Flesh (23 page)

“No!” she said, “I can’t. Even if I could, do you think you should endanger us by returning there? Those women will tell their men when they return, and the priestesses at Vassar will be notified. And we’ll have them on our track. We’d be sure to get caught if they knew we were in this neighborhood.”

“I know you’re right,” he said. “But I can’t stand it. I ate too much. It’s either those two women or you.”

Mary rose to her feet. She looked as if she were going to attempt something she disliked but must do.

“If you’ll turn around a moment,” she said, her voice quivering, “I think I can solve your problem.”

Ecstatically, he said, “Mary, would you really? You don’t know what this means to me!”

He turned away, and, despite his almost unbearably keen anticipation, he had to smile. How like her to be so modest about unclothing just before she bedded with him.

He heard her stir behind him. “Can I turn around now?”

“Not yet,” she said. “I’m not ready.”

He heard her approach him and he said, impatiently, “Is it all right to turn around now?”

“Not yet,” she said, standing behind him.

“I can’t stand waiting much longer...”

Something hit him hard on the back of the head. He blacked out.

When he awoke, he was on his side, his arms bound behind him and his legs tied together at the ankles. She had cut into two the thin rope he had put into the bag before escaping from the Pants-Elf. Near him was a large rock which he supposed she had used to knock him out.

Seeing his eyes open, she said, “I’m terribly sorry, Peter. I had to do that. If you’d put the Deecee on our trail, we might not have escaped.”

“There are two bottles of whiskey in the sack,” he said. “Prop me up against a tree trunk and put a bottle to my lips. I want to drink the whole quart. One, because I need something to kill this pain in my head. Two, because unless I drink myself unconscious, I’ll go crazy from frustration. Three, I want to forget what a black-hearted bitch you are!”

She did not reply but did obey him, holding the bottle to his mouth and withdrawing it from time to time when he quit gulping.

“I’m sorry, Peter.”

“To hell with you! Why did I have to get stuck with somebody like you? Why couldn’t I have run off with a real woman? Keep feeding me the whiskey.”

In two hours, he had drunk two-thirds of the fifth. He sat quietly for a few seconds, his eyes staring straight ahead. Then he groaned and fell asleep.

The next morning, he woke to find himself untied. He did not complain of his hangover or say anything to her. He merely watched her while she placed his rations before him. After breakfast, during which he drank much water, they began walking east in silence.

Toward midmorning, Mary spoke. “No farms in the last two hours. And the forest is thinning out and the land getting rockier. We’re in the wastelands between Deecee and Caseyland. We must be more careful than ever, because we’re likely to run into war parties of either nation.”

“What’s wrong with meeting your people?” Stagg said. “They’re the boys we want, aren’t they?”

“They might shoot first and identify us later,” Mary said, nervously.

“Okay,” he answered harshly. “So we’ll holler out at them from a distance. Tell me, Mary, are you certain I’ll not be treated as a Deecee captive? After all, this horn might prejudice them.”

“Not after I tell them how you saved my life. And that you can’t help being a Sunhero. Of course...”

“Of course what?”

“You’ll have to submit to an operation. I don’t know if my people have medical skill enough to remove your horn without killing you, but you’ll have to take that chance. Otherwise, you’ll be locked up. And you know that would drive you crazy. You can’t be allowed to run loose in this condition. And, naturally, I wouldn’t think of marrying you while you still have that horn. Oh yes, you must first be baptized in our belief. I wouldn’t marry a heathen. I couldn’t if I wanted to; we kill heathens.”

Stagg didn’t know whether to roar with anger, bellow with laughter, or weep with sadness. As a result, he expressed no emotion. Instead, he spoke levelly, “I don’t remember asking you to marry me.”

“Oh, but you don’t have to,” she replied. “It is enough that we spent one night together without chaperones. In my country, that means that a man and a woman must get married. In fact, that is often one way to announce your engagement.”

“But you’ve done nothing to justify a forced marriage,” he said. “You’re still a virgin. At least, as far as I know.”

“I most certainly am! But it makes no difference. It is taken for granted that a man and a woman who spend the night together must succumb to the flesh, however strong the will. That is, unless they are saints. And if they’re saints, they don’t allow such situations to happen.”

“Then why in blue skies and rocketing nonsense have you been so determined to be a good girl?” he said loudly. “If you’re going to have the name, you might as well have the game.”

“Because I wasn’t brought up that way. Because,” she added somewhat smugly, “it doesn’t matter what people think. It is what the Mother sees that counts.”

“Sometimes you’re so sanctimonious I could wring your pretty little neck! Here I’ve been suffering agonies of frustration such as you’ll never know, and all the time you could have eased my pain without any moral blemish on your part—and had a time such as few women ever get!”

“There’s no need to get angry,” she said. “After all, it wasn’t as if it had occurred at home, where we could be killed before we could be married. And then I would have sinned. Besides, you’re not in the normal category. You have that horn. That puts you in a special case. I’m sure it’ll take a learned priest to straighten out all the complexities.”

Stagg shook with rage. He said, “We haven’t reached Caseyland yet!”

Noon came. Stagg ate much more than his normal allowance. Mary said nothing about it, but she kept eyeing him. Every time he came near, she flinched. They repacked the bag and resumed walking. Stagg obviously was beginning to feel the benefit of food. The fleshy upper part of the antler began to swell and to stand stiff. His eyes sparkled, and he gave little leaps into the air, grunting with suppressed joy.

Mary began to lag behind. He was so affected by the approaching rush of desire that he did not notice. When she was about twenty yards behind him, she ran off into the bushes. He walked another twenty yards before he turned around and saw that she was gone. Then he roared and darted after her into the woods, losing all sense of caution and shouting her name.

He found her trail in a bed of crushed weeds, followed it to a small, almost dry creek bed, crossed the creek, and entered a grove of oaks. There he lost the trail. Emerging on the other side, he faced a broad meadow.

He also faced a dozen or more swords, behind every uplifted point of which was the grim face of a Caseylander.

Beyond them he saw a girl of about twenty.

This girl wore a costume such as Mary had worn when he first saw her in the cage. She was a mascot. The men were dressed in the red-soxed uniform of a Caseylander champion baseball team. There was one incongruous item among their clothes. Instead of long-billed caps, they wore feather-plumed hats, like an admiral’s headgear.

Beyond them stood deer, nineteen for the first team and substitutes, one for the mascot, four to carry food and equipment.

The leader of the Caseys, titled “Mighty” as all the Casey captains were, was a tall rangy man with a long lean face, one cheek of which was swelled with a quid of tobacco. He grinned savagely at Stagg. “So, Old Horney! You expected to find soft curved young flesh? And instead you find the hard biting edge of a sword. Disappointed, monster? Don’t be. We’ll give you the embrace of a woman—only her arms are thin and bony and her breasts are flabby and wrinkled, and her breath stinks of the open grave.”

“Don’t be so damned melodramatic, Mighty,” growled one of the men. “Let’s hang him and get it over with. We’ve a game to play in Poughkeepsie.”

Stagg understood then what they were doing there. It was no war party but a ball club that had been invited to compete in Deecee. As such, they would have a safe-conduct pass guaranteeing them against being ambushed.

Furthermore, the guarantee involved the promise not to hurt any Deecee they might encounter in the wasteland.

“Let’s not talk of hanging,” he said to Mighty. “According to the rules, you’re not to harm a Deecee unless he attacks you.”

“That’s true,” Mighty said. “But it just so happens that we’ve heard of you through our spies. You’re not a native of Deecee; therefore our promise doesn’t hold for you.”

“Then why hang me?” Stagg said. “If I’m not a Deecee, I’m also not your enemy. Tell me, didn’t you see a woman running ahead of me? Her name’s Mary Casey. She’ll tell you I should be treated as a friend!”

“A likely story,” said the man who had urged hanging Stagg. “You’re one of those devil-possessed horned men! That’s enough for us.”

“Shut up, Lonzo!” Mighty said. “I’m captain here.”

He spoke to Stagg. “I wish now I’d had you cut down before you could open your mouth. Then you’d be no problem. But I would like to hear about this Mary Casey.” Suddenly he said, “What’s her middle name?”

“I-Am-Bound-For-Paradise.”

“Yes, that’s my cousin’s name. But I guess your knowing it doesn’t prove anything. She was hauled along with you on the Great Route. We have a good spy system, and we know you and she disappeared after the fairy-boys made a raid on Vassar. But the witches substituted another Horned King and then sent secret war parties out looking for you.”

“Mary is somewhere nearby in these woods,” Stagg said. “Find her, and she’ll verify that I was helping her escape to your country.”

“And what were you doing separated?” Mighty said, suspiciously. “Why were you running?”

Stagg was silent. Mighty said, “I thought so. One look at you would tell anybody why you were chasing her. I’ll tell you what, Horned King. I’m going to give you a break. Ordinarily, I’d roast you over a low fire first, then rip out your eyes and stuff them down your throat. But we’ve the game to make and no time to waste, so I’m going to give you a quick death. Tie his hands, boys, and string him up!”

A rope was thrown over the branch of an oak and a noose put around his neck. Two men seized his arms, while a third prepared to tie them. He did not resist, though he could easily have tossed the two aside.

He said, “Wait! I challenge you to a game according to the rules of One against Five, and I call God to witness that I have challenged you!”

“What?” Mighty said, incredulously. “Columbus’ sake, man, we’re late now! Besides, why should we accept the challenge? We don’t know if you’re our equal. We’re all
diradah,
you know, and a challenge from a
shet hed
is not acceptable. In fact, come to think of it, it’s unthinkable.”

“I am not a
shet hed
,” Stagg said, also using the term for a peasant. “Have you ever heard of a Sunhero being chosen from any but the ranks of the aristocrats?”

“That’s right,” Mighty said. He scratched his head. “Well, it can’t be helped. Let him loose, boys. Maybe the game won’t take long.”

There was not even a flicker of thought in his mind to ignore Stagg’s challenge and hang him. He had a code of honor, and he would not think of breaking it. Especially since Stagg had called on the name of his deity.

The Caseys who were to play on the first five removed their plumed admiral’s hats and put on long-billed caps. They took their equipment from the bags on the sides of their deer and began laying out a diamond on the nearby meadow. From a leather bag they poured out a heavy white powder to mark the lanes from plate to plate and from each plate to the pitcher’s box. They drew a narrow square around each plate, since in the rules of One against Five, Stagg might have to bat from any one of the bases during the course of the game. They drew a somewhat larger box for the pitcher.

“Is it okay if our mascot is the ump?” Mighty asked. “She will swear before the Father, Mother, and the Son that she will not favor us over you. If she isn’t fair, lightning will strike her down. Worse, she’ll become sterile.”

“There’s not much choice,” Stagg said, hefting the brass-bound bat they’d given him. “I’m ready when you are.”

His desire for women was gone now, sublimated in an eagerness to spill the blood of these men.

The mascot, wearing a barred iron mask and a heavily padded uniform, waddled up to her place behind the catcher.

“Batter up!”

Stagg waited for the Mighty’s pitch. The Mighty stood only thirty-nine meters away from him, holding the hard leather ball with the four sharp steel spikes. He eyed Stagg, then wound up and let fly.

The ball sped like a cannon shot straight toward Stagg’s head. It came so fast and so true that it was doubtful if a man of normal reflexes could have avoided it. Stagg, however, bent his knees. The ball skimmed an inch over his head.

“Ball one!” the mascot cried in a high, clear voice.

The catcher made no effort to catch the ball. In this game his duty was to chase after the ball and return it to the pitcher. Of course, he also guarded home plate and would try to catch the ball in his immense padded glove if Stagg ever tried to slide into home.

Mighty Casey wound up again and aimed this time for Stagg’s midriff.

Stagg swung. The bat connected with a dull sound that contrasted strangely with the sharp crack he had automatically expected.

The ball bounced off to Stagg’s left and rolled out of the diamond, crossing the foul line.

“Strike one!”

The catcher returned the ball. Mighty Casey feinted winding up, then threw it suddenly in one smooth motion.

Stagg was almost caught. He had no time to swing, just barely enough time to stick the bat out. The ball struck the side and clung for a second, one of its spikes embedded in the brass.

Stagg ran for first, clinging to his bat as the rules said he could do if the ball stuck to it. Mighty Casey ran after him, hoping the ball would fall off on the way. Otherwise, if Stagg reached first and had possession of the ball, he became the pitcher and Mighty Casey became the batter.