Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  He should get back up and defend the ship. But the slope just above him was impossible. How had he survived the tumble down? He must be tougher than he had realized. His rolling descent had taken him away from the regular climbing path. Couldn’t get back to it here by going sideways. He would have to go all the way down and start up again on the proper route.

  To get down he had to re-sling the rifle and use both hands to grip the rock. In his present state he took without thinking about them slides and drops that would certainly have broken his ankles if he had essayed them calmly.

  At the bottom he kept his eyes on, the figure of his fallen enemy. He unslung the rifle once again, but it was not needed. His rifle fire had beaten the facing surface of the great tree trunk into splinters, which had showered down with leaves and twigs to make a patchy carpet on the ground. On top of this carpet a giant doll lay huddled where his violence had flung it.

  SUOMI, the killer, still unable to understand, now unable to take his eyes away, came closer. This time, too, as with the glacier-beast, there was scattered fur, though this fur was a long-dead dull brown instead of gallant orange.

  He prodded with the rifle’s muzzle, put out a hand, moved the tattered cloak. What was left of the thing’s face was turned away. Beneath the torn fur garments the bulky torso itself was torn and shattered, pilling madness into the light of day. No blood and bones this time, but wads of stuff that might have filled a doll. Amid this stuffing were disjointed metal rods and cams and wheels, here and there a gleaming box or tube, and running through all were complex networks of metal cables and insulated wires with an irregular, handmade look about them. And this, some power source. A hydrogen lamp? No, a nuclear fuel cell, not made to energize a robot, but doubtless serving well enough.

  He had killed, yet he had not. This corpse had never lived, that much was certain. Now he could look more coolly. He touched the side of the cheek above the beard, and it felt like smooth leather. The fur clothing over the torso had never covered skin, only a carapace of hand-worked metal armor. In its slight irregularities of shape and thickness the armor reminded Suomi of a warrior’s shield he had just seen at the Tournament below. At close range the energy rifle had opened this crude armor like an egg. Inside were the structural parts, cables and rods and such, also handworked, and mysteriously jumbled with these were a few sealed boxes, smooth and perfect in shape and finish, obviously of quite different origin than the rest . . .

  He grasped at his belt. The communicator was gone, and he realized with dismay that it must have been knocked or scraped from its holder at some point during his fall.

  “Carlos!” It was Barbara’s voice, shrill with panic, coming from somewhere out of sight above him. “Carlos, help—” It cut off abruptly there.

  Suomi ran to the foot of the climbing path and looked up. In view at the top was the head of one of the Hunterian men who had scaled the cliff. Suomi took an ascending step; at once the man’s hands came into view, holding a short, thick bow with arrow nocked and ready. Suomi began to lift the rifle, and an arrow buzzed past his ear. It brought a pang of authentic fright, but Suomi did not shoot back. Dropping one man dead up there was not going to help; Superior firepower or not, Suomi was not going to be able to do anything Tor Barbara, or regain the ship, without help. It would be impossible to climb the path with the rifle in his hands and once he slung his weapon he would be at a hopeless disadvantage.

  He must get help. Suomi turned and ran, ignoring signals of damage from his bruised and bleeding legs and aching back. He headed for the site of the Tournament to spread the alarm. The rifle was not noisy and probably no one there had heard the firing.

  Before he had gotten fifty meters into the trees, a line of uniformed men holding bows and spears at the ready appeared before him, deployed at right angles to his path, cutting him off. A white-robed priest stood with them. The uniformed soldiers of Godsmountain, and they were not coming to help the outworlder against bandits but were leveling their weapons in his direction. “Try to take him alive,” the priest said clearly.

  Suomi abruptly altered course once more, running downhill for greater speed, angling away from both soldiers and ship. Behind him there were signal-like whistles and birdcall cries.

  A single set of footsteps came pounding after him, gaining ground. Suomi visualized another robot monster. He stopped and turned, saw that it was only a human soldier, but still fired with deadly intent. He missed, blowing a notch out of a tree limb above his pursuer’s head. Whether wounded by splinters, stunned by concussion, or merely frightened, the man dove for cover and gave up the chase. Suomi fled. In the distance other men still whistled and. signalled to one another, but the sounds grew fainter as he ran. When at last, utterly winded, he threw himself down in a dense tangled thicket, no sound came to him but his own laboring lungs and pounding blood.

  VII

  WHEN Suomi walked away from the Tournament, Schoenberg noted that Athena was looking after him, an annoyed expression on her face. The two of them seemed to annoy each other, and that was about all. It was beginning to look as if nothing interesting was going to happen between them one way or another—which was just as well from Schoenberg’s point of view because the girl was an invaluable worker and intensely loyal. Schoenberg would hate to lose her.

  He wondered how she had become interested in a man like Suomi. He seemed like such a marshmallow, trailing her passively, failing at the hunt, trying to stay away from the Tournament on principle and failing that, then puking at the sight of blood when he did come. Of course such a miserable performance record might in some way prove attractive to a woman. Schoenberg had long ago given up trying to predict what women might do. That was one reason he liked having them around at all times; they were sure to generate surprises.

  On his other side, Celeste moved a little closer and brushed very lightly against his arm. That one was becoming tiresome. No more pretense of independence. Now she just couldn’t bear to be separated from him, it seemed.

  All at once he forgot about women. The recess was drawing to a close and the priest Leros had his list of names in hand and was about to read from it once more.

  “Rudolph Thadbury—Thomas the Grabber.”

  Thadbury, with the air of a military leader, saluted both Leros and Thomas with his sword. Thomas gave his spear an indefinite wave that might or might not have been a response, then leveled it and moved forward. Schoenberg watched the action critically. He thought he was already beginning—only beginning, of course—to appreciate how a duel with edged and pointed weapons should be fought.

  Since a sword has not a spear’s range of attack Rudolph slid aside from the deep thrusts and hacked at the shaft of the spear when he could, trying to sever the spearhead and to move inside the spear’s most effective range to a lesser distance, where the advantage would lie with the swordsman. All this was not very different from what Schoenberg had expected. He had read historians’ theoretical treatments of personal combat, and had watched Anachronists on Earth playing with their dull weapons. He had never taken up one of their wooden swords, though; he did not care for playing much.

  Thadbury had no success in hacking at the spear shaft, for it was bound with twisted strips of metal running lengthwise and the sword could not cut through. Nor did he get many chances to try; the Grabber was plainly a master of his chosen weapon. Rudolph could not move in to the range at which he wished to fight. Thomas kept his spear’s long shaft flicking in and out, lightly as a serpent’s tongue, and still used it handily to parry whenever it seemed the sword might reach his face or bulky torso. And then, suddenly, incredibly, Thomas was no longer staying back to get the maximum advantage from his weapon’s greater range. Instead he brushed the sword out of the way with the spear shaft and leaped in to close with his opponent in a wrestler’s grip.

  A cry of surprise went up around the ring, and Thadbury too was taken off guard. Sword and spear fell to the trodden earth together and the two men stamped and
whirled in a grotesque dance, each trying to trip and throw the other. But Thomas had the advantage of strength and skill as well. When they fell he was on top, Rudolph prone beneath him. Thomas’s massive right forearm became a lever to crush Rudolph’s wiry neck. Rudolph, belly down on the ground beneath his foe, kicked, wretched, and twisted with desperate strength. His struggles seemed useless. His face went red, then purple.

  Schoenberg thought that what was left of the oxygen in his bloodstream and lungs must be going fast. He hoped the man would be speedily out of his pain, even as he pushed Celeste back a little and stepped slightly to one side to get a better look at the coming of death. He knew that a lot of people on Earth, seeing him standing here and watching so intently, would think he was a sadist. In fact, he wished no living creature suffering.

  Schoenberg wished that he could enter the Tournament himself. Of course he knew full well that he was no more qualified to face such men as these with edged weapons, than they were to meet him with energy rifles. The season before, when he had been hunting with Mikenas, Mikenas had shown him how to use a hunting spear and Schoenberg had successfully impaled some dangerous game on his borrowed weapon. That had been one of the most memorable experiences of his life, and he had never mentioned it to anyone.

  Of course competing in a Tournament like this was a far different matter. Not that he could reasonably expect to be allowed to enter anyway. Maybe he could find out just how one qualified in the preliminaries, and when the next planet-wide Tournament was going to be held. He assumed there would be another one, probably next hunting season. Then if he found some way to practice on Earth, and came back in fifteen years . . . maybe one of these men’s sons would kill him then.

  It was unlikely, to put it mildly, that he would ever be able to win a major Tournament on Hunters’ planet, no matter how much practice and fair preparation he got in. He was not anxious to die, and when he saw violent death approaching he knew that, as in the past, he would be afraid. But it would be worth it, worth it, worth it. For the timeless share of intense life to be experienced before the end. For the moments of full perfect being-when the coin marked Life and Death spun before the altar of the god of chance, moments more valuable than so many years of the dreariness that made up most of what men called civilization.

  Now Rudolph could no longer strain to throw his killer off, could no longer even grate out noises from his mouth and throat. His face was hideous and inhuman. There was no sound now but Thomas the Grabber’s honest panting. That quieted shortly as Thomas sensed the life below him fled. He let Rudolph’s head fall, got to his feet, very easy and limber in his movements for such a bulky man.

  Schoenberg glanced at Celeste, who was looking at her fingernails. Not horrified by what was going on, only mildly disgusted. When he looked at her she gave him a quick questioning smile. He turned to Athena. She was watching the men arm themselves for the next fight, was deep in her own thoughts. Schoenberg and the rest of the outside world had been forgotten.

  De La Torre came ambling up, from the direction of the ship, to stand beside them. “How’d the last one go?” he asked Schoenberg, craning his neck a little to view the bodies where they had been dragged.

  “It went all right. They both fought well.”

  “VANN the Nomad—Wull Narvaez.”

  This should be the last fight of the day.

  Athena turned her head but not her eyes to Schoenberg and whispered: “What are those things on his belt?”

  There were two or three pairs of them, strung on a cord. “They appear to be human ears.”

  De La Torre emitted a high-pitched snicker, that made Schoenberg glance over at him for a moment, frowning in surprise.

  Vann the Nomad was waving his long sword with what seemed to be the clumsy movements of an amateur, but nobody now watching him could be taken in by that deception for a moment. The show now became almost comical, for Narvaez, too, affected an innocent appearance. He looked so like a harmless peasant that the look must have been carefully cultivated. Wull carried a pitchfork, and made tentative jabbing motions with it toward his foe. Wull’s dress was crude, and his mouth pursed grotesquely, so that he looked for all the world like some angry, mud-footed farmer nerving himself to unfamiliar violence.

  The six warriors who had already survived the day’s dangers were relaxed now and in a mood for humor, enjoying the charade. They hooted and whistled at clumsy-looking feints, and called out rough advice. Leros glanced around at them in irritation once, but then to Schoenberg’s surprise said nothing.

  With a flash of insight Schoenberg realized that the contestants in a Tournament like this one must stand closer to the gods than even a priest of Leros’s rank.

  Vann tried several times to cut the pitchfork’s shaft, which was not armored with metal, but Narvaez had a way of turning the fork that minimized the swordblade’s impact, and the wooden shaft seemed very springy and tough. When Vann’s tactics had failed him several times he tried something new; grabbing at the fork with his free hand. He was so fast that on his first attempt he managed to seize the weapon, getting a good grip on it just where the tines branched out. With this grip he pulled the surprised Wull Narvaez off balance while his sword thrust low and hard.

  He took the ears of Narvaez before the man was dead, warning the maul-slave off with a snarl, until he had made sure of undamaged trophies.

  ATHENA, blinking, came back to full awareness of her surroundings once again. She looked for Schoenberg, and saw that he had turned away and was waiting to talk to the High Priest Andreas, who had just come in sight on the road that descended from the mountaintop, walking with a small escort of soldiers.

  De La Torre, moving closer to Athena, asked her in a low voice: “Did you get that last little bit?”

  “What?” Not having understood, she turned to him with a look of expectancy.

  “I was talking about the earcutting, whether you got that part down on crystal. I’ve been making a few recordings too.”

  The expectancy in her face dimmed, then vanished abruptly as realization came. The crystal on which her day’s anthropological records were to have been made still hung unused at her belt.

  ANDREAS, after having made a short congratulatory speech to the surviving warriors, turned quickly to Schoenberg and inquired: “Have you enjoyed the day’s competition?”

  “We who are here have enjoyed it very much. I must apologize for Suomi, the one who became ill, as you may have heard. I do not think he will come to watch again.”

  Andreas’s lip curled slightly but he made no further comment. None was needed. Such a man was beneath contempt and unworthy of discussion. He asked: “Will all of you join me at a feast in the Temple of Thorun tonight? All of you, that is, who are now here. We can ascend at once to the city if that is convenient.”

  Schoenberg hesitated only marginally. “I did not think to bring a gift for Thorun with me from the ship.”

  Andreas smiled. What was the naive old saying? If a smile disfigures a man’s face, then that man is bad. The High Priest said: “lam sure you will provide a suitable gift. There is no hurry about it, not now.”

  “Very well.” Schoenberg glanced at those of his shipmates present. All watched him expectantly and appeared perfectly ready to be Thorun’s guests. “Just let me say a word to the people waiting at the ship. Only take a minute.”

  “Of course.” Andreas, noble savage, turned politely away.

  Schoenberg took his communicator from his belt and spoke into it. Looking toward the ship he thought he could just see the head of Suomi, who must be sitting down in his sentry’s position at the top of the climbing path.

  It was Barbara who answered. “Hello?” Her voice was uncertain.

  “Look, Barb, those of us down here now have been invited up to visit the Temple. A feast is scheduled. I’m not sure when we’ll get back to the ship. Tell Suomi to be sure to get inside before dark and button the thing up. One of you call me if any problems should arise
; I’ll call you again when we’re ready to start back. Okay?”

  There was a little pause, and then she only said, “Okay.”

  “Everything all right?”

  “Yes. Okay, Oscar.”

  Just hearing about the Tournament and thinking about it must have upset her, he supposed. Probably she had been holding Suomi’s hand while he recounted bestial horrors. Well, next trip he. would choose his traveling companions more carefully. None of this bunch were exactly what he had hoped for.

  Except next time he might be coming here alone, not expecting to return to Earth. He wondered if he could really teach himself, on Earth, to use edged weapons with real skill. He wondered if he would do better with sword or axe or spear. Tonight, if everything went well, he would have a chance to mention his plan to Andreas.

  THE little party of outworlders and their casual escort of a few soldiers began to climb the smooth-paved mountain road, Andreas and Schoenberg walking together in the lead. “It is only a few kilometers to the top,” Andreas informed them. “Perhaps an hour’s walk if we take our time. Your hours on Earth are about the same length as ours, not so?”

  When they had walked only about half a kilometer along the zig-zag, climbing road they came to the place where, as Andreas pointed out, the ring was being prepared for the next day’s fighting. Here the mountain was steeper, less level space was available, and one side of the ring overlooked a bank that was almost a precipice. After another kilometer the switchback road passed between twin stone watch-towers from which sentinels saluted the party crisply with their spears. Andreas returned the salutes.

  They must be nearing the summit now. The slope of the mountain moderated again and the road wound through a park-like wood. Many of the trees bore fruit. The earth below them was hidden under a vine-like groundcover plant that put up leaves like blades of grass.