The taverner bowed low as he came in; any Soldier automatically expected that much deference in Nurnen, and was likely to turn a place inside out if he didn’t get it. “Clownfruit brandy,” Glorund said.
A barmaid fetched it for him. She was pretty. He watched her appreciatively. He had a wife back in the Citadel, but any Soldier who earned cyborg status was supposed to disseminate his genes as widely as he could. Maybe another time, Glorund thought with mild regret. He’d come into Nurnen for a purpose more important if less enjoyable than spreading a bar-maid’s legs.
He had another shot of brandy, ordered bread and cheese to go with it. “You eat like a land gator,” the barmaid said as she watched him methodically demolish the meal. She meant it as a compliment; on Haven, being able to put away large amounts of food in a hurry was a survival characteristic.
Glorund smiled back at her, thinking that perhaps he would bed her after all. That, too, was a genetic imperative. But no. First things first. He stretched and yawned, a good impression of a man who felt lazy and loose. “Hear you had a strange sort of brawl in here not so long ago,” he remarked casually.
That was all the prompting she needed; if she was as eager to screw as she was to talk, he thought, she might well wear him out, cyborg Soldier though he was. “We sure did,” she said. “Blind man--Ivan over there”--she pointed to the taverner--”says he’s Juchi the Accursed--whaled the stuffing out of Strong Sven. Everybody in town knows Strong Sven, and nobody wants to quarrel with him. He has a good bit of Soldier blood in him, or so they say.”
“Half the people of Nurnen have some Soldier blood in them,” Glorund said. All the same, word of who Juchi’s opponent had been startled him. A T-year before, Strong Sven had fought a Soldier to a standstill. The Soldier was no prize, genetically speaking, but he hadn’t been left out for stobor, either. So Strong Sven unquestionably was of mixed blood. And what did that say about Juchi?
Ivan the taverner spoke up: “I wouldn’t let Juchi stay here, not after he admitted who he was. I like the Soldiers, I do, and I want naught to do with anyone who fought and hurt your folk.” He puffed out his chest in righteous--and possibly even sincere-- indignation. As he deflated, his right hand moved in a sign the people of Shangri-La Valley had learned from the steppe nomads. He went on, “Besides, I didn’t want his ill-luck rubbing off on my place.”
“Where would he have gone, then?” Glorund asked. As long as the cattle were so forthcoming, he would pump them for all they were worth (just for an instant, is thoughts went back to the barmaid). She was the one who answered: “When they went out the door, they turned left, going south through town. Maybe they were trying to get a place to rest, but who would give them one, knowing what they were?”
It was a good question. Glorund knew not all the town of Nurnen was as pleased with the Soldiers and their constant presence as Ivan professed to be. Still, though, Nurnen depended on the Citadel for its livelihood Few townsfolk would risk their overlords’ wrath for the sake of a couple of wanderers.
The Battlemaster threw down a silver coin with the shark shape of the Dol Guldur--the ship that had brought the Soldiers to Haven--stamped on one side and the old Americ motto KILL EM ALL AND LET GOD SORT ‘EM OUT on the other. Coppers jingled as Ivan started to make change. “Keep it,” Glorund said. “You’ve helped me.”
He went out into the street, glanced up at the sky. Byers’ Sun stood almost at the zenith; Cat’s Eye was low in the east: second cycle, third day noon, more or less. Another thirty-five hours of daylight, at any rate. Sleeping patterns on Haven tended to the peculiar. Some people catnapped when they felt like it, regardless of where--or whether--Byers’ Sun and Cat’s Eye were in the sky. Some tried to keep a rhythm of long stretches of awareness and long sleeps.
Soldiers, for their part, usually went without sleep as long as they could, then slept hard for ten hours or so. Glorund had to think of Juchi as a Soldier. Likely he and the woman would not have settled down to rest, not here in a town where so many people had reason to despise them, but would have pushed on into the valley. If they did stop to sleep, it would be away from people.
Working through the logic took but a moment. As soon as he saw the end of the chain, Glorund went into a Soldier’s trot. Like a broken-field runner, he dodged round the people and carts crowding Nurnen streets. Some Soldiers got into trouble when they tried moving quickly in town--they forgot that people would seek to dodge out of their way, and sometimes zigged into them when they should have zagged away.
Glorund was a cyborg. He made no such stupid mistakes. He saw a kilometer and a half of street as a single unit, plotted his course through it with accuracy and finesse. His processing equipment and reaction time let him treat the journey as a series of freeze-frames, with the men, women, horses, and muskylopes essentially motionless as he moved past them.
Soon he was past the southern limits of the town. He slowed, examined the dirt surface of the road with care. He knew the shoes a man from Nurnen or another valley town was likely to wear, knew also the boot styles of the local nomads and, of course, of his fellow Soldiers. All those, save to some degree the nomads’, he mentally eliminated; his eyes literally took no notice of them. That disposed of more than eighty percent of his possibles; the rest he studied more closely. He did not need long to settle on two pairs of prints as most likely to belong to Juchi and his guide.
One of those sets of prints was a good deal smaller than the other. Since Juchi’s guide was known to be a woman, that alone made those two pairs a decent bet to be the ones he sought. Legend said she was his daughter, his sister, or both at once, but Glorund, with resolute cyborg rationality, discounted legend. Data counted for more, and data he had: the smaller set of feet--the ones he’d tentatively identified as belonging to Juchi’s companion--took firm if short strides. The other set of prints, the ones from the larger feet, was scuffed and dragged along through the dirt, very much as if the person who made those tracks could not see where he was going.
Glorund grinned a carnivore grin. He resumed his effortless Soldier’s trot. Now to see to revenge for Angband Base. It would be late revenge, and minimal, but not to be discarded on account of that. Word of how Juchi met his end would also become legend, legend that would grow and make fear of Soldiers grow with it. Glorund’s grin stretched wider.
Unlike an unaugumented tracker, the Battlemaster did not have to slow to keep track of his quarry’s trail. Now he simply screened from his vision centers all footprints in the road save the two pairs he sought. Sometimes cyborgs made mistakes by programming themselves to ignore data that later proved important. Glorund did not think he was making a mistake, not here.
As he ran on, the trail grew fresher. He was not taken by surprise when Juchi and the woman with him left the road to head for the shelter of an apple orchard not far away. He mentally checked his weaponry. He had a knife--and he had himself. That was plenty. Juchi, after all, was unlikely to be toting an assault rifle. As for the woman with him, well, she was a woman, and largely (altogether, if the legend was a lie, as legends mostly were) of cattle stock. He screened her from his consideration as thoroughly as he had the irrelevant footprints.
He added two things to his inventory of weapons. He had privacy here, and he had plenty of time. Grinning still, he trotted toward the apple orchard.
Aisha looked up from the small fire she was building. “A man is coming.”
‘Yes, I hear him.” Juchi turned his head toward the sound. Even after so long, he sometimes expected to see what he was hearing. Whoever the approaching stranger was, he had a gait like a muskylope’s, tireless and easy. Juchi heard his quick footfalls but only calm, steady breathing, as if the fellow were just ambling along.
Suddenly Juchi did see, in his mind’s eye that no brooch could pierce. He saw himself as a young man out on the steppe, saw another man approaching him at a trot. It had been just such a trot as this. The man had been Dagor, his father--a Sauron. He only learned that
years later. At the time, he’d thought him just another outlaw. He’d fought him. He’d killed him.
The fellow now was in among the trees, weaving between them faster than a man had any business doing. Aisha said, “He has a gray greatcoat.”
“He is a Sauron,” Juchi said. “Well, if he wants me, he has me. I shall not run from him, nor would it do me any good to try.” Less than a minute later, the Sauron came into the clearing. “Greetings, guest,”
Juchi told him. “Will you share salt and bread with us?”
“Yes,” the Sauron answered, “but afterwards I will kill you all the same.”
Aisha drew in a sharp breath. Juchi set a hand on her arm, shook his head. He turned back to the Sauron. “You are honest, at any rate. Shall we talk a while first, that I may learn who so baldly seeks my death?”
“As you wish. I just now thought to myself that I have all the time I need to do as I will with you,” the Sauron said. “Think not to escape, either, for I am no mere Soldier. I am Glorund, Battlemaster of the Citadel. I know you cannot see them, but I wear the death’s-heads on my collar tabs.”
Cloth rustled. He was loosening his greatcoat, then. “He speaks the truth,” Aisha said, her voice quavering. “He is a cyborg.”
“I did not think he came here to boast and lie,” Juchi said. He sounded calm. He’d passed beyond fear for his life in the red moment he’d plunged his wife’s--his mother’s--brooch into his eyes. He nodded to Glorund. “Well, Battlemaster, so you will take your revenge for Angband Base, will you?”
“Exactly so,” Glorund answered. “Our reach is shorter than it was in the long-ago days; we have not maintained as much travel technology as we might wish. But we still know what examples are worth. Now that I have you, the cattle will quiver in fright and horror whenever they speak of your death. That serves the Citadel.”
“Men quiver in fright and horror when they speak of me now,” Juchi said, shrugging. “Allah and the spirits know I have deserved both. But no one yet has dared call me coward. I shall not flee you. Indeed, I warn you that I will strike back if I may. I began fighting Saurons long ago; the habit is hard to break.”
“Strike if you wish,” Glorund said. “It will not avail you.” Juchi had not dealt with Saurons for many years, but he remembered the arrogance they could put in their voices, the certainty that things would be as they said and only as they said. Glorund had it in full measure.
“You condemn me for taking Angband Base,” Juchi said. “Why should I not condemn you and all your kind for what you have done to Haven?”
“Because you have not the power,” Glorund answered at once. “Haven is ours because we are strong enough to hold it, to shape it as we will.” Yes, he was arrogant, arrogant as a cliff lion stretching in front of a herd of muskylopes.
Juchi had thought that way once, till his own downfall led him to a different view. He said, “Your kind, Sauron, did not have the power to hold Angband Base. Thus by your own argument you ought to leave me in such little peace as may be mine.”
“Had you stayed in that faraway valley, you would be right. But you are here now, in the Shangri-La Valley, the stronghold of the Soldiers, and here, I gather, by your own free choice. That makes you a fool, and for fools the death penalty is certain. I am but the instrument the universe chooses to carry out its will.”
“Why not say you are a god and have done?” Aisha said.
“There are no gods,” Glorund answered. “I am a Soldier and a cyborg. Here and now, that is all I need to be. I am a lord among the Soldiers, and the Soldiers are lords among the human cattle of this world.”
“Do you take pride in that?” Juchi asked.
“Why should I not?” Unmistakably, Glorund was preening. “Year by year, we breed more Soldiers, shape this world in our image.”
‘ And year by year, your grip grows shorter. You said as much yourself. When your kind came to Haven, you came in a starship. Where is your starship now, Sauron? You had fliers, they say. Where are your fliers now? You call your folk great conquerors? Were you not then fleeing defeat, like a beaten nomad tribe driven from good pasture country to badlands where grass hardly grows? Boast of your might, and hear your boasts ring hollow in your ears.” Aisha clapped her hands in delight at her father’s defiance. Juchi hoped to hear some sign of anger from Glorund, the sharpness of an indrawn breath or the small mineral noise of teeth grinding together. From an ordinary man, even from an ordinary Sauron, he knew he would have won them. Yet Glorund still sat as relaxed as if they were talking about the best way to trim muskylope hooves. The biomechanical implants that made him a cyborg gave him inhuman calm.
A good word for it, Juchi thought. Many doubted whether cyborgs truly were human beings anymore, or only war machines fueled on bread and meat instead of coal. Juchi knew he was glad no cyborg had led at Angband Base. That fight had been hard enough as it was. But had he died in it, he would not have gone on to sin as he had. Maybe better, then, if a cyborg had been there.
He d chased round such thoughts countless times in his years of wandering, never to any profit. That did not keep him from getting caught up in them, from wishing his life somehow could have been different. He realized he’d missed something Glorund said. He said, “I’m sorry; I was woolgathering.”
“A fit trade for a nomad,” the Sauron said, the first trace of wit Juchi had heard from him. “Let me try again: aye, we were defeated. The herds of cattle gored down our forefathers by weight of numbers. Is that warfare? Half a dozen drillbits may gnaw flesh from a man’s bones. Does that make them mightier than men?”
“The fellow they gnawed will never worry about the question again,” Aisha put in. “He lost, and so did you.”
“And what have you Saurons done with Haven since you came here?” Juchi added. “Have you made it better? Stronger? Or have you simply gone about the planet destroying anything that might get in the way of your quest for power?”
“Those who rule brook no rivals,” Glorund answered. “So has it always been, on every world; so shall it always be. Accept a rival to your power and one day you will find you have a master.”
“But your power is not based just on the fighting magic you Saurons have within your own bodies,” Juchi said.
“By the Lidless Eye, what else is there, you bad-genes wretch?” The Battlemaster’s words still came out in that perfectly controlled tone, but now they betrayed anger all the same.
Juchi nodded to himself. Flick a Sauron on his fighting ability and he bled. Juchi did not intend to let him clot. He went on, “You won Haven with machine magic, and slew everyone else’s machines when you came. You had to--machines can kill from farther away than any Sauron’s arm can reach. But now that that magic is gone for everyone else, it is dying for you as well. And fight as boldly as you will, how can you ever hope to leave Haven again without the machine magic you’ve spent all these years killing?”
“When we have fully mastered the world, we will restore technology--under our control,” Glorund answered. “It can be done; cyborgs can outthink men of the cattle as well as outfight them.”
Juchi snorted impolitely. “I’ve wandered widely across Haven this last half of my life. Though I do not see, I hear and I know. Aye, you hold Shangri-La Valley tight, here with your Citadel. Here you still retain some of your magic, enough to breed or make cyborgs--for now. But for how much longer, even here? In the other and lesser valleys where Sauron fortresses still dominate, they have lost the art. And, Battlemaster Glorund, think on this--is a Citadel a place from which to fare forth to conquer all the world, or is it a place to huddle, warded there against a world that hates you?”
Now Glorund sat some time silent. In that silence, Juchi was reminded of the electronic ruminations of the Threat Analysis Computer at Angband Base. He wondered how Glorund was analyzing the data he had presented, how the cyborg went about weighing those data against the ones he already possessed. No matter how Juchi had scoffed at it, the Threat Analy
sis Computer had proven abominably right. Could Glorund’s augmented flesh and blood match the machine?
Juchi never learned the answer to that question, for Glorund said, “I can tell you what the Citadel and its valley are, Juchi. They are the fitting place for you to die.”
“Aye, that is so, Sauron, but not for the reason you think.” Juchi unobtrusively shifted his weight, readying himself for the attack that, he knew, would come at any moment. While Glorund hesitated still, he took the chance to get in the last word: “What better spot for me to lie than in the center of Sauron wickedness? Perhaps your land will gain some atonement from me, as I have already rid one part of Haven of your foul breed.”
What would have been killing rage in an unmodified man ripped through Glorund. The cyborg Battlemaster felt it only as an augmented urge to be rid of Juchi once for all. He had no need for the rush of adrenaline that sped the hearts and reflexes of cattle, even of Soldiers. All his bodily systems functioned at peak efficiency at all times. Without gathering himself, without changing expression, he leapt at the mocking blind man whose very existence affronted the Soldiers, who would not be silent, and who somehow kept piercing, deflecting, the cool, perfect stream of Glorund’s own logic.
A man of the cattle would have died before he ever realized Glorund had moved. The Battlemaster learned in that instant that part of Juchi’s legend, at least, was true. He reacted to Glorund’s attack with speed many of the Soldiers at the Citadel might have envied, knocked aside the first blow intended to snap his spine, struck out with the dagger that had appeared in his right hand as if by magic.
Glorund chopped at his wrist. That should have sent the knife spinning away. Juchi held on. He grappled with Glorund. His every kick, every handblow was cleverly aimed, Soldier-fast and Soldier-strong. The knife scored a fiery line across Glorund’s ribs before the Battlemaster finally managed to knock it out of Juchi’s hand.
War World III: Sauron Dominion Page 18