And she grabbed him.
41
Getting fleeced.
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.
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