The Edmond Hamilton Megapack: 16 Classic Science Fiction Tales (20 page)

Henry didn’t want that. He had spent just as much of his life in Thar, as Khal Kan, as he had done here on Earth. No matter if that life should turn out to be merely a dream, it was real and vivid, and he didn’t want to see it utterly destroyed.

He felt a little panic as he pictured himself cut off from Thar forever, never again riding with Brusul and Zoor on crazy adventure, never seeing again that brooding smile in Golden Wings’ eyes, nor the towers of Jotan brooding under the rosy moons.

Life as Henry Stevens of Earth, without his nightly existence in Thar, would be tame and profitless. Yet he knew that he
must
once and for all settle the question of which of his lives was real, even though it risked destroying one of those lives.

“I’ll do what Doctor Thorn said, when I’m Khal Kan tonight,” Henry muttered. “I’ll tell myself Thar isn’t real, and see if it has any effect.”

He was so strung up by anticipation of the test he was about to make, that he paid even less attention than usual to Emma’s placid account of neighborhood gossip and small household happenings.

That night as he lay, waiting for sleep, Henry repeated over and over to himself the formula that he must repeat as Khal Kan. His last waking thought, as he drifted into sleep, was of that.

Khal Kan awoke with a vague sense of some duty oppressing his mind. There was something he must do, or say—

He opened his eyes, to look with contentment upon the dawnlit interior of his own black stone chamber in the great palace at Jotan. On the wall were his favorite weapons—the sword with which he’d killed a sea-dragon when he was fourteen years old, the battered shield with the great scar which he had borne in his first real battle.

Golden Wings stirred sleepily against him, her perfumed black hair brushing his cheek. He patted her head with rough tenderness. Then he became aware of the tramp of many feet outside, of distant clank of arms and hard voices barking orders, and rattle of hurrying hoofs.

His pulse leaped. “Today we go south to meet Egir and the Bunts!”

Then he remembered what it was that dimly oppressed his mind. It was something from his dream—the queer nightly dream in which he was the timid little man Henry Stevens on that strange world called Earth.

He remembered now that Henry Stevens had promised a doctor that he would say aloud, “Thar isn’t real—I, Khal Kan, am not real.”

Khal Kan laughed. The idea of saying such a thing, of asserting that Thar and Jotan and everything else was not real, seemed idiotic.

“That timid little man I am in the dream each night—he thinks I would mouth such folly as that!” Khal Kan chuckled.

Golden Wings had awakened. Her slumbrous black eyes regarded him questioningly.

“It’s my own private joke, sweet,” he told her. And he went on to tell her of the nightly dream he had had since childhood, of a queer world, called Earth in which he was another man. “It’s the maddest world you can imagine, my pet—that dream-world. Men don’t even wear swords, they don’t know how to ride or fight like men, and they spend their lives plotting in stuffy rooms for a thing they call ‘money’—bits of paper and metal.

“And the cream of the joke,” Khal Kan laughed, “is that in my dream, I even doubt whether Thar is real. The dream-me believes that maybe
this
is the dream, that Jotan and Brusul and Zoor and even you are but phantom visions of my sleeping brain.”

He rose to his feet. “Enough of dreams and visions. Today we ride to meet Egir and the Bunts.
That
is no dream!”

Ten thousand strong massed the fighting-men of Jotan later that morning, outside the walls of the city. Under the red sun their bronzed faces were sternly confident and eager for battle.

Kan Abul rode out through their ranks, with his captains behind him in full armor. Khal Kan was among them, and beside him rode Golden Wings. The desert princess had fiercely refused to be left behind.

Their helmets flashed in die red sunlight, and the cheers of the troops were deafening as Kan Abul spoke to his captains.

“Egir’s main force is already ten leagues north of Galoon,” he told them. “There’s talk of some new weapon which the Bunts have, with which they claim to be invincible. So we’re going to take them by surprise.

“I’ll lead our main force of eight thousand archers and spearmen south along the coast road,” the king continued. “My son, you will take our two thousand horsemen and ride over the first ridge of the Dragals, then ride south ten leagues. We’ll join battle with the Bunts down on the coastal plain, and you can come down from the Dragals and strike their flank. And the gods will be against us if we don’t roll them up and destroy them as our forefathers did, generations ago.”

Kan Abul led the troops down the coast road, and as they marched along they roared out the old fighting-song of Jotan.

“The Bunts came up to Jotan,

Long ago!”

Hours later, Khal Kan sat his horse amid a thin screen of brush high in the red easternmost ridge of the Dragals, leagues south of Jotan. Golden Wings sat her pony beside him, and their two thousand horsemen waited below the concealment of the ridge.

Down there below them, the red slopes dropped into a narrow plain between the mountains and the blue Zambrian. Far southward, a pall of black smoke marked the site of sacked Galoon. And from there, something like a glittering snake was crawling north along the coast.

“My Uncle Egir and his green devils,” muttered Khal Kan. “Now where are father and our footmen?”

“See—they come!” Golden Wings cried, pointing northward eagerly.

In the north, a glittering serpent of almost equal size seemed crawling southward to meet the advancing Bunt columns.

“Your desert eyes see well,” declared Khal Kan. “Now we wait.”

The two armies drew closer to each other. Horns were blaring now down in the Bunt columns, and the green bowmen were hastily forming up in double columns, a solid, blocky formation. More slowly, they advanced.

Trumpets roared in the north, where the footmen of Jotan marched steadily on. Faintly to the two on the ridge came the distant chorus.

“The Bunts fled back on the homeward track

When blood did flow!”

“There is my uncle, damn him!” exclaimed Khal Kan, pointing.

He felt the old, bitter rage as he saw the stalwart, bright-helmed figure that rode with a group of Bunts at the head of the green men’s army.

“He leads them to the battle,” he muttered. “He never was a coward, whatever else he is. But today I will wipe out his menace to Jotan.”

“They are fighting!” Golden Wings cried, with flaring eagerness.

Clouds of arrows were whizzing between the two nearing armies, as Jotan archers and Bunt bowmen came within range.

Men began to drop in both armies—but in the Jotan army four fell for every stricken Bunt.

“Something’s wrong!” Khal Kan cried. “Every man of ours who is even touched by an arrow is falling. I can’t—”

“Poison!” hissed Golden Wings. “Theyare using poisoned arrows. It’s a trick I’ve heard of the Nameless Men of the far north.”

Khal Kan stared unbelievingly. “Even the Bunts wouldn’t use such hideous means! Yet my uncle is ruthless—”

Red rage misted his brain, and his voice was an unhuman roar as he turned and shouted to his tensely waiting horsemen.

“Our men are being slain by foul magic!” he yelled. “Down upon them—we strike for Jotan!”

It was as though he and Golden Wings were riding the forefront of a human avalanche as they charged down the steep slope to the battle.

They smashed home into the flank of the Bunts. The green men gave way in surprise and momentary terror. Kahl Kan’s sword whipped like a lash of light among ugly green heads and thrusting spears. As always, in a fight, he moved by pure instinct rather than by conscious design.

Yet he kept Golden Wings a little behind him. The girl was fiercely wielding her light sword against those on the ground who sought to hamstring Khal Kan’s horse with spear or sword. His riders were yelling shrilly.

The crazy confusion of the battle took on definite pattern. The Bunts had recoiled from the unexpected attack, but Egir was reforming them.

Khal Kan shouted and spurred to get at Egir. He could see his uncle’s giant form, his cynical, powerful face under his helmet, and could hear his bull voice directing the reforming of the Bunt columns.

But he could not smash through the mad melee toward Egir. And now poisoned Bunt arrows were falling, dropping men from their saddles.

Brusul had reached him, was shouting to him. “Prince, your father is slain—one of those hellish arrows.”

Khal Kan’s heart went cold for a moment. He hardly heard Brusul’ s hoarse voice, shouting on.

“We can’t face those poisoned shafts here in the open! Unless we fall back, they’ll cut us down from a distance like grain in harvest-time!”

Khal Kan groaned. He saw the dilemma. They could not hope to smash the Bunt lines that Egir had reformed—and in a long battle the new poisoned arrows of the green men would take heavier and heavier toll of them.

The safety of Jotan was now a crushing weight on his shoulders. He was king now, and the dire responsibility of the position in this mad moment left him no time even for sorrow for his father. A battle lost here now meant that Jotan was defenseless before Egir’s horde.

With a groan, he ordered a trumpeter to sound retreat.

“Fall back toward Jotan!” he ordered. “March the footmen back on the double, Brusul—we’ll cover your withdrawal with the horsemen.”

Through the long, hot hours of that afternoon, the bitter righting retreat surged back northward to Jotan. The Bunt columns followed closely, the green men howling with triumph.

Ever and again, Khal Kan and his riders charged back against the pursuing Bunts and smashed their front lines, making them recoil. Each time, empty saddles showed the toll of the poisoned shafts.

Sunset was flaring bloodily over the Dragals when they came back by that bitter way to the black towers of Jotan. Footsore, reeling with fatigue, Brusul’s spearmen marched through the gate into the city.

One last charge back at the Bunts made Khal Kan with the horsemen. He rode back then with Golden Wings, who was swaying in her saddle. They two were the last of the riders to enter the city.

The great gates hastily ground shut, as sweating men labored in the dusk at the winches. Through the loopholes of the guard-towers, Khal Kan looked out and saw the Bunt hordes outside spreading to encircle the whole land side of Jotan.

“They have now four fighting-men to every one of ours,” he muttered through his teeth. “We are in a trap called a city.”

He was staggering, his face grimed and smeared with sweat and dust and blood. Golden Wings pressed his arm in complete faith.

“It was only the foul trick of the poisoned arrows that defeated tis!” she exclaimed. “But for that, we’d have rolled them into the sea.”

“We have Egir to thank for that,” rasped Khal Kan. “While that man lives, doom hangs like a thundercloud over Jotan.”

He stepped to the window and sent his voice rolling out into the gathering darkness.”

“Egir, will you settle this man to man, sword to sword? Speak!”

Back came a sardonic voice from the camp of the Bunts.

“I am not so simple, my dear nephew! Your city’s a nut whose shell we’ll soon crack and pick, so rest you.”

Khal Kan set guards at every rod of the wall. Jotan’s streets were dark under the two moons, for no torches had been lit this night. The sound of women’s voices wailing a requiem for his dead father brought his numbed mind a sick sense of loss.

No one else in Jotan spoke or broke the stillness. Awful and imminent peril crushed the city’s folk. But from the darkness outside the walls came the sound of distant hammering as the Bunt hordes began making scaling-ladders for the morrow.

From a window of the palace, before he collapsed in drugged sleep of exhaustion, Khal Kan saw the Bunt fires hemming in the whole landward side of the city in their crescent of flame.…

Henry Steven’s wife had been worried about him all day. He had been acting queerly, she thought anxiously, ever since he had awakened that morning.

He had been pale and stricken and haggard since he had awakened. He had not gone to the office at all, a tiling unprecedented. And he had spent most of the day pacing to and fro in the little house, his haunted eyes not seeming to see her, his whole bearing one of intense excitement.

Henry was afraid—afraid of the dread climax to which things were rushing in the other world of Thar. He knew the awful peril in which Jotan now stood. Once those hordes of Bunts got over the wall, the city was doomed.

“I’ve got to quit driving myself crazy about it,” he told himself desperately that afternoon. “It’s just a dream—Thar and Khal Kan must be only a dream.”

But his feverish apprehension was not lessened by that thought. No matter if Thar was only a dream, it was real to him!