Free Terrible Beast of Zor by Gilbert L. Morris Page A

work.”
    Alex came out of a deep sleep and sat up. If his muscles ached from yesterday’s longer-than-usual hike up steep mountain trails, he refused to show it. “Then let’s get at it,” he said cheerfully.
    “That’s the way to talk. Come along. We’ll cook us breakfast and be on our way.”
    They did their cooking in the semidarkness, and Alexander ate heartily. Reb noticed that the prince washed his own plate, and he thought,
He wouldn’t have done that before. We’re getting somewhere
.
    “We’ll take some sword practice before we do anything else,” Reb told him.
    They picked up their weapons, and Reb led Alex far out from the camp where the noise would not awaken the others. “All right,” he said, turning to face the prince, “let’s see what you got.”
    Alexander advanced. These were broadswords, not fencing foils, and it took a strong arm to wield them. The prince was the stronger of the two and Reb the quicker. Time and time again, Alexander would shower blows down, but Reb quickly parried them. Several times Reb could have touched the prince, but he did not. Finally, however, Reb called out, “That’s enough! I’m out of breath.”
    The prince was breathing hard, too, but he seemedpleased with the exercise. “This is a lot of fun, Reb. It never was before.”
    “It’s fun, but it’s more than that,” Reb said. “When a battle starts and you cross swords with someone, which one of you wins probably will be the one that’s practiced the most.” He rested against a tree and broke off a weed. He held the stem between his teeth and nodded approvingly. “Practice makes perfect,” he said. “You’ve come a long way.”
    Alex looked pleased at the praise. They stood talking until Reb said, “Now let’s do some fast walking today.”
    They hiked along, carrying nothing but their weapons, and Reb was pleased that Alex was able to keep up with him. He had not been able to do that at first, but now he matched him step for step.
    “What was it like back in your world? What you call OldWorld, Reb.”
    “What was it like? Well, it was a lot different from this.”
    “Who ruled your world?”
    “Well, nobody ruled the
world
. Every country had its own king or its own president.”
    “Did your country have a king?”
    “For a while. Then we fought a war to get rid of our king.”
    Alex stared at him with surprise. “You were traitors?”
    Reb shook his head. “No, no. You don’t understand. Let me try to give you a quick history lesson. It was because our people thought they were not treated fairly, and they tried everything they could to get fair treatment. Finally, when they couldn’t, they declared their independence. It was called the American Revolution.”
    “Then who ruled after you got your independence?”
    Reb broke into a trot. “Let’s speed it up.” He tried to think of the best way to explain. “They had elections back in OldWorld America. People would vote, and the man that got the most votes was the president.”
    “So who voted?”
    “Well, just the men at first, but after a while the women too.”
    As they flew swiftly along the trail, the prince kept asking questions. When they stopped for a break and a drink of water at a small brook, he said, “I don’t see how it would work. What if the wrong man was elected?”
    “Sometimes that happened,” Reb said, “but sometimes the wrong man gets to be king. Isn’t that right?”
    “I guess so. Still, I don’t think our people would want a president. They like a king.”
    After the two hiked all morning, Reb said, “Time to go back, but I’m sure hungry.”
    “Too bad we didn’t bring along something to eat.”
    “I’ll tell you what. Let’s catch a fish out of this stream. We could start a fire, skin him, and have fish for lunch.”
    “We didn’t bring any hooks or …”
    Reb laughed. “I’ll show you how to get a fish without a hook. It’s called
noodling
.”
    “Noodling?” The prince’s brow