“You have to practice. Just off the top of my head… You take fifty of your Neanderthals, the ones that have the most imagination, who don’t mind trying something new. Then you give each—I don’t know—five or maybe even ten of these. Under my tutelage, they practice firing until they know what in the hell they’re doing. And then you have about five hundred lances left for war.”

  “Five hundred? We would have then wasted five hundred of these ancient weapons.”

  “No,” I said, “you won’t have wasted them. What you'll have is a group of fifty soldiers who follow my orders, know what to do, and hit what they aim at. The rest will follow. Once we engage in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy, they can take down everything else.”

  Gruum frowned severely, shaking his head. “That is a novel idea. I must think about it.”

  “You do that,” I said. “What’s next?”

  “Next,” Skarl said, stepping forward. “I have a question, Gruum.”

  “Do you, my friend?”

  “Yes. This interloper cannot lead anybody. He may be good for using a technological weapon or two, but the others will not follow him anywhere.”

  That was when I knew and understood. It was time. “You don’t think so, Skarl?”

  “No,” Skarl practically snarled at me.

  “Gruum,” I said, “if you’ll listen to me, I think there is a way we can do it.”

  “Go on,” Gruum said. “Tell me.”

  I started to explain.

  -21-

  It was a day later, and we were lower in the valley. There were thirty Neanderthal toughs. Those of Skarl’s group and a few others like it along with the guards who protected Gruum. This time, Gruum had two fellows help him down, which proved to be a long and laborious process.

  I’d slept hard and had been sore when I woke up. I did some stretches, a few pushups, sit-ups, the like, and more stretching. Finally, I did some shadowboxing. The reason, as I’m sure many of you have surmised, was because I was going to fight Skarl today.

  It turned out that Skarl’s nine, which included him, was the crème de la crème of the free Neanderthals. Each of the nine was acclaimed a special fighter and warrior, including Zog. Skarl was the champion, of course. That they were so good was why they’d had the eight dire wolves. No group trained and traded dire wolves. There were a few trainers and they had sixteen more dire wolves. Skarl’s nine had gone out into the tundra because Gruum had heard the sonic booms and seen the lightning my reaching the ziggurat had brought.

  According to one sensor that sorta worked, Free Neanderthal HQ was surprised to see the First Folk launching flying saucers.

  I’d learned that not many flying saucers went out these days, an indication they were rare. Combined with the low number of First Folk on Garm—maybe too many Accelerationists and Traditionalists had been in the Chaunt System when I’d gone there last journey. Many Accelerationists were trapped on the third planet of the Chaunt System together with the Draconian T-Rex riders. That was thanks to yours truly, Livi and possibly sneaky Philip.

  Perhaps the total number of First Folk in the star lanes was down. Perhaps whatever they did in the mines wasn’t as important as other things on other planets. Those were logical surmises on my part. I didn’t know any of it to be fact.

  That had caused me to ponder on the number of brain-enhanced Smilodons. Did the First Folk have hordes of intelligent, antenna-wearing great cats on Garm? I was thinking not. Likely, those Smilodons were a specialty item, numbering in the tens instead of hundreds or thousands.

  Two elite groups had met out on the tundra several days ago. The five Smilodons had maybe been the best facing the eight best dire wolves. That meant an elite team of Neanderthal tundra-walkers had rescued me.

  I’d learned something else, too. The number of slaves escaping from the mines in recent years had dwindled to almost nothing. That told me the Slave Corps, the Neanderthal Mamelukes, had probably become much better and more sophisticated than before. Therefore, fewer slaves had escaped.

  Because fewer slaves escaped, the free Neanderthals knew much less about what was presently going on in the mines. They had no fresh information.

  What had Krull’s part been in all this? He’d told me half-truths, spinning lies to pump me of information. There was something fishy about the Krull Incident, fishy from Krull’s end regarding his loyalty to his First Folk bosses. Had he been playing both ends against the middle?

  As I shadowboxed, preparing for the fight, I thought about these things and others.

  Zog approached with his bone-talisman necklace and a sneer. “What is this you’re doing, some ritual dance to avert disaster?”

  “Yep,” I said, “you figured me out, Zog. Is it time yet?”

  He nodded angrily. “It will be a pleasure to see you lose and get your head beaten in by Skarl.”

  “Hey, Zog, don’t you want them women? I’m here to find you a girl.”

  The baiting worked too well. He rushed me with a snarl. I was just about ready to clobber him and put him on his back when he halted. I could see the rage in his eyes. This was one angry dude.

  “I gave up the right to a woman in order to gain my freedom,” Zog said in a hoarse voice. “I had a lover in the mines.”

  I almost asked him, “You mean with one of the whores?” I’m glad I stopped myself because, well, the Neanderthal ladies probably hadn’t much to say in the matter. They were probably few in number and had been forced into what they did.

  So I told myself, Bayard, get your head in gear. Don’t be so hard on these guys. Actually help them.

  “All right. Sorry, Zog.” I almost clapped him on the shoulder, and that might have been too much. “Let’s go. I’m ready.”

  I marched down the trail with Zog to the open area.

  Scouts higher up had given the all clear. The sensor hadn’t detected any flying saucers in our vicinity. None of the great cats appeared to have made it over the mountains. We were safe to do this.

  The thirty Neanderthals sat on rocks or dirt, laughing and talking, a few humming together. When they saw me coming, they started hooting like old-time primitives, like cavemen.

  I clenched and unclenched my fists.

  Skarl was going to be strong, and he probably had his own caveman fighting technique. Perhaps he’d been one of the slave guards in the mines. He was larger than the rest. If I were running a slave mine, I’d choose the bigger, stronger Neanderthals to guard the rest. Therefore, yeah, Skarl was going to be his own thing with his own fighting technique. I shouldn’t expect him to be an idiot and rush me, trying to slap me around or crush me with his hands. Still, I didn’t think he’d ever faced someone like me. I’d have to remember, although I was taller, he was probably stronger than I was, was built to take punishment and then some.

  I saluted him. I saluted the other Neanderthals.

  “Gruum, I thank you for allowing me the chance for an exhibition. If we were to use knives—I’m not suggesting it. Skarl, I’m just saying that if we did, my victory would even be more abrupt. But let us fight with hands. Shall we agree, Skarl? No biting?”

  “No biting,” Skarl said, barely able to say the words.

  His eyes were bloodshot. He looked like a savage pitbull ready to go for it.

  I wondered, and perhaps it was my bias showing, but were Neanderthals more emotional than us humans? Sure, there’re plenty of emotional humans. And I know the Neanderthals had big brains. But seeing these guys and Skarl’s reaction—he seemed more primal, more primordial, more basic. Was that a superior attitude on my part? Probably, but so what? Like Popeye had said long ago, “I yam whom I yam.”

  Skarl stepped away from the others. He wore his crude garments and his thick fingers wriggled with anticipation. There was rage in his eyes. Was he trying to psych me out?

  “What are the rules?” I asked, stalling, knowing I’d already talked about this a few moments ago.

  No one answered.

  “No eye gouging, no breaking limbs on purpose, and no choking,” I suggested.

  Skarl grunted agreement, nodding. “Let us begin already.”

  The other Neanderthals climbed to their feet and gathered around, forming a large circle to watch the fight. I could feel their eyes, their anticipation, and perhaps their doubt.

  The fight began abruptly as Skarl charged like a raging bull, bellowing louder than I could believe.

  Even so, I didn’t buy it. I set myself in a combat stance, thinking he was trying to fake me out.

  Skarl stomped the ground, lowering his head and stretching his hands outward.

  I jabbed and sidestepped quickly. He swung his arms to bear hug me. I wasn’t there, though.

  The jab had struck his nose, a good soft target. He stopped and looked at me with surprise.

  “Before you hurt me you gotta catch me, buddy boy,” I said.

  I hadn’t meant to mock him; it was instinctual on my part. Any type of combat was my specialty. Skarl might be good. He might outweigh me. He might be stronger, but I was better. At least I was betting on it.

  Skarl approached cautiously. Much of the rage had dissipated. Pain hadn’t done that. He’d faked the rage as I’d thought. He’d tried to trick me.

  He came close and took several swipes as if to grapple. I jumped back or sidestepped each time.

  “See how he runs,” Skarl said. “He is a runner, but I will catch him because I will stalk him with relentless—”

  Before he finished the last word, I stepped in and threw flurries, landing several on the head. He snarled and rushed in. I sidestepped again and gave him a hard chop with both my hands against the back of his bull neck as he blew past. That did nothing. It was like striking a tree trunk.

  He spun. One of his hands grasped my flesh. I twisted. He held on. I chopped hard and barely disengaged before his other hand struck me. It was a boxing blow on the side of my head. It propelled me back several steps before I collapsed onto the ground.

  “Victory!” shouted Skarl, throwing his paws into the air. “The human is down.”

  I climbed dizzily to my feet, swaying and blinking. That had been unexpected. The Neanderthal had tricks, and though he was slower than I was, he’d caught me by surprise with a freakish hammer blow to the head.

  “I’m not done,” I said with a slur. “One blow doesn’t win a fight.”

  Lowering his arms, Skarl stared at me dumbfounded before turning to Gruum. “Is it not over? Victory goes to whoever knocks the other down first.”

  “No,” I said. “The fight ends when one of us says ‘I quit,’ not until then. Or are you too frightened to keep fighting?”

  Skarl turned to me in astonishment. “So be it,” he said slowly. “I will knock you down as many times as I must until you cry defeat.”

  I ran at him because my head was ringing and I still felt off. I did something stupid, but I had to throw him off balance to give myself a breather.

  Let’s see if he knows this one.

  I ran and leapt, performing a prodigy of gymnastics, launching a flying mule kick. Everyone was amazed, including me. Both of my feet, the boot soles, planted on his chest with a terrific thud. It helped that he was so much shorter than I.

  Skarl flew backward.

  I dropped to the ground prone and sprang up.

  The bastard stayed on his broad, flat feet, wind milling his arms fiercely. When he stopped, he felt his chest and stared at me with bewilderment.

  “That hurt,” he said.

  “There’s more where that came from.”

  Skarl’s eyes narrowed and he began to stalk me.

  Given these few moments of rest, I regained my equilibrium. My head no longer rang so loudly. I used speed to dance around him, deciding Skarl was like a Mike Tyson, a Joe Frazier, a bruiser, a battler. I had to hammer him into submission, maybe close his eyes and give him the pounding of his life…if my fists could take it.

  I worked on closing his eyes by causing tissue swelling. I worked on bloodying that broad flat nose. I gave him a few kicks now and again. I noticed he couldn’t kick in return. He had a thick, lower and wider waist. It didn’t allow him the nimble use of his feet the way I could use mine.

  I was panting—there were no breaks, no rounds. He almost grappled me on several occasions. I barely twisted away each time. I could feel welts on my skin; feel blood dripping because his hold was like crushing iron.

  By slow degrees, I managed to close his left eye first and then almost his right. I gave him roundhouse kicks. I could do it because he was slow enough and his vision was bad enough by this point. At last, after a beating indeed, Skarl went down.

  His mouth was on the ground as he panted, and he glared at the ground without even seeing it. He tried to push up but sprawled back onto his face. He tried to push up again, slipped and thudded into the same position.

  “Hey, Skarl, I can kick your head from now to kingdom come, until you’re unconscious or brain damaged. But I don’t want to do that. You’re a fighter, a warrior. You’re one of the best I’ve ever fought. Do you admit defeat?”

  He bellowed with rage and tried to struggle up, pushing off on his hands, his arms shaking as he held the position.

  Damn it, he was forcing me.

  I kicked with my heel, thudding against his dense head.

  He slumped to the ground.

  “I can keep doing this all day,” I said. “You should—”

  He turned his head. “You’re the victor.”

  After a second, I turned to the stunned crowd. “Did anyone else hear that?”

  None of the watching Neanderthals would meet my eyes.

  Gruum hobbled forward, dazed, maybe even angry. “That wasn’t fair.”

  “Sir, battle and fighting aren’t fair. It’s all about winning. I won. Don’t you want a guy who can free your fellow Neanderthals? Skarl will be with us.”

  Gruum studied the fallen Skarl and then me. “You must train Skarl as one of your shooters.”

  “Not a problem.”

  Gruum turned to the mob. “This is our arms trainer, the one preparing the chosen fifty to shoot the missile lances. Does anyone disagree?”

  None did, although I’d never seen a less enthusiastic crowd in my life.

  My victory didn’t taste like the ashes of defeat. I was glad I’d won, but I realized these guys loved strength more than anything. I hadn’t demonstrated strength. I’d shown cunning, nimbleness, and speed, all things they didn’t particularly cherish or have.

  Even so, I was the official lance teacher. I didn’t think I’d have trouble with the others. They must have thought of me as a wizard of combat, something to fear but not quite respect.

  So be it. I had the job. Now, I had to train fifty cavemen into respectable RPG shooters.

  -22-

  A week passed and I began teaching the Nine. I’d waited until Skarl was better. It wasn’t that his body had taken such a bruising, but that he’d heard ringing in his head. His eyes had also needed to return to normal.

  It was harder to make a Neanderthal’s eyes swell, and I don’t know why that was. But once they did swell, it took forever for the swelling to go down.

  These Neanderthals had muscular, heavy, dense-bone bodies that recovered much quicker from a beating than I would have done. These were tough dudes built for a prehistoric Stone Age or times on modern Garm.

  I knew Bok’s Original People on Saddoth were just as tough or tougher. The ones turned into meat animals for the Ophidian tables had lost some of the stamina and aggressiveness of the basic Neanderthal stock.

  I wondered about that during the mornings when I had more coherence. I worked all day trying to teach these guys, and was wiped out at night.

  They had dense bones and thick muscles, and I’d say thicker heads. They didn’t catch onto the idea of missile launchers, as regular humans would have done. The missiles were too new, too strange to their regular mode of thought. I wracked my brain for ideas how to teach them.

  Then I had an idea: how to start from basic.

  I collected throwing rocks, throwing stones. Then I took the Nine out, these champions, and had them throw rocks at a target.

  They were indifferent throwers, to say the least. Their bulky, waist-thick muscular bodies didn’t have much snap to them. They were literally too muscle-bound, and the idea of projectiles just didn’t come naturally, or maybe at all.

  “Look,” I said later, hoping they were frustrated enough to accept some advice. “This is how you do it.”

  I used my Turlock High baseball pitching techniques to good effect, smacking the target repeatedly, and hard.

  They gave a few oohs and ahhs, nodding.

  “Hey,” Zog said afterward, “we’re not built like you. You’re so skinny, and the way your arms and lower body moves—we’re close-in fighters. We grapple with our foe or strike with a knife.”

  “Yeah?” I said in front of the others. “You do that when you’re attacking a woolly mammoth, grab a leg and wrestle it down?”

  There should have been some laughter. There was none. They all stared at me dead-eyed with Brakka’s style of humor.

  “We don’t grapple a mammoth,” Zog said, stung, “but close in with an axe. A brave warrior hacks at the rear tendons on a back leg. That cripples the mammoth. He falls. Then we all move in and stab with our spears.”

  I could see where this was going—in the opposite direction I wanted.

  “You can’t take out the flying saucers that way,” I said. “You can’t take out their shooters that way, either. You need to do it from a distance. You need ranged combat.”

  The Nine stared at me with seeming incomprehension.

  I almost told them: “Now I know how we beat you Neanderthals on my planet back in the day. We must have run circles around you guys, particularly when we got bows and arrows.”

  I kept my mouth shut, fortunately, about that.

  Still, I wondered who’d invented the original bow and arrow. It had been a revolutionary idea. It must have proven decisive in the Stone Age battles when Cro-Magnon men took out the muscular Neanderthals.