Chapter 13

It was a tedious series of physical contests. The god Bronze declared McAllister would run them naked, as the 'noble warriors of yesteryear' had. McAllister was certain that Bronze was fonder of the company of men than a god ought to be, much as some of the 'warriors of yesteryear' were in his own world. McAllister was reluctant to leave the brooch, though he didn't feel he needed to worry about the whitish stick, it could and would look after itself.

Bronze gave the sword a quizzical look, though he didn't touch it.

McAllister hadn't seen Sable, the Jade, or even Shan Hu since the bright flash. When it ended, McAllister found himself standing in the god Bronze's flagstone courtyard, before the impressive dais. McAllister didn't know how much time passed since his abduction in the river. He could point to where Sable was kept, though there were walls of cut stone between he and she.

Javelin throwing and distance running had its place, McAllister thought, but the current test was trite. "Fetch me an apple from the tree at Aginar," he was told.

The classic story was the apple of the Hesperides, in his old world, and both Heracles and Perseus managed the feat, Heracles as one of his twelve labors. McAllister remembered the story from the stage-show he had seen once in another world, in a prior life ... Heracles tricked Atlas into stealing an apple from Atlas' nieces who guarded the tree in their garden, and Atlas wanted Heracles to keep supporting the world on his shoulders. Heracles tricked Atlas back, asking him to take the weight while Heracles adjusted his shoulder-pad. Of course, Atlas was left supporting the world while Heracles left with the apple.

McAllister doubted there existed an Atlas in this world, nor even three lovely nymphs he could seduce away from their guardianship of the garden.

Naked, McAllister descended the mountain Bronze left him on, after giving him this next task. From the side of the mountain, he could see a village on the river that flowed through the hills to the sea it must ultimately empty into — wherever he was.

McAllister had little choice but to walk into the central market of the village naked. There were no men visible, only women and children, wearing dress that covered legs to the calf, and arms to the mid-bicep, with close necks. Frustrated, his first attempts at conversation with the women were met with blushes and giggles, and much talk amongst the small groups he found them in, but no direct answers.

Despondent, he searched for a place to sit that did not require him to lay his genitals in the dust of the market, when a young girl of perhaps twelve years came to him. "I can help you, mister, if you can help me," she said.

McAllister eyed her dress, as plain and shapeless as the others on the girls and women of the village. "This seems a loveless place," he muttered, but then spoke aloud. "You have but to ask, Mademoiselle, and I will do what I may."

The word from his own world caused her to frown for a moment. "Your half-grown woman," she repeated, and brightened. "I like that," she said.

McAllister gave her a wry smile, for the vagaries of translation, and said, "Perhaps you'd tell me what service I can do for you? I shouldn't like to be here in the market, naked and friendless when the men return."

Giggling again, the girl looked at him through lowered lashes. "You're not unpleasant to look upon, sir. The older women of the village are much taken with you. Though, I'd think it is some months before the men will all return. Only the halt and sick remain, along with the smith."

"Where are the men?" McAllister asked.

"Off to war, down on the Southern Plains, of course," the girl replied. "Our god has commanded us to eradicate the Flavians, and every year we do battle to push them to the sea."

McAllister nodded. "Your god would have straw-colored hair, ride a chariot, and be more fond of men than women?"

Eyes wide, the girl bit her knuckle, staring at McAllister.

"I see I've described him," McAllister said, dryly. "How can I help you?"

"There is a horn, said to belong to the god Bronze once upon a time, that my Lord the King of Etarusca had in his possession."

McAllister interrupted. "Where is Etarusca?"

"Why, here, good sir, you are in the capital city."

McAllister closed his eyes for a moment. "Carry on," he ordered, when he reopened them.

"Yes, sir. The horn is important to us. With it held, a man takes his wedding vows and asks the god Bronze to grant him fertility, so that he may father sons in the season between wars."

McAllister winced. "I guess relations between a man and his woman in this kingdom are brief," he observed. The girl seemed a little flushed, to McAllister's eye, and she began darting glances at what was between his legs. "Return to your tale, please," McAllister reminded her.

"The horn was ours by right of battle amongst the kingdoms which owe fealty and worship to Bronze," she said.

McAllister only nodded.

"My older brother was to be married with three others," she continued, frowning at McAllister's obvious disdain for winning things by the right of battle. "A commotion occurred, when the cow that was to be killed for the event broke loose, and jostled the wedding platform. The horn was knocked from his hands, and fell into the well." She pointed across the square, to where a small ring of rocks were mortared in place around what was obviously a well.

"The king took my brother's head on the spot," she said. McAllister's head snapped up at that, and he met her eye. "And declared that, as his life's blood spilled, he would take the place of the cow for the sacrifice before marching." The girl had tears in her eyes, as she recounted, "He declared that if we do not have the horn back by the time he returns, he will sell my whole family to the Flavian slavers."

"Well, how long do we have?"

"Some weeks, I should say.

McAllister nodded. He had been ninety days from Marcelon, some fifty-nine sailing to the Western Continent and thirty more on horseback or in Sea's-Home. Where he was now ... he could not say, though surely it was south of the Equator if it were early summer.

"In all this time none have sounded it?" McAllister was curious.

"So far as I know, none have dared," was her reply.

"Well, let's see to this well," McAllister said, and turned to it. "Interesting things happen to me at wells," he said, smiling at the girl.

McAllister knelt at the lip of the mortared ring around the well, and saw the bucket was on a rope he judged as no longer than twenty feet. One end was tied through an iron eye welded to a rod set in the mortar, and the other end was in an iron ferrule, through which the bail of the bucket threaded. The iron bail was shaped like an arc, with sharp bends at the ends meant to pierce the sides of the bucket. Small nail-like pins were driven through small holes drilled in the ends of the bail, set so as to retain the bucket on the bail, set on the inside of the bucket.

"This is easy enough to undo. Is there a sling on the horn? A rope or other thing I might snag?"

"There is," the girl responded. "It's a braided leather strap."

"Well then, perhaps it's time to fish for a horn," McAllister said with a smile. A small rock from the dirt near the base of the mortared ring proved sufficient to press the pin out of the ends of the bail, and McAllister quickly had the bucket free of the bail. Sliding the bail through the ferrule on the end of the rope, he held up what was now essentially a large hook on the end of the rope.

"Let's hope it doesn't fall off," he said critically, "I'd hate to have your king vexed with me for the loss of a bucket's bail." So saying, he knelt on the mortared rock, and slowly let the rope and bail down into the dark hole.

As McAllister fished, knees on one half of the mortared ring, his left forearm on the other half of the ring, he knew his privates were exposed awkwardly as the girl at first giggled, and then drew silent.

A moment later, he felt he snagged something with the bail. The girl behind him said in a surprised tone, "Hello, Grandmother."

"That is quite the lesson in the male of the species," the new voice behind him observed in tones of amused tolerance. McAllister pulled the rope upward with great care.

"Note the muscle, and the smooth skin where no hair grows on the inside of the thighs. This man is a horseman, Granddaughter."

Giggling, the girl said something to the grandmother that made her laugh in delight. "Yes, he might be half horse. Certainly on the half that matters."

McAllister pulled the horn completely from the well. Straightening, he turned to the new arrival, the elderly grandmother — who wasn't so elderly in appearance. Straight-backed and still fair of hair, she wore the plain dress of the village with élan.

"Tell me," he said, "do I know you?"

Whatever she was about to reply was lost then, lost in the onslaught of several nearly simultaneous events. From across the market square, there came a commotion, as a caisson and six horses, lathered from hard use, came to a stop. Nearly simultaneously, McAllister felt his awareness of Sable disappear. Not instantaneously, but with the sensation of moving at great speed, to an unknown destination, McAllister could point to her no longer.

As he straightened next to the well, he saw twelve or so men spill from the rear of the caisson, and assemble in a loose line. Four carried bows.

"Get behind the well," he ordered the girl and the one he was not fully convinced was her grandmother.

"All this for a horn?" the girl wondered.

"It's older than you think," he answered, "it was one of the objects of power Rafael carried twelve hundred years ago. I think it was delivered to this mountain kingdom, and entrusted to the care of the warlike people of the warrior-god." He muted the sarcasm in his voice, of respect for the girl and her grandmother. "What no one counted on," he finished grimly, "was the incompetence and vanity of the warrior-god." He spared them a look. "Get down. They'll start to use those bows soon, when they begin to advance."

McAllister wished mightily for a weapon. Feeling a strange detachment, he watched a fat man, still on the drover's bench of the caisson and holding the horses' reins stand up on the bench and point at McAllister.

"I don't think they are here for the horn," McAllister amended his earlier statement. "I think they're after me."

"Kill him. Don't talk to him, don't become distracted," the fat man shouted hoarsely, his grotesque voice floating across the market. "Remember, I will make you rich men, powerful men if you kill him."

His brooch wanted him, McAllister was aware, even over the distance separating them, from the village to the mountain. In turn, McAllister wanted the saber lying on his clothes next to the brooch. A sudden image of unknown hands cutting a rent in the fabric of the world and a figure stepping through it came to McAllister from the brooch. Without questioning whose viewpoint the image came from or how he was to accomplish it, he drew a square in the air before him, the stuff of sorcery trailing from his finger.

A sizzling line of bright light appeared as McAllister drew in the air before him, and the space above his clothes and the flagstone courtyard they lay on became visible through the square he drew. Not taking time to wonder, as the rent was oriented vertically before McAllister, but horizontally over the floor in Bronze's home, McAllister reached through and swept up the brooch, clothes, and saber.

One of the men with bows, despite the range, loosed a shaft at McAllister. It arced high, and then dropped through the rent in the air before him. The arrow clattered off the slate floor of the god's house in the mountains high above the small village.

McAllister looked over the rent at the man who loosed, and smiled, a chilling smile.

"Press him! Do not give him time!" the fat man ordered, and the men began to advance.

With the saber in his right hand and the brooch in his left, his clothes lying on the street and the horn upon his clothes, McAllister caused the rent to disappear, and stepped forward.

The men facing him parted, and the bowmen took aim, though strangely slowly. With the sinuous slipping movement Sable first showed him in the doorway at the church in the mountains of Danane, McAllister slipped between the darts converging where he had been.

However he did the thing Sable accomplished, it seemed scarcely a heartbeat before he was across the market square, and the first, much-surprised adversary found his throat venting bright blood.

McAllister moved between them, their motions delayed and jerky, the looks of surprise almost comically slow on their faces. Economically, with small movements, he performed the slaughter, for slaughter it was. As he killed the last armed man on the square, his eyes locked with the fat man on the caisson.