The shoreline became an indistinguishable blur as their speed increased. Even the moon noticeably changed its position. Yet there was no sensation of speed; no raging wind tore the sail to shreds and felled the great mast. This, Omega explained, was because the surrounding air was traveling with them, enclosed with the ship inside a globular field of force, created by changing slightly the rays of subcosmic energy which pervades all space. These rays, he further explained, were waiting to be tapped by anyone who knew how, and were available anywhere, for their penetrating power was far superior to that of ordinary cosmic rays, which became very weak on the surface of a planet possessing an atmosphere.
Nona shivered a little as the speed decreased and the ship settled gently into the water. She clung tighter to Mark’s arm.
“Cold?” he inquired.
“Scared,” she said. “We’re almost there, Mark. Oh, Mark... Let’s give it up! We’re risking a lifetime of happiness. Our lifetime. We could go to some other part of the world and live out our lives in peace. This isn’t our fight, Mark dear.”
Mark didn’t answer right away. Then he shook his head and gave her hand a reassuring pat. “We have to do this, Nona. It is our fight. There could never be any happiness for us knowing that this menace is hanging over our heads. Distance wouldn’t save us from them. No matter where we went they could find us — and fear us. And strike us down. Even if we should live out our lives undiscovered, we would know that sooner or later they would find our children and destroy them. No, we couldn’t be happy knowing that.”
Nona smiled bravely; but a tear found its way down her cheek. “You’re right of course. This is a good fight, Mark. I know that. Only do — do please be careful... I love you so terribly.”
“Poor helpless creature,” Mark said, grandly. “How I wish I might love you in return.” She pinched his arm savagely. He yelped.
Omega was regarding them with a wry grin. “Heroics!” he snorted. “But just the same, you have plenty to worry about. Those Russians are not nice boys to monkey with. But that’s your worry. I have more important things to think of. I’m going to leave you now...”
Mark was astonished. “Wait a minute, you wretched little coward. You started this, you know — you might at least hang around while I finish it. How am I ever to manage to find — them?”
“Won’t be hard. In the morning you will sight the mouth of the White Sea. Follow the eastern coast until you come to the ruins of the city of Arkhangelsk — yes, there are still some ruins visible, mainly because vegetation doesn’t flourish so well in these parts — then continue for about five miles. The coast takes a turn toward the west after you pass the city. Land when you sight a deep ravine, then follow it until you arrive at your destination.”
“But how will I know? What’s the place look like?”
“You’ll know when you get there. Good bye.”
WITH a sigh the gaunt figure of the ancient slumped and sat wearily down on a coil of rope. The original owner of the body was now in possession and evidently was bewildered. After a minute he shook his head slowly and looked up.
To Mark and Nona it was the face of a stranger who somnolently regarded them. It was the same cadaverous visage, with the same shock of white hair and snowy beard, but somehow different.
The difference, they realized, was one of expression. Gone was the look of intelligence, the twinkle that mirrored a colossal humor. There was still an illusion of wisdom, but only such wisdom as might be expected of an aged savage, steeped in the lore of a long lifetime. But steeped also in superstition.
“Great indeed are the gods!” he intoned, stumbling to his feet and heading toward his cabin. As he went they could hear him muttering: “Omega or Odin... What difference? A change of name but not of identity. There can be but one Odin!
It was a saddened, almost disheartened, pair who followed to the cabin.
“I really shouldn’t have expected him to stay,” Mark admitted. “I knew he didn’t like the job. But somehow I had come to expect that he would be there in the pinches, lending moral support, if nothing else.”
“Maybe,” Nona hesitated, and then apparently decided to hold her peace.
But Mark divined her thought. “Nothing doing. I’m going through with it anyhow. His absence makes no difference. He didn’t figure this out in the first place.”
“But you’re disappointed.”
“Of course I am. But I realize it’s not fair. After all, he merely has left me to fight my own battles. This business can have no more than an academic interest for him. And an academic interest is hardly sufficient reason to risk one’s life, is it?”
Nona looked at him with adoring eyes. “You’re defending him. Yet if the positions were reversed you would have stuck to the bitter end. You thought him a friend.”
Mark was silent. You might call it intuition, but it sounded to him altogether too much like cold logic for him to venture any more meaningless argument. He was disappointed, and had to admit it.
Morning came, clear and cold. The course was now southeast, and the shoreline was dimly discernible from starboard. They were now entering the White Sea, really an over-sized bay.
Before long the opposite coast would be visible, and they would follow its contours southward. During all these changes of direction, from northeast to east, to southeast, and finally to south, Mark noticed that the wind blew the ship continually before it, the most advantageous direction for a single squaresail.
It almost looked like one of the devious machinations of Omega. But no... Omega was gone and it was better not to think of him. He had done wonders for them already and the best thing was to be grateful for favors done rather than bitter at others undone. The favoring wind was merely a stroke of good fortune.
AS YET Mark had said nothing to Sven or any of the crew explaining the purpose of this voyage. And when he tried to think of words to tell them what they were up against, it seemed best to let the whole matter drop.
He could picture their incredulity if he should even try to tell them of the Russians and how they came to be. The thing was beyond them. He could explain by calling this expedition a crusade against malignant gods, and would be believed. But this went against the grain. He had preyed on their superstitious beliefs too much already.
But the Norsemen seemed willing to follow him without question. The fact that he knew more than they, and had a plan of action appeared to be enough for them. They went about with a grim air, obviously looking forward to some engagement in which they could avenge their lost sons and brothers and insure security for their people.
Mark remembered that he had promised them that, and felt a qualm that he might not be able to deliver when the time came. But if he failed, it would be with the knowledge that no one else would have done better when even Omega had shied clear of the undertaking.
The day was nearing its end when Mark spotted the crumbling ruins of Arkhangelsk. From that point on it was necessary to give strict attention to the shore. He posted men in the rigging as lookouts, for if the ravine described by Omega was missed in the fading light, they might have to spend half the next day retracing their course. His precaution turned out to be unnecessary. The ravine was so deeply cut that it was plainly visible from the deck.
There seemed to be nothing to do now but lie at anchor until morning. For although he was ready to disembark and follow the ravine immediately, the Vikings needed a night’s rest. It was probably better that way, anyhow, for he had no idea what lay before them, no idea what the place he sought even looked like. And it would certainly be easier to find it in daylight.
So he spent the night perfecting his plans. Nona stayed awake and occasionally — when he wasn’t busy thinking — spoke to him. She harbored a gnawing fear that they were spending their last moments together, but resolutely kept from letting him know it.
Mark had already decided that only half the ship’s company was to accompany him. Nona had fussed a good deal about coming al
ong, but Mark wouldn’t listen. “Men!” she mumbled irritably and turned away pouting.
Mark had some inkling of the perverse inclinations of the two monster-brains, and he knew how easily they could divert him from his purpose if Nona was along to divide his attention. About thirty-five men would be sufficient to manage the return voyage and warn the survivors in the town of their failure, if failure it was. And the other half would be more than enough to carry out his plan. To take more might mean a needless sacrifice.
Those to remain would be instructed to wait for two days — he had to make it that long, for he had no idea how far his quest might lead him — and then return and warn the townspeople that it would be best to leave the vicinity against the possible return of the invaders. There would be dissension, he knew, when he told the men that only half were to be given a chance for revenge, but he counted on their allegiance to him as a favored one of Thor, to see him through.
Nona put her head against his chest. “I’m sorry I was cross,” she whispered. “And please — please do come back —”
Chapter 16: Nomads and a Dragon
THE ravine wound circuitously toward the interior, and the rocky stubble which littered the ground made traveling difficult. In some distant age in the past, a fast-flowing stream had made this deep cut, strewing rocks and shale haphazardly along its bed.
So early had been their start that the party had covered several miles before the light of the sun was able to light their path. Mark noticed as they traveled, the ravine widened out and flattened.
Noon passed, still without sign that they were nearing their destination.
His companions munched the dried meats they had brought. Mark was glad he had ordered the ship to remain two days, and was wishing he had made it three. But there had been nothing in Omega’s instructions to lead him to believe the trip would be very long. Well, there was nothing to do now but push on. And if the round trip took more than two days, they could always cut across land to the Scandinavian peninsula. With luck they might arrive before the ship, which would have a much longer trip, contrary winds, and no help from Omega.
His reverie was shattered by a loud shout from one of the Norsemen. All eyes were following his outstretched hand. Coming toward them at a rapid trot were more than a score of horsemen!
Mark gasped. For these horsemen were relics of an age long dead before his birth. They were nomads such as those who rode and ravaged under the leadership of Il Khan, the Mongol chief. Conical hats, yataghans and nondescript mounts, there could be no mistaking the rovers, though their period of existence had lapsed many thousands of years past.
Yelling orders, he deployed his men in a long line against the nearest wall of the ravine. This move canceled any advantage the enemy’s horses might give them. Without any apparent plan the horsemen spread and charged. But the charge lost its force when the wall made them slow up their mounts to prevent dashing themselves to pieces against its sides. With a timing that could not have been better had it been rehearsed, each Norseman picked his adversary and attacked at the moment when the horse was partially out of control due to the change in pace.
Several yataghans found sheaths in Viking flesh in that instant of wild fighting, but the result was never in doubt.
Nomad after slant-eyed nomad was dragged from his horse and cut down by axes which seemed imbued with a desire for vengeance all their own. In a few minutes the battle was over.
The riderless horses were fleeing back in the direction where they had come from, and the Vikings were reckoning their losses.
The Norsemen suffered four casualties. Two would never fight again, and the other two had been bandaged and left in the ravine to be helped back to the ship when the party returned.
MARK was puzzled by a strange phenomenon he had noticed after the battle. He had kept his eyes on the fleeing horses until they had disappeared in the distance. But these pieces of horseflesh had disappeared long before reaching a size too small to be detected by the human eye. They had blurred and vanished while still distinctly discernible! The performance smacked of something from Omega’s bag of tricks. And so it followed that the occurrence was the work of the Russians.
Besides if the horses were flesh-and-blood imitations of the real thing — as Omega would have created — there would be no reason for going to the trouble of causing the disappearance. The Russians would have just left them to run wild. But the fact that they did disappear practically proved his forming theory.
The horses — and the nomads — were not of flesh and blood, but only hypnotic creations forced upon the minds of the Norsemen and himself. And the slain bodies of the nomads persisted because of post-hypnotic suggestion, a thing understood even in his day. The horses, no longer needed in the illusion, were allowed to vanish as if they had never existed, which indeed they hadn’t.
The question then arose as to whether an hypnotic suggestion could do bodily injury. The answer to that came just as readily. It had and therefore it could.
He remembered back before his long sleep that there were hypnotists who could render a subject totally insensible to pain, and who could even pierce the body of the subject with sharp knives and leave no sign of a wound. If this could be done by gifted mortals of his day, it was certainly logical that the terrifically powerful composite brains of the Russians could do the opposite — make wounds by hypnotic suggestion.
The fact that men had been killed and others wounded by powerful hypnotic thoughts infuriated Mark; but it did give him an idea. In the case of another encounter with these solid-seeming phantoms he might now pre-sow seeds that would prevent any more shedding of Viking blood.
“Did you notice how dull their weapons were?” he asked Sven, who was marching at his side.
“Not particularly,” Sven admitted. “Were they?”
Mark nodded.
“Yes indeed. Those men were Mongols, and I know them of old. And one thing they never have mastered is the art of sharpening steel weapons. Look at the dent in your helmet. A sharp sword would have cut it in half. And look at the wounds of Olaf and Haldar. They are shallow cuts and yet I distinctly saw the blows struck and they were powerful. Then too, for twenty mounted men to merely dispose of two of our number testifies in itself that their swords would not slice hot lard.”
THE entire band had been listening to Mark’s words and several of them examined the superficial wounds of the men mentioned, and marveled that powerful sword-cuts should be so shallow. The slight dent on Sven’s helmet — one which had really been caused by a light blow — further convinced them that Mark was right. The whole party brightened up considerably. Each man now felt equal to a thousand nomads, with steel helmets and leather jackets to protect them from the dull yataghans.
Mark’s seeds were taking better root than he had hoped. His men were now fortified with the thought that they could not be greatly hurt by the Mongols. It would take a lot of suggestion to overcome this previously implanted idea, if it came to another encounter.
Thoughts of the two who had been killed and the other two, grievously wounded, seemed not to bother them at all. If anything, the small number of the casualties strengthened the idea he had suggested. None of them was astute enough to realize that this was directly due to his quickness in placing the band so as to nullify the advantage of the horses.
He had scarcely finished congratulating himself on the success of his idea, when another shout informed him that another danger was in sight.
This time Mark laughed when be saw the sort of adversary the Russians had thrown in his path, just before them was a gradual slope, accompanied by a sharp narrowing of the ravine. At this point the rocky walls of the cut were evidently so hard that the ancient river responsible for the formation had been forced to wear a deeper path for a stretch.
And directly in the middle of this narrow stretch, completely blocking their path, was an enormous dragon! No other name could describe the creature. It had all the formidable appearance of
the imaginary figures woven into a Chinese tapestry. It breathed fire and lashed its sinuous, scale-encrusted tail.
The Vikings gazed in awe at the spectacle and then at the laughter-convulsed Mark. Here was a creation so foreign to their experience that they had no standards to judge it by. But their wise and respected leader evidently thought it a matter for hilarious levity, and accordingly they drowned their fears and tried halfheartedly to join in his mirth.
Mark controlled his spasm. This might not be a laughing matter after all. But then he mustn’t think such things or the beast would be able to hurt them. He knew — knew positively — that here was but a figment of a controlled imagination, and harmless — so long as he recognized it as such.
For the Russians had overstepped themselves this time. They had proved, by the creation of this outlandish apparition, that they were employing hypnotism and not creating material adversaries for him. Where he had been guessing — and hoping — he now knew. And the knowledge further fortified the plan he had for their destruction.
“But what is it?” queried Sven, not quite sure but what his leader might be mistaken about the innocuous character of this beast.
“That is a dragon,” explained Mark. “A fabulous, creature that never really existed. This one” — he hesitated, not eager to continue, but seeing no other way out of it — “has been placed in our path to test our courage and steadfastness of purpose. Perhaps Odin; maybe Thor; who knows? Stay here, and I shall slay the creature!”
But the creature refused to wait to be slayed. As Mark confidently strode forward, a tremendous gush of flame emerged from its nostrils!
For a second Mark was hidden from the view of the Vikings and they gasped in dismay. But the flame died away and they saw him, still advancing. What followed left them without even breath enough to gasp. For Mark raised his axe and threw it directly at the eyes of the dragon. And in the instant that the axe should have cleaved the reptilian skull, the apparition vanished!
The Best of Argosy #2 - Minions on the Moon Page 11