Camelot in Orbit Page 2

  And so he remained throughout the meal-raptly listening to some strange and distant drum.

  To compound the problem further, Hooli, for whatever his reasons, had tossed a cosmic wrench into my communications mechanism; this prior to his disappearance. The result? I no longer knew if I could even contact the Deneb-3. They were in orbit. I knew that.

  But I’d tried and failed. For this reason I’d deprived myself of “null” protection (a negation of all gravitational-magnetic lines of force), in the hope that they’d ignore the rules and contact me. In effect, whenever “null” was off all circuits were open….

  I sighed, turned to Rawl. But Hooli had suddenly glanced back to me so that I could see his runny nose and shoebutton eyes. An almost subliminal four-color print was instantly etched upon the retinal optics of my brain. It was of Hooli-dressed in a centuries-old, Terran, British admiral’s cap and sword. He had a patch over one eye; one arm was missing, and the hand of the other grasped the rail of a certain well-known flagship. Need I add that the bombs bursting in air all around him were in the best tradition of a place called “Trafalgar”?

  The scene’s duration was accompanied by a voice inside my head-mine, of course; his way of communicating. It sounded as if it came from the deepest pits of Terra’s mythical “hell.”

  “Beware the jabberwock, Buby!” The words were sepulchral-deliberately designed to startle-“The jaws that bite; the claws that catch!”

  And that was it. A single second of Hooli’s nonsense. Or was it Hooli? I shook my head, gasped and drew a deep breath. I then quick-focused my contacts to six mags so that I was nose to nose with the little bastard. I searched his face. No light shone from those flat little eyes. There was no saucy wink, no hasty thumb-to-nose. For Hooli, my only ally, brains-wise, was definitely not in residence.

  Dark were the fulsome clouds as we rode out; dark, too, were my thoughts. Rawl strummed his magick lute-each note perfection. He sang amusing porno-ditties whilst the rest of us, my student-warriors, Charney, Tober, and Hargis, together with the boisterous Lord Hoggle-Fitz and the master swordsman, Griswall, joined in-as did Gen-Soolis, who rode to my left, and his two swordsmen, who brought up the rear.

  Aside from the Kaleen’s magick, I’d trust my mini-entourage against all the fiends of Camelot’s ghost, such was their prowess. Breen Hoggle-Fitz was a middle-aged giant of a man who loved nothing better than a fight before each meal and one before bedtime. He was honest, loyal, brave-beyond the meaning of the words. He was also, paradoxically, both brilliant and stupid. The dour Griswall, short, stocky, terrible in his strength, had the singular reputation of having killed three hundred men. A previous commander of the King’s Guard, he now trained the young warriors assigned to my service. I welcomed his courage and his level head-an attribute too often lacking in Fregisians. My students were what they were, survivors of battles-brave, skillful, smart. As for Rawl, my happy lute player, were he pitted against me, and were I deprived of my “edge” of superior strength-I’d be a dead man….

  And Sir Soolis? Well, he was young, a good warrior, loyal to the king, and until quite recently a friendly sort who on one occasion had shared a cup with Rawl and me. But three days ago he’d challenged me to a run of the lance, which was not unusual, excepting that in no way was he in my class. For his honor’s sake I’d thought to do him easy. But he’d ridden at me, Kaleen possessed-to kill me if he could. I’d caught him square on shield’s center, sent him a full forty feet beyond his dottle’s charging rump-and straight to bed for a good two days to ease the pain of his landing.

  This morning he’d come again, all smiles; the madness lurking still, but in a way that only I could tell…A gerd, he’d told me lightly, had been spotted by a retainer of his. ‘Twas a young one. He’d make it a gift to me if we could capture it; this, for his folly and to show he bore no grudge. The “games-plan” was obviously to incite my interest so I would go where he would lead. The Dark One seemed never to know that I could see his presence in the eyes of his captive hosts, he was that stupid, or that alien to Camelot’s reality.

  A gerd-mount in battle, as opposed to a dottle, is every warrior’s dream. Hoggle had owned one, and oft boasted of its courage. So here we were, gerd hunting; my comrades for the chase, myself to find through Gen-Soolis where the Kaleen would lead me. I doubted much there’d be a gerd there. Most likely there’d be a dark and cowled wizard.

  We passed through the cobbled streets of the steelpoint, snow-bound castle city of Glagmaron, and out to the forest-girt fields to the north and west. We crossed the sinuous, winding Cyr River three times ere we reached the great woods wherein the gerd was supposed to be. The threat of more snow became fact. Now, however, it was still intermittent, coming in gusts and random puffs of cotton flakes. The temperature fell ever lower so that our dottles, with their thick winter fur, fairly pranced their joy at the freshness of it all.

  But we found no gerd, nor even the presence of one. Had we done so the dottles would have smelled him-and moaned their terror. For a gerd is to a dottle as is a Terran wolf to a sheep dog-mortal enemies. A gentle dottle, who is at best but two-thirds the size of a gerd, will run his fat legs off to escape one. Moreover, when a gerd is actually found, the “hunt” is done by man-on foot!

  Still we searched, shouted, blew our horns through bush, conifer, and ghostly stands of bare-limbed hardwoods, and plunged into deep drifts and against the whipping slash of branches and thorn-bracken.’

  “By the gods, Sir Collin,” Gen-Soolls finally cried-and his chagrin seemed almost real-“I’ll ask your pardon, sir. I should have brought the lad as guide. ‘Tis that I’d thought I’d placed the site of the beast so solid in my mind.”

  I felt almost sorry for him. The act of possession, of control from so far a distance-Hish and Kaleen’s dark Omnian capital, was a full eight thousand miles-waned and glowed, depending upon the degree of the Kaleen’s attention, Poor Soolis was but a single pawn, in a horde of pawns; just as I was but a single enemy which he had now, perforce, to reckon with.

  “A gerd’s a gerd,” I yelled in answer, above the clatter of a fall of great icicles which I had knocked from a branch. “If he’s here at all, he’ll be here tomorrow too. Let’s to home!”

  But I wondered, had something gone wrong? Had he failed the liaison the Kaleen had prepared for him? For the briefest of seconds I questioned my own thinking. Mayhap it was all but a creeping paranoia, with the “reappearance” of Hooli as a part of the madness. But the thought was negative. Hooli was real-if for no other reason than the eye-patch and the admiral’s cap.

  We forced our way out of a copse of trees and on to the brow of a hillock where we surveyed the terrain to the west. Great Fomalhaut was now low on the horizon; for though it was still mid-afternoon, it was also winter….

  Our Lord Hoggle-Fitz, his great bulk wrapped to the ears in furs, his bulbous eyes watering in the frozen air, said sharply, “Our Collin’s right. Let’s to hearth and sup, sirs. The more so, me, for I’ve work to do. I’ve to compose a ten-part prayer,” he pompously confessed, “to our sweet gods, Ormon, Wimbily, and precious Harris-for the Queen’s feast day.”

  Hoggle, though a stout sword in melee or onset, and lovable too, was also a one-of-a-kind “grand original.” He was that Camelotian-Fregisian rarity, the religious fanatic-and this in a land of a non-proliferation of deities.

  Sir Fergis, glancing to me, raised tired eyebrows. He said softly, “I agree. Let’s to home, Collin. Such piety must be served.” His dottle Kaati, stomped and whoooed an affirmative.

  But our young Lord Gen-Soolis who’d been staring silently to the depths of two ravines leading off from the hill’s slopes, said loudly, “Hold! For by the gods I swear I can smell the bastard where these miserable mounts of ours do not! I’ll tell you now. He’s in one of those gulleys!”

  The bald-faced lie evoked instant frowns from all my stalwarts. Dour Griswall grunted, spat.

  My students laughed. But I looked to Gen
-Soolis’ eyes; saw instantly what I’d expected to see. He was full-possessed! The eyes, no longer purpleblue, were hellish black. Black as the roiling clouds that seemed suddenly to press round us; to be joined by a roaring thunder-quite alien to snowstorms.

  A faint, electrifying tingle touched on us too; a final proof of the Dark One’s presence.

  I looked to the others, saw their startled glances, hands reaching to sword hafts. I quick pressed the “null” stone at my belt; extended protection to its full radius of a mile. There’d be no Kaleen seizures here! A thread he had to our sad Soolis, and perhaps to his swordsmen too; most certainly to whatever awaited us below-but not to us. I’d see to that!

  All eyes had switched to Soolis. Had I so much as whistled, he’d have been carved into so many pieces. But my sole purpose in being here was to meet with whatever the Kaleen had conjured up-and best it-as proof to the Court of the Dark One’s return.

  So I dug my spurs into fat Henery’s belly and reined him tight so that his forelegs pawed the air. While he wheeled in protest, I whirled him wildly, shouting to Rawl: “Follow me on, sir! This Kaleen’s bastard has a penchant for yon south ravine! And do you,” I yelled to Hoggle and Griswall, “take the north gulley. But be warned of this traitor’s tricks, for ‘twill be no gerd that you’ll come upon!”

  I led off instantly, giving them no time to talk. Shield to the fore and with the long, venom-tipped lance to my right hand-gerds must be tranquilized for capture-I rode hard down the south fork. Rawl was to my immediate rear. The mad Gen-Soolis and his men stormed after us. Behind on the slow wind, I heard the thunder of paws above Hoggle’s shouted orders….

  For seconds we plunged down what seemed a shallow ledge. It widened quickly, but

  ‘twas still a ledge. Below, at some fifteen feet, was the parallel sloping floor of the ravine itself. Brush grew from its sides. Its sandy bottom-it was a dry-wash, actually-was covered by a foot of snow.

  We rounded a sudden bend. ‘Twas at that point that Henery stopped; but he didn’t just stop! All six great paws skidded, clung suddenly, desperately to the frozen earth for purchase, while the fur all round his body stood out in magnetized rigidity, a spine-chilling adjunct to his scream of total terror.

  He had reason to scream. I confess it now that my own hair, from nape to crown actually gripped my skull with a tightness to bulge my eyes. For there in all its ghastly horror, and at a distance of less than sixty feet-was the jabberwock!

  Poor Henery, his great body trembling with an uncontrollable fear, sank to the knees of his last two pair of legs while he tried desperately to hide his head between his front paws. I thought he’d surely die of fright right then and there.

  I’d flung myself instantly from the saddle; shield cast aside, I seized my greatsword in my left hand whilst keeping my lance in my right. Rawl repeated my every move, leaving his whoooing, moaning Kaati, to join me at the lip of the ledge.

  The horror below was a full fifteen feet in width, twenty-five in length, and perhaps eight in height. It had four horned and segmented legs on either side and a monstrous curled stinger to its rear-which I judged for a length of thirty feet or more. Two great clawed appendages were to the front, as were a dual set of frightful mandibles ‘neath a ring of eyes on what I presumed was its head. Ghastly chitinous hairs-they were antennae, really-stuck out from all its body. It was both arachnid and scorpion; truly the stuff of nightmares…

  Rawl coughed. I knew instinctively that he fought for speech ‘gainst the tightness of his throat. He was crouched to my left, his weapons pointed. He managed hoarsely: “There lies our death, Sir Lenti. For by the gods, when that thing moves he’ll cover a hundred yards in a single second.”

  “Indeed,” I said, and my throat, too, was dry, a grating rasp. “But why then does it sit there? Surely it sees us?”

  “Fear not Collin!” a voice screamed maniacally to my rear, “It sees you! ‘Tis your gerd, my lord! ‘Tis your new mount, oh greatest of swordsmen!”

  A quick glance to my rear revealed Gen-Soolis, dancing and writhing in ecstasy-or agony. He seemed now as some true fiend. His eyes, all bleeding, protruded from their sockets. His face worked, the features twisting the very flesh from off his skull. Blood from burst vessels streamed from his nose and ears. His very spittle was a spindrift froth about his face. He stood some fifteen feet from us. Behind him were his two attendants, mad too, but not so much as he.

  Rawl yelled, “Quick, Collin. It moves!”

  I turned again to the monster. And as I did so that other, pitiful monster, my Lord of Breese, catapulted his body toward me; his arms outstretched to shove me to the creature’s grasp. “Ride your gerd!” His bloodied throat screamed out the words. “Ride it, savior! Ride it, Collin!”

  With a “controlled person,” however, there is always that extra second ‘twixt the thought of the possessor and the act of the host…. I had time to step aside and to put out a foot so that the Dark One’s surrogate went tumbling through the frigid air to land within twenty feet of those dread mandibles.

  We watched, fixed hard on the scene before us. The creature’d obviously seen him coming. But its reflexes were unnatural, slow. Its great claws moved as if in some deep and viscous fluid. Its segmented tail with the deadly sting came up and over its back in slow motion. Still it struck-to literally pin poor Soolis to the ground. He’d turned in the air in his tumbling so that he’d landed, feet toward the monster. With the sting through his back he still tried to raise himself on his two hands. His mouth was a gaping horror. The cords of his neck were as two cables. And thus he died-from the sting’s venom, or the strike itself, and I know not which.

  Screams from our rear then caused us both to look back-to Gen-Soolis’ two charging swordsmen. We’d no desire to kill them, but we had no choice. With my left hand I brought my greatsword round to cut through the swordarm, ribcage, and heart of the man nearest me. Rawl took the head of his attacker and kicked the body to the ravine’s floor Still the thing below had not really moved. Moreover, it seemed hard-pressed, barely able even to withdraw its sting. Something was quite definitely wrong with the Dark One’s “emissary.” By the gods, I thought, could it be that? And then I began a silent laugh inside my head. The Great Sorcerer, as he was oft’ referred to by Fregisians, had failed again. Detail was never his forte; indeed, ‘twas beneath him. So in his arrogance he’d not thought his problem through.

  I remembered the monster now, for I’d scanned it as I’d scanned all life forms and all terrain prior to planetfall. It was a meeeg, indigenous to the tropical swamplands of Kerch.

  And Rawl had been right! It could run, or leap, a hundred yards in a single second-in the swamplands of Kerch, that is. In Marack, in the dead of winter, and with the temperature at minus zero, it couldn’t run, or leap, two inches. Indeed, since it was cold blooded, any movement at all, now, was a bloody damned miracle. I wondered just how long since the Kaleen had put it there. What an anomaly: the science for a matter-to-energy conversion-and back again-and then such lack of foresight.

  “Rawl,” I said softly, happily-But he interrupted, saying, “Collin,” and his voice held a hollow sadness, “you’ve been right all along. The Dark One’s here; in that thing. Now allow me, my lord, to a first attempt at tickling its guts with my lance. If I win, I’ve gained the honor-and you’ve not been risked. If I lose-well, you’re the ‘Collin,’ sir; ‘twill be your problem then…

  He had not the knowledge I had-only the courage he’d been born with. I put a hand to his sword arm. “Nay, comrade. There’s no need. We’ve already won. A few more minutes and the damn thing’s dead, frozen stiff. The Kaleen’s brains have in no way matched his magick. Score one for Marack!”

  I then began to laugh, hysterically, in relief. Rawl looked to me in awe, then to the meeeg, until he too began to laugh. Soon we were embracing and pounding each other’s backs. We even did a little dance on the icy ledge in our joy at the Kaleen’s stupidity. For make no mistake, had that t
hing possessed its potential, the both of us would have been dead, our fluids sucked, our bodies rent. Of all life on Camelot-Fregis, only the great Vunn, and one other, so I’m told, can withstand the ferocity of the meeeg.

  Finally, because we were warriors, we could resist temptation no longer. We slipped down from the ledge and approached the monster cautiously.

  A single claw stirred and rose, upon which, with my greatsword in both hands, I hacked it off. The stinger came over its ghastly head again-but oh, so slowly. Rawl leapt, and slashed it off. In his exuberance he climbed up a horned leg and sought to plunge his sword through the carapace of its great back. It was much too hard. But he needn’t have bothered.

  I’d moved to within a yard of the dread mandibles and the ring of ebon eyes-and watched them die, one by one, as the thing itself died.

  He climbed down and we stood together staring ‘til we heard a halooing from the head of the gulley. Rawl answered quickly with his horn…. Dead or alive, however, the horror of the creature would still be too much for the dottles of our companions, so we climbed again to the ledge to lead poor trembling Henery and the equally shaking Kaati to meet them on the trail.

  Once round the bend we risked death again from Hoggle-Fitz who, with reins to saddlehom, and with sword and lance to either hand, came on in such a storm as to almost ride us down. “By Ormon’s love, Collin,” he roared, catching himself at the last moment, and bringing his mount to whoooo and to raise its great forepaws, “what’s a’foot? There’s a stench to the air, sir, that has not at all to do with gerds.”

  I simply said, “Dismount and come with us.” They did and we showed them the meeeg. They gasped, shuddered, and shook their heads accordingly, for no one in all the north had ever seen such a horror. While Tober hacked off a claw for the Privy Council to ponder, I told them of the Dark One’s error-how he’d sent a thing through space and time (his magick), which on its own would die of cold in a single hour, and had done just that. I explained too of the possession of the Lord of Bleese and of his two swordsmen.