Undying World

CHAPTER 5

What Blade did next was not typical of him. Perhaps it was the loneliness, the terrible silence, that caused him to forego his usual caution. Ordinarily, from a position of weakness, he would have laid a snare, made the enemy come to him. At least he would have scouted cannily ahead, would have made sure of the nature of his enemy before coming to a direct confrontation. He did none of these things.

He searched in the shadowed street until he found a shop. He entered, ignoring the sleepers frozen in the attitudes of buying and selling, and searched until he found what he wanted-a simple crowbar. It lay on a half-opened crate in the back room of the shop. Blade cursed himself as a fool. He had been thinking of weapons in terms of bladed instruments, of swords and daggers and the like. There were plenty of weapons about. The crowbar was a weapon. So was the heavy sledge hammer he picked up and took with him.

Blade crouched in the shop entrance for five minutes, not moving, listening. Only silence. No sign of anything moving. They, it, whoever, must have returned to their sewer burrow. Making just one mistake-dropping that sewer lid half an inch.

As he waited, he detached the knife from the curtain-rod shaft and stuck it in his belt. When he was sure he was not watched, he darted back to the kiosk. Another reason for going into the sewers was to get away from that spying moon with its searchlights and, another thought occurred, from the possibility of being watched through powerful telescopes.

He pried the edge of the sewer lid up with the crowbar. It slipped away several times; he cursed softly. At last he got the bar far enough in for leverage and heaved, putting all his great strength into it. The lid moved several inches out of its bed, enough for Blade to get his fingers under the edge. He tried to lift it, to move it just enough and without sound. It was useless, too much even for him. The damn thing must weigh over a thousand pounds.

Again he resorted to the crowbar, a pitifully inadequate tool, to move the lid an inch at a time. When he had enough space for a full hand-hold he lost his patience, gripped it, straightened with a curse and put every bit of effort into it. His arm muscles bulged and the great sinews of his back and legs popped as he heaved upward.

It was a mistake. He moved the mammoth lid but could not hold it, could not lower it gently. It got away from him and spun and fell with a resounding clang. For a moment his ears rang as if he were inside a bell. Blade cursed. Nothing like announcing your coming. He was making a lot of mistakes, far too many, and he wondered when he would pay for them.

The dark hole gaped beneath him. Blade picked up the sledge hammer and knelt by the hole. There was no ladder. No sound came from below. What light slanted into the kiosk showed him part of a bricked arch, nothing more. He listened for running water. None.

Blade pondered. Another mistake. He should have searched about for some means of making light, but he had not and now time was against him. He could not assume that whoever was down there was deaf.

He dropped the crowbar into the pit and listened. Hardly a second elapsed before he heard it strike, a soft sound. Between twenty and thirty feet and soft bottom; mud or sand or, just possibly, more of the artificial turf. He must make up his mind.

Blade clutched the sledge hammer near the head, gripped the edge of the lid ring with one powerful hand, and let himself dangle down into the pit. His swinging legs made gallows shadows on the illuminated are of brick. He let go, thinking as he fell that at least he was getting away from that accursed ever-glowing moon.

He fell easily, bending his knees and rolling in what must be sand or earth. He scooped up a handful of the stuff and sniffed it. There was a faint, hardly discernible odor of old sewage. This sewer had not been used for a long time.

Blade wasted precious moments in groping for the crowbar. It might come in handy again. Just as his fingers closed over it, he looked up to see lights approaching from his left. A score of torches held high and burning straight with no flickering. Blade grimaced and turned to his right.

Another dazzle of torches approached from the right. He was trapped between them. Blade made a rapid calculation. There was more room to the right than to the left. He ran that way. The sewer was narrow here and, now that he could see a bit, he did not want to be trapped in a thirty-foot alley when there might be a better site farther on. He had the feeling now. Battle lay ahead.

His hunch was right-not altogether a hunch because the torches to his right were strung out, those to his left cramped-and as the sewer began to widen he saw someone watching him from a niche in the wall. Nothing more than a shadow, but Blade was sure it moved. When he sprang toward it and tried to grasp it, the shadow became flesh and blood and spat at him, hissed and clawed like a cat, then vanished. Blade wiped a trickle of blood from his face and grinned. He had just touched a bare female breast, warm and pulsing, firm and springy. Real flesh. He had smelled her, too; sweat and a female odor. Not too clean, perhaps, but human. Whoever they were, these sewer people now converging on him, they were real flesh and blood beings. With them he should be able to cope. At least it was better than those beautiful sleepers above.

Blade kept moving to his right. The sewer widened, and kept widening until he reckoned it at some ninety feet across. Beyond this point it began to narrow again. Here he must make his stand.

Both groups of torches were converging on him. They were held high and thrust ahead; Blade could see little of the bearers or the figures behind them. As the light grew he could make out more detail about him: the wide area in which he was trapped must be some sort of living quarters, for he saw crude tables and chairs. There were shelves and ledges in the walls containing what looked like bedrolls and blankets. A dripping water-jar hung from the ceiling and he knew a sudden and terrible thirst for real water.

Hastily he stripped off the jacket and trousers he had taken from the sleepers. He did not know the relationship between these sewer people and the beautiful people above, but it might be just as well to come as a stranger, naked and prepared to do battle or make friends and, as always he must, to establish his supremacy by guile or strength. Long experience had taught him that to survive in Dimension X he must rule or, at the very least, share the power.

They were crowding him now. The torches flared and sparked. Blade hefted the sledge hammer and swung it in an arc. It was well balanced with a long shaft and a sixteen-pound head. A good enough mace. In his left hand he gripped the small crowbar for use as a fending weapon.

As the torch bearers approached from both sides, the light increased until Blade could make them out. They were human, right enough, as he understood human-men, women and children-all staring at him, pointing and whispering among themselves. The women were bare-breasted, the children naked, and the men wore baggy trousers of a material resembling denim. The men were hirsute of chest, arms and back-everywhere but on their heads. They were all bald.

None spoke to Blade. No one raised his voice. They whispered and kept their distance. Beyond the first fringe, some twenty feet from him, Blade saw several of the bald men in conference, whispering and gesturing among themselves. It was time to take the first step.

Richard Blade could be quite a ham when he chose to be, when it suited his purpose and might save his life. Now he twirled the sledge hammer over his head. It made a humming sound and the torchlight was reflected from the burnished metal.

«I come as a friend,» said Blade, «or as an enemy. The choice is yours.» The words came loud and firm, from deep in his chest. It was his parade ground voice and another trick to establish authority.

As he spoke a silence fell over the assembly. The whispers stopped. The staring went on. Children clung to their mothers but none whimpered.

Blade smiled at them. He let the hammer swing idly back and forth at his side. He feigned impatience. «I know you have tongues. I heard you speak among yourselves. Why are you silent now? Which is it to be-friend or enemy?»

There was a renewed buzz of whispering among the women. The men were silent. Several of the women pointed at Blade's genitals, nodding and whispering. One laughed.

At last a man pushed his way through the throng. He came to within a dozen feet of Blade and halted. He carried a long bar of iron or steel, pointed at one end and hooked at the other. Blade instantly judged it to be the natural weapon of these people: some five feet long, an inch thick, hooked and pointed, it would be lethal. And it could move those enormous sewer lids.

Blade swung his hammer in menace. «Keep your distance, my friend. Until it is decided if you are my friend.»

«I am Sart,» said the man. His voice was baritone and matter of fact. He did not smile, nor did he frown. He leaned on his iron bar, his bald pate shining in the torches and stared at Blade-not at Blade's face but at his genitals, just as the women had done. The big man from Home Dimension began to wonder what the hell went on. Were they all sex maniacs?

The man who called himself Sart pointed at Blade's penis. «That, stranger. Does it function? Can you make children?»

Blade did not let his face betray his astonishment. How could this sewer creature, this man of Dimension X, possibly know of Blade's sexual troubles back in Home Dimension? It was fantastic and incredible, an impossible coincidence.

Blade said, «It works. And I can have children. What is it to you?»

A strange prelude to combat, this.

Sart smiled for the first time, more with his eyes than with his brown-stained teeth. He lifted his heavy iron bar and twirled it like a baton. «It is not so much to me, stranger. It might be a great deal to you-the difference whether you live or die. We Gnomen need children. If you can make them, and you can prove this, then we will permit you to live and become a slave. If you cannot make children we will kill you. It is as simple as that.»

Blade had been watching the throng about him. Several men, all armed with the feral iron bars, were inching toward him, so spaced as to make a circle and come at him from all sides.

He raised his hammer and shook it at Sart. «Tell your friends to keep back or we will never finish this talk.»

Sart raised a hand and the men halted. Sart was again leaning on his bar. «Your final answer, stranger?»

Blade had already made his decision. No submission. No slavery. The matter would have to be decided here and now. He fixed a glittering eye on Sart. «The answer is still yes, I can have children like any normal man. As to becoming a slave-the answer is no. That will never happen. I will never submit and you will have to kill me… after I kill a great many of you. Does that suit your purpose, Sart?»

Something changed in the man's eyes. They were well set apart, intelligent, and of a deep brown such as is found in dogs and some apes. Blade waited patiently. Sart was thinking. Sart was in a dilemma; Blade couldn't imagine what it could be.

Blade watched the crowd. He saw one of the men giving instructions to a young girl, saw her glance once at Blade, then disappear into the tunnel. Somehow he knew, instinctively and without really knowing, that the girl was the one he had surprised in the niche, the one who had scratched him. He brushed a crumb of dried blood from his check.

«I have sent for instructions,» said the man called Sart. «I am only a third chief of this section, and as much as I would like to kill you, I dare not. Not without orders from Jantor or Sybelline. If you can have children and I kill you without orders, I would be banished to the five-mile pits. I would not like that. So we will just have to wait and see.»

This did not suit Blade. He decided to provoke a fight, keep the impetus with him, present the real leaders, when and if they appeared, with a fait accompli. There was a time to talk and a time to strike. The talk could come later, when he had established himself as someone to reckon with.

He began to taunt Sart. «What makes you so sure you can kill me?»

Sart did not answer for a moment. Then he stepped back and called to a man in the crowd. The man flung one of the sharpened iron bars. Sart caught it deftly. He put his own bar aside and held the new bar in front of him at arms' length. Slowly he began to exert pressure on the bar. His facial expression did not change as the muscles in his arms, chest and forearms rippled and bunched. He bent the bar into a horseshoe and flung it at Blade's feet.

«I can do the same to you,» said Sart. He was not even breathing hard.

Blade was impressed and careful not to show it. He swiftly picked up the bar, tested it a moment, and then began to straighten it. It took every ounce of his strength. Sweat popped out on his face and he could hear his muscles cracking. When he had bent the bar into a semblance of its original form he flung it back at Sart.

The Gnoman nodded in reluctant approval. «You are strong. I admit it. It would be a pleasure and an honor to kill you. But I dare not, not without orders. More than anything else I dread the five-mile pits.»

«I will solve your problem,» said Blade. He picked up a handful of the sand and flung it in the man's face.

«I provoke you,» he cried. «All your people can bear witness. Defend yourself, Sart. You're a coward and a braggart and if you do not fight I will kill you anyway.»

This thing must be done before the leaders and reinforcements arrived.

Sart snatched up his iron bar and held it before him in a defensive position. He called out. «You all heard him. It is the stranger who forces this fight, not I.»

Some of the women hissed. Two of the men leaped out to stand at Sart's side. They menaced Blade, who was slowly advancing, with their bars. Blade smiled. «I had thought to fight only you, Sart, but if you are coward enough to fight three to one, then that's all right with me.»

All the better, Blade thought. If he could beat down three of them, he would be in an even stronger position.

Sart spoke to the men flanking him. «Do not kill him unless you must. You, Hobbidance, from the left. And you, Obidikut, from the right.»

So it was to be three to one. Blade whirled the sledge hammer over his head and sprang at Sart, giving the men on either side of him a chance to move in if they chose. They moved, but they were slow and they were trying not to kill him. Blade feinted a blow with the sledge and, when Sart raised his bar to defend, halted the blow in midair. He thrust, sword-like, over the bar and caught Sart squarely on the jaw with the sixteen-pound head. Sart went down.

The man on his left, seeing this, forgot his orders and made a vicious swipe with the hooked end of his bar. Blade parried with his hammer and, using the crowbar in his left hand like a dagger, thrust hard at the man's chest. The sharp end of the crowbar went into flesh and the blood spurted. The man, he who had been called Hobbidance, fell to his knees and began to cough blood. He made strangling sounds and clutched at his belly and throat.

The remaining Gnoman moved in with amazing speed, nearly decapitating Blade with a swing of his bar. The hooked point grazed Blade's head and moved his hair as it made a swishing sound. Blade moved away, backhanding the kneeling man with the crowbar, and cast a glance at Sart. He was dead to the world.

The Gnoman called Obidikut reversed his bar and rushed at Blade, trying to impale him. Blade parried and stepped aside, seeking to trip the man as he evaded the lunge. He tried to use a dagger stroke with the crowbar and failed in that also. The Gnoman now reversed his bar again and, using short strokes, kept swiping at Blade with the hooked end.

Blade moved carefully backward, between the two fallen men, heedful of grasping hands. Sart might be feigning. Blade sought to get his back to the wall, but before he could get into position the rush came in all its fury. This Obidikut was shorter than Sart, and not so powerful looking, and his brown eyes did not gleam with the same intelligence, but he was of the stuff that makes berserkers. He fell on Blade with grunts and cries, flailing away with his iron bar in a never-ceasing rain of deadly strokes.

Blade parried with the hammer and the crowbar. All he could do was parry. He never seemed to get a chance to strike a blow. The hammer began to weigh a hundred pounds. Sparks danced and flew and a steady clanging of iron on iron filled the tunnel. The Gnoman was tireless. On he came, on and on, forcing Blade away from the wall and into a circle. Blade retreated and kept retreating. It was all he could do, all he could manage, the only way he could stay alive. The Gnoman swung and poked and hooked with his bar, never stopping, never tiring.

Blade began to know despair and just a tinge of fear. He was wrong about this Obidikut-the man was not human. At least his lungs and muscles were not human. The man was made of the same stuff as his spear bar-iron. Blade had met his match at last and knew it. Guile then and-luck.

Once again he was retreating. Moving back toward the body of Sart. The man's bar lay by his side. Blade began to plan his move. He must bring it off or die, for he was in the last throes. His lungs were balloons filled with pain instead of air. His muscles were weak and quivering, beginning to spasm as fatigue overtook him. All he had left was his will.

Blade parried and parried again. The next blow, a terrible swipe as the Gnoman sensed victory, snapped off the hammer-head and sent it flailing into the crowd. Blade was left with only the haft and the crowbar. He flung the haft at the Gnoman. For the first time the man smiled as the useless piece of wood bounced off his chest.

Blade hurled the crowbar. It bounced off the bar with a clang. Blade turned to run. He pretended to trip over Sart's body and went to his knees. The watchers, for the most part silent until now, let out a sudden cry for blood, a frenzied merciless screaming for Blade's death.

Blade counted on the rush. He had two plans, but strength for only one. If Obidikut played it cautiously, if he did not rush, then Blade knew he was dead. He could fight on but he could not win.

The Gnoman rushed. Blade twisted on his knees, faked getting up, then fell to his knees once more. He snatched at Sart's bar and planted the hooked end firmly in the sand, inclining the point toward the rushing Gnoman. In doing so he took one final and terrible risk-the man's last blow.

The lethal bar whispered over Blade, brushing his skull under the thick hair. Blade knelt firm, holding the inclined bar, watching the pointed end impale the rushing man just below the rib cage. So great was the rush, so furious the last onslaught, that the sharp bar penetrated the chest and the man's back, and stood out behind him half a foot.

Obidikut dropped his own bar. He stared at Blade in what seemed mild surprise. Blade snatched up the bar and leaped away, using his last strength and cunning, pretending to be a confident winner when he had so nearly been a loser. He stepped over the body of Hobbidance and stood leaning on the bar, half smiling, trying to give the easy impression of I told you so.

The Gnoman still had not fallen. He actually smiled at Blade. He fingered the bar transfixing him as though it were some strange ornament and a bit uncomfortable. He walked around in a few short circles, making odd noises in his throat. The crowd was silent again. They seemed to have forgotten Blade. They watched the Gnoman as he walked about, with the iron bar through him. No one made an effort to help him, to speak to him, to pull out the bar in his guts.

Blade did not like it. Why didn't the man die instead of staggering about like a broken toy? He used the moment to improve his position, getting his back to a wall, filling his lungs and feeling his strength return. He brushed sweat from his streaming forehead and watched the Gnoman still on his feet.

The man went to his knees. He groped in the sand and found the crowbar Blade had flung. He raised it and brandished it at Blade-a last gesture of defiance-then fell forward, dead.

The crowd watched Blade. Scores of eyes glittered at him. Men were silent and did not come to challenge him. Women hissed and held their children close. They did not seem to hate Blade, nor to admire him. They paid no attention to the bodies.

Sart groaned again and got slowly to his knees. Blade watched him in wonder. The man had taken a sixteen-pound iron hammer-head on the jaw and now he was getting up. His jaw did not appear to be broken, though Sart was spitting blood and teeth. Blade tightened his grip on Sart's bar. Maybe it wasn't over yet. And Blade, though his outward facade was calm and confident, did not feel up to another battle. His guts churned, his knees trembled and he was bathed in sweat.

But Sart did not get to his feet. He glanced about him, at the bodies of his two friends, then looked at Blade. He began to crawl toward Blade on his knees, his bloody mouth gaping as he spoke.

«You have won,» Sart gasped. «By our laws, that makes you master and me slave. So be it. I prostrate myself to you.» He crawled nearer to Blade.

«Keep your distance,» said Blade. «And I wish no slaves. As far as I am concerned, you are a free man. And more-I told you I would be friends. My word still holds. So get on your feet and act like a man.»

The crowd watched in silence, not even whispering now.

«I plan no treachery,» said Sart. «I wish but to kiss your feet so that all will know I am your slave.»

Blade replied, «I say again that I want no slave. But I want you as a friend if-«

Sart's eyes were pleading. He whispered so that only Blade heard. «You do not understand, master. I must be your slave now. Only you can protect me. I have failed in my duty and if you do not take me for slave I will be sent to the five-mile pits. I beg you, I grovel before you, I ask for mercy. Take me for your slave before Jantor and Sybelline arrive. They have no mercy. But if you take me for slave and speak for me, if you save me from the pits, I will be both slave and friend. I swear it.»

Blade decided to risk it. He was still in a desperate position and Sart might serve him well in many ways.

He assented. «I take you for my slave, Sart.»

Sart wriggled forward and kissed Blade's foot in full view of the silent crowd. Then he wiped blood from his ruined mouth and stood up near Blade. «I pledge loyalty, master.» To the crowd at large he spoke, «You have all seen and heard. This stranger has defeated me and taken me for his slave. From this time on, I am under his protection.»

One of the men in the crowd called back. «We have seen, Sart. We have heard. But what of Jantor and of Sybelline? Suppose they decide to kill this stranger after all? What of you then, Sart?»

Sart did not answer them. He got to his feet and stood near Blade, who pointed the sharp end of the bar at him and said, «Keep your distance yet a time, my new friend and slave. And talk if you mouth is not too sore. Who is Jantor? And this Sybelline? Speak swiftly now, for I must know as much of them as possible before I meet them.»

Sart managed to look hurt. He said, «You need not fear me, master. When Sart makes a vow, he keeps it. And as to Jantor and Sybelline-they rule down here. And there is no time to tell you anything. They approach now.»