Free The Corridors of Time by Poul Anderson Page A

arrows, and let the sun flash off his metal.
    The sun itself struck him.
    Thunder exploded in his skull. Blinded, shattered, he whirled into night.
    Awareness returned with a hurricane of anguish. Light-spots still clouded his vision. Through screams, whinnies, rumbling
     and booming, he heard the shout:
‘Forward, Yuthoaz! Forward with Sky Father!’
    It was in a language the diaglossa knew, but not the Tenil Orugaray.
    He groped to hands and knees. The first thing he saw was his rifle, half melted on the ground. That destruction had absorbedmost of the energy beam. The cartridges had not gone off in the clip, nor had he himself suffered worse than a vicious burn
     on face and chest. But fire was in his skin. He could not think for the torment.
    A dead man lay nearby. Little remained of the features except charred meat and bone. The copper band on one arm identified
     Echegon.
    Storm stood close by. Her own weapon was out to make a shield. Brief rainbow fountains of flame played around her. The enemy
     beam passed on, to sickle down three young men who had gone sealing with Lockridge.
    The Yuthoaz roared! In one tide, they swept over the villagers. Lockridge saw a son of Echegon – unmistakable, that countenance
     and that doggedness – ground his spear as if the horses earthquaking down upon him were a wild boar. Their driver swerved
     them. The chariot clattered past. The warrior who stood in it swung his ax with dreadful skill. Brains spurted. Echegon’s
     son fell by his father. The Yutho hooted mirth, chopped on the other side at someone Lockridge couldn’t see, hurled a spear
     at an archer, and was gone by.
    Elsewhere, the village men were in flight. Panic had them, and they wailed as they ran into the forest. Pursuit ended there.
     The Yuthoaz, whose patron gods were in the sky, did not like those rustling twilit reaches. They turned back to dispatch and
     scalp any wounded of their enemy.
    One chariot rushed toward Storm. Her energy shield made her lioness form shimmer; in Lockridge’s delirium it was as if he
     watched a myth. He had the Webley too. He fumbled for it, but consciousness left him before he got the weapon loose. His last
     sight was of the one who stood back of the driver – no Yutho – a man beardless and white-skinned, immensely tall, in a hooded
     black cloak that flapped after him like wings —
    Lockridge awoke slowly. For a while he was content to lie on the earth and know he was free from pain. Piece by piece, there
     came to him what had happened.When he heard a woman scream, he opened his eyes and sat bolt upright.
    The sun was down, but through the doorway of the hut where he was, past the shore and the bloodily shining Lim-fjord, he glimpsed
     clouds still lit. The single room here had been stripped of its poor possessions and the entrance was barred with branches
     lashed together and fastened to the doorposts by thongs. Beyond, two Yuthoaz stood guard. One kept glancing inside and fingering
     a sprig of mistletoe against witchcraft. His mate’s eyes rested enviously on a pair of warriors who drove several cows along
     the beach. Elsewhere was tumult, deep-throated male shouts and guffaws, tramp of horses and clatter of wheels, while the conquered
     keened their grief.
    ‘How are you, Malcolm?’
    Lockridge twisted his head around. Storm Darroway knelt beside him. He could see her as little more than another shadow in
     the murky cabin, but he caught the fragrance of her hair, her hands moved softly across him, and she sounded more anxious
     than he had ever heard her before.
    ‘Alive … I reckon.’ He touched fingers to face and breast, where some grease had been smeared. ‘Doesn’t hurt. I – I actually
     feel rested.’
    ‘You were lucky that Brann had antishock drug and enzymatic ointment with him, and decided to save you,’ Storm said. ‘Your
     burns will be healed tomorrow.’ She paused, then – her tone might almost have been Auri’s; ‘So I am also