The Heretic-eARC

by David Drake

  Although the Scouts had been good at making use of the land, they were in many respects amateurs in comparison to him, who’d lived in this environment all of his life. There was a wealth of sustenance hidden in this harsh and arid land for the one who knew how to find it. The pricklebush itself was useful, for its roots could be exhumed, slit open, and the moisture got out. Best of all were the wands of the very plant that had been used to tie the unfortunate Schlusel males to the metallic rocks. These could be skinned and would provide a ropey chewing cud that would also relieve his fatigue and reduce the swellings of his joints from the running. If he were able to find a bayonet plant, he might even have a feast on its fleshy parts. He must keep his eye out, that was all, and he would be all right. After this was over, he could think about eating again.

  He checked the stars and set off through the night. His pace was even greater than he had hoped, for he’d received a new pair of sandals from the Farmers, and they were proving most efficacious against the hard ground.

  After several hours in the end have a feeling that something was looking over his shoulder, was following him from behind.

  It cannot be the Farmers, he thought to himself. They were sound asleep as I left, and they will not have been able to pick up my track in the evening even if they did wake up. But he stopped running and looked back.

  It was the moon called Mommsen, quivering on the horizon, about to set.

  “Oh you,” he said, shaking a finger at it, “you shouldn’t stare at a man so.”

  He turned around and continued onward, still at a jogging pace that would have put many a dont to shame if the creature had to make a similar traverse at night.

  He found a pricklebush near dawn and dug it up with his fingers. The slight moisture of the roots on his lips was delicious. He abandoned himself to finding more roots for several minutes and dug up five or six more bushes. Suddenly he stopped and thought.

  “They will know I came through here,” he murmured. “They will see the dug-up plants.”

  So maybe he couldn’t drink after all. Well, that would be all right, because he thought that he only had another ten or twelve hours to go.

  “It ought to be just enough to take me through,” he said to himself.

  Onward through the harsh glare of the sun. This was a time of day that every instinct told him was not good to travel in. It was a time for rest, or at least to be in shadows while doing chores. It was not time to run with the bare head through the unforgiving Redlands.

  Yet run he did, onward and onward.

  And slowly the sun traveled across the sky, and it was afternoon. The visions started near sunset, and they were what he expected. Up ahead a woman beckoning him to keep going, to keep ahead of any who would pursue them. He knew it could not be his wife, because he had buried her in the sand after he pulled the Blaskoye off her and slit his throat. He’d been very angry to discover that his wife was already dead, and that the Blaskoye who had been raping her either didn’t know or didn’t care. He felt cheated, as if his rescue effort had not only been in vain, but had been a sort of joke.

  Then the woman stopped appearing, and as he ran on, another form appeared, smaller. This, too, he knew could not be real, but it was closer to reality, and so closer to tricking him, for the boy—it had to be the boy—still lived as far as he knew. In fact, everything he did and thought was a result of believing that the boy still lived and that he was going where the boy was.

  In the end he gave in to the boy’s beckoning and even called out once or twice in his weak, parched voice, “I’m coming.”

  Then, well into the evening, after the sun set and the first moon rose, he saw the campfires of the oasis ahead of him. They were twinkling in the dark. Now a hard chill had set, and his yellow robes, thin as the scales of a ground-scather and fine for day, were no protection against the bite of the evening.

  He ran on.

  And that nagging feeling, that there was something behind him, returned. But now he knew that he was as far away from reality as he was ever likely to get and still have a chance to come back. The boy was telling him to come forward with signs and motions, and he was eager to do so. It was only when he got to the first outlying campfire that he realized he must now be careful, that the run was over, and the crawl and the shuffle had begun.

  But that was all right, too. Working his way through the outer camps was not as hard as he thought it might be. They were not expecting anyone like him here. As far as they knew, all Remlaps had ceased to exist.

  So within two hours of careful movement he was into Awul-alwaha proper. There were so many people around it was impossible to hide any longer, and there was no need to. He could stand up and walk among the people, or at least slink from alley to alley. If he were glimpsed, it was no great matter to imagine that he was a lost traveler, for Awul-alwaha was filled to capacity with outsiders, men who had not been of the Blaskoye tribe, who had never thought of themselves as Redlanders, but who did now.

  They convinced themselves after they saw what got done to those Schlusels, thought Gaspar. And he knew that many others had received the same treatment, including his tribe. It was either join the Blaskoye and call yourself a Redlander—or find yourself made an example of in the most horrible way.

  He knew where he was going. At least, he believed he could find the tent.

  As the headman of his tribe, in better days he had been invited to visit the sheiks and potentates who had run the Blaskoye clan before Rostov came along.

  In many ways, those old days had not been very much different from now. The Blaskoye had been running a protection operation since time immemorial. But in those days you knew where you stood, and you knew that if you paid the proper amounts to the right people, you would be let alone and left to go your way. And if you did not, the most that would happen would be to have your legs broken, a few daks slaughtered or taken. This was not out of consideration for the finer feelings of the herd animals, the other tribes, of course. It was a method for ensuring a steady return over the long-term.

  But now all that was gone, and the only thing the Blaskoye—and one might as well go ahead and say it, Rostov—cared about was the present.

  Awul-alwaha was not a town in any sense, more an extended encampment, but Gaspar, never having seen a town, was only aware of this fact in the abstract. It seemed enormous to him. The buildings were not permanent, except for a couple of wells and a central bathing area made of adobe bricks. It was the largest collection of human beings that Gaspar ever seen, and he could not imagine how a Farmer town could be more crowded, although he’d heard that they were. Almost he forgot the way along the paths between the tents and other temporary structures that defined the encampment. But there was enough similarity from the last time he had been here, which was nearly three years before, for him to wind his way toward the big tent of white and blue fabric that marked the Blaskoye central living area. Around that tent, clustered like sheep around the salt lick, were the many elaborate structures that formed the corridors of the tribes’ leaders, including the slave quarters and the dont enclosures. There were even separate cook tents and specially floored dining yurts where the masters of the Redlands could sit in comfort and consume their slave-brought meals.

  The sounds of the oasis surrounded him. The perpetual flapping of fabric in the wind. The sudden onset of humidity, and the ensuing plague of insectoids. The white shine of the morning sun and play of shadows through breeze-whipped tent walls. The smell of the fabric itself: most of it dakwool, locally made, but some dusty linen bought or stolen from the Valley with its flax mills.

  And, as always, the need to watch out for stakes and guylines. They were everywhere, put in wherever there was room. Get off the path, and you were likely to trip, perhaps yank up a carefully planted stake, or do something that would call attention to yourself.

  Then he was among the Blaskoye tents, white and trimmed with blue, and his way became less certain. He would have to listen in
on conversations and find his way to where he wished to go. It proved easier than he had feared, however, for a steady stream of visitors was headed for the very person he wanted to find. He hid in a shadow behind a large potted plant and listened to two men as they spoke of a report they would soon give. Both seemed nervous and uncertain about how it would be received.

  “He won’t like that they are in the Redlands and we couldn’t find them,” said one.

  “But it’s better for him to know that they are here than for them to get away with it entirely,” said the other. “I don’t think he’s going to take it out on us. We’ve done what we could.”

  “You know that’s not the way he will look at it. He’ll tell us that he might hear the same report from a tribe in for market, so what does he need spies for?”

  They continued past Gaspar, and he came out from behind his plant and followed them. Just before they went through a large opening that led to another tent, he ducked to the side and worked his way around the edge of that tent until he came to yet another tent that connected to the larger structure.

  This will be the slave quarters for the main area, he thought. I will come in here, and if he is not here, it is still a good way to get to where I must go. A way that he will not expect.

  The hard part would be getting himself and the map case through a small opening without being detected. He was about to slit a hole long ways with his rusty knife—an instrument the Farmers had mercifully, foolishly, allowed him to keep—when he realized that this would be immediately noticed and instead reached down and made a horizontal cut along the floor of the tent side just above where it reached the ground and was curled under the flooring circlet that kept it in position. His slit began at one support and ended at another. It was as long as a man. Gaspar got down on his belly and held the map in its case in front of him as if he were hugging a baby. He quietly rolled through the slit.

  When he looked up he was inside a large area full of people and frenetic with movement. He quickly stood up and looked around. The people were intent on their tasks and no one had noticed him enter. In fact, he didn’t think any one of them would notice anything unless the entire tent were burning down, so intent were they on following whatever orders drove them.

  These had the sliced foreheads that signified they were slaves. Many of the gashes were recent and still healing. The greatest danger he faced at the moment was the fact that he had no such scar on his own forehead. But the presence of the map in its willow tube proved to be exactly what he needed. He looked like a functionary making his way toward the main hall, a Blaskoye minor noble, perhaps, taking a shortcut to get to his destination.

  So instead of slinking along and hiding, Gaspar held his head high and walked confidently through the enormous tented area full of bustling slaves. He looked right and left, searching, searching. He looked into the faces of the others, and they averted their eyes, afraid that he was doing the worst thing you could possibly do to a slave—notice them, pick them out for some special duty or punishment.

  But he did not find what he was looking for, and he was going to have to ask someone. This might not go so well, he knew, for his garb would immediately be noticed, not to mention his outré accent. For a moment he contemplated luring someone to the shadows and killing them for their clothes, but he didn’t think that he would be able to pull this off in his present state. He was very, very thirsty, and the sight of the slaves taking cups filled with drinks into the main area was maddening.

  He walked in circles around the large area, trying to find where they might keep the young slaves, the gleanings from raids and trading among the tribes. Surely a boy of seven would not be put to work that required a great deal of dexterity or strength. They must keep them at some mundane tasks somewhere, and he must discover where that place was. But ducking down side tunnels and into other tents led him nowhere. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t find the boy. After coming so close, he couldn’t find him.

  Then he considered hiding and waiting for evening, when he might conduct a more thorough search, but the bustling would never stop. In fact it would increase in the evening. And besides, where was he going to hide? He could not stay in the slave pens and the slave quarters, and he had nowhere else to go where he would not be recognized and called out for an imposter. Already he was receiving odd glances. Was this master never going to leave the service tent? He had to come to a decision. And he decided.

  The original plan was not going to work. He had been so sure he would find the boy and be able to leave. But the boy was not here, and he had no more idea where to look. So it was the other plan that he was going to have to use. This was the reason he had brought the maps, after all.

  There was no use waiting after that. He turned and followed a slave who was carrying a tray full of beverages out a side door, down a long enclosed hallway, and into the large area that was underneath the enormous Blaskoye main tent.

  It was at least a hundred paces in diameter, and so high that if you fell from the ceiling you would die striking upon the ground. Although the tent was made of white fabric, the thickness of it kept out enough of the sunlight that oil lamps were necessary inside during the day for sufficient light. Sitting dens defined by central oil lamps were scattered all over the area. Some of these circles of cushions were empty. Most, however, were taken up by groups of Blaskoye men who were arguing politics, tactics, and all the matters that a conquering people must contend with when they of one and must rule.

  After this, it was not difficult to find Dmitri Rostov. He was near the center, and surrounded by a group of eight men who were arguing among themselves while he looked on. There were the two men, the spies, that he had seen and overheard outside. Rostov himself was smiling slightly, ferociously, showing teeth, at some comment that one of his retainers had just made. Gaspar circled around the group, making certain that this was correct, that he’d found the right people, but he was sure. He remembered.

  He remember the negotiations when he had refused. He had not refused to give in, but to call his people, his tribe, by another name. No, the good name they had shared for centuries was enough. He did not think of himself as a Redlander, and, foolishly, he’d believed he could convince the other, the other with the glistening black eyes and the white teeth, to leave them that, the name of Remlap.

  But Gaspar had chosen to keep the one thing Rostov most wanted.

  Now he had a decision to make. Would he hide the map, secrete it somewhere nearby, and use it to negotiate? He did not see that working. No, much better to make it an act of gratitude, of magnanimity. Yes, that was the way to go about it. And without further thought—because to think would be to fail—Gaspar of the Remlaps pushed his way into the circle of retainers and sat down directly in front of Dmitri Rostov.

  Immediately two burly men moved in from the side with obsidian knives drawn and would have cut his throat in seconds had Rostov not raised his hand and signaled for them to stop. Rostov looked down upon Gaspar, and Gaspar felt those eyes once again, the cold eyes that reminded him of nothing else than his mother’s tales of the carnadons, a creature he had never seen but that had filled his childish dreams with terror.

  “What have you got there, Remlap man?” asked Dmitri Rostov. “And what are you doing still alive after I ran you into the Voidland?”

  Gaspar clutched the map tightly and tried to stop his trembling. Still, a tremor rose that was clearly audible in his voice. “I came to apologize for our mistake,” he said. “I know that there is no way we could make up for our transgression, but I have brought a token of our esteem that I hope that you will take as a sign of our repentance and love for you, our leader. We beg to be Redlanders now.”

  Moving while he still could make himself function, and fighting back the urge to piss his own legs, Gaspar pulled the top covering from the tube. The two bodyguards, for that is what they were, moved in on him once again, but he smiled and Rostov nodded for them to allow Gaspar to complete his motion.<
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  He took the rolled papyrus map from the woven willow tube.

  “Here is a most useful treasure, my sheik,” he said. “It is an intricate recording, a map drawn to perfect scale, of the lands which you rule and must pass through. There are things in here that you do not know, places hidden that we—I—have discovered that will help you guard against your enemies and aid your subjects.” Gaspar’s shaking increased, but he forced himself to go on, to say it: “And I have but one entreaty before I lay this wonder into your hands.”

  Rostov smiled his tooth-filled smile. “And what is that, wastelander?”

  Gaspar took a breath and spoke. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing much, a trifle. A youngster who is an acquaintance of mine, who is now in your service as a slave. A young boy.” Gaspar felt his voice trailing off into silence. “He would be about seven years old now.”

  “And would he look like you?” said Rostov.

  “A bit,” said Gaspar. “He is a relative, at some distance, so I imagine he might.”

  “And what would you like us to do with this child slave, wastelander?”

  “I just wish…” Do not cry. Do not show the tears that are gathering behind your eyes. You do not have enough water within you to waste them so, Gaspar thought. “To look upon him, see that he is well. To report to his mother, you know,” he said. “You know how women are. They cannot let go, even when letting go is their only choice in the matter.”

  “To look,” said Rostov, “as a favor?”

  “Yes, great sheik.”

  “And what is the slave’s designation?”

  “I—don’t know what you will have called him,” Gaspar answered hurriedly.

  Rostov shrugged. “This boy may prove difficult to locate, I’m afraid. And since you have said it is a matter of trifling importance, what do you say we not bother ourselves with such small concerns and have a look at this supposedly marvelous gift you have brought for us?”