The Best of E E 'Doc' Smith

by E E 'Doc' Smith

  While Sarpedion had not appeared personally in Devann's lifetime, he had so appeared many times in the past; and by a sufficiently attractive sacrifice be could be persuaded to appear again, particularly since this appearance would be in self-defense.

  No slave, or any number of slaves, would do. Nor criminals. No ordinary virgin of the common people. This sacrifice must be of supreme quality. The king himself? Too old and tough and sinful. Ah ... the king's daughter....

  At the thought the pit of his stomach turned cold. However, desperate situations require desperate remedies. He called in his henchmen and issued orders.

  Thus it came about that a towering figure clad in flashing golden armor-the king himself, with a few courtiers scrambling far in his wake--dashed up the last few steps just as Tedric was wrenching out Sarpedion's liver.

  "Tedric, attend!" the monarch panted. "The priests have taken Rhoann and are about to give her to Sarpedion!"

  "They can't, sire. I've just killed Sarpedion, right here."

  "But they can! They've taken the Holiest One from the Innermost Shrine; have enshrined him on the Temple of Scheene. Slay me those traitor priests before they slay Rhoann and you may. ..."

  Tedric did not hear the rest of it, nor was his mind chiefly concerned with the plight of the royal maid. It was Sarpedion he was after. With a blistering oath he dropped the god's liver, whirled around and leaped down the stairway. It would do no good to kill only one Sarpedion. He would have to kill them both. especially since the Holiest One was the major image. The Holiest One ... the Sarpedion never before seen except by first-rank priests ... of course that would be the one they'd use in sacrificing a king's daughter. He should have thought of that himself, sooner, damn him for a fool! It probably wasn't too late yet, but the sooner he got there, the better would be his chance of winning.

  Hence he ran, and, farther and farther behind him, came the king and the courtiers.

  Reaching the Temple of Scheene, be found to his immense relief that he would not have to storm that heavily manned rampart alone. A full company of the Royal Guard was already there. Battle was in progress, but very little headway was being made against the close-packed defenders of the god, and Tedric knew why. A man fighting against a god was licked before he started, and knew it. He'd have to build up their morale.

  But did he have time? Probably. They couldn't hurry things too much without insulting Sarpedion, for the absolutely necessary ceremonies took a lot of time. Anyway, he'd have to take the time, or he'd never reach the god.

  "Art Lord Tedric?" A burly captain disentangled himself from the front rank and saluted.

  "I'm Tedric, yes. Knewst I was coming?"

  "Yes, Lord. Orders came by helio but now. You are in command; you speak with the voice of King Phagon himself."

  "Good. Call your men back thirty paces. Pick me out the twelve or fifteen strongest, to lead.

  "Men of the Royal Guard!" He raised his voice to a volume audible not only to his own men, but also to all the enemy. "Who is the most powerful swordsman among you? ... Stand forward ... This armor I wear is not of iron, but of god-metal, the metal of Llosir, my personal and all-powerful god. That all here may see and know, I command you to strike at me your shrewdest, most effective, most powerful blow."

  The soldier, after a couple of false starts, did manage a stroke of sorts.

  "I said strike!" Tedric roared. "Think you ordinary iron can harm the personal metal of a god? Strike where you please, at head or neck or shoulder or guts, but strike as though you meant it! Strike to kill! Shatter your sword! STRIKE!"

  Convulsively, the fellow struck, swinging for the neck, and at impact his blade snapped into three pieces. A wave of visible relief swept over the Guardsmen; one of dismay and shock over the ranks of the foe.

  "I implore pardon, Lord," the soldier begged, dropping to one knee.

  "Up man! 'Tis nothing, and by my direct order. Now, men, I can tell you a thing you would not have fully believed before. I have just killed half of Sarpedion and he could not touch me. I am about to kill his other half you will see me do it. Come what may of god or devil you need not fear it, for I and all with me fight under Llosir's shield. We men will have to deal only with the flesh and blood of those runty mercenaries of Tark."

  He studied the enemy formation briefly. A solid phalanx of spearmen, with shields latticed and braced; close-set spears out-thrust and anchored. Strictly defensive; they hadn't made a move to follow nor thrown a single javelin when the king's forces withdrew. This wasn't going to be easy, but it was possible.

  "We will make the formation of the wedge, with me as point," he went on. "Sergeant, you will bear my sword and hammer. The rest of you will ram me into the center of that phalanx with everything of driving force that in you lies. I will make and maintain enough of opening. We'll go up that ramp like a fast ship ploughing through waves; Make wedge! Drive!"

  Except for his armor of god-metal Tedric would have been crushed flat by the impact of the flying wedge against the soldiery packed so solidly on the stair. Several of the foe were so crushed, but the new armor held. Tedric could scarcely move his legs enough to take each step, his body was held as though in a vice, but his giant arms were free; and by dint of short, savage, punching jabs and prods and strokes of his atrocious war-axe he made and maintained the narrow opening upon which the success of the whole operation depended. And into that constantly-renewed opening the smith was driven-irresistibly driven by the concerted and synchronized strength of the strongest men of Lomarr's Royal Guard.

  The result was not exactly like that of a diesel-powered snowplough, but it was good enough. The mercenaries did not flow over the sides of the ramp in two smooth waves. However, unable with either weapons or bodies to break through the slanting walls of iron formed by the smoothly-overlapping shields of the Guardsmen, over the edges they went, the living and the dead.

  The dreadful wedge drove on.

  As the Guardsmen neared the top of the stairway the mercenaries disappeared-enough of that kind of thing was a great plenty-and Tedric, after a quick glance around to see what the situation was, seized his sword from the bearer. Old Devann had his knife aloft, but in only the third of the five formal passes. Two more to go.

  "Kill those priests!" he snapped at the captain. "I'll take the three at the altar-you fellows take the rest of them!"

  When Tedric reached the green altar the sacrificial knife was again aloft; but the same stroke that severed Devann's upraised right arm severed also his head and his whole left shoulder. Two more whistling strokes and a moment's study of the scene of action assured him that there would be no more sacrifice that day. The King's Archers had followed close behind the Guards; the situation was well in hand.

  He exchanged sword for axe and hammer, and furiously, viciously, went to work on the god. He yanked out the Holiest One's brain, liver, and heart; hammered and chopped the rest of him to bits. That done, he turned to the altar-he had not even glanced at it before.

  Stretched taut, spread-eagle by wrists and ankles on the reeking, blood-fouled, green horror-stone, the Lady Rhoann lay; her yard-long, thick brown hair a wide-flung riot. Six priests had not immobilized Rhoann of Lomarr without a struggle. Her eyes went from shattered image to blood. covered armored giant and back to image; her face was a study of part-horrified, part-terrified, part-worshipful amazement.

  He slashed the ropes, extended his mailed right hand. "Art hurt, Lady Rhoann?"

  "No. Just stiff." Taking his hand, she sat up-a bit groggily-and flexed wrists and ankles experimentally; while, behind his visor, the man stared and stared.

  Tall-wide but trim-superbly made-a true scion of the old blood-Llosir's liver, what a woman! He had undressed her mentally more than once, but his visionings had fallen short, far short, of the entrancing, the magnificent truth. What a woman! A virgin? Huh! Technically so, perhaps ... more shame to those pusillanimous half-breed midgets of the court ... if he had been born noble ...

&n
bsp; She slid off the altar and stood up, her eyes still dark with fantastically mixed emotions. She threw both arms around his armored neck and snuggled close against his steel, heedless that breasts and flanks were being smeared anew with half-dried blood.

  He put an iron-clad arm around her, moved her arm enough to open his visor, saw sea-green eyes, only a few inches below his own, staring straight into his.

  The man's quick passion flamed again. Gods of the ancients, what a woman! There was a mate for a full-grown man!

  "Thank the gods!" The king dashed up, panting, but in surprisingly good shape for a man of forty-odd who had run so far in gold armor. "Thanks be to all the gods you were in time!"

  "Just barely, sire, but in time."

  "Name your reward" Lord Tedric. I will be glad to make you my son."

  "Not that, sire, ever. If there's anything in this world or the next I don't want to be, it's Lady Rohann's brother."

  "Make him Lord of the Marches, father," the girl said, sharply. "Knowst what the sages said."

  "'Twould be better," the monarch agreed. "Tedric of old Lomarr, I appoint you Lord of the Upper, the Middle, and the Lower Marches, the Highest of the High."

  Tedric went to his knees. "I thank you, sire. Have I your backing in wiping out what is left of Sarpedion's power?"

  "If you will support the Throne with the strength I so clearly see is to be yours, I will back you, with the full power of the Throne, in anything you wish to do."

  "Of course I will support you, sire, as long as I live and with al! that in me lies. Since time was my blood has been vassal to yours, and ever will be. My brain, my liver, and my heart are yours."

  "I thank you, Lord Tedric. Proceed."

  Tedric snapped to his feet. His sword flashed high in air. His heavy voice rang out.

  "People of Lomarr, listen to a herald of the Throne! Sarpedion is dead; Llosir lives. Human sacrifice-yes, all sacrifice except the one I am about to perform, of Sarpedion himself to Llosir-is done. That is and will be the law. To that end there will be no more priests, but a priestess only. I speak as herald for the Throne of Lomarr!"

  He turned to the girl, still clinging to his side. "I had it fast in mind, Lady Rhoann, to make you priestess, but..."

  "Not I!" she interrupted, vigorously. "No priestess I, Lord Tedric!"

  "By Llosir's brain, girl, you're right-you've been wasted long enough!"

  In another time-track another Skandos and another Furmin, almost but not quite identical with those first so named" pored over a chronoviagram.

  "The key point in time is there," the Prime Physicist said, thoughtfully, placing the point of his pencil near one jagged peak of the trace. "The key figure is Lord Tedric of Lomarr, the discoverer of the carburization of steel. He could be manipulated very easily ... but, after all, the real catastrophe is about three hundred eighteen years away; there is nothing alarming about the shape of the curve; and any interference with the actual physical events of the past would almost certainly prove calamitous. Over the years I have found your judgment good. What is your thought on this matter, Furmin?"

  "I would say to wait, at least for a few weeks or months. Even though eight hundred twelve fails, number eight hundred fifty or number nine hundred may succeed. At very worst, we will be in the same position then as now to take the action which has for a hundred years been specifically forbidden by both Council and School."

  "So be it."

  Lord Tedric

  Time is the strangest of all mysteries. Relatively unimportant events, almost unnoticed as they occur, may, in hundreds of years, result in Ultimate Catastrophe. On Time Track Number One, that was the immutable result. But on Time Track Number Two there was one little event that could be used to avert it-the presence of a naked woman in public. So, Skandos One removed the clothing from the Lady Rhoann and after one look, Lord Tedric did the rest!

  Skandos One (The Skandos of Time Track Number One, numbered for reasons which will become clear) showed, by means of the chronoviagraph, that civilization would destroy itself in one hundred eighty-seven years. To prevent this catastrophe he went back to the key point in time and sought out the key figure-one Tedric, a Lomarrian ironmaster who had lived and died a commoner; unable ever, to do anything about his fanatical detestation of human sacrifice.

  Skandos One taught Tedric how to make one batch of super-steel; watched him forge armor and arms from that highly anachronistic alloy. He watched him do things that Tedric of Time Track One had never done.

  Time, then, did fork. Time Track One was probably no longer in existence. He must have been saved by his "traction" on the reality of Time Track Two. He'd snap back up to his own time and see what the situation was. If he found his assistant Furmin alone in the laboratory, the extremists would have been proved wrong. If not ...

  Furmin was not alone. Instead, Skandos Two and Furmin Two were at work on a tri-di of Tedric's life: so like, and yet so wildly unlike, the one upon which Skandos One and Furmin One had labored so long!

  Shaken and undecided, Skandos One held his machine at the very verge of invisibility and watched and listened. "But it's so maddeningly incomplete!" Skandos Two snorted. "When it goes into such fine detail on almost everything else, why can't we get how he stumbled onto one lot, and never any other, of high-alloy steel-chromenickel-vanadium-molybdenum-tungsten steel-Mortensen's supersteel, to be specific-which wasn't rediscovered for thousands of years?

  "Why, it was revealed to him by his personal god Llosir -don't you remember?" Furmin snickered. "Poppycock!"

  "To us, yes; but not to them. Hence, no detail, and you know why we can't go back and check."

  "Of course. We simply don't know enough about time ... but I would so like to study this Lord of the Marches at first hand! Nowhere else in all reachable time does any other one entity occupy such a uniquely key position!"

  "So would I, chief. If we knew just a little more I'd say go. In the meantime, let's run that tri-di again, to see if we've overlooked any little thing!"

  In the three-dimensional, full-color projection Armsmaster Lord Tedric destroyed the principal images of the monstrous god Sarpedion and killed Sarpedion's priests. He rescued Lady Rhoann, King Phagon's eldest daughter, from the sacrificial altar. The king made him Lord of the Marches, the Highest of the High.

  "This part I like." Furmin pressed a stud; the projector stopped. A blood-smeared armored giant and a bloodsmeared naked woman stood, arms around each other, beside a blood-smeared altar of green stone. "Talk about being STACKED! If I hadn't checked the data myself I'd swear you went overboard there, chief."

  "Exact likeness-life size," Skandos Two grunted. "Tedric: .six-four, two-thirty, muscled just like that. Rhoann: six feet and half an inch, one-ninety. The only time she ever appeared in the raw in public, I guess, but she didn't turn a hair."

  "What a couple!" Furmin stared enviously. "We don't have people like that any more."

  "Fortunately, no. He could split a full-armored man in two with a sword; she could strangle a tiger bare-handed. So what? All the brains of the whole damned tribe, boiled down into one, wouldn't equip a half-wit."

  "Oh, I wouldn't say that," Furmin objected. "Phagon was a smooth, shrewd operator."

  "In a way-sometimes-but committing suicide by wearing gold armor instead of high-alloy steel doesn't show much brain-power."

  "I'm not sure I'll buy that, either. There were terrific pressures ... but say Phagon had worn steel, that day at Middlemarch Castle, and lived ten or fifteen years longer? My guess is that Tedric would have changed the map of the world. He wasn't stupid, you know; just bull-headed, and Phagon could handle him. He would have pounded a lot of sense into his skull, if he had lived."

  "However, he didn't live," Skandos returned dryly, "and so every decision Tedric ever made was wrong. But to get back to the point, did you see anything new?"

  "Not a thing."

  "Neither did I. So go and see how eight twelve is doing." For Time Test Number Eight Hu
ndred Eleven had failed; and there was little ground for hope that Number Eight Hundred Twelve would be any more productive.

  And the lurking Skandos One who had been studying intensively every aspect of the situation, began to act. It was crystal clear that Time Track Two could hold only one Skandos. One of them would have to vanish-completely, immediately, and permanently. Although in no sense a killer, by instinct or training, only one course of action was possible if his own life-and, as a matter of fact, all civilization-were to be conserved. Wherefore he synchonized, and shot his unsuspecting double neatly through the head. The living Skandos changed places with the dead. A timer buzzed briefly. The time-machine disappeared; completely out of synchronization with any continuum that a world's keenest brain and an ultra-fast calculator could compute.

  This would of course make another fork in time, but that fact did not bother Skandos One at all-now. As for Tedric; since the big, dumb lug couldn't be made to believe that he, Skandos One, was other than a god, he'd be a god-in spades!

  He'd build an image of flesh-like plastic exactly like the copper statue Tedric had made, and go back and announce himself publicly as the god Llosir. He'd come back-along Time-Track Three, of course-and do away with Skandos Three. There might have to be another interference, too, to get Tedric started along the right time-track. He could call better after seeing what Time-Track Three looked like. If so, it would necessitate the displacement of Skandos Four.

  So what? He had never had any qualms; and, now that he had done it once, he had no doubt whatever as to his ability to do it twice more.

  Of the three standing beside Sarpedion's grisly altar, King Phagon was the first to become conscious of the fact that something should be done about his daughter's nudity.

  "Flasnir, your cloak!" he ordered sharply; and the Lady Rhoann, unclamping her arms from around Tedric's armored neck and disengaging his steel-clad arm from around her waist, covered herself with the proffered garment. Partially covered, that is; for, since the cloak had come only to mid-thigh on the courtier and since she was a good seven inches taller than be, the coverage might have seemed, to a prudish eye, something less than adequate.