A grenade went off, followed by several screams and the crash of a tree going over. Then more bursts, mixed with a few single shots, a sizzling sound, the woman's voice crying out something high-pitched and incoherent, and several men shouting what must have been curses. Finally there was silence, except for the gurgling and moaning of the wounded.

A few inches at a time, Blade crept to where he could get a better view of the scene. By the time he'd finished moving, the survivors were getting themselves sorted out.

The clearing looked like a crude slaughterhouse, with hacked carcasses lying about and blood everywhere. Blade counted eight of the soldiers either dead or so mangled he hoped they were dead. Three men of the other side were also dead, and one was groaning with a bloody arm and shoulder. The woman was sprawled on her back, her clothes torn in a couple of places and her face smoke-blackened. Otherwise she seemed unhurt.

Some of the surviving soldiers were gathering up the undamaged weapons and ammunition from the bodies. Others, including the officer with the pistol, surrounded the enemy survivors. Blade saw the officer bend over the man.

«Your name?» As usual, the passage into Dimension X had altered Blade's brain so that the officer's language came to him as English.

A groan from the man.

The officer kicked the man in the ribs. He screamed.

«Your name?»

A wordless muttering. This time the officer kicked the man in the groin. He doubled up gasping, without the breath to scream.

«Your name, you filthy wild swine!»

This time the man said something Blade couldn't catch, but was obviously insulting: The officer's face twisted and turned dark. He gripped his pistol and squeezed the trigger. It was a laser, and the beam seared across the man's cheek, leaving a charred mark and destroying one eye. The officer fired several more times, until the man's face was a ruin of charred flesh and blackened bone. Then the officer signaled to one of the soldiers, who finished the man with a bayonet thrust in the ribs.

Blade found himself itching to have a gun in his hand and its sights on the officer. He'd seldom met people in any Dimension who'd so quickly convinced him he wasn't going to be on their side. He wasn't sure what side the soldiers' victims belonged to, but it had to be a better starting point for this Dimension than the soldiers!

He was considering what to do next when the problem was solved for him. One of the soldiers bent over the woman, opened his canteen, and emptied it onto her face. She twitched, gasped, choked, and tried feebly to sit up. Four other soldiers grabbed her arms and legs and began ripping off her clothes. Blade watched, disgusted but also noting strange details revealed as the woman was stripped.

Her skin was reddish-brown where it wasn't dark with smoke, dirt, and bruises. It was totally unlike the soldiers, who were mostly about Blade's complexion. Both the long hair on the woman's head and the tight triangle between her legs were white with a faint, barely visible silvery sheen.

She was long-limbed and so slender it was hard to detect the normal female curves in her body. Yet she didn't look starved or masculine. She was simply more slender than any human woman Blade had ever seen. There was an ethereal quality about her, like a fairy woman.

Then one of the soldiers jerked off the man's shirt the woman wore under her jacket, leaving her completely naked. This lifted one arm so that the hand was silhouetted in the air. Blade had a clear view of a hand with six long fingers on it, each finger with an extra joint.

Humanoid, Blade thought, but definitely not human. No question of who to help. Even if the soldiers hadn't behaved like sadistic thugs, this woman had to be helped. Blade needed to know who she was, where she came from, and what she was doing in this Dimension of otherwise normal human beings. To even ask her these questions, he'd have to get her out of the hands of the soldiers, and he couldn't see any way of doing that peacefully.

So now he knew what had to be done next. The question left was: how?

Chapter 4

Whatever Blade did, he'd have to do it quickly. He'd also have to get one of the rifles as fast as possible. The woman would probably be killed when the soldiers were finished with her, and tackling a dozen of even the clumsiest soldiers as he was would be suicide. Blade shifted to the left, where a stand of young trees offered better cover. He crawled on his belly like a snake, losing one sandal but hanging on to the pouch with the sling stones.

By the time Blade reached the trees a lively argument was going on among the soldiers. The officers wanted the woman kept alive for interrogation. Most of the soldiers wanted to pull down their pants and leap on her at once.

«We don't get one like her very often,» said one, and his comrades muttered agreement.

«All right,» the officer finally said. «If she won't talk, you can have her.» He bent over the woman, took one wrist, and twisted just hard enough to make her face contort in pain.

«Your name, mudskin bitch! And what were you doing with the woodrats, anyway?»

The woman shook her head silently. The officer repeated the questions, got more silence, and twisted her wrist hard enough to make her cry out. The attempted interrogation went on for quite a while along those lines. The officer's face slowly darkened with rage and frustration, while the woman soon lost the breath to even scream.

«Hey, leave some life in her for us, for Mork's sake!» said one of the soldiers at last. The officer shrugged and stepped back.

«Well enough. She's yours. But let's not be foolish. Shturz, Hegen, Durgo-take up a triangle with the points there.» He pointed at three soldiers, then at three points around the clearing. Blade saw that one of those points was right in front of the trees where he lay hidden, another off to his left.

The three soldiers took up their positions, while one of their comrades started opening his pants. The officer holstered his laser and stepped back. Blade crept backward until he was at the edge of the trees. Now he could no longer see the woman and the men around her clearly. He could still see both the sentry to his left and the one in front of the trees. That should be enough for now.

Blade waited, trying not to hold his breath. Then the woman screamed, the soldier on top of her gave a grunting cry, both sentries turned to watch the show, and Blade went into action.

He rose, dropping a stone into the sling and whirling it around his head faster and faster. The woman's cries drowned the hiss of the sling winding up for the throw. At the last moment the flicker of movement caught the first sentry's eye. He started to turn, Blade's arm snapped out, the stone flew from the sling and smashed into the soldier's forehead. He fell, not quite as spectacularly as Goliath, but with a satisfying thud.

As the first sentry hit the ground, Blade sprinted around the trees to attack the second. The third sentry on the far side of the clearing saw Blade and opened his mouth to shout. That was all he could do. His comrades were between him and Blade. If he'd fired at the Englishman he'd have massacred half of them.

The second sentry whirled as Blade came at him, thrusting with his bayonet. Blade sidestepped the thrust, gripped the rifle barrel with both hands, and jerked. The rifle came out of the soldier's hands like a cork out of a bottle. Blade smashed the butt into the sentry's throat, splintering the larynx into a hundred pieces. The man went over backward and writhed on the ground, hands clawing at his throat for the air it would no longer take in.

Blade threw himself on the ground almost at the foot of the dying man. He flipped off the rifle's safety and raised the muzzle, aiming well above the woman on the ground. At this range he could hardly miss such a fat target, even with an unfamiliar weapon.