by Larry Niven
“Yes. Also remembering what you said about the small raiding party. That could be true. Or it could be a deliberate misdirection. Or nothing at all.”
Aros chuckled. “A suspicious man.”
“One of the reasons,” the general said, “that I’m still alive. What have you seen?”
Aros shrugged. “Nothing alarming. Quiet.”
“Isn’t this the moment when you say, ‘Too quiet’?”
They laughed. It felt good.
“No. Glad for the quiet. Be happy to crawl back into my bedroll in three hours.”
The general grunted, looked up at the moon. It was bloody. “One good thing about a general patrol is that we can get more sleep.”
Aros managed to bow while seated. “For which I am grateful. General?”
“Yes?”
“Surely you do not need to be out here with us on a standard patrol.”
“This border has been disputed for generations. There has been some activity here lately. I think to acquire … prisoners.”
That caught the Aztec’s attention. “For interrogation? As slaves?”
“Yes,” the general said.
There was a keep your nose out of this quality to the single syllable, a sharpness that had been lacking from previous conversation. Aros nodded.
“I don’t mean to question you, sir. Just wondering…”
“Why do I do what I do?”
Aros nodded. “Yes.”
A metallic laugh in return. “Why do you do what you do?”
“To survive,” he said. “And find entertainment, sometimes. Is there more?”
“Survival is for animals. Men were meant to lead or follow a leader.”
Aros nodded. “It is what men do.”
There was silence between the two of them for a few moments, companionable and deep. Then the general placed his hands upon his thighs and levered himself heavily to his feet. “Stay alert.”
And the general continued on his rounds.
* * *
For three days, through spell and trance, Neoloth had struggled to reach Aros. But even as he did, he wasn’t certain what his purpose should be.
“What would you do, barbarian, were you in my place?” he whispered. “Would you betray me? Damn you. I know what you would say: that what I do is not the issue. It is who you have committed to being. And so … although I know you are waiting for a chance to betray me.”
For two days he had attempted lesser spells. But if the Red Nun’s information was accurate, he was running out of time. Aros was running out of time. And, ultimately, the question was not, What would Aros do? The question was, What would he, Neoloth, do?
What would a man worthy of marrying a princess do?
He created another circle, then cradled the talisman in his hands. It buzzed, crackling with energy. He slipped into sleep again.
* * *
Aros slept. It was three o’clock in the morning. His eyes snapped open. He looked both ways, startled, the remnants of an evil dream slipping away like an oil slick. Something was very wrong.
No sound outside him save the usual night murmurings. But … that sense that there was danger could not be removed. He rolled out of his blanket and strapped on his sword.
He headed to the perimeter, drawing the attention of the guard. “Who goes there?”
“Kasha, second company.”
“Advance and be recognized.” He relaxed when he saw the familiar face. “Ah, it is you, Aztec.”
“What is to be seen?”
“Nothing.”
The rain was falling lightly. The night was very dark. “Nothing is out there.”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing,” Aros repeated doubtfully. “Where is the sergeant’s tent?”
“You would do well not to awaken him,” the guard said.
“And you,” Aros replied, “would do well to remain on guard.”
He peered out into the night. The damned clouds blocked stars and moon. He hurried to the sergeant.
Fflogs was snoring like a sick bear. Aros shook him. “Wake up, damn it.”
The sergeant groaned and then snapped up to sitting. “What the hell do you want? What time is it?”
“Time to get your sword.”
“What? Is it an attack?” A moment of respect and concern amid the disdain.
“I think so, yes.”
Fflogs shook his head. “You think? Are you suffering from nerves?”
“We are going to be attacked,” Aros said, as positively as he could manage.
“We are going to be? Are you a coward?” He groaned and rolled over. “Let me sleep, damn it.”
“Sergeant, you should wake.”
“And I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing with the general, but let him sleep.”
“What if I’m right?” Aros asked.
Fflogs groaned and peered back over his shoulder. “I’d be more concerned about what happens if you’re wrong.”
“You aren’t me.”
“Your funeral,” the sergeant said.
And without further words, Aros headed to General Silith’s tent.
The general made no sound at all as he slept. Aros stood well back. “General Silith. I need to speak with you.”
“Who?”
“It is Kasha.”
Silith rose to hands and knees, and then stood. “What is the hour?”
“The hour of our death, if we aren’t careful.”
“We are under attack?”
“Unless you city folk use a different word, yes.”
The general buckled on his sword. “And if you are wrong?”
“You would punish one who seeks to keep you alive?”
Silith grinned. “Are you a gambling man?”
“If the wager is right.”
The general nodded. “If you’re right … you live, and get your promotion.”
“And if I lose? If there is no attack?”
The general looked at the weapon at Aros’s side. Flaygod. “Your sword.”
“Excuse me?”
“I want your sword for my wall. I’d rather not kill you for it. Don’t worry. I’ll find you a perfectly good Shrike blade.”
“Agreed.”
The general clambered out.
The sky was dark with rain clouds. There was no moon overhead. When they reached Sergeant Fflogs, he was leaning back against a boulder, drowsing, but not asleep.
Fflogs jerked himself awake. “General!”
“As you were,” Silith growled. “What’s the word?”
“Nothing, sir.”
Aros faced the breeze, turned slowly, and then looked back out into the rain. He himself was uncertain of the source of his intuition. Only that it was overwhelmingly powerful. He decided on a partial lie. “I smelled something.”
The general seemed doubtful. “You … smell something? In the rain?”
“Smelled. Earlier. Before the rain started.”
“Explain.”
Aros’s brows furrowed. “I’ve smelled something like it before.”
“And when was this?”
“The Southern Desert. There had been a series of wars with the Mayans come north, seeking empire.”
The General frowned. “The Mayans smelled in this way?”
“No,” Aros said. “They smelled like men. But the plain where we met had seen blood before, many times. So much death … so many dead men, over generations. Something came and started … feeding.”
The general stared at him.
“The animals got used to it. Eating us. And not just animals. Cannibals who lived in the mountains above the plain. Most times, they hunted in the mountain, but after a battle they came down and carried away the dead. We hunted them once, found the salted flesh of our comrades. Wiped them out, such as we could find.”
“Gods!”
“No gods. Not in that damned place. But what I remember most was the smell. And what a man eats comes out in his sweat.
In his shit. You can smell it.”
“Is that right?”
Aros said, “You said that many battles have been fought here. For generations. What is under this ground?”
The general’s eyes widened. “Caves. I think … Corporal! Lanterns!”
Aros didn’t know the word. He didn’t know the reality either. Lights sprang up among the men, and they didn’t flicker. They weren’t afire.
The weird torches cast their glow out into the rain. They could see nothing out across the desert, but men roused each other and armed themselves.
“Sir?” Sergeant Fflogs said. “You believe this?”
“I believe that the cost if he’s right is more than the cost of losing a bit of sleep,” Silith replied.
The strange light of the box torches projected out into the rain but, despite their magic, was conquered by the rain. Then … lightning. And in the crackle of lightning Aros saw something that froze his blood. Hundreds of crawling things swarming out of tunnels in the ground. Humping across the plain toward them.
Once, Aros had broken open a log infested with termites. Had been repelled by the pale, pasty little things squirming to evade the light. If those things had been increased in size until they rivaled men and been given two legs and two arms and heads with sightless milky eyes, they might have resembled the horde coming for them.
To his credit, the general didn’t miss a moment. “On your marks! Prepare the cannon!”
The men responded at once. They threw tarps off the devices they had been hauling. Tubes as long as canoes, mounted on wagons.
Before they could get everything in place, an ungodly howl rose from all around them.
“Sir!” Sergeant Fflogs screamed against the wind. “We don’t have time!”
“If we don’t have time, then we’ll have blood. On your guard!”
The first wave hit their lines, and the battle began. Aros wielded a sword like a demon; the general fought beside him. “Too many of them!”
The grubs carried swords made of bone—but harder and stronger, like bones dipped in steel—and spears, also made of bone. They were dressed in human skins, explaining the resemblance to men. Beneath those skins was flesh more alien, and coming to the distance for sword strokes just made it clearer that the soldiers were not fighting cannibals. Cannibals eat the flesh of their own species. These things had never been men at all.
Aros perceived a pattern in their attack, something that he did not understand: the things were coming for Silith. More than their dreadful attentions to the other men, they sought the general. Once, twice, three times.
The line seemed to be breaking—
BOOM!
Cannons fired into the mass of grubs, shattering the line. They swarmed back, and then in again …
BOOM!
And then tubes bundled together like straws fired, pop-pop-pop, ripping the ranks.
“I don’t know what those weapons are,” Aros yelled above the din, “but I’m glad they’re on our side!”
The cannons roared again, jolting the wagons backward, and the ground under them buckled.
Then one of the cannons exploded; the barrel shattered as if a bomb had burst in its guts. Amid a rain of fire and hail of torn steel, the soldiers were thrown screaming to the earth, stunned.
They were recovering, their brother soldiers protecting them. Then—
Cracks ran along the sodden earth as the ground collapsed, and men plunged screaming into the dark. General Silith watched the chaos for a moment too long, and the very ground beneath his feet dropped away.
“What in nine hells—?”
“General!” Aros screamed. He could see down into the hole. Despite the murk, he could tell that the men had fallen ten feet down, perhaps, to a ledge of rock, a tunnel beneath the surface. Silith lay stunned, and grubs squirmed toward him, away from other men who had fallen through the crust.
General Silith’s men hesitated, frozen with terror. A few climbed on crumbling dirt.
And not entirely knowing what he was doing, Aros jumped down into the collapsed ground, as the general was swarmed by grubs.
Aros got Silith to his feet, the grubs clawing at him until they pulled his cloak off. There were too many of them; they would be slaughtered …
And then the strangest thing happened. The grubs were ripping and tearing and fighting over Silith’s coat, almost ignoring Silith and Aros. Aros had never seen anything quite like that.
Ropes were dangled down from the surface, and Aros helped the dazed Silith step into a knotted loop at the end, and he was hauled up. Aros climbed as rapidly as he ever had, and a moment later was at the surface.
The sun was rising in the east, and as its rays stretched across the land, the grubs fled, vanished into their holes and back into the darkness. They had what they wanted: the cloak was shredded and gone.
* * *
“General, sir!” Sergeant Fflogs yelled. “Are you alive? We saw the ground open and swallow you.”
The general glowered at him, struck the sergeant to the ground. “Yes! And the only one of you miserable bastards who went after me is Kasha.”
“Sir, I wasn’t close enough!”
The general’s eyes were like coals. “Corporal, give the sergeant your sword.”
Fflogs’s eyes flew wide. “General, what—”
The general was like ice. “When Kasha and I came upon you this evening, you were asleep.”
The sergeant was stricken. “Sir! No! It … don’t you remember?”
The general turned to Aros. “Kasha. You remember, don’t you?”
Aros didn’t know what to say. The sergeant’s face was twisted in a silent plea. “Maybe … maybe he’d closed his eyes for a moment.”
The general drew his blood-crusted sword. A little more would mean little. “Then let him close them permanently.”
The sergeant recoiled, mouth working without producing sound.
Aros raised his hand. “I said … maybe. I came upon him first, general … and I believe his eyes were open. It was a blink.”
“A blink?” Silith asked.
Aros nodded, holding his eyes. “A very long, slow … blink.”
In spite of his mood, the corners of Silith’s mouth flickered up and then flattened again. “I see. I owe a favor to the man who saved my life. Is this the favor you seek?”
Desperation lived in Fflogs’s face. He was a man who needed a favor and knew he had no right to ask.
“He was awake, sir. I ask no favor. Just … justice for a good man.”
Silence, as the entire camp watched. “I see. Strike the camp! We head home.”
* * *
The soldiers were a thinner, shorter line than they had been just a day before. But blooded warriors all.
The general pulled his horse beside Aros. “Last night,” he said.
“A hell of a night.”
“Could have been my last one,” the general said.
“Close call.”
“Yes. Very. That cannon exploded. Someone will be held responsible for that.”
“I’m sure, sir. Don’t sweat the small stuff.”
The general’s eyebrows jumped. “Compared to what?”
“Your cloak. Did you notice the way the grubs came at you? And then, when you shed it, how they went after the cloak?”
Silith shook his head. “You’re right. I must be getting old. I was so dazed I really didn’t think about that.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Yes. Almost as if it was pulling them.”
“As if there was something they wanted in it. Or something that angered them.”
“There are lures that hunters use,” Silith said. “The musk of certain animals attracts them.”
“Something they can smell that you did not.”
Silith hunched in his saddle. “Yes. Almost as if someone had deliberately scented my cloak. I wonder,” he said, with a side gaze at Aros. “Who would do such a thing?”
“Great men have great
enemies, sir.”
Silith nodded. “Much to think on. You have a very good head, Aztec. I want it close to me.”
“Whatever you wish, sir.”
Silith was silent for a quarter mile, lost in thought before he spoke again. “Last night, when the sergeant was on the spot. I had the impression he’s made things hard on you. Why did you testify for him?”
“And against you, I assume you mean.”
“Some could see it that way,” the general said.
Aros fought for the right words. “I am new here. I don’t know how things are done, or what history there is that would motivate your lordship. Maybe I don’t know the customs hereabouts, and folks sleep standing up. I can only say what I saw.”
“Some would say you were impertinent,” the general said.
Aros snorted. “But, sir, if they said that, do you know what I’d say?”
A muscle the size of half a walnut twitched at the corner of Silith’s jaw. “What would you say?”
“I’d say that I don’t know what that word means, sir. Me being a simple man and all.”
The general stared at him … and then roared with laughter and kicked the sides of his horse. As he did, he called back over his shoulder: “You keep your sword for now, Outlander. But I’ll get it, one way or the other!”
It seemed that Aros would never be alone. The sergeant rode up next. “Aztec!” Fflogs roared.
“Yes?”
The sergeant shook his head. “I’ve ridden you pretty hard.”
Aros laughed. “This is the army, not a damn nursery.”
The sergeant nodded approvingly. “No. No it’s not.”
Aros rode along. The other men grunted approval, and one handed him a canteen to share. It was beer. He grinned and drank deeply.
I could get used to this, Aros said to himself. I truly could.
TWENTY-SIX
The One
Shyena the Red Nun stepped down from her carriage and presented her papers to the guard at the gate in the Great Wall. Her face alone should have been sufficient, but the general was taking no chances, and neither were the Hundred, let alone the Ten.
Or … the One. She shuddered at the thought of facing him, kept her fear locked deep inside herself, walked with purpose and poise, her red robe trailing lightly behind her, her eyes focused directly ahead, arms folded into her sleeves.
The wall Neoloth had crawled through was thick, as if designed to keep in some enormous beast. The lies that had been told to the population of the capital city had been convincing, she supposed, and it had required over a year just to create the skeleton, let alone the time required to fill it with cement.