The two-dragon craft crossed the corner of the Black Sea and began to drift towards the snow-topped mountains.
They set down in the stony mountainside, above the tree line. Before them towered a sequence of mountains whose tops seemed to almost prick the sky. They'd set down because the unpredictable gusts and eddies of wind in the high valley had nearly splattered them on the rocks below.
Jerry shivered. It was bitterly cold up here, on a high spur looking down on a cascading river far below. In the shade, icicles still clung.
Liz, as was often the case, seemed able to ignore physical discomfort by thinking about biology. As they undid the net and pole arrangement, she asked: "If dragons are reptiles, then how come they live in the mountains?"
"Caufse it'fs easier to launch," said Smitar.
"Launch for lunch," agreed Bitar . . . "And what'fs for lunch?"
"They're pretty warm," said Lamont, battling with numb fingers to untie a knot. "I think that warm-blooded dinosaur theory is right on the money, myself."
Liz looked at him open-mouthed. "Where do you get all this stuff from, Lamont?"
The mechanic grinned. "Somebody at the Institute leaves their copies of Nature in the john."
Jerry chuckled. "Great mysteries of the world finally solved. Now we finally know who the hell steals my copy!"
They met the locals about three miles up the trail. The local bandits, anyway. They'd had a profitable session. A herd of fat-tailed sheep and several ponyloads of fleeces. And about half a dozen stumbling, miserable and terrified captives. Two women and several young boys.
Both parties took the other by surprise. "Brands!" yelled the bandit leader, a villainous-looking fellow wearing a greasy sheepskin coat and a helmet with rams' horns on it. Rams'-horn helmets were obviously quite the fashion around here, but his was the biggest.
Several of the bandits were carrying spears with bundles on the ends. In a trice, these were flaming bundles. This was dragon country and plainly the locals knew how to keep methane-farting dragons at bay. Several of the other bandits had already drawn bows.
"Get behind the dragons!" yelled Cruz. An arrow splintered against Smitar's scales.
They were in trouble. The bandits couldn't shoot them—yet—unless they tried with drop shots, but as soon as they had their sheep out of the way, they could use the flaming brands to drive off the dragons. And they outnumbered the snatchees by five to one.
Jerry's mind raced frantically, trying to think if there was some spell he'd obtained from Pan which could deal with the problem. Unfortunately, the goat-god's magical powers tended to be highly specialized. True, Jerry could give the bandits instantaneous sexual arousal . . . but somehow he felt that that might just be worse for Liz and Medea.
Rams'-horn helmet bellowed out another order. And into Jerry's mind an idea came.
"I've got to hand it to you, Jerry," said an awed Lamont. "It's not every day that you see a bunch of thugs taken out by rampaging, sex-mad sheep."
One minute a group of thirty grinning and very evil-looking bandits had been pushing their way through the sheep. The next moment a strange, hungry and wild-eyed look had come into those sheepish eyes. Perhaps seven of the thugs had not been wearing rams'-horn-bedecked helmets.
There must have been at least three hundred desperately unsatiated sheep in that herd.
Maaadness had overtaken them. It had also overtaken most of the bandits. Jerry could still see one man. He had made the safety of the cliff. He hadn't made it very far up, unfortunately for him. He was clinging to a ledge about eight feet off the ground, just above the bleating pack. Two of the shepherd boys were amusing themselves by pelting him with dung.
Several of the other bandits had gotten lucky and had managed to run over the cliff, before the sheep reached them.
The bandit chief had fared the worst. The patriarch ram of the flock didn't like competition from upstart humans with big horns.
Jerry shuddered. What the sharp hooves hadn't managed, the two once-captive women had done. Jerry looked at the spear he'd acquired from Arachne. The bronze edge was bloody. He shuddered again.
Well, one of the bandits without a rams'-horn helmet had chosen Jerry as a soft target, rather than Bes. Just because you're a murderous bandit doesn't mean you have to be stupid.
Jerry had simply reacted. Right now he couldn't say exactly how it had happened, but someway or another he'd skewered the man.
Cruz put a hand on his shoulder. "I see you're one of the guys that don't freeze up."
Jerry looked at the blood. For once it was his turn to be mystified. "Huh?"
The sergeant gave a half smile. "In contacts most men just don't react. They freeze up. We put a lot of time and effort into training that outa guys. It looks like you're one of the few that don't need training. It was him or you, Doc."
Jerry still found the blood . . . bloody.
The two women who had been captives looked fearfully at the newcomers, and cowered nervously against each other. "We're not going to hurt you. We promise. You're free," said Jerry soothingly.
They clung to each other.
"What is wrong with you?" snapped Medea. "You've just been rescued. Be grateful."
"They're going to rape us," said the younger woman, who was barely more than a girl. She looked terrified and on the verge of tears.
Medea laughed slightly. "I promise you they will not," she said in a gentle voice. "The men are all foreigners from a place called America. They have weird customs, but I think it's a nice change myself."
"What are you going to do with us, then?" asked the older woman, plucking up her courage. She was not more than thirty, but already her face was lined from hard living and hard work.
"Nothing," said Jerry. "You're free to go. The boys can gather the sheep. I suppose that's all your stuff. Collect it and go home."
The two women goggled at him. The younger woman shook her head. "This America place. It must be very, very strange. You kill them and we get the loot? It is not usually done that way, here."
"Sorry. But that's the way we do things. Now, can we get past the ponies? We've got a Titan to free."
The smallest shepherd boy tugged at the older woman's sleeve. "Why is that man so dark, Mama? When all the others are white and blue?"
It was an accurate enough observation. "It's my natural color, son," answered Lamont. "And the blue on the rest of them is just because they're cold."
The woman smiled and clapped. "Aha! Cold! Timotar. You and the other boys collect the clothes from the bodies of Cholkar's band. Come on. Jump to it."
Jerry looked at the heavy sheepskin jacket the boy was handing him. He'd live through the blood on it. The shepherd boy had done his best to wipe it away. And Jerry'd become a lot less squeamish since coming to the Krim Ur-universes. But the black line of migrants pouring out of it . . .
Whether freezing to death wasn't better than being parasitized to death was a moot point, at least while the two, brightly dressed, Colchian tribeswomen had such a nice fire going. Looking at Liz he saw a similar expression on her face. Her eyes narrowed as they always did when she was thinking.
"I say, Jerry. Those wild animal spells—do you think the size of the animals matters?"
Lamont looked at the line of hungry lice. He shuddered. "Believe me, Jerry. Those critters look really wild to me. We'd probably be better off with tigers. At least they'd just eat you alive and not eat you alive and give you diseases as well."
"Then let us try some game-driving spells . . . "
The jacket, overtrousers, scarf, fur hat and even the boots fit reasonably well; the leg wrappings that did duty as socks were now at least vermin-free, if not clean. The warmth seeping into his bones from being insulated from the wind outside was delightful. And so was the hot, spicy soup.
The Colchian tribeswomen had long since passed from fear into a state of bemused amazement. Lice were things you lived with . . . A life without them was unimaginable. Looting, rape, murder and servitude were facts of life. People who captured a pack train of stolen fleeces and a herd of sheep, and then told you to help yourself, were a totally unheard of experience. The women and their children weren't at all sure about what they were seeing here.
The older woman asked in a carefully artless voice. "And just whereabouts is this 'America'?"
Cruz gestured vaguely. "It's quite a long way to the west."
Half an hour later they set off up the mountain, warmly dressed and certain they were heading in the right direction. That much the Colchian hill people could tell them. The Titan was up there. Up where no man ever went, but the snow lay eternal.
An errant snatch of wind brought voices up the mountain.
"And where will we go now, Mama?"
"First back to your Uncle Sebatia, Timmi. Then we are going west."
Cruz halted. Looked guilty and all set to turn back downhill. "I didn't mean it like that . . . "
"Leave it," said Lamont. "I don't think you can explain—or that she'll believe you."
Liz gave a wry grin. "And in the long run you might just have planted the seed for a place not unlike the U.S."
Cruz shook his head. "They'll never reach America."
Jerry shrugged. "America the continent probably doesn't even exist in this Ur-universe. But what they may get to is a place where the rule of brute force isn't all that there is. And if not, they'll make one of their own. They know it is possible now. The dream exists."
Lamont pulled a face. "And they might find the U.S. a bit of a letdown, compared to the dream."
"Compared to this? I mean, I'm not saying the U.S. is perfect . . . " Which, coming from Liz, was a bit rich. It would have been even funnier from Henri.
"Well, at least they have much wealth now," said Medea.
Lamont chuckled. "A herd of killer sheep and some ponies?"
"No, the golden fleeces," said Medea.
"They looked like bundles of sheepskins to me," said Cruz.
She frowned. "They are sheepskins. They peg them into the stream beds to gather the heavy grains of gold."
"That's what a golden fleece is?" asked Jerry, fascinated.
Medea looked at him as if he were a slightly mentally deficient child. "Of course. What else?"
Cruz, with thoughts about having to support a princess and her two children, looked at Lamont. Lamont, with thoughts of the constant battle to pay rent, never mind the bills, looked at Cruz. "Oh, Lord. Gold. No wonder they thought we were crazy!"
The golden subject returned to democracy, a concept that puzzled both Bes and Medea severely, as they continued up the mountain.
Jerry finally realized the truly amazing thing about it all. He was actually talking while walking up a thirty-five-degree slope. Either Pan's spells had some kind of bio-enhancement effect, or he was getting fit.