For two weeks after speaking to Pier and Marta, Bart had seen nothing of the Master of the Steeds, beyond an occasional glimpse of him going about his duties in the domain of the Steeds. Then abruptly he had appeared in Bart’s dormitory when Bart had just returned there from the Library and taken Bart off with him. Now, they were sitting in the private eating and drinking area of the Steeds, with tall glasses of the sweet, weak local beer in front of them. As with the first time Chandt had brought Bart here, they had the place to themselves. Bart wondered whether this was because of the times that Chandt picked to bring him here, or whether some sort of message that he was coming had cleared ordinary Steeds out of the room.
In either case, they had been alone here except for the serving man for three glasses now, and surprisingly, already Chandt was beginning to show the effects of alcohol. Bart noted the slightly slurred speech, the short-focused gaze, with suspicion. It did not seem possible that someone of Chandt’s size, let alone in Chandt’s magnificent physical condition, could be honestly affected by drink so strongly and so quickly. It was true, he had known some men who were hit hard and quick by alcohol—but never this quickly, nor had they been someone like Chandt.
Nonetheless, Chandt was indeed beginning to look and sound drunk, to the point that the statement he had just made had a faintly challenging note to it, a near-pugnaciousness of the sort a drunk might show.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Bart.
Chandt’s black eyes bored into him.
“You think I don’t know when a man does not want to fight—particularly one of my own men?” he said, and drank. His gaze wandered off toward another part of the room. There was a pause before he went on, almost to a change of subject.
“Paolo’s all right,” he said. “Some of the dormitory Leaders . . . they think of fighting anyone. Even me.”
He laughed, shortly and harshly; and drank again.
“Some have tried,” he said. “Yes, some tried to fight me. Not many, but some.”
His mind seemed to wander.
“Some . . .” he said again. His eyes focused once more on Bart. “You would try, maybe.”
Bart shook his head.
“I don’t want to fight anyone,” he answered.
It was a small disappointment. He had somehow expected Chandt to understand, even where others did not. But the other man’s attitude had been no different from that of most people Bart had encountered.
It was strange, Bart thought, how people—essentially men, but some women too—could not think of unusual strength as being otherwise than a blessing. It never seemed to strike them that it could be a curse as well. There was no pleasure in winning when you knew that the dice were loaded in your favor by nature. Strength that had been earned by some great labor might be different; but Bart’s had simply been visited on him from birth and he had never been able to take any particular pride in it.
But Chandt was talking again.
“You know,” he was saying, his dark eyes squinting a little as if to keep Bart in focus, “you may be telling me the truth. There are some who’d not care to be even Master of the Steeds. There are those like Paolo—but you’re not like Paolo.”
Chandt shook his head as if to shake shadows clear of it.
“Never mind,” he said. “What you are is specially favored; and that is something you and I have got to come to an understanding on. You’re not the first Steed, you know, for whom someone more than a slave has come to me and wanted me to give that Steed special privileges. In the centuries I’ve been what I am, there’ve been a number who asked.”
He stopped and stared for a moment across the table at Bart.
“When those who asked were agreeable to me, I agreed,” he said, “—provided there was nothing unnatural involved. They can have their men or their women, whichever they prefer; as can my Steeds. I don’t interfere ordinarily. But a fighting man is not to be made a toy of, to be put on soft cushions and cozied up to and made love to. It spoils him for what he should be. And my Steeds are not for spoiling. In those cases, where I did not like what was asked, I went to the Emperor—and the Emperor always understood, because he knows what the Steeds are for.”
Chandt paused to drink and look again at Bart.
“You know what the Steeds are for?” he asked.
“No,” said Bart.
“They are for the protection of three things,” said Chandt. “For the protection of the Inner World, if that should ever become necessary. But more important than that, they are for the protection of the Lords against all else, such as a rising of the slaves; and beyond that they are for the protection of the Three Who Command. But last and most of all, and beyond those three things—above all else—they are for the Emperor, whoever he may be.”
“The Emperor?” Bart said. “You mean, even against the other Lords?”
“I mean even against the other two of the Three Who Command, if necessary,” said Chandt. “The Emperor holds in his living body the spirit of him who ruled aboard that which brought them to this Earth from beyond the moon. Most Steeds know this but don’t understand it. If the time comes, they will have to understand, then. But someone like you, whom I’ve been asked to treat as only partly one of the Emperor’s Steeds, needs to understand it from this moment.”
He paused. Bart said nothing.
“The Emperor is your final responsibility,” Chandt said. “In the end, only your loyalty to the Emperor counts. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” said Bart. “I understand that.”
“If necessary, for the Emperor, you will do anything. You will kill anyone. You will kill me, you will kill the one who has asked for special favors for you, if you are ordered by the Emperor or in the Emperor’s name. You understand that? No matter what you owe anyone else, no matter who you care for, as long as you are a Steed, you belong only to the Emperor.”
“Yes,” said Bart.
“And you accept that—that duty, that honor, that obligation,” said Chandt. “You agree to and understand and accept?”
“You don’t need to keep hammering it home,” said Bart. “I understand what you’re trying to tell me—that I’m the Emperor’s man first and foremost, no matter what.”
“Good,” said Chandt.
He sat back in the booth, reached for his glass and drank deeply, almost draining it.
“Good,” he said again.
He pushed the glass away. The signals were plain that the Master of the Steeds was through drinking and about to get to his feet. But Bart had questions of his own.
“Who are the Three Who Command?” Bart asked. He had already been told by Marta, of course, but Chandt had no way to know that Bart knew, and it was a natural question to follow what the Master of the Steeds had just said. And it might be a good lead-in to get him more information about who stood where, down here.
Chandt stared at him for a moment, as if testing the question for sarcasm or insult.
“The Three Who Command,” he said, “are the Emperor, the Regent and the Librarian. As one of them dies, a new one is elected by the Lords, for life. Until now it’s never been one of the Three who asked me for special use of one of my Steeds. Do not think because it is the Librarian who speaks up for you that it makes any difference. You are still a slave and one of my Steeds, that is all.”
“What I am, I am,” said Bart, meeting the other’s gaze.
Chandt stared at him again for a long moment.
“That was a good answer,” he said. “Almost a Mongol could have said that. But there are no Mongols anymore.”
“There are a great many Mongols in central Asia,” said Bart.
Chandt’s face did not change, but his eyes narrowed between their lids until they were mere slits of darkness in his round face.
“You are a liar!” he said; and though his voice got no louder, it was blurred by a fury that overrode the drink in him. “They are dead, all dead—like me! If they were not dead, they would have
conquered the world, long since. Yes, even this Inner World they would have found and conquered. They are dead!”
Bart had spent nearly all of one of the days since he had become an inhabitant of the Librarian’s territory learning his way around the Library. In the process he had run across a book in English, titled The Life of Jenghiz Khan, Translated from the Chinese by a Robert Kennaway Douglas. He had put aside his general search of his surroundings to read that book and learn more about what Chandt claimed to be. His mind was full of its facts now.
The only battle that came close to fitting what Chandt had said before about his death had been the Battle of Mohi, fought April 11, 1241, on the banks of the River Sajo in Hungary. The international Christian army had been made up of Hungarians, Germans, Croats and five hundred French Knights Templar.
That Christian army, as in all other conflicts between the West and the Mongols, had been routed. But it had been a remarkably bloody battle in which many Mongols perished, which was not the usual case. The Mongol expedition that engaged in that battle had been commanded by Ghengis’s grandson Batu (who was later to establish the Golden Horde in Russia); and Batu had been assisted by an experienced general.
That general was Subotai, who was famous in his own right. He had commanded under Ghengis himself; and he was an “Orlock” or “Eagle”—one of nine chief princes created by Ghengis. But in spite of Subotai’s help and Batu’s own budding genius as a commander, the battle was one that gave the Mongols their accustomed victory only at a heavy price in Mongol lives.
“Do you know the name of the place where you were killed?” Bart asked now.
“The name?” Chandt swayed a little where he sat. “What difference does a name make? It was by a river in the West. What mattered was that Mongols died. I died.”
“Why do you suppose,” said Bart, “that of all people the Lords decided to revive you to be Master of their Steeds?”
“Who else?” Chandt growled. “I was of the tribe of the great Khan himself. How could they do better than to bring back to life Chandt, who was first a Mongol and second, knew more about steeds, beast or human, than anyone?”
“Yes,” said Bart, “that tribe that both you and the Great Khan belonged to. What was the name of it?”
Chandt’s eyes wandered away from Bart, to rest on a far wall of the room.
“The name of the tribe? My tribe?” he said. “The name of my tribe is sacred to Heaven. I don’t tell Steeds the name of my tribe.” “Was it ‘Borjigin’?” asked Bart.
“Perhaps . . .” Chandt still watched the distant wall.
“It was Borjigin—‘the Gray-eyed Ones’—that was the name of the tribe in which the Great Khan was born. And his name ‘Ghengis Khan’ was Chinese for ‘Perfect Warrior,’ isn’t that true?” “Perhaps,” said Chandt, almost to himself.
“What was the real name, the tribal name of the Great Khan? Can you remember that?”
Chandt looked back at him.
“Do you think I don’t know the name of him who was of my tribe and the greatest warrior the world has ever seen? Of course I know his real name. It was Temuchin.”
“Of course it was,” said Bart. “But tell me, then, what was the word for ‘arrow’ in your language? Certainly no Mongol, a people of the bow, would ever forget the word for arrow.”
Chandt’s head had sunk on his chest.
“Some other time,” he muttered. “Some other time I’ll tell you that.”
“There was a former enemy of the Great Khan whom the Great Khan renamed after the Great Khan conquered him,” Bart went on unyieldingly. “The Great Khan renamed him ‘Jebei’ so that later he became ‘Jebei Noyon,’ which would mean ‘Prince Arrow.’ Could ‘jebei’ be the word for ‘arrow’ in your native tongue?”
Chandt lifted his head slowly and stared at Bart. He got heavily to his feet.
“Why do you ask me questions like this?” he said thickly. “Has someone put you up to this, seeking to attack me? Is it that you seek to weaken my loyalty to the Emperor, by reminding me of those who once held my loyalty? Of my clan? My people? How could you know all this? Have you been with those free-thinkers among the young Lords who have always clustered about the Library? Well, it won’t work.”
“No one put me to anything,” said Bart, looking up at the other man swaying above the table.
“I am drunk,” said Chandt, “yes. But your purpose has not escaped me. I see how you try to make me doubt what I know to be true.” He paused for only the shortest of times, as if gathering himself for a leap. “If you could prove to me—if, I say,” he said thickly but quickly, “you could prove I had been lied to—if my people were not dead, and I not dead, and the Lords not what they say they are—then I would pull these walls down around them. But there is no way they can have lied. What I know is the truth. Talk to me no more like this—and remember, if I call on you in the Emperor’s name, you abandon any loyalty you have to anyone else and answer immediately like the Steed you are—to me.”
Bart watched the other man’s broad back weave its way between the square tables and out of the room. His probing for information had certainly hit a sensitive spot in Chandt; but he had not intended quite as much as the other had implied, at the end. And certainly it looked to be a dangerous avenue to seek information on. But what was this about free-thinking young Lords and the Library? It was certainly another thing to find out about, if he could only find some avenue to the information.
Jon Swenson, he had discovered after leaving that first private interview with Pier and Marta, was useless as a source of important information. He knew nothing of any slave in the Guettrig household who had resembled Bart’s father—hardly surprising, since Bart’s father must have left the Inner World long before Swenson came into it. The very fact Lionel had once been in the Inner World and gotten away—perhaps with the help of Pier and Marta—however, hinted that there was some secret way out.
A slave would hardly be allowed to depart by the way of the mine; unless he had been under the control of a trusted Lord or Lady who was also going into the outer world—and maybe not even that was allowed.
In fact, generally speaking, Swenson had nothing to offer Bart at all by way of information except a knowledge of the geography of the Inner World, plus an acquaintance with the general workings of the Library and the household of Pier and Marta. He was more than willing to talk, but as far as having anything to say that Bart could find useful, the young slave’s conversation was a waste of time.
Chandt, on the other hand, obviously had a great deal he could tell. Equally obviously, he had no intention of doing so. Not yet, to Bart, at least.
That left the Library itself as a source of information; and other slaves who might be more knowledgeable than Jon and more communicative than Chandt.
Bar got to his feet and left the Steeds’ Recreation Center himself. He headed for the general Recreation Center, the one for all slaves, to which Paolo had taken him for their earlier talk. Paolo had promised to be there this evening, and Bart had made it a promise on his part, not expecting Chandt to show up and demand his time as he had; but then, the time had not been all that long, and chances were that Paolo was still there—he liked his evenings in the Recreation Center.
So there should be plenty of time to find Paolo and, more to the point, Loren a, with word of Emma.
When he got to the Center, he passed in through the doorway and stepped to the side, out of the traffic and watching the crowd. The place seemed to be swarming with slaves, and Bart saw now a number of faces that he recognized from having seen them during his time here in the Inner World. He had put in several hours every day carrying Pier about the working areas of the Inner World, and he supposed that in those rounds he would eventually see almost everyone in the total population of the place.
He really knew none of them to speak to—slaves spoke only on their Masters’ business, outside of their free time and living spaces—and it seemed that most slaves avoided Ste
eds when they could, anyway. Besides, he had made no effort to strike up an acquaintance with any of them; that would only make him more conspicuous—something he wanted to avoid if at all possible.
He was grateful for the special luck that had made him a favorite of, and the property of, Pier Guettrig. The Librarian, unlike many of his fellow Lords and Ladies, was not afflicted with the fancy to dress up his personal Steed in some sort of flashy uniform or livery. A Steed usually stood out from the other slaves in any case, being usually shirtless unless on some special duty, or off-duty altogether —but even then they often stood out; but livery would ensure that anyone noticing Bart doing something unusual would be able to identify exactly which Steed had aroused his notice.
On Bart’s right wrist now, secured there by a leather band stained black, was a device with a face something like that of a very small clock, except that instead of a ring of numbers, its visible surface was covered with dots of some material like glass, which, on a signal sent by the Steed’s Lord, could glow with an assortment of different colors. Each color was a signal to the Steed—and at the very top of the face was a single isolated bulb which simply ordered the Steed to report to his owner for orders.
With this, his size and his shirtlessness to identify him as a Steed, Bart made his way easily through the crowd of slaves in the room—no one of them would be eager to impede his way, or that of any Steed. And although the yellow lights in this room were rather dim, it seemed that no one had any trouble telling what he was. No one seemed to recognize him individually, though, which he supposed was the best he could hope for.
Paolo had enlightened him on the social layers of the slave world; and it was a fact that the presence of any Steed in these rooms was somewhat unusual, and attracted attention. Other slaves seemed to share the assumption that the Steeds had other, much more luxurious recreation rooms of their own—so a Steed in this place was at least noticed. But there was no help for that; Paolo liked it here, and it was the only place where a Steed could associate with a non-Steed slave.
The Earth Lords Page 16