by Lyndon Hardy
Jemidon turned to meet the new arrivals. His apprehension was well founded. In the hallway behind the men, he glimpsed iron bars and a steel plate. He heard the rumble of wooden wheels on stone. What they were he knew he was soon to learn.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Fugitive's Choice
JEMIDON gasped when the cold water hit his face, snapping him awake. Squinting into the dawn sun, he saw that he was outside Kenton's castle at the edge of a field of wheat. A steel belt and chains fettered him to the sides of a large metal cage. He was the only occupant, although the volume could have accommodated many more. Straining as far as his bounds would allow, he came nowhere near to touching one of the walls. Bars were spaced a handspan apart on all four sides. A steel plate formed the ceiling, its underneath side bracketed with tools, gears, screens, and other machinery that Jemidon did not immediately recognize. The bottom was open; he stood on the rough ground. And all of the bars were attached only at the top, like the teeth of a giant comb. In each of the four corners, large wooden wheels pressed into the damp earth. Identical cells formed a precise line staggered into the distance, each one placed a cage length behind the one in front and offset half a width to the right.
The man-at-arms who had splashed Jemidon awake continued down the row, waking others who hung slumped in their bonds. A sergeant followed behind, tapping each cage with a baton and barking the order to make ready. He stopped at Jemidon's cell and pointed at the scythe attached just within arm's reach to a bracket on the ceiling.
"You must cut it all," he said. "If any tickles the touch-plate in back, the flagella will whirl. And get rid of the cape. It will merely get in your way."
Jemidon did not reply. Only with great restraint had he not resisted being seized the night before. It had saved him from certain injury. He had been thrust into the cage in such a hurry that he was still dressed for the feast. In silence, he watched the sergeant look at the gently waving stalks and then turn a crank that led into the top of the cage. As the handle spun, a coarse screen lowered from the ceiling to about waist level, directly behind Jemidon. Twisting to look over his shoulder, he saw a cylindrical drum mounted above the screen, with its axis parallel to the back of the cage. Long strips of leather coiled around the drum, and sharp metal brads covered the loose ends that dangled in the air.
The sergeant looked a second time at the grain, made a small adjustment with the crank, and then nodded to himself in satisfaction. He tapped his baton once more on the metal bars and turned his attention to the next in line.
As the sky brightened, Jemidon gazed across the field down the long lines of tall grain. In the distance, he could see more treadmills like those of the feasting hall, but built on a larger scale, with ambulators four abreast.
Jemidon watched the ambulators start the treadmills in motion and expectantly waited for what the thaumaturgical effect would be. Almost immediately, a strange rustling shimmered throughout the grainstalks. Thin tendrils of vapor snaked into the morning air. Triggered by the incantation the day before, the crop had matured and was ready to harvest. His cage lurched and began to rumble forward toward the high-standing grain. Jemidon looked forward and back and saw the rest of the staggered line move in unison. Somewhere, a thaumaturge was guiding a small toy to which all these were bound. He stumbled on a rock and missed a step, but the cage continued forward, pulling him by the fetters tied to his waist.
Jemidon saw the man in the cage directly ahead enter the field and grab his scythe. With a practiced stroke, the prisoner felled the stalks that filtered through the vertical bars in front. His path was such that the left edge of his swath matched the right of the prisoner who preceded him. Jemidon grunted understanding as he saw what was happening. The cages were large enough to give each man room to swing, yet they were grouped in such a way that, once they had all passed over the field, no grain would remain standing.
Jemidon watched the uncut grain dance into his cage as he reached the field. But his anger of the previous night still lingered. Nurturing a spark of defiance, he folded his arms and stomped on the grain as it came underfoot, letting the growth on either side pass by untouched. He looked over his shoulder, to see it spring back to nearly full height, almost as if he had not gone by at all.
He saw the tall stalks poke through the screen that the sergeant had lowered into place. As the first tassel passed through the grid, one of the gear trains on the ceiling began to creak. A lever pulled a pawl from a ratchet, and suddenly the disk at Jemidon's back whirled into motion. The leather thongs uncoiled and whipped from their resting place, striking his back with a barrage of the sharp metal tips. Hot bursts of pain exploded across his shoulders and neck, staggering Jemidon almost to his knees.
The sergeant's words suddenly had meaning. Jemidon grabbed the scythe as quickly as he could. With a slashing abandon, he hacked at the grain that continued to pour through the bars of the cage, toppling all the stalks before they slipped past him to be detected by the screen. The swinging blade tangled in his cape. With a rip of his free hand, he flung the garment to the ground. He looked again at the methodical sweep of the other prisoners' scythes in front and tried to imitate their economy of motion. He felt his own cage pick up speed and fell into a rhythm to keep up with the pace.
The rate of progress increased two more times before Jemidon reached the end of the row. With leaden arms and gasping lungs, he mowed the last few lengths. He was not used to the hard labor. Already he felt his coordination deteriorate from the fatigue. He dropped the scythe to the ground, then thought better of it and barely managed to retrieve the blade as the cage continued to trundle along its predetermined track.
Jemidon was led to a second field adjacent to the first and placed into another staggered line. While the last of the cages were finishing their swaths and being moved into position, a small, hinged door opened from the ceiling and a cup of dirty water descended on the end of a long rod. Jemidon grabbed the offered liquid and drank deeply, thankful for a moment of rest.
On the first field, another row of prisoners had begun to move across the mowed ground. Their cages were different, with deep wooden bins hanging along the interior walls on both sides. Through a complex of linkages and springs, the suspended hoppers were connected to a circular disk, faced with two rotating pointers like the hands of a clock. One seemed to circle of its own volition, revolving at a steady but fairly rapid rate. The other bounced and jerked, moving forward through short arcs only whenever another armful of shorn stalks was dumped into one of the hoppers to increase the weight it contained.
Most of the time, the weight indicator led the other, but occasionally it would be passed and lag behind. And whenever it did, the drum in back of the occupant of the cage whirled into life, lashing out with the barbs of sharp metal. Snatching and scooping in a fury, the harvesters made sure that little of what had been mowed was left on the ground.
Without warning, Jemidon's line began to move again. The cup retreated back into the ceiling. In an instant, his cage lumbered into more uncut grain. Again he was late to stop the screen behind his back from being touched, and again he felt the incentive to leave no stalk uncut. Grimly he swung the scythe and tried to take his mind off anything more than ensuring that his task was perfectly done. Before the sun had reached its zenith, Jemidon had cut six more rows of wheat. By dusk, he had lost track of the number.
With the last rays of the sun, he was allowed to stop at the end of the row he had just worked. His arms, his back, his legs, and every muscle were throbbing in protest to the strenuous labor. His waist bled from a dozen sores where the metal belt had dug into his flesh. He hung like a damp rag in his harness, feel dragging on the ground and arms dangling with no life.
The blankness of his thoughts was interrupted by the sergeant, who placed a bowl beside his cage. The man-at-arms paused a moment, looked hastily over his shoulder, and then scooted a second bowl between the bars. "The first day is the roughest," he said, "but if you do not
eat to get strength, then the next will be your last."
Jemidon raised his head and eyed the sergeant dully, too tired even to offer thanks. "I earn no favor with the lord if one of the cages stops working during the day," the guardsman said gruffly as he unknotted one of the chains binding Jemidon to the bars. "Take advantage of your good fortune so that I can ensure mine."
Later, with food in his stomach, Jemidon felt a small degree of reason return. Another ten days of this he could not endure. He slowly stood and looked around the cage. With only one fetter, he could reach the side, but rattling the bars revealed no looseness; they all heid tight and firm. Tentatively at first and then with greater vigor, he sawed with the scythe against the linkage that still bound him, but the blade just skittered across the harder metal, refusing to bite and make a notch.
Jemidon grasped the tool in both hands near the neck where the blade joined the wooden handle, trying to imagine how he might separate the two pieces and turn them into something that would be of use in an escape. He ran his hands over the gears and levers of the ceiling, pulling at protrusions and trying to break something free. Each object he could reach he studied in turn, grasping for some idea that would help his plight.
But try as he would, all his thoughts were leaden. Evidently he was too tired from the labor to think anything more than the obvious. With the certainty of failure, he went through the motions, making the escape attempts that every cage occupant probably tried.
Finally he turned his attention to his own possessions. He ran his hands over his newly purchased tunic, now deeply creased and smelling of sweat. As he touched his pockets, he felt the reassuring lumps of their contents; his purse of gold, Benedict's changer, and the various curios of his seven years of wandering were still there. In the haste to have him confined, no one had bothered to take anything away.
One by one, he removed the items, trying to couple them with something else in the cage. When he reached the changer, he idly thumbed piles of coins into his palm and poured them back into the slit in the top.
As the metal disks slid into the opening, Jemidon could hear the soft click of some sorting apparatus that directed them to the various columns. But the output of each was a jumble-gold, silver, copper, and steel, diameters of all sizes, coins with central holes and those without, all mixed when a dispensing lever was depressed.
Almost hypnotically, Jemidon cycled the coins, letting the soft jangle soothe the soreness from his limbs and back. He found himself watching the pattern of types as they emerged and trying to guess what the next might be. Silver, he thought, fingering the lever for the leftmost column. Silver again; he smiled when his choice proved correct. "And again," he muttered half aloud when he was right a second time. "Perhaps, even without magic, the box can still sort, if given enough tries."
Five silver coins in a row fell from the column before a brass dranbot ended the string. "An interesting puzzle," Jemidon mused, putting the device aside as he tried to visualize what the internal mechanism must be. After a moment's thought, he lifted the changer again. With a rapid series of motions, he emptied the entire contents of coins onto the ground. Then he selected one copper and inserted it in the slit. Trying the dispensing levers one by one, he found that the third column had received the coin.
Two coppers in sequence were partitioned into columns three and four. And if they followed a silver, they went instead to two and five. In a rapid series of experiments, Jemidon used longer sequences of coins, trying to deduce the rule by which they were distributed. He inserted runs of all one coin and then two types, interleaved in pairs. Cycles of four, mixed triplets, groups of seven-the various combinations filled his thoughts as he struggled to assemble all the results into a coherent whole.
The sky dimmed into night, and then the first stars twinkled into view. The moon streaked pale shadows of the cage bars onto the ground, but Jemidon continued on unheedingly. He divided the coins into distinct piles that he could locate by feel in the darkness. "Suppose we limit the problem to five of each type," he muttered. "And the challenge is to choose the order so that in the end they all will be sorted. Yes, I will call it Benedict's problem. The path each one takes from the slit depends not only on its type but on what the columns already contain as well. It cannot be done in one pass. When four coppers are in column one, unless a silver is in both two and three, the last will go to five instead. So one must carefully remove some from the bottom and intermix them with those remaining to be added at the top. Only then can there be a chance."
"With the setting of the moon! Pass it along." A whispered voice broke Jemidon's concentration sometime later. He had not noticed that another of the harvest cages had moved to barely ten feet away.
"With the setting of the moon. Do not sleep. Pass it along," the voice repeated. "The message comes from one of the Pelinad's band. Kenton expects him only to touch the fields on the east, if at all. But it will be tonight. Here. They will make the attempt."
Jemidon shook himself alert. He frowned at the scatter of metal disks that lay in front of him. He looked at the sky, now quite different from when he had last noticed it. "What have I been doing?" he gasped aloud. "Frittering away time on a meaningless puzzle, and one of my own making at that. I must be more tired than I thought." Disgustedly he scooped up aU the coins and inserted them in the changer. He shook his head, confused about his actions, and thrust the device away. The visions of sliding mechanisms and clinking coins began to fade. He wrinkled his brow and forced his thoughts back to his immediate plight.
"Wait," he said to the occupant of the other cage. "The setting of the moon. Pelinad's messenger. What do you mean?"
"The reward justifies the risk. With common laborers too tired to lift a sword, there was no reason for taking the chance. But two new ones were added to the cages today-and one is a sorcerer from Morgana."
"I am no sorcerer," Jemidon said. "I was only on a visit to the island to learn the craft."
"Not you, dolt. The big man farther down the line. Now pass it on, before the guardsmen hear your chatter and come to investigate."
Jemidon started to ask more, but the other cage began to move away. Silently, he cursed himself for not noticing sooner that the message was close at hand. Sorcerers and Pelinad's rebels, he thought. They were far more important than the tinkle of a few pieces of metal. Determined, he made up his mind to recover the time he had lost. He checked the ground to ensure that all the coins had been retrieved and then began to push his cage in the direction of the next in line.
And at the next, rather than returning to his own position, he offered to carry the message farther down the row. At each stop, as he whispered the words, he stared into the darkness, trying to recognize a familiar face. The practice of sorcery in Arcadia had been confined to Morgana. A master sorcerer would have to come from there. But it would not be tradition-bound Farnel and certainly not Gerilac. And why would any of the other masters journey to the wheatlands?
A dozen stops produced nothing, and Jemidon felt his fatigued legs begin to tremble from the effort of pushing over the ruts that ran alongside the lines of wheat. But the memory of his mental lapse goaded him on, and he continued to the next. He lost track of how many cages he visited. The end of the line finally came within sight.
As he approached the fourth from the last, a sudden scream jerked him alert. A drum sounded to the left, and the guard fires sprang back to life. Shouts of alarm came from all along the line. Steel clanged against steel three cages away. In a matter of moments, Jemidon saw dark figures running from cell to cell and keying open the doors. He heard the jangle of freedom in the back of his own cage and tugged with an energy he was surprised he still had to free himself of the melal belt.
He bolted so quickly to the outside that he nearly knocked down the man racing from the adjacent cell. Together, they flailed to regain their balance in the dimness. As they spun about, the moon on the horizon caught the other man's features. Jemidon's mouth dropped open in
sudden recognition.
"Canthor!" he exclaimed. "Canthor, the bailiff of Morgana Island. Why are you here? You are no more a sorcerer than I!"
Jemidon looked around the campfire in the small bowl framed by the rising hills. He tried to stretch himself into a more comfortable position. His linen tunic was now bunched in thick creases beneath a vest of stiff leather. The equally fine leggings hung in tatters beneath his knees. There had been no pursuit for over two days. And now Pelinad's band was high enough in the foothills so that the lookouts would be able to spot any activity out of Kenton's castle on the plain below. The slopes rapidly merged into the higher mountains in the east, and escape was possible in a dozen ways. Not that flight was the only option. Before the attack, Pelinad's brigands had numbered about sixty. Now they were three times the number. Not a single one of the bondsmen or freetoilers had elected to stay. Even the troop from Searoyal would find the rebels more than a mere nuisance.
In small groups of three and four, they huddled around the sprinkling of morning fires. Some sprawled exhausted, still asleep despite the cold and rocky ground. Others talked with loud animation, slapping the arms of old acquaintances and testing the feel of the newly supplied hide-covered shields. Behind them, the silhouettes of craggy spires were just barely discernible in the brightening sky. Slightly north of where the sun would rise, Jemidon saw the dark crestline dip into the deep notch that was Plowblade Pass.
Jemidon watched Canthor return from a huddled conference with Pelinad and his lieutenants around one of the fires to the left. The bailiff squinted off into the distance, then looked at Jemidon and smiled.