Future Indefinite

by Dave Duncan

  “I do.”

  “No, you don’t!”

  “Yes, I do! Details don’t matter. The principle does. I believe a god sent you to them.”

  He studied her for a moment, as if trying to decide how serious she was. Then he forced a smile. “Wish I did, but thanks anyway.” He kissed her.

  Well! If that was the best kiss he could manage at his age, she ought to be ashamed of herself. She pulled him back to her and showed him what a real kiss was. Eventually he put his arms around her and cooperated clumsily.

  Afterward he just said, “Oh!” For a monosyllable it seemed to convey an awful lot of meaning.

  “You need lessons.” She was breathless herself.

  “Would you give me lessons?”

  “Gladly, oh gladly!”

  He glanced around the big, empty room. Julian had gone. Another man stood in the doorway, leaning limply against the jamb as if he had just run over Figpass. It was only Dosh, with his blond hair awry and some lurid welts across his face—how long had he been there? Why did little Dosh look so sinister, so ominous, waiting there?

  Edward shuddered and broke free from her embrace. “Too late. Time to go.”

  “Not just yet!”

  He took a step or two and stopped. He looked back unwillingly and bared his teeth in a snarl. “I have to go, Alice. Got a job to do. I promised. God knows I don’t want it but I asked for it and I can’t evade it now.”

  “What job? Promised what? Promised whom?”

  “Pray for me,” he whispered.

  Then he turned and hurried over to join Dosh. The two of them went out together.

  58

  There was prickly grass in his face, an earthy smell in his nostrils. The back of his head thumped a sickening beat, keeping time with his heart. He was cold.

  “I don’t think you should lie there like that, love,” said a man’s voice. “It isn’t good for you, and it’s likely to get a great deal worse very shortly.”

  Dosh groaned. If he spoke he would throw up, or die. Dying would be better. He opened his eyes a crack and made out a bare knee close by. He closed them and tried not to groan again.

  “I suppose I can waste a little more mana on you, just for old times’ sake,” Tion said. “There, how’s that?”

  Cool fingers touched his scalp. The pain and nausea disappeared. Dosh felt infinite relief and then shame at having accepted a favor from the sorcerer. “Go away.”

  “Oh, I shall! But I do think you ought to make yourself scarce, too, lover. They’re going to tear you into small pieces if they catch you.”

  Dosh raised his head. He could hear a strange, low roaring noise in the distance. Like a waterfall. He did not know what it was. Come to think of it, he didn’t know what he was doing here or how he had come here or even where here was.

  Keeping his face averted from the sorcerer, he scrambled to his feet. Trumb blazed green in the sky again, drowning out the stars, shedding its unholy light on the peaks of…er, Thargwall. Yes, this was Thargvale. He was in a meadow, just below the wood where the Free were camping. He turned around to look for the two lonely bristlenut trees, and they were right beside him. This was the rendezvous he’d set up with…

  He spun around. “D’ward? Where’s D’ward?”

  Tion was on his feet also, wearing the same appearance as before, the dark-haired boy of ethereal beauty. He shrugged. “Almost at the river. But I think you ought to worry more about those irate peasants, lover.”

  Reluctantly, suspecting a trap, Dosh glanced again toward the woods. It was shedding a tide of stars, a dark flood full of twinkling lights, flowing down the hill. The roar was growing louder. The dark mass was…people with torches.

  “The Thargians! They took D’ward?”

  “Well, of course. They cracked you on the head. You’re of no value to them. You are to me, of course, lover, but not to them. They broke your skull with a sword hilt. Didn’t want to get the blade dirty.”

  “But it was a parlay!” He had delivered the Liberator’s message. He had promised that the Liberator would come in person to confirm the agreement, as D’ward had told him to. They had agreed on these two trees as a landmark….

  “Dosh, Dosh! You know Thargians!”

  “They took him! They’re taking him to Tharg?”

  Tion rolled his eyes. “I can’t heal stupidity, lover.”

  “They can’t kidnap the Liberator! He’ll perform a miracle. He’ll escape!”

  “No he won’t. He promised not to.”

  “Promised who?”

  “Me—and my associates.”

  Filthy lies! Who would ever believe Tion?

  “The river?” Dosh looked at Mestwater, a brilliant silver highway looping through the valley. It was in flood, deadly—but it would lead to Thargwater and then the city. “They’ve got boats?”

  “Even ephors can’t walk on water, Dosh, dear.”

  Treachery! If the Thargians had boats ready, then the perfidy had not been a sudden impulse. The swine had planned it. Rescue? Rescue! There might be time for the Free to overtake them before they reached the water with D’ward and were swept away to safety.

  He had taken two steps when Tion’s hand closed on his shoulder and effortlessly stopped him in his tracks. “Think, Dosh, think! Somebody saw you. They’re coming already. But I really don’t think they want your help now, darling.”

  “But—”

  “Think! You haven’t forgotten verse two twenty, have you? ‘In Nosokslope they shall come to D’ward in their hundreds, even the Betrayer’? Where did you enlist, Dosh?”

  Dosh screamed. “I was only doing what D’ward told me to!”

  “But they don’t know that, do they, dearest?” Tion chuckled. “You were seen leading D’ward out of the camp. Now the Thargians have got him. What would you think? If you want to die horribly, then I suggest you stand pat, and your wish will be granted very soon. If you want to live, then your best course is to get down to the river before the last boat leaves and before D’ward’s friends can catch you.”

  The lights were much closer. The roar was louder, and distinguishable now as the sound of mob fury. Being a loner, Dosh had always hated mobs. Panic! He turned and sprinted downhill, running as hard as he had ever run in his life, leaping and stumbling over the rough pasture. When he came to a stone wall, he hurdled it recklessly and kept on going. His shadow raced ahead of him. The river was a hatefully long way away.

  Tion loped along easily at his side. “I did warn you that you shouldn’t deliver the message, didn’t I, dear? I told you it wouldn’t do you any good.”

  Dosh tripped, regained his balance, and went on. He thought he could feel a stitch starting in his side. He had no breath to argue with the evildoer.

  “I did tell you D’ward was being nasty to you, didn’t I?”

  And so had D’ward. D’ward had warned Dosh that the mission might kill him. He had known.

  Dosh ran. He had always hated mobs. They would never give him a chance to explain. He thought of Tielan and Doggan, of Bid’lip…. They wouldn’t stop to Listen to reason or explanations. It wasn’t fair. But he’d always done best when he expected the worst. D’ward knew the truth. If he could get to D’ward, he would be all right.

  It wasn’t D’ward’s fault, it was Tion’s. If Tion had left him lying unconscious in the field, then the Free would have found him like that and known he hadn’t helped the Thargians. He would have been a betrayed, not the Betrayer. He ran. D’ward had known the physical danger. He had foreseen the probability of Thargian violence. He couldn’t have expected Tion’s meddling.

  The river was closer. Dosh looked around, and the pursuit was closer also. There were hundreds of them, spread out now. Some of them would be younger and faster than he. The leaders carried no torches, and they were gaining on him rapidly. It would only take one stripling to bring him down and let the others catch up.

  “A little more to the left,” Tion said quietly, “over by
those sheds.” That was the last Dosh heard of him. At some moment after that, the sorcerer disappeared. Soon, though, Dosh made out the Thargians, two or three score of them, dragging boats across the grass to the river. The boats had been beached for the winter, pulled up high, away from floods. As he ran, he watched one after another being launched and swept away in the swirling torrent. He could not see D’ward, but he would have been loaded into the first. Tree trunks and ice floes and ice-cold water: Without a boat, the river was death.

  Reeling and gasping, he arrived at the bank just as the last boat was loading. The men were armored and armed. A couple of them drew their swords. Somewhere he found breath enough to scream, “They’ll kill me!” in Lemodian, which was close to Thargian. Men laughed, but someone shouted an order. The soldiers sheathed their blades and vaulted over the side as the dory began to move. Dosh splashed through water so cold that it burned his legs. He grabbed hold of the gunwale and tumbled over it headfirst.

  Howls of fury and frustration from the shore faded swiftly into the distance as the little craft was seized by the current and swept away on its long trek to Tharg.

  59

  Whatever Edward was doing, Alice knew she could be no help, only hindrance, but she wished she knew what it was, where he was. She strongly suspected he had set off for Tharg already, with only Dosh to keep him company. That would explain Dosh’s mysterious errands—filching a couple of rabbits and concealing them somewhere.

  Lugging her bedroll along on her shoulder, she went in search of the feast. She investigated two or three campfires, hoping to find Julian, Ursula, or anyone she knew who could speak English. In a community of thousands, that was not very easy. Eventually her hunger drove her to join a group of—she thought—Lappinians. They jabbered at her cheerfully, laughed at her halting efforts to reply in Joalian, and presented her with a slab of roasted meat on a scrap of bloody hide as a plate.

  It was disgusting and absolutely delicious. She ate all the meat, handed the skin on for someone else to use, and licked her fingers. A woman offered her a rib to chew on, but she declined with thanks. She had a strong desire just to lay out her blanket and go to sleep. Her eyelids weighed tons.

  On the other hand, her nerves were still jangled and jumpy. She heaved her bundle up on her shoulder again and renewed her search. She had not reached the next campsite when the shouting began. It spread like ripples on a pond. Soon the whole camp was in an uproar, people racing around howling and waving torches that threatened to set the entire hill on fire. Unable to understand a word of what was going on, she just stood her ground, a rock in a whirlpool, and watched the faces streaming by. Were the Thargians attacking already? Should she flee with the mob or go to the house for a last stand?

  Then a woman with carroty red hair going past in a shrieking crowd…Alice grabbed her arm.

  “You speak English?”

  The woman glared at her, then at her vanishing companions.

  “Yes, Entyika. I must go.”

  “Just tell me what’s happening!”

  She did, then she ran.

  In some sort of herd reflex, Alice found herself racing down the hill with thousands of others. The night was a madhouse. People were falling and being trampled, screaming, yelling. Others were pushed by the mob into the freezing river. A few crazier souls went as far as the Thargian army camp, four miles away, and were repulsed with heavy casualties. It was useless, of course. The mob rampaged along the flooded meadowland for hours, but their Liberator had long gone.

  As the sky began to brighten toward a chilly dawn, Alice trudged wearily back into the grove. The fires had gone out, the landscape looked as if a plague of Brobdingnagian locusts had slept in it. Not many people had. Now they were returning, as she was, broken and bewildered. Exhausted children clung to their parents and wept. Lost children howled in terror for theirs. Adults prowled the ruins in search of scraps left over from the feast.

  Someone was trying to restore order, though. Tracking down the shouts, she found a shield-bearer, but it was Kilpian Drover, who knew no English. She could just make out enough of his words to understand that he was trying to collect all the Niolians.

  Farther up the hill, Ursula Newton was bellowing for Joalians, Lemodians, and Nagians. There was nothing wrong with her voice, but her eyes were red-rimmed pits, her hair a briar patch, and she obviously had not slept. She paused, leaning on her pole and staring blearily at Alice.

  “You heard what happened?”

  “I heard. Can any boat survive in that torrent?” That was the first danger—that the fates had made a mockery of human ambitions once again and the Liberator was floating facedown in some weedy backwater, his mission forever incomplete. (But mana should have taken care of that danger, shouldn’t it?)

  Ursula pulled a face that declined comment. Then she seemed to change her mind. “It’s possible. That river’s flowing forty miles an hour or I’m a Dutchman. He could have reached Tharg hours ago.”

  “So what are you doing?”

  Another pout. “I’m carrying out the last orders he gave me. I’m to lead the exodus to Joalia. Can’t leave the kiddies here for the Thargians.”

  Alice looked over the group Ursula had collected so far and concluded that she might be several hundred short, although who knew how many Joalians had come to join the crusade? “Will they let you go?”

  “Can’t know till we try. Excuse me.” She started shouting at a group of men, gesturing vigorously with her pole. They nodded reluctantly and moved off, separating and starting to shout in their turn. “Bid’lip and Gastik are taking the Niolians. Don’t know who else is doing what the hell else.” She thumped the end of her pole at a helpless rock a few times. “Shite, what a mess! I hope those ambassadors come through with the rations they promised.”

  “And that the Thargians cooperate too. Who’s staying here?”

  “Don’t know. I imagine Eleal Highpriestess will be wanting to put her temple in order. Don’t know if the Thargians will allow that either, of course.”

  Alice rubbed her eyes and thought about it. “That will probably depend on what happens when Edward gets to Tharg, won’t it? Once he’s killed Zath, he won’t have to tolerate backtalk from the ephors.”

  Ursula responded with long bellows of, “Joalians! Here, Joalians!” like a bull elk summoning his harem. She resumed the conversation in her normal voice, eying Alice pensively. “You really think he’s still alive?”

  “I’ll believe it until I know he’s dead.”

  Mrs. Newton pursed her lips skeptically. She was a hard-headed, practical woman, not given to wishful thinking. Julian detested her for some reason he would not discuss, but she would do as good a job as anyone could in shepherding a few thousand pilgrims back to their homes.

  She said scornfully, “With the mana he had, the Thargians should never have been able to ambush him, you know. And certainly not overpower him. Doesn’t that suggest that it was Zath’s doing?”

  “Why abduct him? Why not just kill him and leave his body for the Free to find?”

  “I don’t know.” Ursula sighed. “Because Zath wants a public execution in Tharg, perhaps. It’ll take a few days for them to get back with the news.”

  Ah! “Someone did go?”

  She nodded absently. “I heard Doggan, Tielan, and Julian. Possibly Dommi. They may have had a few others with them, I don’t know. They found a boat farther upstream. Shouted to someone as they went by.”

  Alice’s knees trembled with weariness. If she didn’t sit down soon she would fall down. She compromised by leaning against a tree.

  “That doesn’t sound like enough people to stage a rescue, and I don’t imagine Edward needs rescuing anyway. I mean, if he overcomes Zath and gets all his mana—that is what’s going to happen, isn’t it?”

  Ursula was peering around as if to spy out ill-intentioned Joalians hiding in the bushes. “I don’t think rescue was uppermost in their minds. They wanted to catch that scummy, yellow-h
aired Tinkerfolk pervert and knot his guts round his throat.”

  “What? You mean Dosh?”

  “Dosh! Dosh the Betrayer! He turned Exeter over to the Thargians—didn’t you know that? Well he did! And if I ever get my hands on him, he’ll rue the day he was born, I’ll tell you. Where are you going? You want to go Home? There’s a portal over in Thovale we know the key for.”

  Alice shook her head. “Not until I find out what happened. Are you quite sure Dosh…” The look in Ursula’s eye was answer enough. But it still seemed incredible. “Edward valued Dosh very highly. He put him in charge of the money, remember.”

  “Christ trusted his to Judas!”

  “Hell! So he did.” Alice felt very, very weary. “Think I’ll go up to the temple and help the bishop with the housework. If I don’t ever see you again…”

  They made a subdued farewell. Leaving Ursula Newton to her bull moose impressions, Alice dragged herself up the hill on aching feet.

  60

  The soldiers had apparently been launching the boat stern first, because Dosh found himself in a pointed end, which he assumed was the bow. He huddled down on the thwart and hoped to be forgotten and overlooked—not an unreasonable ambition, for the helmsman would be fully occupied in trying to steer by moonlight and the four oarsmen must face the rear. His first thought was to pull off his wet boots and massage some life back into his toes, but he discovered he needed both hands just to hold on. Even then, the boat rocked and pitched so violently that he was hard put to stay on his seat. Besides, there was bilge slopping around already, so he might as well keep his boots on. Then something hit the side with a shuddering crash and the sergeant screeched something in Thargian.