The next day, Somnus’ lounge was more crowded than Proto ever had seen it. But he’d never met anyone who was here now, except Lilac. The only other somewhat familiar face was the slim man in a leather jacket he’d seen yesterday. His pink hair was pomaded into a new shape today, rather more James Dean than Elvis.

  Proto supposed he should wait for Astrid or Somnus to show up. He approached the bar and sat on a stool. “Morning, Lilac. You’re here bright and early.”

  “It’s equally bright and early at all times here,” she replied. “Coffee or tea?”

  “All business!” he lamented. “Like a robot. Programmed to do one thing, and one thing only: dispense drinks, and the best drinks you’ve ever tasted. No more, no less.”

  She eyed him flatly. “I’ve never even mixed you a drink.”

  He slapped the bar. “Then let’s fix that! Give me a coffee Lilac-style.”

  She arched a black eyebrow. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Surprise me!” he urged.

  She stared at him. “I don’t have a style.”

  “Oh, come on now,” he waved. “How about the way you—”

  “That will have to wait,” came a voice behind him.

  He turned around. The pink-haired man was approaching and setting his empty mug on the bar.

  “It’s time for us to head out, if we want to make this visit,” the man said. “Dream’s started already.”

  Proto blinked. “No Astrid today?”

  “Just Mayger today, no Astrid. She’s with Dahlia at the Shadowcaster,” replied the pink-haired man—Mayger, evidently. “I thought Astrid told you. I’m your substitute teacher today.”

  “Teacher or babysitter?” questioned Lilac.

  “Ask me afterward,” replied the man in leather.

  “Everyone here has such faith in me. It’s inspiring,” observed Proto. “Also, what’s this Shadowcaster I keep hearing about?”

  “Well,” said Mayger, striding toward the doorway under the painting and motioning him to follow. “You’ve probably wondered how we know what’s going on in all these dreamers’ lives before we visit them. That’s what we see in the Shadowcaster.”

  “So, how does it—?” began Proto.

  “I’ll leave it to Dahlia to explain how it works,” Mayger interrupted. “Or Astrid. Or anyone besides your humble substitute here.”

  “Alrighty then. What are we doing today?” asked Proto. “Any insights? Guidance? Warnings?”

  “Be on your toes,” suggested Mayger.

  Proto sighed. He followed the lithe man through misty blue corridors for several minutes before they halted at a sliding door.

  Mayger started to reach for the door, then turned to Proto. “Really. Be on your toes,” he repeated.

  Proto frowned. “Shouldn’t I always?”

  But the man already was walking through the opening door and into the mirk beyond it. He paused near the end of the passage. Blue skies and swaying barley loomed before him. Some shouting and clanging could be heard as well, but the sounds’ sources were unseen.

  Mayger extended an arm toward the scene. “After you.”

  Proto absently nodded and stepped across the threshold into the dream, scanning the sunny field.

  The first clue as to why he should “be on his toes” was the dead horse lying to his left, with its belly hewn wide open and one of its legs severed.

  The second was the roar that sounded to his right.

  A huge bearded man in skins was drawing back a double-bladed waraxe over his shoulder. He was just over a yard away, and his menacing leer was directed squarely at Proto. Gleaming in the sunlight was an eagle-shaped brooch, affixed to the furry hide above his left breast.

  Then, the half-moon blade was sweeping toward Proto’s neck.

  He gasped and flopped backward.

  He was halfway to the dirt, with a broad blade whirring a couple inches above his nose, when he realized this was a dream and he didn’t need to retreat—not even from a 6’5” howling barbarian wielding a waraxe in a berserker frenzy.

  Still, he had to make this look convincing, in case the dreamer was watching. That would be difficult.

  To be sure, Proto was mildly proud that, at age twenty-seven, he’d maintained the same lithe musculature he’d had as a high school athlete. Indeed, his old tracksuit still fit perfectly.

  But lithe musculature doesn’t help much when you’re unarmed and facing a 6’5” barbarian with a waraxe.

  Proto rolled aside and, seeing the corpse of another barbarian warrior, had an idea. He kicked back up to his feet, darted for the body, and reached as though to grab something from it.

  Then, with a thought, he made a long knife appear in his hand, like Astrid had the other day. Continuing the fluid movement, he was back upright and wielding the blade an instant later. It looked like he’d grabbed it from the fallen warrior.

  Meanwhile, Proto’s opponent was grinning now with bared teeth, his axe gripped in two hands. “What will you do with that?” He inclined his head at the knife. It was quite long, at about eight inches. But it may as well have been a butter knife for all the good it’d do against that waraxe. “Cut my meat for me?”

  The barbarian lunged abruptly forth into a sweeping arc.

  Proto stepped back, letting it pass in front of his face, then dodged again beneath the next blow. He supposed he could parry with his knife. But it’d look so absurd—this dinky little food-chopper, halting that double-bladed monstrosity—that the dreamer may well be startled awake on the spot.

  Instead, Proto artfully evaded a few more grievous deathblows, letting them whiff by mere inches away.

  Then, smiling, he flung the knife at the barbarian. Guided by his thought, it spun twice in the air and struck squarely in the barbarian’s right eye.

  “Augh!” the huge man wailed, first stumbling backward, then crouching and putting both hands over his face. Blood dribbled through his fingers.

  Well done, Proto inwardly complimented himself. He willed the barbarian to fall to the earth, done in by his fatal wound.

  Instead, nightmarishly, the barbarian let his bloody hands fall and turned to face Proto, with the knife’s hilt still jutting from his eye. His jaw sagged wide. His groans of pain became a bizarre shriek of fury.

  Suddenly, he was charging with his waraxe raised. Blood streamed along both sides of his face and dribbled off in his wake.

  WTF! Why isn’t he . . . ?! Proto’s thoughts didn’t have time to register fully. He focused on an image of the barbarian tripping and falling and willed it into existence.

  The barbarian did indeed trip. But somehow, he recovered and was back to barreling toward Proto an instant later. The knife in his eye threw off bloody sun-glimmers as he sprinted.

  Why isn’t it working this time!

  Feeling a strange terror seep through him, Proto held up his hands defensively—a useless gesture, against this rampaging beast of a man and his mighty waraxe.

  Just as Proto was gritting his teeth for impact, an even bigger form crashed into the barbarian’s flank linebacker-style.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  His foe was absolutely smeared. He hit so hard and skidded so far that he left a dust cloud.

  “Woo! Woo!” howled the newcomer wildly—another barbarian, this one wearing a lionskin. Lifting a six-foot-tall greatsword over his head, he brought it smashing down upon Proto’s hapless opponent. It squelched through the warrior at the waist, leaving him in two pieces. “Woo!”

  Here’s our dreamer, supposed Proto. He eyed the exulting victor and prepared to run away if necessary.

  But it wasn’t. After a bit more gloating, the barbarian turned to Proto. He squinted as though something were in his eye—and mists briefly swirled around them, causing Proto’s breath to catch—but they faded a second later.

  “You all right there?” The barbarian ambled up to him, his massive greatsword still dripping blood. “You almost got chopped down like a tree! Nice dodging though.” He made some quick juking movements, accompanied by wind-whooshing sound effects. “And I like what you did with his eye.” He pointed at the knife hilt jutting from the socket.

  “Didn’t work as well as I hoped,” replied Proto.

  “Ha! We’re a tough lot out here.” The man looked him up and down. “That livery you’re wearing—I don’t recognize it. You with some local lord?”

  Proto looked down at himself. Somehow, his navy, yellow and white tracksuit had transformed to a tunic and leggings of similar hues. The icon of the planet Saturn was still on his left breast. Odd. Did he . . . revise my outfit to match his dream?

  “Lord Somnus,” nodded Proto, pondering just a moment before sharing the name. Why not?

  “Hm. Sounds familiar. And you look familiar too.” The barbarian peered at him closely, and the mist rose for a moment.

  Then, he shrugged. “Anyway, as long as the Empire’s trying to kill you”—he kicked the eagle brooch upon the dead barbarian—“and you’re trying to kill them, you’re a friend in my book.”

  “Likewise. You seem like a good friend to have.” Proto reached down and grabbed the fallen barbarian’s double-edged waraxe.

  “Ah, now there’s a man’s weapon,” admired the dreamer. “No one’s going to keep walking with that thing in his head.”

  Proto took a couple practice swings. In real life, he’d have struggled with the weight. But here, it was effortless. He may as well have been swinging a spoon.

  Meanwhile, the barbarian was gripping his greatsword eagerly and peering at some others wearing hides, who were fighting atop a hill some forty yards away.

  “You need a hand with that bunch over there?” asked Proto. He wasn’t sure yet what this dream was about, what the goal was, or how he was supposed to help. But it seemed likely that winning this battle and not dying was part of it.

  “The more, the merrier!” The barbarian slapped Proto’s back. “We’re all going to die. But what a bloody way to go. Literally!” He barked a laugh and kicked the exsanguinating body.

  “We’re all going to die”? Well, this would be interesting.

  “I’m Reks,” the barbarian went on. “Happy to die by your side, friend. Come!” He roared and charged toward the fray.

  Proto followed him, running with his new waraxe in hand.

  As they approached the fight, it was hard to tell who was on whose side. But Proto eventually noticed that everyone wearing an eagle brooch was fighting someone without one. So, we kill the ones with the eagles. Alright then.

  They fell upon the enemy with blades flashing. Blood splashed, men roared and cried, and they did red battle on the plains. When it ceased, the two new allies were still standing, together with ten others in hides. Among them were strewn dozens of corpses, most wearing eagle brooches.

  “Ha! Traitors get what’s coming,” declared Reks, wiping his dripping greatsword on a fallen man’s garb.

  “Traitors?” questioned Proto.

  “These are our kin. Men of our own tribe, who’ve sold themselves to the Empire. They care more about silver than our people and our ways.” Reks kicked the silver eagle brooch that one of them was wearing. “In the end, they’ll lose everything that matters. But they’ll help the Empire destroy us first.”

  Proto wanted to ask what this Empire was. But someone in his place should probably already know that. He didn’t want to risk waking Reks by asking strange questions. “How so?” he asked instead.

  “They’re getting close,” broke in one of the nearby barbarians, pointing to the south. “Look right there.”

  From the hilltop, Proto could see many square masses of men in legion formation. Most wore identical steel armor. Those near the front rows held javelins and red tower shields. They were advancing slowly and inexorably. In their wake lay countless dead men in hides.

  “The Empire. They use our people as skirmishers,” Reks said grimly. “They pay our kin silver to run in front of them and die, since they know we’re brave enough to do so. Their deaths are ugly and pointless. But it gives those boxes of men time to march up to us.” He waved toward the square formations. “Once they’re close, with those big shields and long spears and little swords, there’s nothing we can do. Like battering at a prickly wall. We just hurt ourselves and die.”

  “That’s what will happen to us today. It happened to my father, it happened to my brother, and it will happen to me,” concluded Reks. “But when it does, we’ll make a glorious end of it.” He raised his weapon grimly, and his fellow barbarians did the same.

  Proto blinked and shook his head. “You’ve already given up? You’re not even going to fight this?”

  “We fought as hard as men could fight,” replied Reks. “And it led us here, where we have no hope but to die honorably. Doing so isn’t giving up. It’s acceptance of Fate.”

  “Fate?” Proto looked at the other men. They were nodding at Reks’ words and eying the advancing formation eagerly. They looked ready to draw blood, bleed, and die. “I don’t think so. It sounds to me like you’ve just decided to lose.”

  “Watch your tongue.” Reks’ face wrinkled with anger. “Each of us has bled a body’s worth of blood in fighting the Empire. We fought in the old way, the beautiful way. And we’ve lost. The Empire and its boxes of men have won. Our time has passed. And we’ll pass boldly with it.”

  Somehow, Proto knew that this was the problem he was here to solve—this attitude, this fatalism, this acceptance of tragic inevitability. This was what had to change for Reks to win this battle. But how?

  “You’re all good on horseback, right?” said Proto, struggling to recall what he knew of warfare in the Dark Ages. He was no expert on the subject. But he’d read enough Wikipedia articles and played enough strategy games to have a sense why battle formations like legions and phalanxes stopped working so well around that time.

  “Of course we are. Far better than them,” affirmed Reks, waving toward the advancing legion. “But try to charge them on horseback, and they’ll just gut us on those spears. Believe me, we’ve tried!”

  “And I assume you’re all good archers too? And you have bows here?” said Proto.

  At this, Reks’ head went tilted. He frowned in thought. “I . . . ” Mist started swirling up from the floor, quickly rising to waist level. “I’m not sure . . . ”

  “Since,” Proto went on quickly, “you all hunt for food. So you all learn the bow in boyhood. Your people are famous for it, in fact.” He was making all this up. But it seemed to make sense and he said it confidently.

  There was a long pause, and the mists continued swirling upward till they reached Proto’s neck. He tried to suppress a wince.

  “Yes,” Reks finally agreed. He sounded more like he was accepting Proto’s statements than confirming them. “Yes, that’s right.”

  Proto exhaled slightly as the mist sank to about chest level. “How many men and horses do you have here?”

  Reks shrugged. “Maybe a thousand men, two hundred horses.”

  “Alright. I need you to gather all your horses,” instructed Proto. “Put about a hundred of your best archers on horseback. Give them bows, leather armor, and nothing else. Have them circle the legion and loose arrows at it. Keep moving, don’t stop. Don’t let their skirmishers engage you. Just harry the main body. Do it long enough, and they’ll eventually break formation. They’ll try to chase you and block your path.”

  “That’s when your other hundred horsemen charge,” said Proto. “Give them spears and the heaviest armor you’ve got. Keep them out of sight till the formations start breaking up. Then, charge at the weak points. Try to scatter their troops.”

  “Then, do what you do best,” concluded Proto. “Run in with those greatswords and battleaxes and cut them down in the chaos. Their long spears and little swords are no good, once their formation breaks down.”

  For all he knew, the advice he’d just given might be completely ridiculous. But this was a dream, and all that mattered was sounding convincing. He tried to keep a firm and confident face.

  Reks stared at him. “Are you . . . a tactician?” The mist began inching upward again.

  “Lord Somnus’ head tactician,” affirmed Proto.

  He heard a scoff behind him and glanced. A slender man in hides and a helm was standing there. While steel hid most of his face, a bit of pink hair was visible beneath it.

  “We’ve never fought this way,” said Reks slowly. “And you would have us start today? Glory and death loom before us. Death like our fathers before us. You’d have us give that up to try this”—he waved a hand—“gambit?”

  “Well, possibly dying is better than definitely dying, right?” replied Proto, glancing anxiously at the mists now creeping toward his chin. “Look, I know you love the way things were. The old way, the beautiful way. But time’s like a clock, okay? You can’t stop the hand of time. You try to, and you’ll just get left behind. All you can do is follow it forward. And eventually it’s a new day, and you’re back where you used to be.”

  Where are these words coming from? The things he was saying felt familiar, like he’d heard them somewhere. But where? Do I have amnesia?

  “Just when it seems like everything’s lost, time brings it back again.” The words flowed from Proto’s lips before he’d even parsed them. “Maybe not exactly the way things were. But what you loved is still there—that beauty, that conflict, that glory. You can keep what you love, if you give up everything else.”

  “You can keep what you love, if you give up everything else.” He heard a different voice echoing this in his head. Why did it sound so familiar? Both the words and, especially, that voice?

  “The way back is forward. The way to the old is the new,” murmured Reks, rapt with thought. “Keep what you love by giving up the rest.” After a moment, he nodded slowly, as one does when his mind is stretching to hold a new concept. “Maybe so.”

  The mist, which had been tickling Proto’s chin, now started sinking.

  There were no scoffs from the helmed barbarian with pink hair now. Indeed, his head had tilted curiously at Proto, like he now saw something different from what he’d thought he’d seen.

  “Maybe so,” repeated Reks, as the dwindling fog revealed his waraxe once again, gripped tightly in two big fists. “Yes, if we fight and win as you say, I think our fathers would be proud.”

  The other barbarians were all nodding and grunting their agreement now.

  “Sound the warhorn, Calamis,” commanded Reks. “Summon the men. We rally near Equilus. Half the horses are there already.” He proceeded to give a series of orders.

  Within a minute, the plan was underway. Barbarians were hying about gathering horses and armor, spears and bows. The Empire’s troops were still advancing, but their pace was slow, and they didn’t seem to be in any hurry.

  “Well. That worked out nicely,” commented Proto to the pink-haired warrior in the helm—the one and only barbarian in the area doing nothing to help prepare for the assault. “Didn’t it, Mayger?”

  The lithe man looked at him impassively. “Perhaps.” He scanned the advancing legions, then the growing assembly of horses and riders. Some were equipping bows and leather, others spears and mail.

  Suddenly, bizarrely, a sound halfway between a modern alarm clock and an air raid siren broke out. Mist began spiring from the ground in great geysers all around them. It obscured the horizon almost instantly.

  “What the—? No! What is this!” demanded Proto.

  Mayger tilted back his head and laughed uproariously. “Or perhaps not!” he cried.