by David Drake
“Where’s that?” said Jeft, who’d come back from the house. He was still holding the hammer. Other villagers were drifting toward us; hoping to hear what was happening, I suppose.
“I won’t know that until I come back,” I said. I needed to get going now. If I sat and thought about it, I was going to freeze up.
“But Lord Pal…?” said Ludo. “Shouldn’t you wait until you have more help?”
I clucked my tongue and said, “Come on, Lad.” I had to get out of here. If I didn’t I was going to wind up shouting curses at all the people asking questions I couldn’t answer. Nobody could answer them without more to go on.
It was my job to fix things. There were plenty of better fighters than me, but there was nobody in the Hall of Champions that I trusted to figure things out better than I could.
“Let’s go, Lad,” I repeated, taking a step into the Waste.
The world became gray. I reached to my left to put my hand on Lad’s shoulders; he hadn’t accompanied me.
I stepped backward. Daylight bathed me. Ludo and Jeft were staring at me in puzzlement; beyond them, villagers continued to gather.
Lad whined and rubbed firmly against my left knee, delighted at my return. I said, “Come on, boy,” and curled my fingers in the long fur over his shoulder. I’d planned to be holding my shield and weapon when I came out of the Waste, but having my dog with me was more important if there was a fight on the other side. “Come on, it’s fine,”
I stepped into the Waste. Lad pulled back and twitched his fur out of my hand.
For a moment I did nothing. I’d had a lot of concerns about following the Cube to its home. It might be waiting with a dozen of its friends, or it might have better equipment at home, now that it knew how well I was armed; but worst was the worry that I’d get off track.
I was pretty sure I could reverse my course precisely. I’d been prospecting in the Waste for ten years, after all; this wasn’t a new experience. “Pretty sure” isn’t the same as certainty, however, and I had no idea at all how long I was going to have to walk.
But no dog raised in Beune was unwilling to enter the Waste with its master; at least I’d never heard of that happening. They didn’t do it on their own except when they were running too fast to stop and plunged in, but a trained dog just went where its master went. Lad was brisk on the Road and a great dog in a fight, steady and fearless against the Cube, but apparently entering the Waste wasn’t part of his mental territory.
I took a deep breath; I was already breathing hard. I mentally checked my course, then strode out into the Waste. Lad was a problem to solve later. I missed Buck and by the Almighty! I missed being a kid on Beune when I wasn’t responsible to anybody except to Mom, to come home more or less when I said I would.
But I was a Champion now, and I’d act like a Champion. The job sure wasn’t what I’d thought it was going to be growing up in a hamlet, but so far I’d been able to handle it.
If the Cube and its attendants always arrived at the same point, going in the same direction, it seemed to me they were coming from the same place. I couldn’t tell how far away that place was, but it must be less than half a day. The raids had occurred less than a day apart.
Unless there were two Cubes. Or unless there were a lot of other things that I didn’t know about, which there probably were. But I wasn’t going to learn about those things if I didn’t go looking, and if that meant I wound up a dried corpse somewhere in the Waste, that was the breaks. I didn’t know what they’d say about me in Dun Add when they learned I’d vanished—but they wouldn’t say that I hadn’t gone. That was the part I could control.
I was already getting warm, though I suppose some of that was in my head. I’d been out much longer than this and had gotten back with no trouble. Once my left foot even touched something, but I didn’t stoop to pick it up.
It might be an artifact that would change Dun Add and make a reality of the Commonwealth!
I started laughing at the notion that my worst regret if the Cube killed me in the next few minutes would be that I’d left an artifact behind without even examining it. Though you know, it really might be. People in Beune thought I was weird—“Ariel’s boy is a little strange, you know, but he’s a good sort,” was one of the ways I’d heard it put—and I guess that was so.
I chuckled again—and as I did, I stepped onto a node just as solid as Gram. The sun was shining, there were houses—hovels, at least; thatched domes like beehives with no windows on the sides I saw. Nearby was a construction of silvery metal rods with which a lizardman was fiddling when I appeared.
The lizardman gave a startled croak when he saw me. He tried to run away, but his leg got tangled with one of the rods and he sprawled at full length.
I heard shouting, some of it human, as I brought my shield and weapon live. There was no sign of the Cube. For want of anything better to do, I slashed my weapon through the silvery machine. It flew apart in a dazzle of golden sparks. I couldn’t imagine what the gadget was, but the lizards knew. I could be sure that it wasn’t here to help me.
Viewed with my shield on, the lizardmen were blurs with a vaguely blue tinge whereas the humans I’d glimpsed before switching on were faintly russet. The distinctions weren’t so clear that I couldn’t make a mistake in a melee, but if I did, that was the breaks. A farmer learns to focus on the practical and leave the ideal for the priests.
I moved toward the largest assembly of lizardmen. Several were running toward me. The way the rods in their right hands glittered implied some sort of energy release, but not much.
I slashed across them. Two went down; a third back-pedaled, and others nearby who’d been standing instead of attacking now fled in apparent panic. As the refugees from Gram had said, the lizards could move really fast.
Some people use weapons modified so that they can extend the beam, though at reduced energy levels, but I don’t see the advantage in a real fight. This wasn’t a real fight, not yet, but I didn’t regret keeping my weapon in standard condition.
The lizard who’d backed away made a wild slash with his wand and turned to run. I thrust him between the shoulder blades and went in the direction of his fellows who’d run around the thatched building.
I hadn’t felt the wand’s contact. They were apparently intended for controlling slaves, not for real fighting.
The lizards had run into a clearing. There were a dozen structures on the other side, most of them timber-framed with panel walls. I could see twenty-odd lizards and as many human blurs. More of both sorts were coming from the fields I could see past the buildings.
In the middle of the clearing was a well with a curb of roughly shaped field-stones. Overhead, a canopy of energy rather than cloth spread from metal poles standing upright in the ground.
Lizardmen were working on two squares of tubing set in a metallic tracery. One square was a hand’s breadth above the other. The lizardmen were fitting a head-sized ball onto an upper-level tube. A similar ball, melted out of its original spherical shape, lay on the ground nearby.
I started toward them. Two lizardmen leaped away from the one in the center. That lizardman gripped a crossbar with both three-fingered hands and vanished within a shining black cube. The upper right corner facing me seemed grayed out. I laughed and continued advancing.
The only thing that concerned me now was that the unequipped lizards—there were dozens—were going to swarm over me from behind while I had to concentrate on the Cube. Even at maximum coverage, my shield didn’t wrap around my back.
Humans who’d been coming in from the fields made a rush on the lizards. A lizard’s baton beat down a man with a dibble, but another man swinging a seed bag at the end of its tether swatted the lizard to the ground. Other humans piled on with utility knives. The remaining lizards tried to clump together but they were many times outnumbered by the humans.
I concentrated on the Cube, backing it through the clearing. I was tempted to wade in and finish the business q
uickly, but being in a hurry had cost Baran his life. I was going to treat the task just as I would if I were in a trance repairing an artifact: each tiny bit in place, one after the one before it.
I thrust for the upper right corner. As I’d hoped, my weapon sank in through spongy resistance. There were more golden sparks, but not as many of them. The lizardmen hadn’t finished installing the piece that replaced the one I’d overloaded in Gram.
The Cube rotated to bring what had been the left-front corner close to me. Another ribbon of energy whipped out of it. I didn’t have Lad’s brain to help me predict, but I’d used my dogs’ perceptions for long enough to pick up the first hints on my own. I didn’t block the ribbon before it wrapped the upper edge of my shield harmlessly, but I drove it downward hard enough to sever it near the tip. What remained licked back into the Cube.
I struck at the corner from which it had come, driving my weapon into sizzling golden fire. The Cube spun sunwise and I slashed at the originally damaged corner. There were more sparks; the whole front half of the Cube vanished like mist when the sun comes out.
The lizardman inside sagged over the framework he’d been using to lift the Cube. I thrust him through the body, just where a human’s breastbone would be. The lizard crumpled to the ground, blood pouring out of the wound.
I knelt, gasping. I wished I had a wall to lean against, but I’d have to go too far to find one. I shut my shield down and looked about, unprotected.
None of the lizards remained. The villagers danced and capered, shouting to one another and embracing. One and then more of them noticed that I’d shut my shield down was waiting expectantly.
“Who’s the leader here?” I croaked. I meant to shout, but that was going to have to wait for my throat to improve. “And somebody bring me something to drink.”
“Well, I’m the Elder Burnaby…?” a man with a bushy gray moustache said. “Do you mean me?”
How in hell would I know? I thought, but a woman knelt beside me with a skin bottle. I swallowed wine, sucked in more and swizzled it around my mouth, and spat it out. After swallowing the third mouthful, I lowered the bottle and said to Burnaby, “You’ll do. Where is this place and how far is it from Gram?”
The question seemed to have puzzled Burnaby hopelessly, but a younger man volunteered. “Gram’s just down the Road, a couple hours, is all. Only the lizards, they blocked landingplace and nobody can get out.”
I stood up, feeling only a little wobbly. “How many of the cubes are there?” I said.
“Just the one, Lord,” Burnaby said, finding his tongue again. “And you killed it! It was just a lizard wearing a box.”
“Take me to landingplace,” I said. I didn’t bother commenting on what Burnaby had just said. Beune got by with no formal leaders. I’d say that was better than giving authority to somebody like Burnaby, but the Almighty knows that some of the folks back home were just as stupid.
The young fellow who knew about Gram was named Ramba. He became my guide, but we gathered up everybody we met on our way through the village; we were on Christabel and the village didn’t have a name different from the node’s.
Occasionally we met a lizardman. They ran when they saw us, sometimes making croaking noises. Villagers ran them down and either beat them to death or chased them out into the Waste. They could come back from the Waste, but the same thing would happen again; and I knew that even a few steps into the Waste is disorienting, especially if you’re not with a dog.
“They showed up a month ago,” Ramba said. “They came out of Brangston’s Well—yeah, the one right by where they set their tent up. Those whips of theirs, they sting like hornets and you’re weak for days after it. That Cube showed up and they put something up at landingplace so you couldn’t get through. More of ’em came and they just took over.”
My first job after I opened landingplace would be the well, but one thing at a time. “How did they talk to you?” I asked.
“They didn’t talk,” said Ramba. “They pointed and if you didn’t get the idea, they hit you and pointed to somebody else. If you were working in the fields they mostly didn’t hit you, but otherwise—”
He shrugged. “Well, you take your chance.”
There were six lizardmen at the end of the road. Beyond them I could see hazy curtain that marked the Road, but an unfamiliar hue like a sheet of violet silk overlay it. Immediately behind the guards was another example of the wire-and-tube traceries they built.
The guards braced themselves when the mob and I came into sight. Instead of the thin wands that I’d seen before, these creatures carried poles each the length and weight of a quarterstaff.
“Better let me handle this,” I said and switched on my equipment. I’m not sure the villagers even heard me. The folks in front shouted and started running, drawing along those farther back. I’d expected them to pause when they approached the tight rank of lizardmen, but instead they rushed on.
Over the shouts and screams I heard the lizards’ poles discharge four times, sharp cracks like lightning. Two men were dead on the ground when I got there; a man and a woman were being supported away by their friends.
The lizardmen were dead. I could only assume that the crushed and hacked mess contained the bodies of all six.
With my shield still on, I prodded the tip of my weapon into the machine the guards had died protecting. It disintegrated with a crash that knocked me down, though I wasn’t injured; the shield had protected me.
I sat up, saw no enemies, and turned my equipment off. The violet tinge was gone. I stepped through haze onto the Road and switched my shield back on to be sure of where I was. Then I returned to landingplace on Christabel.
The blast didn’t seem to have seriously injured anybody but it meant that the confused babble was louder than it had been. I found Ramba and shouted, “Take me back to Brangston’s Well. And I’ll need a dog and a guide to Gram after that.”
I could probably have found the well without help but I’d want help in a moment. When Ramba and I started off, other villagers followed along as they had before.
More kept joining from the far end of the node, asking questions that I didn’t bother trying to answer. Somebody else would take care of that: my job was to fix the present problem, and I hadn’t finished doing that yet.
Brangston’s Well had the usual waist-high stone curb around an opening about three feet across. I couldn’t tell how deep down the water was by leaning over the side, so I found a scrap of wood on the ground and dropped it in. The splash was about ten feet below ground level.
“Do you have other wells on Christabel?” I asked.
“Sure,” said Ramba. “And there’s the creek up on the north end where the sheep farmers water. The lizards didn’t let us use this one after they came up through it.”
I kicked the well curb with my heel. The stones had been cemented into place, so it didn’t give. I lit my weapon, then tapped the tip into the join between two stones of the top tier. They split apart with a sharp crack. There was a sizzle of white fire as the mortar burned back to quicklime. I shoved both blocks into the water, then stepped back.
“Okay!” I said. “All of you? Your job is to fill the whole well with stone. Do it fast, use foundations to start with. You’ve got to get the passage blocked so the lizards can’t come this way for a while.”
Men with farm tools started chipping at the curb. Others trotted away, I figured to get hammers and proper prybars.
To Ramba I said, “When I get to Dun Add, I’ll have Jon send a garrison here. I don’t think you need a Champion full-time; thirty ordinary soldiers could handle what I found when I got here. You’re about to become members of the Commonwealth—which means taxes and probably an administrator.”
I smiled. It wasn’t really funny, but it was a way to let out the tightness that made my body tremble. “I’ve heard folks say that they don’t know what they get for their taxes,” I said. “You people in Christabel know. You got the value befor
e you even joined.”
I put my weapon and shield away. A man I didn’t recall seeing before had come close to us but was remaining a polite distance away. With him was a shaggy mongrel with a red kerchief tied around his neck for a collar.
“Do you know the way to Gram?” I said. Both my hands were on the verge of cramping from the way I’d been gripping my equipment.
“Yessir,” he said. “When do you want for me to take you there?”
“Right now, friend,” I said. I’d thought of having a meal here before I left, but I really wanted to get back to a place I knew. I thought of hiking through the Waste—and started to tremble.
“Then let’s do it, buddy,” the man said. “My name’s Matthis.”
CHAPTER 11
Homecoming
When we got to Gram and I picked up Lad, I paid Matthis off. I gave him a silver piece and told him to split it with Ludo when he got back to Christabel. I didn’t care what he did with the money, but I’d as soon that people behaved right—so I hoped Matthis would.
I told folks at Gram that I’d be going to Dun Add to report and that there’d be an administrator out in good time—and tax collectors. Nobody likes paying taxes, but they wouldn’t like lizards taking over either.
I didn’t say much more about Christabel, but I figured that Matthis would. Even if he stuck to things that he’d seen himself, he must have enough stories to keep people buying him drinks for the next month.
I thought of heading straight back to Dun Add, but I decided to keep to my original plan instead. Lad was an exceptional dog, and I greatly appreciated Jon’s giving him to me. He wasn’t the dog for the life I wanted to live, though.
We got to Beune at mid-afternoon, three days after I’d left Gram. That was a lot quicker than I’d expected when I was laying out the trip, but now I had a goal beyond showing folks that the Commonwealth was real and was paying attention to them.
The house I’d grown up in was pretty close to landingplace. I saw somebody, probably one of Gervaise’s sons, plowing behind a mule on the tract that had been my family’s before I sold out to get me to Dun Add.