Context

by John Meaney

  More of their comrades turned and ran.

  But three men, lean-faced and lupine, now circled Kraiv with monopole daggers drawn: quiet, coordinated, knife-fighters used to working as a team. Even the briefest exposure of a limb, his torso, would gain Kraiv a tendon-slicing cut, an organ-piercing thrust—

  He yelled as he advanced, but they fell back towards the cave, a feint, then spread out. With blades, they could attack from all angles with no risk of crossfire; and they could deliver tiny, progressively weakening cuts, before stepping in close for the kill.

  They sprang at Kraiv —

  No!

  — who whirled, arms wide, in what surely must be a fatal mistake —

  Do it.

  — except that the morphospear had cleaved in two, into blazing blades which cut infinity symbols into the air as Kraiv spun through their midst, then stepped back, chest heaving.

  Splashed blood, dying moans.

  There were two more left, two soldiers with weapons drawn, who looked at the dark cavemouth, at each other, then turned to run.

  Each of Kraiv’s weapons became hatchet-shaped as he hurled them, spinning through the air, burying their heavy blades with a thud in the fleeing soldiers’ spines. Two corpses fell, arms outstretched towards lost salvation.

  Kraiv held out his hands, palm upwards, as though in prayer.

  Both hatchets’ hafts elongated—grew impossibly long and thin, stretching towards their master—then looped themselves round his massive wrists, and tugged their blades free with a liquid slurp. Fat burgundy blood drops spattered and gobbet-stained grey vertebrae fell aside as the twin weapons sucked back into shape, merged into one, and the great morphospear was whole again, sharp and ready.

  Kraiv turned towards Tom, death shining in his eyes.

  ‘My friend. Kraiv.’

  The huge carl stopped, breathing hard, veins like cords prominent across black iron muscles, until slowly the tension and berserker rage attenuated, faded to nothing, and he was human and civilized once more.

  From the small dank cave at the camp’s rear, Kraiv led forth two women—careful not to touch them, even when they stumbled—whose torn clothes, bloodied skin and shrinking posture told Tom everything he needed to know about what had happened here.

  Neither woman gloated at the evidence of vengeance all around them. Instead they shivered as they passed the corpses—the taller woman weeping silently—granted no release by the sight of hot ripped meat which had so recently been real and powerful, revelling in power to brutalize their victims, to tear fragile humanity to shreds.

  It took nearly three more tendays to reach the Dorionim Goldu.

  In a marketplace, among holosprite tables and narl-egg vendors, they found the leaders of a local Urdikani community, distant kin to the two refugee women—Hani and Ravi by name—who agreed to find them shelter, and who listened with saddened sympathy to a too-familiar tale of families gone to war and not returning, of armed invaders who crashed into ordinary lives, turned peaceful Aqua Halls into blood-soaked scenes of horror, left children dead, and stunned survivors with fractured lives.

  Tom and his companions bade them a short farewell. Tears tracked without shame down the trio’s faces, as they followed the directions they had been given, and headed for the Blue Lotus Hong.

  ‘Nĭ hăo.’ Tom’s words echoed oddly in the low, misty cavern. Behind them, their rented skimmer was already departing from the flat dock. ‘Lĭ xiānsheng zài ma?’

  Five cloned enforcers, black hair braided pit-fighter style, stared at him with eyes like stone. But behind them, an older Zhongguo Ren in a robe of black and gold bowed to the three strangers.

  ‘Master Lee,’ he said, ‘has been expecting you.’

  Overhead, a tiny holo flower with cupped azure petals slowly revolved.

  The shaven-headed oriental man was old, and his hands looked unsteady when he showed them the lamina trap he intended to use on Draquelle. But Tom gave Kraiv a tiny nod: he trusted Master Lee’s ability to remove the silver-scaled dragon which slithered endlessly across Draquelle’s slender torso, sliding between the soft layers of her skin.

  Trusted him to remove the femtautomaton; after that, there was Draquelle’s indenture and their safety to consider.

  ‘Leave the chamber,’ Master Lee told Tom and Kraiv. And, to Draquelle: ‘Remove your tunic, please.’

  ‘No.’ Draquelle reached out to hold Kraiv’s hand. ‘He stays with me.’

  Tom went outside, into a holoflame-lit foyer, and stood with silent footsoldiers to whom exquisite politeness and passionless killing were two sides of the same professional coin. But he did not have to wait long before they called him back inside.

  ‘Master Lee says ...’ Draquelle hesitated, still fastening up her clothes.

  Tom watched the old man drape black velvet across the flat laminar trap, hiding the silver movement within.

  ‘The Bronlah Hong,’ said Master Lee, ‘no longer exists. We make no claim on this person’s indenture.’

  Tom wondered if he would have made the same decision without a towering, ebon-skinned housecarl standing in the chamber, giant morphospear slung across his broad triangular back. Nevertheless, Tom bowed to Master Lee with punctilious correctness, and delivered the most courteous formal thanks he knew:

  ‘Xièxie... Zhù dájiā wànshì rúyì.’

  The old man bowed, palm covering fist.

  ‘Zhù gè wèi yílù shùnfēng.’

  It was a traditional farewell to travellers.

  Tom walked ahead, along a gloomy, cold, square-edged tunnel whose floor curved slightly upwards, sparsely lit by fluorofungus contained in baskets, not allowed to grow free across the damp stone. It was not a cheerful place.

  Their next destination was the Manse Hetreece, where Kraiv would offer reparation, perhaps his life, to atone for young Horush’s death.

  But despite this, Kraiv and Draquelle—a freedwoman once more—walked hand tightly in hand, unable to look away from each other, skin tingling, their eyes filled with a sudden hope they did not dare to name.

  ~ * ~

  35

  NULAPEIRON AD 3420

  The Manse Hetreece was a great, grey-blue, square-columned building, lined with copper, standing proud and strong atop a great cliff, in a black-shrouded titanic cavern where winds whistled eerily among strange rock formations.

  It was late evening when Tom and his companions stood on a flat outcrop, the end of a winding causeway, on the other side of the dark abyss. Between here and the towering Manse, a single bridge stretched: shining gold and violet and flame-orange, shimmering above the drop—a bridge of light instead of dull, base matter.

  “The sentinels,’ said Kraiv, nodding towards the distant watchtowers, ‘will be tracking us already.’

  ‘I can’t—’ Draquelle stopped, staring at the bright, glorious, insubstantial bridge.

  ‘Stick with me, and you can.’

  And so they passed along the fiery bridge’s length. Hissing and sparkling, every hue in the spectrum blazed in random patterns, and the travellers waded through that viscous, brilliant light—up to their ankles at first, then their knees, and finally, at the centrepoint above the now-invisible abyss, hidden by brightness, they walked hip-deep in shining bridge-stuff- and Tom was shaking by the time they reached the portal at the far end.

  “The Bifrost Gate,’ Kraiv announced as they walked through.

  Then they were in a courtyard tiled in shades of blue, surrounded by carls with deep-blue cloaks and helms of shining copper, and morphospears to match Kraiv’s own.

  A phalanx of carls escorted Kraiv—trailed by Tom and Draquelle—to the Great Hall. On the way, from dark stone corridors, Tom glimpsed gymnasia—saw female carls practising acrobatics—and schools. At one point, they passed two women, glowing with sweat and breathing hard as they left a training hall together, unfastening the sparring straps which bound their fists.

  The taller woman, black-haired and athletic
, caught sight of Tom, and sudden mutual attraction leaped between them—caring nothing for appropriateness of time or place.

  But then the moment was past, a memory, and Tom was entering a huge hall already filling with boisterous housecarls looking forward to their evening banquet.

  What happens now?

  Tom had no legal arguments prepared—Call yourself a logosopher?—or rhetoric with which to plead for Kraiv’s life. He knew little of the Manse’s laws inscribed in Sèr Koedex Rechtenstein; he knew everything about a warrior’s willingness to die for honour.

  For if there were to be a trial, it would surely involve blood, endurance, and a stoic resistance to pain.

  Long tables were set out in rows and tiers. Round copper shields hung vertically in mid-air; rosy glowclusters drifted among them, sliding warm reflections across the burnished disks.

  On the dais, a central chair, surmounted throne-like by a carved blackstone canopy, stood conspicuously empty: it belonged to the clan chief who was currently away from home, with a fighting company of carls.

  But the woman who sat to the vacant throne’s right bore herself with a warrior’s grace, limber and strong despite the grey which streaked her copper-bound hair. From time to time, her gaze would travel to the back of the Great Hall, where Kraiv ate nothing, waiting for the meal to end.

  Plentiful food, hot and fragrant, accompanied by humorous boasting, by tall tales and word-puzzles, rounding off the day’s hard work. But there were too many vacant seats, and every now and then the merriment would fade to silence; then someone would call out a warrior’s name, and they would toast a brave housecarl fallen in battle in some far demesne.

  When the last course was removed, the woman upon the dais rose, and beckoned Kraiv.

  He stood up, muscular and impressive as a statue.

  Then he walked among housecarls suddenly grown silent, along the central aisle. Before the dais he stopped, went slowly down on one knee, and bowed his head.

  ‘Kraiv Guelfsson yclept am I, of the Clan Vachleen. And I caused’—looking up, he held the woman’s gaze—‘your son’s death, which I regret.’

  Beside Tom, Draquelle jumped, gave a tiny sound, then forced herself to stillness.

  Chaos, my friend...

  ‘Reparation, your Highness, is yours to command.’

  The ruler’s skin was paler than Horush’s had been, but Tom could see the resemblance now: his mother, indeed. Would she call on Kraiv to fall upon his own morphospear? Or would the punishment be long, drawn out?

  For an age, she regarded Kraiv.

  Then her gaze lifted, and she pointed around the Great Hall, at the clusters of empty places. In a carrying voice, she said:

  ‘We are short of honourable warriors, proud carl. An you pledge yourself to Manse Hetreece, we know brave Horush’s spirit would be satisfied.’

  No-one breathed.

  What’s wrong?

  Kraiv’s own clan would already have accepted his loss. Surely that was not the—

  Draquelle’s fingers were digging into Tom’s forearm like claws, gripping hard. For she had already realized: the danger arose not from the mass of armed and deadly warriors, nor even from the iron will of the proud, bereaved woman who was strong enough to rule them.

  It was Kraiv’s own sense of honour which placed him in peril.

  ‘Do you accept’—the woman’s voice was soft—‘brave warrior?’

  Kraiv frowned, hesitating, while inside Tom every nerve screamed.

  Give your allegiance!

  But that was not the carl’s way.

  Do it, my friend.

  Breathing fast, Kraiv squeezed his eyes shut, examining his soul for signs of cowardice. Honour-bound, he could pledge allegiance—but not fear-driven.

  He scrutinized his feelings with ruthless self-honesty, ready to pay the price of weakness with his own blood. Beside Tom, Draquelle bit her lip, to prevent herself crying out.

  Kraiv’s eyes snapped open.

  ‘By Axe and by Flame—’

  Fate save him.

  ‘—I bind myself to thee, wise Lima, to the safety and welfare of thy Manse. I fight beside my broth—’

  Suddenly every carl in the Hall was upon his or her feet, cheering loudly as they stamped feet and smashed metal goblets upon stone tables, roaring their approval, drowning the final words of Kraiv’s blood oath in wave upon wave of glorious sound.

  On the seat beside Tom, Draquelle hid her face and wept.

  Two days later, on the far side of that blazing bridge of light, Tom looked back, eyes squinted almost shut against the brilliance. He raised his hand in farewell, though he could not see if they still stood beneath the Bifrost Gate.

  Be well, my friends.

  Then he turned his attention to the causeway, and carried on alone.

  He travelled light and fast.

  For three days, he ran like a monk performing ultra-endurance devotions: at an unstoppable, distance-eating speed. There was no logical reason to hurry; it had taken two Standard Years to get from his entering the Aurineate Grand’aume to here. But it felt as though time was running out.

  At the border of Realm Boltrivar, they scrutinized Tom’s travel-tag very carefully, and for a moment he wondered what that bastard Trevalkin might have encrypted in the tag, but then the membrane dissolved and he was through.

  For an hour he walked among corridors and tunnels which knew nothing of distant strife. Eventually, Tom found himself in a market chamber filled with spice and fabric vendors, so perfect that he might have stepped back into childhood in Saks Core, with Father and old Trade, the other stallholders, the throng of market-goers ...

  Except that one of them was pointing at him.

  And another, as growing whispers circled the chamber.

  ‘It’s him...’

  An old woman, head covered with a plain dark shawl, confided in her neighbour: ‘I’d know him anywhere.’

  Repeated, the whispering grew louder, becoming a refrain.

  ‘Lord One-Arm!’

  By the time Tom reached the chamber’s centre, beneath the broad silver disk inset upon the ceiling, there were soldiers hurrying towards him from every entrance. The nearest group was led by a running officer in a brocade-edged half-cape, hand upon his sword hilt.

  Tom’s travel-tag sparked ruby.

  Overhead, the silver disk slowly turned.

  No escape.

  Troops on every side.

  Overhead, slats descending ...

  But then the young officer, breathing hard, knelt down on the flagstones, held his ceremonial sabre so it would not rattle, and made obeisance.

  ‘My Lord, we have great need—’

  A snick as the stairway slotted into place.

  ‘—of your abilities.’

  Tom smiled at the officer’s perfectly clean, pressed uniform, in contrast to his own rough-cut, dust-stained clothes. ‘Thank you’—checking the man’s insignia—’Lieutenant.’

  ‘General d’Ovraison—’

  ‘Is expecting me. Quite.’

  Then he set foot upon the first rung, paused for a moment, half-seeing expectant faces among the crowd, and began his ascent.

  ~ * ~

  36

  TERRA AD 2142

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  [11]

  Holo, with soundtrack by Borodin:

  It is in the depths of icy winter—Ro kept the narrative as text: she could read it ten times faster than listening to voiceover—beneath a crust of fresh white snow, that Moscow (more properly, Moskva)—she touched the word: it sounded from the speaker as ‘Maskvà’—paradoxically reveals its character.

  Layer upon layer of history: like winter clothing, peeled off in the warmth indoors, we reveal a proud people—superstitious yet secular, intellectual and family-loving — who have suffered greatly ...

  Leaning back in her cushioned seat, Ro regarded the smartcart in the aisle beside her.

  ‘Quelque chose à boire?’ The device
had noted her Swiss citizenship; Ro’s canton-reg mistakenly listed her primary tongue as français: a piece of misinformation destined to spread through EveryWare.