Gruum gave a small shake of his head. Perhaps that was a signal to Brakka. “Why do you think you can fight better than we?”

  “Well, sir,” I said, “I used to be a US Marine,” and I described my training and some of my various journeys and how I’d fought and how I was a warrior.

  Skarl shifted angrily.

  “You do not think he is a warrior?” Gruum asked.

  “He did charge the great cats,” Skarl said. “That was brave, but he used his technological weapon. Could he face and fight one of us hand to hand? I don’t think so.”

  Gruum looked at me and asked, “What do you say to that?”

  I shrugged.

  “Do you say Skarl is wrong?” Gruum asked.

  “He isn’t right,” I said. “Let me put it that way.”

  Gruum looked closely at Skarl.

  “Let us fight you and me: if that is what you have to say,” Skarl said.”

  “You sure you want that?” I asked. “Here in front of Gruum? Do you want to lose that badly?”

  Skarl stood. “I’ve had enough of your cheek. It’s time for you to learn that we’re much stronger and more powerful than one such as you.”

  I stood as well.

  Gruum chuckled and waved both of us down. “No, no, now isn’t the time for that. The time may come, but this is motivating. You say you’re a technological warrior.”

  “A Marine,” I said.

  “I don’t know the difference, but I assume you believe there is one.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “From what you’ve said, you have knowledge about technological weapons.”

  “If you have enough Neanderthals and weapons,” I thumped myself on the chest, “I’m the man to train you. I’m the man to lead you to victory. I’ve fought First Folk before. I’ve killed and defeated them before.”

  “Let me hear about it,” Gruum said.

  I told him about my experiences in the Chaunt System.

  Gruum absorbed every detail of it. “I do not think he is a liar,” he told Skarl. “I think he speaks the truth and I think perhaps—”

  Gruum picked up the phasor. “With this and another cache of weapons we’ve found, perhaps now is the time to make the assault. We have a tech weapon fighter among us. I think the day of our exile may be over, and I think the day of our freedom, our real freedom for the entire planet and for women,” he said in a hoarse voice.

  Gruum, Skarl, and Brakka fell still and silent.

  “Yes,” Gruum finally said, “I may be too old to enjoy the true pleasures of women, though I would like to speak with one again and hear her beautiful voice and see the suppleness of her form and how she walks so enticingly. Despite all that, I think now is the time to act. I would like to see it before I pass this veil. But first, outlander, I want you to examine our weapons and tell me truthfully what you really think about our chances.”

  “I’d have to know more about the First Folk on Garm,” I said.

  “You’ve seen the flying saucers as you call them. You’ve seen their great cats and have witnessed their weaponry. Thus, you probably know more about it than any of us do. They have hunted and slain us. They have oppressed us for centuries. If you are what you say you are, and the fact that you attacked the Smilodons with your weapon—that was a warrior’s act. I approve. Do you not approve, Skarl?”

  “Yes, Gruum,” Skarl said, and there was conviction in his voice.

  “Come,” Gruum said. He struggled to rise. I could see then that he was even older than I’d suspected.

  One-eyed Brakka rushed forward, helping Gruum up.

  “Off, off,” Gruum said. “I can do this myself.”

  Brakka ignored that and continued to help Gruum stand. He kept a hand on Gruum’s elbow as we proceeded to head deeper into the cave.

  -20-

  We left the cavern from the back, passing Gruum’s bed, and walked into a darkened area.

  “Ah,” Gruum said, “I almost forgot.” He turned to Brakka, the one holding onto an elbow. “Could you get some glow balls?”

  Brakka nodded and left.

  I wondered if that was a trick to get rid of Brakka so Gruum could tell us something interesting or secret. Instead, we waited until Mr. One-Eye returned with three glow balls. Brakka gave one to Skarl, kept one for himself, and then wondered who he should give the next one to.

  “Give it to the Marine,” Gruum said.

  Reluctantly, Brakka gave it to me.

  It was a little bigger than both my clenched fists put together. It wasn’t warm, as one would expect with light coming from it. I raised my glow ball and raised my eyebrows at Gruum.

  “It’s magic from the old time,” he said, “or high technology that we don’t understand. Take your pick.”

  “Right,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Brakka gave me a whack on my back with the brass tube. “Your role is not to give commands, but to wait and listen.”

  “Let us go,” Gruum said, almost in a weary voice.

  Brakka once more put a hand on one of Gruum’s elbows. Skarl led the way, and we threaded through a long corridor. Once more, we reached spiral stone stairs, going down. I could hear Gruum panting. He sounded exhausted.

  “How far away is this in our terms?” I asked.

  “Many, many miles,” Gruum said.

  Miles wasn’t the same word as you or I would have used, but it was the Garm term that meant the same thing.

  “May I ask a question?” I asked.

  “Certainly,” Gruum said.

  “How are you going to last that long?”

  “You shall see,” he said, with humor tinting his voice.

  We wound down the seemingly endless stairs and eventually reached a junction. I was astonished to see what looked like rail tracks or something similar like a subway station. The tracks led into dark stone tube-ways.

  We climbed into an open-air car sitting on the tracks, settling ourselves onto benches. Gruum closed the railcar door and with obvious pride sat at the front. He touched controls on a panel.

  The railcar began to hum softly, and we rose, floating just above the tracks. It was a magnetic rail line. Something, somewhere, must have supplied power to run this. The railcar began to move along the track into a stone tube-way. Lights appeared in the railcar’s front, showing the way as it illuminated the subterranean passage.

  “Impressive,” I said. “Is it ancient technology?”

  “Yes,” Gruum said. “This isn’t of First Folk make, by the way. Sometimes, I think the First Folk appropriated some of our lost technology.”

  I could see that.

  “May I ask another question, sir?”

  Gruum turned to Brakka glaring at me. “Let him ask. Don’t administer anymore of your obedience touches. He’s possibly the trainer of our attack force. Therefore, we must give him leeway to learn what he doesn’t know.”

  Brakka grunted, giving grudging assent.

  “How did you lose your great civilization that produced these things?” I asked.

  “There are ancient legends,” Gruum said, shrugging. “There was a war, as you have spoken of briefly, in the distant past. It must have been during or just after the shattering of the Harmony of Planets.” He shrugged again. “It is one legend among many, but your appearance and tale lends credence that that particular legend is true.”

  In the magnetic railcar, we sped farther into the ancient mine, passing areas that may have once been old storefronts. They looked petrified, in the sense of having turned to stone over the ages.

  Presently, the car slowed and came to a halt, settling gently onto the rails. Brakka rushed forward and opened the railcar door so Gruum could lead the way.

  Illumination dimmed as the railcar’s lights diminished and then vanished. We were down to our three glow balls again.

  This place looked ancient and the air tasted dry and possibly stale. I spied stone chips and bits of gravel scattered on the floor. We reached a spot with metal-edged pickaxes leaning against the wall. There were leather straps wound around the wooden handles. Perhaps Neanderthals had wrapped the straps around their hands in order to chisel at the stone with the pickaxes. There was a crudely chiseled entrance ahead of us.

  “We stole the pickaxes,” Gruum said, “or some did when they escaped the First Folk mines. We’ve put the picks to good use here. Watch your head,” he warned. “You’re very tall, and I don’t want that precious head of yours hurt.”

  I ducked, entering and shuffling down a low-ceilinged stone corridor that went a good three hundred and fifty feet. At last, we came to a taller open area. There were stacked casks or caskets, long things. They looked like ancient wood, brittle with age. One was open.

  “There,” Gruum said, “that is what I want you to see.”

  I stepped up to the casket and peered inside. I expected to see machine guns, phasor rifles, or something of that nature. Instead, there were six-foot lances made of brass poles such as Brakka carried. Each pole or lance had a vicious-looking spear tip similar to a bayonet. This one had a button near the end where one would grasp the lance. The tube was open by the bayonet lance-head end but not the other.

  “You’ve aroused my interest,” I said. “What is this, and what does the button do?”

  “Take it,” Gruum said. “We’ll go topside. There, you’ll demonstrate for us.”

  “How old is it?”

  “Ancient beyond belief, but they are, how do you say, what is the correct word... functional.”

  I nodded. “How long ago did you find these?”

  “A year ago. We’ve searched farther, but this is all we’ve found, even though we’ve searched for many, many years. We had hints and tantalizing tales, and there have been a few other places we tried… This is our only success, along with…yes, let me show you now.”

  Gruum shuffled ahead into another chamber. I followed. Here, lined upon the walls on shelves, were iron helmets such as a medieval warrior might have worn. Near each helmet were gauntlets. The gauntlets looked like they were made for Neanderthal hands, much broader than mine, with thicker fingers. On the area where one would punch were spikes.

  I picked one up. “May I?”

  “Of course,” Gruum said.

  I put on the gauntlet. It felt well-made with a good heft. “May I punch a wall?”

  “Of course.”

  I did, and the spikes were tough, punching into the granite.

  “Gauntlets,” I said, “and helmets. This is very medieval and not futuristic weaponry as I’d expected.”

  “True,” Gruum said, “but yet, armed with these, I suspect our warriors will feel more like… I think there is a word for it.”

  “Like soldiers,” I said.

  “Ah,” he said, “soldiers. And what is the difference?”

  “A warrior is an individual fighter who battles for his own glory. A soldier obeys orders, but even more importantly, he acts as a unit with his fellows. His team is much more powerful. A unit of soldiers will almost always defeat a unit of warriors because the soldiers act and move as one.”

  “Yes, yes,” Gruum said. “You are an arms instructor indeed. I think your planet knows more about the art of war than even the First Folk.”

  “Of that,” I said, “you should have no doubt.”

  “Why do you say this?”

  “He told us a story about what happened in the Chaunt System,” Skarl said.

  “Tell me as we head for the surface with the lance,” Gruum requested.

  We headed back for the waiting railcar.

  During the walk and while we rode in the railcar, I told him what had happened in the Chaunt System, giving details, as I was selling myself. I particularly spoke of my one-man war against the First Folk in that chamber, even though Philip had aided me.

  “Interesting,” Gruum said, absorbed in the tale. “There are Accelerationists and Traditionalists among the First Folk. We had no idea. You did a great feat, Jake Bayard, when you destroyed those Accelerationists. The First Folk are here in small numbers, but I fear they would have brought some of the iron warriors—the mechs, you said.”

  I nodded.

  “The First Folk would have used those terrible weapons and hunted down we who have escaped and are free. They don’t have the needed numbers to track us down as they’d like.”

  “How many escaped slaves are here?” I asked.

  “We are not slaves,” Gruum said. For the first time, anger tinged his voice.

  “Excuse me, sir, I misspoke. How many free people are here to engage in the fight against the First Folk?”

  “I’d say three hundred, though it will take time to bring them all in. There’s more than three hundred, yes, but three hundred have the youth, power and will to fight.”

  “How many First Folk do you think guard the mines?”

  “Less than a hundred,” he said.

  Huh, that was odd. Less than a hundred puny First Folk kept all these guys enslaved. “How many people are in the mines, do you think?”

  “Thousands,” Gruum said, “thousands upon thousands.”

  “Fifty thousand? A hundred thousand?”

  “I do not know what the precise number is, but it is thousands, over ten thousand at least, and they’re forced into slavery.”

  “Huh,” I said, chewing my lower lip. “There’s no way that a hundred First Folk, those little Homo habilis dudes, are keeping ten thousand or more of you Neanderthals in bondage.”

  “No, there is a Slave Corps that fights for and follows them. A few who have escaped from the mines were originally from the Slave Corps.”

  “Ah,” I said, “of course, Mamelukes.”

  “Mamelukes?” Gruum asked.

  “That was a slave army that fought for the Muslims back in the Middle Ages and beyond. The Mamelukes were Turkish and other nomadic people made slave who fought for the Egyptian dynasty that ruled in those times. They were fierce warriors. The Mamelukes were one of the first to defeat the grandsons of Genghis Khan as the Mongols and allies marched across the world, defeating everyone else.”

  Gruum nodded. “The slave warriors are strong and merciless, having slain many who tried to escape. They’re ruthless, acting viciously upon their own fellows.”

  “Yep, that’s often the way of it, bullyboys who would rather eat well and have power even at the expense of their own people.”

  “Exactly,” Gruum agreed.

  By this time, the magnetic railcar had come to a stop, and laboriously, Skarl helping Brakka with Gruum, we wound up stone stairs. We crossed back through Gruum’s sumptuous chamber, and soon climbed another set of stairs to find ourselves outside.

  I studied the lance I’d been carrying all this time, hefting it. It had a good heft. This tube was hollow, but there was definitely something inside it.

  “Where should we go?” I asked.

  “Down over there,” Gruum said, pointing.

  We moved until we came to an open area. I spied ground and rocks ahead with the debris of former blasts.

  “Is this a missile launcher?” I asked.

  “Explain what you mean by missile launcher,” Gruum requested.

  I told him.

  “Exactly,” he said. “Please test it for yourself.”

  I hefted the lance, which had a good feel for stabbing. Then I aimed it, although it lacked an aiming device. I pressed the button. There was a whoosh, and out sped a projectile, a missile, a rocket perhaps. It sped to the far end and exploded against the rocks.

  It was a worthy explosion, not as good as a regular Earth RPG would have done, certainly not near what a Javelin missile would have done. Still, this was a mini-RPG, far better than a flint-tipped spear.

  “How many rounds does it hold?” I asked.

  “Keep doing it until you have emptied it.”

  I did, firing seven missiles altogether. I tried three in quick succession. Then I fired them deliberately one at a time. Each missile worked. Then the lance was empty and obviously lighter than before.

  I turned the weapon over, looking at it, as smoke rose from the front.

  Skarl and some of the others looked in wonder at what had happened to the rocks.

  “How do you reload this?” I asked.

  Gruum shook his head, and he looked more withered and decrepit out here in the starlight, the sunlight, than he had previously.

  “You can’t reload these?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “We have what we have.”

  “How many of these lances filled with mini-missiles do you have?”

  “Now,” he said, “one thousand and eleven.”

  “A thousand and eleven,” I mused. “How many of your Neanderthals know how to use this?”

  “None, as we’re still debating how to use them.”

  I nodded. That made sense. I quickly came to a conclusion, but I thought I’d ask to check. “How many of your Neanderthals do you hope to arm?”

  “All three hundred fighters,” Gruum said. “There are a thousand lances. Surely each will have three.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “and you’ll have three hundred men who have no idea how to use these. Do Neanderthals use bow and arrows?”

  “What are those?” Gruum asked.

  “What weapons do the free Neanderthals use?”

  “Ah. I perceive. The spear, the throwing stick, stone axes and knives.”

  “That’s my point. None of them are used to firing ranged weapons.”

  Deep furrows appeared on Gruum’s forehead. “You’re right.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Okay, look, if you arm your three hundred with these, you’ll have three hundred guys who don’t know what to do. That’s a waste of time and effort. Rather, what you want is a small group that knows exactly what they’re doing, that have practiced.”

  “Practiced?” Gruum said. “For what reason? That will waste lances.”

  “You want your fighters to practice so they fire this weapon with skill and ingenuity, so they hit what they aim at. This weapon has no aiming apparatus. It’s more like…basketball. You shoot the ball and you get a feel for how to put it in the hoop.”

  Gruum gave me a perplexed look.