Viciously he snatched his axe from its holster and leaped for the nearest warrior. The surprised soldier went down without even making an attempt to defend himself.
The next few minutes tore the silence of the night into shattered fragments. With a whirling attack that dazzled the soldiers with its speed and ferocity Mark plied his axe in a dozen directions at once. So baffling was his footwork and so vicious his handling of the axe that it was some minutes before they were able to so much as touch him with a weapon.
The first cut he received, a shallow one on the shoulder, was a poor retaliation for the seven men he had laid on the ground.
But there was one among the soldiers who evidently had more intelligence than the others. That man was their sergeant. In the hectic moments that Mark was striking down one after another of his men, he realized that unless a lucky blow brought him down, this amazing fellow might very well wipe out his whole command. The sergeant had been carefully drilled, but clearly this was no time to be too picky about regulations. Standing well back out of Mark’s darting lunges, he waited for his opportunity. It came when he saw Mark deliver a smashing blow to the man directly in front of him and then whirl to face those at his back.
In that instant the sergeant dove, catching both of Mark’s legs in his crushing embrace. Mark toppled to the ground.
Without hesitation they all jumped at the chance to climb aboard. Mark felt as if the Notre Dame eleven with a full complement of substitutes were jumping up and down on his midriff. For a few minutes Mark heaved beneath the weight of their bodies, but he became more docile when the point of a knife pricked his throat and a stern voice commanded him to be still.
The soldiers brought stout ropes and bound him. Several grumbled because they wanted to slice his throat right then and the sergeant wouldn’t let them. To the survivors fell the task of carrying Mark as well as their fallen comrades.
Mark was seething as he was carried roughly through the city streets. Like a bale of dirty laundry. Occasionally the men holding his feet would lower him enough that he bounced for several steps on the cobbles. This seemed to give them considerable satisfaction, though they stopped it when they noticed that Mark didn’t seem to be paying any attention. Even though he was in the throes of an intense rage, Mark wasn’t oblivious to his surroundings. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. And he noticed, wonderingly, that his captors weren’t carrying him in the direction of the jail.
He noticed further that none of the soldiers were familiar. They certainly weren’t of the same group that he had encountered earlier that night. For although the light had been poor, he surely would have recognized at least one of them. These men were all strangers.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked the sergeant.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” came the growled answer. Another one laughed in a sinister sort of way and Mark didn’t feel like asking any more questions for a while.
“Where did you fellows learn to tackle like that?” he inquired a little later.
The sergeant expanded. “Never learned it anywhere,” he said. “It seemed to be the only way to bring you down. When they want to promote a man to be a sergeant, they always pick the one who can figure a way to meet any circumstance.” He cast a disdainful glance at the men around him. “That’s why these nitwits aren’t sergeants. They’re only butchers, and bad ones at that.”
Mark nodded. “Your master knows men,” he observed. “Who is he?”
“Erlayok,” said the sergeant, proudly. “The greatest of them all. He’s the real boss around here.”
Mark mentally translated this into “Earl of York”, and tried to remember what he had heard of the man. Murf had informed him of the status of the various nobles with whom they would have to contend, and as he remembered, the Earl of York was the most powerful of them all. His army was the best equipped, and his lands were the richest.
And he was the most feared, for he maintained a corps of spies who kept him informed of the actions of his enemies, who were legion.
Once again since setting foot on this land of the Brish, Mark found himself spending the night in a dungeon. This time, however, he wasn’t incarcerated in an ordinary prison. His cell was one of a dozen in the lower basement of a pretentious palace. Though situated in the confines of the city of Scarbor, it was guarded and fortified with all the elaborate contrivances of a medieval castle. There was no moat, but its lack was well compensated by a high stone wall, its top patrolled by guards.
Nor was Mark left alone to utilize his strength in an effort to break out. A guard with a long, sharp-pointed pike was stationed outside his cell. At Mark’s attempt to communicate with him, he obligingly opened his mouth and displayed the place where his tongue had been torn out. Mark shuddered and held his peace.
But Mark had never been much of a hand at just sitting still. He decided to try an experiment. He grasped the bars of the door and began to exert pressure. The guard grinned at the attempt and spat contemptuously. Then he blinked and passed a hand over his eyes. The bars were slowly bending, warping the door.
Instantly the guard sprang into action. Holding his spike like a billiard cue, he jabbed at Mark’s hand. The point sunk deep in the flesh of its heel, but his amazing prisoner waved his hand in the air and resumed his prodigious labor. Frantically the guard jabbed at the knuckles. Mark, afraid that the heavy pike would break a bone, stepped back.
The bars were warped appreciably, but not nearly enough to let him through. The guard, mouthing sharp querulous sounds, stood ready to repel any further attempt. His eyes were expressing the amazement he couldn’t voice. They were glued unbelievingly on Mark’s hands, which showed no signs of a wound.
THE night wore on, Mark alert for any relaxing on the part of the guard. But that astounded individual kept rigidly prepared to use his pike on a moment’s notice. When the throbbing gongs announced the termination of curfew, the man was ready to drop from exhaustion.
Mark still watched him, sympathetically.
Shortly after curfew there was a commotion in the corridor, and a squad of soldiers made their way to Mark’s cell. They wore enameled-armor with the crest of the Earl’s private guard. Each carried a drawn sword and seemed willing, even anxious, to use it.
The face of the guard eloquently spoke his relief at getting rid of his prisoner.
The soldiers surrounded Mark and marched him away. Two of them were pointing knives directly at his throat. Word of his prowess had obviously gotten around.
The way led upward, and several flights of stairs were climbed. Each of these seemed to be of smoother material, the last flight being constructed of beautifully polished marble. The upper floors were evidently the living quarters of the earl and his retinue.
A door was opened, a corridor ornamented with carved woods and tapestries was traversed, and Mark was thrust into a richly decorated room. The soldiers stopped and stood at attention.
The room, which was furnished to a king’s taste, had one occupant, Erlayok. The man was of massive physique, layered with pounds and pounds of fat. Yet he gave an impression of having tremendous power. One could guess that some years before he had been a commanding figure. For even with all his gross bulk there was an air of proud austerity about him, demanding respect from any and all. Mark found himself studying the man carefully.
“At ease,” said the Earl. “You may go.”
A soldier in the trappings of a captain stuttered and finally found his voice. “Excellency,” he said. “This man is as dangerous as a wild boar. It would be better —”
Erlayok silenced him with a glance, a glance that had a deadly threat in it. “You would advise me?” he said, softly and slowly: “When you know that these hands have strangled even the beast of which you speak.”
The captain blanched visibly, then bowed and withdrew, his men following. A gargantuan roar of laughter tumbled from the Earl’s gaping mouth.
Mark flexed the muscles of his shoulders. The mor
e he saw of Erlayok, the less he liked him. But dislike did not breed contempt. The softness of the layers of fat was not reflected in his face, Mark noticed. The face was one of unusual hardness, an inflexible hardness that seemed to reveal the power that was inherent in the man. And it revealed intelligence as well. In the wide-spread, level eyes there was reflected a self-assured wisdom that gave Mark the impression that the man was learned beyond the average of his times. But if there was intelligence, it was a cruel intelligence, not sympathetic, not tolerant of any form of weakness.
“You are the man of whom my spies speak,” began Erlayok, contemptuously. “The man who would be king! Do you not know that we have a king, and that he is but a puppet? And that we are satisfied to have it so?”
MARK said nothing. He was meditating, trying to decide if it wouldn’t be smart to kill Erlayok while he had the chance. Mark had intended that the eventual rebellion be as bloodless as possible. His plans were already laid whereby the nobles and their families would be made useful citizens, and not slaughtered out of hand, as some of his allies favored.
But this man was undoubtedly their most dangerous foe; and to kill him now would save bloodshed later. His death would tend to cripple the nobles by removing their greatest support. And certainly this man could never be either an ornament to or a useful member of any well regulated society.
“Speak, man!” cried Erlayok, his voice rising a note.
Mark smiled disarmingly. “You seem very confident of your ability to handle me,” he observed. “Overconfidence has filled many a cemetery.”
Erlayok laughed again. Mark wondered uneasily if there might not be a touch of madness in him. His laughter had a horrible quality, a sort of bubbling, that made Mark’s ordinarily steady nerves jitter.
“How true,” agreed Erlayok, the laughter subsiding. He sobered. “And it will probably hold good in your case too.”
That about decided Mark. Erlayok was just asking for it. Killing him would not be murder. It would be only the execution of a criminal who deserved it many times over. Only five feet separated him from the hideous grossness that was the Erlayok, and Mark poised on the balls of his feet for the leap.
Then abruptly he realized that Erlayok’s eyes were beating him back! His feet were solidly on the floor and he had no will to leap.
Mark had experienced this same thing once before, but on that occasion he had been expecting it and had fought back. Now he was beaten down, his senses reeling, before he knew that he was facing a master hypnotist.
Dimly he heard the soft voice: “And you thought I was a creature of physical force only!” It mocked him, and with its dying sound he felt consciousness go.
Chapter 8: Duel of Two Centuries
WHEN he awoke he was sitting on the floor, heavy manacles and chains binding his hands and feet. Nothing else had changed. Erlayok sat motionless in his cushioned chair, his heavy chin resting on a heavy fist, and there was no other person in the room.
Mark glanced curiously at the chains and found them to be thin but strong looking. Erlayok was gazing at him, apparently with keen interest, and perhaps with even a touch of amiability.
“You can break them, I don’t doubt,” he said. “But before you could accomplish it, I would have you unconscious again. So let’s be friendly and talk. Perhaps you would like a bit of this wine?”
He gestured toward a bottle and glasses on a small table at his side. Mark shook his head. Turning on the charm, was he?
“You are a man of intelligence,” stated Erlayok. “While I held you in a trance I probed into your mind, plumbing to the earliest of your memories. I was astounded. Truly astounded. I could scarcely believe the things I found. That you have lived for many thousands of years; of this mental creature, Omega; and of your adventures in the north country. Yes, there are many things of which we must talk.”
“Why?” growled Mark, concealing his own astonishment that this man of modern Britain should possess such power.
In an age when humanity was slowly accomplishing its weary climb back to the heights it had attained in his early youth, it was almost unbelievable that there could exist a man of such mental attainment.
Yet all through history there had been evidences that here and there existed super-intelligences. Babylon, Egypt, Greece and Rome all had their oracles, their necromancers, their prophets, all men of undoubted genius. Men who had astounded the peoples of their times. And today, the phenomenon could happen again, could it not? There was no sense conjecturing. It had happened.
“Why?” repeated Erlayok, uncertainly. “But of course, I had forgotten. You are the leader of the rebels. You disapprove of our form of government. My boy, you are being silly. I see I underrated you. With some common ground upon which to meet, you and I could be of great help to each other.”
Mark thought that highly unlikely. “How?” he asked.
“First let us discuss the meeting ground,” said Erlayok, amiably. “You must know that I am a great scholar. That I have read of the troublous times in which you lived. Certain books are preserved even to this day, and others have been copied. So that scholars, such as myself, have a fair idea of how people lived. And I think that I can show you that things are not so very different right now.”
A short burst of sardonic laughter passed Mark’s lips.
“Don’t laugh too soon,” admonished Erlayok. “Of course there are no carts that roll at lightning speed without oxen or horses. Nor are there ships which sail without sails, or machines that fly in the air. But there are still taxes collected that the government may maintain public works, such as an adequate army. That is the same, and I think that is the very thing to which you object.”
“Of course I object,” Mark retorted. “The bulk of that wealth is not used for public works, but only so you can keep your power, and live in ease and luxury.”
“Not the bulk, my boy; only about the same proportion that was used for the purpose by your own governments. Didn’t the ones in power in your day divert some of the public funds to their own ends? Didn’t they invariably cause legislation to be passed which would benefit themselves? And was this practice frowned upon to the extent that people would take up arms and risk their lives to stop it?”
MARK was stumped for a minute. This wise-eyed noble had placed his finger on a sore spot. “Yes,” to that he suddenly answered. “People did rebel at times.”
“So they did. But when the rebellion was won, did conditions change? Did the new crowd conduct themselves in an exemplary manner? Or did they change things about a little, and then drift back into the old rut?”
Mark saw his argument thrown back in his face. Erlayok was right. The thing had happened many times. “But in my time people didn’t work from dawn to dusk and then half starve to death.”
“Perhaps not, but then your fine machines enabled you to produce goods in a shorter space of time. The only way to ease things today for the common herd would be to abolish our armies. And we can’t do that or our enemies would conquer us and we would be worse off than before.
“So you see that mankind’s most expensive luxury is not the ruling class, which charges enough for its services that it may live in ease and comfort, but rather its own belligerence and greed. Man’s own vices keep him slaving to satisfy them.”
“I don’t see how the expense could be so high that your people should have to work every minute of their waking hours to earn a mere existence.”
“But it is. Our armies must be large. There are the Macs on the north and the Mics to the west, besides a long coastline to defend against possible attack from your friends, the Norse. I think that just about takes care of our differences of opinion. You can readily see that any change must obviously be for the worse.”
Erlayok’s suave amiability, his utter logic, and the neatness with which he compared present-day practices with the injustices of Mark’s own time, had Mark losing ground fast. But a few of the things he had seen for himself in the past two weeks c
ame to his rescue.
“I suppose you can condone the rape of peasant girls by members of your army,” he suggested. “Or perhaps the barbaric treatment of accused prisoners, and the medieval punishments you mete out for minor offenses. Not to mention your delightful practice of torture to obtain confessions.”
ERLAYOK shrugged his massive form deprecatively. “Just standards of the times,” he said. “Deplorable, I’ll admit, but nothing can be done about it. These people are barbarians. You must have seen that.”
“How could they help but be — and nothing can be done as long as you don’t wish it,” flared Mark. “You coddle your army by letting it ride rough-shod over the rights of the very people who work to feed it. The other tear-’em-and-teach-’em stuff goes because you’re afraid that if you ever showed the velvet glove inside the steel fist you’d have a swell rebellion on your hands.”
Erlayok’s eyes hardened for the merest instant. But so flickerlingly that Mark wasn’t sure that any change had taken place.
“Tut tut,” Erlayok replied. “You are wrought up over nothing. Our people are hardy, used to long hours of labor and poor food. They don’t think anything of serving a few months imprisonment for an anti-social act. If we instituted soft punishment, crime would run wild. Punishment must be severe. We nobles are not inherently cruel. Our harshness is forced upon us.”
“I notice that you let your soldiers do pretty much as they please,” Mark pointed out.
Erlayok spread the fingers of his pudgy — but curiously powerful — hands, in a gesture meant to convey his helplessness in the matter. “Our enemies are powerful,” he said. “And it was a recognized fact even in your civilized times that the more bestial a man was, the better soldier he made.
“There was a great general called the Duke of Wellington who said that he preferred men who were bestial and unruly. He said that they made the best soldiers just because their passions were primitive and unbridled. And because they lacked imagination. Such men don’t picture their own blood wetting the battlefield. In their fighting rage they think of nothing but the damage they are going to inflict on the enemy. And so they are the more ferocious. We must have that kind of man if we are to survive, and the women know what to expect.
The Best of Argosy #6 - Minions of Mars Page 6
