A Quest-Lover's Treasury of the Fantastic

by Margaret Weis

  Having overcome the Centaurs singlehanded, he tramped down through our northern provinces and one day stood at the gates of Sarmia herself. It was a curious vision—the turreted walls rearing up over the stone-paved road, the guards with helmet and shield and corselet, and the towering near-naked giant who rattled his blade before them. As their pikes slanted down to bar his way, he cried in a voice of thunder:

  “I yam Cronkheit duh Barbarian, an' I wanna audience widjer queen!”

  His accent was so ludicrously uneducated that the watch burst into laughter. This angered him; flushing darkly, he drew his sword and advanced stiff-legged. The guardsmen reeled back before him, and the Barbarian swaggered through.

  As the captain of the watch explained it to me afterward: “There he came, and there we stood. A spear length away, we caught the smell. Ye gods, when did he last bathe?”

  So with people running from the streets and bazaars as he neared, Cronkheit made his way down the Avenue of Sphinxes, past the baths and the Temple of Loccar, till he reached the Imperial Palace. Its gates stood open as usual, and he looked in at the gardens and the alabaster walls beyond, and grunted. When the Golden Guardsmen approached him upwind and asked his business, he grunted again. They lifted their bows and would have made short work of him, but a slave came running to bid them desist.

  You see, by the will of some malignant god, the Empress was standing on a balcony and saw him.

  As is well known, our beloved Empress, Her Seductive Majesty the Illustrious Lady Larra the Voluptuous, is built like a mountain highway and is commonly believed to be an incarnation of her tutelary deity, Aphrosex, the Mink Goddess. She stood on the balcony with the wind blowing her thin transparent garments and thick black hair, and a sudden eagerness lit her proud lovely face. This was understandable, for Cronkheit wore only a bearskin kilt.

  So the slave was dispatched, to bow low before the stranger and say: “Most noble lord, the divine Empress would have private speech with you.”

  Cronkheit smacked his lips and strutted into the palace. The chamberlain wrung his hands when he saw those large muddy feet treading priceless rugs, but there was no help for it, and the Barbarian was led upstairs to the Imperial bedchamber.

  What befell there is known to all, for of course in such interviews the Lady Larra posts mute slaves at convenient peepholes, to summon the guards if danger seems to threaten; and the courtiers have quietly taught these mutes to write. Our Empress had a cold, and had furthermore been eating a garlic salad, so her aristocratically curved nose was not offended. After a few formalities, she began to pant. Slowly, then she held out her arms and let the purple robe slide down from her creamy shoulders and across the silken thighs.

  “Come,” she whispered. “Come, magnificent male.”

  Cronkheit snorted, pawed the ground, rushed forth, and clasped her to him.

  “Yowww!” cried the Empress as a rib cracked. “Leggo! Help!”

  The mutes ran for the Golden Guardsmen, who entered at once. They got ropes around the Barbarian and dragged him from their poor lady. Though in considerable pain, and much shaken, she did not order his execution; she is known to be very patient with some types.

  Indeed, after gulping a cup of wine to steady her, she invited Cronkheit to be her guest. After he had been conducted off to his rooms, she summoned the Duchess of Thyle, a supple, agile little minx.

  “I have a task for you, my dear,” she murmured. “You will fulfill it as a loyal lady in waiting.”

  “Yes, Your Seductive Majesty,” said the Duchess, who could well guess what the task was and thought she had been waiting long enough. For a whole week, in fact. Her assignment was to take the edge off the Barbarian's impetuosity.

  She greased herself so she could slip free if in peril of being crushed, and hurried to Cronkheit's suite. Her musky perfume drowned out his odor, and she slipped off her dress and crooned with half-shut eyes: “Take me, my lord!”

  “Yahoo!” howled the warrior. “I yam Cronkheit duh Strong, Cronkheit duh Bold, Cronkheit what slew a mammot' singlehanded an' made hisself chief o' duh Centaurs, an' dis's muh night! C'mere!”

  The Duchess did, and he folded her in his mighty arms. A moment later there was another shriek. The palace attendants were treated to the sight of a naked and furious greased Duchess speeding down the jade corridor.

  “Fleas he's got!” she cried, scratching as she ran.

  So all in all, Cronkheit the Barbarian was no great success as a lover. Even the women in the Street of Joy used to hide when they saw him coming. They said they'd been exposed to clumsy technique before, but this was just too much.

  However, his fame was so great that the Lady Larra put him in command of a brigade, infantry and cavalry, and sent him to join General Grythion on the Chathakh border. He made the march in record time and came shouting into the city of tents which had grown up at our main base.

  Now admittedly our good General Grythion is somewhat of a dandy, who curls his beard and is henpecked by his wives. But he has always been a competent soldier, winning honors at the Academy and leading troops in battle many times before rising to the strategic-planning post. One could understand Cronkheit's incivility at their meeting. But when the general courteously declined to go forth in the van of the army and pointed out how much more valuable he was as a coordinator behind the lines—that was no excuse for Cronkheit to knock his superior officer to the ground and call him a coward, damned of the gods. Grythion was thoroughly justified in having him put in irons, despite the casualties involved. Even as it was, the spectacle had so demoralized our troops that they lost three important engagements in the following month.

  Alas! Word of this reached the Empress, and she did not order Cronkheit's head struck off. Indeed, she sent back a command that he be released and reinstated. Perhaps she still cherished him enough to be an acceptable bed partner.

  Grythion swallowed his pride and apologized to the Barbarian, who accepted with an ill grace. His restored rank made it necessary to invite him to a dinner and conference in the headquarters tent.

  It was a flat failure. Cronkheit stamped in and at once made sneering remarks about the elegant togas of his brother officers. He belched when he ate and couldn't distinguish the product of one vineyard from another. His conversation consisted of hour-long monologues about his own prowess. General Grythion saw morale zooming downward, and hastily called for maps and planning.

  “Now, most noble sirs,” he began, “we have to lay out the summer campaign. As you know, we have the Eastern Desert between us and the nearest important enemy positions. This raises difficult questions of logistics and catapult emplacement.” He turned politely to the Barbarian. “Have you any suggestion, my lord?”

  “Duh,” said Cronkheit.

  “I think,” ventured Colonel Pharaon, “that if we advanced to the Chunling Oasis and dug in there, building a supply road—”

  “Dat reminds me,” said Cronkheit. “One time up in duh Norriki marshes, I run acrost some swamp men an' dey uses poisoned arrers—”

  “I fail to see what that has to do with this problem,” said General Grythion.

  “Nuttin',” admitted Cronkheit cheerfully. “But don't innerup' me. Like I was sayin'—” And he was off for another dreary hour.

  At the end of a conference which had gotten nowhere, the general stroked his beard and said shrewdly: “Lord Chronkheit, it appears your abilities are more in the tactical than the strategic field.”

  The Barbarian snatched for his sword.

  “I mean,” said Grythion quickly, “I have a task which only the boldest and strongest leader can accomplish.”

  Cronkheit beamed and listened closely for a change. He was to be sent out with his men to capture Chantsay. This was a fort in the mountain passes across the Eastern Desert, and a major obstacle to our advance. However, in spite of Grythion's judicious flattery, a full brigade should have been able to take it with little difficulty, for it was known to be undermanned
.

  Cronkheit rode off at the head of his men, tossing his sword in the air and bellowing some uncouth battle chant. Then he was not heard of for six weeks.

  At the close of that time, the ragged, starving, fever-stricken remnant of his troops staggered back to the base and reported utter failure. Cronkheit, who was in excellent health himself, made some sullen excuses. But he had never imagined that men who march twenty hours a day aren't fit for battle at the end of the trip—the more so if they outrun their own supply train.

  Because of the Empress's wish, General Grythion could not do the sensible thing and cashier the Barbarian. He could not even reduce him to the ranks. Instead, he used his well-known guile and invited the giant to a private dinner.

  “Obviously, most valiant lord,” he purred, “the fault is mine. I should have realized that a man of your type is too much for us decadent southerners. You are a lone wolf who fights best by himself.”

  “Duh,” agreed Cronkheit, ripping a fowl apart with his fingers and wiping them on the damask tablecloth.

  Grythion winced, but easily talked him into going out on a one-man guerrilla operation. When he left the next morning, the officers' corps congratulated themselves on having gotten rid of the lout forever.

  In the face of subsequent criticism and demands for an investigation, I still maintain that Grythion did the only rational thing under the circumstances. Who could have known that Cronkheit the Barbarian was so primitive that rationality simply slid off his hairy skin?

  The full story will never be known. But apparently, in the course of the following year, while the border war continued as usual, Cronkheit struck off into the northern uplands. There he raised a band of horse nomads as ignorant and brutal as himself. He also rounded up a herd of mammoths and drove them into Chathakh, stampeding them at the foe. By such means, he reached their very capital, and the King offered terms of surrender.

  But Cronkheit would have none of this. Not he! His idea of warfare was to kill or enslave every last man, woman, and child of the enemy nation. Also, his irregulars were supposed to be paid in loot. Also, being too unsanitary even for the nomad girls, he felt a certain urgency.

  So he stormed the capital of Chathakh and burned it to the ground. This cost him most of his own men. It also destroyed several priceless books and works of art, and any possibility of tribute to Sarmia.

  Then he had the nerve to organize a triumphal procession and ride back to our own city!

  This was too much even for the Empress. When he stood before her—for he was too crude for the simple courtesy of a knee bend—she exceeded herself in describing the many kinds of fool, idiot, and all-around blockhead he was.

  “Duh,” said Cronkheit. “But I won duh war. Look, I won duh war, I did. I won duh war.”

  “Yes,” hissed the Lady Larra. “You smashed an ancient and noble culture to irretrievable ruin. And did you know that one half our peacetime trade was with Chathakh? There'll be a business depression now such as history has never seen before.”

  General Grythion, who had returned, added his own reproaches. “Why do you think wars are fought?” he asked bitterly. “War is an extension of diplomacy. It's the final means of making somebody else do what you want. The object is not to kill them all off—how can corpses obey you?”

  Cronkheit growled in his throat.

  “We would have negotiated a peace in which Chathakh became our ally against Serpens,” went on the general. “Then we'd have been safe against all comers. But you—You've left a howling wilderness which we must garrison with our own troops lest the nomads take it over. Your atrocities have alienated every civilized state. You've left us alone and friendless. You've won this war by losing the next one!”

  “And on top of the depression which is coming,” said the Empress, “we'll have the cost of maintaining those garrisons. Taxes down and expenditures up—It may break the treasury, and then where are we?”

  Cronkheit spat on the floor. “Yuh're all decadent, dat's what yuh are,” he snarled. “Be good for yuh if yer empire breaks up. Yuh oughtta get dat city rabble o' years out in duh woods an' make hunters of 'em, like me. Let 'em eat steak.”

  The Lady Larra stamped an exquisite gold-shod foot. “Do you think we've nothing better to do with our time than spend the whole day hunting, and sit around in some mud hovel at night licking the grease off our fingers?” she cried. “What the hell do you think civilization is for, anyway?”

  Cronkheit drew his great sword so it flashed before their eyes. “I hadda nuff!” he bellowed. “I'm t'rough widjuh! It's time yuh was all wiped off duh face o' duh eart', an I'm jus' duh guy t' do it!”

  And now General Grythion showed the qualities which had raised him to his high post. Artfully, he quailed. “Oh no!” he whimpered. “You're not going to—to—to fight on the side of Serpens?”

  “I yam,” said Cronkheit. “So long.” The last we saw of him was a broad, indignant, flea-bitten back, headed south, and the reflection of the sun on a sword.

  Since then, of course, our affairs have prospered and Serpens is now frantically suing for peace. But we intend to prosecute the war till they meet our terms. We are most assuredly not going to be ensnared by their treacherous plea and take the Barbarian back!

  The Silk and the Song

  Charles L. Fontenay

  I

  Alan first saw the Star Tower when he was twelve years old. His young master, Blik, rode him into the city of Falklyn that day.

  Blik had to argue hard before he got permission to ride Alan, his favorite boy. Blik's father, Wiln, wanted Blik to ride a man, because Wiln thought the long trip to the city might be too much for a boy as young as Alan.

  Blik had his way, though. Blik was rather spoiled, and when he began to whistle his father gave in.

  “All right, the human is rather big for its age,” surrendered Wiln. “You may ride it if you promise not to run it. I don't want you breaking the wind of any of my prize stock.”

  So Blik strapped the bridle-helmet with the handgrips on Alan's head and threw the saddle-chair on Alan's shoulders. Wiln saddled up Robb, a husky man he often rode on long trips, and they were off to the city at an easy trot.

  The Star Tower was visible before they reached Falklyn. Alan could see its spire above the tops of the ttornot trees as soon as they emerged from the Blue Forest. Blik saw it at the same time. Holding onto the bridle-helmet with one four-fingered hand, Blik poked Alan and pointed.

  “Look, Alan, the Star Tower!” cried Blik. “They say humans once lived in the Star Tower.”

  “Blik, when will you grow up and stop talking to the humans?” chided his father. “I'm going to punish you severely one of these days.”

  Alan did not answer Blik, for it was forbidden for humans to talk in the Hussir language except in reply to direct questions. But he kept his eager eyes on the Star Tower and watched it loom taller and taller ahead of them, striking into the sky far above the buildings of the city. He quickened his pace, so that he began to pull ahead of Robb, and Robb had to caution him.

  Between the Blue Forest and Falklyn, they were still in wild country where the land was eroded and there were no farms and fields. Little clumps of ttornot trees huddled here and there among the gullies and low hills, thickening back toward the Blue Forest behind them, thinning toward the northwest plain, beyond which lay the distant mountains.

  They rounded a curve in the dusty road, and Blik whistled in excitement from Alan's shoulders. A figure stood on a little promontory overhanging the road ahead of them.

  At first Alan thought it was a tall, slender Hussir, for a short jacket partly concealed its nakedness. Then he saw it was a young human girl. No Hussir ever boasted that mop of tawny hair, that tailless posterior curve.

  “A Wild Human!” growled Wiln in astonishment. Alan shivered. It was rumored the Wild Humans killed Hussirs and ate other humans.

  The girl was looking away toward Falklyn. Wiln unslung his short bow and loosed an arro
w at her.

  The bolt exploded the dust near her feet. With a toss of bright hair, she turned her head and saw them. Then she was gone like a deer.

  When they came up to where she had stood, there was a brightness in the bushes beside the road. It was a pair of the colorful trousers such as Hussirs wore, only trimmer, tangled inextricably in a thorny bush. Evidently the girl had been caught as she climbed up from the road, and had had to crawl out of them.

  “They're getting too bold,” said Wiln angrily. “This close to civilization, in broad daylight!”

  Alan was astonished when they entered Falklyn. The streets and buildings were of stone. There was little stone on the other side of the Blue Forest, and Wiln Castle was built of polished wooden blocks. The smooth stone of Falklyn's streets was hot under the double sun. It burned Alan's feet, so that he hobbled a little and shook Blik up. Blik clouted him on the side of the head for it.

  There were so many strange new things to see in the city that they made Alan dizzy. Some of the buildings were as much as three stories high, and the windows of a few of the biggest were covered, not with wooden shutters, but with a bright, transparent stuff that Wiln told Blik was called “glaz.” Robb told Alan in the human language, which the Hussirs did not understand, that it was rumored humans themselves had invented this glaz and given it to their masters. Alan wondered how a human could invent anything, penned in open fields.

  But it appeared that humans in the city lived closer to their masters. Several times Alan saw them coming out of houses, and a few that he saw were not entirely naked, but wore bright bits of cloth at various places on their bodies. Wiln expressed strong disapproval of this practice to Blik.

  “Start putting clothing on these humans and they might get the idea they're Hussirs,” he said. “If you ask me, that's why city people have more trouble controlling their humans than we do. Spoil the human and you make him savage, I say.”