She made her way over, banging first into Sylvia and then into me. I told her, “You must have very poor night vision.”
“Nonsense,” she insisted. “I can see that its nighttime as well as anybody. If we must keep on, why don’t we rope ourselves together, or at least hold hands?”
“Come on,” Chester said, “take my hand. It would further us to be farther away from that field when the UFO returns.”
“You think it’s coming back?” I asked.
“It did once. That’s not the only reason I wanted to get us away from there, but it’s a good one.”
“I’ll grant you that.”
“It would further and faster us to hold hands,” Sylvia said.
“Yes,” Chester said. “I think I’ve found a road, or at least a path.”
We walked along the Chester-found path Indian file, Chester in the lead (it was his path), holding hands and not talking. Each of us was too deep in his own thoughts and too busy trying not to trip to carry on a conversation. The first words in about half an hour came from Dorothy. “Enough,” she said.
Chester stopped. Dorothy banged into him, I bumped into Dorothy, and Sylvia walked into me. “Enough (oof) what?” he asked.
“Enough walking. Let us sit down and rest for a while. This leading and being led is very tiring.”
“All right,” Chester agreed. “Let’s get off the road a little way and sit down. We’ll take a ten-minute break.”
CHAPTER SIX
When I woke up, the sun was rising over my left arm. Over my right arm, chest and most of my back sprawled Sylvia, her eyes closed tight in sleep. Chester and Dorothy were already up and were busy setting fire to a small bunch of twigs and leaves. I rolled over carefully, so as not to wake Sylvia, and sat up. “Morning.”
“Indeed,” Chester grouched. “Any other comments or observations you’d care to make?”
“Sorry,” I said pleasantly. “I should know better than to try to talk to you before you’ve had coffee in the morning. What’s the fire for?”
“I’m planning to be rescued by a brown bear in a ranger’s cap,” Chester explained.
“We’re making coffee,” Dorothy volunteered.
“That would help,” I admitted. I got up and stretched my cramped bones. “Where did we get the coffee to make?”
“I always carry onetime cups,” Dorothy said. “When you work in a circus you travel a lot.” She finished her project of erecting a forked stick over the fire and carefully set a can of water in the fork.
“You lug around the water too?”
“I fetched the water,” Chester said. “There’s a stream down there,” he pointed, “and a pile of empty tin cans by the stream. Modern man strikes again. ‘By their works ye shall know them.’ Ancient Latin saying. The Latins were an uncivilized tribe who conquered the world but left behind no tin cans to mark their passage.”
“They would have if they’d had the cans to leave behind.”
“Cynic.”
“You’ll feel better after you’ve had your coffee.”
Dorothy opened her shoulder bag and took out four flat, round disks of paper. She squeezed the sides, and the disks popped out into plastic cups. “Can you take the can off the fire?” she asked.
“Sure,” I told her. “But I don’t know if I can pour it.” I rolled my jacket around my hands and took the can of boiling water carefully out of the fork.
“Just set it down,” Dorothy said. “Chester wanted to boil the water before we use it for sanitary reasons. The cups are self heating.”
When the tin was cool enough to pour from, Dorothy filled the cups. About five seconds later each of them was boiling again.
Sylvia sat up. “Coffee!” she said. “Is our ten-minute rest over?”
Chester groaned.
After coffee we went down to Chester’s stream to wash. It was too cold and shallow for serious bathing, but a few splashes in the face did as much as the coffee to wake me up. Then we gathered together for a council meeting.
“Well,” I said to Chester, “what next?”
“We need a plan,” he announced.
Dorothy asked, “Why?”
Chester groped in the air in front of him for words to express his thoughts. “If you’re lost in the woods and you’re not very careful to go in a straight line, you’ll go around in a big circle until you starve to death. A plan is our way of going in a straight line. Almost any plan, as long as it’s consistent.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “Pick a plan.”
“Let’s consult the I Ching for a plan. That’s what it’s best at.”
“Fine,” I agreed. “Go ahead. It’s your turn anyway.”
“What’s an Itching?” Sylvia asked.
I explained as best I could. She volunteered to give me her birth date and rising sign if it would help, and I explained some more.
Chester squatted on the earth and threw his coins. “A lot of moving lines: many changes. There. Let’s see. Ken under K’un. Fifteen: Modesty. Changing to sixty: Limitation.” He slid the tube out of his pocket and squinted toward the sun. “Yes. Well, well, well.”
“What is it?” Dorothy asked.
Chester put his viewing tube away and stood up. “We must continue, that’s all. It’s all in how you interpret it.”
“I’ll bite,” I said. “How do you interpret it?”
“Enough talk. Onward! Come on, let’s get going.”
“Okay. Okay. Don’t push.”
Dorothy strode up to Chester, who was taking the lead along the trail. “Very good,” she said. “Tell me, have you ever considered becoming a ringmaster?”
“I dreamed about Adolphus last night,” Sylvia told me. “He’s fine, and well, and we will find him.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said.
“She has this affinity,” Dorothy said. “One time she dreamed that Adolphus was badly frightened, so she woke up in a panic and ran over to the animal tent. A snake had broken loose and was in Adolphus’s stall. The poor beast was so frightened that it couldn’t even whinny. She just picked the snake up and put it back in its cage. Eight feet of python.”
We went along silently for a time, while I practiced looking at Sylvia with a new respect. Then the trail intersected an asphalt road.
“Civilization,” Chester declared.
I shrugged. “It’s just a road.”
“Yes, but there’s a tire over there. Civilization.”
“Hist!” Sylvia said. “Someone comes—I hear clinking.”
“Clinking?”
A second later I could hear the clinking. Then the clinkers came into view.
Six men in leather pants and iron suits walked around the corner.
“Spanish conquistadors!” Chester said.
“Italians,” I volunteered. “Fourteenth-century Italian knights.”
“The Queen’s Guards!” Dorothy exclaimed. “We’re home!”
“They’re not the Guards, Dorothy,” Sylvia said. “And I think they’re drunk.” They were indeed weaving and staggering down the road toward us.
“Ars grabbis!” the one in the lead shouted, seeing us. He turned back to his companions. “Leavis protamis! Hic! Yatta lo fraturntitti up.”
“Too too papilarus,” one of his companions agreed, leaning against a tree.
“Bashmire!” another exclaimed.
We stood by the side of the road, unsure whether we should stay or run, laugh or cry, as the horseless knights approached. Chester raised his hands “Welcome good friends,” he called.
“Congratulations,” I whispered out of the side of my mouth. “That’s three assumptions in as many words. I think you’ve set a record.”
“Shut up,” Chester whispered back.
“Grap fikker toom?” the lead tinman called. “Grabul fram?”
I stepped forward. “Every other Thursday,” I told him. “Except when the lead guitar is sick. Three cents a yard, wrapped.”
The six of them
clanked to a stop about ten yards away. They spent ten or fifteen seconds eyeing us the way some people look at hamburger, then went into a huddle.
“I don’t like this,” I told Chester.
“You shouldn’t have insulted them,” he said. “Girls, stand behind us.”
“How could they have been insulted if they didn’t understand what I said?”
“It’s your attitude,” Chester explained.
One of the tinmen kept breaking out of the huddle, turning around to glare at us, and then going back. I felt like the center in an unfriendly football game. Or, possibly, the ball.
There was a cracking sound behind me, and I looked around to find Dorothy trimming the twigs off a good-sized branch. “Do you know anything about quarterstaff buffeting?” she asked.
“I’ve seen Robin Hood in the movies,” I said. “And a couple of those Japanese cut-em-ups. But I’ve never tried it myself.”
“In my youth,” Dorothy said, coming alongside us with her six-foot chopstick, “I was women’s champion of New Lincolnshire.”
“Do you remember much of it?” I asked.
She glared at me. “That was four months ago.”
“Sorry. I guess I’d better do something about arming myself.” I searched around for a club. The first hunk of wood I picked up had been lying there too long; it broke in half when I lifted it. The second, a hefty three-foot section, was fresh and sturdy.
“Is that not a mite short?” Dorothy asked me.
I told her, “The Romans conquered the world with three-foot swords.”
“I presume they had edges and points,” she said.
“I’ll do my best without,” I said. “Or would you like to sharpen this?”
“Don’t fight before a battle,” Chester said firmly. “It would seem that Dorothy can take care of herself. If anything starts, watch out for Sylvia.”
“I think you missed the point of the story I told earlier,” Dorothy said. “Sylvia can take care of herself better than any of us.”
Sylvia stood, slim and defenseless, by the side of the road. I had gotten into this to take care of her and I was going to do my best. I moved over until I was between her and the opposition. She might be able to take care of herself better than any of us, but she wasn’t going to have to prove it if I could help it.
Chester stood with his hands in his pockets and looked annoyed. “I don’t think they like us,” he said.
The six of them broke off the huddle and turned to face us in squad formation. The leader, in left middle position, raised his hand. “Huggem squamish aye lipto!” he called. He pointed to the two girls. “Huggem squamish!” he repeated, making a beckoning motion. He pointed to Chester and me. “Backem rapish,” he said, with a go-away gesture.
With a further series of words and obscene gestures he indicated that he wanted the girls to do with as he and his men had read about in all those nasty books back in the barracks. Chester and I should just go away. Otherwise they’d simply kill us and take the girls anyway.
Dorothy turned her staff sideways and hefted it. The soldiers seemed to think this was very funny.
“Rape and looting,” I said to Chester. “That’s all these army types think about, rape and looting. It’s disgraceful.”
“Lack of team athletics,” Chester commented. “They ought to play more volleyball.”
“Aren’t you going to arm yourself?” I asked him.
“I am armed. Legged too, for that matter. If things look bad, remember that we can probably outrun them. They must be carrying easily thirty pounds of armor each.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” I assured him.
The troops decided that we weren’t going to leave peacefully and resigned themselves to chopping us apart. The ends each leveled pikes at us, and the rest of the line drew their swords. Three and a half feet of single-edge, badly tempered steel. They started advancing slowly, keeping in line.
“Michael,” Sylvia asked, “are they serious?”
“I would say so,” I told her. No use lying about something she’d find out in three or four minutes anyway.
“And would you say they’re trained soldiers?”
“Well, at any rate they’ve practiced a bit. Don’t worry,” I said, spreading artificial confidence, “we’ll take care of them.”
“I’m not worried,” Sylvia assured me. “I just didn’t want to hurt them if there was any chance they’d go away and leave us alone.”
“What?” I said. But I was suddenly too preoccupied to demand a further explanation of her comment. The line of tin-clad infantry broke into a trot and swept down at us.
We stood there, frozen for a long moment, and then all hell broke loose. All hell, in this case, was mostly Sylvia. I felt her hands on my shoulders, pushing up. And then her feet. And then she had launched herself at the lead soldier like a snow leopard taking a sheep.
With a startled cry, the commander brought his sword up to defend himself from this unexpected attack. Sylvia pulled knees and shoulders together into a tight, spinning ball of trained muscle and then snapped out. The commander’s sword whistled as he pulled it down to meet this new threat, but too late. With all the momentum of her leap, Sylvia’s arms and shoulders met the ground and acted as springs to transfer the energy to the other tip of her body—her legs, which with piston-like speed drove forward and up to their point of impact. Her feet met the commander’s chin with a sound like a pistol shot, and his head snapped back, instantly breaking his neck. He flew backwards and crash landed; an inert body covered with a pile of tin cans.
Sylvia sprang to her feet and stood over his body like a goddess: slim, lithe, innocent, beautiful and terrible as uncaged lightning; and there was an unholy look in her eyes.
By this time, line had met line, and the battle was engaged. One of the pikemen tried to push Dorothy aside so she wouldn’t be hurt and could be saved for later sport. With a left-hand twist of her staff she knocked the pike up, and then brought the staff under and in. It caught the pikeman right below the cuirass and drove deep into a sensitive spot. He dropped to the ground, clutching himself and gasping for breath.
A swordsman came at me, and I parried his lunge with my club. He swung a few more times, but I held him off easily. I couldn’t get at him and he seemed satisfied to stand there swinging at me. Then I realized: every time I parried his swing a chip flew off my club. In another minute he would have cut it in half; this would never do. I lunged at him, forcing him to take a step backward. He yammered some invective and changed his tactics, thrusting point-first at my chest. I just barely caught the point on my club. He pulled back, and the club was almost yanked out of my hand.
He was as startled as I was: the point of his sword had driven tightly into the club and wouldn’t pull free. “Yargha!” he yelled, jerking the sword from side to side. But now I had the advantage—for as long as that sword stayed stuck. He could only hold the sword by the hilt, but I had the leverage of the whole club. I grabbed the club at both ends and twisted. He struggled fiercely to hold on to the sword as it twisted in his hands. With a sudden heave, which cost me my balance, I yanked the sword from his grasp and fell backward. Club and sword flew over my head and into the brush. My opponent drew a long, spade-shaped dirk from its scabbard and lunged at me. I rolled and kicked, catching him across the knee, then scrambled to my feet to avoid his next rush. He didn’t make one. With his mouth opened in a vast O, and his face turned flour-white, he slowly toppled to the ground, his leg stiffly thrust before him. He was no longer aware of my presence. I had broken his kneecap, and he could think of nothing beyond his own pain.
Which, as it happens, was all right with me.
The three remaining heroes had all rushed Chester, who stood there, nonchalantly, his hands in his pockets. When the first one was about to reach him, he pulled his gas lighter out of his pocket and gushed two feet of flame from his outstretched arm. The flame formed a protective semicircle in front of him, as his hand weave
d the lighter in an intricate pattern. The three tinmen stopped, startled, and poked gingerly at the flame with their weapons.
Dorothy, swinging her staff like a great baseball bat, floored the left-most one with her first blow. Sylvia leaped on the middle one from behind and pressed her thumbs into the sides of his neck, cutting off the blood to his brain. After three seconds he dropped, unconscious.
I took one bare-handed step toward the one man left standing with no clear idea of what to do about him. He looked around and saw the four of us closing in; Chester flipping the lighter on and off like a serpent’s tongue licking in and out. After a moment’s indecision he dropped his pike, turned and fled.
Dorothy looked around at our felled foes lying silent on the ground or writhing and moaning in the grass. “Shall we,” she asked, hefting her six-foot twig, “put them out of their misery?”
“Dorothy!” Sylvia, looking very petite and innocent, sounded shocked. I remembered a quote about the female of the species, and tried to decide which of these two it most applied to.
“Let us walk, casually but rapidly, away from this scene of carnage,” Chester suggested. “After all, they may have friends.”
“Great idea,” I agreed.
We headed down the asphalt in the opposite direction from that our vanquished foe had taken.
* * * *
We had abluted at a convenient pump by an empty house, ministered as best we could to our surprisingly few bruises and scrapes, and were a few hours away from the battleground when the sound of pursuit came first to our —Sylvia’s —ears. “Quick, off the road!” she exclaimed. “A galloping beast comes behind.”
“What sort of beast?” Chester asked.
“One with hooves,” she said.
“Just one?”
By this time we could all hear it: one horse clattering toward us. We clumped together on the side of the road, figuring one horse meant one man and we could handle one man.
As the rider approached, I had a very strong sense of deja vu. A brown range pony at full gallop, carrying a lean man in tan buckskins. The rider leaning forward in his lightweight saddle, on tightly cinched stirrups, as if to urge the mount onward; reins lightly held in one hand with the other resting on the extra large saddlebags behind. I had seen this all before.
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