the Hikdar. I foined briefly, desperately anxious to get these idiots off my back and hightail it back to Valka or Strombor. I pitched him down to lie with his comrades, although, as I had bleakly surmised, he did not sleep. I had to slash half his face off before he’d consent to lie down.
The screaming from the woman and the baby went on and on and there was no time to shout at them as a fifth man leaped into the doorway. He took a single look at the scene within, the shrieking woman and the baby, his four comrades sprawled and bloody on the floor, and me, a right tearaway with an axe fronting him, and he half turned.
He stood in the doorway, the light gleaming from his powerful body.
I was perfectly prepared to let him go. I had no idea where I was, but I had no wish to slaughter more than was inescapable if I was to do what I had been commanded to do. If he attacked the woman and the child, he would probably die. If he ran away I might run a greater risk; but that was an equation that honor demanded.
I shook the axe at him, to help him make up his mind.
From outside the approaching beat of hooves heralded the arrival of a hard-riding group of men. The staccato hammer held much of the rhythm of a zorcatroop; certainly they were not totrixes with their awkward six-legged gait or nikvoves with their battering array of eight hooves. The man in the doorway threw me a look of so powerful a hatred I was minded to charge forward and settle his hash there and then. In the linen and beadwork band about his dark hair he wore more feathers than the others. He moved smoothly, like a chavonth, the lamplight running in gleaming shadow-filled highlights across his muscles.
A succession of strange noises broke from outside — noises I did not at once identify. The first impression was of some maniac hammering a dull but noisy drum, or repeatedly slamming a heavy door. The coughing bangs erupted with the violence of a summer storm, bursting thunder about our ears.
Ready to leap forward and make sure the woman and child were safeguarded from this fifth fellow who had tried to kill them, I stopped stock still.
The man jerked. He stiffened. He dropped his axe. He half-turned, shaking with some invisible force. He staggered and then, limply, collapsed.
From his back a gush of blood dropped down.
I stared.
I looked down on him.
And I trembled.
The banging sounds continued. But I knew what they were.
With a roar of rage and agony I hurled forward, reached the door, looked out.
The shack stood near the end of an untidy row of similar shacks, and a raised boardwalk connected them above the road. Other men clad in loincloths and wielding axes and knives, some with bow and arrows, ran this way and that, and many fell. Up the center of the street rode a party of men, wearing clothes I recognized.
And, over all, the silvery flood of light from a single moon lit the scene in hard metallic pewter brilliance.
Again and again the Winchesters and the Colts and the Remingtons flamed.
I felt sick.
Somehow I was back in the cabin, looking at the woman who stared in horror at me, her sobs shaking her, her cheeks wet. She cradled the baby to her. Slowly, I picked up a shirt, a red and white checked shirt, whereat I felt a fresh pang, and put it on. Boots stood nearby. The woman’s husband would not require boots for his last journey to Boot Hill.
“You are safe now,” I said, and my voice made her flinch back.
I turned to the door and men crowded in. They were apims, like me — well, they would be, wouldn’t they? There were no Fristles and Rapas and Chuliks and all the other wonderful assemblage of diffs within four hundred light years.
“You all right, pardner?” The man who spoke wore Levis, a hickory shirt, a tin badge and a wide-awake hat. He held his Army Remington easily one-handed, and the muzzle centered on my midriff. I own he was wise to show caution. Despite my pants and boots and shirt, I must have looked far more like
The screaming from the woman and the baby went on and on and there was no time to shout at them as a fifth man leaped into the doorway. He took a single look at the scene within, the shrieking woman and the baby, his four comrades sprawled and bloody on the floor, and me, a right tearaway with an axe fronting him, and he half turned.
He stood in the doorway, the light gleaming from his powerful body.
I was perfectly prepared to let him go. I had no idea where I was, but I had no wish to slaughter more than was inescapable if I was to do what I had been commanded to do. If he attacked the woman and the child, he would probably die. If he ran away I might run a greater risk; but that was an equation that honor demanded.
I shook the axe at him, to help him make up his mind.
From outside the approaching beat of hooves heralded the arrival of a hard-riding group of men. The staccato hammer held much of the rhythm of a zorcatroop; certainly they were not totrixes with their awkward six-legged gait or nikvoves with their battering array of eight hooves. The man in the doorway threw me a look of so powerful a hatred I was minded to charge forward and settle his hash there and then. In the linen and beadwork band about his dark hair he wore more feathers than the others. He moved smoothly, like a chavonth, the lamplight running in gleaming shadow-filled highlights across his muscles.
A succession of strange noises broke from outside — noises I did not at once identify. The first impression was of some maniac hammering a dull but noisy drum, or repeatedly slamming a heavy door. The coughing bangs erupted with the violence of a summer storm, bursting thunder about our ears.
Ready to leap forward and make sure the woman and child were safeguarded from this fifth fellow who had tried to kill them, I stopped stock still.
The man jerked. He stiffened. He dropped his axe. He half-turned, shaking with some invisible force. He staggered and then, limply, collapsed.
From his back a gush of blood dropped down.
I stared.
I looked down on him.
And I trembled.
The banging sounds continued. But I knew what they were.
With a roar of rage and agony I hurled forward, reached the door, looked out.
The shack stood near the end of an untidy row of similar shacks, and a raised boardwalk connected them above the road. Other men clad in loincloths and wielding axes and knives, some with bow and arrows, ran this way and that, and many fell. Up the center of the street rode a party of men, wearing clothes I recognized.
And, over all, the silvery flood of light from a single moon lit the scene in hard metallic pewter brilliance.
Again and again the Winchesters and the Colts and the Remingtons flamed.
I felt sick.
Somehow I was back in the cabin, looking at the woman who stared in horror at me, her sobs shaking her, her cheeks wet. She cradled the baby to her. Slowly, I picked up a shirt, a red and white checked shirt, whereat I felt a fresh pang, and put it on. Boots stood nearby. The woman’s husband would not require boots for his last journey to Boot Hill.
“You are safe now,” I said, and my voice made her flinch back.
I turned to the door and men crowded in. They were apims, like me — well, they would be, wouldn’t they? There were no Fristles and Rapas and Chuliks and all the other wonderful assemblage of diffs within four hundred light years.
“You all right, pardner?” The man who spoke wore Levis, a hickory shirt, a tin badge and a wide-awake hat. He held his Army Remington easily one-handed, and the muzzle centered on my midriff. I own he was wise to show caution. Despite my pants and boots and shirt, I must have looked far more like
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