Free Fliers of Antares by Alan Burt Akers Page A

chopped at and who had slid his thraxter across barely in time, so that instead of having his head laid open had been merely slashed down his face, yelled back hoarsely.
    “He may only be apim, Kov Nath, but he fights like a devil of the Yawfi Suth!”
    “Stick him, you yetches, and have done!” This Kov Nath whirled his sword at me, commanding, demanding. “We must break in and make sure Ortyg Fellin Coper is truly dead. His men will be here soon! Hurry, you rasts, hurry!”
    A blazing mass tumbled from the roof then, falling from the porch, and we all skipped aside. Kov Nath yelled savage commands. His men closed in. There were something like twenty of them, and I knew this was no longer a pleasant muscle-exercising afternoon’s romp. Twenty diffs with four arms each meant something more than eighty to two, for the combinations offered by the four-armed configuration are interesting and deadly. So I fought and leaped and jumped and kept the door.
    Stuxes hissed past me, and those I did not snatch from the air and return from whence they came in best Krozair tradition thunked splinteringly into the lenken door. How much longer could this go on? My thraxter gleamed a foul and bitter red, now, with the blood of these diffs. They did not seem to reck the consequences of attack; they bore in vengefully, and only by the utmost exertions could I stop the final lethal thrust.
    A crossbow bolt tore into my side. I ignored that. Kov Nath, raging, rushed forward. He had snatched up a shield and grasped it in his two larboard hands, while his two starboard fists wrapped around a sword that was, I swear, longer than those great Swords of War of the Blue Mountains in distant Vallia.
    A window broke outward and a four-armed diff sprang out, wielding a sword, cursing, followed by two more. They charged into the attackers. All thee of them were smoldering, their cloaks and trousers smoking.
    “Now by the blood of Holy Djan-kadjiryon!” yelled Kov Nath. “You will all die!”
    He charged.
    Even in the shock of the engagement I thought he would do better to grip that unwieldy longsword in his two upper fists, or his two lower, so as to get the triangular leverage so important in two-handed play. But he was skilled and quick and vicious, and I skipped and parried and gonged my thraxter uselessly on his shield. He tended to keep the shield covering him and did not use it, as I taught my men, to thrust out and so use as an offensive weapon in its own right.
    He, like them all, had taken no notice of my appearance. I had two arms only, and was therefore apim. My nakedness, my shaved head, my hairless body, appeared to them as merely a part of the custom of my people. We circled, and against my will I was forced from the door.
    I leaped in with a fierce and savage lunge, ducked, felt that damned great sword go whistling over my head, and tried to stick him through the thigh. But the shield rim clanked across, and that rim was bound in iron, not brass.
    “By Zodjuin of the Rainbow! You fight like a leem!”
    I did not waste breath answering but got myself back to the splintered door and held him off yet again. I had to allow my fighting instincts full play. There had to be a way of beating him. While he leaped and sprang so agilely before me and I ducked and weaved in my turn his men would not chance a stux throw or the loosing of a bolt. This gave me heart.
    The three men who, on fire, had charged into the fight were fully occupied. They were yelling and screeching strange oaths at one another, calling on outlandish gods and devils, and the way these four-armed diffs fought filled me with admiration. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation and wherever on Havilfar I might be, I had landed in a country of warriors, by Vox!
    Kov Nath drew back a space, and I saw a face at the window at my side. At first I imagined a monstrous mouse-face looked at me. There were brilliant dark eyes, a trembling tender nose above wide white whiskers,