Sojan the Swordsman ; Under the Warrior Sky Read online

  “There must be some way to defeat them!” demanded Sojan. “And if there is a way—I swear that I will find it!”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Hounds of the Cergii

  Sojan and the stern-faced fighting men of Norj, some sixty in all, stood in the main cave, waiting for nightfall.

  Plans of Sojan’s attempt to overcome the Cergii had been discussed and Sojan and Jarg, the leader, had reached a decision.

  The Cergii were few, it seemed. About ten in number. They were immortal, or at least their life-spans were incredibly long and the race had gradually dwindled to ten evil sorcerer-warriors whose only pleasures were their midnight hunts.

  At dusk, Sojan rose, went over the final plan with his friends and left, heading Eastwards, towards the castles of the Cergii—some twenty in all, mostly in an advanced state of decay—only one of which housed the Cergii and their Norjian slaves and hirelings.

  The tiny Zylorian moons gave scant light and Sojan found it difficult picking his way through the rubble of the ruined outbuildings.

  There came a faint scuffling behind him; a sound which only a barbarian’s senses could have heard.

  Sojan ignored it and carried on.

  Even when the scuffling came nearer he ignored it. The sudden blow on the back of his head was impossible to ignore, however, and a blind sense of survival set him wheeling round, hand groping for his sword hilt before blackness, deeper than night, swam in front of his eyes and he lost consciousness.

  He awoke in a damp-smelling cell, lit only by torchlight which filtered through a tiny grille in the wall. The cell was obviously on a corner for the large barred door was not in the same wall as the grille.

  Peering through this door was an unkempt warrior clad in dirty armour and holding a spear.

  With half-mad eyes he glared short-sightedly at the mercenary. His mouth gaped open showing bad teeth and he chuckled loudly.

  “You’re the next game for the Hunters of Cergii,” he cackled. “Oh! What a feast the beasts will have tonight.”

  Sojan ignored these words, turned over and attempted to ease the pain in his aching head.

  After many hours in which he attempted to get some rest, Sojan was jabbed roughly awake by the guard’s spear butt.

  “What is it now?” he enquired as he raised himself to his feet and dusted off the straw in which he’d been sleeping.

  “Heh, heh!” cackled the man. “It’s almost midnight—time for one of our little hunts!”

  Sojan became tense. He had a plan based on the knowledge that if he was captured he would most certainly be forced to partake in one of the hunts of the Cergii as the quarry.

  “Very well,” he said, trying to sound as frightened as possible.

  The courtyard was dark and gloomy, one moon showing through a gap in the ruins. The strange smell of an unknown animal came to Sojan’s nostrils and he gathered that these were the “hounds” of the Cergii that Jarg had told him about.

  He heard the stamping of the myat’s hooves and the jingle of harness and, as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, made out the vague outlines of tall mounted men.

  “Is the quarry ready?” called out a voice as dead and cold as the ruins around them.

  “Yes, Master, he is here!”

  “Then tell him he will be given quarter of an hour’s start—then we will be upon his scent!” the voice went on.

  The guards stood aside and Sojan was off—along a route already planned nights ago. His plan was a daring one and one which called for a great deal of courage. He was acting as a human snare for the Hunters.

  Down a narrow forest trail he ran, the trees and grasses rustling in the cold night breeze, the sound of small animals calling to each other and the occasional scream as a larger animal made its kill.

  The air in his lungs seemed to force itself out as he ran faster and faster. The time was getting short and he had several more minutes yet until he could reach the planned spot.

  Sounds—not the sounds of the forest, but far more ominous—began to reach his ears. The snap of cracking whips and thundering hooves as the Hunters and their silent hounds rode in pursuit.

  Faster and faster Sojan ran, keeping his eyes open for the landmark which would afford him comparative safety.

  At last, just as the cracking of whips and pounding hooves seemed to be on top of him, it came into sight. Past the tall rock he ran, into a tiny gorge flanked on each side by towering rock walls.

  Up the side of the cliff he scrambled as the Hunters entered the gorge. Then:

  “Now!” roared Sojan, and as he did so sixty death-tipped arrows flew down and buried themselves in the bodies of Cergii riders.

  Their curses and frantic screams were music to Sojan and his friends as they fitted new arrows and let fly at the sounds.

  Yelling the great battle-shout of his ancestors Sojan leaped down the rocks again, a long sword in his right hand.

  A shadowy rider loomed out of the darkness and an evil face, white teeth flashing in a grin of triumph, aimed a blow at Sojan with his own blade.

  Sojan cut upwards, catching the rider in the leg. He screamed and tumbled off his steed, putting it between himself and Sojan.

  He came upright, limping rapidly in the mercenary’s direction. Sojan ducked another savage cut and parried it. Down lunged his opponent’s sword attempting to wound Sojan’s sword-arm. He again parried the stroke and counter-thrust at the man’s chest.

  Following up this move with a thrust to the heart, the mercenary ended the evil hunter’s life.

  Most of the Cergii were now either dead or mortally wounded and it did not take Sojan and his friends long to finish off the job they had started.

  “Now for the hirelings!” yelled Sojan, goading his myat in the direction from which they had come; his sword dripping red in the moonlight, his hair tousled and a wildness in his handsome eyes.

  The sixty riders thundered down the narrow forest trail towards the castles of the dead Cergii, Sojan at their head, shouting a battle-cry which had been voiced at a dozen great victories for the men whom Sojan had led.

  Straight into the courtyard they swarmed, catching the soldiers entirely unawares.

  Dismounting, they crashed open the doors of the castle and poured in.

  “Guard the doors!” yelled Sojan. “And all the other exits—we’ll finish off every traitor in the place!”

  His first call was in the dungeons—for there he knew he would find the man who had been his jailer during the previous day.

  The half-crazed warrior cringed when he saw Sojan enter sword in hand. But one look at the tall mercenary told him he could expect no mercy.

  Drooling with fear he yanked his own sword from its scabbard and swung a blow at Sojan which would have cut him in two had it not been deflected by Sojan’s blade.

  Coolly Sojan fought while his opponent became more and more desperate.

  Slowly the warrior was forced back as Sojan’s relentless sword drove him nearer and nearer the wall.

  His madness gave him immense stamina and gradually he began to fight with more skill.

  “Heh, heh!” he cackled, “you will soon die man! Think not that you escaped death when you escaped the Cergii!”

  Sojan smiled a grim smile and said nothing.

  Suddenly the maddened warrior wrenched a spear from the wall and hurled it at Sojan. It plunked heavily into his left arm causing him to gasp with pain.

  Then his eyes hardened and the warrior read his fate in them.

  “You’ll die for that,” said Sojan calmly.

  Almost immediately the warrior went down before a blurring network of steel and sought a fresh incarnation with an inch of steel in his throat.

  Sojan returned to the main hall of the castle where his friends were finishing off the rest of the Cergii’s warriors.

  “Well,” he laughed cheerfully, “I must be off!”

  Jarg turned. He saw the wound inflicted by the madman’s spear.r />
  “You can’t ride in that state, Sojan!” he cried.

  “Oh, it will heal,” Sojan smiled. “It is only a superficial cut! But you have work to do, restoring your farms now that the Cergii are vanquished. I should like to stay—but this is an interesting continent with lots to see. If I hurry I might be able to see it all before I die!”

  With that he strode from the room, mounted his myat and cantered off, up the steep track which led him out of the valley of Norj. No doubt many more adventures lay ahead for Sojan, either in this incarnation or another.

  “There goes a brave and honourable man. What he promises he performs! What he cannot do he does not say he will do,” murmured Jarg as he watched him disappear over the hilltop. “Would that there were more like Sojan Shieldbearer.”

  And so he rode into the legends of Zylor, a man who lived according to that age-old code of honour which has ensured the peace and justice of all the planets Sojan’s ancestors settled: a man for whom death was no barrier and who would live forever, ready to do battle with the forces of greed and tyranny wherever they occurred. Would he ever return to Hatnor and his friends there, to fight beside them, laugh with them and find further strange adventures in their company? That perhaps we shall never know, but we can be sure that Sojan—or one with Sojan’s brave soul—would find what it was he loved and be content if not on Zylor then on another of the many planets of our astonishingly varied galaxy.

  Together with various friends of my teenage years, I would write several other short stories set on the same planet or in the same universe as Sojan’s. I also wrote Harold Lamb-influenced historical stories for boys’ “annuals” such as The Searchlight Book for Boys and for Amalgamated Press papers in which Barry Bayley or myself were almost the sole text contributors by that time. We were both admirers of the old American pulps of every kind and this was reflected in our work. Tarzan Adventures was the nearest thing we’d ever had in England to a juvenile US pulp. Sadly, Tarzan Adventures did not last much longer after I had left and the editor who took over from me believed that fantasy stories and readers’ departments were “unwholesome” reading for boys, rejecting any further stories submitted to him in the fantasy genre and dropping most of the departments and other features. For a few years the nearest I would come to writing similar fiction would be short historical stories in Robin Hood Annual and other sister publications, as well as scripts for historical adventure strips like Karl the Viking and Olac the Gladiator. Slowly I made a transition from juvenile weeklies to adult monthlies until in ig6o I would be asked to create what is now the Elric series for the magazine Science Fantasy.

  Michael Moorcock

  Under the Warrior Star

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Dedicated to the great creators of

  Planet adventure and sword and sorcery:

  Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otis Kline, and Robert E. Howard.

  Goodbye to nostalgia.

  Chapter One

  My History

  I write here on yellow pad among the bones of the dead. The wind whistling through broken glass.

  My name is Braxton Booker. This vast and empty underground structure, where I now sit, recording my experiences, is really where my story began, and now it is where it ends. But, to better understand what has happened to me, I’ll move to an earlier beginning, and tell you about the events of my life that made me the perfect person for this strange adventure.

  Not that I expect you to believe me. Providing anyone ever reads this. The bottom line is it is all so fantastic. If someone were to tell me what I am writing on my pad, or give it to me to read, I would think them either a liar or mad. But my experiences weigh on me like the tumbling stones of an avalanched mountain, and recording my adventures somewhat lifts that weight from my soul. So, here it is.

  In a nutshell, when I was eleven, living in a small town in East Texas, my father, fearing that I was becoming a loner, and that I lacked confidence, introduced me to an elderly man who taught jujitsu and fencing. His name was Jack Rimbauld.

  Rimbauld was elderly, five eight, weighing about one hundred and thirty pounds, soaking wet with change in his pocket. His age and size and appearance were misleading. He was the toughest, quickest, most physically capable man I ever knew. He had studied all over the world in his youth, both the physical arts and the arts of education. He was a warrior and an intellectual. He had settled in our small town to retire, for whatever reason. In time, we became not only student and teacher, but friends.

  I never asked why he had come to live in East Texas. Never considered it. I was a young man and caught up in the skills he was teaching me. Each day after school I went to his home with great enthusiasm. The sight of the big fencing room and the matted room next to it were like the Holy of Holies for me.

  I knew very little about my teacher beyond those training rooms and his library, where we often sat after class and he spoke to me of better understanding my skills. He wrote poetry, haiku mostly, but other kinds of poetry as well. He requested that I read them and try my hand at them. I tried. I also attempted the Japanese art of flower arranging, and the tea ceremony. I wasn’t very good at any of that. My tea was sour, my flowers drooped. My poetry thudded.

  He taught me meditation, and I swear I once saw him, sitting cross-legged on a mat, hands on his knees, eyes closed, slowly lift off the mat and hover there quietly for a full minute or so. Another time, I was looking right at him, and then he was gone. I heard him behind me. He had moved across the room by some weird means of teleportation. He told me it was just a trick of the mind. That he had never moved, but that he had in fact put the idea in my mind that he was behind me. Another time, in his office, he was at his desk and I was sitting in a chair across from him. The door opened, and in Jack walked, closing the door behind him.

  This time, when I looked back at the man behind the desk, Jack was still there. There were two of him in the room. Slowly, the Jack behind the desk faded, and the Jack in the doorway smiled, turned, and walked right through the closed door. I stood there blinking for a long moment, not believing what I had seen.

  When I rushed into the mat room, he was sitting there on one of the mats, cross-legged. The look on my face made him laugh out loud.

  What I remember most about that, though, was right before the second Jack had entered the room, the Jack behind the desk had shaken my hand.

  I had felt his touch, as sure and solid as if he were there.

  He tried to teach me this power of mind over matter. It was difficult work. I didn’t entirely understand it, though when I’m not caught up in the whirlwind of life, I make an effort to improve my ability. So far, my ability is me sitting cross-legged on the floor trying not to think about a cheeseburger.

  But the combat arts, there I thrived.

  If Jack Rimbauld had a family, I never heard of them. If there was someone dear to him, other than myself, I was never given an indication.

  Looking back on it now, remembering certain things he said to me, I have the belated impression that he may have had some dark secret in his past. That, however, is nothing more than a guess, and comes in hindsight, and is ultimately unimportant to my story. Back then, I only knew that he was Mr. Rimbauld, maestro, sensei, friend and mentor.

  I remember him saying to me, “Brax. You have an impulsive nature, and a temper. Neither serve a man well in the long run. The mind and the spirit and the body must be welded together by the tightest of glue.”

  This meant very little to me at the time.

  I took lessons five days a week in fencing and jujitsu for three hours a day until I was twenty, and then three days a week in both arts until I was twenty-two and Jack became ill, and shortly thereafter, died, surprising me by willing me not only his collection of swords, but his home and library and a fairly substantial savings. How he came about this money, I don’t know. I never saw him teach another soul, other than myself, and I never knew of him to have a job or to go off to work. Perhaps these answers
lie somewhere in the volumes of handwritten composition books he left me.

  Before his death, he had taught me all there was to know about the sword, and not any one kind of sword, but all manner of swords and knives, and even some training in archery and spear casting. Anything with a point I could use with considerable skill. I was no slouch at jujitsu, either, and earned a third-degree black belt under his tutelage. He also spent time introducing me to books, and loaned me numerous volumes of rare editions of novels by the world’s greatest authors. He was my education, and he was like a second father to me. I respected the information and skills he gave me.

  Because of those skills I made a great mistake, and then those same skills saved my life. So, I owe Jack Rimbauld much praise, and I owe myself criticism for bad judgment. In the end, however, I would not undo what happened.

  Though there are events leading up to my situation that are interesting, and under other circumstances might even be considered thrilling, they pale in comparison to the amazing events that came after. The events that I expect will be difficult for you to believe.

  Because of that, I’ll condense the early adventures, and simply say that I made the Olympic fencing team, and might have won a gold medal, if one of my comrades and I had not gotten into a quarrel over a young lady with long blonde hair and very nice figure.

  He ended up with the girl. But it was not enough for him, and he, like in the old days, challenged me to a duel using sabers. I was foolish. I no longer cared about the girl, or at least not that much, but I did care—too much—about my pride. I accepted his challenge, and soon found it was not just a duel of skill, but that he fully intended to strike me down.

  With a parry and a stroke, I cut him deeply in the face and shoulder, and dropped him. It was a frightful wound, but he wasn’t dead. Being young, and foolish—and I am not far off that youth now, but in experience I am much older—I fled for fear of arrest. I most likely could have made a good legal defense, claiming accurately that he had tried to kill me and I was only defending myself. But at the time, it didn’t occur to me. I was frightened.