The Cache by Philip José Farmer Page A

his huge frame loomed over Benoni. He drew his sandalled foot back to kick Benoni in the ribs, and then he fell heavily. Zhem, coming up from behind, had kicked Joel hard in the ankle.
    Zhem kicked Joel in the ribs and knocked him down again. A figure soared out of the smoke and carried Zhem face-forward to the floor. Benoni struggled to his feet, picked up another stool, and brought it down on the man on top of Zhem. The man quit trying to bend Zhem’s neck backward until it would break, and he crumpled.
    Benoni whirled to face Joel, saw Joel had removed his belt and was holding it by one end and preparing to use it like a whip. The buckle on the other end, probably sharpened for just such an occasion as this, would slash like a knife if it caught Benoni.
    Benoni loosened the strap around his chin, took his steel helmet in hand. As he saw Joel flick the buckle-end of the belt back before lashing it out at him, he hurled the helmet at Joel’s face. The helmet struck Joel a glancing blow on top of his head, for Joel had ducked. Benoni was on him, inside the reach of the belt, before Joel could recover. He struck at the face, felt his fist hit the big jaw, and then was enfolded inside Joel’s arms. His arms were pinned to his sides in the bear hug.
    “I’ll break your back, you sidewinder!” said Joel. “How the hell did you ever get here?”
    “I’d find you in hell!” said Benoni.
    “So now what’re you going to do with me?”
    And Joel began squeezing.
    There was nothing Benoni could do except try to bring his knee up, and Joel was too good an infighter to allow that. Benoni did begin to hammer the top of his head against Joel’s chin, but he was so close to knocking himself out that he quit. Then he began tearing at Joel’s neck with his teeth, and he ripped the skin and tasted the blood on his mouth. But the breath was being forced from him, and his ribs felt as if they would collapse. His senses dimmed. If he did not do something at once, he would die in Joel’s arms. And those arms were the last he wanted to die in.
    Then, the arms fell away from him, and Joel was backing up to the wall, a swordpoint against his belly driving him.
    Benoni turned and saw that the tavern was filled with armed soldiers. These wore stuffed hawks on top of their helmets. The civilian police.
    Benoni was herded with the other brawlers outside the tavern and allowed to collapse against the wall while the police waited for the wagon that would bear the culprits to prison. By the time the wagon arrived, he was feeling well enough to stand and ask Zhem if he were all right. Zhem’s woolly scalp was bloody, but he laughed and said that this fight was better than the tankards of beer and a woman.
    Benoni got into the big cage on top of the wagon and sat down. Joel was the last to climb aboard. He made a lunge for Benoni as soon as the cage door was shut. Benoni leaned back, kicked out with his feet, and his steelhard soles caught Joel’s jaw and drove him backward. Joel fell heavily to the floor and lay there, unconscious and breathing hard. He did not come back to consciousness until shortly before the wagon halted in front of the prison-tower. He glared at Benoni but did not offer to attack again.
    One by one, the prisoners were taken out of the wagon, shackled by the wrists to each other, and led into an office. There they were identified, searched for weapons, relieved of their money, and led off to individual cells.
    “Good thing we’re military,” whispered Zhem to Benoni just before they went behind the bars. “If we were civilians, we’d all be put into a den. And a man’s lucky if he comes out of one of those alive. The professional criminals beat you up, maybe kill you, just because they don’t like non-professionals. They gang up on you or wait until you fall asleep.”
    Benoni was hungry, but he almost failed to eat when he saw the bowl of mush that was to be both his supper and breakfast. There was a blue mold