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?”
“Technology. What's the difference, as far as we're concerned? What it means is that it's a one-way transporter. No one can leave by it.”
“No one?” Kelvin's knees began to feel like cooked macaroodles.
“No one. That's why the king's men don't use it.”
Kelvin tried to think. To be confined to this dull frame forever. Never to see Heln again. To be, furthermore, in a world where there was no way to raise an army and defeat a tyrant? And what about the chimaera? The chimaera would be waiting for the dragonberries he had promised. He had every intention of fulfilling that promise, and would be mortified to renege on it.
“Perhaps there's a little hope,” his father said unexpectedly.
All looked at him, the big stranger who had been mainly silent. Marvin looked hardest.
“Look,” John Knight said, spreading his hands. “We're as much victims here as you are. But if the transporter is technology, or even if it's not, there may be a way.”
“How?” Marvin demanded, showing some interest. “You going to kill off those headbees?”
“Maybe. The chamber beside the transporter chamber-- I'm certain it didn't exist in any of the other frames. Maybe there's something that will make the transporter two-way. Possibly a control.”
“The king's men would have found it,” one of the men said.
“Maybe not,” John said. “Not if they didn't know what to look for. I remember how difficult it was to make a computer work, when you didn't know the codes; you could make random guesses all week and never get anywhere, and the damn machine wouldn't tell you.”
“You think you know what to look for?” Marvin demanded.
“I might. If it's technology.”
Kelvin's gauntlets twitched. What did that mean?
Marvin put away his sword. His grim face showed acceptance but no real belief in John's words. “There'd better be an army in this,” he said. “There'd better be, or that's the end of all of us.”
But the gauntlets were cooling. That gave Kelvin hope.
CHAPTER 20
A Meeting of Kinds
Charlain woke up rested. The camp was quiet now, the wounded up and around. It was-- good heavens, it was late in the day!
She met Lomax as she was scrambling out of the tent. He was grinning as he came with arms wide for a hug. She let him embrace her and then tell her how many lives she had saved and how grateful they all were. “But now,” he finished, “we'll be making our big drive and it's not fair to you-- “
“You want me to leave.”
“Before we reengage the enemy. Yes, ma'am. There will be more casualties, but we have a good supply of bloodfruit and you have discovered the mysteries of the doctor bag. We can manage, although-- “
“Yes,” she said. He wanted her to stay with them, she knew, and she didn't want to. She had after all come here for just one purpose, and that was to save Lester's fading life. She had done that, and now wanted very much to get well away from this mindless carnage.
“Then you-- “
“I mean I will return home now, where I will be safe. That is what you were saying?”
He looked astonished, then crestfallen. He had asked from a sense of duty. She knew that the last thing he had expected was that she would comply. She felt guilty for disappointing him, but she did have to go.
“I'm not really a nurse or a magician,” she said. “I'm sure you will manage with those who assisted me. My daughter may need me, and then there's my son and his wife. Heln is having my grandson.”
“I-- see.” He was doing his unsuccessful best to mask his disappointment. If he were a very few years
younger, he'd have to cry. It was nice that she was going to be missed.
“Keep the bandages changed, administer bloodfruit syrup as needed, and keep that boy out of the fighting.”
“You mean Phillip?”
“That's the boy. He's reckless as my Jon was at his age. I read his cards and he's at continued high risk with the uncertainty card. Keep him safe.”
“I'll try. But Phillip was a king. He's hard to control.”
“No harder, I suspect, than Jon. And Phillip of Aratex doesn't have a big brother with magic gauntlets and a prophecy. If Jon was here you'd know what unmanageable is.”
Lomax tried a grin, albeit weak. He motioned to a passing soldier. “Corporal Hinzer, saddle Mrs. Hack-- eh, Charlain's horse and bring it to her. Have two unwounded men escort her to the border.”
“That won't be necessary,” Charlain assured him. “I know the way and there shouldn't be any danger for one old woman.”
“Not old!” Lomax protested in a manner that had to be automatic. “But if you're sure-- “
“You need all your men. The war isn't over.”
“Yes. Yes, thank you, Charlain. Thank you for your help. You saved many lives.”
You may not thank me always, she thought with regret. When things go against you and I'm not there. Then you may want to curse me for abandoning you.
With some justice, unfortunately.
She waited patiently while her mount was brought, then climbed up and into the saddle. She was a little stiff from all that kneeling. She was about to ride out when Lomax came running to her, his face flaming red. He handed her up a packet and a jug.
“I forgot you hadn't eaten! Here's traveling biscuit, dried meat, and tuber fruit. Wine's in the jug. You must be famished!”
“Not really,” she said. “We witches seldom eat.”
“Witches?” His face paled perceptibly. For a moment he looked as though he believed her.