It grazed his left shoulder, barely touching it. It was mostly garment that it plowed.
The stone richocheted from tree to tree behind him, before it finally vanished.
All was still then. The birds had given up on their morning concert.
"Gentlemen," called Dos Santos, "you have each had one chance to settle your differences. It may be said that you have faced one another with honor, given vent to your wrath, and are now satisfied. Do you wish to stop the duel?"
"No," said I.
Hasan rubbed his shoulder, shook his head.
He put the second stone to his sling, worked it rapidly through a powerful windup, then released it at me.
Right between the hip and the ribcage, that's where it caught me.
I fell to the ground and it all turned black.
A second later the lights came on again, but I was doubled up and something with a thousand teeth had me by the side and wouldn't let go.
They were running toward me, all of them, but Phil waved them back.
Hasan held his position.
Dos Santos approached.
"Is that it?" asked Phil softly. "Can you get up?"
"Yeah. I need a minute to breathe and to put the fire out, but I'll get up."
"What is the situation?" asked Dos Santos.
Phil told him.
I put my hand to my side and stood again, slowly.
A couple inches higher or lower and something boney might have broken. As it was, it just hurt like blazes.
I rubbed it, moved my right arm through a few circles to test the play of muscles on that side. Okay.
Then I picked up the sling and put a stone to it.
This time it would connect. I had a feeling.
It went around and around and it came out fast.
Hasan toppled, clutching at his left thigh.
Dos Santos went to him. They spoke.
Hasan's robe had muffled the blow, had partly deflected it. The leg was not broken. He would continue as soon as he could stand.
He spent five minutes massaging it, then he got to his feet again. During that time my pain had subsided to a dull throbbing.
Hasan selected his third stone.
He fitted it slowly, carefully…
He took my measure. Then he began to lash at the air with the sling…
All this while I had the feeling-and it kept growing-that I should be leaning a little further to the right. So I did.
He twirled it, threw it.
It grazed my fungus and tore at my left ear.
Suddenly my cheek was wet.
Ellen screamed, briefly.
A little further to the right, though, and I wouldn't have been hearing her.
It was my turn again.
Smooth, gray, the stone had the feel of death about it…
I will be it, this one seemed to say.
It was one of those little premonitory tuggings at my sleeve, of the sort for which I have a great deal of respect.
I wiped the blood from my cheek. I fitted the stone.
There was death riding in my right arm as I raised it. Hasan felt it too, because he flinched. I could see this from across the field.
"You will all remain exactly where you are, and drop your weapons," said the voice.
It said it in Greek, so no one but Phil and Hasan and I understood it, for sure. Maybe Dos Santos or Red Wig did. I'm still not certain.
But all of us understood the automatic rifle the man carried, and the swords and clubs and knives of the three dozen or so men and half-men standing behind him.
They were Kouretes.
Kouretes are bad.
They always get their pound of flesh.
Usually roasted.
Sometimes fried, though.
Or boiled, or raw…
The speaker seemed to be the only one carrying a firearm.
… And I had a handful of death circling high above my shoulder. I decided to make him a gift of it.
His head exploded as I delivered it.
"Kill them!" I said, and we began to do so.
George and Diane were the first to open fire. Then Phil found a handgun. Dos Santos ran for his pack. Ellen got there fast, too.
Hasan had not needed my order to begin killing. The only weapons he and I were carrying were the slings. The Kouretes were closer than our fifty meters, though, and theirs was a mob formation. He dropped two of them with well-placed stones before they began their rush. I got one more, also.
Then they were halfway across the field, leaping over their dead and their fallen, screaming as they came on toward us.
Like I said, they were not all of them human: there was a tall, thin one with three-foot wings covered with sores, and there were a couple microcephalics with enough hair so that they looked headless, and there was one guy who should probably have been twins, and then several steatopygiacs, and three huge, hulking brutes who kept coming despite bullet-holes in their chests and abdomens; one of these latter had hands which must have been twenty inches long and a foot across, and another appeared to be afflicted with something like elephantiasis. Of the rest, some were reasonably normal in form, but they all looked mean and mangy and either wore rags or no rags at all and were unshaven and smelled bad, too.
I hurled one more stone and didn't get a chance to see where it hit, because they were upon me then.
I began lashing out-feet, fists, elbows; I wasn't too polite about it. The gunfire slowed down, stopped. You have to stop to reload sometime, and there'd been some jamming, too. The pain in my side was a very bad thing. Still, I managed to drop three of them before something big and blunt caught me on the side of the head and I fell as a dead man falls.
Coming to in a stiflingly hot place…
Coming to in a stiflingly hot place that smells like a stable…
Coming to in a dark, stiflingly hot place that smells like a stable…
… This is not real conducive to peace of mind, a settled stomach, or the resumption of sensory activities on a sure and normal keel.
It stank in there and it was damn hot, and I didn't really want to inspect the filthy floor too closely-it was just that I was in a very good position to do so.
I moaned, numbered all my bones, and sat up.
The ceiling was low and it slanted down even lower before it met with the back wall. The one window to the outside was small and barred.
We were in the back part of a wooden shack. There was another barred window in the opposite wall. It didn't look out on anything, though; it looked in. There was a larger room beyond it, and George and Dos Santos were talking through it with someone who stood on that other side. Hasan lay unconscious or dead about four feet away from me; there was dried blood on his head. Phil and Myshtigo and the girls were talking softly in the far corner.
I rubbed my temple while all this was registering within. My left side ached steadily, and numerous other portions of my anatomy had decided to join in the game.
"He's awake," said Myshtigo suddenly.
"Hi, everybody. I'm back again," I agreed.
They came toward me and I assumed a standing position. This was sheer bravado, but I managed to carry it.
"We are prisoners," said Myshtigo.
"Oh, yeah? Really? I'd never have guessed."
"Things like this do not happen on Taler," he observed, "or on any of the worlds in the Vegan Combine."
"Too bad you didn't stay there," I said. "Don't forget the number of times I asked you to go back."
"This thing would not have occurred if it had not been for your duel."
I slapped him then. I couldn't bring myself to slug him. He was just too pathetic. I hit him with the back of my hand and knocked him over into the wall.
"Are you trying to tell me you don't know why I stood there like a target this morning?"
"Because of your quarrel with my bodyguard," he stated, rubbing his cheek.
"-Over whether or not he was going to kill you."
"Me? Kill…?'
"Forget it," I said. "It doesn't really matter anyhow. Not now. You're still on Taler, and you may as well stay there for your last few hours. It would have been nice if you could have come to Earth and visited with us for awhile. But things didn't work out that way."