It was a big room, lighted by two candles, one on a table spread with a meal and the other on the mantel, and by the fire on the hearth. Double-deck bunks along one wall, fireplace with things stacked against it. There were three men and another, younger, woman, besides the one who had admitted the comer of his eye he could see children peering around a door that seemed to open into a shed-annex. One of the men, big and blonde-bearded, stood with his back to the fireplace, holding what looked like a short gun.
No, it wasn't, either. It was a crossbow, bent, with a quarrel in the groove. The other two men were younger-probably his sons, Both were bearded, though one's beard was only a blonde fuzz. He held an axe; his older brother had a halberd. All three wore sleeveless leather jerkins, short-sleeved shirts, and cross-gartered hose. The older woman spoke in a whisper to the younger woman, who went through the door at the side, hustling the children ahead of her.
He had raised his hands pacifically as he entered. "I'm a friend," he said. "I'm going to Bellefonte; how far is it?"
The man with the crossbow said something. The woman replied. The youth with the axe said something, and they all laughed.
"My name's Morrison. Corporal, Pennsylvania State Police." Hell, they wouldn't know the State Police from the Swiss Marines. "Am I on the road to Bellefonte?" They ought to know where that was, it had been settled in 1770, and this couldn't be any earlier than that.
More back-and-forth. They weren't talking Pennsylvania Dutch-he knew a little of it. Maybe Polish. no, he'd heard enough of that in the hard-coal country to recognize it, at least. He looked around while they argued, and noticed, on a shelf in the far corner, three images. He meant to get a closer look at them. Roman Catholics used images, so did Greek Catholics, and he knew the difference.
The man with the crossbow laid the weapon down, but kept it bent with the quarrel in place, and spoke slowly and distinctly. It was no language he had ever heard before. He replied, just as distinctly, in English. They looked at one another, and passed their hands back and forth across their faces. On a thousand-to-one chance, he tried Japanese. It didn't pay off. By signs, they invited him to sit and eat with them, and the children, six of them, trooped in.
The meal was ham, potatoes and succotash. The eating tools were knives and a few horn spoons; the plates were stabs of corn-bread. The men used their belt-knives. He took out his jackknife, a big switchblade he'd taken off a j d. arrest, and caused a sensation with it. He had to demonstrate several times. There was also elderberry wine, strong but not particularly good. When they left the table for the women to clear, the men filled pipes from a tobacco-jar on the mantel, offering it to him. He filled his own, lighting it, as they had, with a twig from the hearth. Stepping back, he got a look at the images.
The central figure was an elderly man in a white robe with a blue eight pointed star on his breast. Flanking him, on the left, was a seated female figure, nude and exaggeratedly pregnant, crowned with wheat and holding a cornstalk; and on the right a masculine figure in a mail shirt, holding a spiked mace. The only really odd thing about him was that he had the head of a wolf. Father god, fertility goddess, war god. No, this crowd weren't Catholics Greek, Roman or any other kind.
He bowed to the central figure, touching his forehead, and repeated the gesture to the other two. There was a gratified murmur behind him; anybody could see he wasn't any heathen. Then he sat down on a chest with his back to the wall.
They hadn't re-barred the door. The children had been herded back into the annex by the younger woman. Now that he recalled, there'd been a vacant place, which he had taken, at the table. Somebody had gone off somewhere with a message. As soon as he finished his pipe, he pocketed it, managing, unobtrusively, to unsnap the strap of his holster.
Some half an hour later, he caught the galloping thud of hooves down the road-at least six horses. He pretended not to hear it; so did the others. The father moved to where he had put down the crossbow; the older son got hold of the halberd, and the fuzz-chinned youth moved to the door. The horses stopped outside; the dogs began barking frantically. There was a clatter of accoutrements as men dismounted. He slipped the. 38 out and cocked it.
The youth went to the door, but before he could open it, it flew back in his face, knocking him backward, and a man-bearded face under a high combed helmet, steel long sword in front of him-entered. There was another helmeted head behind, and the muzzle of a musket. Everybody in the room shouted in alarm; this wasn't what they'd been expecting, at all. Outside, a pistol banged, and a dog howled briefly.
Rising from the chest, he shot the man with the sword. Half-cocking with the double-action and thumbing the hammer back the rest of the way, he shot the man with the musket, which went off into the. ceiling. A man behind him caught a crossbow quarrel in the forehead and pitched forward, dropping a long pistol unfired.
Shifting the Colt to his left hand, he caught up the sword the first man had dropped. Double-edged, with a swept guard, it was lighter than it looked, and beautifully balanced. He stepped over the body of the first man he had shot, to be confronted by a swordsman from outside, trying to get over the other two. For a few moments they cut and parried, and then he drove the point into his opponent's unarmored face, then tugged his blade free as the man went down. The boy, who had gotten hold of the dropped pistol, fired past him and hit a man holding a clump of horses in the road. Then he was outside, and the man with the halberd along with him, chopping down another of the party. The father followed; he'd gotten the musket and powder-flask, and was reloading it.
Driving the point of the sword into the ground, he bolstered his Colt and as one of the loose horses passed, caught the reins, throwing himself into the saddle. Then, when his feet had found the stirrups, he stooped and retrieved the sword, thankful that even in a motorized age the state police taught their men to ride.
The fight was over, at least here. Six attackers were down, presumably dead; two more were galloping away. Five loose horses milled about, and the two young men were trying to catch them. Their father had charged the short musket, and was priming the pan.
This had only been a sideshow fight, though. The main event was a half mile down the road; he could hear shots, yells and screams, and a sudden orange glare mounted into the night. While he was quieting the horse and trying to accustom him to the change of ownership, a couple more fires blazed up. He was wondering just what he had cut himself in on when the fugitives began streaming up the road. He had no trouble identifying them as such; he'd seen enough of that in Korea.
There were more than fifty of them-men, women and children. Some of the men had weapons spears, axes, a few bows, one musket almost six feet long. His bearded host shouted at them, and they paused.
"What's going on down there?" he demanded. Babble answered him. One or two tried to push past; he cursed them luridly and slapped at them with his flat. The words meant nothing, but the tone did. That had worked for him in Korea, too. They all stopped in a clump, while the bearded man spoke to them. A few cheered. He looked them over; call it twenty electives. The bodies in the road were stripped of weapons; out of the comer of his eye he saw the two women passing things out the cottage door. Four of the riderless horses had been caught and mounted. More fugitives came up, saw what was going on, and joined.
"All right, you guys! You want to live forever?" He swung his sword to include all of them, then pointed down the road to where a whole village must now be burning. "Come on, let's go get them!"