Short Fiction, Poul Anderson [simple e reader .TXT] 📗

forests and rivers of Kathantuma with the mountains shining in the far distance. Dyann set the ship down just outside the town, stood up, and stretched her tigress body with an exultant laugh.

“Home!” she cried. “Gravity!”

“Uh⁠—yeah.” Ray tried to lift his feet. It went slowly, with some strain⁠—half again the pull of Earth. Urushkidan groaned and wheezed his painful way to a chair and collapsed all over it.

“Let’s go!” Dyann snatched up her sword, set the helmet rakishly on her bronze curls, and opened the airlock. When Ray hesitated she reached and yanked him out.

The air was cool and windy, pungent with a million scents of earth and growing things, tall clouds sailing over a high blue heaven, and even the engineer was grateful for it after the stuffiness of the boat. He looked around him. Not far off was a charming rustic cottage. It was like a scene from some forgotten idyll of Earth’s old past.

“Looks good,” he said.

A four-foot arrow hummed past his ear and rang like a gong on the ship’s hull.

“Yowp!” Ray dove for shelter. Another arrow zipped in front of him. He whirled at a storm of contralto curses.

There were half a dozen women pouring from the charming rustic cottage, a battle-scarred older one and five tall young daughters, waving swords and axes and spears. A couple of men peered nervously from the door.

“Ha, Ormun!” yelled Dyann. She lifted her sword and dashed to meet the onslaught. The oldest woman caught the amazon’s blow on a raised shield and her ax clanged off Dyann’s helmet. Dyann staggered, shook her head, and struck out afresh. The others closed in, yelling and jabbing.

Dyann’s sword met the nearest ax halfway and broke across. She stooped, picked the woman off her feet, and whirled her over her head. With a shout, she threw the old she-warrior into two of her nearest daughters, and the trio went down in a roar of metal.

Centaurian hospitality, thought Ray.

A backhanded blow sent him reeling. He looked up to see a yellow-haired girl looming over him. Before he could do more than mutter she had slugged him again and thrown him over one brawny shoulder.

Hoofs clattered down the narrow dirt road. A squad of armored women riding animals reminiscent of Percherons, but horned and red of hide, were charging from the town. They swept into the fight, wielding clubbed lances with fine impartiality, and it broke up in a sullen wave of red-splashed femininity. Nobody, Ray saw from his upside-down position, had been killed, but there were plenty of slashes and the intent had certainly been there.

The harsh barking language of Kathantuma rose on either side. Finally an understanding seemed to be reached. One of the riders pointed a mailed hand at Ray’s captor and snapped an order. The girl protested, was overruled, and tossed him pettishly to the ground. He recovered consciousness in a minute or two.

Dyann picked him up, tenderly. “Poor Ray,” she murmured. “Ve play too rough for you here, huh?”

“What was it all about?” he mumbled.

“Oh, these people vere mad because ve landed in their field, but the qveen’s riders stopped the fight in time. It is only lawful to kill people on the regular duellin’ grounds, inside the city limits. Ve must have law and order, you know.”

“I see,” said Ray faintly.

It was a large and turbulent crowd which gathered at sunset to hear Dyann speak. She and her companions were on a raised stand in the market square, together with the scarred, arrogant queen and her troop of pikewomen and cavalry. In the guttering red flare of torches, Ray looked down on a surging lake of women, the soldier-peasants of Kathantuma gathered from all the hinterland, brandishing their weapons and beating clangorous shields in lieu of applause. Here and there public entertainers circulated, thinly clad men with flowers twined into their hair and beards, strumming harps and watching with great liquid eyes.

Ray was still not quite sure what the girl’s plan was, and by now didn’t much care. A combination of the dragging Varannian gravity and the potent Varannian wine made him so sleepy that he could barely focus on the milling crowd. Urushkidan slept the sleep of the just, snoring hideously.

Dyann ended her harangue and the racket of metal and voices shook the surrounding walls. After that there were long-winded arguments which sometimes degenerated into fistfights, until Ray himself dropped off to sleep.

He was shaken awake by Dyann and looked blearily around him. Dawn was streaking the horizon with cold colorless light, and the mob was slowly and noisily dispersing. He groaned as he stretched his stiffened body and tried to brush the dew off his clothes.

“The natural life⁠—Hah!” he said miserably, and sneezed.

“It has been decided,” cried the girl. She was still as fresh as the morning, her cheeks were flushed and her eyes ablaze. “They agreed at last, and now the var-vord goes over the land and envoys are bound for Almarro and Kurin to get allies. How soon can ve leave, Ray?”

“Leave?” he asked stupidly. “Leave for where?”

“Vy, for Yupiter, of course!”

“Huh?”

“You are tired, my little bird. Come vith me, and ve shall rest in the castle.”

Ray groaned again.

How do you equip an army of barbarians still in the early Iron Age to cross four and a third light-years of space?

A preliminary question, perhaps is, Do you want to?

Ray emphatically didn’t, but he had very little choice in the matter. He was soon given forcibly to understand that men kept their place and did as they were commanded.

He went to Urushkidan and poured out his sorrows. The Martian, after an abortive attempt to steal the spaceship and sneak home, had been given a room in one of the castle towers and was covering large sheets of local parchment with equations. This place, thought Ray, has octopuses in the belfry.

“They want to go to Jupiter and fight the Jovians,” he said.

“What of it?” asked Urushkidan, lighting his pipe. He had found that dried bark could