The Fallable Fiend

by L. Sprague DeCamp

  To the rear of the cave, dimly illumined, stood a stone statue, twice the size of a man. It appeared to have been sculptured from a big stalagmite. It had holes for eyes and mouth, a knob for a nose, and a male organ as big as any of its rough-hewn limbs.

  For a while, the Zaperazh ignored me. There was an infinity of coming and going and of ceaseless talk.

  What with the village fires at the entrance, the lamps and torches, and the swarm of Zaperazh, the cave was warmer than the air outside. I began to thaw out. I found that I could move my eyes, then my head, and lastly my fingers and toes.

  While I was still planning how best to use my newfound mobility, the white-haired oldster whom I had seen before came through the milling mass and stood over me, holding a lamp and peering.

  Presently he leaned over, grasped my hand, and gave a sharp tug.

  I ought to have pretended to be rigid still, but the move caught me by surprise. I jerked my hand away from the Zaperazh, betraying the fact that I was recovering my normal lissomness. The old man shouted to some of his fellow tribesmen, who hastened up. Some wrenched off the robe and the cap that Aithor had given me; others bound my wrists and ankles together with rawhide thongs. Those who had taken the garments amused themselves by trying them on, roaring with laughter at each other’s appearance thus garbed.

  The oldster set down his lamp and seated himself cross-legged beside me. He asked me a question in a language I did not know. I could only stare. Then he said in broken Novarian: “You speaking Novarian?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Who you?”

  “My name is Zdim. Whom have I the honor to address?”

  “Me Yurog, shaman—what you call wizard—of Zaperazh. But what you? You not man.”

  “Nay, sir, I am no man. I am a demon from the Twelfth Plane, on an errand for the Syndicate of Ir. May I take the liberty of inquiring your purpose?”

  Yurog chuckled. “Demons evil, wicked things. But you got nice manner, anyway. We sacrificing you to Rostroi.” He nodded to the idol at the back of the cave. “Then Rostroi send us many sheep, many goats to eat.”

  I tried to explain the reason for my journey and the urgency of my mission, but he only laughed off my explanations.

  “All demons liars,” he said. “Everybody know that. We no fear your black men, even if they true.”

  I asked: “Doctor Yurog, tell me, pray. I was told that a treaty between your folk and the Solymbrians provided for the safe passage of travelers through the Needle’s Eye. So why should you seize me?”

  “Treaty no good! Solymbrians promise give us one ox every month, to eat, so we let people through pass. When Gavindos become chief of Solymbrians, he no sending oxes no more. He no keep treaty, we no keep him either. All flatlanders liars.”

  “Did you capture me by a magical spell that froze me stiff?”

  “Why, sure. Me great wizard. Not know freeze spell make you hard like stone, like snake or lizard from flatlands. That make it easy for us, ha ha.”

  “Well now, behold. You have cut up my horse for food and leather, and it must have almost as much meat as one of those oxen the Solymbrians used to send you. Wouldn’t you consider that a fair payment of toll to allow me to pass on through your land?”

  “No great treaty with you. You enemy. All flatlanders enemies; all demons enemies. Is right to sacrifice them whenever we catching them. Tell you what, though. Zaperazh like me to skin you, slowly; but, because you nice demon with good manner and because of horse, I cut your throat quick-quick, so you got hardly no pain. Is good of me, yes?”

  “Aye, though it were better still to treat me as a friend—”

  Before I could carry this interesting discussion further, the tall chief loomed up and spoke to Yurog in his own tongue. Yurog replied and added in his atrocious Novarian: “Chief, must meet guest. Is demon Zdim. Zdim, meet Vilsk, chief of Zaperazh. I got nice manner, too, yes?”

  Then the chief and the shaman went off together. For some hours I had nothing to do but lie in my bonds and watch the cavemen prepare for a grand festival. The first item was to be a ceremony in honor of Rostroi, to be followed by a feast on the remains of my horse, washed down with some sort of beer they brewed and kept in leathern bags.

  ###

  The sun was setting when the Zaperazh gathered in semicircular rows at the entrance to the cave. The men occupied the foremost rows, with women and children in the rear. Many of the women were nourishing their infants by means of those protruding lacteal glands that distinguish the females of the higher animals of the Prime Plane. The stench of the crowd was overwhelming. My tendrils picked up emotions of intense anticipation.

  One tribesman sat down beside the statue of Rostroi with a drum, while another, with a wooden pipe of the flute kind, sat down on the other side of the idol. Vilsk made a speech. It went on and on and on. He gestured, shook his fists, stamped, shouted, roared, growled, whispered, laughed, wept, sobbed, and went through the entire gamut of human emotions.

  Because of the crowd, I could not tell from my tendrils how sincere Vilsk was in his histrionics. But the tribe took the oratory with the utmost relish. This can be understood from the cavemen’s lack of urban amusements.

  Vilsk finished at last, and the musicians struck up. A squad of dancers, stripped to breechclouts and weirdly painted and befeathered, went into action, leaping and prancing. The dancers shouted continuously to one another, I suppose exhorting one another to get in step and to be ready for the next figure in the dance.

  I seemed to have been forgotten for the moment. Having now fully thawed, I tested my bonds. These were by no means so secure as those that Aithor’s men had put upon me, for the Zaperazh had assumed that my strength was no greater than that of a man. While the eyes of the audience were fixed upon the bounding, whirling, stamping dancers, I put forth my full strength and broke the thong holding my wrists. Waiting a moment for circulation to return to the members, I then grasped the thong around my ankles and snapped it, also.

  Then I began levering myself slowly along the ground, a few digits at a time, towards the entrance to the cave. In the dim light, none observed as I slithered around behind one horn of the crescent formation in which the Zaperazh sat.

  When I thought it safe, I rolled over and got to my hands and knees. I had almost reached the exit when a child saw me and set up an outcry. A woman turned at the sound and screamed.

  Before any could lay hand upon me, I bounded to my feet and ran out the entrance. Behind me, the cave seemed to boil as the entire tribe scrambled up to pursue me.

  I sped out the cave and through the tent village. As I passed a fire, near which a pile of flesh from my horse was stacked, I had the wit to snatch a steak from the pile before speeding off into the night.

  Had the ambient air been warm, I should have easily escaped from the Zaperazh. My strength and my night vision gave me an advantage over Prime Planers that was usually insuperable. The cold of this height, however, soon slowed me down to no more than a Prime Planer’s speed.

  Behind me, a swarm of cavemen ran in pursuit, setting up a view halloo as my scales reflected the light of their torches. I bounded down the rocky slope, swerving to right and left in an effort to shake them off. But they were fast and hardy as human beings go. The swarm of torches, like a flight of luminous insects, came bobbing after me no matter which way I ran. In fact, they gained upon me. With every stride, I slowed as the cold took hold of me.

  Had I known the terrain better, I could doubtless have given them the slip by some ruse; but I did not. Closer and closer they came. If I turned at bay, I could slay two or three, but then I should learn what it was like to be slowly hacked to death by crude weapons of stone and glass. And this, I was sure, would not at all give satisfaction to Madam Roska and the Syndicate, which I was obligated to do.

  An arrow whistled past me. Desperation at last spurred my sluggish wits.

  Making sure that they saw me, I changed color to the palest shade I could—
a pearly gray. Then I angled off to the right. When they were pelting after me and yelling in anticipation of an easy triumph, I leaped down a bank that stood athwart our path. As I vanished momentarily from the sight of my pursuers, I changed my color to black and ran along the foot of the bank to the left, perpendicular to my former direction.

  In a trice, the mob of Zaperazh poured down the bank and went on in the direction they had been running. I trotted lightly off in my new direction, taking care not to spurn stones and make a clatter. By the time the tribe discovered that their pale-gray quarry was no longer in sight and came to a halt, shouting and waving their torches, I was beyond their grasp.

  ###

  By dawn, I had found the footpath through the Needle’s Eye and was on my way down the northern slopes of the Ellornas towards the steppes of Shven.

  During my captivity and flight, I had been inclined to agree with the taverner Hadrubar’s unfavorable view of the Zaperazh. As I walked down the trail in the rosy light of dawn, taking a bite now and then from the slab of horsemeat, I achieved a more rational view. The Zaperazh had merely acted in the normal manner of Prime Planers, who instinctively divide up into mutually hostile groups. Each member of such a group regards all other groups as not fully human and therefore as fair game or legitimate prey. These divisions can be formed on any pretext—race, nation, tribe, class, belief, or any other difference that will serve.

  Having, as they thought, a grievance against the Solymbrians, the Zaperazh had, by the normal workings of the human mind, taken a hostile attitude towards all Novarians. Since I was working for a Novarian government, they placed me in the same category. The fact was not that the Zaperazh were “murthering savages” in distinction to the civilized Novarians, but that all human beings had a touch of “murthering savage” about them, however they disguised it by a veneer of civilized manners and custom.

  IX

  CHAM THEORIK

  For three days I plodded over the flat, grassy, windswept steppes of western Shven without seeing a sign of human life. In fact, I saw no animal life, even, save birds and a few antelope and wild ass far off. I had long since finished the horsemeat and had no means of getting more food, since the wild animals were too swift even for me to run down and I had no missile weapon.

  Lacking food and water, I was weakening when my tendrils picked up a hint of dampness. I stood at gaze, testing the air, and set off in the direction indicated. In half an hour I found a water hole, surrounded by a few small trees. The water was largely mud, but I did not let that stop me. Luckily, we demons are proof against nearly all the diseases of the Prime Plane.

  I was still sucking up muddy water when the sound of hooves aroused me. As I arose, the horseman spurred his beast to a gallop. He was a big man, similar to the Shvenite mercenaries whom I had seen at Ir. He wore a bulbous fur hat, a sheepskin coat, and baggy woollen trousers tucked into felt boots. His blond beard blew in the wind.

  I held up my hand and cried in Shvenish: “Take me to your leader!” This was one of several phrases that I had memorized before setting forth. Time and a good instructor had been lacking for a complete course in the language.

  The horseman shouted something like, “Yipi!”, and continued his charge. As he came, he unfastened a coil of rope that hung from his saddle and whirled a noose on the end about his head.

  Evidently, the man intended to snare me with his lariat, as Aithor’s robbers had done in the Green Forest, and drag me along the ground. Not relishing such treatment, I braced myself. As the loop came whirling towards me, I sprang into the air and caught the rope in my claws. As I came down, I dug in my heels and threw myself backwards.

  The results were astonishing. The rider was prepared to pull me off my feet and drag me, but the unexpected tug from my end jerked him out of the saddle, to fall on his head in the grass. The horse halted and fell to grazing.

  I hastened to the fallen man. When I turned him over, I was still more astonished to find him dead. The fall had broken his neck.

  This put a new complexion on things. The man’s garments would furnish me with some insulation against extremes of temperature, for the midday heat of the steppe nearly prostrated me and the cold of midnight froze me almost to immobility. I therefore adopted the man’s fur hat, sheepskin coat, and felt boots. The trousers I gave up because of the discomfort of cramming my tail into them. I also adopted the man’s weapons and his flint and steel.

  The horse I essayed to catch. Repelled by my looks and odor, it moved away as I approached. At the same time, it seemed reluctant to leave the neighborhood of the water hole. I pursued it round and round the clump of trees in a circle; but, weak from hunger, I could not catch it.

  Then I bethought me of the lariat. I had never practiced the art of casting nooses, and the first time I tried it I only wound the rope around my legs and sent myself sprawling. Several hours of practice, however, enabled me to make a fairly good cast up to twenty feet. By this means I succeeded at last in getting close enough to throw the noose over the horse’s head. Then I led it back to the water hole and tethered it to a tree.

  The dead man I ate, rejoicing in being able to cook my repast for a change. Some Prime Planers would be horrified and deem me a mortal enemy of mankind, but I cannot take their illogical and inconsistent tabus seriously. The man had brought about his own death by attacking me. His soul had presumably gone to that Prime Plane afterworld, where everything is done by machinery. If he had no more use for his body, I certainly did.

  Knowing men’s peculiar feelings about the devouring of their own kind, however, I buried the dead man’s remains. It would be hard enough to engage these barbarians in a rational discourse without giving them an additional reason for hostility.

  Then I mounted the horse and steered it northwest. According to the map I had once possessed, this was the way to Cham Theorik’s horde. One could never be sure, because every few sennights the tribe packed up and moved in search of new grass for their flocks and herds.

  On the second day from the water hole, I sighted another rider on my left. He was headed in a more northerly direction than I, so that our courses converged. Like the first nomad, he wore a fur hat and a sheepskin coat.

  As the man and I neared each other, I waved. Here, I thought, was he who should show me to the horde’s present encampment.

  The man waved back, and I thought I had made a friendly contact. When we drew nigher, I called in my rudimentary Shvenish: “Sir, would you please direct me to the camp of Cham Theorik?”

  We were now about twenty or thirty paces apart. Evidently the man was near-sighted, for only now did he appear to notice that the face under the fur hat was not that of a fellow tribesman after all. His eyes widened with horror, and he shouted something like: “Aroint thee, vile demon!” He pulled the bow from his bow case and fumbled with the arrows in his quiver.

  I had a bow and a quiver, too, but never having practiced archery I had no hope of hitting him before he skewered me. Moreover, I wanted a guide, not another corpse.

  My next actions were quite out of character. Had I stopped to plan them rationally, I am sure that I should have abandoned the scheme as rash and foredoomed. I had never even practiced the maneuver, which were difficult at best. But as we demons say, luck oft befalls the fearless.

  I jabbed my horse’s flanks with the sharp corners of the heavy iron stirrups, which the Shvenites employ in lieu of spurs. As the beast bounded ahead, I swerved towards the mounted Shvenite. While the latter was still nocking his arrow, I swooped within a few feet of him. Then, doing as I had seen Madam Dulnessa do in Bagardo’s circus, I threw myself up on my hands, gripping the saddle bow, and brought my feet up under me. In a trice I was standing erect on the back of the galloping horse.

  If I had had to go any distance, I had surely fallen off this precarious perch. By this time, however, the two horses were almost in contact. I sprang from the saddle on which I stood to the rump of the other horse and slipped into the riding
position just behind the other rider. I grasped his neck with both hands, driving the ends of my talons into his throat beneath his beard, and shouted in his ear: “Take me to your leader!”

  “I will take you!” he cried in a strangled voice. “Only pray cease digging your claws into my neck, lest you open my veins and slay me!”

  I let him continue on his course. The poor fellow did not realize that I was as weak with terror at my own recent daring as he was at my unfamiliar aspect.

  ###

  The movable city of the Hruntings reminded me of the camp of the Paaluans and even of the village of the Zaperazh. The houses, however, differed from either of these, being made of sheets of felt spread on hemispherical frameworks of poles. Around this mass of gray domes, areas were marked off for special purposes, among which I noted horse lines, an archery range, and a park for war mammoths.

  The nomads and their females and young swarmed about the mass of felt tents, among which were also placed hundreds of large four-wheeled wagons. As my captive guided his mount through the spaces between these obstacles, he and the other nomads kept up a running fire of shouts. My man cried: “Keep off! Stand back! Interfere not, or this thing will slay me!”

  In the midst of the tent city stood a tent of double size, with a clear space around it. Before it rose a pair of standards bedight with horsetails, human skulls, and other emblems of nomadic sovranty. A pair of Hruntings, in cuirasses of lacquered leather, stood guard before the cham’s tent; or rather, were supposed to be standing guard. One sat with his back to one of the standards and his head bowed on his knees, asleep. The other sat with his back to the other standard; while not asleep, he was idly spinning a little wooden top with thumb and forefinger on the hard soil before him.