Great Kings' War by Roland Green, John F. Carr Page A

wolves. Woodcutting parties were going out again so people weren't freezing to death quite so often, and winter had to be two-thirds gone unless another Ice Age was making its appearance. However, when spring arrived so would the next round against Styphon's House and their puppets in Harphax City.
    By the time Kalvan's thoughts had gone that far, the snow was up to his horse's knees and it looked as if it would be even deeper farther on. Kalvan guided the horse to the left, down into the bed of the little stream, and then stopped as he felt his mount's hooves begin to slide on the ice.
    The clouds were thicker and darker, and while it wasn't snowing—thank Dralm for small mercies! —the wind was blowing the snow already on the ground.
    "Your Majesty, should we be stopping here?" Count Phrames' voice came from behind. "We are too strong to tempt wolves or bandits if we keep moving, but if we stop we may look like easy prey."
    "In that case, they're gong to get a nasty surprise," Kalvan said, as he pulled a pistol out of his boot and checked the load, the flint, the priming. Then he pulled his horse's head around with one hand, holding the pistol cocked and ready with the other.
    As he left the road, he heard Phrames calling out that the Great King wished to ride apart with his scouts and pray to the gods of this homeland for guidance. If he'd thought there was anyone home, Kalvan would have done exactly that. However, neither the late Rev. Morrison's determination that his only son follow him into the ministry nor the here-and-now baker's dozen of gods and goddesses had altered his basic agnosticism.
    What he was doing probably wasn't any more rational than praying, but it worked better for him. He intended to ride up to the four-foot thick hemlock standing below a little cliff that marked the place where Kalvan had left otherwhen Pennsylvania on May 19, 1964 and wound up here in the Five—now Six Kingdoms. The hemlock marked the site of the farmhouse where an escaped murderer had been holed up. A murderer who'd escaped jail, come home to this ramshackle farmhouse and beat on his wife until she'd escaped and told a neighbor. According to his wife, Bill Kirby had a rifle and a grudge against the State Police.
    Kalvan had been skulking toward the yellow farmhouse, his hand close to the butt of his .38 Colt, with fellow Pennsylvania State Policemen Steve Kovac, Larry Stacey and Jack French, when he was scooped up by the cross-time flying saucer. He wondered what they thought about his disappearance...probably thought he'd turned tail and ran, Dralm-blast it!
    Kalvan didn't like that at all; he'd never run from a fight in his life. One thing was true: no one back home had seen hide nor hair of him since he'd been picked up by that a cross-time saucer. Other than Aunt Harriet, there was no one to miss him back home; he'd broken up with Kate over six months before he disappeared. Last he'd heard, she was engaged to a dentist... She'd always fretted over the danger of police work; he'd never known how right she was!
    Of course, Kate had imagined dangers closer to home than here-and-now, where medicine was of the barber and leech variety and one was as likely to get run over by a runaway Conestoga wagon as die peacefully in bed. Not a lot of old folks here-and-now...
    Still, climbing the cliff and visiting the tree calmed him down when he needed calming, and sometimes gave him an idea for the solution of some particularly knotty problem. Call it his touchstone to the past. Kalvan had visited this spot three times since his arrival here-and-now; on this, his fourth visit, he needed a relaxing place to ponder events more than ever. Next year's battles would determine whether or not the fledgling Great Kingdom he'd created would endure or end in an orgy of blood-letting and burning...
    This spot was also where Kalvan had started to write his Journal—maybe a foolish conceit, but it helped keep his perspective on who he had been, a