That was where the fight began.

  The girl burst out of a clump of cherry trees in blossom, screaming as she saw me. It was a small dry scream, as if she’d already burned out her throat. I only had time to see that she was young and dark and pretty, then she swerved around to dodge me. Her foot slipped and she went down in a heap. I don’t know exactly why I grabbed my ax and jumped to the ground. Maybe the long red weals across her naked back had something to do with it.

  She tried to scramble up, I put my foot on her back and held her down. As she looked up, I saw big dark eyes, a small curved nose, a wide full mouth, and a hell of a big bruise on one cheek. “What’s the hurry, sis?” I asked.

  She cried something, I didn’t know the language but there was a terrible begging in her voice. A runaway slave—well, let her run. The sabertooth would be better for her than her owner, judging by those marks. I lifted my foot and bent over and helped the girl rise.

  Too late. The man came out through the trees after her. He was a young fellow, short but strongly built, and mad as a Zulu. He wore a gray uniform, a square helmet, and a swastika arm band—a Nazi, then—but his only weapons were a broadsword and the long whip in one hand.

  The girl screamed once more and took off again. He snarled, and snapped the whip. It was a murderous Boer sjambok; its heavy length coiled around her ankles and she stumbled and fell.

  I suppose it was my bad luck that day which flared up in me. I had no business interfering, but I didn’t like Nazis much. I put a hand on his chest and shoved. Down he went.

  He scrambled up, bellowing in excellent Norman French. I hefted my ax. “Not so fast, chum,” I answered.

  “Get out of the way!” He lunged past me toward the girl, who was lying there crying, out of hope, out of tears. I got him by the collar and spun him around, flat on his back.

  “I rank thee, friend, in spite of that fancy uniform,” I told him. “I rate a flintlock, and thou’st only got that pigsticker. Now behave thyself!”

  Sure, I was looking for a fight. It’s the best way there is to work off your temper.

  “Thou bloody swine—” He got up again, slowly, and his face was strange. It was a look I’d only seen before on children and kings, just about to throw a tantrum. I didn’t recognize him, never having had much truck with the Nazis or their friends. Suddenly he lashed out with the whip. It caught me across the chest like a white-hot wire.

  That did it. No damned swordsman was going to hit me that way. I didn’t even stop to think before my ax bounced off his helmet.

  The clang sent him lurching back, but the steel held firm. He screamed, then, and drew his sword and sprang for me. I met the whistling blow in midair. Sparks showered, and our weapons were nearly torn loose.

  He growled and tried to thrust, but a broadsword is no good for that. I knocked the blade aside, and my ax whirred down. He was fast, jumped back. I furrowed his shoulder.

  “The devil damn thee!” He got two hands on his sword and it slammed against my bare head. I caught the blow on my ax handle, swept it aside, and took one step inward. A sidewise chop, and his head was rolling in the gravel.

  Most people think a battle-ax is a clumsy weapon. It isn’t. I’ll take it for close quarters over any weapon except a .45 or a carbine, which I didn’t rate. His pretty sword went spinning as he fell, flashing the sunlight into my eyes like a last thrust.

  Breathing hard, I looked around me. I was a little surprised that the girl was still crouched there, but maybe she was too tired and scared to run any more. She was a stranger to me, and I’d have noticed anyone that nice-looking, so I decided she must have been captured just lately. She’d been horribly treated.

  “Who art thou, sis?” I asked, trying to be gentle. I asked it in French, English, Latin, Greek, and whatever other languages I had a smattering of—even tried the language of The Men, just for the hell of it. Her eyes were wide and blank, without understanding.

  “Well—” I scratched my head, not knowing exactly what to do next. It was decided for me. I heard a barking curse and the sound of hoofs, and looked up to see a dozen Huns charging.

  I’ve no particular race prejudices, not like some of The Men. I’m about a quarter Neanderthal myself, and proud of it—that’s where I get my red hair and strong back. We’ll say nothing about the brains. Otherwise, of course, I’m a Man. But where it comes to Huns, well, I just don’t like the greasy little devils. That was beside the point right now, though. They were after my skull. I didn’t know what business of theirs the fight was, and didn’t stop to think why. No time. Not even time to get mad again. The lead man’s lance was almost in my throat.

  I skipped aside, chopping low, at the horse’s forelegs. The poor beast screamed as it fell. The Hun sprang lightly free, but I’d sheared his arm off before he hit the ground. The next one had his sword out, hewing at me. I turned the blow and chopped at his waist, but he was wearing chain mail. He grunted and swung once more, raking my cheek. Then they were all about me, cutting loose.

  I scrambled toward Iggy, where the big stupid brute stood calmly watching. The Huns yammered and crowded their ponies in close. Reaching up in an overhand sweep, I split one brown monkey-face. A sword from behind struck at my neck. I ducked as it whistled over me, and thought in a queer short flash that this was the end of Trebuen.

  “Chinga los heréticos!”

  The tall horse had come thundering from the Nest and hit the pack like a cyclone. Don Miguel Pedro Estebán Francisco de Utrillo y Gutierrez flashed like a sun in his armor. His lance had already spitted one Hun and his sword sent another toppling. Now he reared the Arab back, and the slamming forefeet made a third man’s pony yell and buck. The Huns howled and turned to meet him, giving me a chance to cross steel with one at a time.

  Slash and bang! We were fighting merrily when a shot cracked in the air, and another and another. That was the signal of the bosses. We broke off and drew away from each other, still growling. There were five dead on the road, too trampled to be recognized. I drew air into lungs that seemed on fire and looked up to the new rider. She’d come galloping from the Nest, not even stopping to saddle her horse.

  “Ah, Señorita Olga!” Don Miguel rose in his stirrups and swept her a bow till the plumes on his helmet brushed his horse’s mane. He was always polite to women, even to Captain Olga Borisovna Rakitin, who by his lights was not only a heretic but unmaidenly.

  I sort of agreed with him there. She was a big woman, as big as most men, and beautifully formed. The tight gray-green uniform of the Martian Soviet left no doubt of that. Under the peaked, red-starred cap, her face was straight, finely cut, with high cheekbones and big gray eyes, and it was a sin the way she cropped her bronze-colored hair. But she was a human icicle; or maybe a chilled-steel punching ram would be better.

  She holstered her pistol with a clank and looked us over with eyes like the wind off a glacier. “What is the meaning of this brawl?” She had a nice low voice, but spoke French like a clicking trigger.

  Don Miguel’s bearded hawk face broke into the famous smile that had made him the terror of husbands and fathers from Lagash to London. “Señorita,” he said gently, “when I see my good friend Trebuen set on by pagans and in danger of death before his conversion to the true faith is completed, there is only one thing which any hidalgo can do. Surely a lady will understand.”

  “And why did ye fight?” she went on, looking at me and the Huns.

  One of the horsemen pointed to the battered Nazi body. None of them spoke French very well, so they wouldn’t talk it at all if they could help it. It was plain I’d killed a particular pal of theirs. Well, any friend of the Huns is an enemy of mine.

  “And thou, Trebuen?” she asked. “I’ve had about enough of thy Stone Age cannibalism. Thou’rt the worst troublemaker in the Nest.”

  That wasn’t true, and she knew it. The Huns and the Nazis were forever brawling, and the Normans were even worse—though as they owned the place, I suppose they had the right. And I resented her crack about my people. The Men aren’t cannibals, they’re peaceful hunters, minding their own business. I’d never heard about war before being recruited into the Nest. That was when I chanced to meet a mammoth-hunting party, guided them, and had one of the Duke’s sons take a fancy to me. They could always use tall husky men here.

  “I didn’t like his face,” I snapped. “So I took it off.”

  “This girl—” She looked at the plump, dark little chick, who had huddled up close to me.

  “My property.”

  “I didn’t know even thou went in for slave-beating,” she sneered.

  “I didn’t do that!” I shouted.

  Don Miguel had noticed the girl by now. He beamed at her, because she was certainly a knockout. Then he swept off his cloak and threw it over her shoulders. She drew it close around her and gave him a funny look, like a kicked dog that somebody finally pets. One small hand stole toward mine, and I took it.

  By this time the cops had arrived, twenty of them marching in double-time from the Nest. The setting sun glared off their helmets, armor, and shields. They broke formation at their leader’s command—he was a centurion, I noticed—and closed in around us, their short swords bare and sharp-looking.

  “There’ve been enough brawls here,” said Captain Olga. “This calls for an inquiry. Maybe a hanging or two.”

  “Señorita,” said Don Miguel, very, very softly, his black eyes narrowed on her, “the law of the Nest permits gentlemen to duel. Any subsequent quarrel is between the victor and the dead man’s friends.”

  “We’ll see what the Duke has to say about it!” she snapped, and wheeled her horse around.

  “Come on, friend,” said the centurion. “Up to the castle.”

  I shifted my ax. “Are we under arrest?” I asked, putting a bite in the words. Cops have to be kept in their place.

  “Er—not exactly, I guess,” said the centurion. “But you’d better stay inside the castle walls until the Duke settles your case.”

  I shrugged. Killing a man here wasn’t a crime—there were plenty more where they came from. I might have to pay a fine, and perhaps some weregild to a few Huns and Nazis. That griped me, but I could afford it.

  That’s what I thought—then.

  I clicked my tongue at Iggy, who stooped over so I could scramble aboard. I took the girl in front of me, which made the ride a pleasant one. She was horribly scared, and clung close to me. Iggy rose back up on his hind legs and stalked alongside Don Miguel’s horse. The Huns trotted sulkily in the rear, twittering in their own language. The cops enclosed all of us and marched steadily down the road. They weren’t really Romans, most of them were barbaric riffraff from Germany and Thrace, but their discipline was beautiful.

  Don Miguel looked up at me. “Who is the young woman?” he asked. “Where is she from?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Looks Semitic, but that could mean almost anything.”

  “Well,” he said, “we’ll take her to the Wisdom and find out.”

  “Uh—” I stumbled awkwardly. “I don’t know how to thank thee for—”

  “De nada, amigo.” He waved a long, lily-white hand. “It was a pleasure. Quite apart from the fact that I have to save thy heathenish soul before thou departest this world, unworthy apostle though I am, there is this question: Where else in the Nest would I find a man who could keep up with me in a drinking bout?”

  “Well, there is that,” I agreed.

  We entered on the Via Appia. There was pavement within the bounds of the Nest, beautifully laid—but a lot can be done when you have all the slave labor you want. Small houses lay on either side of the broad street, surrounded by gardens and bowers—the homes of the ordinary warriors. Slaves and naked children stopped to gape at us as we went by. We saw a few friends in the streets or in front of their homes: Thorkel the Berserk, all tricked out in Italian silks; the Mongol Belgutai, swapping small talk with Amir Hassan of Baghdad; the old sea dog Sir Henry Martingale, smoking in his garden while his concubines fanned him and played music. They hailed us cheerfully, not knowing what we had coming to us. But then, neither did we.

  The cops’ footfalls slammed on the pavement, a dull drumbeat between the fantastic houses. There were about a thousand homes in the Nest, each built according to the owner’s fancy. A half-timbered Tudor cottage nestled between a French château and a swoop-roofed Chinese affair with one of their silly-looking dragons out in front; across from it were a miniature Moorish palace and one of those adobe huts the Greeks insisted on kenneling in. We turned at the fountain in the Place de l’Etoile—a lovely piece of Renaissance work, though it had gotten somewhat knocked up en route to us—and crossed London Bridge to the Street of St. Mark. The town muezzin was calling Moslems to prayer as we climbed the hill on which the castle stood.

  Its gray stone battlements threw a night-like shadow over us. Looking around, I could see the slave pens on the other side of town; overseers were herding the field workers back, and such of the city’s slaves as worked by day were trotting obediently toward the same place. Not many ever tried to get away—there was no place to go, and if a sabertooth or nimravus didn’t get you first, the Normans would hunt you down with dogs. They thought that was rare sport.

  We went through the gate into the flagged courtyard, past the guards—those were specially trusted Janissaries, armed with repeater rifles. “Get on down,” said the centurion. “I’ll take your mounts to the stables.”

  “Okay,” I said, “but if they don’t give Iggy enough to drink there, thou’lt hear from me. He needs lots of water.”

  We stood in the courtyard. A couple of big mastiffs growled at us. There was a small group of Normans breaking up an outdoor poker game as it got too dark to see—some of the Duke’s many sons and grandsons. They swaggered past us into the main keep. Most of them were dressed in Renaissance style, though one wore a Chinese mandarin’s robe. Some, the older ones, carried pistols as well as swords.

  “I suppose we wait here till the Duke summons us. I hope it won’t be long—I’m hungry.” Don Miguel spoke to the Nubian porter: “If we are called for, we will be in the Wisdom’s chamber, or else in the main gaming room.”

  The girl shuddered as we walked into the keep. Don Miguel laid a brotherly arm not quite about her waist. “There, there,” he said. “We shall find out who thou art, and then we will get thee some wine and dress those hurts.”

  “How about the rest of her?” I asked.

  “Oh, there is no hurry about that,” he answered.

  I felt a tingle of jealousy. Just lately, I’d lost my concubine in a crap game to Ethelwulf the Saxon—I’m not a harem keeper, I believe in one at a time—and had been thinking that this wench would make a nice replacement when she was patched up. But if a man’s saved your life—oh, well. She kept looking in my direction anyway.

  We went down long, stony corridors, hung with rich tapestries; the electric lights didn’t drive away the gloom and chill, somehow. Now and then we’d pass a slave or a warrior, but no one paid any attention to us, in spite of the fact that I was only wearing breeks and that Don Miguel and I were both spattered with red. You got used to almost anything in the Nest.

  “I thought the Duke was away this afternoon?” I said.

  “He is. Off to survey the Danelaw. I fear me the poor English will be missing more than the Vikings ever took.”

  “Well,” I said, “it’s about time for another expedition anyway. The boys are getting restless.” As a warrior third class—technically a musketeer—I had my own responsibilities and command. “And there ought to be good pickings in Saxon England; the Romano-Britons certainly had some fine things.”

  Don Miguel shrugged delicately. “I wish, my friend, thou wouldst not be quite so blunt about it,” he said. “At any rate, Duke Hugo and his party should be back in time for dinner. They took the Rover out this morning.”

  The Normans were often pretty stupid. They could have brought the Rover back within a second of its leaving the Nest , no matter how long they stayed in the Danelaw, but no, they were too superstitious for that, they had to be gone all day. In fact, they’d never done any of the things they could have done with the machine, except just transport themselves and us. Oh, well, it was theirs.

  We came to the fork in the hall. One branch of it went off toward the eating and gaming rooms, another to the guarded door beyond which was the Rover’s place. We took the third branch, toward the harem. That was guarded too, of course, by slaves whose sizes and strength hadn’t been hurt much by Hugo’s following the quaint custom of his father, Duke Roger of Sicily; but we didn’t go that far. The girl shuddered and moaned as we started up a long stair, into the north tower.

  A fancy bronze door at its top opened into the Wisdom’s laboratory. I slammed the rather gruesome knocker down, and pretty soon his dusty voice said to come in.

  The lab was a huge room, most of it filled with bookshelves; an arched doorway led into a still bigger library. One end of the lab, though, was given over to grimoires, wands, skulls, a stuffed crocodile, bottles and flasks, an alembic, a spectroscope, and an induction furnace, for the Wisdom dabbled in alchemy. He came toward us, his long black robe sweeping the ground, his hairless head bent forward as he peered near-sightedly at us. “Ah,” he murmured. “The Cro-Magnon and the hidalgo. What can I do for you, gentlemen?”

  I never knew just where the Wisdom came from. Some said he was Victorian English, some said he was Reformation German, but my private guess is Byzantine Greek. He was here because of his impossibly good memory and scholar’s brain. I don’t think there ever was a book he couldn’t translate or a language he couldn’t soon learn, and if you gave him time and references, he’d tell you what you wanted to know about any sector. It saved a lot of firsthand casing of many joints. Then he was our interpreter and teacher of new arrivals. I didn’t like him—nobody did—nasty cold-blooded snake—but we could hardly do without that big head of his.