A flitterboat passed low over their heads.
“Good thinking,” the guard said, coming forward to examine Carl from close up. “Say, aren’t you Corporal Allan from the Eleventh?”
“That’s right,” Carl said, twisting his head to look up at the guard. “Isn’t this the Eleventh?”
“No, the Eleventh is over that way, where all the noise is coming from. This is the Nineteenth. What are you doing way over here?”
“I got lost,” Carl told him. “The Saracens have attacked us. Don’t you people know that?”
“Of course,” the trooper told him. “The captain has doubled the guard.”
“Oh,” Carl said. “Well, if you’ll let me up now that you recognize me, I guess I’ll head back to my unit.”
The trooper stepped back and raised his pike to present arms. “Only doing my job, Corporal,” he said.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Carl assured him, climbing to his feet. “Carry on, trooper.” He gave a halfhearted salute, and started toward the battle noise. The screaming sounded louder and more organized: the counterattack had probably begun. Carl Frederic’s place was with his platoon.
He had gone no more than a couple of hundred yards when the four of them jumped him. Four Saracen troopers; they had been quietly sitting out the battle by the side of a large rock when Carl blundered into their midst. He was not only an enemy in their eyes, he was a corporal who had seen them goofing off. He might report them after the battle—if he lived to tell about it.
They leaped without warning, as though pulled by a common string. Carl had barely time to get his sword up before they were upon him. He parried all their blows and retreated before them, carefully not letting any of them get behind him. It took him over a minute to maneuver around and get his back to the rock so he could keep them all in sight before him.
The four Saracens were young, inexperienced troopers, no match for Carl in single combat. But there were four of them, and if they just kept bashing long enough one of them would get through Carl’s guard. Or they would tire him out to the point where he couldn’t keep his guard up anymore.
Carl kept them far enough away with the point of his sword so that they had to use full arm swings or lunges to get through his guard. Full arm swings were difficult with four of them facing him, as they kept getting in each other’s way; and they were reluctant to try lunges, as that would bring their bodies entirely too close to that sharp point on the end of Carl’s sword. So they stood their distance and hacked away at him, waiting to tire him out and finish him.
Carl could feel himself tiring, and the muscles of his shoulder began to ache. He knew that he’d better do something, and do it fast. Every second that passed was further sapping his strength. Trying to break away from the four Saracens would be risky, but staying and fighting them was eventual death.
The Saracens were coming in two at a time, the other two staying just out of range, and switching every minute or so to rest. Carl backed along the face of the rock, causing the two in front to clump closer together, then made his break. Instead of breaking away from them, where the other two in the rear were waiting for him, he broke toward them. With a sudden sweep of his sword he knocked the other two aside; then he lunged toward the point dead center between them.
They were knocked aside, and one of them stumbled. Carl carefully kicked him as he went down, and slashed waist-high at the other’s side. Then he swiveled to face the other two men, his sword at ready.
A flitterboat swooped down to get a better view of the action.
The first two men were out of the fight: one rolling on the ground clutching his abdomen, and the second sitting quietly by the rock and keeping both hands on the pressure points that would lessen the flow of blood through the long gash in his side right below the chain shirt. The other two men were warily approaching Carl, who was backing away from them, trying for a clear shot at escaping into the woods. They were not going to underestimate him again, and had already tired him out to the point where, with care, they could take him.
Carl switched his sword to his left hand to rest his right, and concentrated on parrying the renewed attack. The two Saracens were getting practice in keeping out of each other’s way, and pressed in on each side of Carl, methodically hacking away to get by his guard. Soon they would succeed.
Carl gathered himself for a lunge—one mad make-or-break dash into the wood. In a few seconds either he would be among the trees and away, or he would be dead.
Suddenly, as Carl smashed the two blades aside and leaped forward, a searingly bright white light flashed on and impaled him in its beam, blinding him. He tripped and fell flat on his face. Something solid cracked into the back of his head.
Chapter Five
It was some time before Carl came to. The sun had risen and was already well up in the sky, Carl realized, staring out the window of the flitterboat.
The flitterboat?
With a groan, Carl tried to push himself up to a sitting position. The girl in the command chair hurried over to him when she heard the noise. It was Alyssaunde, Carl noticed blurrily, then he collapsed back in the couch and lost consciousness again.
When he came around again it was dusk, and Alyssaunde was sitting by the couch looking down at him. “Hello,” she said softly when she saw his eyes open.
He focused on her face and thought about this for some time. Finally he figured out what she had said and what he should do about it. “Hello,” he replied. His voice seemed to come from far away, and his tongue was unnaturally thick. There was something wrong about where he was and what was happening to him, but he couldn’t figure it out now. He closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
This time he slept for only a short while, and when he woke Alyssaunde fed him hot soup from a fine porcelain cup. Neither of them spoke. Carl finished the soup and Alyssaunde removed the cup and then patted an alcohol-dampened cloth across his face.
“What happened?” Carl asked. He tried to sit up again and found that he couldn’t. He was trussed up like a mummy from his waist to right below his arms. His left arm was bandaged from elbow to shoulder, and his head was wrapped in what seemed like yards of bandage. He felt very weak, and the effort of trying to move made him dizzy.
“What do you remember?” Alyssaunde asked, sitting next to him and staring into his eyes.
Having Alyssaunde that close made him uncomfortable, and it wasn’t just because she was a Guest. He closed his eyes and reached for the elusive memory of his recent past. “I was fighting off a couple of Saracens,” Carl remembered. “I was just about to make a dive for the cover of a nearby grove of trees when some idiot blinded me with a bright light. I’ve never seen a light that bright. Then someone clobbered me over the back of the head. It must have been one of the two Saracens. Then I woke up here. Since they were trying to kill me, this must be heaven. And you—”
“Not quite,” Alyssaunde told him. As a matter of fact, if you promise not to yell, or try to strangle me, there’s something I should tell you.” She looked faintly amused.
“What’s that?” Carl asked.
“I was the idiot,” Alyssaunde said. She shook her head slowly. “It was inexcusable, and I’m more sorry than you can imagine. I wouldn’t want to hurt any of you people.”
“You turned on the light? What for? Then it must have been you in the flitterboat over our heads.” Carl struggled to sit up, and this time he made it. “Whatever did you turn on that light for?”
“I guess I owe you an explanation,” Alyssaunde said, “seeing as I almost killed you. It was sheer stupidity. I admit it, I was stupid. Thoughtless and stupid. My father keeps telling me I shouldn’t try to do anything that requires intelligence. Leave that to the men, he says. Maybe he’s right.”
“In my experience,” Carl said slowly, thinking over each word before it came out, “the women are, if anything, smarter than the men. Women get better grades in school. All the teachers are women. Why, I knew
a girl once who used to read; I mean, for fun. She would just sit there and read a book for fun. She was pretty smart, that girl.”
“Is that right?” Alyssaunde sounded interested. “Perhaps in your society, primitive as it is, women are allowed to reach their full potential. In mine women are regarded as objects: playthings for the men. Be pretty or die, or at least join a nunnery, that’s what you’re—we’re—taught.”
“Really?” Carl said. “Well, you sure are pretty!” Then he turned red. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
Alyssaunde smiled again. “Why not? It’s true,” she said, but not as if she were proud of the fact or regarded it as much of an accomplishment. “It’s not hard, you know. Just start out with a decent body, eat properly when you’re growing up, and spend ten years learning the cosmetic arts. It helps to have money. Malnutrition is just hell on a girl’s figure.”
“Why’d you turn the light on?” Carl asked, as much to change the subject as for any other reason. After all, if a Guest wanted to use a spotlight, it was not forbidden. Guests were not supposed to interfere, but throwing a light on an existing battle would probably not be regarded as interference. Spotlighting a group waiting in ambush would be interfering, probably, but even then an Inspector would have to have seen it to make the complaint. Citizens were not to question the actions of Guests.
“I was trying to take pictures,” Alyssaunde said. “I’m doing a photo-essay on some aspects of your culture. I meant to take them in infrared light, but the selector switch was incorrectly set.” She shook her head. “See how you can do that without even thinking about it? Here I am trying to blame the switch, which is a mindless mechanical device and merely stays where I set it. I set it wrongly. Me. It’s my fault I’m sorry and I apologize. The switch is not sorry.”
Carl didn’t follow any of this. He decided it was because he was so weak. “Where are we?” he asked. “What time is it?”
“It’s about nine in the evening,” Alyssaunde told him. “The day after your fight. That is, actually, the same day, since the battle began well after midnight. You know what I mean. We’re sitting on top of one of the Altoona Mounds.”
“But they’re off limits,” Carl said.
“Not to me,” Alyssaunde told him. “Someday I plan to dig them up and get a glimpse of the ancient city they say is buried here.”
“Oh,” Carl said. “Is that what it is?” He was beginning to feel stronger and his head was clearing. He raised his arms and twisted his body experimentally to judge the extent of the damage. “Well, I guess I haven’t bought my ticket,” he said. “Who packaged me?”
“Ticket?” Alyssaunde said. “Packaged?”
“Who packaged me—who wrapped me up?”
“Bandaged you. I did. What about a ticket?”
“I said I guess I haven’t bought my ticket. That’s what we call it when we’re retired and put on half-pay because of honorable wounds. They give you a card to carry around saying you’re honorably retired and can shop in the commissary and eat at the mess and like that. It’s called a ticket; so getting disabling wounds is called buying your ticket. It’s just the way we talk. You packaged me? You sure did a good job; where’d you learn?”
“It’s amazing how quickly the different ethno-cultures develop their own argots despite all our efforts to keep the language standardized,” Alyssaunde said. “I really find your idiom charming.”
“Look,” Carl said, “I guess you’d better put me down somewhere. Not that I’m not grateful to you; I am. You saved my life. But I’m not supposed to be flying around in a flitterboat. I could get in a lot of trouble.”
“That’s true,” the girl admitted. “Don’t the restrictions that you must live your life by ever gall you? Don’t you find them unfair?”
“I never thought about it,” Carl said.
“I find the restrictions in my life very unfair,” Alyssaunde said, “and there are far fewer of them for me than for you.”
“I imagine,” Carl said politely. He found this girl very puzzling. She was an Earther, he was sure of that by now, but she rode in a flitterboat. She talked about fairness and unfairness, but she came in low to get good pictures of Carl being hacked apart. Then, to compound the puzzle, she saved his life and packaged (bandaged?) him.
“I’ll find a quiet, deserted place to let you out,” Alyssaunde said. “Do you think you’re strong enough to walk back to the bivouac?”
“I don’t know if I’m even strong enough to stand up,” Carl said, “but I guess I’ll have to. Listen, miz, I do thank you very much for saving my life, even if it was your fault about the light.”
“Look, you,” the girl said angrily, “if I wish to chastise myself about my actions, that’s my business. For you to do so is impolite, gross, vulgar, and altogether insulting. I may offer an apology, my man, but it is not your place to suggest that one is due you. Let us not forget our stations, you and me.” She hit the control stick savagely, and the flitter bobbed up a couple of hundred feet.
The sudden surge threw Carl back in his couch. He felt a void in the pit of his stomach, which was immediately filled by a powerful urge to be sick. He rolled over to face the window, but the sight of the ground receding only made him feel sicker. He gulped and held his stomach,
Alyssaunde punched the course in the control board and turned back to Carl Frederic, prepared to continue the tirade. But the sight of his face was enough to make her change her mind. “What’s the matter?” she said.
Carl shook his head weakly.
“It’s the acceleration,” Alyssaunde said. “I should have known. What a stupid thing to do; I’m sorry.”
Carl smiled sickly. “That’s not for me to say,” he gasped, rolling over to look at her.
Alyssaunde opened a cabinet behind her and selected a small box from inside. She removed a plastic tab and broke it open, shaking the two pills it contained into Carl’s hand. “Take,” she directed. She handed him a small cup of water. “Drink.”
Carl swallowed the pills without argument. “Thank you, miz,” he said, handing her back the cup.
“I can’t drop you out of sight of the bivouac,” Alyssaunde said, “you’d never make it back. And I sure can’t drop you anywhere in sight of the bivouac. We both share that restriction, from opposite sides of the fence. And I can’t keep you here; I have to be back tonight.” She drummed her fingers on the top of the control panel. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” she said.
“Just drop me anywhere away from the bivouac,” Carl said. “I’ll be all right.”
“Look, you,” Alyssaunde said, “I didn’t save your life just to leave you to bleed to death out on some rock. There’s got to be— Of course!” She slapped her hands together. “Stupid! It’s all in point-of-view, and I was looking through the wrong one. Of course I’ll drop you. And then, like any other Guest, I’ll just wander over to the bivouac and mention seeing you and carry you back. It’s all very simple when out there. As if I were curious to watch them pick you up, you’re keeping to the right frame of reference.”
“That sounds good,” Carl said, thinking it over.
“Can you make it up here to the observer’s seat?” Alyssaunde asked. “It would help if you picked the location to drop you.”
“I think so,” Carl said, pushing himself to his feet and staggering forward. The interesting thing about being so weak, Carl noticed, was that even the simplest actions became tremendous projects. He found himself as innately pleased with his success in standing up as he would have been when well with completing a complex defense pattern with the two-handed broadsword. With a sigh of accomplishment, he dropped into the right-hand observer’s seat and stared through the glass at the ground below.
They were flying over a great, cubic building that stood alone in a cleared field. “We’re not in your sector yet,” Alyssaunde said.
“I thought not,” Carl said. “That box below is nothing I recognize.”
Alyssaunde peered d
own. “That’s the Blockhouse,” she told Carl.
“A good name,” Carl agreed.
“It’s Prime Area Government House,” she explained. “The Blockhouse is its nickname.”
“Prime Area?” Carl asked.
“Earth is divided into twelve areas,” Alyssaunde told him. “Didn’t they teach you any geography at school?”
“No,” Carl said.
“Oh. Well, it is. Earth, I mean. And the Outlands. That’s anyplace that isn’t in one of the twelve areas. Your sector, Sector Seven, is in Prime Area.”
“What does that mean?” Carl asked.
Alyssaunde shrugged. “The first, I suppose. Just in numbering order; it’s not more important or anything. It just happens to be Area Number One on the maps. You know about the governors?”
“No,” Carl said.
“Each area has a governor. Earth has a governor-general. They administer the planet.”
“They can boss the King around; and the Emir?”
“They appointed them,” Alyssaunde said.
“But Hiram the Sixth is hereditary monarch,” Carl Frederic said.
“That’s right,” Alyssaunde said. “The Governing Council appoints all the hereditary monarchs.”
“But—” Carl said.
“It’s very complex,” Alyssaunde said, “and you’re probably not supposed to know all this stuff anyway. You’re in a state of benign ignorance. Maybe if I get a chance I’ll come back and explain it all to you.”
“That would be nice,” said Carl, who was just beginning to realize how much he didn’t know.
“We’ve crossed,” Alyssaunde said, watching some instrument on her control panel.
“What’s that?” Carl asked.
Alyssaunde pointed to a glowing readout that read: 01:07:A/9. “That’s the locator,” she said. “It reads: Area One, Sector Seven, grid coordinates A-stroke-nine.”
“Oh,” Carl said.
“Your bivouac is B-stroke-seven,” Alyssaunde said. “We’ll be there in a couple of minutes. I’ll put you down three or four miles from camp. Pick a site.”
Tomorrow Knight Page 4