by Brian Daley
Sandur was shrugging into the mail shirt now and adjusting his gorget. “But the shaman must have divined something about the crystal. He was canny enough; almost kept the lizard riders from making war on the broken cross.”
But war there had been, Crassmor knew. He’d seen furious engagements fought all across this alien terrain, overwhelming hordes of lizard riders against the destructive power of the broken-cross weapons. The army of the broken cross had wandered into the Beyonds by accident; much of it was mechanized, though much of it was horse-drawn. Its arrogant commanders had shown nothing but hostility for the envoys of the Singularity. The lizard riders had come into the Beyonds purposely to conquer the Singularity.
The Singularity had become aware of both forces groping their way through the uncertain environs of the Beyonds. It had been Sandur’s plan to set them at each other’s throats, to eliminate them both before they reached that stable island at the center of the Beyonds, the Singularity.
It had been the Outrider, with a force of the King’s-Borderers, who’d captured a small peace party of broken-cross soldiers on their way to the camp of the lizard riders, a miraculous stroke of luck. Instead of the real emissaries, Sandur had gone in, posing as a turncoat. He’d warned that the broken cross meant to war on the barbarians and asked sanctuary and rewards, pretending disaffection with his “own” side. With what he’d managed to learn from his captives, he’d made his claims seem true.
It had been a good plan, perhaps the only way to save the Singularity. By guile and force of personality and prowess at arms, Sandur had won the tentative trust of the invaders’ fearsome Warlord.
“The shaman asked to see the crystal for a moment; I dared not refuse,” Sandur explained. His cut-and-thrust broadsword was buckled around his hips now, along with his parrying dagger. He was pulling on elbow-length gauntlets banded and reinforced with metal lames. “He knew it was something mystic; he smashed it. He’d foxed me. We were alone, his only mistake.” He set his sallet helm on his head, leaving its visor up. “I knew that would bring you running, so I had no time to spare.”
Crassmor felt pride in his brother’s confidence in him, but a twinge of guilt too at how close he’d come to letting Sandur down when he’d withdrawn into the hills. Before he could, admit to that, though, Sandur went on.
“So I left Solingen in the shaman and could lay hands on no other weapon but the pistol.”
The rest Crassmor knew. “Will the broken cross now make common cause with the barbarians?”
Sandur shook his head. “There has been too much killing on both sides, too many deaths among the hordes of the barbarians, which their clansmen won’t let go unavenged. There is no trust left between those two armies.” He remounted.
“Who will win?” Crassmor wanted to know, as he followed suit.
Sandur reached out with his sword to flick aside the thorn screen. “If we are lucky, neither. I think, though, that we could handle the broken cross more easily than the savages.” He seemed distant, concerned for a moment. Crassmor hadn’t seen misgiving on his brother’s face very often; this afternoon it had been there many times.
“We are in exactly the wrong place,” Sandur went on. “This war sprawls in all directions. It’s sudden and fast-moving; I’ve never seen anything quite like it.” He almost smiled then, realizing what he’d said. “But then, you already know that.”
Indeed. Crassmor had done much dodging and hiding during his wait for his brother. There would be a great deal more of it before they could make their way back through the shifting Beyonds to the Singularity. Too, it would be across the barbarians’ type of country. Crassmor looked up at what seemed a green cloud, caught by the lowering sun, and saw that it was actually a long, cohesive drift of spores, like smoke.
“I’m in exactly the wrong place,” he seconded his brother sourly, having no taste for heroics.
Sandur laughed. “Not to my way of thinking. Or at least, not earlier this afternoon.”
That gave Crassmor a warm feeling. They’d managed to break with their pursuers, at least for the time being. Traveling at night, they might evade watching eyes, and the lizards were inclined to be less active after dark.
Crassmor pulled his scarf tighter around his face to keep out choking, windblown sand and the stench of burning vehicles and flesh. He and Sandur looked around them at the dozens of broken-cross bodies littering the battlefield.
It wasn’t the first scene of pitched combat that they’d seen. The fight here had been particularly fierce, though. And to the winners? Crassmor mulled. A few acres of alien wilderness in the Beyonds, which they promptly vacated in order to search for more enemies. He wondered if these broken-cross soldiers had even had any idea what the conflict was about.
He gave Kort a touch of his spurs to catch up with Sandur. The lathered horse quickened just as Sandur drew rein at the crest of a little hillock and stood up in his stirrups to peer through swirling sand for signs of pursuit. Crassmor pulled his scarf aside to yell over the wind, “Is there sign of them?” He reached right hand over left shoulder nervously to assure himself of Shhing at his back. His stiffened haubergeon, clogged with windblown grit, hampered him.
Sandur, squinting into the wind, shook his head, then pulled up his own scarf. “But that means nothing; this storm is little better than night.”
Crassmor nodded unhappily. The wind had kicked up all the loose sand in this part of the Beyonds; visibility varied unpredictably from near-normal to end-of-the-nose. “Still, that is not without its redeeming aspects,” Sandur finished.
“Forgive me if I’m less than cheery about it,” Crassmor grumbled.
Sandur added, “Those riding lizards lack the stamina of horses, most especially of these two beneath us. Still, Bordhall and Kort have seen hard service. Would that we had time to rest them.”
“Would that I had a more sedentary brother!” Crassmor hollered back. The Outrider guffawed.
Crassmor surveyed the scene. Metal vehicles, some of them ranging up in size to that of a small cottage, had been gathered in a hasty circle at whose center the pair had paused. Some of the machines were already partially buried by sand; smoke wafted from the interiors of several, to be pulled away quickly by the wind. Everywhere were signs of the furious hand-to-hand combat that had ended the engagement as it had the others the brothers had come across.
The lizard riders, victorious, had borne away their slain, of course. The soldiers who wore the broken cross lay on all sides, their blood blackening the sand. Various scavengers were at work; a flock of four-winged creatures had taken to the air at the Tarrants’ approach. The bodies had been stripped of jewelry and the odd decoration; the barbarians had no use for the machines or equipment of their beaten foemen.
“The same thing happened here,” Sandur concluded, sweeping his gauntleted hand at the slaughter. “The broken-cross men had their way of it—at first.” Witness to that, the ground was littered with the shining metal cylinders, large and small, from the spent rounds of the weapons of the slain. The mechanized soldiers’ equipment had finally failed, their weapons silent for lack of ammunition, their vehicles halted for want of fuel. Their supply lines had, of course, been severed when they’d wandered from their own Reality into the Beyonds. Eventually, through sheer weight of numbers and unflagging hatred, and with weapons that never needed reloading, the barbarians had annihilated them.
Sandur’s face held somber despair; Crassmor knew a current of sympathy. The Outrider wasn’t mourning the fallen, who’d had their own dreams of conquest, but rather the failure of his plan. By every sign the pair had seen over the last two days as they’d evaded elements of both armies and tried desperately to work their way back to the Singularity, the lizard riders’ host was still enormous. The barbarians were regrouping, after their extermination of the broken cross, to conquer the Singularity.
Crassmor’s troubled preoccupations with what that meant for the Home Plane was broken by his brother’s voice. “
It’s clearing.”
A pale nimbus in the sky was their first hint of sunlight that day. They could see little more than a mile across the shifting wasteland. There was no sign of the invaders.
Invaders, Crassmor thought. Wanderers into the Beyonds were almost always alone or in small groups, bewildered and disoriented. It took them time to apprehend where they were—or rather, were not. And while those who couldn’t or didn’t wish to find their way home again often made their way to Dreambourn, the Singularity’s capital, it usually took some time. The stern, well-organized lizard riders, though, promised to lose no time invading the Charmed Realm, the Home Plane—the Singularity. They warred without quarter, their numbers were vast, and they considered attrition their ally.
The way to the Singularity now lay open before them. For the hundredth time, Crassmor wondered why the diverse warriors of the Singularity hadn’t already come forth to do battle. Surely King Ironwicca must know by now that Sandur’s stratagem had failed?
“Best to rest the horses,” Sandur decided. He dismounted tiredly; they’d been in the saddle long before the uncertain daylight had come. Neither of them was certain just how long ago that had been; the passage of a day, here in the fluxes of the Beyonds, was subject to change and distortion.
Crassmor took his lower lip between his teeth, tasting grit. He was not yet an appointed knight and had taken on this duty because no one else could have done what was needed. “Do you think we’ve gotten clear, then?” he asked. “Is it safe?”
Sandur, gathering saliva only with effort, spat sand. “No, but neither is it any more dangerous. Even Kort and Bordhall must rest.”
True enough; the horses had already saved the brothers’ lives three times. When Sandur had first entered the barbarians’ camp, it had been with the knowledge that the lizard riders and their animals had developed a fondness for eating horseflesh. The practice also lessened a captive’s chances of escape, since the invaders’ riding beasts responded only to their strange control whistles. Thus, Crassmor’s role in things. Sandur’s poor saddle horse, the one on which he’d entered the camp, had been served up at a feast by the Warlord. In a way, that had been beneficial. Convinced that Sandur had no means of escape, the Warlord had been that much more inclined to believe him.
Now Crassmor felt his face flush, hoping it didn’t show under the caked sand. “I didn’t mean—”
Sandur, securing his horse’s rein at the gun carriage of a silent eighty-eight-millimeter fieldpiece, interrupted. “If you’re not disturbed at the prospect of encountering those wild men, you damned well ought to be.” He set hands at the small of his back and arched his spine. “I know I am.”
Crassmor knew his brother was being kind. He sniffed. “I am altogether disinclined to closer acquaintance with them, never doubt it!”
Sandur barked a quick laugh as Crassmor dismounted. “Father will be proud of you; no Knight of Onn would be slow to boast this deed.” Crassmor half-smiled in embarrassment; that pride was something he very much desired.
The warmth he felt for his brother seemed to Crassmor a strange thing here in this laager of the dead. He wondered again who these men had been, whence they’d come, what their Reality had been like. The wind broke his thoughts with its susurrus, the sand with its hiss. His gaze went back to the open stretch they’d put behind them. Cold compressed his middle.
He spoke as calmly as he could, determined that the Outrider would hear no quaver in his voice. “There; they come.”
Chapter 2
IN FLIGHT
Sandur whirled where he stood, having been studying the terrain ahead. A sizable war party was racing directly toward them. The barbarians themselves were difficult to discern well at this distance, but the darting gait of the big riding lizards was unmistakable. “Those beasts probably have our scent by now,” he told his brother.
“That’s all of us they’re going to get.” Crassmor frowned, less confident than he sounded. Kort and Bordhall were possessed of remarkable strength bred into them by Combard of Tarrant; on the other hand, the lizard cavalry looked fresh.
Sandur slapped Crassmor’s back and vaulted into the saddle. “Come! This will take a bit of doing. We’d best be at it.” Bordhall, sensing what was to come, made a little caracole.
Crassmor resumed his saddle with less animation, aware that he was not as confident or bold, that he wasn’t the Outrider. A last look back told him that the lizard riders were looming larger already. Their mounts’ squat legs carried them along at good speed, the clawed feet throwing up sand. With tongue clicks, spurs, and reins, the brothers quickly got their horses moving.
My first deed of errantry, Crassmor mused, and my last as well? This derring-do is even less appealing than I’d thought. If he’d said it aloud, he knew, Sandur would have instructed him sharply to keep his mind on his riding. This he did anyway.
Bordhall and Kort galloped hard, necks straining, performing as no other horses could have after the exertions of the past two days. Crassmor bent low over Kort’s neck, his stomach hard against the saddle’s high pommel, and stayed well up behind his brother. Thoughts came to him unbidden.
Combard had been absolutely opposed to Sandur’s plan and had spoken harsh words against Crassmor’s proposed participation. That had to do with the old man’s lack of faith in his younger son’s martial spirit. Too, there had been Crassmor’s adolescent irresponsibility, with a period of fairly frequent peccadilloes and predisposition toward sins of the flesh. Combard hadn’t forgiven those or been prepared to recognize that Crassmor’s devotion to Sandur outweighed all else. In the end, it had been Combard’s deep love for his first-born son that had changed the old man’s mind. That Sandur would try his plan, entering the barbarian camp, was certain; Ironwicca, the King, had set him the task when Sandur had proposed it.
And, should the Outrider’s life depend on the endurance and speed of a contingency horse, it wouldn’t do, in Combard’s mind, for that horse to be any but Kort or Bordhall. Reluctantly, Combard accepted; Crassmor had gone into the Beyonds.
Bit by bit, after Sandur’s escape, the two had worked their way around the huge clash of savages and mechanized army, to discover that the plan had failed. The lizard riders had slaughtered the broken-cross soldiers and were ready to advance once more.
The sand had closed in again. The brothers pounded along, listening to their horses blow for breath. They came to the top of a long, gradual slope. Sandur drew rein, scanning, squinting. “That way!” His muffled voice came as he pointed off to the right.
Crassmor never questioned his brother’s decisions, least of all in matters of action. Anyone native to the Singularity had a certain sense for access routes to it and its location relative to the Beyonds. The Outrider’s was more acute than most, though, his ties to their homeland more reliable. The horses blew foam from their lips. “Wish you’d stayed home?” Sandur asked.
“Wish the lizard riders had!” Crassmor countered. His reward was Sandur’s full laugh behind the scarf; it was enough. They set off again.
Without warning the turbulent sand parted before them. They were confronted with lizard hide, with exotic barbarian ornamentation and riding tack, with glittering reptilian fangs, and most of all with bright, wavy-bladed weapons. It seemed to Crassmor that the world was suddenly filled with bloodthirsty, heavily armed savages.
There were, in reality, only three men in the patrol that had happened across them. Before the barbarians, who were as startled as the two brothers, could react, Sandur had swept out his broadsword and ridden in at them, whirling the blade, whooping through the scarf.
There! There is the difference between us, nothing I’ll ever change, Crassmor thought. Teeth on edge, scalp prickling, he wished there were some other way out. No use looking for a line of least resistance, though, he saw; Sandur was already in the thick of things. Crassmor reached his right hand up over his left shoulder, drew Shhing, and went in after.
The first barbarian wore an
amber gem clipped to each nostril, a choker made of fangs, and a helm of enameled leather and ivory. He was bringing his lance into line while his red and gray mount hissed and showed a red, forked tongue. The lance was studded with glass beads and decorated with colorful plumes which the wind tugged. Twin prongs glittered cruelly as Sandur set on the man. The barbarian’s face still held a look of surprise.
The broadsword chopped; the two-pronged lance head went flying, severed from its shaft. Sandur turned the same slash into a backhand and hacked with that amazing strength that had seen him through so many duels. The lizard rider yelped, parried—barely—with the remainder of his lance, then threw himself back for his life. The slash only opened a line of wound across his chest, parting a strap of his bejeweled war harness. He was all but unmounted.
Sandur laughed his wildest laugh, then batted his opponent with the flat of his blade, a kind of generosity in the heat of battle that was characteristic of him and always astounded Crassmor. The barbarian howled as he was thwacked in the helm, bits of ivory flying from it; he tumbled out of his lizard-hide saddle as if hit by lightning.
Horses and lizards hissed, kicked, snapped, and feinted. The two species hated one another even more than did their respective riders. The other two barbarians were closing on Sandur, having overcome their surprise. He turned to engage the closest, mindful to keep that one between himself and the next. The fighting had begun so suddenly that the barbarians had lacked any time to pipe their mounts into suitable battle frenzy with their control whistles. Now that the two brothers were upon them, the lizard riders had no thought for anything but combat, compelled to direct their mounts with spurs and lip reins alone.
With the second lizard rider, there was no question of cleaving a lance shaft. Sandur charged, trusting to his own prowess for timing. The barbarian wore a headpiece shaped like a bird of prey and his face was a swirl of tattoos. The lance head eluded Sandur’s shield, but the knight’s broadsword hilt came up between its needle-sharp tines. It was an awkward parry for the horseman; the lizard rider could exert considerably more leverage.