The Reluctant Shaman and Other Fantastic Tales

For the Seteshans were a small people, dark, slender, hatchet-faced, and scant of beard, while Gezun was a typical Lorska: over six feet before he had reached his full growth, with the bold, rugged features, the big, sharp nose, beetling brow, and square, jutting jaw of his folk. His skin was almost as dark as a Seteshan's. His hair was thick, black, and curly, and he had a respectable beard despite his youth. A girl in Yavan had told him he looked like a god—not the grim sort of god who broods on people's sins and dispenses doom by thunderbolts, but the kind who roams the earth teaching people to make wine and looking for likely mortal maids on whom to get demigods.

In the open, he could have outrun most Seteshans. But in these twisted streets, he hesitated at turnings long enough to let the mob gain back what they had lost in the straight stretches. Furthermore, with such a large crowd, there were bound to be some swift runners. These pressed to the front. Their teeth gleamed, their eyes glared, and foam blew back from their chins. They bore knives, stones, bricks—whatever they had snatched up. Their panting breaths were like the hissing of a thousand snakes.

Gezun passed a tavern where a pair of King Zeremab's archers lounged in the doorway. He slid to a stop and pointed back at the mob.

"They—look—help me—" he gasped.

The soldiers glanced. The mob shrieked: "Slay the cat-killer! Burn the blasphemer! Flay the foul foreigner!"

The soldiers looked at one another. One cried: "Slay the foreign devil!" and drew his dagger.

Gezun hit him over the ear with his staff and knocked him sprawling. The other archer started forward but fell over his companion. Gezun ran on, a corner of his cloak flapping behind him like a flag.

Passing a potter's stall, he jerked the rack of finished pots so that it fell forward with a crash, filling the street with bouncing, rolling, and smashing pots. The obstacle hardly checked the mob. The leaders cleared the pots in long leaps. The rest flowed over them like some natural force. A few fell, but the rest trampled on and scrambled over the fallen, heedless of what bones of their own folk they broke if they could only get at the hated alien.

Another corner. Gezun's teeth showed, too, as he gasped. His staff got heavier with every stride. Should he throw it away or keep it for his last stand? He had a short, bronze, Tartessian sword under his cloak, but with the staff he might be able to hold the mob at arms' length. The sword, although deadlier, would let them close enough to fasten on him like the giant leeches of the Tritonian Sea and pull him down.

With a burst of speed, Gezun gained enough so that he turned one corner before the mob rounded the last one. Coming out upon a street in which Gezun was not to be seen, the mob hesitated before dividing like a stream of ants, half going each way.

Gezun made another turn, into a mere alley, not wide enough to let two men pass unless they sidled past one another. It was so crooked that he could see along it only a few paces. On either side rose high walls of stone or brick, without openings save, once in a while, a stout wooden door. Gezun knew enough of Seteshan customs not to expect help there.

The alley ended. Gezun faced another wall across his path. He was in a cul-de-sac. The walls rose smoothly around him, except where to one side was a gap a pace wide between two houses. The space was blocked up to the height of a man by a mass of rubble from some earlier edifice, which had been simply pushed into the place between the houses when they were built. A man could climb over the fallen masonry, but beyond it rose the wall of still another house. So the space between the houses formed a minor cul-de-sac, branching off from the main one.

The sound of the mob, muted for the moment, rose again. Plainly, they were coming down the alley to see if he had taken refuge there. The crowd had put off an offshoot, like a tendril, to probe all nearby cavities for its prey. In such a narrow space they could come at him only one or two at a time. If they were mere soldiers he might hold them off, at least until he dropped from exhaustion or somebody fetched a bow to shoot him.

But with a mob of fanatics, those behind would push those in front, willing or not, up against Gezun faster than he could knock or cut them down. So the end would be the same, with the swarm fastening on him, using teeth and nails if there was no room to wield a weapon. Teeth and nails would kill one just as dead as swords and spears, and rather more painfully.

Gezun pounded on the nearest door. The copper shutter that closed the peephole on the inside moved aside. A black Seteshan eye looked out.

"Let me in!" said Gezun. "I am beset!"

The shutter moved back into place. Gezun angrily thrust at it with his staff, but it held. He was not surprised. The noise of the mob grew louder.

The pile of rubble might make a better place for a last stand than the alley proper. Not only was the gap between the houses narrower, but also by mounting the pile one could make the pursuers climb up and whack them on the sconce as they came.

Gezun sprang into the gap and had begun to climb the pile when a voice said: "In here, foreign devil!"