Norman Spinrad

Feric smiled bravely. "I must admit the ride made my throat somewhat dry," he said. "I thank you for your magnanimous hospitality."

Thus speaking, Feric emptied his lungs, sucked in a great breath of air, hoisted the drinking hom to his lips, and poured a great swallow of heavy, powerful ale directly down his throat. When he had filled his mouth and throat to the choking point, he gulped the brew down, while continuing to decant more ale into his mouth on its heels. The second great mouthful immediately followed the first down Feric's gullet while he poured a third; thus he established a rapid rythm of pouring and swallowing so that the aie gushed from the drinking hom to his mouth, down his throat, and into his stomach in a constant torrent.

Faster and faster, Feric gulped the strong dark ale, nearly on the verge of choking, for he felt both (he building ache in his lungs and the cool metal of Stopa's cocked pistol against the back of his neck. His head began to spin and his knees to grow weak, both from lack of breath and surfeit of brew. But he summoned up his last reserves of will from the core of his being and felt the 64

psychic power fight back heroically against the pain in his chest, the gorge in his throat, and the spongy feeling in his knees. He redoubled his efforts, gulping down what seemed like oceans of ale. After an eternity measurable only by the roaring in his ears, the pain in his chest, the pistol at his head, and the choking torrent of ale in his mouth and throat, the hom finally gave up its last drop.

Exhaling a great rush of stale air, Feric tossed the empty drinking hom end over end into the press of Black Avengers, who roared their manly approval of the feat while Stopa put aside his pistol and regarded Feric with a certain grudging respect.

For his part, Peric spent this respite drawing in great gasps of air as the iron slowly returned to his knees. The great bonfire behind Stopa sent clouds of orange smoke and flickers of brilliance up as an offering into the black sky; around each torch in the circle was a sparkling aura.

"Not a bad brew," Feric finally said when he had caught his breath. "Perhaps you'd care to try it?"

The Avengers howled their approval of this notion gleefully and one of them tossed the great drinking hom back to Feric while Stopa fumed in silent rage. Feric dipped the hom into the keg and handed Stopa a brimming measure.

Stopa fairly yanked the hom out of Feric's hands, raised it to his lips in the same motion, and drew one hasty breath before swilling the ale down in great gulps and slobbers which distributed a good portion of the stuff on his jerkin and beard. He ended his quaffing with a series of unesthetic chokes, coughs, and retches, but none-theless was able to upend a drinking hom out of which no liquid spilled.

Stopa tossed away the drinking hom and stood panting in the orange glow like a great beast of prey, his eyes inflamed with drink and rage, his muscles standing out in bands, his black leather jerkin shining in the firelight where the ale clung to it.

"We'll see! We'll see!" Stopa roared somewhat drunken-ly. "You like the taste of ale, do you, Jaggar? Well let's see how you like the taste of fire! Set up the gauntletl Bring him a bike! The Test of Fire!"

At once the Avengers broke ranks and made for the torches staked in the ground, each man uprooting his own spear of flame. They quickly arranged themselves into two parallel rows of about twenty men to a side, with just 65

enough distance between them so that there was a corridor of relative safety a scant yard wide between them when they extended their torches at full arm's length toward each other. The wind-whipped flames of the torches danced tantalizingly through this narrow aisle, enlivening even this thin path through the gauntlet with intermittent tongues of fire.

An engine roared to life in the darkness beyond reach of the firelight, and a moment later a motorcycle with crimson enamel and great chromed fins sporting black swastikas in white circles was driven to one end of the flaming corridor by an Avenger in a black leather jerkin on which was sewn a white swastika in a red circle. The Avenger dismounted and put the cycle up on its stand; the engine, however, was left running, thrumming with power, rumbling its challenge.

"I'll stand at one end of the line," Stopa shouted loudly, as much for the Avengers' benefit as for Feric's, "and you, Jaggar, will drive Sigmark's cycle through the fire to my side. Any real Avenger can do it; our hides are too tough to be scorched by anything short of the sky fire of the ancients." At this, the twin lines of Avengers cheered and waved their torches grandly overhead.