[Kelvin 03] - Chimaera's Copper (with Robert E. Margroff) (26 page)

St. Helens grunted, nodding his head in a curt gesture of acknowledgment. He was alert for a trap that was about to be sprung, but in the meantime he'd gotten what he'd wanted for days: a clean hide and the summary execution of the tenants of that hide. He hated lice almost as much as he hated brats!

The brats disappeared. St. Helens was returned to his cell. He stood and gaped at the door.

The cell had been scrubbed spotless. Fresh straw had been provided. What magic might have done readily, the young kings had evidently done laboriously.

"Good gods," he said. He sank down on the straw, physically more comfortable than he had been since capture. "Good gods, she really is a good witch!"

CHAPTER 19

Revolutionaries

The great war-horse gave a grunt of surprise as Kelvin landed on its broad rump. With his left hand, hardly thinking of what he did but just going with the gauntlet, he pushed the rider from the saddle. Grabbing the horse's mane he took the soldier's place. The reins were loose, but that was no problem to the gauntlet which snatched them up without his thinking. Immediately he was confronted by a burly royalist swinging down at him, and the right gauntlet countered for him and quickly ended the man's life.

Kelvin caught a squirt of blood as the royalist corpse toppled. He felt his stomach heave, but somehow he was learning to ignore it. Assuredly he and the others here were in the midst of a tremendous fight. It was as if he were in a different plane of reality, something that had nothing to do with home and family and human values.

"Kelvin, watch out!" his father shouted. So much for being apart from his family! But already the gauntlets were blurring as they moved, transferring sword to left hand and reins to right. The new attacker ended his life on the point of Kelvin's sword, blood spraying from his throat, his own wild swing breezing Kelvin's right cheek. No time to think! Just swift positions, as the gauntlets acted, and the effort to fight with everything he and the gauntlets had, just to preserve his life. How he hated this!

Now one of the royalists' attackers was before him, his ally. It was a big man dressed in the plainest of clothes. Morton Crumb! No, not his friend and Jon's father-in-law, but this frame's very close look-alike. He focused on the man's round pink ears, neither bearing as much as a scar, and that alone kept him from shouting the name.

"You," the Morton Crumb look-alike rumbled, "fight against the king?"

The last time he had tried to answer that question, he had gotten into trouble. "I fight to save my friends," he said, nodding back at Kian and his father.

"Come!" As abrupt as Crumb would have been.

He maneuvered the horse with sure gauntleted hand and fought his way at the big man's side until they were directly opposite the prisoners. Kian and his father had their hands tied behind their backs, and that could complicate the problem of getting them away. The royalist guards might have been ordered to slay them rather than give them up.

"Father, I think we'd better retreat!"

It was the Lester look-alike who had just pushed in. With him was a younger fighter, the exact look-alike of Phillip, former boy-king of Aratex, except for his round ears. There were two riderless war-horses behind them. On the ground were two more dead royalists. On the Lester's sword was fresh blood.

Kelvin tried to think. This is not really Lester and Phillip, and this other man is not really my brother-in-law's father. It was hard to think of anything under the circumstances. He was likely to get himself or them killed if he did anything but concentrate on his business.

He looked around. Indeed they were outnumbered, these revolutionaries. "Help me release them first," Kelvin urged.

"We're losing too many men," the big man protested.

"You help us now, we'll help you later. We have things you may not have. We're from another frame."

"I thought as much! I saw you flying down! But we can't help you if you're dead. If you've got power, use it!"

Kelvin realized he had a point. He nudged the control on his belt and kicked himself free of the saddle. He rose to just over the heads of the combatants. The fighting stopped.

It was only a temporary halt, he knew. In a moment the novelty would be absorbed and the slaughter would resume. He nudged the control forward.

The guards' faces came nearer, and so did those they guarded. They stared openmouthed, amazed at what they had been too busy to see when he arrived. In a moment more someone would think of a crossbow or other projectile weapon that could spell his end. But with surprise to his advantage and the gauntlets on his hands, he had his chance.

Quickly he disarmed the guard who raised his sword at him, then descended and stabbed the remaining guard through the throat. A moment later he was slicing through first his father's and then his brother's bonds, while renewed fighting raged ahead of them.

Now then, how to get out? The gauntlets knew how. Without his quite willing it, the magical grippers captured the reins of a war-horse. At their urging he vaulted into the saddle.

"Father! Kian! Up!"

They extended their hands to him, and the gauntlets pulled them up on the horse. The three of them made a crowded horseback.

"This is going to be difficult!" John said. "We're surrounded." Kelvin's gauntlets snatched a passing sword and handed it to his father.

"Uh, thanks, but do you think--?"

"I'll clear a path. You follow. Close."

With that Kelvin lifted free of the saddle and just over their heads. The horse eyed him suspiciously, but didn't argue; after all, it was a load off its back. Then he pushed the forward lever and flew to meet a royalist riding down on them.

The attacking royalist died, and so did several others as Kelvin fought horselessly and airborne, to open his side of the crowd. The remaining revolutionaries fought inward, led by the Crumb look-alikes. The Phillip look- alike shouted encouragement.

The royalists, caught between enemies, fought hard, but still perished. The sword in Kelvin's hand never ceased its darting and its hacking, ignoring, as Kelvin could not, the cries of slain and wounded men.

Finally the last of the royalists melted from in front of his wild flying attack. There was the big fellow and the big fellow's son and the boy and half a dozen others whose faces had a familiar look. They looked up at Kelvin.

"Now you can retreat," Kelvin said, "and take us with you."

"Thank the gods that's over!" the Morton Crumb look-alike said. "Follow us!"

They raced out of what would have been the pass between the twin valleys in the world of the silver serpents. Up the roads and into the hills, and finally, their pursuit lost, to a familiar-seeming region of farms and villages. Here the big leader of the far-smaller band raised his hand and drew up. "Whoa. Time for a talk."

Kelvin descended until his feet once more touched the ground. He shut off the belt. He waited.

"Marvin Loaf," the big man said. "You strangers have any trouble with that name?"

"Not a bit," Kelvin said. So this was not Morton Crumb as at home, or Matthew Biscuit as in the world of the silver serpents, but Marvin Loaf. It made perfect sense.

"Good. Some think Marvin a peculiar name."

"No more so than mine," Kelvin said, keeping a straight face. "Kelvin Hackleberry. And this is my father John Knight, and my brother Kian Knight."

Marvin nodded. "This is my son Hester. And this young fellow we call Jillip."

As in Lester and Phillip. Good enough. Kelvin held out his hand politely. The custom of handshaking existed here, fortunately, as it had in every world he had visited with the possible exception of the chimaera's. His father and brother dismounted, along with the others of the band. Everyone shook hands.

"We call ourselves Loaf's Hopes," Marvin said. "Sometimes Loafers. We haven't been doing much raiding lately." He paused again, but no one found any humor in the nickname. "After two years of trying to force a change, this is all we have."

Kelvin saw what he meant. Eight men in all, two of them with slight wounds. The rest who had been in the fight were dead or had been captured by the royalists.

"Your king is bad?" Again, Kelvin wasn't taking anything for granted.

"The worst. He has to be overthrown. How I can't now imagine."

"With our help," Kelvin said confidently.

Marvin looked doubtful. "That flying harness of yours should help, but I'm not sure it's enough. There's really only us eight."

"There will be more," Kelvin said. "All you have to do is get the word out once you've got your army."

"Army? What army? I tell you we're only eight." Kelvin sighed. How elementary it all was. It really pained him to have to explain it. His father was looking at him warningly, but he went right on.

"If you haven't got huge serpents here that shed skins of purest silver, you have dragons that have scales of purest gold." Simple. Logical.

Marvin Loaf was looking at him with eyes that now bulged. His expression suggested that Kelvin was a lunatic.

"Serpents with silver scales? Dragons with golden skins?"

Kelvin abruptly realized why his father had sent the warning look. His morale plummeted. He had walked into another subtle but critical difference between the frames. Yet he owed these look-alikes something. There was a debt and he could not leave with it unpaid.

"My mistake. I told you we're from another frame."

"It must be a distant one. Silver serpents! Golden dragons! These are legend! Nothing like them can possibly exist!"

Nor should chimaeras with three heads, Kelvin thought. Oh, well, these good folk still had to have some advantage, and he had to provide it.

"Look," he said, unsheathing the Mouvar weapon. "This is something very special. It will nullify hostile magic and even turn the magic back on its sender."

"Magic? Magic is myth!"

Kelvin suppressed a groan. Another disappointment! This world seemed so similar to his own, yet it lacked dragons, serpents, and even magic? How could that last possibly be the case? But the robot Stapular had spoken of Major and Minor frames. Maybe this world was like his father's, where magic didn't exist but where magical results were achieved by something called science.

"All three of us can fly with this," he said, touching the belt. "We can hover still in the air as you saw, or move at the speed of a fast horse. That should be some help. It was back there in the battle we just fought."

"Back there I lost over half my men!" Marvin exclaimed, looking suspicious. "Is that belt all you've got?"

"Father!" Hester said, and it was impossible not to think of him as Lester. "Father, he wants to help."

"Good intentions don't defeat tyrants. Armies defeat tyrants."

Kelvin swallowed a lump. He still hadn't answered the big man's question. He glanced at Kian and he saw that his half brother's face was as pale as though he faced instant death. Then he looked at his father and saw that he could expect little help there. Yet his big mouth had gotten him into this, the same as it had with the chimaera. Somehow his big mouth was going to have to get him out.

"We have experience. We overthrew tyrants in two worlds nearly identical to this. And--" Inspiration finally hit him. "If we need to, we can travel back to those worlds, and get what we need there, to deal with this tyrant."

"You think so, do you?" Marvin looked dangerous.

"If we have to. Bring you weapons you don't have. Maybe an army."

"Listen to him, Father. Listen!" Loaf's son urged.

But the big man was drawing his sword. "You've come here without our asking and now you'd leave and we'd never see you again."

"That's not true!" Why was this version of Morton Crumb so belligerent? But he realized that the question was pointless. Characters were similar in each frame, but also different, and the differences showed up most strongly in their personalities, rather than their bodies. So this Crumb was more aggressive than the others, and probably more dangerous to rile. He also seemed clumsier.

"Listen, Sonny," Marvin said, testing the edge of his sword with a callused thumb. "We have been this route before. We have had visits from other frames so often that the king has men watching the transporter! One thing we've learned: visitors are trouble!"

"But Father," Hester protested. "He can't know!" He was protesting, but there was a certain whine in his voice. He seemed to be more dominated by his father than Lester was.

"No, I don't know," Kelvin said. "I don't know about your prior visitors." He felt much as he had when Stapular pulled off his hand and revealed the laser weapon. His gauntlets tingled, but only moderately.

Well, he would use the gauntlets for guidance. He would keep talking, and change the subject if the gloves got bothered. "You have a kingdom where you can hire mercenaries, haven't you?"

Marvin's glower hardly eased. "We have that, Sonny, but we certainly haven't got golden dragons, silver serpents, or magic. Neither do we have riches!"

"But you do have round ears. You can use the transporter."

"Not for a mountain of gold!"

"I don't mean you personally, but at least one of you. Maybe Hester here?"

"The king's men guard the transporter," Hester protested. "And even if we got there, I couldn't use it."

"With my help?"

"No."

"Why not?" The gauntlets were not getting any warmer, which was not a bad sign, but neither was it necessarily good. He might just not be getting anywhere, good or bad. "Round ears means you can use the transporter." I hope.

"No way, Sonny. There's more than the shape of ears involved."

"But--" This was getting confusing! According to the Mouvar parchment, round ears were the tickets to use and other-shaped ears a sentence to destruction. Or was that only in his home frame? Were there other rules elsewhere?

"Let me explain it, Sonny. Whenever any of us natives enter the transporter chamber we feel as if our fool heads will burst. So will you, if you attempt to go back."

"You mean--" He strove desperately to make sense of this, his head already feeling swollen. "Magic?"