The Iron Dream (10 page)

The Avengers broke ranks and danced a wild cannibal rite of shouts and flaming torches around the motorcycle as Ferio brought it to a screaming halt, rammed it up onto its stand, and, simultaneously with Stopa, dismounted.

Stopa regarded Feric with as much respect as fury now.

Clearly, he was now convinced that he was involved in a test of will and heroism with a man who at the very least was his unquestioned equal. A lesser man might have now acknowledged the fact with some comradely gesture and backed out of the situation gracefully, with but slight loss of honor.

But to his credit, Stopa's outrage was unabated; he was clearly determined in his own heroic fashion to play out this contest for spiritual and physical supremacy to its conclusion, regardless of the futility of his cause.

"The final ordeal is the Test of Steel, Jaggar!" he shouted for all to hear. "We have it out with truncheons between us. Ordinarily, I only play with the mouse in question until I am satisfied that he is worthy or decide that he isn't and slay him. If I required each new Avenger to defeat me in combat, we'd never welcome a new brother, since no man has ever proven himself my equal with the truncheon."

Stopa paused and fixed Feric with a cold bloodshot stare in which malice and grudging admiration had fused to icy determination. Something in the psychic aura generated by this confrontation caused the Avengers to give over their shouting and cavorting and stare silently at their leader and his bold challenger.

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"But in your case, Jaggar," Stopa continued, "we'll do things in better style. Instead of bruising each other around like playful brats, we'll fight to the death. You and me all the way with steel truncheons, Jaggar. The better man wins his life."

The silence now took on a more somber cast; the banter and rough good humor which had accompanied the initiation thus far quite suddenly evaporated as each man present realized that his own fate was enmeshed with the outcome of the duel that was about to begin. Feric did not need to be told that he who defeated the old leader became the new; by no other means save fortuitous death of the old leader could power change hands in a band such as this. This law was written deep in the true human genes; indeed it was even more primeval than that—it was a law intrinsic to protoplasm itself, the basic canon of evolution, the rule of the strongest. Bogel shot Feric a cold and then a fiery look, indicating that he was aware of the full import of the situation, and that his faith in Feric was iron hard and unshakable.

"Bring a weapon!" Stopa ordered. "Bring the Steel Commander!"

Seven burly Avengers retired from the firelight and disappeared into the darkness. Almost at once, one of them returned bearing a battered old truncheon of respectable length and girth, its stainless steel shaft somewhat tarnished and marked with myriad battle scars. The truncheon bearer presented this hoary weapon to Feric.

Upon closer inspection, Feric discerned that this corroded truncheon had once bom elaborate etchings of serpents on its shaft, that the headpiece which at first had seemed to be a plain steel ball had once been enameled with the likeness of a great eye. Feric hefted the weapon with his right hand. It was much lighter than he would have chosen, but it had good balance and was nearly a yard long. He cut a swam through the air with the weapon; the arc felt true, the momentum sumcient to smash a skull to flinders with a direct hit. A battered but honorable trun-

cheon; it would do.

Stopa now drew his own weapon and whirled it through the air a few times. Feric regarded it closely now. Stopa wielded a truely heroic truncheon. It was a full six inches longer than the weapon given Feric, and, judging from the way Stopa swung it, was perhaps as much as a quarter again as heavy. The steel shaft was plated with brilliant 69

chromium, and the headball was carved in the likeness of the skull motif Stopa seemed to favor. The handle was of black leather wound over wood. Clearly, Feric had been handed a truncheon in no way the equal in size or style of that wielded by his opponent; just as clearly, however, it would have been the action of an unmanly poltroon to protest the situation aloud.

As Feric and Stopa completed their preparatory swings of their truncheons, a great huffing could be heard approaching the firelit area; then the other six Avengers became visible, groaning strangely under what seemed the negligible weight of the wooden pallet they bore on their collective shoulders.

But when they reached the spot where Feric and Stopa stood regarding each other, and laid the pallet on the earth between them, Feric gasped once in amazement and understood all.

The pallet was covered with spotless black velvet and upon it, in all its incredible glory, rested the Great Truncheon of Stal Held, the lost sceptre of royal power, the Steel Commander!

In mere physical appearance alone, the Great Truncheon was breathtaking. Its handle had been carved out of one great chunk of the ancient milky substance known as ivory and was padded not with leather but with some soft arcane substance that yet had the gloss of ruby. The shaft was a gleaming rod of some tarnishless metal fully four feet long and thick around as a man's forearm, etched all around with rich red traceries of lightning strokes, a motif which made the huge shaft appear as if it had but recently been quenched in blood. The oversize headball was a life-sized steel fist, and a hero's fist at that. Upon the third finger of this metal hand was a ring bearing the signet of a black swastika in a white spot surrounded by a circle of crimson fire, the colors as vivid as if they had been applied hours ago instead of centuries.

Feric stared at the mystic truncheon in unabashed wonder. "Do you realize what that weapon is?" he said softly.

Stopa grinned smugly at Feric, but he could not keep awe from softening somewhat the ferocity of his features.

"It's the Steel Commander," he said. "Once the old Kings of Heldon drew their power from it. Now it's the property of the Black Avengers!"

"It's the property of all Heldon!" Feric roared.

"We found it in a cave deep in the Wood when all you 70

worms thought it lost forever!" Stopa snarled, albeit clearly defensively. "It's ours now!" He laughed sardonically.

"If you want it, Jaggar, why don't you just pick it up and carry it away?"

The assembled Avengers laughed at this, but not without a good deal of uneasiness; their simple but true instincts told them that the Steel Commander and the ancient arts which had forged it were hardly a proper matter for jest.

For his part, Feric appreciated the irony of Stopa's words perhaps more keenly than did the Avenger himself.

Legend had it that Stal Held had ordered the weapon forged by a hidden community of captive wizards who had preserved the lore of the ancients through the Time of Fire and far beyond; once the weapon had been completed, Held had slain these evil creatures to a man. By some lost art, these baleful wizards had so constructed the truncheon that only Held himself and the true bearers of his genetic pattern down through the centuries could wield it. The mysterious alloy out of which the weapon had been forged gave it the weight of a huge boulder; no ordinary man could budge it, let alone wield it. But contact with flesh shaped by the royal genes triggered the release of some inexhaustable power within the Great Truncheon, so that in the hand of a hero of the true royal pedigree, the Steel Commander could be wielded as effortlessly as a willow wand, though to those who felt its wrath, it still had the mass of a small mountain. Thus, the Great Truncheon was both the sceptre of the King of Heldon and the ultimate verification of his pedigree. There were those who insisted that all troubles that had beset Heldon since its disappearance during the Civil War were the result of a rule by men incapable of wielding the Great Truncheon; in this view, Sigmark IV had been the last proper ruler of Heldon. Therefore, to pick up the Great Truncheon would be to seize in a very real sense the historic right to rule all Heldon. It was this that Stopa sarcastically suggested that Feric might do.

Yet somehow, there was a mad impulse within Feric to do just that; the truncheon seemed to call out to something deep within his blood, seemed to vibrate his being with a deep, almost cosmic, longing. No doubt many men had felt this; there were many tales of heroes who had sought to heft the Steel Commander and all were cautionary rubrics against the vice of excessive pride.

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"Enough mooning over a weapon that no living man can wield!" Stopa finally said, breaking the palpably mystical reverie. "You have your truncheon, and I have mine, and that's enough for men like us! Defend yourself, Jaggarl"

With this, Stopa ran at Feric, his truncheon high over his head, and brought the weapon down in a stroke that would have smashed a skull like an eggshell.

But Feric had darted to his right, and as Stopa's truncheon went whistling through the empty air where his head had been, he struck the shaft a glancing blow near the handle which nearly caused the Avenger to lose his weapon. The first clangof steel on steel broke the solemn mood and set the Avengers to shouting boisterously and waving their torches in the air.

As Stopa, recovering with admirable speed, raised his truncheon above his head once more to aim another blow, Feric swung his own weapon in a low arc aimed at smashing Stopa's kneecap. Stopa fell back raggedly, avoiding the blow, but Ferio was able to get in a quick jab in the stomach with his headball, which caused the Avenger no Bttle discomfort.

However, as Feric withdrew from this thrust, Stopa managed to bring his truncheon down on the tip of Feric's weapon, sending a shock through the steel shaft into Feric's arm which stung enough to prevent him from following up his advantage.

The two men backed up a step or two from each other, circled for a moment, then almost simultaneously aimed blows at each other's heads which resulted only in a mighty crash of steel as their truncheons struck each other dead on. The Avengers roared their approval of this titanic clash of steel on steel, though the strokes resulted in nothing more than jolts to the arms of both adversaries.

Almost immediately, similar parallel strokes, this time at rib level, resulted only in another ringing double-parry.

Recovering from this, Feric struck high, while Stopa came in low. Both men were therefore forced to fall back in midstroke and their truncheons whistled through empty air.

Stopa took five quick steps backward, then came at Feric all in a rush, aiming a downward blow at the head, which was parried, then a slash at his ribs, which fell once more on the steel shaft of Feric's truncheon, then a similar blow from the other side, which Feric was forced 72

to take low on the shaft of his weapon, sending a lightning bolt of pain up his arm.

For his part, Feric feigned a 'greater pain from this blow than was actually the case and fell back in seeming disarray as the Avengers hooted and Stopa rushed at him, truncheon held high for a finishing head blow. Suddenly, Feric stopped dead in his tracks, jumped to the side as Stopa's truncheon came down in a mighty arc, turned, and fetched the Avenger a mighty blow to the leg, which Stopa was just agile enough to take with his buttock.

Stopa howled in pain and continued the downward arc of his truncheon. Feric, from his low position, raised his truncheon slightly to parry this wild blow.

Stopa's truncheon came down squarely on the center of the shaft of Feric's weapon as Feric deliberately swept it toward the ground to cushion the impact.

But instead of a fine sharp clang, there was a sickening crack of rotten metal. Feric's hoary truncheon had been cloven in twain by Stopa's weapon and he found himself holding the useless jagged stump in his hand.

Stopa grinned wolfishly as he allowed Feric to dart to his feet. Slowly, deliberately, with his truncheon held at chest level, he began to stalk Feric as Feric circled backward. The meaning of this was perfectly clear: there would be no exaggerated gallantry here; Feric's weapon had been rendered useless by fate, and no quarter would be offered. Nor, Feric thought, would quarter be requested. If it was his destiny to die in this manner, he would meet his fate heroically, battling to the last with whatever came to hand, with his bare fists themselves, if need be.

Stopa aimed a blow at Peric's head; Feric lept backward. The Avenger took a sweep at Feric's ribs, which Feric was hard put to block with the remains of his truncheon; once more he was forced backward off balance. Seeing this, Stopa raised his truncheon overhead and smashed down at Feric's head. Once more Feric was barely able to parry the blow with the stump of weapon left to him—but this time the remains of the truncheon were struck from his hand by the force of Stopa's blow, and he found himself defenseless.

With a great animal shout, Stopa struck at Peric's knees, forcing him to jump blindly backward. His feet struck a rock or a root, and he went sprawling. Stopa struck at his head; he rolled away from the blow and the 73

headball of the truncheon buried itself in the earth beside him. Once more Stopa struck at him, and again he avoided the blow by rolling his body. Again and again, Feric barely averted death by rolling away from mighty blows, but each time Stopa was on him again before he could rise to his feet.

Feric rolled one final time as Stopa's truncheon whistled past his ear; this time, however, he had rolled half onto the wooden pallet holding the Steel Commander. The surprise of this cost him precious seconds; moreover, his upper torso was now spread-eagled over the side of the pallet and he could roll no further. Seeing this, Stopa howled, raised his truncheon high over his head, and brought it down in an irresistible arc.

At once, without conscious thought, Feric reached behind him, grasped the handle of the Great Truncheon of Held, and whipped the Steel Commander into the air to parry the blow. Stopa's truncheon struck the thick gleaming shaft of the legendary weapon and instantly shattered to pieces.

An incredible, scarcely human cry went up from the Avengers: a low, incredulous moan that almost instantly guttered to silence. Stopa staggered backward a few steps, then dropped the remains of his weapon and sank to his knees, his eyes downcast, his head bowed before him. An instant later, the other Avengers followed his example and assumed this posture of homage, holding their flaming torches erect before them. Even Bogel, thoroughly dumb^