by Brian Daley
Woods brought the track to a halt in surprise. Pomorski scanned to the rear as the remaining three peeked up over their splash shields, all searching for enemies who’d threatened them and the friendlies who’d rescued them moments before. They craned their heads around, taking in the view with their mouths hanging open.
They saw an unusual building rather like a small castle on a nearby rise, some copses of trees and a primitive village farther back down the meadow.
“Cut the engine,” Gil ordered. He needed to hear himself think.
Slowly, Pomorski said, “MacDonald, what . . . what’s happened? MacDonald?”
“What is this, Jeopardy?” the sergeant roared back. “Am I buzzing my answer buzzer? Am I?”
A large body of curiously dressed men on horses had appeared at the edge of the trees and were regarding the Nine-Mob with a good deal of interest. Gil looked at them and tried hard to remember if either side was using cavalry in Vietnam. Horse type, that is, he thought.
Four of the mounted men detached themselves from the rest and moved leisurely toward the APC. The Nine-Mob was still hunting with growing urgency for the disappeared VC and related familiar landmarks, but they were not, as individuals or a group, slow to recover or react. The four riders reined in front of Lobo and Gil spoke softly into his intercom.
“I am now open for hints.”
“Pass,” said Pomorski, and that was the only help the sergeant got.
“Right,” he said after another moment. “Pomorski takes the fifty and the rest of you hang loose. I’m gonna talk to these bananas.”
His brain wasn’t sluggish. He knew from gross physical evidence that he was no longer in the situation in which he’d been only a few seconds before. There was absolutely no sign of ambush, ambushers or, for that matter, Southeast Asia.
Pomorski put down his grenade launcher as Gil took off his helmet and headset and leaned down into the APC and plucked up his submachine gun and a bandolier of ammunition. He climbed up over the cupola as the grenadier came up from underneath and replaced him at the machine gun.
The sergeant slung the bandolier over his head, checked the safety on Shorty, an abbreviated M-16, and jumped to the ground. Once down, he flicked the safety over to autofire and walked unhurriedly to the waiting men, chopper cradled comfortingly against him.
All four sat horses decked out in splendid harness. The two to the rear wore long outfits made from metal rings, covering them to the wrists and falling like shirts to their knees, and steel caps with nasal guards. Moreover, they bore triangular shields and wore long swords.
Armor? Swords? Had they wandered into some kind of pageant?
Of the two in front, one wore a caftan with a hood which hid his face in shadow. The other was in gaudy robes, sashed pantaloons, pointy-toed shoes and a fur busby, and was decorated with a good deal of jewelry.
Hallucinations? Had somebody been putting something in the Lister bags?
The one with the hood threw it back suddenly and stared out—although Gil couldn’t actually see his eyes— from a golden mask which enclosed his entire head. The mask featured red, jutting fangs and a distinctly hateful expression with graven scowl and V-shaped brows done in black. But where the eyes and mouth should have been there were only dark apertures.
Golden Mask spoke, voice echoing eerily from within the headpiece. “Who are you, who appear in the fields of Erub for no possible reason save that you are in league with the renegades?”
The sergeant didn’t waste time with meaningless sounds of shock and disavowal. It was his experience that people with submachine guns didn’t have to.
Until today.
“Uh, MacDonald, Gilbert A., sergeant, U.S. Army,” he said from habit and by way of introduction. “I don’t think I know where I am right now. Who are you, Jack, and where are we?” He watched the faces of the other three for reactions, since Golden Mask was unreadable, but they gave him none.
Golden Mask turned to his fellows. “They are confused, at a loss for their Reality. They obviously don’t belong to this place-and-time, they are an invocation. Let us eliminate them now, before those in the castle can offer interference.”
Gil, who hadn’t missed “eliminate,” was about to shove his way back into the conversation when the two armored men drew their mounts back cautiously. Golden Mask kept his place while his colorfully-turned-out companion urged his steed a few steps closer to the sergeant. Without taking his gaze from the men in front of him, Gil called, “Pomorski! Cover the two in back; if anything goes down, you ace ’em.”
“Roger-dodger.”
Fancy Pants stopped a few feet from where Gil stood. He extended his bangled and braceleted arms toward Lobo and the Nine-Mob. His fingers clawed grotesquely as he began to chant loudly, nothing the American could comprehend.
The same instinct that had prompted him to look for a backup RPG made Gil’s hackles rise and sent a signal of fear down his spine. There’d been only the slightest of breezes a moment before but now a stiff, driving wind began to swirl around him. It tore at his fatigues, threatened to throw him headlong, yet didn’t seem to affect Fancy Pants or any of those behind him.
Gil risked a glance behind him, to start in horror at the murky funnel of air forming around Lobo and, impossibly, rocking the giant weight of the APC. The wind raged around and around in that small circuit, grew in intensity on its confined course. The cantor continued, in a voice grown loud beyond belief, deafening even over the tornado howl. The Nine-Mobsters were hanging on for life, their helmets blown off and their clothes tearing from their bodies.
The sergeant was obliged to drop to his knees to avoid being blown off his feet. Insane as it seemed, this gaudy character must be the one responsible for the wind. In a live-or-die fix, with a conclusion based on the way things must be—no matter how crazy—that was enough for Gil MacDonald. He brought the chopper up and fired from the hip, quick-kill style. It was almost impossible to hold even a stationary target in the malevolent wind, and so he emptied the entire eighteen rounds in his magazine at Fancy Pants to be sure. Man and horse collapsed in a spray of blood; M-16 slugs tended to wobble when they hit and eight hits were more than enough to make a mess.
As quickly as it had begun, the were-wind died. Gold Mask and the others stared at the form of their dead companion for a moment as they tried to control their maddened horses, and Gil slammed home a new magazine from his bandolier and covered them. They backed their horses away and the American wasn’t sure if he ought to stop them or be glad they were leaving. Considering all the buckaroos they had to back them up, he decided that further exchanges would be ill advised. The entire mounted body moved oft, stopping at the tree line several hundred yards away, in the opposite direction from the castle.
Gil backpedaled to the APC and scrambled up as the Nine-Mob pulled themselves together. Pomorski relinquished the .50 and they were all silent for a minute.
Then Gil said, “The guy and his horse are both dead; each took a couple in the head. Guess I was shooting high.”
“A shame to stop him just when he was getting going good,” said Pomorski, as the green began to leave his complexion, “but conservatively speaking, all isn’t well here and the obvious question, as I pointed out earlier, is—where are we at?”
“We’re someplace without VC or dry seasons, okay? Where people dress for Halloween and have their own cyclones on call, ride horses and live in castles.” Gil waved his hand at the countryside and said, “Look around you. Everything’s different—climate, plants, terrain, the works. Everything’s utterly not-the-same as before we cruised through that gray fog. So Pomorski, carefully now, I want you to apply all sixty-eight of your Famous College Credits and tell me where we are.”
“How about this?” Woods asked. “How’d we get here?”
“Damned if I know, Sportin’ Life,” the sergeant sighed. “This kind of action usually happens to girls and little dogs after Kansas twisters.” Thoughts of The Outer Limits b
obbed in his brain.
Olivier, thin face even more pallid than usual behind thick glasses, yelled and pointed toward the castle. Galloping full tilt in their direction, plainly come from the now-open castle gate, was a single horseman. He wore a brightly painted mask with a rooster tail of tall white plumes and sat a big, long-legged gray—seventeen hands high, Pomorski thought to himself, if he was an inch—whose neck was thrust forward in exertion. The rider fairly flew across the meadow, bringing his horse to a stop near them in a shower of turf as they looked to their weapons against another attack; if they’d been less disciplined they might have dropped him on the spot without questions.
The rest of the fellow’s dress matched his war mask. He wore high rider’s boots, leather guards covering his forearms, loinband and a sword belted to his hip.
“Welcome!” he cried, “And hurrah for a fine deed in slaying Neezolo Peeno. Andre deCourteney could not extend the protection of Calundronius to the meadow but Van Duyn said that the men with—guns, are they called?—would be able to defend themselves admirably and so you have. But we must hasten now, back to the Keep, before the soldiers decide to make a sally or Ibn-al-Yed cooks up some wizardish attack to our sorrow.”
The five soldiers had been mute throughout Springbuck’s speech. Now Gil rubbed the back of his sunburned neck with his hand as if it would help. Woods said, “Simply astonishing.”
“All right,” said the sergeant, “take us to the fella who knows about guns. Maybe we can get a little info. I guess we might as well leave the Dearly Departed over there for his friends and loved ones.”
Fireheel became skittish as Woods fired up the track’s big Chrysler with a roar, and Springbuck was careful to trot him a goodly distance in front of this thing, this machine, which the Prince found delightfully loud and menacing. Gil noticed that none of the other riders, the ones who had confronted them before, moved to stop or follow them. In a place where firearms seemed at least a rarity, from their guide’s remarks, Gil’s response to the were-wind must have been most impressive.
Shades of the Connecticut Yankee!
Springbuck led them to the very drawbridge of the castle, then galloped across. Gil studied the wooden span and the dozen or so faces staring round-eyed at them from the ramparts above. That some of them were women, and one in particular an absolute red-haired fox, did not escape the American’s notice even in these disconcerting circumstances.
“Hell,” said Gil at last, “we’re better off stepping on in than sitting out here to rot. I’ll ground-guide.”
Pomorski took the .50 again and Gil walked ahead of the track as Woods followed his hand signals, easing Lobo over the drawbridge. Shorty was at the sergeant’s side again. Woods nursed the ponderous APC along as if he were treading eggs, but the timbers held firmly enough and they found themselves in a large, cobblestoned courtyard filled with weeds, refuse of one kind and another and some very curious people. These last were dressed in attire as peculiar—from the Nine-Mob’s point of view—as any other they’d seen in the past fifteen minutes; mostly woolen clothes, baggy shirts and pantaloons and shapeless dresses. All were staring in total fascination at Lobo, but were definitely afraid to approach or touch it. Gil wanted to pinch himself.
He wondered if the Veterans Administration had a nice, comfortable nuthouse anywheres close to home?
Chapter Eight
The soldiers are the cleverest, their wisdom they display there, they know that miracles like this don’t happen every day there.
—Heinrich Heine, “I Dreamt I Was the Dear Lord God”
Their guide had dismounted and pushed his way through the crowd, mask now in hand. He was quite young, with an open face bearing an exuberant smile. The imposing saber he wore notwithstanding, he appeared friendly enough.
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 bolstered pistol at Van Duyn’s belt as he asked preemptorily, “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 bam. 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.