The Barbarians Read online

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  _History was repeating itself; there were moats and nobles in Pennsylvania and vassals in Manhattan and the barbarian hordes were overrunning the land._

  The Barbarians

  BY JOHN SENTRY

  It was just as he saw The Barbarian's squat black tankette lurchhurriedly into a nest of boulders that young Giulion Geoffrey realizedhe had been betrayed. With the muzzle of his own cannon still hot fromthe shell that had jammed The Barbarian's turret, he had yanked thestarboard track lever to wheel into position for the finishing shot. Allaround him, the remnants of The Barbarian's invading army were being cutto flaming ribbons by the armored vehicles of the Seaboard League. Thenight was shot through by billows of cannon fire, and the din oflaboring engines, guns, and rent metal was a cacophonic climax to theSeaboard League's first decisive victory over the inland invaders. YoungGeoffrey could justifiably feel that he would cap that climax bypersonally accounting for the greatest of the inland barbarians; thebarbarian general himself. He trained his sights on the scarlet bearpawpainted on the skewed turret's flank, and laid his hand on the firinglever.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of another tanketterushing up on his port side. He glanced at it, saw its gracefulhandcrafting, and knew it for one of the League's own. He could even seethe insigne; the mailed heel trampling a stand of wheat; Harolde Dugald,of the neighboring fief. Geoffrey was on coldly polite terms withDugald--he had no use for the other man's way of treating his serfs--andnow he felt a prickle of indignant rage at this attempt to usurp ashare of his glory. He saw Dugald's turret begin to traverse, andhastily tried to get the finishing shot into The Barbarian's tankettebefore the other Leaguesman could fire. But Dugald was not aiming forThe Barbarian. First he had to eliminate Geoffrey from the sceneentirely. When he fired, at almost point-blank range, the world seemedto explode in Giulion's eyes.

  _Illustrated by Ed Emsh_]

  Somehow, no whistling shard of metal actually hit him. But the tankette,sturdy as it was, could not hope to protect him entirely. He was thrownviciously into the air, his ribs first smashing into the side of thehatch, and then he was thrown clear, onto the rocky ground of thefoothills; agonized, stunned to semi-consciousness, he lay feeblybeating at his smoldering tunic while Dugald spun viciously by him,almost crushing him under one tread. He saw Dugald's tankette plungeinto the rocks after The Barbarian, and then, suddenly, the battle wasbeyond him. Dugald, The Barbarian; all the thundering might that hadclashed here on the eastern seaboard of what had, long ago, been TheUnited States of America--all of this had suddenly, as battles will,whirled off in a new direction and left Giulion Geoffrey to lie hurt andunconscious in the night.

  * * *

  He awoke to the trickle of cold water between his teeth. His lips bitinto the threaded metal of a canteen top, and a huge arm supported hisshoulders. Broad shoulders and a massive head loomed over him againstthe stars. A rumbling, gentle voice said: "All right, lad, now swallowsome before it's all wasted."

  He peered around him in the night. It was as still as the bottom of agrave. Nothing moved. He drew a ragged breath that ended in a sharpgasp, and the rumbling voice said: "Ribs?"

  He nodded and managed a strangled "Yes."

  "Shouldn't wonder," the stranger grunted. "I saw you pop out of yourtank like a cork coming out of a wine bottle. That was a fair shot hehit you. You're lucky." A broad hand pressed him down as the memory ofDugald's treachery started him struggling to his feet. "Hold still, lad.We'll give you a chance to catch your breath and wrap some bandagesaround you. You'll live to give him his due, but not tonight. You'llhave to wait for another day."

  There was something in the stranger's voice that Geoffrey recognized forthe quality that made men obey other men. It was competence,self-assurance, and, even more, the calm expression of good sense.Tonight, Geoffrey needed someone with that quality. He sank back,grateful for the stranger's help. "I'm Giulion Geoffrey of Geoffrion,"he said, "and indebted to you. Who are you, stranger?"

  The darkness rumbled to a deep, rueful laugh. "In these parts, lad, I'mnot called by my proper name. I'm Hodd Savage--The Barbarian. And thatwas a fair knock _you_ gave _me_."

  Young Geoffrey's silence lasted for a long while. Then he said in aflat, distant voice: "Why did you give me water, if you're going to killme anyway?"

  The Barbarian laughed again, this time in pure amusement. "Because I'mnot going to kill you, obviously. You're too good a cannoneer to bedespatched by a belt knife. No--no, lad, I'm not planning to kill anyonefor some time. All I want right now is to get out of here and get home.I've got another army to raise, to make up for this pasting youLeaguesmen have just given me."

  "Next time, you won't be so lucky," Geoffrey muttered. "We'll see yourhide flapping in the rain, if you're ever foolish enough to raid ourlands again."

  The Barbarian slapped his thigh. "By God," he chuckled, "I knew itwasn't some ordinary veal-fed princeling that outmaneuvered _me_!" Heshook his head. "That other pup had better watch out for you, if youever cross his path again. I lost him in the rocks with ease to spare.Bad luck your shot smashed my fuel tanks, or I'd be halfway home bynow." The rolling voice grew low and bitter. "No sense waiting to pickup my men. Not enough of 'em left to make a corporal's guard."

  "What do you mean, _if_ I ever cross Dugald's path again? I'll have himcalled out to trial by combat the day I can ride a tankette once more."

  "I wouldn't be too sure, lad," The Barbarian said gently. "What doesthat look like, over there?"

  Geoffrey turned his head to follow the shadowy pointing arm, and saw aflicker of light in the distance. He recognized it for what it was; ahuge campfire, with the Leaguesmen's tankettes drawn up around it."They're dividing the spoils--what prisoners there are, to work themills; whatever of your equipment is still usable; your baggage train.And so forth. What of it?"

  "Ah, yes, my baggage train," The Barbarian muttered. "Well, we'll comeback to that. What else do you suppose they're dividing?"

  Geoffrey frowned. "Why--nothing else. Wait!" He sat up sharply, ignoringhis ribs. "The fiefs of the dead nobles."

  "Exactly. Your ramshackle little League held together long enough towhip us for the first time, but now the princelings are dividing up andreturning to their separate holdings. Once there, they'll go back topeering covetously at each other's lands, and maybe raid amongstthemselves a little, until I come back again. And you're as poor as achurch mouse at this moment, lad--no fief, no lands, no title--unlessthere's an heir?"

  Geoffrey shook his head distractedly. "No. I've not wed. It's as yousay."

  "And just try to get your property back. No--no, it won't be so easy toreturn. Unless you'd care to be a serf on your own former holding?"

  "Dugald would have me killed," Geoffrey said bitterly.

  "So there you are, lad. The only advantage you have is that Dugaldthinks you're dead already--you can be sure of that, or it would havebeen an assassin, and not me, that woke you. That's something, at least.It's a beginning, but you'll have to lay your plans carefully, and takeyour time. I certainly wouldn't plan on doing anything until your body'shealed and your brain's had time to work."

  Young Geoffrey blinked back the tears of rage. The thought of losing thetown and lands his father had left him was almost more than his hotblood could stand. The memory of the great old Keep that dominated thetown, with its tapestried halls and torchlit chambers, was suddenly veryprecious to him. He felt a sharp pang at the thought that he must sleepin a field tonight, like some skulking outlaw, while Dugald quitepossibly got himself drunk on Geoffrion wine and snored his headacheaway on the thick furs of Geoffrey's bed. />
  But The Barbarian was right. Time was needed--and this meant that, to acertain extent at least, his lot and Savage's were thrown in together.The thought came to Geoffrey that he might have chosen a worse partner.

  "Now, lad," The Barbarian said, "as long as you're not doing anythingelse, you might as well help me with my problem."

  The realization of just exactly who this man was came sharply back toyoung Geoffrey. "I won't help you escape to your own lands, if that'swhat you mean," he said quickly.

  "I'll take good care of that myself, when the time comes," the mananswered drily. "Right now, I've got something else in mind. They'redividing my baggage train, as you said. Now, I don't mind that, seeingas most of it belonged to them in the first place. I don't mind it forthis year, that is. But there's something else one of you cockerels willbe wanting to take home with him, and I've a mind not to let him.There's a perfectly good woman in my personal trailer, and I'm going toget her. But if we're going to do that and get clear of this country bymorning, we'd better get to it."

  Like every other young man of his time and place, Geoffrey had aclear-cut sense of duty regarding the safety and well-being of ladies.He had an entirely different set of attitudes toward women who were notladies. He had not the slightest idea of which to apply to this case.

  What sort of woman would The Barbarian take to battle with him? Whatsort of women would the inland barbarians have generally? He had verylittle knowledge to go on. The inlanders had been appearing from overthe westward mountains for generations, looting and pillaging almost atwill, sometimes staying through a winter but usually disappearing in theearly Fall, carrying their spoils back to their mysterious homelands onthe great Mississippi plain. The seaboard civilization had somehow keptfrom going to its knees, in spite of them--in this last generation, eventhough the barbarians had The Barbarian to lead them, the SeaboardLeague had managed to cobble itself together--but no one, in all thistime, had ever actually learned, or cared, much about these vicious,compactly organized raiders. Certainly no one had learned anythingbeyond those facts which worked to best advantage on a battlefield.

  So, young Giulion Geoffrey faced his problem. This 'perfectly goodwoman' of The Barbarian's--was she in fact a good woman, a lady, andtherefore entitled to aid in extremity from any and all gentlemen; orwas she some camp follower, entirely worthy of being considered a spoilof combat?

  "Well, come on, lad," The Barbarian rumbled impatiently at this point."Do you want that Dugald enjoying _her_ tonight along with everythingelse?"

  And that decided Geoffrey. He pushed himself to his feet, not liking thedaggers in his chest, but not liking the thought of Dugald's pleasureseven more. "Let's go, then."

  "Good enough, lad," The Barbarian chuckled. "Now let's see how quietlywe can get across to the edge of that fire."

  They set out--none too quietly, with The Barbarian's heavy bulk lurchingagainst Geoffrey's lean shoulder on occasion, and both of them uncertainof their footing in the darkness. But they made it across without beingnoticed--just two more battle-sore figures in a field where many suchmight be expected--and that was what counted.

  The noise and confusion attendant on the dividing of the spoils was anadded help; they reached the fringes of the campfire easily.

  * * * * *

  It was very interesting, the way history had doubled back on itself,like a worm re-growing part of its body but re-growing it in the wrongplace. At one end of the kink--of the fresh, pink scar--was a purulenthell of fire and smoke that no one might have expected to live through.Yet, people had, as they have a habit of doing. And at the other end ofthe kink in time--Giulion Geoffrey's end, Harolde Dugald's time, TheBarbarian's day--there were keeps and moats in Erie, Pennsylvania,vassals in New Brunswick, and a great stinking warren of low,half-timbered houses on the island of Manhattan. If it had taken a fewcenturies longer to recover from the cauterizing sun bombs, these thingsmight still have been. But they might have had different names, andhuman history might have been considered to begin only a few hundredyears before. Even this had not happened. The link with the pastremained. There was a narrow, cobbled path on Manhattan, with sewageoozing down the ditch in its center, which was still Fifth Avenue. Itran roughly along the same directions as old Broadway, not because therewas no one who could read the yellowed old maps but because surveyingwas in its second childhood. There was a barge running between two ropesstretched across the Hudson, and this was The George Washington Bridgeferry. So, it was only a kink in history, not a break.

  But Rome was not re-built in a day. Hodd Savage--The Barbarian, the manwho had come out of the hinterlands to batter on civilization's badlymortared walls--clamped his hand on Giulion Geoffrey's arm, grunted,jerked his head toward the cluster of nobles standing beside thecampfire, and muttered: "Listen."

  Geoffrey listened.

  The nobles were between him and the fire, and almost none of them weremore than silhouettes. Here and there, a man faced toward the fire atsuch an angle that Geoffrey could make out the thick arch of an eyebrow,the jut of a cheek, or the crook of a nose. But it was not enough forrecognition. All the nobles were dressed in battle accoutrements thathad become stained or torn. Their harness had shifted, their tunics wereaskew, and they were bunched so closely that the outline of one manblended into the mis-shaped shadow of the next. The voices were hoarsefrom an afternoon's bellowing. Some were still drunk with the acid fireof exhausted nerves, and were loud. Others, drained, mumbled in thebackground like a chorus of the stupid. Gesticulating, mumbling,shouting, shadowed, lumped into one knot of blackness lighted by a ruddycheekbone here, a gleaming brow there above an eye socket as inky andblank as a bottomless pit, they were like something out of the wan andmisty ages before the Earth had had time to form completely.

  Two arguing voices rose out of the mass:

  "Those three barbarian tankettes are _mine_, I say!"

  "Yours when I lie dead!"

  "They surrendered to me!"

  "Because I pounded them into submission."

  "Into submission, indeed! You skulked around their flanks like a lamedog, and now that I've taken them, you want your bone!"

  "You were glad enough to see me there when the battle was hot. Call me adog again and I'll spit you like a rat on a pitchfork."

  No one else in the group of nobles paid the two of them any attention.No one had time to spare for any quarrel but his own, and the wholesquabbling pile of them looked ready to fly apart at any moment--to drawsidearms and knives and flare into spiteful combat.

  The Barbarian spat quietly. "There's your Seaboard League, lad. There'syour convocation of free men. Step out there and ask for your landsback. Care to try?"

  "We've already decided that wouldn't be wise," Geoffrey said irritably.He had never cared much for these inevitable aftermaths to battle, butit made him angry to have an inland barbarian make pointed comments. "Isuppose it's different when _you_ win, eh?"

  "Not very. But then, we're not civilized. Let's get moving, lad."

  Silently, they skirted the fire and made their way toward the parkedvehicles of The Barbarian's captured supply train. The ground was roughand covered by underbrush. More than once, The Barbarian stumbled intoGeoffrey, making him clench his jaw against the pain in his chest. Buthe saw no point in saying anything about it.

  "There she is," The Barbarian said in a husky growl. Geoffrey peeredthrough the brush at an armored trailer whose flat sides were completelyundecorated except for a scarlet bearpaw painted on the door. A lanterngleamed behind the slit windows, and The Barbarian grunted withsatisfaction. "She's still in there. Fine. We'll have this done in acouple of seconds."

  In spite of the incongruity, Geoffrey asked curiously: "What's asecond?"

  "A division of time, lad--one sixtieth of a minute."

  "Oh. What on Earth would you want to measure that accurately for?"

  "For getting women out of trailers in a hurry, lad. Now--let's look forsentries."

&
nbsp; * * *

  There were two guarding the trailer--men-at-arms from Dugald's holding,Geoffrey noticed--carrying shotguns and lounging in the shadows. One ofthem had a wineskin--Geoffrey heard the gurgle plainly--and the otherwas constantly turning away from the trailer to listen to the shrieksand shouting coming from among the other vehicles of the train, whereother guards were not being quite as careful of their masters' newproperty.

  "I see they've found the quartermaster's waggons," The Barbarian saiddrily. "Now, then, lad--you work away toward the right, there, and I'lltake the left. Here--take my knife. I won't need it." The Barbarianpassed over a length of steel as big as a short-sword, but oddly curvedand sharpened down one side of the blade. "Stab if you can, but if youhave to cut, that blade'll go through a man's forearm. Remember you'renot holding one of those overgrown daggers of yours."

  "And just why should I kill a man for you?"

  "Do you think that man won't try to kill you?"

  Geoffrey had no satisfactory answer to that. He moved abruptly off intothe brush, holding The Barbarian's knife, and wondering just how