CHAPTER FOUR

No sooner had the blue-clad interrogator left the room than Aiken Drum was testing the wooden door, discovering that it was locked, and doing something about it.

He used the tough glassy needle of a leatherworking fid to probe the slot where the brass latch bar came through until he was able to lift a concealed pawl that was preventing the notched bar from moving. Opening the door carefully, he saw the device on the other side that activated the locking mechanism. A tiny stone from the floor served to jam it.

He pulled the door shut and went creeping down the hallway, passing other closed rooms where he assumed his comrades from Group Green were incarcerated. He wouldn’t let them out yet; not until he looked things over to see how he might take advantage of this strange situation. There was something powerful as well as peculiar at work here in the Pliocene, and it was obvious that it would take more than the simple-minded schemes of Stein and Richard to con the local yokels.

…Look out!

He darted into one of the deep window bays that overlooked the castle’s inner courtyard. Whipping out his chameleon poncho, he hunkered down in the shadows and tried to blend inconspicuously into the stone floor.

Four sturdy guardians, led by a man in blue, went dashing down the corridor in the direction from which Aiken had come. They never looked in his direction and in a moment the reason became apparent.

There was a roar of rage in the distance and a muffled crash. Heavy blows began to ring against the inner side of one of the reception room doors. Aiken peered from his alcove in time to see the group of castle lackeys cringe away from the first door at the head of the stairway. Even from his viewpoint more than ten meters away, Aiken could see the slabs of thick oak tremble from the force of rhythmic smashes.

The guardian in blue paused outside the door and fingered his torc in an agony of apprehension. The four other men gaped as their leader screeched, “You let him keep the iron axe? You stupid turds!”

“But, Master Tully, we put enough soporific in his beer to stun a mastodon!”

“But not enough to even slow down this Viking maniac, that’s obvious!” Tully hissed. The door vibrated with a particularly mighty blow and the point of Stein’s axe blade showed momentarily through broken wood before it was pulled back. “He’ll be out of there in minutes! Salim, run for Lord Creyn. We’ll need a very large gray torc. Alert Castellan Pitkin and the security squad, too. Kelolo, bring more guardians with a net. And tell Fritz to close the portcullis in case he gets away down the stairway. Hurry! If we can net this bastard as he breaks through we might just salvage this crock of shit!”

The two guardians raced off in-opposite directions. Aiken shrank back into the shadows. Good old Steinie. Somehow he’d seen through the facade of phony goodwill and decided to take direct action. Drugged beer! Good God, suppose the coffee had been doped, too? He hadn’t taken more than half a cup though. And he’d tried to play the game their way when Tully interviewed him. He felt certain he had put himself over as a potentially useful but harmless little clown-handyman. Maybe they only drugged the big, dangerous-looking types.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry up, you fools!” Tully wailed. “He’s breaking out!”

This time Aiken didn’t dare look. But he heard a triumphant bellow and a squawk of splintering wood.

“I’ll teach you to lock me in!” Stein’s voice called out “Wait till I get my hands on that little white-bellied prick who juiced my beer! Yah! Yah! Yah!”

A very tall figure dressed in scarlet and white went striding past Aiken’s refuge, trailed by a jangling squad of warriors, all human, wearing domed kettle-helmets and heavy coats of yellowish scale-armor.

“Lord Creyn!” came Tully’s voice. “I’ve sent for the net and more men… Oh, thank Tana! They’re here!”

Lying flat on the floor under the poncho, Aiken wormed over the stones until he had a good view down the corridor. Stein, yelling with each blow of the axe, had enlarged the hole in the door until it was nearly large enough to permit his escape. The people from the castle had regained their discipline with the coming of Creyn and stood waiting.

Six armored men had a strong net deployed on the floor. Two more soldiers poised on either side of the disintegrating door with dubs as thick as a man’s arm and studded with rounded metal knobs. The unarmed guardians fell back in a protective line before the towering form of Creyn.

“Hee-yah” cried Stein, kicking the last obstructing pieces of oak from the opening. His horned Viking helmet popped out for an eye-blink and then withdrew for the charge.

He emerged with a leap that carried him nearly to the opposite side of the broad corridor, beyond reach of the net and into the midst of the guardians gathered about their awesome master. Men in white flung themselves at the berserker with despairing screams. Stein hewed at them, both hands swinging the battle-axe in short vicious arcs that sheared through flesh and bone and sent pathetic severed things bouncing from walls and along the floor, fountaining crimson as they rolled. The armored soldiers clubbed at him without effect and tried to seize his arms while he kept chopping at the barrier of living and dead men separating him from Creyn. In some way, Stein knew very well who his principal enemy was.

“I’ll get you!” the Viking roared.

Creyn’s robes showed scarcely any white now. He stood impassively against the wall, fingering the golden ring about his throat. One soldier finally snatched the horned helmet from Stein’s head while another swung a club, catching the giant at the back of the neck with a force that would have crushed the bones of a less heroic vertebral column. For three long seconds, the Viking stood like a grotesque statue, his axe raised within easy striking distance of Creyn’s head. Then Stein’s fingers loosened. The weapon went tumbling down behind his back. His knees bent slowly and his head fell onto his breast as the net was belatedly flung over him.

One of the warriors drew a short bronze sword and rushed forward, eyes glittering. Before he could strike, he halted as though paralyzed. Another soldier pried the blade from his hand.

“No one is to harm this one,” the Tanu overlord said. He moved through the shambles until he could look down upon Stein’s unconscious body. Kneeling on the gory flags, Creyn held out his hand for the short sword and used it to cut the meshes covering Stein’s head. Then he took a gray metal torc from a large pouch at his belt and fitted it about the fallen rock driller’s neck.

“He is harmless now. You may remove the net. Take him to a fresh reception room and clean him up so that I may treat his wounds. He’ll be most welcome in the capital.”

Rising, Creyn beckoned for a pair of soldiers to accompany him. All three of them made bloody footprints as they walked toward Aiken’s hiding place, slowed, and stopped.

“Come out,” Creyn said.

“Oh, well!” Aiken gave him a grin as he scrambled to his feet. He flourished his hat in a mock salute and bowed from the waist. Before he realized what was happening, Creyn bent down and snapped something around his neck.

Oh, Christ, Aiken thought. Not me, too!

You are a completely different breed of cat, Aiken Drum, and bound for more sophisticated amusements than your muscular friend.

Aiken craned his head to look into the wintry eyes far above him. The Tanu’s hair that had been so sleek and shining was clotted now with the blood of men who had died defending him, died unwillingly, from the sound of their hopeless screams, freed from the symbol and source of their bondage only at the moment that Stein’s blade severed their heads from their bodies.