Arms of Steel: The Lost Crusade

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"That kiss will be enough to keep me going." The Princess giggled and lurched out of the room as if intoxicated.

The sun had started to rise gold in the single tower window of the princess's room. Sir Athelstane the Saxon was not tired, and started to flex his naked, brass-colored, Herculean body in the presence of a mirror, startled by the appearance of the shadows that appeared over cuts and full bulges. He could hardly believe it. He expected to awaken at any moment back as carrot-haired, ordinary Sir Sigurd.

He turned to the side and admired his thick, solid glutes, a tight bubble ass that rippled like a fish below water when he moved his legs. He placed a finger against its surface and saw it did not sink in no matter how hard he pressed.

Sir Athelstane grasped a huge iron-shafted spear from the Princess's walls. It was heavy, balanced and steel all the way through. He slid the spear right in between his ass cheeks, and clenched his ass together, causing the two muscles to roll and collide like crashing boulders. When he pulled the spear shaft out, it was broken in half, the area in between his ass flat as a piece of parchment and moulded to the two cheeks on either side. The bottom part of the spear fell to the ground, snapped.

He grasped a wooden gada, or mace from the Princess's wall next and bringing his arm back, he struck it against the hard serrated brick wall he called abs and tightened them like a bellydancer. He barely felt the blow, but the wooden mace was broken in half.

His reverie was interrupted by a smell of burning smoke, an explosion, screams, and a roar unlike that of any animal he had ever heard.

Sir Athelstane snapped like a cat with puma-quick reflexes and ran to the Princess's tower window. The sun was blocked out by an enormous shadow that covered the city of Bhopala like a shadow. Sir Athelstane looked above him and his jaw dropped.

It was a floating city with spires and obelisks, pagodas, and muezzin and onion-domes as glorious and golden as El Dorado itself, which hovered over Bhopala. The Cyclopean-masonry walls that surrounded the city to the east were caught asleep, to be smashed under the floating city's unassailable artillery and flaming arrows, that crashed and ignited the mountain people's defenses. The Maharaja's cavalry and war-elephants were trapped in by flaming walls to whinny and trumpet helplessly.

So this was what Princess Erzhad said when she mentioned that the Brahma-Rishi had allies in the Dreamtime!

Worse, Sir Athelstane saw pinpricks emerge from the city like tiny flashing meteors. Six of them streaked toward his open window and as they grew closer he saw what they were.

They were great winged white snow apes, seven feet in height. Their faces were like a baboon or mandrill, and they sported a tufted prehensile tail. Between the eyes in their sloping forehead was a glowing stone like a yellow opal. In one hand was a slim curved sword of the kind used by the Infidel Turks, and in the other was a Hindu punching-knife.

One of the monsters landed with a slam of its half-ton weight upon Sir Athelstane's windowledge, and perched with its handlike feet. With surprising ferocity, Sir Athelstane charged the creature. His hand shot out and grasped the ape's neck, and with one arm lifted its great bulk from the ground by a foot until its feet dangled in the air, and squeezed until the white of the creature's face turned purple and his fingers crushed bone and windpipe under them with a satisfying crush. It was as helpless as a mouse in the paws of a huge cat. The creature's pounding arms lashed against Sir Athelstane's iron body with a helpless flail, before finally it went limp as a tentacle of a jellyfish. Sir Athelstane dropped the dead meat off the ledge like a sack of potatoes.

The mighty bulging-biceped Saxon looked up and saw five more of the flying creatures in a v-shape streaking to the window, all in iron breastplates. In a flash, he realized why they were so keen to target this tower: they believed the Princess was there. If the Brahma-Rishi had the Princess, he could force them into giving the ring. He had to find the Princess!

Sir Athelstane leaped back with a bounce of his powerful legs like a soap bubble, and from its great sheath, he drew Witchslayer. The Saxon slashed the black sword in a silver halfcircle crescent that broke and shattered the five blades of the five winged snow apes like a farmer's scythe cuts through wheat stalks.

Sir Athelstane twisted his core with flexibility that meant the punching daggers of the ape-men hit only air. He leapt with his powerhouse legs like the uncoiling of a spring, a move shook the ground and took him to to the unprotected flank of an ape-creature. He extended his sword in mid-leap and struck the creature in the side, the blade popped the steel breastplate like a can-opener and moved almost a foot deep into the softer flesh below by a power blow. The point of the sword drove into the monster's still-beating heart.

Sir Athelstane withdrew the sword, and using it like a parrying fan that deflected punching daggers, he brought up one of his enormous legs and kicked a creature in the chest and sent it flying as if it was a man made of straw, out the window.

Two of the apes drew giant spears from their backs and hurled them from their arms like living catapults at the blood-drenched Saxon superwarrior. They sped as inevitable as continental drift. Sir Athelstane extended one arm out and caught the spear along its wooden length, halting it in mid-flight. Sir Athelstane caught the other in the line of separation between his oversized pecs, the weapon's point an inch from his sternum, the pole shaft sticking vertically out from his pecs. With a twitch and flex of his big chest, Sir Athelstane snapped the forearm-thick wood shaft of the spear like a straw.

The knight looked down and saw his massive tool had sprung to life and rose at a 45 degree angle until it slid between his abs and up to the underside of his pecs. This was giving him an erection!

Sir Athelstane felt a throbbing pulse on his hand. The gem on their foreheads...it is a slave-stone. It projects the will and rage of another into them. The big-armed stud shot his huge hands with blurring speed and snatched the rocks from the foreheads from the two apes. With a squeeze, he crushed the slave-stones into a fine yellow powder.

The rage of the creatures was replaced with a sudden look of confusion the instant the stone was pulled away from them. Sir Athelstane turned on his heel and ran with a speed that would leave a jackrabbit behind down the spiral staircase, the punch of his jet-powered legs crushed each of the stairs under his feet. He grasped his clothing on the way out. As he spun around to exit, his hard low-hanging stiffy slapped against the waist of an ape, and sent him sprawled on his back.

Sir Athelstane had to summon his willpower to calm down and squeeze his giant zucchini into his short pants.

How did I just know that about the stones? The ring somehow must be telling me. There's more to it than even my predecessor knew.

The heroic knight leaped amongst the darkened city streets; from horizon to horizon, the sky was filled with the floating city above. He dashed to the Bhopala palace jeweler to see the princess, the cobblestones on the street sent up in a trail behind him, his feet slammed and pushed off the ground with such force that he lodged himself up to his ankles. Even a charging mustang could not match his speed.

"You are entirely too late, Christian." An aged, wheezing voice sprang from behind him. It was the Brahma-Rishi himself, riding a tortoise the size of an elephant. "My slaves have already borne the Princess Erzhad as my guest up to the Sky City. She is my prisoner and will be worse unless you demonstrate some patience and serenity."

The Brahma-Rishi of Rupalistan's skin ws dark, but his thick beard was pure snow-white. His head was bald as an egg, shrunken and small as the skull of a monkey. His eyes were coal-black and had a baleful gaze as malevolent as Satan himself. His voice was huge for such a tiny man. Between his eyes was painted the V-mark that indicated devotion to Vishnu, and above was a ruby red gem in place of the traditional Bindi, which indicated what Sir Athelstane somehow knew was the Relay Slave-Stone.

"I can see now why you'd covet the ring enough to kill a good man for it, you leathery cross between a reptile and a corpse." Sir Sigurd sniffed dismissively.

The Brahma-Rishi let out a cracked, wheezing laugh like a teacher to a student's dimwitted answer. "You haven't the slightest inkling as to the ring's true power, Christian. You think all it can do is a body-switch parlor trick? I tell you, it has powers beyond your boring imagination. It is one of two Master Rings, used to create humans and to exile the Beast-Gods to the Dreamtime...the other was lost ages ago. Either one is worth an empire – ten empires."

"But then again," the Rishi continued, "I wouldn't expect your young race to know of it. The 'secret wisdom' kept in Rupalistan goes back to the age when the Greeks, Celts, and Indians were all one tribe, when the gods of Greece and India were allies before they became foes."

Sir Athelstane for a moment remembered stories of the gods of Greece, how in the primeval darkness they battled another equally more powerful race, the Titans, some of whom, the Hetonchieres, were disntinguished because of their many arms and heads...

"Enough of this. You're not worthy to touch the Princess, base varlet!" The mighty Saxon lifted his lethal sword with both huge hands and hammishly slashed downward in the manner of his Viking ancestors at the turtle and its rider. The blade moved through the turtle as if it was a cloud of smoke.

The Brahma-Rishi laughed his vile laugh, the turtle and its rider disappeared as if a mirage, with only the surprisingly deep voice of the holy man left behind. Sir Athelstane cursed himself for the loss of his composure.

"An Astral Projection, one of the mind-powers of the Brahmin of Rupalistan. See here, Christian: the Princess is my prisoner. I will trade her life for the ring. If you do not, I will send her into her next incarnation. Her death will be on your Karma, not mine."

Sir Athelstane looked up and saw the sky city drifted away from Bhopala. The slave-stones on the foreheads of the winged snow apes started to glow, and the creatures abandoned their attacks as if a switch had been turned, and took to the air and soared to the floating city like a flock of migrating birds. The sky city flew up and vanished off the horizon.

The Herculean Knight heard a clomp of iron boots, the charge of Sir Athelstane's Oathbound Men in their beelike black and yellow striped cloaks.

"My Liege!" One of the Bandemanna said. "We had to awaken and don our armor. The sky city emerged from nowhere, and was upon us before the warriors of the east wall could react. How fares the Princess?"

"The Princess has been captured. Gather the rest of the Oathbound Men." The Dane was amazed at how naturally and easily Sir Athelstane's ability to command came.

Before heading to meet with his men, Sir Athelstane ventured to the city's forge, where he saw the men had completed work on what the Princess had asked them to make when she was seized. They handed it to him in a box. Sir Athelstane looked at it and smiled.

The Brahma-Rishi descended into the dungeons beneath the floating city. He was always revolted to enter such places and considered it beneath one of his caste to enter such an unclean place. Unlocking steel bars, he stood before the Princess Rupali, who was bound to the wall in her torn clothes with chains made of solid gold.

The Brahma-Rishi ran his finger along the Princess's face. "Aye, you're beautiful. More beautiful than Sita or Helen of Troy." He spoke without hyperbole in his voice, his tone almost clinical.

The Princess rolled her head from his touch and bit his finger.

The Brahma-Rishi pulled back as if from a dangerous animal. "Have it your way." The Brahma-Rishi hissed. "I know all about your skill as a contortionist, so I had my Dreamtime allies forge these gold chains. Struggle as you will. Only a person that is pure of heart can break them. And even if your view of human nature is not quite as cynical as mine, you must agree that is quite a minority."

The eleven Oath-Bound Men assembled in their fortified pagoda waiting to be commanded. Sir Athelstane eyed them warily; for one among them had tried to kill "him."

There was Sir Gavin of Kent, the hunchback who had armor molded for his unusual body. No stronger man was there than he save Sir Athelstane, beside whom even his might was like that of a child. There too, was Sir Bruge du Calaís, a veteran mercenary who loved Sir Athelstane for allowing him to fight for righteous causes instead of for greed. There too, was the pointed-bearded Norman, Sir Caudiér, and the virgin she-warrior Deidre von Eisenbach, who was called to the sword for religious purposes, and for her vow of lifelong chastity was called 'the Iron Maiden.' Even among the Oath-Bound, religious men on average, she was known for her piety.

"Sire! Are we going to rescue the princess? By God! I wonder if we'll be saving her from those Eastern devils, or saving the Eastern devils from her! She's a fighting, snarling killer cat." Sir Gavin the hunchback said. His face was normal, green-eyed, with chipmunk cheeks; handsome and endearing.

"I have yet to tell you what it is the Brahma-Rishi wants." Sir Athelstane said.

The hunchback drew his sword out. "What does it matter? A beautiful woman is in need of rescue! And if I may say, there too's the matter of little Sir Sigurd. I was rather fond of that Danish lad, the youngest and best of us."

The Norman sniffed dismissively. "Listen to yourselves! What good is this talk when we do not even know where that devilish sky city is now, and we have no means to reach it."

"Ahhh, but I do know where it is. You might be able to deduce too, if you were paying attention." Sir Athelstane smiled.

"I say, good old Sir Athelstane! I see why he's the leader." The hunchback said.

"What is it the men want, in return for the Princess?" The Norman asked.

Sir Athelstane showed his platinum ring. "This ring."

The hunchback laughed. "Just that trifle? Then why not give it to them?"

"That is precisely what I mean to do. The one trouble is, I cannot figure out a way to get to the sky city short of growing wings and flying. God, if only a great King from the past or future, Charlemagne or Arthur, could aid us now!"

The ring let out a buzz sound. Sir Athelstane instinctively covered his hand with his other hand to still the noise.

A scuffle and clamor could be heard outside. The fighting instincts of the veteran Oath-Bound Men, who warred from Esthonia to Persia, were raised. Sir Athelstane raised his immense cinderblock fist and with the power of his 28" arms behind it, he struck the huge oak pagoda door like a lightning bolt, shattering it in twain with a shower of wood sparks, his legs causing the ground to quake as he pounced through as agile as a panther.

In the hallway was a pair of Bhopala palace guards wrestling a big man with a square round head, and a pair of gold hoop spectacles over his eyes. He looked like a white Christian like themselves though his clothes were strange. "See here, sirs, most unsporting of you to take a man two to one! I warn you, I'm no slouch when it comes to gentleman's fisticuffmanship!"

At this, the stranger wound a Sunday punch that drove into the guard's plate, sending him flying. The other reached for the weapon at the stranger's waist, a huge steel tube the size of a sword.

"Bolts and balderdash, son! Don't be touching that –"

A loud noise like thunder shook the room and the man holding his weapon keeled over dead.

Sir Athelstane raised his shield instinctively. "Sir? Who in the name of St. Peter are you?"

The stranger let loose a huge toothy grin, and hiked up his palm-thick leather belt. "By Jove, lad, I'm the answer to your prayers! The ring called for help from the Dreamtime, and I answered, because I was spoiling for a good fight! You can call me Teddy. Teddy Roosevelt. With a little elbow-grease and good old fashioned American know-how, I say there's nothing we can't lick!"

"It's a trick, my liege! Some phantom Halfling of the Brahma-Rishi sent to spy!" The Norman roared, his swordpoint drawn.

"Nay! As strange as it sounds, he speaks the truth." Sir Athelstane looked down at his ring. "You are welcome among us, Sir Teddy of Roosevelt. The Princess of Rupalistan has been kidnapped. I am Sir Athelstane the Saxon, and we mean to rescue her. Will you be the twelfth of my Oath-Bound Men?"

"Why, of course! Rupalistan, you say? By gum! It does my old Knickerbocker heart good to be back here. It's been years since I was big game hunting in the mountains." Teddy Roosevelt made gestures with his iron tube-weapon.

"What a strange weapon, sir. Is it from the Dreamtime?" Sir Athelstane asked.

"Heavens no, son! Why, I daresay it's little different from this sporting country's fireworks."

Sir Athelstane scratched his masculine, goldskinned and goateed lower face. He let out a great, deep, hearty laugh which startled the others like the laugh of a giant. "I have it! I know how we will reach the Sky City and save the Princess. Teddy, are certain you are fit to come with us?"

"Nonsense, my boy! Why, I feel as fit as a bull moose!"

"Then let us find Rupalistan's kitemakers, for I have a special project for them. We too, will help them work. We'll work all through the day and into the night. Then we'll fly to the sky city and take the Princess back!"

"In the meantime, the Brahma Rishi might try to steal his ring back with his Dreamtime allies, who may have strange and devilish powers. He will believe I keep it on me at all times. In case I am captured, the ring falls into his hands. I intend to remove the ring, and place it in our weapons and supply room. None but us will know of this." Sir Athelstane removed his ring and placed it among the other supplies the Knights kept in the pagoda.

The Oath-Bound Men cheered. During the work, Teddy Roosevelt predictably enough, dominated the conversation, with tales of his Rough Riders and San Juan Hill.

Late at night, the project was finished. Enormous kites with Oriental designs of dragon, lion, and carp. Below each was a bar with which a warrior would ride, and beside each were the queer, concentrated variety of firework only the men of the Himalayan Dragon Kingdom knew how to make.

"God be praised!" Diedre von Eisenbach, the Iron Maiden said. "Our work would not have been possible without you, Theodore. In your time, you must be a truly great King."

The great, ruddy man blushed, his hand to the back of his head. "T'weren't nothing, my dear! Just a couple lessons learned from my good friends Orville and Wilbur."

Meanwhile, leather-boot clad feet walked on the stucco of the pagoda, and a dark figure crept through the window and dropped to the ground noiselessly. The figure pulled open a wood crate, unwrapped a leather satchel. Inside was Sir Athelstane's platinum ring. The figure put the ring on his finger.

A massive form burst from the ceiling as soundlessly as a great bronze cloud. Sir Athelstane raised his immense arms. "Sir Caudiér the Norman! You traitor! You poisoned the original Sir Athelstane and tried to use me as your alibi!"

"Aye! Sir Sigurd, that's you in there, isn't it?"

"How obvious was it? You deliberately went to fetch me to establish your blamelessness. You didn't kill him yourself, but you had a servant friend of yours in the palace do so. He slipped up, however, and asked if Sir Athelstane had been poisoned...before the cause of death was known!"