The ledge seemed to be still underground, for despite the morning hour, the space they saw beyond the lighted rock surface was pitch dark. Beyond the ledge there seemed to be a river; it could be seen as a black sheen, moving a little, beyond the ledge. A number of small rowboats and three Indian canoes were moored at that edge, to the left, last one touching the vertical rock wall that came down to mark the end of the ledge.
Bart’s first assumption was that they were, back at the river into which he had fallen on entering the Inner World from the mine tunnel. Though this was strange, considering that the Clinic, and therefore the bridge and entrance he had never seen, were at the opposite end of the Inner World from the warehouse sections. He pushed past Arthur, Emma and even Michel, to stride hurriedly to the water’s edge.
One close look at it was enough. The current of this water was nothing like the current of that into which he had fallen—not more than a lazy two or three miles an hour in speed, though the water itself, when he went down on one knee and dipped his fingers into it, was as icy as the stream into which he remembered falling.
The current was flowing from his left to his right. He looked to his left, at the small boats and canoes moored near the end of the ledge.
“There’s something wrong here,” he said, his voice booming strangely under the rock ceiling which here was at least fifteen to twenty feet in height, arching out over the underground river, “boats brought upstream normally tie up at the downstream end of their moorage—”
A snapping sound and a shout from Michel brought Bart to his feet and spinning around. Behind him, the door to the tunnel was closing; and now revealed where they had been hidden by an outcropping of rock and the opened door itself, were Chandt and four Steeds—all dormitory Leaders, Paolo among them—each with a blindfold now hanging loosely around his neck, each holding one of the strangely lumpy-looking rifles Bart had first seen in the hands of a sentry at one of the doors to the Tectonal room.
Chandt had just used the lash of a long whip to wind around Michel’s two wrists and jerk them together. The pain and the shock had caused Michel to drop both knife and gun; and both weapons were now skittering down the slight slope of the smooth rock to plunge over the edge into the water and disappear.
But Michel had not been so stunned by the shock that he had not recovered in time to grasp the lash above where it wound around his wrist, and a jerk of his arms had pulled the whip-handle out of Chandt’s grasp. The Commander of the Steeds watched almost philosophically as the whip-handle, clearly heavy and weighted to serve as a weapon on its own, went skidding down the rocky incline to disappear also into the water.
Michel pulled the lash-end from his wrist and watched the weight of the drowning handle yank the lash across the ledge and out of sight in its turn into the dark stream.
“So,” said Michel savagely, “our Emperor doesn’t keep his imperial word after all.”
Chandt ignored the words. He was busy reaching into the wallet that hung from the belt around the waist of his tunic. He produced a rolled up sheet of heavy-looking paper, of the same gray color on which the Emperor had written the pronouncements he had handed to Michel, earlier this morning. Bart looked directly at Paolo, who stood at the far end of the line from Chandt. Paolo avoided his eyes.
“You too?” said Bart. Paolo did not answer, but continued to look away.
Chandt had his paper out now. He held it up before him and read aloud from it in Latin as fluent as any Hybrid’s, or any Lord’s or Lady Lord’s.
“To our Commander of Steeds:
Three spies and members of a conspiracy under the renegade former Lord, Vincent Saberut, who some years back fabricated a false report of his own death while on the surface of the world, have introduced themselves to the Inner World secretly as slaves.
These spies are Bartholomew Saberut, son of the renegade former Lord named in the above paragraph, and two other humans, Arthur and Emma Robeson; and these, having stolen various important documents from the X Collection of the Library, documents having to do in detail with the construction of the Tectonal, are presently trying to escape with these back up to the surface.
With them, and to be considered no more than an innocent dupe of these spies unless proved otherwise, is our well-loved nephew Michel Saberut. You are directed to apprehend and return all four of these individuals to be dealt with according to our justice. Such is the importance of the documents they have stolen that, while every effort should be made to return the four alive and in good health for judgment, you are authorized if necessary, to put them to death; if that is the only way they can be kept from going free onto the surface with what they carry.
(Signed)
Zoltaan, Emperor
Chandt reached into his wallet, pulled out a thick wad of papers, smiled at them and returned them to the wallet with the letter.
“The fugitives,” he said in a calm conversational tone of voice, “clearly seem to be attempting to escape. Steeds, aim—”
The weapons, which had been held generally pointing in the direction of Bart and the others, came up to the shoulders of the men holding them, their muzzles aimed at the party by the water’s edge. All, that is, but one.
“Wait!” shouted Paolo.
He had stepped away from the line of his fellows and his own weapon was up, but covering the other dormitory Leaders and Chandt. “They’re not trying to escape! What’re you talking about, Chandt? That letter sent us here to bring them back, not to shoot them down like turkeys in a pen! Drop your slicers, every one of you, or I’ll cut you all in two!”
The other three Steeds stared at him for one long moment, then let go of their weapons as if they were red hot.
“Now, kick them into the water!” said Paolo; and the three obeyed.
Chandt had turned to look at Paolo. Chandt’s face seemed vaguely puzzled and concerned.
“Paolo,” he said, “you’re getting upset over nothing. Of course we’re not really going to shoot them. That’s just the form of arrest I have to go through . . .”
As he spoke, he was walking toward Paolo. Paolo’s weapon wavered for a second, and in that second, Chandt had spun about on his left toe and lashed out with his right foot in a kick that he was now just close enough to reach Paolo with. His toe drove into Paolo’s body, up under the ribs on Paolo’s right side; and the force of it lifted the dormitory Leader up on his toes. The weapon in his hand whined suddenly like a lost kitten and a bright green fan of light leaped momentarily from its muzzle, missing Chandt but literally cutting down the three other dormitory Leaders as if the light was something solid with a razor edge. But then the weapon dropped from Paolo’s hands, and he himself dropped to the rock and lay still.
Chandt spun back and made a dive for the weapon Paolo had let go, but it was already skittering across the smooth floor of bare rock and as they all watched, it too slipped over the edge and disappeared into the dark waters.
Chandt straightened up and turned to face Bart and the others. Michel began walking toward Chandt.
“Well now, Leader of Steeds and slave of an Emperor,” said Michel, “the odds are a little more even. Perhaps you’d care to try to arrest just me, with your bare hands?”
“Michel! No!” cried Bart. “Look out! He’s not just what you think he is—”
But Michel paid no attention to him. He was close to Chandt now, his arms half held out before him as if inviting Chandt to make the first move. Chandt was backing away, circling out from the rock that had been at his side, until his back was now to the group at the water’s edge and Michel was between him and the wall.
Realizing suddenly that Michel would never listen to him, Bart began to sprint forward. But at the sound of a step behind him, Chandt wasted no more time in backing up. Instead, with a suddenness that took even the oncoming Bart by surprise, he met Michel, on the other man’s next stride toward him, in midair with both heels lashing out in a lightning double kick at Michel’s chest.
Michel had just checked his balance after the step forward and the powerful impact of Chandt’s heels lifted him, for all his weight, and smashed him back against the rock behind him.
His head slammed with a stomach-twisting crack against the raw-cut rock and he slid down it to huddle without movement on the floor.
At the same time, in what was almost a rebound from the impact, Chandt had rolled over in midair and dropped back down onto his feet, facing the oncoming Bart in a half crouch, one leg a little forward of the other and his hands up at waist level and open, waiting.
Bart stopped, checking himself so suddenly his leg muscles creaked, but happily still a good two strides from Chandt.
For a long moment they simply stood, facing each other. Then Chandt took a step forward—and Bart took one back.
Now it was Chandt who advanced and Bart who backed away, circling on the ledge that had become far too narrow an open space for Bart’s liking. What Bart had suspected had been true. Chandt was a master at what Bart and Michel’s father had been expert in—what he had called the “tricks” of hand-to-hand conflict.
“You were sent to kill us, weren’t you?” said Bart as they moved about each other, two partners in a set dance.
“I obey my Emperor,” said Chandt.
“I’m right though, aren’t I?” said Bart. “Everyone would know that Michel had left on a mission to the upper world. You were to kill us and get rid of our bodies. In time it would be forgotten that we ever went, or were—except perhaps the other Hybrids who’d known him would remember Michel from time to time.”
“You could almost have been a Mongol,” said Chandt. He smiled—and Bart found himself shocked when he saw it. “Who was it taught you?”
“My father,” said Bart, “by himself in the upper world when I was growing up. The man you knew as Vincent Saberut.”
“I remember,” said Chandt. “I liked him. He came to me of his own accord for teaching. Few Lords do that. The Lords and Ladies must learn, but they’re seldom eager to know, as he was.”
They were still circling, Bart still backing away, Chandt advancing. The pattern and the situation were plainly as clear to Chandt as they were to Bart. At arm’s reach, Chandt was by far the superior, and deadly. If he could get at Bart with his arms or feet while withholding his body, he would have the fight won. But if Bart could get a grip on Chandt’s body from some position where the other’s lethal skill could not be used, then Bart’s superior strength could make him the winner. Whoever lost would die—because it would not be safe for either to leave the other alive; and if Bart died, Emma and her brother would die within seconds after Chandt reached them.
“He was a good pupil, your father,” said Chandt. “One of the best I ever had. But he was only a pupil—”
Suddenly, he was coming at Bart through the air, as he had come at Michel.
Bart, balanced and ready, spun away from the lethal heels, which flashed by his chest—and felt his neck barely caught a split second later by the fingers of one hand on an outstretched arm.
For the moment, strength paid. Bart’s neck and body muscles were powerful enough that he was able to complete his spin, tearing loose from a grip that would have held most men and been the beginning of the end with Chandt as victor. Having spun, Bart leaped backward again, while Chandt once more landed on his feet, turned, and stood facing him.
“Ah!” said Chandt. It was the sort of audible, near sigh of satisfaction a wine connoisseur might have made on first tasting a superb vintage. He once more began stalking Bart and they circled each other at some ten feet of distance, in silence.
Behind Chandt, Michel stirred, raised his head, put his hand to the back of it and stared at the moving forms of Bart and Chandt.
“Help me, Michel,” said Bart, without taking his eyes off Chandt. “But be careful. Very careful.”
A lesser individual might have looked behind him on hearing Bart’s words. Chandt’s gaze did not shift a millimeter from its focus on Bart. But he smiled.
“Don’t have to tell me that,” muttered Michel, almost drunkenly, pulling himself to his feet. “I knew what he taught, but I thought I was strong enough—never mind.”
Chandt and Bart were continuing to circle, so that Chandt was coming around to where he could see not only Bart, but Michel also.
“Don’t get in line with me, Michel,” Bart said. “Keep moving. Try to keep behind him.”
Chandt smiled again. Michel obeyed. He began to move around behind Chandt, who to all appearances completely ignored his presence. As he did so, the somewhat drunken look in his eyes, which had matched the thickness of his voice when he first came to, began to clear. He was squinting his eyes, though, and Bart suspected that he had a headache—it was amazing that he could move at all, after the blow he had taken.
Behind Chandt’s back and out of sight of the Steed Leader, Michel lifted his right hand and made a pushing movement forward toward the corresponding side of Chandt’s body, meanwhile lifting his eyebrows questioningly.
Bart did not dare make any obvious acknowledgment with Chandt’s gaze sharp upon him; but after a few seconds, he lifted his own right hand a few inches, the hand opposite the other side of Chandt’s body. He made the move as if unconsciously, all the time keeping his gaze locked with that of the Leader of the Steeds,
He still focused on Chandt; but Michel was within his field of vision and he waited for the other to make either another signal or the actual move he had already signaled he was ready to make.
They had grown very close in just this short time of knowing each other; and, even without specific evidence, Bart believed he sensed things in Michel that other people probably no more than suspected. First among these was the fact that, while to a casual glance he and Michel were very much opposites—he, stolid, taciturn and a loner, while Michel was vibrant, quick-tongued and social to an extreme—Bart had come to feel that beneath Michel’s exterior was the same sense of difference and loneliness that he himself had always felt.
Now in this moment when everything depended on their working together against Chandt, it seemed to Bart he could feel something like a flow of energy back and forth between Michel and himself— not exactly as if they could know what was in each other’s minds, but as if each could feel what the other was feeling, so that it was almost as if they shared one body that was in two places.
He waited, therefore, for the feeling that Michel was about to attack Chandt from the back, confident that he would know it was coming a split-second before it came, even though Michel had in no way signaled him. And he felt that Michel felt and understood this, too. This circling could not go on much longer with any safety. Chandt was the master, they were not. The longer the stalemate was prolonged, the greater the chance that Chandt would spot some moment of opportunity that would give him an advantage in attacking either or both of them at once.
Then, Bart felt the impulse from Michel, and the other threw himself at the side of Chandt’s back that was on Michel’s right. In the same moment, warned by the flow of feeling between them, Bart leaped at the other side of Chandt from the front.
Chandt’s reflexes were unbelievable. The second they were in midair, his arms were both up before him and he was spinning about in a movement that would have had them flying by harmlessly, one on each side of him. But the double attack had been just a fraction of a second too unexpected and quick for him to complete the defensive maneuver. Michel missed him completely, but Chandt’s spin brought him into direct collision with Bart, who grabbed him with both arms about the body and locked his hands together behind the other man’s back, setting his chin into the hollow between Chandt’s shoulder and neck.
Bart had been prepared to accept punishment from the free arms of Chandt, once he had his hold; and he had been determined to hold on, regardless. Nonetheless, the first blow of a fist from Chandt between his shoulder blades felt as if the other had hit him there with a heavy hammer. In spite of his determination,
the breath was almost driven from his body, and for a second he felt his grip weaken—but then he tightened it once more.
A second blow bounced off the back of his head, but this time it was no harder than the blow of a fist from any ordinary man, and a third blow slid off his shoulder so lightly it was almost a tap.
He knew then that Michel had wisely managed to capture the arms and legs of Chandt with his own. Michel and he had achieved what had been their only hope, gaining positions in which the advantage of their own massive but relatively unskilled strengths could be brought to bear on Chandt, in a situation where the Master of the Steeds could not use his much greater skill against them.
Bart set his chin deeper in the hollow between Chandt’s neck and shoulder and strove to get the power of his shoulder muscles into the grip of his arms. His fists were locked together against the middle of Chandt’s back. That back with its taut muscles was like carved wood, but Bart knew if he could get the full leverage of his arms against it, it would have to give.
. . . And slowly, it did give. He felt the lesser muscles of the other man, rod-hard from long training as they were, beginning to bend and give before the unrelenting pressure he was putting on them, as Chandt’s body was slowly being bent backward.
Bart reached back in his memory for something else his father had taught him. Slowly, he closed his concentration down, shutting out the rest of the world about him, more and more, until nothing remained but the effort between him and Chandt. His arms tightened. Chandt gave, bending backward until he arched at an unnatural angle.
Bart’s face was buried in Chandt’s shoulder. Chandt’s mouth was only an inch or so from Bart’s left ear. There was a moment in which they stood together, hardly moving; and a faint breath, barely strong enough to be called a whisper, sounded in Bart’s ear.
“Done . . . well . . .”
Then something gave inside Chandt and he hung limply backward in Bart’s arms. Bart lowered him gently to the rock and stood for a second looking down at him. Chandt had fallen on his side, as if asleep. His eyes were closed, his face was like his face in sleep.
The Earth Lords Page 35