A Barnstormer in Oz

by Philip José Farmer

  Blogo wiped his eyes and said, "But the joke was on me. Those clowns had barred the door on the outside when I went in. The officer tried to kill me, so, naturally, I had to defend myself. He was a big guy, almost as tall as your chin, but I broke his neck. The woman was screaming, and the soldiers on duty were coming. I couldn't get the door open, so I tore out the planks in the wall and took off.

  "If I'd been just a human, I might have gotten away with it. How could those drunks have identified me? But I stand out like a leopard among sheep, a wart on Glinda's face. I was wanted. The government had an intense desire to separate my head from my neck. Governments, you know, take everything very seriously. No sense of humor. So I wandered around in the woods, almost got eaten by a tiger, and then met Sharts..." He looked at the giant to make sure that he was concentrating inwardly, "... the Shirtless," he whispered.

  Hank hesitated, then said, "Uh, Sharts mentioned something about the Very Rare Beast. What's that?"

  Blogo's eyes widened, and he bared his teeth. He held his hot pipe by the bowl, and he said, "How'd you like this shoved all the way up to your liver?"

  "Sorry. No offense meant," Hank said.

  "Well, there's plenty taken. How'd you like to step outside and take me on? I've torn men bigger than you into little strips!"

  "That'd be stupid, no offense meant," Hank said.

  He walked away shaking his head.

  Shortly before sunset, the farmer and his son pushed a wagon into the barn. After the doors were closed, Hank, Blogo, and Sharts lay down with the weapons and Sharts's shirts on the floor of the wagon. They were covered with hay over which was piled a few layers of an early-season indigenous fruit. While the three crypto-passengers breathed through cracks in the floor, the wagon was pushed out of the barn and hitched to four of the farmer's deer. And they were on their way.

  Hank could hear the crowds on the road and the occasional talk of his compatriots walking behind the wagon. The farmers going to the big rally did not sound as happy as Erakna would have liked. There was no laughter, and there were many complaints, though he noted that no one said anything directly about the queen. Doubtless, there were spies and agents provocateur among them.

  After what seemed a long time but was probably only an hour, the wagon stopped. Hank could hear the gate guards asking the farmer some questions. Abraam said that he intended to sell the fruit to the crowd during the rally. If he did not sell all of it tonight, he would tomorrow at the market. Would the guards care to sample some of the fruit? Take some home for their families? The guards said that they would.

  Hank hoped that they wouldn't stick their spears through the fruit to find out if there was any contraband. They did not, and, after they had lightened the load somewhat, they told Abraam to go on and have a good time.

  They were within the walls and passing very slowly through noisy obviously drunken crowds. The halts were frequent. But, inside an hour, or so it seemed, the wagon halted, and Abraam knocked three times on the side of the wagon. Hank came up out of the hay and fruit like Lazarus rising from the tomb. Very stiffly and wondering, "What next?"

  It was dark, the only near light was from the windows of a few houses and a tall oil-burning lamp on a street corner half a block away. No. Blogo's lamp, held by Smiirn, was lit.

  The street was narrow and smelly, and the narrow houses were three- or four-storied and had high pointed roofs. There were no sidewalks. The house before which the wagon had halted was dark, but a stranger was talking to Smiirn and Unwaz. From what seemed to be far off came the muted surf-dash roar of a crowd.

  Shafts went up to the man in the doorway and began talking. Presently, he turned and spoke to Hank.

  "This is Audag the Limper. He says we're to go inside now, no loitering, and the wagon will be parked inside the court behind his house."

  Audag was middle-aged, thin, and had an exceptionally long and narrow face. He introduced his teen-aged son, who looked like his father but was taller.

  Abraam and his son said their farewells and wishes for the success of the raid. They would go to a relative's house for several days and then return, minus the wagon and deer, to their farm.

  The owl and Balthii settled on Hank's shoulders. He took the cloth case containing the BAR; a man carried the boxes holding the box magazines and the grenades. He went into a small unlit room with a steep staircase in front of him and a door on each side. He passed the staircase and turned to go into a doorway on its side. A wet and musky odor struck him. He sniffed. There was something familiar about it. Dead rats.

  They were in a cluttered basement which held wooden boxes of all sizes, piles of papers tied together, and broken furniture and toys. Audag and two raiders began removing the boxes stacked against the north wall. When these were out of the way, a mortared brick wall, damp and gray-streaked with some kind of lichen, was revealed.

  Audag marked an area on the wall with chalk and then indicated a sledgehammer, some wedges, picks, drills, and shovels.

  "You'll have to tear out the bricks here."

  Sharts worked at the upper level of bricks, and Blogo removed the lower level when Sharts was done. The hole revealed a solid bank of dirt.

  "It's two feet deep," Audag said. "There's another wall behind that. It was constructed that way so tapping on the wall wouldn't bring a hollow sound."

  Two men picked at and shoveled away the dirt. Sharts got impatient with what seemed to him their slowness, and he attacked the dirt facade. When it was off, another brick wall was before him. Without pausing for rest, Sharts began tearing the bricks loose from the decaying mortar. A chain of men picked up the bricks and passed them to a corner.

  Sharts, not breathing hard after his exertions, said, "We'll wait for a few minutes. The air might be bad."

  It certainly smelled dead, but it was moving. There was a means for ventilation somewhere in there.

  Sharts thrust his torch into the entrance. Hank, standing close behind him, looked within. The downward-slanting tunnel had been dug from the dirt for about sixty feet. Then it had been hewn from rock. The bricks lining the wall had given way in a few places, and dirt had poured through the gaps. But the wooden beams, though rotting, and the reinforcing steel beams, though rusty, had held.

  "It goes under the moat around the castle," Audag said.

  "I know that," Sharts growled.

  "Thanks very much for your help," Hank said to Audag. "Glinda will see to it that you get your money."

  Sharts leading, they filed into the narrow tunnel. There was just room for two pygmies to walk shoulder to shoulder, and the two giants had to stoop. They walked slowly since Sharts still did not trust the air, and he also was wary of traps. When they came to the lowest part of the tunnel, they were confronted with a black pool of water about thirty feet across. The tunnel slanted upward on the other side.

  Even as Sharts stood on the edge, the water oozed towards his feet and a few bubbles broke in the center of the blackness.

  "A day or two later," Sharts said grimly, "and the tunnel would have been filled with water."

  Hank, watching the spreading pool, thought that they would be lucky if they did not have to swim when they returned from the castle. Perhaps Sharts thought so too but did not want to discourage the others.

  Blogo was standing just in front of Hank. He carried a sword and a long dagger in sheaths attached to his belt and held a two-bladed ax with a short shaft. A knapsack contained the package of his chief's shirts. What in blue blazes were those shirts? The giant's good-luck tokens?

  Unwaz the hawk, sitting on Smiirn's shoulder, said, "What are we waiting for? This place makes me nervous."

  Sharts did not reply. He began walking into the pool and presently was up to his chin. Then the water receded as he walked on. He turned when he was out of it. Dripping, he said, "All but the Earthman will have to swim."

  "That's obvious," Balthil said. "You're very good at pointing that out. But if you think we hawks are going to get in
to the water, you are mistaken."

  "Don't try me," Sharts said. "Of course, you'll fly. But I won't guarantee what'll happen when you get over here."

  Balthii waited until the other birds had transferred from shoulder to shoulder and then flapped off from Blogo's before she flew over the water. By then Sharts had turned away and was proceeding slowly up the tunnel.

  Hank assisted each man across so that they would not go under the pool. This put him in the rear, where he stayed. It was too time-consuming and awkward for him to squeeze by all those ahead of him. Besides, he liked the idea of having the way clear if he had to turn tail and run.

  Wet to the chin, shaking with cold, he arrived at a chamber which was just big enough to hold the entire party. Sharts, the little men pressing against his back, was squatting and shoving up on a rectangular slab inset in the ceiling. The slab groaned and squeaked as it rose, but it was soon out of the floor and pushed to one side.

  Sharts stuck his head into the opening, his torch held high. "Another room," he said. "Bigger than this one." He got down on his knees, turned, and held out his clasped hands before him. One by one, the little men and hawks stood on his hands and were propelled upwards and slightly outwards. Smiirn fell back onto Sharts, and there was some screaming and cursing for a while before Smiirn went back up.

  Hank knew that he was risking Sharts's anger, but he had to speak up.

  "Don't you think that all that noise could attract attention? We'd better be very quiet from now on. Don't talk above a whisper."

  Sharts surprised Hank by apologizing. "You're right. I was stupid to yell like that. However, it did not make much difference. Smiirn was screaming."

  Smiirn muttered something. Hank was close enough to hear that Smiirn was going to put a knife into someone's heart after this was all over. Sharts and Blogo glared at him but said nothing.

  A thickly painted metal ladder led to a hole in the ceiling twenty feet above the floor. Sharts, his torch gripped by his teeth, went up the ladder rapidly even though it was not built for a man his size. He climbed through the hole and leaned out over it, the torchlight making his eyes look even weirder. "Come on up."

  The birds riding on their shoulders, the men ascended one by one. Hank found himself in another room. This had more space than the one below. It, too, was hewn out of rock except for one wall of huge blocks of dark purplish stone, the wall of the castle. They were outside its dungeons.

  This room also had another twenty-foot-high metal ladder leading into another hole in the ceiling. When they had climbed that, they were in a room which had two levels. The upper one could be reached by a ten-foot ladder. It was a narrow platform hewn out of rock, and an iron door with massive hinges and a massive bolt was set within the inside wall.

  Sharts went to the upper level and took a can of oil from his knapsack. He oiled the bolt thoroughly and then pulled it, though not without some straining. He had to stop now and then to apply more lubrication. Even so, the bolt squeaked. Having drawn that, he oiled the hinges and carefully pulled it open by a big handle. It required more oil, and it squeaked. But it came fully open.

  Sharts looked inside the doorway and signalled that the others should follow him. When Hank went through the doorway, he was at the bottom of a shaft which had been cored out of the massive stone blocks. The ladder was a series of painted metal rungs set into the stone. Hank hoped that the rungs had not rusted away, but those he could see seemed to be unaffected by the damp.

  Hank took the BAR from its case and hung it by its strap over his shoulder. He set the middle part of the torch, which had been whittled down, in his teeth. He started climbing.

  So far, their route had been exactly as described by Glinda.

  He marveled at her patience and planning. The castle was two hundred years old. Glinda must have had the tunnel and rooms prepared before the castle was built. Her agents must have taken twenty years to make this shaft. They had had to chip away very slowly and carefully not to be detected. She must always have had her agents planted in the house in the basement of which the tunnel began. They had nothing to do except pretend to be good citizens of Wugma and to wait for the day when the tunnel would be used. There must have been many generations of agents. But they would have been well paid.

  And this was the woman that the U.S. Army was tackling.

  The ladder went up and up. Finally, he pulled himself over the edge. A door in the wall only two feet from the shaft was open. Its hinges dripped oil. Hank stooped through the entrance, which was low for the pygmies. The others were in a low narrow room lit only by the torches. The fumes from the burning oil-soaked pine caught at his throat and made his eyes water.

  Blogo put his fingers to his lips when Hank entered. Sharts rose from the floor, against which he had had his ear. He stooped and gripped a ring set in the floor, and a trapdoor rose. Though its hinges had been oiled, it, too, squeaked.

  The drop to the floor below was twenty feet. The two men carrying coiled ropes over their shoulders gave them to Sharts, who tied the end of one to a hooked bolt set into the wall. This was more evidence of Glinda's planning. She had known that the room below could only be reached by a rope, and she had ordered the installation of the bolt.

  Sharts let himself down into the room by the rope. The others followed. The room was large and unwindowed, and dust was thick on the floor and the objects stored there.

  The only door was locked. Sharts produced a key from the knapsack and unlocked the door. More evidence of Glinda's foresight. She had had a duplicate made from the steward's key long ago.

  Outside the door was a long dusty drafty hall. A heavily barred window covered with dust and spiderwebs was at one end. The footprints there were half-filled with more dust.

  Smiirn sneezed, causing everybody to jump.

  "There'll be no more of that," Sharts said softly.

  They waited, hoping that no one had heard Smiirn. After a minute, Sharts led them to the stairway halfway down the hall. There was complete silence except for the shuffling of feet, someone breathing heavily, and a hawk's wings rustling.

  The stairway led to another hall the far end of which held the only torch. There were numerous comparatively fresh footprints on the dust-covered stone floor. Sharts, a loaded and cocked crossbow in one hand, peered around the corner. He signalled that they should follow him and went down another hall. Reaching another stairway, he halted.

  According to what Hank had learned from Glinda, two human guards and a falcon would be stationed at the bottom of the staircase. If anyone came in from above, and that must have seemed very unlikely to Erakna, the falcon would fly away to arouse the guards on other floors. The two men were supposed to hold any invaders until help could come. Though the two must have known they were actually sacrifices, they would not be uneasy. How could anybody come from above? The windows were few, and all were barred against hawk assassins. Nobody could climb the castle walls.

  Sharts indicated that the two men with crossbows should follow him and that two hawks should get on their shoulders. The others would appear about ten paces behind if they heard a hullabaloo. Then they would charge en masse.

  In single file, they went down the stairs. Sharts peeked around the comer. When he pulled back his head, he whispered something to the two hawks and the two men. Hank, who was standing near the top of the stairs, could not hear him.

  Sharts lifted his hand and sprang out into the hall. The two crossbowmen jumped out after him, the hawks rising from their shoulders just as they did.

  There was a spang! as the three bolts sped toward their targets. A choked-off cry.

  When Hank got to the bodies, he saw that Sharts's bolt had gone through the falcon as it lifted from its perch. A bolt had hit one guard near the spine, penetrating the chain mail and half-burying itself. Another bolt had gone through the back of the shoulder of the guard, who was lying speechless on the floor, dying of shock. Blogo cut his throat.

  Hank felt like vomiting.<
br />
  There was no noise from the well of the staircase a few feet beyond the dead. The guards below had heard nothing, Hank hoped. It could be that they had stayed silent, had sent a hawk to the guards on the floor below them, and were waiting to ambush the intruders.

  Sharts went to the bottom of the next staircase, stuck his head around the corner, and quickly withdrew it. He came back up the steps.

  "One guard's asleep. So's the hawk. Same plan. This should be like cutting through pumpkin pie." It was.

  Hank looked at his wristwatch. They had an hour before Erakna was scheduled to return to her suite two stories below. She was said to be very punctual, and she should return on time. But many things might happen to delay her.

  The change of watch would take place in an hour and fifteen minutes. There was always a danger, however, that an officer might make a surprise check on the guards. Two of Sharts's men would be stationed to kill the officer if this should happen.

  There was also the chance that some of the dwellers in the apartments on the queen's floor might come home early. The distant but unmistakable rumble of thunder came. Hank swore. If it rained or there was a storm, the rally would break up.

  Sharts, grimacing, went down the next staircase. He raced back up a minute later.

  "I almost got caught," he said. "The guards walked down the hall to look out the window, but I ducked back behind the corner just in time."

  He told the two crossbowmen and the two hawks to follow him. Hank glanced at his wristwatch as they left. It was exactly sixty-two seconds later when Sharts came back up. "Done," he said. "Now comes the hard part." The hawk there had been sleeping. Sharts had trod softly down the hall while the two guards obligingly kept their backs to him by looking out at the thunder and lightning. Sharts had cut the hawk's head off, and the two guards were dead, pierced by bolts, a second later.