_The White God_
Bram Forest returned to consciousness and realized the black nausea of
his previous moments had vanished. All traces of the sickness were
gone as he opened his eyes, his mind intent upon the small flat
package that had dropped from the box in which he had found the
strange disc-like instrument. But the package was not within reach.
This caused only a small part of his bewilderment however. His
attention was riveted mainly upon the tableaux being enacted before
him. A group of people, almost as naked as himself, deeply browned of
skin, stood huddled nearby.
Almost as though for the entertainment of these, two grim and
uniformed warriors were facing each other on the level turf before the
strange circular ground-entrance beside which Bram Forest found
himself.
The two warriors possessed strange supple swords which they
manipulated with much skill. At least, one of the warriors did. The
other seemed clumsy in comparison but there was no hint of cowardice
in his manner.
Upon closer inspection the two warriors who had seemed of a cut at
first glance were quite dissimilar. The one of greater skill was dark
and possessed of a cruel mouth and venomous dark eyes. The other was
slim and fair with contemptuous blue eyes. He fought with an erect
stiffness in his shoulders which was both awkward and dignified at the
same time.
The sympathy of Bram Forest went out instinctively to the fair one but
the dark, sinister swordsman held his attention. There was something
naggingly familiar about the dark one's cruel face. A tantalizing
familiarity that bemused Bram Forest even as the singing swords
thrust and parried with that of the dark warrior always on the
offensive and the other fighter striving more for self-preservation
than for aggressiveness.
Where, Bram Forest wondered, had he seen the dark one before? Nowhere,
of course. Any previous contact was impossible. Or was it? Dared he,
Bram Forest, call anything impossible after what had already occurred?
Bram Forest glanced down and realized he had been removing the disc
from his left wrist and placing it on his right. He had committed the
act instinctively, in the same manner he breathed and moved and his
mind went back momentarily to the two tubes he had found in his ears
when he awoke in the cavern back on Earth.
Back on Earth? How did he know he was not still on that planet? I've
got to stop questioning these things I possess knowledge of but know
not why. I must take them at face value and without wonder. Otherwise
I shall spend all my years in conflict with my own mind.
At that moment, the dark warrior's whip-sword whined in a skillful arc
and entered the body of the fair one. A moan of sympathy arose from
the waiting group as the defeated warrior sank to the ground, his face
strained in agony and fast becoming a death-mask.
The dark warrior stepped back, a cruel sneer of satisfaction gleaming
in his eyes. Bram Forest, sickened by the unequal contest rose up from
where he lay and moved forward. This drew the attention of both the
group and the victorious warrior and the effect was electric.
The huddled observers reacted with a mixture of consternation, awe,
and fear that would have been comic under less tense circumstances.
They dropped as one to their knees. They placed their foreheads upon
the ground. A concerted moan escaped them that far transcended in
depth and feeling the one with which they had reacted to the death of
the fair warrior.
* * * * *
In a language Bram Forest was completely familiar with, their voices
sounded a chant of fear and awe. "The white god has come! The white
god has come! The white god has come!"
Bram Forest scarcely considered them. He was advancing upon the dark
warrior with the clean, stalking movements of a tiger, his great
shoulders low, his magnificent legs tense for the death spring.
The dark one was frozen from surprise. From whence had this naked
white creature erupted? He stood stiff from sudden fear and
uncertainty a moment too long and the hands of the avenger were upon
him. The fingers of those hands were like steel talons driving deep
into his throat and in his panicked mind he looked upon the face of
death and found it horrible. He was being driven down to the ground,
lower and lower in abject submission by this strange and terrible
manifestation the brown-skinned ones had called a white god.
The dark warrior's mind raced and in his terrorized desperation a
native cunning sprang to his aid. Using every ounce of his remaining
strength, he forced words up from his tortured throat. "Would you kill
an unarmed man?"
The words touched a responsive chord in Bram Forest's mind. The craven
spoke aptly. By killing him thus, was not Bram Forest doing the same
thing for which he had condemned the other?
Bram Forest straightened and hurled the cringing figure from him.
"Then defend yourself, swine!" he cried and seized up the dead
warrior's shining whip sword.
The dark one sought means of escape but he feared turning from this
avenger as much as facing him. He could only play for time.
Rising, he retrieved his own sword and faced the other with his
expression of fear not one whit abated. The man of the steel hands
whipped the sword experimentally and the dark one was struck by a ray
of hope. The other's actions with the blade were as clumsy as had been
those of Jlomec the Nadian. Perhaps all was not lost.
* * * * *
The dark one gripped his blade and moved forward in the customary
crouch of the Tarthan fighting man. Then elation welled up within him
as the answering posture of the other revealed him as knowing nothing
whatever of the whip-sword's use. The dark one's smile returned. God
or not, the skill of this one with the ancient weapon of Tarth was
even less than that of the pathetic Jlomec.
The dark warrior parried a clumsy thrust with ease and whipped his
blade around to harass the other's exposed back. "You are a fool!" he
said, "whatever else you may be. As you die, give thought to the fact
that you join a large company. Those who have faced the greatest
swordsman of Tarth and fallen ignobly before his blade."
With that the dark one whipped his blade home and spun his adversary
expertly in order to discover the exact point of entrance of the
blade. His aim was true.
It was just a trifle low but the other fell heavily and the dark
warrior withdrew his blade and wiped it uneasily. His nervousness
sprang from fear. If one of these so-called gods had appeared, why not
two, or four, or a dozen? The Tarthan swordsman, well up on the
principles of discretion, felt a sudden urge to be quit of this
locality.
It was indeed a disconcerting place. Brown folk, the identity and
origin of which he knew not. A white creature with steel hands
appearing from nowhere. What would the next manifestation be?
The dark warrior moved swiftly toward his waiting stad. He mounted and
rode away and not until the figures about the well were tiny spots
almost beyond range of his vision, did he again breathe easily.