Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen k-1

by H. Beam Piper

  "I hope he got dragged out of his own Subsector. Suppose he comes out on a next-door time-line, and reports to his police post, where a duplicate of himself, with duplicate fingerprints, is on duty."

  "Yes. Wouldn't that be dandy, now?" He lit a cigarette. "When the aircar comes, send it back. I'm going over the photo-records myself. Have the rocket held; I'll need it in a few hours. I'm making this case my own personal baby."

  CALVIN Morrison dangled his black-booted legs over the edge of the low cliff and wished, again, that he hadn't lost his hat. He knew exactly where he was: he was right at the same place he had been, sitting on the little cliff above the road where he and Larry Stacey and Jack French and Steve Kovac had left the car, only there was no road there now, and never had been one. There was a hemlock, four feet thick at the butt, growing where the farmhouse should have been, and no trace of the stonework of the foundations of house or barn. But the really permanent features, like the Bald Eagles to the north and Nittany Mountain to the south, were exactly as they should be.

  That flash and momentary darkness could have been subjective; put that in the unproven column. He was sure the strangely beautiful dome of shimmering light had been real, and so had the desk and the instrument-panel, and the man with the odd weapon. And there was nothing at all subjective about all this virgin timber where farmlands should have been. So he puffed slowly on his pipe and tried to remember and to analyze what had happened to him.

  He hadn't been shot and taken to a hospital where he was now lying delirious, he was sure of that. This wasn't delirium. Nor did he consider for an instant questioning either his sanity or his senses, nor did he indulge in dirty language like "incredible" or "impossible." Extraordinary-now there was a good word. He was quite sure that something extraordinary had happened to him. It seemed to break into two parts one, blundering into that dome of pearly light, what had happened inside of it, and rolling out of it; and two, this same-but-different place in which he now found himself.

  What was wrong with both was anachronism, and the anachronisms were contradictory. None of the first part belonged in 1964 or, he suspected, for many centuries to come; portable energy-weapons, for instance. None of the second part belonged in 1964, either, or for at least a century in the past.

  His pipe had gone out. For awhile he forgot to relight it, while he tossed those two facts back and forth in his mind. He still didn't use those dirty words. He used one small boys like to scribble on privy walls.

  In spite-no, because-of his clergyman father's insistence that he study for and enter the Presbyterian ministry, he was an agnostic. Agnosticism, for him, was refusal to accept or to deny without proof. A good philosophy for a cop, by the way. Well, he wasn't going to reject the possibility of time machines; not after having been shanghaied aboard one and having to shoot his way out of it. That thing had been a time-machine, and whenever he was now, it wasn't the twentieth century, and he was never going to get back to it. He settled that point in his mind and accepted it once and for all.

  His pipe was out; he started to knock out the heel, then stirred it with a twig and relit it. He couldn't afford to waste anything now. Sixteen rounds of ammunition; he couldn't do a hell of a lot of Indian-fighting on that. The blackjack might be some good at close quarters. The value of the handcuffs and the whistle was problematical. When he had smoked the contents of his pipe down to ash, he emptied and pocketed it and climbed down from the little cliff, going to the brook and following it down to where it joined a larger stream.

  A bluejay made a fuss at his approach. Two deer ran in front of him. A small black bear regarded him suspiciously and hastened away. Now, if he could only find some Indians who wouldn't throw tomahawks first and ask questions afterward…

  A road dipped in front of him to cross the stream. For an instant he accepted that calmly, then caught his breath. A real, wheel-rutted road. And brown horse-droppings in it-they were the most beautiful things he had ever seen. They meant he hadn't beaten Columbus here, after all. Maybe he might have trouble giving a plausible account of himself, but at least he could do it in English. He waded through the little ford and started down the road, toward where he thought Bellefonte ought to be. Maybe he was in time to get into the Civil War. That would be more fun than Korea had been.

  The sun went down in front of him. By now he was out of the big hemlocks; they'd been lumbered off on both sides of the road, and there was a respectable second growth, mostly hardwoods. Finally, in the dusk, he smelled freshly turned earth. It was full dark when he saw a light ahead.

  The house was only a dim shape; the light came from one window on the end and two in front, horizontal slits under the roof overhang. Behind, he thought, were stables. And a pigpen-his nose told him that. Two dogs, outside, began whauff whauffing in the road in front of him.

  "Hello, in there!" he called. Through the open windows, too high to see into, he heard voices a man's, a woman's, another man's. He called again, and came closer. A bar scraped, and the door swung open. For a moment a heavy-bodied woman in a sleeveless dark dress stood in it. Then she spoke to him and stepped inside. He entered.

  It was a big room, lighted by two candles, one on a table spread with a meal and the other on the mantel, and by the fire on the hearth. Double-deck bunks along one wall, fireplace with things stacked against it. There were three men and another, younger, woman, besides the one who had admitted the comer of his eye he could see children peering around a door that seemed to open into a shed-annex. One of the men, big and blonde-bearded, stood with his back to the fireplace, holding what looked like a short gun.

  No, it wasn't, either. It was a crossbow, bent, with a quarrel in the groove. The other two men were younger-probably his sons, Both were bearded, though one's beard was only a blonde fuzz. He held an axe; his older brother had a halberd. All three wore sleeveless leather jerkins, short-sleeved shirts, and cross-gartered hose. The older woman spoke in a whisper to the younger woman, who went through the door at the side, hustling the children ahead of her.

  He had raised his hands pacifically as he entered. "I'm a friend," he said. "I'm going to Bellefonte; how far is it?"

  The man with the crossbow said something. The woman replied. The youth with the axe said something, and they all laughed.

  "My name's Morrison. Corporal, Pennsylvania State Police." Hell, they wouldn't know the State Police from the Swiss Marines. "Am I on the road to Bellefonte?" They ought to know where that was, it had been settled in 1770, and this couldn't be any earlier than that.

  More back-and-forth. They weren't talking Pennsylvania Dutch-he knew a little of it. Maybe Polish. no, he'd heard enough of that in the hard-coal country to recognize it, at least. He looked around while they argued, and noticed, on a shelf in the far corner, three images. He meant to get a closer look at them. Roman Catholics used images, so did Greek Catholics, and he knew the difference.

  The man with the crossbow laid the weapon down, but kept it bent with the quarrel in place, and spoke slowly and distinctly. It was no language he had ever heard before. He replied, just as distinctly, in English. They looked at one another, and passed their hands back and forth across their faces. On a thousand-to-one chance, he tried Japanese. It didn't pay off. By signs, they invited him to sit and eat with them, and the children, six of them, trooped in.

  The meal was ham, potatoes and succotash. The eating tools were knives and a few horn spoons; the plates were stabs of corn-bread. The men used their belt-knives. He took out his jackknife, a big switchblade he'd taken off a j d. arrest, and caused a sensation with it. He had to demonstrate several times. There was also elderberry wine, strong but not particularly good. When they left the table for the women to clear, the men filled pipes from a tobacco-jar on the mantel, offering it to him. He filled his own, lighting it, as they had, with a twig from the hearth. Stepping back, he got a look at the images.

  The central figure was an elderly man in a white robe with a blue eight pointed star on his bre
ast. Flanking him, on the left, was a seated female figure, nude and exaggeratedly pregnant, crowned with wheat and holding a cornstalk; and on the right a masculine figure in a mail shirt, holding a spiked mace. The only really odd thing about him was that he had the head of a wolf. Father god, fertility goddess, war god. No, this crowd weren't Catholics Greek, Roman or any other kind.

  He bowed to the central figure, touching his forehead, and repeated the gesture to the other two. There was a gratified murmur behind him; anybody could see he wasn't any heathen. Then he sat down on a chest with his back to the wall.

  They hadn't re-barred the door. The children had been herded back into the annex by the younger woman. Now that he recalled, there'd been a vacant place, which he had taken, at the table. Somebody had gone off somewhere with a message. As soon as he finished his pipe, he pocketed it, managing, unobtrusively, to unsnap the strap of his holster.

  Some half an hour later, he caught the galloping thud of hooves down the road-at least six horses. He pretended not to hear it; so did the others. The father moved to where he had put down the crossbow; the older son got hold of the halberd, and the fuzz-chinned youth moved to the door. The horses stopped outside; the dogs began barking frantically. There was a clatter of accoutrements as men dismounted. He slipped the. 38 out and cocked it.

  The youth went to the door, but before he could open it, it flew back in his face, knocking him backward, and a man-bearded face under a high combed helmet, steel long sword in front of him-entered. There was another helmeted head behind, and the muzzle of a musket. Everybody in the room shouted in alarm; this wasn't what they'd been expecting, at all. Outside, a pistol banged, and a dog howled briefly.

  Rising from the chest, he shot the man with the sword. Half-cocking with the double-action and thumbing the hammer back the rest of the way, he shot the man with the musket, which went off into the. ceiling. A man behind him caught a crossbow quarrel in the forehead and pitched forward, dropping a long pistol unfired.

  Shifting the Colt to his left hand, he caught up the sword the first man had dropped. Double-edged, with a swept guard, it was lighter than it looked, and beautifully balanced. He stepped over the body of the first man he had shot, to be confronted by a swordsman from outside, trying to get over the other two. For a few moments they cut and parried, and then he drove the point into his opponent's unarmored face, then tugged his blade free as the man went down. The boy, who had gotten hold of the dropped pistol, fired past him and hit a man holding a clump of horses in the road. Then he was outside, and the man with the halberd along with him, chopping down another of the party. The father followed; he'd gotten the musket and powder-flask, and was reloading it.

  Driving the point of the sword into the ground, he bolstered his Colt and as one of the loose horses passed, caught the reins, throwing himself into the saddle. Then, when his feet had found the stirrups, he stooped and retrieved the sword, thankful that even in a motorized age the state police taught their men to ride.

  The fight was over, at least here. Six attackers were down, presumably dead; two more were galloping away. Five loose horses milled about, and the two young men were trying to catch them. Their father had charged the short musket, and was priming the pan.

  This had only been a sideshow fight, though. The main event was a half mile down the road; he could hear shots, yells and screams, and a sudden orange glare mounted into the night. While he was quieting the horse and trying to accustom him to the change of ownership, a couple more fires blazed up. He was wondering just what he had cut himself in on when the fugitives began streaming up the road. He had no trouble identifying them as such; he'd seen enough of that in Korea.

  There were more than fifty of them-men, women and children. Some of the men had weapons spears, axes, a few bows, one musket almost six feet long. His bearded host shouted at them, and they paused.

  "What's going on down there?" he demanded. Babble answered him. One or two tried to push past; he cursed them luridly and slapped at them with his flat. The words meant nothing, but the tone did. That had worked for him in Korea, too. They all stopped in a clump, while the bearded man spoke to them. A few cheered. He looked them over; call it twenty electives. The bodies in the road were stripped of weapons; out of the comer of his eye he saw the two women passing things out the cottage door. Four of the riderless horses had been caught and mounted. More fugitives came up, saw what was going on, and joined.

  "All right, you guys! You want to live forever?" He swung his sword to include all of them, then pointed down the road to where a whole village must now be burning. "Come on, let's go get them!"

  A general cheer went up as he started his horse forward, and the whole mob poured after him, shouting. They met more and more fugitives, who saw that a counter-attack had been organized, if that was the word for it. The shooting ahead had stopped. Nothing left in the village to shoot at, he supposed.

  Then, when they were within four or five hundred yards of the burning houses, there was a blast of forty or fifty shots in less than ten seconds, and loud yells, some in alarm. More shots, and then mounted men came pelting toward them. This wasn't an attack; it was a rout. Whoever had raided that village had been hit from behind. Everybody with guns or bows let fly at once. A horse went down, and a saddle was emptied. Remembering how many shots it had taken for one casualty in Korea, that wasn't bad. He stood up in his stirrups, which were an inch or so too short for him to begin with, waved his sword, and shouted, "Chaaarge!" Then he and the others who were mounted kicked their horses into a gallop, and the infantry-axes, scythes, pitchforks and all-ran after them.

  A horseman coming in the opposite direction aimed a sword-cut at his bare head. He parried and thrust, the point glancing from a breastplate. Before either could recover, the other man's horse had carried him on past and among the spears and pitchforks behind. Then he was trading thrusts for cuts with another rider, wondering if none of these imbeciles had ever heard that a sword had a point. By this time the road for a hundred yards in front, and the fields on either side, were full of horsemen, chopping and shooting at one another in the firelight.

  He got his point in under his opponent's arm, the memory-voice of a history professor of long ago reminded him of the gap in a cuirass there, and almost had the sword wrenched from his hand before he cleared it. Then another rider was coming at him, unarmored, wearing a cloak and a broad hat, aiming a pistol almost as long as the arm that held it. He swung back for a cut, urging his horse forward, and knew he'd never make it. All right, Cal, your luck's run out!

  There was an up flash from the pan, a belch off flame from the muzzle, and something hammered him in the chest. He hung onto consciousness long enough to kick his feet free of the stirrups. In that last moment, he realized that the rider who had shot him had been a girl.

  RYLLA sat with her father at the table in the small study. Chartiphon was at one end and Xentos at the other, and Harmakros, the cavalry captain, in a chair by the hearth, his helmet on the floor beside him. Vurth, the peasant, stood facing them, a short horseman's musketoon slung from his shoulder and a horn flask and bullet-bag on his belt.

  "You did well, Vurth," her father commended. "By sending the message, and in the fighting, and by telling Princess Rylla that the stranger was a friend. I'll see you're rewarded."

  Vurth smiled. "But, Prince, I have this gun, and fireseed for it," he replied. "And my son caught a horse, with all its gear, even pistols in the holsters, and the Princess says we may keep it all."

  "Fair battle-spoil, yours by right. But I'll see that something is sent to your farm tomorrow. Just don't waste that fireseed on deer. You'll need it to kill more Nostori before long."

  He nodded in dismissal, and Vurth grinned and bowed, and backed out, stammering thanks. Chartiphon looked after him, remarking that there went a man Gormoth of Nostor would find costly to kill.

  "He didn't pay cheaply for anything tonight," Harmakros said. "Eight houses burned, a dozen peasants butch
ered, four of our troopers killed and six wounded, and we counted better than thirty of his dead in the village on the road, and six more at Vurth's farm. And the horses we caught, and the weapons." He thought briefly. "I'd question if a dozen of them got away alive and hale."

  Her father gave a mirthless chuckle. "I'm glad some did. They'll have a fine tale to carry back. I'd like to see Gormoth's face at the telling."

  "We owe the stranger for most of it," she said. "If he hadn't rallied those people at Vurth's farm and led them back, most of the Nostori would have gotten away. And then I had to shoot him myself" . "You couldn't know, kitten," Chartiphon told her. "I've been near killed by friends myself, in fights like that." He turned to Xentos. "How is he?"

  "He'll live to hear our thanks," the old priest said. "The ornament on his breast broke the force of the bullet. He has a broken rib, and a nasty hole in him-our Rylla doesn't load her pistols lightly. He's lost more blood than I'd want to, but he's young and strong, and Brother Mytron has much skill. We'll have him on his feet again in a half-moon."

  She smiled happily. It would be terrible for him to die, and at her hand, a stranger who had fought so well for them. And such a handsome and valiant stranger, too. She wondered who he was. Some noble, or some great captain, of course.

  "We owe much to Princess Rylla," Harmakros insisted. "When this man from the village overtook us, I was for riding back with three or four to see about this stranger of Vurth's, but the Princess said, 'We've only Vurth's word there's but one; there may be a hundred Vurth hasn't seen.' So back we all went, and you know the rest."