Glory Road by Robert A. Heinlein

“Well, since you put it that way . . . no.”

“I do put it that way. We all sleep in comfort tonight. Isn’t that enough? You’ll enjoy it as much as anyone.”

“So will you.”

“When did I ever fail to enjoy anything? Hold your tongue. Now, Oscar, at the root of the cliff are the Horned Ghosts–no way to avoid them, they’ll see us coming down. With luck we won’t see any of the Cold Water Gang; they stay back in the mists. But if we have the bad luck to encounter both, we may have the good luck that they will fight each other and let us slip away. The path through the marsh is tricky; you had best study, this sketch until you know it. Solid footing is only where little yellow flowers grow no matter how solid and dry a piece looks. But, as you can see, even if you stay carefully on the safe bits, there are so many side trails and dead ends that we could wander all day and be trapped by darkness–and never get out.”

So here I was, coming down first, because the Horned Ghosts would be waiting at the bottom. My privilege. Wasn’t I a “Hero”? Hadn’t I made Igli swallow himself?

But I wished that the Horned Ghosts really were ghosts. They were two-legged animals, omnivorous. They ate anything, including each other, and especially travelers. From the belly up they were described to me as much like the Minotaur; from there down they were splayfooted satyrs. Their upper limbs were short arms but without real hands–no thumbs.

But oh those horns! They had horns like Texas longhorns, but sticking up and forward.

However, there is one way of converting a Horned Ghost into a real ghost. It has a soft place on its skull, like a baby’s soft spot, between those horns. Since the brute charges head down, attempting to impale you, this is the only vulnerable spot that can be reached. All it takes is to stand your ground, don’t flinch, aim for that one little spot–and hit it.

So my task was simple. Go down first, kill as many as necessary to insure that Star would have a safe spot to land, then stand fast and protect her until Rufo was down. After that we were free to carve our way through the marsh to safety. If the Cold Water Gang didn’t join the party–

I tried to ease my position in the sling I was riding–my left leg had gone to sleep–and looked down. A hundred feet below the reception committee had gathered.

It looked like an asparagus patch. Of bayonets.

I signaled to stop lowering. Far above me, Rufo checked the line; I hung there, swaying, and tried to think. If I had them lower me straight into that mob, I might stick one or two before I myself was impaled. Or maybe none–The only certainty was that I would be dead long before my friends could join me.

On the other hand, besides that soft spot between the horns, each of these geeks had a soft underbelly, just made for arrows. If Rufo would lower me a bit-

I signaled to him. I started slowly down, a bit jerkily, and he almost missed my signal to stop again. I had to pull up my feet; some of those babies were a-snorting and a-ramping around and shoving each other for a chance to gore me. One Nijinsky among them did manage to scrape the sole of my left buskin, giving me goose flesh clear to my chin.

Under that strong inducement I pulled myself hand over hand up the line far enough to let me get my feet into the sling instead of my fanny. I stood in it hanging onto the line and standing on one foot and then on the other to work pins and needles out. Then I unslung my bow and strung it. This feat would have been worthy of a trained acrobat–but have you ever tried to bend a bow and let fly while standing in a bight at one end of a thousand-foot line and clinging to the line with one hand?