A Barnstormer in Oz

Ot said, "Glinda has to be notified about this. I'll get a messenger if there's one available. Do you have anything special to tell her?"

"Yes. We may be three days late. Or more. I have to get a new propeller. And I have to take out the propeller shaft and see if it's been bent. If it is, then it has to be straightened. Also, we can't fly if it keeps on raining. We won't take off until the repairs have been made and the weather's good."

"I'll see she gets the message," Ot said, and she flapped off.

By then men had arrived. They were wild-looking, their hair growing waist-length, their beards spreading out like wild mushrooms, their cloth garments tattered, torn, and dirty, and they bristled with daggers, swords, spears, and axes.

According to what Niklaz had said before they'd taken off, these were outlaws. Glinda had made contact via hawk with several groups of "wild men," as they were called. She had offered them pardons if they would act as guerrillas for her. They had set up the refueling stations in these mountains. After the plane had left, they would go northward, slip across the Gillikin border, and terrorize the citizens. Or, if the Gillikins invaded, the guerrillas would harass the armies.

Ot introduced him to the leaders of the band, which numbered exactly forty.

Call me Ali Baba, Hank thought. Forty thieves is right. They could have stepped out, been run out, rather, from The Arabian Nights for being too unsavory. I never saw such a bunch of cutthroats, not even on Wall Street.

The two that especially got his attention were Sharts the Shirtless and Blogo the Rare Beast.

Sharts was a giant among his own kind, as tall as Hank's six feet two inches and broader and more heavily muscled. A "Strangler" Lewis. A handsome one, though, the only clean-shaved man in the crowd. He could have posed for a collar ad. His thick wavy hair was sunset-red. His eyes were strange and disconcerting, purplish with aquamarine flecks and with a hint of madness about them. He had a habit of whistling tunelessly while by himself or when someone else was talking to him. This was going to irritate Hank considerably, but at the moment he just thought that it was an eccentricity to note.

Hank did not know how Sharts had earned his sobriquet. He wore a bronze-colored velvet shirt which must have cost him, or the man he robbed it from, much money.

Weird-looking as the giant was, he was like a candle beside a searchlight compared to Blogo. Hank knew at once that this creature's ancestors had not originated on Earth.

Blogo's head was apish but bore on its top a tall fleshy-red rooster's comb. His nose was long and cylindrical and had a big knob at the end. His long rusty hair swirled in the back to make an opening for the third eye there. The eyes in front were small and light blue and looked guileless. His arms, though human enough, were covered with more rusty-red hair and reached to his knees. The torso was also human, though very hairy, and few men were as broad or as thickly boned. The legs were ostrich-like, very ski

Blogo's chest was cavernous, but his voice was high-pitched and squeaky. It needed lubrication and apparently got it quite often. He carried on a shoulder strap a large stone flask which contained a mixture of water and grain alcohol, easy on the water.

Sharts the Shirtless's voice was like the bass from an organ, deep, honey-flowing, and almost emitting sparks of charisma.

Unreasonably, Hank became jealous. How would Glinda react if she ever met this fellow? And he was glad that saluting, not handshaking, was the custom here. This man could have pulped his hand and probably would have been pleased to do so.

"Even in our mountain fastness we've heard of you," Sharts said. "The fabled Earthman. Tall as our ancestors were supposed to be. Neither of us, however, are as near to the sky as Thago the Ungracious, Erakna's bodyguard and lover. He boasts that he is the biggest and strongest man in the whole land. I hope to get near enough to him some day to test him."

"I'd like to see that fight," Hank said. "I wouldn't want to tackle you."

Sharts looked pleased, though he did not smile. He never smiled.

"This," he said, gesturing at Blogo, "is my second-in-command and my bosom buddy."

"At your service, friend of Glinda the Good," Blogo said. "I might add that, excluding Sharts for certain and Thago for perhaps, I am the second strongest man in the whole land. I am also the most courageous."

"Yes, he's afraid of nobody or no thing," Sharts said. "Isn't that right, Blogo?"

Blogo swelled out his chest, and his cock's comb expanded and became a deeper red. "Right."

"Unafraid of anybody or anything," Sharts said. He paused, then said, "Except for the Very Rare Beast. Right, Blogo?"

Hank could almost see the air spurting out of Blogo. The comb shrank, and it may have been his imagination, but Hank thought that the knobbed nose became slightly deflated.

"Well, yes."

"Who's the Very Rare Beast?" Hank said.

"I don't even want to talk about him," Blogo said, and he strode off on his birdlike legs.

Hank, watching him, said, "Are there any more like him?"

"In spirit or in form?" Sharts said.

"I mean... of his kind?"

"A few," Sharts said sadly. "There are about twenty still living. His species is near extinction."

"He doesn't look natural," Hank said. "I mean, he doesn't look like a product of nature, one of God's own creations."

"He's not. His ancestors were, I believe, and I've done a deep study of his origins, made by the Long-Gones."

Hank told him what had to be done. Sharts said that he would see to it that all that was required would be done and very swiftly.

"When I say, ‘Go!', the whole universe beats it."

Hank gri

"What was he outlawed for?" Hank said.

"You might not believe it to look at him now," the hawk said. "But at one time he was the greatest scholar and doctor of medicine in Quadlingland. Except for Glinda, of course. One day, a subordinate had an attack of irrationality or pride or indiscretion. Or all three. I don't know just what Sharts and his assistant were arguing about. I've heard that it concerned whether or not the soul was a physical entity and, if so, where it was located in the body. Sharts claimed that it must be in the brain and it could be located and operated on so that its tendency towards evil could be removed. The assistant said that that was nonsense. Sharts lost his temper and broke the assistant's neck. Then he fled from justice and took refuge in the woods."

"I'll try to control my temper," Hank said.

"Good idea. Even the Cowardly Lion is afraid of him."

"Why was the Rare Beast outlawed?"

"Oh, him! Hah, hah! Ugly and outre as he is, he thinks he's the world's greatest lover. Maybe he is. Anyway, one of his many women claimed that she was pregnant by him. That's impossible, of course. No human woman could conceive by a Beast. But she pressed her suit in court, and the legally literal-minded judge of the remote rural area where they lived decided that Blogo had to marry her. That so enraged him that he killed the judge and three character witnesses with his bare hands, wrecked the courtroom, and fled through a window.

"When Glinda heard about it, she cancelled the judge's decision, but he's still wanted for murder."