R.W. II - The Fabulous Riverboat Read online

  A few minutes later, his stomach warmed by a big shot of Bourbon, cigar in mouth, his speech finished, Sam started to dig. The bamboo shovel had a sharp edge, but the grass was so tough and thick that it was necessary to use the shovel as a machete. Sweating, swearing, declaring that he had always hated physical exertion and was not cut out to be a ditch-digger, Sam chopped away the grass. On driving the now-dulled shovel into the earth, Sam found he could not bring up even a half shovelful. It would be necessary to hack away at the grass and the dirt between.

  "By the great horn spoon!" he said, flinging the shovel down on the ground. "Let some peasant who's cut out for this drudgery do it! I'm a brain-worker!"

  The crowd laughed and set to work with flint and bamboo knives and flint axes. Sam said, "If that iron is ten feet down, it'll take us ten years to find it. Joe, you'd better bring back plenty of flint, otherwise we're done for."

  "Do I have to go?" Joe Miller said. "I'll mithth you, Tham."

  "You gotta go, as all men do," Sam said. "Don't worry about me."

  Chapter 12

  * * *

  During the next three days, a hole ten feet across and one foot deep was made. Von Richthofen organized the teams so that a new one replaced the previous crew every fifteen minutes. There was no lack of fresh and strong diggers, but delays were caused by the flaking of new flint tools and the making of new bamboo tools. Bloodaxe growled about the damage to the axes and knives, saying that if they were to be attacked, the stone weapons could not cut through the skin of a baby. Clemens begged him for the dozenth time to be allowed to use the steel ax, and Bloodaxe refused.

  "If Joe were here, I'd have him take the ax away from him," Clemens said to Lothar. "And where is Joe, anyway? He should be back by now, empty-handed or bearing gifts."

  "I think we ought to send somebody in a dugout to find out," von Richthofen said. "I'd go myself, but I think you still need me around to protect you from Bloodaxe."

  "If something's happened to Joe, we'll both need protection," Sam said. "All right, that Pathan, Abdul, can be our spy. He could wriggle unnoticed through a basket of rattlesnakes."

  At dawn, two days later, Abdul paddled in. He woke Sam and Lothar, who were sleeping in the same hut for mutual protection. In broken English, he explained that Joe Miller was tied up in a strongly built bamboo cage. Abdul had tried to get a chance to free Joe, but the cage had an around-the-clock guard.

  The Vikings had been greeted with friendliness and sympathy. The chief of the region had seemed surprised that his flint for their iron would be a very good trade. He had held a big party to celebrate the agreement and had given his guests as much liquor and dreamgum as they wished. The Norse had been overcome while they snored drunkenly. Joe was asleep but had awakened while being tied up. With bare hands only, he had killed twenty men and injured fifteen before the chief had half stunned him with a dub against the back of his neck. The blow would have broken anybody else's neck; it just reduced his fighting ability enough to permit men to swarm over him and restrain him while the chief hit him twice over the head.

  "The chief knows Joe is a mighty warrior," Abdul said. "Greater than Rustam himself. I overheard some men talking, and they said their chief plans to use Joe as a hostage. He wants to become partners in the iron mine. If refused, he will not kill Joe but will make a slave out of him, although I doubt he can do that. He'll attack us, kill us, get the iron for himself.

  "He can do it. He's building a huge fleet, many small ships carrying forty men each, hastily put together but serviceable to transport his army. He'll make an all-out attack with warriors armed with flint weapons, bows and arrows and heavy war-boomerangs." "And who is this would-be Napoleon?" Sam said.

  "His men called him King John. They say that he ruled over England when men wore armor and fought with swords. In the time of Saladin. His brother was a very famous warrior, Richard the Lion-Hearted."

  Sam cursed and said, "John Lackland! The blackhearted pussyfooting Prince John! So rotten that the English swore never again to have a king named John! I'd sooner have a scoundrel like Leopold of Belgium or Jim Fiske after my hide!"

  Thirty minutes later, Sam was shoved into an even deeper gloom. This time, the message came by word-of-mouth grapevine. Thirty miles downRiver, a huge fleet was sailing toward them. This consisted of sixty large single-masters, each carrying forty warriors. The leader of the armada was a king of an area which had been just outside the destruction caused by the meteorite. His name was Joseph Maria von Radowitz.

  "I read about him in school!" von Richthofen said. "Let's see. He was born in 1797, died about 1853, I believe. He was an artillery expert and a good friend of Fredrick Wilhelm IV of Prussia. He was called 'The Warlike Monk' because he was a general who also had strict religious views. He died when he was about fifty years old, a disappointed man because he had been dropped from favor. So now he's alive again, young, and no doubt trying to impose his Puritanism upon others, and killing those who don't agree with him."

  An hour later, he got word that King John's fleet had set sail.

  "John's force will get here first," he told Bloodaxe. "They'll be faster because the wind and current will be helping them."

  "Teach your grandmother to suck eggs," Bloodaxe snorted. "So what do you plan to do?"

  "Smash the Englishman first and then destroy the German later," Bloodaxe replied. He swung his ax and said, "By the shattered hymen of Thor's bride! My ribs still hurt, but I will ignore the pain!"

  Sam did not argue. When he was alone with Lothar, he said, "Fighting against hopeless odds until you die is all very admirable. But it doesn't pay off in preferred stock. Now, I know you're going to think I'm as spineless as a cockroach, Lothar, but I have a dream, a great dream, and it transcends all ordinary ideas of faithfulness and morality. I want that boat, Lothar, and I want to pilot it to the end of The River, no matter what!

  "If we had a fighting chance, I wouldn't suggest this. But we don't. We're outnumbered and have inferior weapons. So I'm going to suggest that we make a deal."

  "With whom?" von Richthofen said. He was grim and pale.

  "With John. He may be the most treacherous king in the world, although the competition is fierce, but he's the one most likely to throw in with us. Radowitz's fleet is bigger than his, and even if John somehow managed to defeat it, he'd be so weakened we could take him. But if we ganged up with John, we could give Radowitz such a beating he'd take off like a hound dog, tail closed down like a latch."

  Van Richthofen laughed and said, "For a moment I thought you were going to propose that we hide in the mountains and then come out to offer our services to the victor. I could not stand the idea of playing coward, of leaving these people to fight alone."

  "I'll be frank," Clemens said, "even if I am Sam. I'd do that if I thought it was the only way. No, what I'm suggesting is that we get rid, somehow, of Bloodaxe. He'll never go along with taking John in as a partner."

  "You'll have to watch John as if he were a poisonous snake," the German said. "But I see no other way out. Nor do I think it's treachery to kill Bloodaxe. It's just insurance. He'll get rid of you the first chance he gets."

  "And we'll not really be killing him," Sam said. "Just removing him from the picture."

  Clemens wanted to talk more about what they should do, but von Richthofen said that there had been enough talk. Sam was putting off the taking of action – as usual. Things had to be done right now. Sam gave a sigh and said, "I suppose so." "What's the matter?" Lothar said.

  "I'm suffering from guilt before I've even incurred it," Sam replied. "I feel like a yellow dog, although there's no reason I should. None at all! But I was born to feel guilty about everything, even about being born."

  Lothar threw his hands up in disgust and strode off, saying over his shoulder, "Follow me or hang back. But you can't expect me to think of you as the captain of our boat. Captains don't drag their feet."

  Sam grimaced but went after him. Lothar talked to tw
elve men he thought trustworthy enough for what he proposed. The sun began to climb down from the zenith while the details were arranged and then the men went to arm themselves. They came back from their huts with bamboo spears and knives. One had a bamboo bow with six arrows, effective only at close range.

  Lothar von Richthofen and Sam Clemens leading, the group strode up to the Norse king's hut. Six Vikings stood guard outside.

  "We want to talk to Bloodaxe," Sam said, trying to keep his voice from quavering. "He's in there with a woman," Ve Grimarsson said.

  Sam raised his hand. Lothar ran past him and clubbed Grimarsson over the head. An arrow whistled past Sam's shoulder and stopped in the throat of a guard. Within ten seconds, the others had been killed or wounded too severely to continue fighting. There were shouts from a distance as a dozen other Vikings came running to protect their chief. Bloodaxe, naked, bellowing, his steel ax held high, rushed through the doorway. Von Richthofen lunged with his spear and impaled the Norseman on it. Bloodaxe dropped the ax and staggered back, driven by the German's weight on the spear, until he slammed into the bamboo wall of the hut. He stared; his mouth worked; blood ran from a corner of his lips; his skin was blue-gray.

  The German then yanked the spear out of the Norseman's belly, and Bloodaxe crumpled.

  There was a fight afterward with six of Clemens' men killed and four wounded. The Vikings did not give up until all were silenced and as dead as their king.

  Sam Clemens, panting hoarsely, splashed with blood from others and bleeding from a gash on his shoulder, leaned on his spear. He had killed one man, Gunnlaugr Thorrfinnsson, puncturing his kidney from behind while the Viking was thrusting at von Richthofen. Too bad about Gunnlaugr. Of all the Norsemen, he enjoyed Sam's jokes the most. Now he was stabbed in the back by a good friend.

  I've fought in 38 battles, Sam thought, and I've slain only two men. The other was a severely wounded Turk struggling to get to his feet. Sam Clemens, the mighty warrior, great-hearted hero. Thinking thus, he gazed with the horror and fascination that corpses had always had for him and would have if he lived 10,000 years.

  And then he squawked with fright and yanked his left ankle away in a frantic effort to escape the hand gripping it. Unable to do so, he lifted his spear to drive it into the man who held him. He looked down into the pale blue eyes of Erik Bloodaxe. Life had surged up in Bloodaxe for a moment. The glaze was gone from his eyes and the skin was not so gray-blue. His voice was weak but strong enough for Sam, and others nearby, to hear him.

  "Bikkja! Droppings of Ratatosk! Listen! I will not let you go until I have spoken! The gods have given me the powers of a voluspa. They want revenge for your treachery. Listen! I know there is iron beneath this blood-soaked grass. I feel the iron flowing in my veins. Its grayness turns my blood thick and cold. There is iron enough and more than enough for your great white boat. You will dig up this iron, and you will build a boat to rival Skithblathnir.

  "You will be captain of it, Bitch Clemens, and your boat will sail up The River for more miles than Sleipnir's eight legs could cover in a day. You will go back and forth, north and south, east and west, as the River-valley takes you. You will go around the world many times.

  "But the building of the boat and the sailing thereof will be bitter and full of grief. And after years, two generations as known on Earth, after great sufferings, and some joys, when you think you are at long last near the end of the long long journey, then you will find me!

  "Rather, I will find you! I will be waiting on a distant boat and I will kill you. And you will never get to the end of The River nor storm the gates of Valhalla!"

  Sam became cold and brittle. Even when he felt the hand slacken its grip on his ankle, he did not move. He heard the death rattle and did not move or look down. Faintly, Bloodaxe spoke again. "I wait!"

  There was another rattle, more drawn out, and the hand fell away. Sam forced himself to step away, not sure that he would not break into a dozen pieces. He looked at von Richthofen and said, "Superstition! A man can't look into the future!"

  Von Richthofen said, "I don't think so. But if things are as you believe, Sam, mechanical, automatic, then the future is predetermined. If things are ready-made, why can't the future open up for a minute, lights blaze in the tunnel of time, and a man see down the track?"

  Sam did not answer. Von Richthofen laughed to show that he was joking and clapped Sam on the shoulder.

  Sam said, "I need a drink. Badly." Then he said, "I don't take any stock in that superstitious rot."

  But he believed that those dying eyes had seen into the years ahead, and he was thereafter to believe.

  Chapter 13

  * * *

  An hour before dusk, King John's fleet arrived. Sam Clemens sent a man out to tell John that he wanted to discuss a possible partnership. John, ever willing to talk to you before knifing you, agreed to a powwow. Sam stood on the edge of the bank while John Lackland leaned on the railing of his galley. Sam, his terror unfrozen by a dozen whiskeys, described the situation and spoke glowingly of the great boat to be built.

  John was a short, dark man with very broad shoulders, tawny hair and blue eyes. He smiled frequently and spoke in an English not so heavily accented it could not be easily understood. Before coming to this area, he had lived for ten years among late-eighteenth-century Virginians. A fluent linguist, he had disburdened himself of much of the speech patterns of his twelfth-century English and Norman French.

  He understood well why it would pay him to team up with Clemens against von Radowitz. No doubt he had mental reservations about what he would do after von Radowitz was disposed of, but he came ashore to swear eternal friendship and partnership. The details of the pact were arranged over drinks, and then King John had Joe Miller released from his cage on the flagship.

  Sam did not shed tears easily, but several trickled down his cheeks on seeing the Titanthrop. Joe wept like a perambulating Niagara Falls and almost broke Sam's ribs in his embrace.

  Von Richthofen, however, told Clemens later, "At least, with Bloodaxe, you knew fairly well where you stood. You've made a bad trade."

  "I'm from Missouri," Sam replied, "but I never was much of a mule trader. However, if you're running for your life, a pack of wolves snapping at your heels, you'll trade a foundered plug for a wild mustang, as long as he'll carry you out of danger. You worry later about how to get down off of him without breaking your neck."

  The battle, which started at dawn the next day, was long. Several times, disaster came close for Clemens and King John. The Englishman's fleet had hidden near the east bank in the early morning fog and then had come up behind the German fleet. Flaming pine torches thrown by John's sailors started fires on many of van Radowitz's boats. But the invaders spoke a common language, were well disciplined, had soldiered together a long time, and were far better armed.

  Their rockets sank many of John's boats and blasted holes in the cheval-de-frise along the bank. The Germans then stormed ashore under cover of a hail of arrows. During the landing, a rocket exploded in the hole dug to get to the iron. Sam was knocked over by the blast. Half stunned, he rose. And he became aware of a man he had never seen before standing by him. Sam was sure that the man had not been in this area until this moment.

  The stranger was about five feet seven inches tall and was stockily, even massively, built. Like an old red ram, Sam thought, though the stranger looked, of course, as if he were twenty-five years old. His curly auburn hair hung down his back to his waist. His black eyebrows were as thick as Sam's. His eyes were large, dark brown with chips of pale green. His face was aquiline and jutting-chinned. His ears were large and stood out at almost right angles from his head.

  The body of an old red ram, Sam thought, with the head of a great horned owl.

  His bow was made of a material that Sam had seen before, though it was rare. It was made from two of the curved horns that ring a Riverdragon-fish's mouth. The two were joined together to make one double recurved bow. Th
is type was by far the most powerful and durable bow in the valley but had one disadvantage. It took extremely powerful arms to bend it,

  The stranger's leather quiver held twenty arrows, flint tipped, the shafts carved laboriously from the fin bones of the Riverdragon and feathered with carved pieces of bone so thin that the sun shone through them.

  He spoke in a German with a thick, non-Germanic, unidentifiable accent. "You look like Sam Clemens."

  "I am," Clemens replied. "What's left of me. But how did you. . . ?"

  "You were described to me by" – the stranger paused – "one of Them."

  Sam did not understand for a moment. The part deafness caused by the explosion, the yells of men killing each other only twenty yards away, other, more distant rocket explosions, and the sudden appearance of this man gave everything an unreal quality.

  He said, "He sent . . . the Mysterious Stranger . . . he sent you! You're one of the twelve!" "He? Not he! She sent me!"

  Sam did not have time to question him about this. He checked the impulse to ask the man if he was any good with the bow. He looked as if he could wrest from the bow the last atom of potentiality. Instead, Sam climbed to the top of the pile of dirt by the hole and pointed at the nearest enemy ship, its prow against the bank. A man standing on its poop deck was bellowing orders.

  "Von Radowitz, the leader of the enemy," Sam said, "He's out of range of our feeble bows."

  Smoothly, swiftly, pausing only to aim briefly, not bothering to gauge the wind which blew always at this time of day at a steady six miles an hour, the bowman loosed his black arrow. Its trajectory ended in the solar plexus of von Radowitz. The German staggered backward under the impact, whirled to reveal the bloody tip sticking from his back, and fell backward over the railing and into the waters between boat and bank.