The Nonborn King Read Free

compelled the caravan's escorting pack of huge bear-dogs to attack Lady Epone and the other soldiers In the ensuing fray, the samurai Tatsuji was killed, as well as the entire escort of gray troops Richard approached Epone. thinking that she, too, was dead But the exotic woman seized him with her powerful mind, in spite of the fact that she was nearly torn to pieces Richard would have perished had he not stabbed her with Felice's little dagger
    (Much later, the nun, who was a physician, deduced that the nearly invulnerable Tanu were fatally poisoned by iron weapons For this reason, they had proscribed the use of iron in Pliocene Europe, making do with copper alloys and a kind of supertough glass, vitredur, in its place )
    Felice coveted Epone's golden torc. knowing that the mental amphfer was capable of releasing the great metafaculties now locked within her brain But before she could take the torc from the Tanu woman's body, mad Dougal grabbed it and threw it into the lake Amerie had to drug Felice with a sedative to prevent her from killing Dougal
    Bewildered and frightened, the ex-pnsoners realized that news of the fight must have been tetepathically flashed by the dying Epone to the nearest fort They would have to disperse quickly One group elected to follow Basil, the ex-don They would sail in small boats down the Lac de Bresse to the Jura Mountains
    Claude, the 133-year-old paleontologist, was more wilderness-wise after years of roughing it on wild planets in the Milieu He advised his friends of Group Green to avoid the open lake and instead head into the heavily forested Vosges Mountains, which were much closer than the Jura The surviving samurai wamor, Yosh, decided to go his way alone, heading north in hopes of reaching the sea
    The large group of escapees out on the lake was eventually almost entirely recaptured and taken in chains to the city of Finiah But Claude, Richard, Amerie, and Felice went deep into the Vosges, where they Finally made contact with a group of free outlaw humans, fugitives from Tanu settlements, who called themselves Lowlives
    The Lowlife leader was an old woman, Angelique Guderian, former keeper of the time-gate and the ultimate author of Pliocene humanity's degradation Around her neck was a golden lore, the gift of the Firvulag, those deadly enemies of the Tanu, who had formed a very tentative alliance with the Lowlives Madame had modest metapsychic powers
    The killing of Epone by the escapees were unprecedented Never before had a mere human been able to bring about the demise of one of the tough exotics, who normally enjoyed life spans of hundreds of years Tanu searchers, under Lord Velteyn of Finiah, now swarmed the Vosges region, looking for the ones who had done the deed The remnant of Group Green, together with Madame Guderian and some 200 Lowlives, hid in a great hollow tree until things should cool off Inside the refuge, Madame explained to the newcomers her great plan to free Pliocene humanity from the Tanu yoke, a task she had undertaken in order to expiate her own guilt
    Madame's deputy, a Native Amencan named Peopeo Moxmox Burke, who had once been a judge, was keenly interested in Amerie's theory about the deadliness of iron to the exotic race This might be an invaluable secret weapon in the liberation of humanity
    A friendly Firvulag named Fitharn Pegleg joined the Lowlives inside their sanctuary and told Group Green the legend of the Ship's Grave The great space-going organism that was Brede's mate had died in making the leap from its home galaxy to our own Tanu and Firvulag, passengers in the Ship led by Brede. escaped from the hulk m small flying machines just before it impacted upon the Earth, making a great crater known as the Ship's Grave
    For some time. Lowlives, working with Firvulag, had searched for this ancient site Even though a thousand years had passed, it was possible that some of the sophisticated flying machines left at the Grave might still be operational And