Robert Adams - Castaways 1 - Castaways in Time.pdf - Robert Adams - margozap

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PROLOGUE

Raibert Armstrong sat his fine, tall, long-legged horse -- spoils of

this extended reaving -- atop a low-browed ridge, just above the

sleeping camp of his largish band. Every so often, he would take the

slowmatch from out the clamp and whirl it around several times in the

air before once more securing it back into the serpentine of his clumsy

arquebus, for if that scurvy, ill-natured pig of a Seosaidh Scot who

had robbed him of his well-earned sleep and set him to this useless,

thankless task should come by and find his match unlit, he surely would

set about thrashing Raibert. And Raibert would then have to kill the

bully and then, even if he were fortunate enough to escape north to

Armstrong lands, he would be forever marked as the man who brought back

into being the long, costly, bloody feud betwixt the two clans, and it

ended but less than a score of years.

Of a sudden, the horse raised its well-formed head and snorted, dancing

in place, its small ears twitching forward. Then, faintly, Raibert

heard it too -- a deep, but blaring, buglelike sound, seemingly coming

from somewhere beyond the slightly higher ridge on the other side of

the camp of nearly two thousand sleeping Lowlander Scots.

Raibert gave the beast just enough knee to set it to a distance-eating

trot, loath to gallop so marvelous a prize when he could see but dimly

the way ahead. He took time to blow upon that slowmatch, but then, as

he harbored scant faith in the ability of the ancient, ill-balanced and

woefully inaccurate firelock to accomplish anything more of value than

a loud noise to alert the camp, he reined up long enough to check by a

vagrant beam of moonlight that the priming had not shaken from out the

pan of his new wheellock pistol. He also made certain that the falchion

was loose in the sheath -- e broad, thick, heavy blade was centuries

older than the elderly arquebus, but cold steel was at least always

dependable, if well-honed and hard-swung.

At the foot of the higher ridge, the Armstrong clansman blew one last

time upon the smoldering match, then snapped the metal ring of the

shoulder strap to the similar ring in the weapon's wooden stock so that

when its single charge had been fired he could drop it to dangle,

leaving both hands free for horse-handling and bladework.

All preparations for alarm and battle complete, he set his prize horse

to the heather-thick ridge, a sudden gust of night wind, blowing down

cold from off the distant highlands and the icy seas beyond, whipping

his breacan-feile about his shoulders and tugging at the flat bonnet he

wore over his rusty mail coif.

But at the ridge crest, Raibert Armstrong reined up with such

suddenness and force that the horse almost reared. Up the opposite

slope, headed directly for him, was a monster, an eldritch demon surely

loosed by none other than Auld Clootie, Himself, and straight from a

deeper pit of Hell!

No less than six eyes had the demon -- four glaring a blinding,

soulless white, the lowest-set pair a feral, beastly yellow-amber. Of

the rest of the demon, Raibert could descry but little, save a dense,

dark mass, low to the ground, wheezing and whining, snorting and

bellowing its bloodlust as it eas-sayed the steep slope. The hornlike

bellowing was constant, as if the creature had no need to pause and

take fresh breath.

Perhaps it did not need to breathe air at all? What man, priest or lay,

truly knew aught of the bodily working of a Fiend from Hell? Certainly

not Calum Armstrong's son, Raibert. Nor did he intend to learn more,

not at any close proximity.

Moaning with his terror of the Unearthly, he had reined the skittish

horse half about when the monster changed its course, bearing off to

Raibert's left Seeking the gentler slope of the ridge, was it? Or was

the diabolical Thing seeking rather to flank him, to place its

awesomeness twixt him and the camp?

At the new angle, whereat the glaring eyes did not so blind him,

Raibert could discern more of this foul Thing -- long as a good-sized

wain, it was, but far lower. He could see no part of the legs for the

high-grown heather, but he suspected it to possess at least a score, to

move it so fast across the rising, uneven ground.

But most sinister of all, he could now see that a dozen or more

warlocks -- or were they manshaped fiends? -- were borne upon the

thrice-damned Beast's back, all bearing blue-black Rods of Power.

Whimpering, Raibert Armstrong still set himself to do his sworn duty,

despite his quite-justifiable horror. He presented the heavy shoulder

gun and, taking dead aim downward into the thick of the knot of manlike

creatures, he drew back the pan cover, his fingers so tremulous that

they almost spilled out the priming powder. Once again, he checked his

aim at the Beast lumbering below his position, shut his eyes tight,

then drew back the lower arm of the serpentine, thrusting the match end

clamped to the tip of the upper arm into the powder-filled priming pan.

He braced himself for the powerful kick of the piece.

But that kick never came; the match had smoldered out And still the

glaring, blaring Thing lumbered across the low saddle, leaving smoking

heather wherever its demon feet had trod, excreting fire and roils of

noxious gases from somewhere beneath its awful bulk.

Dropping the useless arquebus, Raibert sensed that his only chance now

lay in escape -- for who ever heard of a lone, common man trying to

fight a Monster out of Hell with only a pistol and an old chlaidhimhl -

- and while he could go back the way he had come, the Monster seemed

headed that way too...and Raibert felt that that was just what the

hellish Thing wanted him to do.

There seemed but one thing for it, in Raibert Armstrong's mind; he must

try -- with Christ's help -- to outfox the eldritch Beast. Reining

about, he trotted the frightened, but still obedient, horse a few yards

back along the ridge crest, as if he were blindly falling into the

Monster's coils. Then, suddenly, he drew his antique chlaidhimh -- for,

if die he must, far better to do so with a yard of steel in his

freckled fist; and besides, touch of iron or steel was held by some to

be inimical to the Auld Evil -- wheeled that hot-bred hunter about and

spurraked a full gallop, leaning low on the animal's neck to lessen

wind resistance.

Where the hill abruptly dropped away, the horse hesitated but the

briefest instant, then launched itself in a long jump which sent ridden

and rider soaring overtop the still-soaring six-eyed monster.

The horse alit on the slope below and to the right flank of the

unheeding Hellspawn, then Raibert Armstrong was spurring northward,

toward the ill-defined border, toward Scotland and his ancestral home.

Forgot were the near two thousand reavers, forgot was the raid upon the

interdicted Sassenachs, forgot was Sir David Scott and all. But Raibert

Armstrong knew that never, until the very hour of his death, would he,

could he forget the sight and the sound and the hot, oily, evil stench

of the Devilspawn Horror he had faced on the Northumbrian Moors on that

dark and windswept night.

CHAPTER 1

Bass Foster sat directly under the ceiling vent, bathed in the cool

flow from the air conditioner, watching the Collier woman swill

straight vodka and trying to think of a tactful way to cut her off --

his modest supply of potables would not last long under her inroads;

she had guzzled the last of the gin hours ago.

The professor, her husband, seemed to have barely touched his own weak

highball, but he had used the last of the tobacco in his own pouch and

now was stuffing his pipe out of one of Bass's cans of Borkum Riff.

Mid-fiftyish -- which made him some ten years Bass's senior -- he

seemed as quiet and courteous as his wife was loud and snotty. His

liver-spotted hands moving slowly, he frowned in concentration over the

pipe, his bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows bunched into a single line.

Across the width of the oversized cocktail table from the couple,

Krystal Kent sat with one long leg tucked beneath her, doing yeoman

work on a half-gallon jug of Gallo burgundy, and taking hesitant drags

at one of her last three cigarettes. Bass shifted his eyes to her; she

was far nicer to look at, with the slunlight delineating bluish

highlights in her long, lustrous black hair.

Bass and the other three carefully avoided looking out the big window

at the impossiblity that commenced beyond the manicured lawn. Each time

Bass's thoughts even wandered in that direction he felt his mind reel,

start to slip, and he as-

siimed the others suffered the same, for all the five people who now

shared his house had seemed in one degree or another of shock when

first they had arrived at his doors -- the Colliers at the front, the

other three at the back, first Krystal Kent, then Dave Atkins and the

grubby little teenager who went by the name of Susan Sunshine.

Eschewing chairs, the two were lying side by side on the wall-to-wall

carpet before Bass's stereo. One of his very few tapes of acid rock was

in place and both Dave and Susan had fitted padded earphones on their

heads. They, at least, were not slopping up their host's booze; Dave

had rolled a double-thick joint -- of the diameter of an ordinary

cigarette and almost as long -- and, smilingly, they were passing it

back and forth. Despite the efforts of the air conditioner, the room

already contained an acrid reek of burning rope.

According to the story given by Collier when first he and his wife had

arrived, yesterday noon -- both of them soaking wet and he slimed all

over with reddish-brown mud, his hands and shirtfront smudged as well

with greasy black grime -- they had been driving from Chapel Hill,

North Carolina, to Washington, D.C., had gone off at the incorrect

beltway exit, become lost and spent seeming hours driving the backroads

and byways of rural Maryland. Finally, a blowout of their right rear

tire had forced a stop on a muddy shoulder under the driving rain of

the approaching storm.

While Arbor Collier sat and fumed in the car, nipping at one of the

several pints of gin she had hidden in various locations for the long

trip, Collier had jacked up the aging Ford and gotten the wheel off

with much effort and was kneeling in the slippery mud, putting the

spare in place, when he felt the shoulder under him seem to become

fluid . . . and Arbor had chosen that moment to open the passenger-side

door and make to step out Collier had tried to shout a warning, then he

was falling....

Seconds later, or eons, Collier had found himself lying -- l muddy,

still gripping his lug wrench -- near the base of a stone wall. Arbor

was sitting, dazed, a few feet away, in her sensible traveling suit and

with her huge purse still slung from her shoulder. The grass directly

under Collier was wet, but that surrounding him was dry as a bone under

the bright, hot sun.

"William!" Arbor had shrieked. "Where are we? How . . . how did we get

here and . . . Where's our . . . car? All my clothes are in the car,

William, my medicine and my vitamins, everything. You've got to find

the car!"

She had continued the same selfish, shrewish litany all the way to

Bass's trilevel -- maybe a hundred feet. But when she discovered that

Bass stocked a fair amount of the "medicine" she required, in varying

proof and flavors, she had set about dosing herself, even taking a

bottle of gin up to bed with her.

This morning, she had mechanically eaten the breakfast Bass and Krystal

had together cooked, then had sought out the liquor cabinet. She had

nagged her husband for a short while about Bass's lack of any more gin,

but had soon settled on one of the couches with a water glass and a

bottle of 100-proof vodka.

With his eyes on Krystal Kent's slender loveliness, Bass had allowed

his mind to slip back to pleasurable thoughts of last night with her --

two frightened people, taking solace and comfort in each other.

". . . ster Foster, I'm speaking to you!" The nasal, strident,

supercilious voice was Arbor Collier's.

Bass turned his head to face her. "Uh, sorry, I was . . . was thinking,

Mrs. Collier. What is it?"

Arbor smiled a nasty, knowing smirk. "Yes, I know the way you dirty men

all think when you're looking at women the way you were looking at Miss

Kent," she sniggered.

Bass felt his face going hot. Forcing calm, he inquired coldly, "If

that was all you had on your pickled brain, Mrs. Collier, it could have

been left unsaid. I don't like you any better than you apparently like

me. If we continue to ignore each other, maybe we can make it through

the day without coming to blows."

"Afr. Foster," hissed Arbor, clenching her half-glassful of vodka until

her bony knuckles shone white, "you are a rude, crude lout, ill-bred

and uneducated; I knew that the minute I met you. You are the type one

thinks of whenever one speaks of 'dirty old men' -- a lewd, low,

lascivious, middle-aged Lothario. I think -- n

"I don't know how you can think, Mrs. Collier, with all the booze

you've been slopping down since breakfast," said Bass in frigid tones,

adding, "And I warn you, ma'am, if you don't just shut up, I'm going to

heave you out that door on your damned ear!"

Arbor raised her plucked brows, then nodded. The final argument of

barbarians, force. But let me warn you, Mr. Foster, my husband served

with the OSS, during the war. They were taught how to kill with their

bare hands."

"Now Arbor," Professor Collier began. "You know that I never left Wash

-- "

"Shut up, William!" she snarled 'Tm talking to this male chauvinist

pig!"

Then she returned her attention to Bass. "I insist, Mr. Foster, that

you make those two, filthy, disgusting hippies stop using narcotics in

this house."

Before Bass could frame an answer not obscene and physically

impossible, Krystal Kent spoke up.

"Mrs. Collier, they're smoking pot...marijuana. It's not a narcotic,

it's a hallucinogen, and -- "

"Miss Kent," Arbor snapped coldly, "I was addressing Mr. Foster, if you

please. I, for one, do not care to have my friends hear that my husband

and I were arrested at a house where a dope orgy was going on."

Krystal threw back her head and laughed throatfly. "Orgy? Two kids

smoking a joint? You call that an orgy? I've heard of prudes, in my

time, but you -- "

Arbor pursed thin lips. "Prudence, Miss Kent, is not prudery. Though I

suppose a woman of your kind would call anyone less licentious than

herself a prude."

"And just what," snapped Krystal brittlely, "is that remark supposed to

Robert Adams - Castaways 1 - Castaways in Time.pdf

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