by Джеффри Лорд
«I certainly hope not!»
It wasn't.
Blade and Eye of Crystal took to each other with enthusiasm, tenderness, and laughter. Blade would have enjoyed her company even without the sex, or the sex without the telepathy. Having everything made it just that much better.
Crystal taught Blade a few things about telepathy in sex. He discovered that he could arouse her by simply projecting the image of her writhing in climax. She promptly returned the favor. They found that if she brought him to climax by fellatio while they were in contact, she would also climax, nine times out of ten.
They discovered a lot of other things, which Blade knew he would have to report to Lord Leighton when he got back home. They would make interesting reading, and not entirely because of their value for the study of telepathy. For the first time Blade didn't like the idea of talking about his sex life in Dimension X as frankly as the Project required. He'd be revealing things he'd never thought were there to be revealed!
However, that didn't alter the fact that he was learning a lot about telepathy while he was having fun! If having Crystal's every little response written down in Lord Leighton's files helped give the Project controlled telepathy-well, they'd just have to be written down. This was all the more important, now that Cheeky was almost certainly gone for good.
Once he and Crystal became lovers, Blade found that he didn't think about Cheeky for days at a time, and when he did he didn't miss him as much as before. He wondered how much Crystal knew about Cheeky, and whether she was doing anything to affect his memory. Whether or not it was deliberate, he was grateful for the healing she was giving him.
Because he was so grateful, and for other reasons as well, Blade could never quite bring himself to explain to Crystal how soon he might have to leave her. She seemed to sense it anyway, and was remarkably cheerful about the prospect.
«We are good as we are, Blade. If we tried to be different, we might not be as good. My father says you are a man who has traveled far, and my Voice tells me the same. You would not wish to stop traveling, and if I asked you to you would be angry. Nor would I care to have as husband a man who might spend so much time away from my bed-Blade, have I hurt you?»
«No.» How to explain about Zoe, who'd left him for just about that reason, with the Official Secrets Act buggering up things even worse? He'd thought that memory and its pain were dead and buried, until the Guardian's probe of his memories showed him otherwise.
Eye of Crystal wasn't worried about being loved and left, but her father worried for her. Or at least Kyarta told Blade that, as nearly as he could understand. The Guardian's wife was handsome and charming and by no means stupid. But she kept changing the subject on a whim, and she never used two words when five would do half as well.
«He thinks you ought to be named Distant Eagle,» Kyarta said. «But that would be using an old name too soon after the man who brought it honor died."' She spent the next ten minutes telling him about the dead warrior Distant Eagle, before remembering that his name had really been Gray Eagle.
«He fears I will travel on and leave Crystal grieving?» Blade finally asked.
«Oh, yes,» she said. Another twenty minutes went by as Kyarta related tales of all the young women among the Uchendi who'd been loved and left during the last ten years, talking as if she'd known each one personally.
Blade felt his blood pressure rising, but kept his temper. He didn't want to annoy the woman. Like her husband, she would be a dangerous enemy, and she was telling him a lot of things about the Uchendi that just might be useful. He also suspected that she was a much better listener than she seemed, and would remember any slips of his tongue.
Finally, Kyarta ran down enough to say, «But I do not worry about Eye of Crystal. She knows what she's doing with you. She is strong.» And that was that.
Of course Eye of Crystal was strong, Blade realized. After all, she'd reached the age of twenty living with this woman without going out of her mind. He wondered sometimes how the Guardian put up with her.
The Guardian would not bother Blade or his daughter as long as his wife insisted they be left alone. And River Over Stones was not going to go against the blessing the Guardian had given Blade. At least not in public, and so far he'd found no chance to do anything in private.
The rest of the warriors of the Uchendi seemed to be waiting to make up their minds about Blade. Or perhaps they were waiting for someone to help them decide? Blade suspected it was the latter. The warriors of the Uchendi were an independent-minded lot, but in some matters they followed their leaders.
Who was the key leader in this case? It didn't take Blade long to know it was Winter Owl.
The Guardian's brother-in-law was the most famous living warrior of the Uchendi, one of the dozen greatest the tribe had ever known. He hadn't said anything against Blade, but he hadn't said anything much for him either. As long as he held his tongue, the warriors would keep an open mind on the subject of Blade of the English.
All very well, as far as it went. An open mind meant safety for Blade, but it didn't help the Uchendi. The Rutari might declare war any day; certainly they would make more raids. Blade knew he could help, if they let him, by giving the Uchendi weapons and teaching them to use them to overcome the shpugas. Without those hairy menaces, the Rutari would be no match for the plainsmen.
He'd need Winter Owl's support for any such new weapons, though. Without it, none of the warriors would listen to him. Even worse, Winter Owl might see Blade as a menace to his authority and influence. Then he would speak out against Blade, even in the face of the Guardian's blessing. Blade might have to leave the Uchendi for his own safety, and they would have to face their enemies with their two leaders quarreling.
An ugly picture, it seemed to Blade. And easily avoided, if he could just win over Winter Owl.
But how?
Chapter 17
It sounded like a small war going on beyond the hill. Ezintis bawled, men shouted, hooves thudded on hard-packed ground, and every so often something went thump or whuck. It couldn't be a Rutari raid, not this close to the main village, but Blade was curious. He ran out of his hut, hurried up the hill, and looked down on the field along the bank of the stream beyond it.
More than two dozen Uchendi warriors were riding back and forth on ezintis. Each warrior was guiding his ezinti with one hand, and the other hand held something like a polo mallet with a wicker cup on the end. They seemed to be chasing small feathered balls around the field, trying to catch them in the cups of their mallets. If they couldn't do that, they'd whack each other or the ezintis with the mallets. Blade saw two men go sprawling on the ground, but both promptly got up again, cursing much too loudly for injured men.
Blade was almost at the edge of the field before anyone noticed him. Then someone shouted, scooped a ball into his cup, and slammed the ball straight at Blade. Blade didn't even have time to consider ducking. He felt a whfffff as the ball nearly parted his hair.
«Hey, you-!» Blade shouted. He went on to describe what the man's mother had eaten the night she conceived him, who his father had been, and why no woman would touch him. By the time Blade ran out of breath the man was laughing so hard he could barely stay on his mount. He rode over as Blade bent to pick up the ball.
«I am sorry, Blade. It seemed a good jest.»
«Well, it was not you whose skull might have cracked,» said Blade. The ball was solid brass, wrapped in leather and with feathers woven into the leather. The weight made it fly far, but the feathers made it fly wildly.
He tossed the ball back to the rider. «I have not seen this game played here before. What is it called?»
By now other riders had seen Blade and come up. «It is called nor,» said one. «We are the White Tree team, or will be. We practiced to play against the Black Rock team of Winter Owl. Why do you ask, Blade? Is there a game like this in England?»
«There is, and I have played it.» He hadn't played much polo, and none since he left Oxford. H
e didn't have the time or money to keep in practice, let alone maintain a stable of ponies.
Several riders exchanged significant looks. «Would you like to play for us?» said the same man.
«As a rider or as an ezinti?» said someone else, and there was laughter. «No, in truth,» said the man, «you may laugh, but look at him. He could carry you on his shoulders for half a game, Friend of Lions! What ezinti could carry Blade? Certainly not mine, and I would not let him try, either. He may be needed for other work than carrying vast English warriors before long.»
Everybody stopped smiling at the reminder that war with the Rutari could not be far off. Blade had to admit the man had a point. He weighed two hundred and ten pounds; most Uchendi warriors weighed a good deal less. He would be enough of a load for an ezinti to slow it down, and success in nor depended heavily on speed.
It wouldn't help, either, if he wound up playing against Winter Owl. He didn't know how important having his team win was to the warrior, but why take chances?
But why not take a chance? He couldn't go on sitting on his arse much longer, not with the Uchendi needing help. Even if he annoyed Winter Owl, there must be other warriors with some influence. Friend of Lions, captain of the White Tree team, might be one of them.
«I will play as one of the White Trees, if there is an ezinti fit to carry me. I will not need one who can carry me fast, as long as he can carry me for a full game.»
«How can you hope to play at all, if you are slow?» said Friend of Lions. He sounded honestly confused. «That is not the way of nor. «
«It is not the old way of nor, this I know,» said Blade. «But the old way of a thing is not always the only way or even the best way.» He was bluffing about the game of nor. He didn't have much idea of what he was going to do once he got on the back of an ezinti. He did want to start getting the Uchendi used to the idea of change, and this was too good an opening to miss.
Friend of Lions shrugged. «You are the best judge of what you can do, Blade. Perhaps you are not so good a judge of the game of nor, but I will give you my own second mount for your riding until the game.» He grinned. «But if you kill it or hurt it past use, you shall go among the Rutari to find me a new mount.»
That was the standard penalty for killing or stealing another man's ezinti among the Uchendi. To most men, it was as good as a death sentence. To Blade, it sounded almost like an opportunity to spy on the Rutari with the blessing of Uchendi custom.
That might be handy.
Don't get ahead of yourself, he told himself. If you don't make a good showing in the game of nor, Friend will just take away your mount and you'll have even less honor than before.
«Among the Uchendi, I shall be as one of them, unless the spirits of my English ancestors turn their faces away from me. Now, let me see this stick you use in the game of nor.»
Blade quickly discovered that to him the cup-ended stick was much more important in the game of nor than good riding or a fast ezinti. Blade had a longer and stronger arm and a sharper eye than any of the Uchendi riders. He could pick up a ball faster than any and hurl it farther and more accurately at the goal. The goals were foot-wide holes set in the top of mounds of earth at either end of the field. The ball had to be thrown accurately into the hole, not just slammed toward it and allowed to roll in.
It was also to Blade's advantage that when he swung his stick against another rider, it hurt. In practice, he and everybody else pulled their blows. On the day of the game, everybody would be striking full force. Broken bones were common in the game of nor, and dead ezintis not infrequent. There had even been dead men, although Uchendi warriors were hard to kill.
«Nor seems to be how you people practice for war,» said Blade one evening, after a practice session that left him with bruises all over and a split lip. He'd scored six goals, so he was feeling rather good in spite of the aches and pains.
«It is,» agreed Friend of Lions. «But I do not know if the Guardian will allow us to use man-strikes with the sticks in this Great Game. The Rutari watch and wait, and all of our warriors must be whole and ready to fight when they come.»
«That is so,» said Blade. «But why doesn't the Guardian just give the order not to strike?»
«It might anger Winter Owl,» said Friend of Lions. «His team has five of the strongest man-strikers of the Uchendi. They would lose much strength if they could not play as they usually do.»
No need to ask if the Guardian feared to anger Winter Owl. Blade began to wish he hadn't sworn to play against the warrior's team. However, it was too late to back out now without letting down the White Trees. That would be just as bad as angering Winter Owl by helping to beat his team.
There was one consolation. Blade now had an ezinti of his own, a sturdy if rather slow-wilted beast. He could ride out of the village any time he wanted privacy, as long as he was back before nightfall. He didn't need to ride very far before he had enough privacy to start testing with bow and arrows while he waited for the Great Game of nor to take place.
The bow was no problem. His harness made a good one, just as he'd expected. If it got too hard he would dip it in a cold stream to make it more flexible; if it got too soft he would lay it on a sun-heated rock. Ezinti sinew made a good bowstring, and he'd found reeds tough enough for arrows to use for demonstration and practice.
He'd want wooden arrows with stone or even bronze heads before the war started. Unless he could find a poison for them, pointed-reed arrows wouldn't do much damage to the shpugas. Those hairy hides would repel a light bullet, let alone most arrows! Newly trained archers couldn't hope to hit vital spots and cause any significant damage.
Feathers for the arrows were a problem. The Uchendi had several different kinds of domestic fowl, and Blade tried them all. He collected so many different feathers that the Guardian himself wondered why.
«Before the war with the Rutari comes, I must make a war bonnet of feathers in the English style,» Blade said. «I must test each kind of feather with my magic, where it will not disturb the village. The Rutari would not let me do that. This is one reason why I left them.»
«None of the Uchendi will speak against the ways of the English without answering to me,» said the Guardian.
«I thank you,» said Blade. He would have been even more grateful if the Guardian had promised to make the warriors speak for English ways. But the Guardian ruled the Uchendi only in matters of telepathy and religion, not war.
Eventually Blade discovered that the best feathers came from something called a greenfoot, about the size of a chicken and the shape of a goose, with a nasty temper but a delicious flavor when roasted. Blade fletched two dozen reed arrows with greenfoot feathers and made all the rest into the promised war bonnet. Then he took everything out to his chosen archery range in a little fold of hills south of the village.
He was a good archer, but he wanted to be even better before he demonstrated archery to the Uchendi. He had to show them not only that it existed, but that it would work.
Four days before the Great Game of nor, Blade reached his archery range. It was midmorning and he'd left the village before dawn, with his stomach empty except for a drink of water. The first thing he did was eat a handful of nuts and a slab of dried meat. Then he settled down to practice.
By noon he'd used all his arrows several times, broken four of them, and brought down two birds on the wing. He was particularly proud of that. The birds were no larger than quail, and he'd picked them off at fifty yards. The reed arrows were better than he'd expected, and if he could find a poison for them they might do a job even against the shpugas.
He decided to make up for missing breakfast by roasting the birds for lunch. He was squatting in the shadow of a boulder, plucking the birds, when he heard the faint scraping of feet on stone above him.
Blade jumped up and away from the boulder in a single motion, then snatched up his spear and drew his knife in a second one. Soft laughter answered him, and Eye of Crystal's head appeared over th
e top of the boulder. She was grinning complacently.
«How did you get here?»
«I followed your trail. A child could have done that.»
«A child can follow anyone who does not think he is being followed.» It was true that Blade hadn't bothered to hide his tracks. He hadn't thought he would need to, either. «Very well. I have not been wise. That does not tell me why you are here.»
«I wanted to see what you were doing, so that I might tell my father if it was dangerous to the Uchendi.»
«You took a big chance. Suppose it was so dangerous that I decided to kill you to keep you from talking about it?»
«I did not let you hear me until I knew it was not dangerous. I knew you would not kill me unless you thought I would put you in danger.»
Blade couldn't deny that. In fact, he wasn't sure he'd rather not leave the Uchendi than speak a word against Eye of Crystal. He wasn't exactly in love with her, but he'd bend over backward not to hurt her.
«So what do you think of what I am doing, now that you have decided it is no danger to the Uchendi?»
«I think it might be a danger to the shpugas of the Rutari. Is that what you want it to be?» she asked with a sly smile.
Blade's well-trained sixth sense for other people's tricks told him there was something more behind Eye of Crystal's grin. Probably not dangerous, but something he needed to know. «Yes. You see clearly. But it is not ready to be taken to war against the shpugas, or anything more dangerous than those birds you saw me kill.»
«I know. It cannot be taken to war at all, unless my mother's brother, Winter Owl, allows it. He has the last word in such matters of war.»
Here it comes, thought Blade. «Why do you tell me what I already know? Do you think I have lost my wits?»
«No.» She laughed. «At least I do not think that playing against Winter Owl's team in the Great Game of nor is a sign of madness. But if he also learns that you are making weapons-magic without telling him-Blade, what did you say?»