!
"And then I'll be free to release my biobomb! While the mortals are starving to death and also gasping for oxygen, I'll be in my mountain retreat, snug and safe, eating well, breathing a rich air! After it's over for the mortals, then I and a few of my servants, mostly female, and my stock of beasts and plants, will come out!
"What do you think of that?"
The prisoners continued to stare without expression.
"You can pretend to be unconcerned!" he shouted. "But you are naked, and I can see your hearts thumping! A long goodnight to you, mortals!"
He spat and walked away, two men preceding him, the others trailing.
Pauncho broke the long silence. "Maybe the invaders will take pity on us.
"Yeah," Barney said. "They might shoot us. At that, they'd be doing us a favor."
Pauncho looked at Doc and said, "I didn't know we were related. That makes me several cuts superior to this proletarian peasant, heh, Doc? I got the blood of English nobility in my veins, right? And the blood of ancient Viking sea kings. And what's more, the blood of men and women that were once gods and goddesses to the common herd, lowly swine like Barney. Say, Doc, what about that that hero stuff? Who do you think were those ancient Germanic heroes he was talking about?"
"I don't know. Maybe the men whose exploits formed the basis of the Volsunga and Nibelungenlied epics. Or maybe the man or men who were the originals of the Beowulf stories. I'm more concerned about his descendants, three in particular."
Pauncho's small eyes widened. "Three?"
"Yes. That man's descendants have to include most of the present populace of north Europe or anybody descended from north Europeans and probably from south Europeans, and many Africans and Asiatics, too. Figure it out mathematically, if you ever get a chance."
Barney haw-hawed but quit when the grizzly, roaring, hurled himself against the bars. Doc said, "Iwaldi didn't say whether or not pressure has to be maintained on that door. We can't afford to take a chance, so one man should keep pulling on it." "If I had a pocket, I'd pull out a coin and we could flip it to see who's the lucky guy," Pauncho said. "But I'll be magnanimous, Barney. I'll handle the door while you help Doc with the bear." Pauncho's voice was steady and he was grinning, but his reddish skin had turned pale.
"No," Caliban said firmly. "We'd be stupid to reduce our strength by one-third. We either put the grizzly out of commission and then open the door—provided Iwaldi wasn't lying to us—or we don't make it at all."
"Well, Barney, you always said you might be skinny but you could lick your weight in wildcats,” Pauncho said. "Here's your chance to prove it."
"I said cats not bears," Barney replied. "Anyway, the three of us total about seven hundred and seventy so that gives the grizzly an edge of three hundred and fifty pounds. And he's got teeth and claws a hell of a lot sharper than ours."
"Tell me something I don't know," Pauncho said. "Like how're we going to take him?"
He pressed his blobbish nose against a bar and stared at the grizzly. It was pacing back and forth, it's head low and swinging, the brownish silver-tipped fur beautiful but the beauty lost on the watcher. There was fat under that loose glossy hide but there were also giant bones and the strength of two gorillas.
"I want you two to hang back in here until I give the word to join me," Doc Caliban said. "I'm going to make him chase me until he gets tired.' Barney and Pauncho looked at the cell, forty feet square, and they said, at the same time, "Chase you?" "It's worth a try," Caliban said. For him, that was equivalent to a long speech by Hector urging the discouraged Trojans to venture out against the Achaeans again. He pulled back on the door and slipped through. The grizzly bellowed and whirled around, glared at Caliban, and then charged. It went so swiftly that it was a blur to Pauncho and Barney.
But the reddish-brown golden-tinted skin and dark auburn metallic-looking hair of Doc Caliban was a blur, too. He sprang to one side just before the grizzly was on him, ran at the wall, and bounced off it like a handball.
The grizzly rammed head-on into the bars with a crash that shook the bars and quivered the iron floor under the feet of the two men. But. the enormous and clumsy-looking beast recovered swiftly, whirled, and was after Caliban, who had sped to the corner where the wall and the outside barred wall met. Again, he leaped to one side, and again the beast crashed with wall- quivering impact.
"If that grizzly's smart, and he doesn't look dumb," Barney said, "he'll be watching for Doc's sidewise maneuver." "Yeah, but his thinking processes maybe overwhelmed by the aggression stimulation," Pauncho said. "It may make him all fury and no brains at all."
The third time, Doc startled his aides by suddenly running at the bear just after it had started its charge. Events happened so swiftly that they looked as if they were being run by a speeded-up projector. The bronze blur and the brownish silver-tipped blur met. But Doc had leaped up and leveled out, and his legs shot out. His bare feet struck the grizzly on the nose and the sides of the head. The two bulks stopped. Doc fell backward but rolled and landed on his side and then was up and away. The bear, roaring, shook his head, while blood flowed from his nostrils, and launched himself at Caliban. The man did not quite succeed in escaping untouched. Claws, backed by a great paw swinging with strength enough to remove a man's head, barely nicked the back of his right leg. The skin came off in a wide band across the back of his calf, and blood ran down his leg.
Caliban spun and ran straight into the bear. The grizzly heaved himself up, coming up off of all fours like a killer whale bursting from the sea's surface, and opened his front legs to receive the foolhardy human.
Doc Caliban went on in as if he had lost his desire to live. Pauncho and Barney cried out, "Doc!" and Pauncho yanked at the door to pull it back. He and Barney would go out there now; surely this was the time. But Doc had planted a blow with his huge fist with all the power of his left arm and his back and legs. The arm sank into the fur of the animal’s belly, into the fat, and into the muscle.
The grizzly went, "Oof, " and it fell backwards.
Doc Caliban leaped back, then, but even as it fell the grizzly's left paw raked the top of Caliban's head, and blood gushed out from a torn scalp.
Doc was momentarily blinded. He turned and ran, judging the distance to the wall by memory, stopped there three paces away, and turned. He wiped away the blood from his eyes, but more flowed down.
The grizzly had gotten to all fours and stood for a minute while it sucked in air. Its belly heaved, and its tongue dangled far out.
Then it charged, more slowly than it had before but still fast enough to have kept pace with many Olympic dashers.
Doc waited until it was very close and then, putting his feet against the wall behind as a springboard, dived under the beast.