The Space Barbarians

by Mack Reynolds

  His voice expressing interest, Harmon said, “How do you know that under local laws the sachems have such power?”

  “What do we care? They’re kind of a chief, aren’t they? With the papers signed by one or two sachems, we can go to one of the less punctilious planets and get some military beef to back up our legal rights.”

  The skipper said heavily. “Mr. DeRudder, I can see you missed your calling. But what if we can’t find any such sachems?”

  DeRudder laughed. “In that case, Skipper, maybe well elect one or two of our own. Once the chaos starts, who can say who the legal sachems are, and who aren’t?

  “Just a minute,” Harmon said abruptly. His heavy boots sounded on the floor, as he moved rapidly across the room toward the door behind which John of the Hawks stood.

  Chapter Five

  But some instinct had warned John a split second before. He spun and scurried across the room to the door to the long hall and was through it before the other could expose him.

  In the hall, he shot his eyes up and down, having no immediate plan of action. Where would he find the Sachem of the Hawks? Obviously…

  He was saved the problem.

  Through the door to the living quarters of his family stepped DeRudder. On spotting John, he whipped his side-arm from its holster.

  “All right, boy,” he said. “Step in here.”

  John of the Hawks looked at him. “I have no fear of your weapon,” he said. “A shout and my kynsmen will be upon you.”

  “But you will be very dead by that time, boy.”

  “I am not afraid to die. I am a Hawk.”

  DeRudder hefted the gun up and down. “However, you have seen what the weapon could do. Would you expose your relatives to it?”

  John thought about that only briefly. He stepped forward. DeRudder stood to one side, the gun trained, as John entered the room where the others from Beyond were gathered.

  He stood there before them defiantly.

  DeRudder closed the door behind him and said, “The overgrown dully’s been snooping. What’ll we do with him?”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Perez said quickly. “The fat’s fixing to be in the fire before we know it.”

  The skipper looked at John, remaining seated in the same chair he had been in the day before. He said. “How much did you hear, son?”

  “Do not call me son. I am not kyn of yours.”

  “Oh, belligerent, eh? Not quite the same polite boy you were yesterday.” The skipper looked at DeRudder and then to the other two of his officers. “If you’ve got anything around here, gather it up quick. We’re going back to the Golden Hind.”

  DeRudder jerked his head at John. “What do we do with our empty friend, here?”

  The skipper considered it, his face dour. Finally he said, “Bring him along. We can use a hostage. Besides, I’d like one of them to question a little more. Half of this whole setup leaves me blank.”

  “Let’s get going,” Perez said.

  “I refuse to go with you,” John said.

  DeRudder chuckled. “Boy,” he said, “you remember the beam that came out of this gun when I shot it up into the sky? Believe me, with it, in ten minutes I can cut down this whole pint-sized village of yours.”

  The skipper said gruffly, “And it’s not the only gun we’ve got on hand, son. Come along.”

  John said, “Ten minutes is a long time. The clannsmen of Aberdeen are not slinks.”

  Harmon grunted contempt. “And they’re not in Aberdeen, either. Practically nobody but women and children are in Aberdeen. Half of your men are still out chasing Thompsons or whatever you called them. The other half have already taken off to raid another town. You Caledonians seem to spend most of your time butchering each other.”

  “So if there’s any fighting,” DeRudder said, “it’ll largely be with women and children, eh? Well, boy…”

  “I will come,” John said.

  DeRudder made a mocking gesture with the gun. “After you, John of the Hawks. Our groundcar is parked behind the building, in that area you use for your saddle animals that are in immediate use. Take us there by the shortest route. And careful, boy. The slightest trick and we unlimber our artillery and shoot our way out.”

  John didn’t know what the word “artillery” meant, but he could guess. He said stiffly, “I told you I would come. And even though you are not my clannsmen, I do not lie to you.”

  He led the way out into the long hall and down it to the entry that led to the paddock. They passed only three or four fellow residents of the Hawk community house as they went, and none of these were clannsmen. Harmon had been right. The men of the Clann Hawk were highly occupied.

  In the paddock, John’s eyes widened, whether he would or not. The vehicle there was a far cry from anything he had ever expected to see on Caledonia. It was of metal, streamlined and beautiful. There were two doors, one on each side, and several windows. There were no wheels, which mystified him.

  Perez opened one of the doors, saying, “Let’s get out of here,” although obviously that was exactly what they were already doing.

  DeRudder said to John, “Take off that belt, boy. I think we’d better relieve you of that set of toad stickers.”

  John kept his shame to himself as he turned over his claidheammor and skean.

  The skipper motioned him inside, and he entered the vehicle from Beyond and took a seat in the rear. There was seating for ten persons and ample room for luggage or whatever to the rear.

  The others got in, the officer named Harmon behind a set of bewildering dials and switches and a small wheel.

  In spite of the position he was in, John of the Hawks was fascinated.

  The others settled themselves, and Harmon dropped a lever. There was a faint hum, and John’s stomach turned over in surprised rebellion as the heavy craft lifted slightly from the ground. Harmon trod upon another gadget, and they began moving forward.

  The vehicle from Beyond progressed slowly to the entry of the paddock and then, as they entered the broad street before the longhouse of the Hawks, sped up. They headed for the Aberdeen main gate, going faster still.

  The gate was open, and as they passed through it, John could see the warder, wide eyed, staring at them. Only at the List minute did he see that John was in the craft, along with the otherworldlings.

  Once in the countryside, Harmon flicked another lever, and the craft rose another foot or two and increased speed considerably. They were now progressing as fast as any horse upon which John had ever ridden. He set his facial muscles, hating to show these others that he was amazed. And faster still, and faster. The countryside sped past in bewildering rapidity. In a matter of moments, they had covered ground that would have taken a horseman hours.

  DeRudder, who still carried his weapon in his hand, albeit loosely and nonchalantly, grinned at John. “Now if that sachem mucky-muck of yours hadn’t been so empty, we might have made a deal to turn over a few of these Goundcars in return for platinum rights,” he said. “Can you imagine the advantage of taking one of these on one of your raids?”

  John said, “Undoubtedly, the Keepers of the Faith would have decided it was against the bann.”

  The skipper said to him dourly. “Everything seems to be taboo on this damned planet. Why should repeating rifles be against the bann?”

  “That, like all banns, is in the hands of the Holy,” John said without inflection.

  “Great,” DeRudder grunted. “But somehow the Holy, by whatever name you want to call him, usually makes with his words of wisdom and his threats through the lips of some intermediary or other. Such as your Keepers of the Faith, or bedels, or whatever you call them.”

  John had never thought of that aspect, but he kept his peace.

  DeRudder said in irritation, “So what do your Keepers of the Faith teach you was the reason for a bann against rifles that shoot more than once?”

  John of the Hawks had never been particularly reverent; however, he had
done the usual amount of reading of the Holy books when he was taking such schooling as Aberdeen saw fit for its youth to assimilate.

  He said, “It is written that in the misty days, shortly after the Inverness Ark came from Beyond—”

  “The what?” the skipper said sharply. “What was the name of that ship?”

  “Ship?” John said.

  “The name of the, well, whatever it was you came in from, uh, Beyond?”

  “The Ark,” John said. “All of the people of Caledonia came in the Holy Inverness Ark.”

  “Krishna!” the skipper said. “I remember now. Possibly the first pioneer craft ever to be lost in space. Crewed largely by colonists from northern Great Britain.”

  John didn’t know what the skipper was talking about. DeRudder said, “Go on. Why the bann against gun that shoots more than once?”

  John continued. “In the misty days, there were few people in all the land, and only slowly did the first phylum multiply. And at that time it is written that there was strong bann against man raising his hand to man, even though honor was involved. All lived in peace, as all will live in peace when the Land of the Leal is achieved.”

  DeRudder said, “Great. But about the bann against repeating rifles?”

  John said, “But when the people grew so numerous that there was no longer space for all the herds or sufficient game for the hunters, then there was a meeting of the sachem fathers of each clann, and it was decided that half the people, half from each clann, would gather together and move far off to a new land. And so it was. So that now there were two phyla, rather than one. And time passed, and still the people grew in number. So both the new phyla split, and half their number moved away to new lands.”

  DeRudder was staring at him. “I’ll be damned. So finally, you spread over the whole planet, tribe by tribe, splitting as soon as there got to be so many that your primitive economies were fouled up by overpopulation.”

  John didn’t understand that. For that matter, he was largely reciting what he had always considered legend or myth, and much of it wasn’t clear to him.

  He went on, “But then, as the number of the phyla grew throughout the land, man began to ignore the original bann against raising hand against his fellowman, and the raids began. So it was that the Keepers of the Faith and the bedels gathered, and it was revealed to them by the Holy that there must be banns to control the relationship between the phyla. So it was that it was ruled that it is more glorious to count coup on man than to kill. So it was that the weapons of all were decided upon, and a carbine must fire but one shot at a time, so as to minimize the number that might be killed in a raid. All this so that the population would not be decimated.”

  Harmon said, “There’s the ship. Krishna! What’s going on?”

  They were coming in fast, and John’s eyes bugged. The craft was double the length of a longhouse and all obviously of metal. Could any clannsman swallow the nonsense that such an object could fly between the stars?

  But while he goggled at the vehicle from Beyond, the others were taking in the clannsmen who, concealed by hillocks or any other cover they could find, were firing their carbines at the huge spaceship.

  When the groundcraft approached from the rear, the startled clannsmen were up and away, scurrying for new cover, or possibly even for their horses.

  “Bruces,” John said contemptuously.

  “’What?” the skipper said.

  “Clannsmen of the Clann Bruce,” John said. “A whole clann of slinks.”

  “If that means coward,” Perez said, “I’d hate to see a hero on this damned planet. Here they are, attacking a ship with nothing but single shot rifles.”

  The skipper said, “Take her into the port, Harmon. We don’t want to get out here—there might be some of those sharpshooters still around.”

  As they got nearer to the Golden Hind they passed over several kilt clad bodies, Bruces who must have fallen in a charge on the ship.

  To John’s amazement, as they approached the rearing otherworld spaceship it seemed to grow even larger than his first estimates. In volume it was at least the size of three or four longhouses. And as they drew near, slowing now, one of the metal walls slid open, and where earlier he could have seen no indication of an entry port, now there was one and a ramp of metal to ascend to it.

  Harmon expertly jockeyed the groundcraft up the ramp, and they slid into the interior. He flicked his lift lever, and the vehicle sank to the metal flooring. Harmon stretched and yawned. “Home again,” he said sourly.

  Perez opened a door manually and stepped out. Another otherworldling came hurrying up. He was dressed as were the four who had come to Aberdeen, but there was a bandage around his head, and his arm was worn in a sling. When all, including John of the Hawks, had disembarked, the skipper scowled at the newcomer. “Where is the chief?” he growled. “What in the name of Krishna’s going on a-round here, Wylie?”

  “The engineer’s dead,” the one named Wylie said excitedly. “Where’ve you been, Skipper? All hell’s busted loose since you left. We were afraid they’d got you. T. Z. Chu’s dead too. If you hadn’t come back, we couldn’t even’ve lifted off.”

  “Dead?” Perez said in shock.

  Darting a glance at John, but then coming back to his fellows, Wylie said, “The raids started right after you left. It was the first one got us. They came charging in on horses, shooting and with these big swords, and they caught the engineer and Chu outside. I tried to come out to help, and they nicked me. Jerry and I managed to run them off with flamers, but it was too late for the chief engineer and T. Z.”

  The skipper turned coldly to John. “I thought there were three days of hospitality for traveling strangers.”

  John said, “The kilts on those clannsmen outside are those of Bruces. They are not of our phylum. You are on Aberdeen lands. We have granted you the three days of hospitality, in spite of your actions. But the Clann Bruce is not affected by the bann in this case. Do you know nothing at all of honorable usage?”

  The skipper turned from him in disgust and back to the wounded man from Beyond. “What else happened?”

  “Jerry and I have been fighting them off ever since,” the man called Wylie said. “At first we bowled them over like nothing. But they’re smarting up now. They don’t come within range of small arms or at least, not so we can see them. They just lay off and ping away at us.”

  Harmon said. “What harm can they do?”

  Wylie said to him, “Nothing, against the hull of the ship. But we can’t go out. They tried to build a big fire up against us last night. I tell you, they’re tricky.”

  John was taking all this in, without overmuch surprise. The men from Beyond were fair game for any clannsman save those from Aberdeen, and now that the three days were up, they were game for Aberdeen, too.

  The skipper grimaced. He thought about it. In irritation he snapped at DeRudder, “Put this dully in confinement somewhere, and everybody come on into the lounge.”

  DeRudder upped his weapon and motioned to John with it. “This way.”

  John preceded him down a long corridor of metal. John of the Hawks had never seen so much metal in his life. It gave him a strange feeling of being shut in, a disturbing feeling. The halls were more narrow than those of the long-houses. The ceilings were lower, and he felt as though they were squeezing him down. He wondered how long it must take to come from the Beyond to Caledonia and how the otherworldlings could bear to be confined, whatever the time involved. Did they not feel the demand to dash outside and see the sky above, the distances stretching away? It would have been a horror to him. Indeed, it was a horror even in so little a time.

  He was conducted to a small compartment—smaller even than his young man’s quarters in the longhouse—and ushered inside. The door was closed behind him, and he heard a noise that was a lock, though this he didn’t know, the institution of locked doors being unknown on Caledonia;

  And then came the most trying ordeal i
n the seventeen years of John of the Hawks. For confined though the corridor of the Golden Hind might have seemed to him, it was like all space compared to this small hold which measured little more than his height in length, breadth and depth.

  His soul screamed against his imprisonment, as that of the eagle or hawk must when encased in a space so small that it cannot spread its wings, as that of the timber wolf must when brought to the zoo from its woodland range.

  All his tendency was to beat with his fists against the metal door and scream to be released, but the pride of a score of generations of clannsmen came to his aid and preserved sanity. He refused to play the slink before these foe.

  Chapter Six

  He found some release in closing his eyes and pretending to be in his own quarters. There was a cot, much too short for him, but at least he was able to recline. And finally sleep came.

  He was awakened by a noise at the door and at first didn’t comprehend where he was, but then it came flooding back to him.

  It was DeRudder, and the other carried his weapon in hand. He said, “Come along, John, the skipper wants to talk to you.”

  John came to his feet and followed the other out into the corridor. DeRudder gestured again with the gun. “That way.”

  They proceeded down the metal hall again, to emerge at last into a fairly large compartment, large enough, at least, so that the awful feeling of confined space was not quite so bad. There were various chairs, tables and other furnishings, and the four spacemen John had originally met were augmented by two others, Wylie and another. John noted with satisfaction that the man with Wylie was also wounded. Evidently, the Clann Bruce was doing fairly well—for the Clann Bruce. John slightly altered his opinion of their fighting abilities.

  The skipper, who was seated at a table, a glass of some darkish liquid before him, said gruffly, “Sit down, John. We want to talk to you.”