The Horse Barbarians

Jason could neither fight nor cry out. He writhed and struggled ineffectively as he quickly slipped into black unconsciousness.

16

Someone was grinding snow into Jason’s face, forcing it into his nostrils and mouth, effectively dragging him back to consciousness. He coughed and spluttered, pushing himself away from the offending hands. When he had wiped the snow from his eyes, he looked around, blinking, trying to place himself.

He was kneeling between two of Temuchin’s men. Their swords were drawn and ready, and one of them held a guttering torch. It illuminated a small patch of drifted snow and the black lip of a chasm. Red-lit snowflakes rushed by him and vanished into this pit of darkness.

“Do you know this man?” a voice asked, and Jason recognized it as Temuchin’s. Two men appeared out of the night and stood before him.

“I do, great Lord Temuchin,” the second man said. “It is the other-world man from the great flying thing, the one who was captured and escaped.”

Jason looked closer at the muffled face and, as the, torch flared up, he recognized the sharp nose and sadistic smile of Oraiel, the jongleur.

“I never saw this person before. He is a liar,” Jason said, ignoring the hoarseness of his voice and the pain in his throat when he spoke.

“I remember him when he was captured, great lord, and later he attacked and beat me. You saw him yourself there.”

“Yes, I did.” Temuchin stepped forward and looked down at Jason’s upturned face, his own cold and impassive. “Of course. He is the one. That is why he looked familiar.”

“What are these lies…” Jason said, struggling to his feet.

Temuchin seized him by the forearms in an implacable grip, pushing him backward until his heels were on the crumbling edge of the abyss.

“Tell the truth now, whoever you are. You stand at the edge of Hell’s Doorway and in one moment you shall be hurled down it. You ca

As he talked, Temuchin bent Jason’s body back, farther and farther over the blackness, until only the grip on his wrists prevented him from falling. Jason could not see the warlord’s face: it was a black outline against the torches. Yet he knew there was no hope of mercy there. This was the end. The best he could do now was to protect the Pyrrans.

“Release me and I shall tell you the truth. I am from another world. I came here alone to help you. I found the jongleur Jason, and he was dying, so I took his name. He had been gone from his people many years and they no longer remembered him. And I have helped you. Release me and I will help you more.”

A weak voice, filled with static, buzzed in his head. “Jason, is that you? Kerk here. Where are you?” The dentiphone was still operating — he had a chance.

“Why are you here?” Temuchin asked. “Are you helping the lowlanders to bring their cities to our lands?”

“Release me. Do not drop me now into Hell’s Doorway and I will tell you.”

Temuchin hesitated a long moment before he spoke again.

“You are a liar. Everything you say is a lie. I do not know what to believe.” His head turned and for an instant the torchlight lit the humorless smile on his lips.

“I release you,” he said, and opened his hands.

Jason clawed at empty air, tried to twist so he could clutch at the cliff’s edge, but he could do nothing. He fell into the blackness.

A rush of air.

A blow on his shoulder, his back. Then he was scraping along the side of the cliff, struggling to keep his face and hands away from the abrasive dirt and stone. The cliffside tore at the leather of his garments as he plummeted down the outward-slanting surface.

Then it ended and he fell free in the blackness once again. Falling for an unmeasurable moment of time, seconds or minutes, forever — until a crushing impact enfolded him.

He did not die, and that surprised him very much. He wiped something from his face and realized that it was snow. A snowbank, a drift, here at the bottom of Hell’s Doorway. A snowbank in hell and he had fallen into it.

“Where there’s life, there’s still hope, Jason,” he told himself unconvincingly. What hope was there at the bottom of this inaccessible pit? Kerk and the Pyrrans would get him out, that was a morale-building hope. Yet, even as he thought this, his tongue contacted a jagged end of metal in his mouth. With restored fear he groped out the crushed remains of the dentiphone. Some time during the fall, he had unknowingly ground it between his teeth and destroyed it.

“You’re on your own again, Jason,” he said aloud, and did not enjoy in the slightest the tiny sound of his voice in the immense blackness. What were his assets? He floundered about in the drift until he could reach back for his medikit. It was gone. Well, his wallet was still on his belt, though his knife was gone from his boot. His fingers searched through the assorted junk in the wallet until they touched an unfamiliar tube. What? The photon-store flashlight, of course. Dnopped in here and forgotten since the night they had picked up the climbing equipment.

But was it broken? The way his luck was ru

There was a moaning cry and something black plunged down from above and through the beam of light, striking the valley bottom no more than ten meters from Jason.

The vertical rocks there were coated with only a thin layer of snow and the man had struck full across them. His eyes were open and staring, a tricide of blood ran from the gaping mouth. It was his betrayer, the jongleun Oraiel.

“What’s this? Temuchin eliminating eyewitnesses? That’s not like him.” The mouth still gaped open but Oraiel had finished forever with speaking.

Jason floundered out of his drift and started across the floor of the narrow valley. The ground was smooth in the center, smooth and very flat. He did not consider why until there was an ominous creaking beneath his feet. Even as he tried to throw himself backward the ice broke, splintering and cracking in every direction, and he fell into the dark waters beneath.

The sudden shock of the frigid water almost drove the air from his lungs, but he clamped his mouth shut, sinking his teeth hard into his lower lip. At the same time his fingers tightened convulsively on the flashlight. Without this he would not be able to find the opening in the ice again.

Almost at the same instant his feet touched the rocky bottom, the water was not deep, and he kicked upward. The light shone on a mirror above as he rose and his hand went out to press, palm to palm, against his imaged hand. It was ice, solid and unbroken above him. Only when he felt his fingers being dragged across its surface did he realize that he was being pulled swiftly along by a current. The hole in the ice must already be far behind him.

If Jason dinAlt had been prone to despair, this was the moment when he would have died. Trapped beneath the ice at the bottom of this inaccessible valley, this was indeed the time to give up. He never considered it. He held the burning lungful of air; he tried to swim to the side where he could get some footing, perhaps press up through the ice; he waved the light upward looking for a break