The Doomfarers of Coramonde

by Brian Daley

  Gil was destroying an elephantine atrocity that had been bearing down on them, its features those of a lovely woman. It staggered and collapsed under the hail of automatic fire. Bar in hand, Springbuck pounded Gil’s shoulder and pointed out the baby wailing alone in the midst of the carnage. The American was growing sated and wanted only to leave; Woods had started the engine and they could go at any time. It made no difference; he knew that they couldn’t desert the child there. He traversed his gun to cover.

  The Prince launched himself through space, landing by the slab. The infant was not bound and he reached to take it up. A burst went over his head and he ducked, peering around for the sergeant’s target. An obscene bird-thing lay convulsed and dying, brought down in midstoop. He turned, the baby cradled in his left arm, only to find that a more frightening phantasm had come up behind him, a grinning, decaying corpse swinging a khopesh.

  Gil had fired the last of his ammo belt and was locking and loading another, unable to help. The corpse closed with the Prince, its blade whistling savagely. Hampered by his burden, he parried and cut back. Bar flashed eagerly and severed the grinning head from the spine bone, but slowed his opponent not at all. Horrified, he fought on, concentrating on the khopesh and the bleached arm which held it, and these alone. The baby was making it difficult to fight; he had to keep his torso turned awkwardly to shield it from the dead body’s attack.

  Then he heard Gil’s voice. “Get down, Springbuck, down!” He whirled and threw himself headlong, losing Bar but protecting the infant by landing on his right side and arm. He saw the corpse above him, khopesh raised in triumph for the final stroke, but it dissolved in a shower of bone fragments, rotting meat and dust as Olivier and Gil scored concurrent hits on it.

  The Prince regained his feet, tottered to the side of the APC and handed his small burden up to Olivier’s open arms. He then remembered Bar, still lying where he had dropped it, and ran back to recover it. When he had it in hand, he looked around for Yardiff Bey, thinking to settle accounts with him. His eyes fell upon the still-squirming form of Amon. Ignoring the pleas of those in the track, he ran to where the demon lay. The intense heat and brilliance hurt his eyes as he bent next of the huge Lord of that place. The wolf head had ceased howling and now regarded him with red-slitted gaze.

  “Mighty Amon,” said the Prince, “if you will but answer me one question we will leave your halls. If you will not, I’ll place another of these burning sunlets upon your breast and let it eat its way through. I know now that Strongblade is Yardiff Bey’s son. Who, then, is his daughter, his firstborn, and how may we find her?”

  The demon, even in his great suffering, barked one short laugh and answered. Springbuck backed away from him, bewildered, and walked back to Lobo, leaving the Lord of forty legions in such agony as he had not felt since that first battle against his eternal opponents. So distracted was the Prince that he did not even notice the minions of Amon, now summoning their courage and arming themselves, as the WPs were beginning to burn low. A threatening ring was slowly closing on Alpha-Nine.

  Pomorski jumped out and threw him bodily through the rear hatch, pulling it shut as the screaming slaves of Amon rushed toward them from all sides. The Nine-Mob lobbed fragmentation grenades among them and ducked. The explosions were tremendous. Metal bits flew in all directions, bouncing harmlessly off Lobo’s armor but doing fearful damage to the attackers. Smoke billowed through the chamber as broken figures crawled or expired among those already sped.

  Woods got the APC into gear, describing a tight circle, and drove at top speed, crushing anonymous obstacles beneath them as they made their way back to the black sands outside. Andre and Gabrielle joined hands and the girl went into a mystical seizure, the blue glow of power coming from her as from the filament of some strange, pulsing strobe. Of this the others saw little; the Nine-Mobsters were busy looking for pursuit and the Prince was pondering the words of Amon.

  Cold broke around them like a wave and the black sands disappeared beneath, replaced by weed-assailed cobblestones. Woods had to brake very hard indeed to keep from plowing into a wall of the castle near Erub.

  Chapter Thirteen

  If you wish to know what a man is, place him in authority.

  —Anonymous Proverb

  The baby, a beautiful little girl, was the immediate center of attention. Stories were demanded, told in confused style and received with wonder and acclaim.

  The Nine-Mob regarded Lobo ruefully: scorched, dented, gore-streaked and littered with brass casings and bits of metal linking from disintegrated ammo belts.

  They all adjourned to the main hall for a meal amid the shouts and laughter of the Erubites. Springbuck was sitting to one side, lost in thought, when Gabrielle came to him. She knelt before him, face level with his, and took his hands in hers. He guarded his expression as, smiling ever so faintly, she brought her mouth to his. Van Duyn, standing near the hearth with Andre, watched without comment and at length returned to his conversation, animation gone from him but with no other indication of the hurt he felt.

  Andre spoke to his sister for a moment as she hovered yet near the Prince, then went to where the Nine-Mob sprawled, relaxed and mellow on the floor.

  “We will be able to return you shortly before dusk,” he said.

  “What’ll you do then?” Pomorski asked.

  Andre seated himself somberly as Van Duyn joined them. The wizard said, “I have talked this over with Edward. Since the slaying of Chaffinch, many of the Erubites have come to the castle, along with a number of stray horses they recovered. We are going to take the nucleus of our school eastward over the mountains to Freegate, where the King is an acquaintance of mine and has already said that we may establish ourselves there.”

  “School?” Gil demanded, “But what about Coramonde? You gonna just leave it to Yardiff Bey? After what his men did to Erub last night and the kind of backing he had from—back there; you know—I can’t believe you’re dealing yourselves out and moving on.”

  Andre fiddled with Calundronius, now back around his neck. “The situation has changed since my last communication with the King of Freegate. Now we are certain that Yardifi Bey plans to make war on him and indeed on all the lands within his reach, one by one. But we have the Prince with us now, a viable approach to unseating Strongblade and turning out Yardiff Bey, if we can evade capture and win the factions of Coramonde to our side.”

  Gil considered this. “But what about the people you’ll be leaving behind? With a little teaching, they could start a working resistance movement. There’s all kinds of things they could do—propaganda, intelligence, sabotage and like that. Guerrilla warfare.”

  “Oh, well,” Pomorski cut in, “too bad we never got to shoot Yardiff Bey. We’d have saved Coramonde a lot of trouble.”

  “It would have been a great service,” Andre agreed. “Bey is the engineer of our present troubles. But he has his counterparts in other places; rest assured that there are replacements waiting in the wings if we eventually pull him down. We can only do, each of us, what we may.

  “But I feel that there is much that you might do, Gil MacDonald. You speak of ways of using our people here in Erub, things with which we are not conversant. Edward assures me that, though he does not agree with the war you were fighting, you have many skills and techniques which we do not know.”

  The sergeant yawned and stretched, looking to Van Duyn. He took a tug from a beer bucket as the older man spoke carefully. “I won’t argue a tired and sore point with you, MacDonald—”

  “Oh, God, no, please don’t,” Pomorski said quickly. “You’ll start him quoting the SEATO codicil again.”

  “—but,” Van Duyn plodded on, “let me ask you this: what are you going to do with that military head of yours when you get out? There isn’t any room in civilian life for you as you are now. You’ll have to do things their way or starve. And perhaps, if you feel strongly as you say, you wouldn’t find this war so very different from yours.”
<
br />   Gil rolled to his feet. “I’m going to check out the track,” he said. “I’ll be waiting for word on exactly when we can leave.”

  As they watched him go, Van Duyn took his lower lip between his teeth thoughtfully. “What kind of soldier is MacDonald?” he asked the Nine-Mob.

  Typically, it was Pomorski who answered for them. “You meet his sort more and more now in the army, a good troop who hates soldiering. He’s got it chalked up as his duty and he doesn’t kick, but he hates to take orders and I think he hates giving them, too. They lost a good candidate when he didn’t push for OCS.”

  He twisted his villainous mustache. “Take my handlebar, for instance. It’s against regs to wear it this long, but I like it this way. Mac knows it but he doesn’t care about things like that; minutiae and housework don’t interest him. He ignores it as long as he can, until our new platoon leader, a wet-eared West Point sonofabitch, calls him down about it. One thing leads to another and eventually Mac’s in front of the Old man, but he never once suggests that I cut off my broom. As far as he’s concerned, it’s mine and it isn’t hurting anyone.

  “So he ends up with his heels locked in front of Cap’n Cronkite, who’s just taken over as CO of Alpha Troop. And do you know what he says, even with this newly minted looie standing there right beside him? He says, ‘Well, sir, Pomorski’s a helluva good grenadier and ammo bumper and a pretty sharp gunner. The ’stache keeps him happy and doesn’t cost the government a red cent. I always figured that it’s more important that what a soldier shoots at get killed than what his tonsorial preferences are.’

  “So it turns out that the skipper, Captain Cronkite, feels the same way and the matter is dropped. But none of us forget it and just after that the looie refers to us as ‘that raggedy-assed Alpha-Niner mob’ and the name stuck—the Nine-Mob.

  “Anyway, MacDonald’s terribly conscientious about his job. He feels that as long as he has people under him—us—and he’s supposed to be a noncom, he should give it his best shot. He’s always trying to pick up something new, getting people to teach him what they know. He reads a lot, a bit of everything but heavy into military subjects. He never once volunteered us for anything, never tried to suck up to Command, but he’s never shirked anything either. When they give him a job he does it right down the line.

  “Oh, he’s a strange one, all right. Likes to try his hand at new things, even writes poetry occasionally; but it stinks, especially his haiku. Pretty good with the hands, too, but I gather that you’ve already found that out.”

  They talked a bit more, then Van Duyn went out to speak to Gil, who was checking oil levels in the road wheels of Alpha-Nine, digging dirt from the little glass circle at the center of each wheel with his thumbnail and frowning in concentration.

  Without preamble the older man said, “Sergeant MacDonald, I’d like you to come back to Coramonde when your time in the army is finished, or simply stay here when we send your friends back. You could be of inestimable value to our cause.”

  Gil straightened. “Look, I’ve got nothing against Springbuck. In fact, I’m certain he’d be a good King or whatever, but—”

  “You don’t understand. Springbuck’s job as Pretender and true Heir to the throne is to back our plan to institute a more equitable government in Coramonde. We are going to seek the help of other nations and factions within this realm.”

  “Van Duyn, do you know what the hell you’re talking about? Have you ever seen civil war? I’m not saying it isn’t justified here, but I hope for your sake that you realize what price innocent people will have to pay. Are you ready to provoke something like that?”

  “If my companions and I do not,” the other answered steadily, “the scenes you saw in Erub and at Amon’s mansion—oh, yes! Andre has told me!—will be repeated throughout this part of the world. Even now it will be a difficult thing to prevent.”

  “Why look at me? Why don’t you come back with us and appeal to the government for help?”

  “No, for several reasons. I cannot leave at this critical juncture, for one thing. Besides, think for a moment what would happen, even if I took time and managed to convince the right people of our situation here. The chances are that they’d either slap a security cover on the whole issue or they’d throw it up to the UN. If the latter, there’d be a land rush to get guaranteed economic and political spheres. Who’s to say Yardiff Bey wouldn’t win support for Strongblade as incumbent? Then there’d be study missions with the results digested through every committee on Capitol Hill. And in the meantime don’t you think the Vatican would be outraged to find no vestige of the Christian mythos here? That would prompt an ecumenical council to end them all. No, I have no intention of involving my old world in the problems of my new one; the contiguity effect will stay a secret if I can help it. It may be duplicated elsewhere—indeed, if the number of cosmos is infinite or near infinite, it is constantly being discovered—but I shall do all that lies in my power to keep it from the poeple and nations whom I quit when I developed it.”

  Gill shifted tactics. “How would I get back? Because I can’t just stay here. You snatched up Lobo more or less by chance, and your machine was kept in Earthfast.”

  “Yes, but the first apparatus is still at the Grossen Institute, as far as I know. And that is another worry. If anyone at the Institute should ever deduce its purpose and operation, I suppose that a gifted man or team could reconstruct my breakthrough and devise new activation components to replace the ones I removed. But you could come back by using it; I’ll give you the address of the man with whom I left the missing parts and a note of introduction.”

  Gil exploded. “You’ve got a lot of hide on you, Van Duyn. Get myself mixed up in this crazy business again, maybe on a one-way ride this time, and bring your gizmo along as a bonus? You’re insane, is what; strictly out-of-your-tree.”

  Springbuck, who had come up to listen, stepped between the two. He was more authoritative, more martially erect than he had been when Van Duyn had first met him. The past day or two had left a profound mark on him. He faced the sergeant. “I am asking you to return to help us,” he said. “And I offer you as reward anything which might lie within my suzerainty. But I do not think that, if you returned, you would do it for payment We will understand if you don’t fare again to Coramonde, but your aid would be of immense value to me and those who will stand with me.”

  Gil blew out his breath between pursed lips, long and loud. “Van Duyn.” be said at last, “get me your address book. We’ll figure out a target date for me to come back through.” To the Prince he said, “You know, it’s been said that the first guy to be King was a lucky soldier. Okay, you’ve been getting lucky lately; let’s see what happens.”

  * * * *

  They had all washed sketchily and eaten lightly. A change of clothes would have been nice, but they were used to being grubby.

  “Don’t change the settings on the programming input,” Van Duyn was saying for the fifth time. “I already know just where you’ll come through and I’m fairly sure that the time relation is on a one-to-one order, so there’ll be someone waiting to meet you.” He held in his hands a sheaf of papers covered with shorthand scratchings, product of several hours of rambling dictation by Gil with assists from the rest of the Nine-Mob on the topic of warfare with particular attention to guerrilla fighting. In a pouch at the scholar’s side were the few hand grenades they’d had left, to be kept against the sergeant’s return. Gil had vetoed the suggestion that they leave behind a few small arms, since they couldn’t foresee how badly they would need them in the war to which they were returning.

  The sergeant was nodding his acknowledgment, shrugging on his flak jacket with its rip from the cavalryman’s spear, and looked to his squadmates. “How about it? Any of you guys coming back with me?” All four answers were negative. No surprise. Olivier and Handelman are married, Pomorski’s engaged and Woods is dying to start college. They all think I’m nuts and who’s to say they’re wrong? It�
�s not all that unlikely that I’ll never get out of here again, once I come back. Stupid ass.

  He gave a wave to Andre and Gabrielle deCourteney. “You can do it, right? Send us to a few seconds before you grabbed us and a couple of yards farther back?”

  Andre waved back and nodded with a smile, but his sister merely studied the APC coolly.

  Van Duyn left the track’s side, closing the geometrical designs and lines of its runed pentacle behind him. Then they stood, Springbuck, the deCourteneys and the scholar in a circle around Lobo. Gil had an impulse to shout out, to tell them that he could not come back and not to expect him. But he was cut short as Gabrielle’s marvelous form, arms upraised, became the center of the now-familiar blue pulsations.

  Cold grayness broke around the APC again, then they were sitting in the midst of a dusty road as waves of heat rose in the searing dry season. Ahead of them another track was rumbling along as a movement stirred in the grass to the right. Then Lobo was in motion again, sent, as Andre had promised it would be, to a point several yards behind and seconds before the ambush, overlapped with itself in time.

  Gil watched the first rocket go off, saw his own crew responding out ahead of him. Woods goosed the track as he searched for the second RPG-4 man, and spotted him. The Gil MacDonald in the lead APC did not see the man in time, but his older counterpart to the rear had already been through this ambush once and was waiting when the man stood. He cut the small figure down with his first burst and killed the backup man with the AK-47. The track commander in the cupola of the other Lobo turned in confusion. Gil, knowing what a blackened, battered sight they were, raised a fist to Gil MacDonald, who returned it with a grateful grin.