Sojan the Swordsman Read online

  The Host-Leader turned to survey the landscape. “Xon’s Sons! Look at that, Skortan!”

  It was a great insect, coloured in hues which were entirely beyond the description of either man. Upon its huge back rode three squat beast-men wielding heavy clubs.

  It was evident that these savages were hostile by the way they brandished their weapons and called loudly in their guttural tongue.

  “A fight’s a fight wherever we are!” exclaimed Rens Karto. “If we’re in Frejh, then by the Evil Gods who rule here, we’ll take a few of her devils down the Long Passage with us!”

  While Skortan hefted his enormous war-axe into his great hands, Karto whipped out his bright Blood-Drinker, his broadsword of fine steel and stood beside him.

  The two still retaining their clubs leaped to the ground and made for Rens Karto. The third rode his mount full at Skortan who leaped aside and lashed at the monster with his horned head while his hands moved swift as a war-arrow hacking off the insect’s long antennae with his axe. The beast-man, clinging to the monster’s back, uttered a despairing cry. What Skortan had hoped for had happened. It writhed in terrible agony and within seconds it was dead. How unfortunate, reflected Skortan, that its rider was underneath it, crushed to death.

  The Chieftain of Darsik turned towards Rens Karto to see if he needed any help. He was sitting on the ground nursing his wounds while one savage lay in his final death throes; the other was nowhere to be seen.

  A few miles away, an airship came to rest. Sojan and Nornos Rique were listening to the low moaning of primitive horns.

  “Sounds like natives of some kind,” said Sojan presently.

  “There aren’t any natives in this part of Poltoon,” Nornos Rique argued. “Everybody knows that!”

  “There weren’t to my knowledge before I left Nornos Kald’s Court,” replied Sojan, “but sometimes, recently, tales have come through about a nomad tribe of beast-men who seem to be heading slowly across the face of the continent.”

  “I’d like to find out what these wanderers are like,” put in Andel. “What say we head in that direction?”

  The party left the airship and headed north under the leadership of Sojan who knew the continent of Poltoon better than the rest. As they journeyed, the horns, weird and strange to the ears of Sojan and his friends grew louder and eerier until all at once they broke into a small clearing — crowded with savage beast-men.

  Karto grinned weakly at his friend. “The other one escaped,” he said, “that means he’ll tell his friends, if he has any, and then —”

  The weird savage music of the horns began to fill the air and suddenly the beast-men burst into the clearing.

  The men didn’t have a chance. Karto saw Skortan struggling underneath a mound of giant insects, then he felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck and saw no more.

  As he awoke, the throbbing in his head gave place to the mournful hoot of the beast-men’s horns. He was tied beside Skortan and the corpses of the dead were piled about them.

  “It seems as if there’s some kind of ceremony taking place,” remarked Skortan, “if it’s centred on us, as it undoubtedly is, I don’t think it’s going to be pleasant for us.”

  Suddenly the horns blew louder and the primitive men began to advance towards the two helpless companions. The largest raised a club and got ready to swing it down upon Rens Karto’s outstretched body, intending to break the bones one by one. “You won’t get any entertainment from me, damn you!” said Karto, closing his eyes and waiting for the first blow.

  “By Vit!” yelled Sojan. “They’ve got a man there — and some kind of man-beast! Start shooting!” Frightened by the missiles which sped almost silently from the long-barrelled and powerful air-guns, the beasts broke and fled.

  Sojan rushed forward to free the two captives.

  “Quick,” he yelled, “before they get back!” The two friends did not understand the words but they could tell easily what he meant.

  The party rushed into the forest and raced in the direction of the airship, Parijh leading the way.

  Suddenly he swerved to the right. The rest automatically followed, for in front of them were scores of the beast-men.

  “I can see a building over there!” shouted Parijh and ran towards it, not looking to see if the others were following. In a few minutes they were all safely inside.

  Sojan glanced round. “This building is smaller, but very similar to the one we found in Shortani,” he mused.

  They crowded into a lift which, from past experience, they knew how to work.

  Up they went to the third floor to find a huge room containing many strange machines.

  In a corner a screen was glowing, blank like blind eyes it flickered occasionally but that was all.

  Carefully Sojan studied the ancient script upon the dials and levers. While he bent over these controls his friends noted the little heaps of rubble, the odd piece of broken machinery here and there.

  “It looks as if those natives somehow discovered how to get into this place,” mused Nornos Rique. “And quite recently too. Probably some chance pressing of a button caused that screen to light up and scared them off.”

  “Very likely,” said Sojan as he very deliberately pressed a stud. The screen faded, flickered, faded again and then an immense view of an alien landscape sprang into the frame.

  Rens Karto and Skortan rushed towards it in wonder — for it was the home planet. The scene was one which was familiar to them and depicted the exact spot where they had been before being suddenly whisked to Zylor.

  Frantically, by means of signs, the two conveyed this news to Sojan. Sojan was perplexed. How could two beings be on one planet one moment and on another the next?

  “I just don’t understand,” he said, “no spaceship brought them, that’s sure — but…”

  “I think I understand,” said Nornos Rique. “This machinery may well have been used for transporting people from place to place without the aid of spaceships. How they did it I have not the remotest idea, but if they were capable of all the wonders we have seen recently, why not one more?”

  “It smells of Dark Magic, to me,” growled Andel.

  “I also feel it is Evil,” put in Parijh, “machinery I can understand — but this, no!”

  “You’re both a couple of superstitious barbarians still!” shouted Sojan.

  “But if they got here — by Vit! — then we’ll get them back.”

  “How?” said Parijh simply, grinning a little into his short black beard.

  “By readjusting the machine to what it was set at and thus break whatever is holding these two to Zylor!”

  “Can you do it, Sojan?” asked Nornos Rique quietly.

  “I think so,” replied the mercenary, “if you signal to these two to stand in the centre of that large machine over there, from what I’ve gleaned from the old writing, it will be an easy thing to send them back!”

  By means of more signals they succeeded in placing the two chieftains beneath a huge piece of machinery shaped like an inverted saucer. Then Sojan turned a switch. Abruptly the two men disappeared.

  Jubilantly Sojan pointed to the screen. “Look!” he cried. “They’re there already!”

  And so they were, lying on the soft grass of Bersnol, a little dazed, a mile or two away from a large city.

  “I’m glad that they are safe,” said Sojan, “I feel that we have much in common with those two. We probably came from the same mother race who populated Zylor ages ago!”

  “Very likely,” said Nornos Rique. “Perhaps — one day — we shall meet them again!”

  “Perhaps,” said Sojan. “I hope so!”

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  ELRIC

  Elric of Melniboné and other Stories

  Elric: The Fortress of the Pearl

  Elric: The Sailor on the Seas of Fate

  Elric: The Sleeping Sorceress

  Elric: The Revenge of the Rose

  Elric: Stormbringer!

  Daughter of Dreams: Book One of Elric: The Moonbeam Roads

  Destiny’s Brother: Book Two of Elric: The Moonbeam Roads

  Son of the Wolf: Book Three of Elric: The Moonbeam Roads

  CORUM

  Corum: The Prince in the Scarlet Robe

  1. The Knight of the Swords

  2. The Queen of the Swords

  3. The King of the Swords

  Corum: The Prince with the Silver Hand

  1. The Bull and the Spear

  2. The Oak and the Ram

  3. The Sword and the Stallion

  HAWKMOON

  The History of the Runestaff

  1. The Jewel in the Skull

  2. The Mad God’s Amulet

  3. The Sword of the Dawn

  4. The Runestaff

  Count Brass

  1. Count Brass

  2. The Champion of Garathorm

  3. The Quest for Tanelorn

  JERRY CORNELIUS

  The Cornelius Quartet

  1. The Final Programme

  2. A Cure for Cancer

  3. The English Assassin

  4. The Condition of Muzak

  Jerry Cornelius: His Lives and His Times (short-fiction collection)

  A Cornelius Calendar

  1. The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Cornelius in the Twentieth Century

  2. The Entropy Tango

  3. The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle

  4. The Alchemist’s Question

  5. Firing The Cathedral / Modem Times 2.0 (combined in one eBook)

  VON BEK

  1. The War Hound and the World’s Pain

  2. The City in the Autumn Stars

  THE ETERNAL CHAMPION

  1. The Eternal Champion

  2. Phoenix in Obsidian

  3. The Dragon in the Sword

  KANE OF OLD MARS

  1. Warriors of Mars

  2. Blades of Mars

  3. Barbarians of Mars

  THE DANCERS AT THE END OF TIME

  1. An Alien Heat

  2. The Hollow Lands

  3. The End of all Songs

  MOORCOCK’S MULTIVERSE

  1. The Sundered Worlds

  2. The Winds of Limbo

  3. The Shores of Death

  THE NOMAD OF TIME

  1. The Warlord of the Air

  2. The Land Leviathan

  3. The Steel Tsar

  TRAVELLING TO UTOPIA

  1. The Wrecks of Time

  2. The Ice Schooner

  3. The Black Corridor

  THE WAR AMONGST THE ANGELS

  1. Blood: A Southern Fantasy

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  The Chinese Agent

  The Russian Intelligence

  The Distant Suns

  The Golden Barge

  Sojan the Swordsman

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  Michael Moorcock (1939-)

  Michael Moorcock is one of the most important figures in British SF and Fantasy literature. The author of many literary novels and stories in practically every genre, his novels have won and been shortlisted for numerous awards including the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Whitbread and Guardian Fiction Prize. In 1999, he was given the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award; in 2001, he was inducted into the SF Hall of Fame; and in 2007, he was named a SFWA Grandmaster. Michael Moorcock is also a musician who has performed since the seventies with his own band, the Deep Fix; and, as a member of the prog rock band, Hawkwind, won a gold disc. His tenure as editor of New Worlds magazine in the sixties and seventies is seen as the high watermark of SF editorship in the UK, and was crucial in the development of the SF New Wave. Michael Moorcock–s literary creations include Hawkmoon, Corum, Von Bek, Jerry Cornelius and, of course, his most famous character, Elric. He has been compared to, among others, Balzac, Dumas, Dickens, James Joyce, Ian Fleming, J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard. Although born in London, he now splits his time between homes in Texas and Paris.

  For more information about Michael Moorcock and his work, please see his entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, visit his website at www.Multiverse.org, or send S.A.E. to The Nomads Of The Time Streams, Mo Dhachaidh, Loch Awe, Dalmally, Argyll, PA33 1AQ, Scotland, or P.O. Box 385716, Waikoloa, HI 96738, USA.

  Copyright

  A Gollancz eBook

  Copyright © Michael and Linda Moorcock 1957/58, 1977, 2010

  Revised edition © Michael and Linda Moorcock 2013

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Michael Moorcock to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Artwork copyright © 1957/58, 1976 James Cawthorn

  This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2013 by

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 0 575 07890 1

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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