The Iron Dream (9 page)

Feric dismounted the moment the cycle halted and even before Stopa himself could step down, so as to deprive the Avenger leader of either forbidding him to do so or giving him the order. For his part, Stopa seemed to ignore the significance of this gesture. He simply dismounted, placed his hands on his hips, and glowered at his men while they climbed down from their machines and formed a rough semi-circle facing their leader. A shaken and dazed Bogel wobbled forward out of this crew to Feric's side.

"This is madness, Feric!" Bogel declared. "These savages will surely slay us and no doubt feast afterward on our remains. What a ride! What a foul midden this is!

What friends you have thrown us among!"

Feric shot Bogel a look of such blackness that the smaller man instantly fell silent, fairly trembling in his shoes. Bogel had a tendency to run off a bit at the mouth when silence was a stronger weapon than words. He needed more steel in his backbone as well.

"All right!" Stopa barked. "Don't just stand around with your tongues hanging out! We've got a rite to hold!"

With that the Black Avengers sprang into action. A crew of them went off into the woods on some errand while others entered their huts and emerged bearing sheaves of great ten-foot torches, pointed at their nether ends. Two Avengers went to the oversized hut and returned rolling an enormous wooden keg. More of the great torches were fetched, until there were dozens of them lying in the center of the clearing. The party returned from the woods laden with branches and logs and began assembling the fuel for a large bonfire. The keg was stood up on end and the top removed, revealing an ocean of heavy brown ale. A cheer went up, and each Avenger dropped a wooden drinking hom into the keg, brought it up brimming, swallowed it down in one great draught, then refilled his hom for fortification while performing his 62

duties. Thus invigored, the Avengers quickly staked out a large circle of torches centered on the great heap of faggots.

While this work was done, Stopa had stood silent and immobile beside Feric and Bogel, his hands on his hips in a lordly posture, neither deigning to join in the tasks, nor drinking his brew with the others. Now he went to his motorcycle, mounted it, and kicked the engine to life. As the cycle sprang forward, he leaned over and snatched a torch off the ground on the fly. This he ignited with a fire lighter. He then roared around the entire circle of torches at speed, firing each in turn, until the center of the Avenger camp was a blazing ring of torchlight casting tongues of flame and bright sparks up into the infinite forest darkness. Stopa then drove his machine into the ring of fire straight for the woodpile at its center. With one sudden breathtaking motion, he pivoted the howling motorcycle about his own right foot, instantly reversing its direction, while tossing his torch directly on the pyre, setting it aflame. He then brought his machine to a screeching halt by the keg of ale, dismounted, and thrust his head beneath the beery waves. He held his head under the foam for long moments, then withdrew, smacking his lips.

"Into the circle, you bugs!" he roared. "We're going to find out whether we have a new brother tonight or a corpse."

The Avengers gathered themselves in a group inside the circle of torches facing Stopa and the great crackling bonfire that now blazed behind him. As Feric led Bogel into the ring of fire, Bogel grimaced at him impishly and said: "Well, I suppose if I must die tonight, it might as well be in a blaze of glory. Apparently you share my taste."

Feric clapped Bogel on the shoulder as they approached Stopa; despite certain limitations, there was no denying that Seph Bogel was made of the right stuff.

Stopa drew his huge truncheon and leaned insolently on it as if it were a cane. "All right, Feric Jaggar," he shouted, "it's all very simple. You're inside the circle of fire; you leave as either an Avenger or a corpse. If you survive—which you won't—you become an Avenger with the right to challenge me to fair combat. That's the game, bug, all you have to do is survive the three ordeals—the Test of Water, the Test of Fire, and the Test of Steel. So let's get started. Bring on the big hom."

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At this, a large, blond-bearded Avenger wearing a black jerkin emblazoned with a crimson swastika left the circle of torches. In a few moments, he returned bearing a drinking hom of truly heroic proportions. This huge vessel was hewn from a single block of dark-colored wood like the others, but it was a full three times their size, holding perhaps four or five standard tavern measures of ale, and carved all over with stags' heads, eagles, swastikas, and rearing serpents^

Stopa took the great drinking horn, plunged it into the barrel of ale, and brought it up filled to overflowing and dripping with foam. He held the vessel aloft with both hands and declaimed: "Anyone who can't drain this horn of ale without pausing for breath isn't man enough to be an Avenger."

He handed the hom of ale to Feric, then drew his pistol. So heavy was the drinking hom that Feric needed both hands to steady it.

"You drink it all down, Feric Jaggar," Stopa said, "and you pass the Test of Water." He cocked his pistol and pressed the muzzle directly to the base of Feric's skull.

"But if you take one breath before it's dry, it'll be your last."

Feric smiled bravely. "I must admit the ride made my throat somewhat dry," he said. "I thank you for your magnanimous hospitality."

Thus speaking, Feric emptied his lungs, sucked in a great breath of air, hoisted the drinking hom to his lips, and poured a great swallow of heavy, powerful ale directly down his throat. When he had filled his mouth and throat to the choking point, he gulped the brew down, while continuing to decant more ale into his mouth on its heels. The second great mouthful immediately followed the first down Feric's gullet while he poured a third; thus he established a rapid rythm of pouring and swallowing so that the aie gushed from the drinking hom to his mouth, down his throat, and into his stomach in a constant torrent.

Faster and faster, Feric gulped the strong dark ale, nearly on the verge of choking, for he felt both (he building ache in his lungs and the cool metal of Stopa's cocked pistol against the back of his neck. His head began to spin and his knees to grow weak, both from lack of breath and surfeit of brew. But he summoned up his last reserves of will from the core of his being and felt the 64

psychic power fight back heroically against the pain in his chest, the gorge in his throat, and the spongy feeling in his knees. He redoubled his efforts, gulping down what seemed like oceans of ale. After an eternity measurable only by the roaring in his ears, the pain in his chest, the pistol at his head, and the choking torrent of ale in his mouth and throat, the hom finally gave up its last drop.

Exhaling a great rush of stale air, Feric tossed the empty drinking hom end over end into the press of Black Avengers, who roared their manly approval of the feat while Stopa put aside his pistol and regarded Feric with a certain grudging respect.

For his part, Peric spent this respite drawing in great gasps of air as the iron slowly returned to his knees. The great bonfire behind Stopa sent clouds of orange smoke and flickers of brilliance up as an offering into the black sky; around each torch in the circle was a sparkling aura.

"Not a bad brew," Feric finally said when he had caught his breath. "Perhaps you'd care to try it?"

The Avengers howled their approval of this notion gleefully and one of them tossed the great drinking hom back to Feric while Stopa fumed in silent rage. Feric dipped the hom into the keg and handed Stopa a brimming measure.

Stopa fairly yanked the hom out of Feric's hands, raised it to his lips in the same motion, and drew one hasty breath before swilling the ale down in great gulps and slobbers which distributed a good portion of the stuff on his jerkin and beard. He ended his quaffing with a series of unesthetic chokes, coughs, and retches, but none-theless was able to upend a drinking hom out of which no liquid spilled.

Stopa tossed away the drinking hom and stood panting in the orange glow like a great beast of prey, his eyes inflamed with drink and rage, his muscles standing out in bands, his black leather jerkin shining in the firelight where the ale clung to it.

"We'll see! We'll see!" Stopa roared somewhat drunkenly. "You like the taste of ale, do you, Jaggar? Well let's see how you like the taste of fire! Set up the gauntletl Bring him a bike! The Test of Fire!"

At once the Avengers broke ranks and made for the torches staked in the ground, each man uprooting his own spear of flame. They quickly arranged themselves into two parallel rows of about twenty men to a side, with just 65

enough distance between them so that there was a corridor of relative safety a scant yard wide between them when they extended their torches at full arm's length toward each other. The wind-whipped flames of the torches danced tantalizingly through this narrow aisle, enlivening even this thin path through the gauntlet with intermittent tongues of fire.

An engine roared to life in the darkness beyond reach of the firelight, and a moment later a motorcycle with crimson enamel and great chromed fins sporting black swastikas in white circles was driven to one end of the flaming corridor by an Avenger in a black leather jerkin on which was sewn a white swastika in a red circle. The Avenger dismounted and put the cycle up on its stand; the engine, however, was left running, thrumming with power, rumbling its challenge.

"I'll stand at one end of the line," Stopa shouted loudly, as much for the Avengers' benefit as for Feric's, "and you, Jaggar, will drive Sigmark's cycle through the fire to my side. Any real Avenger can do it; our hides are too tough to be scorched by anything short of the sky fire of the ancients." At this, the twin lines of Avengers cheered and waved their torches grandly overhead.

Slowly and deliberately, Feric made his way to the motorcycle which called out to him with its great metallic voice from the head of the gauntlet of fire. Through the flashing and flickering flames of the fiery corridor, he could see Stopa glowering at him in a sullen, drunken rage, the insolence on his reddened face a deliberate challenge to Feric's manhood. Feric determined that he would do more than merely survive this ordeal in the face of such an attitude; he would grab the moment and fling it back in Stopa's arrogant face. Thus would the simple but spirited fellow be notified of his true station.

The Avenger known as Sigmark gave Feric a short briefing on the mechanics of driving the motorcycle: slap down on the lever under your left foot and you engage gears of successively higher ratio, twist the right steering grip for throttle, under the right foot and right hand were controls for the front and rear brakes respectively, while the lever under the left hand worked the clutch. It all seemed straightforward enough.

Feric mounted the metal stallion and gripped the steering bars firmly in his hands. He disengaged the clutch, twisted the right handgrip; instantly the engine howled and 66

he could feel its power surge through the very bones of his body. This seemed to establish an immediate rapport with the machine, as if it were an extension of his own flesh, as if the incredible force generated by the screaming engine were coursing directly through his soul. In this moment, Feric possessed the iron conviction that this steed was fully capable of carrying him through the fire unscathed, and that he was just as capable of making the ride as the circumstances demanded—resolutely, with utter confidence, and without for an instant flinching. This was not a test of physical prowess so much as one of heroism. A true hero would emerge untouched, but one ounce of cowardice or hesitation would result in disaster. Feric could not but admire the instincts of men who had con-trived such a perfect test of true manhood.

Without further hesitation, Feric eased the motorcycle off its stand, leaned as low over its petrol tank as possible so that he was fairly hanging by his outstretched arms from the steering bars, gunned the engine into a terrible roar which sent waves of power pulsing through his body, slammed the machine into gear with a resolute application of his booted foot, and dropped in the clutch.

Spewing stones and dirt and lifting its front wheel off the ground for an instant, the motorcycle sprang forward.

Unflinchingly confident in the unity of man and machine which he felt with his flesh and his soul, Feric steered the cycle straight for the corridor of fire. Far from being frightened, he felt a certain exhilaration, a manly thrill, at rushing resolutely and heroically into the flames.

With a rush, Feric was enveloped in a universe of intense heat, orange flame, and hurtling speed; nothing but these elementals existed for him and they blended together into a raw essence of power that filled his being and fed the grandeur of his spirit. His only thought was to keep the throttle wide open and hold his steed on an arrow-straight path. He felt neither pain nor fear, only a sense of riding the juggernaut of destiny; indeed it seemed but an instant before he burst through the flames and emerged, singed but unharmed, on the other side.

The Avengers waved their torches and cheered wildly as Feric circled back toward Stopa. For his part, Feric was determined that this little game had not been truely played out as yet; he had avoided losing easily enough, but he would not be satisfied until he had actually won.

As he brought the motorcycle up beside Stopa, he 67

bellowed a challenge: "Ride back with me, Stopa, if you dare!"

A veritable pantheon of expressions chased each other across Stopa's drunken countenance: anger, fear, defiance, rage.

"Come on Stopa, don't let the fire get cold," Peric japed. "If you're not man enough, just tell me!"

With a guttural shout of fury and defiance, Stopa leaped up onto the motorcycle behind Feric. Before the Avenger leader had the chance to utter a more heroic salutation, Feric gunned the engine and the cycle sped forward into the flames.

Once more Peric was enveloped in a world of triumphant fire and juggernaut speed; once more the motorcycle emerged from the tunnel of flame with its burdens singed but unharmed.