by Джеффри Лорд
They rode on for the rest of the afternoon and finally stopped deep in a stretch of virgin forest as it began to grow dark. Blade guessed they must have come a good twenty miles from Dodini and were about as safe as they could hope to be. Until the Wolves in Dodini knew which way the fugitives had gone, they'd be facing the job of searching an area the size of an English county. A hundred men couldn't do it. A thousand might, but it would take time to gather a thousand Wolves. In that time Blade and Lorya would be traveling on as fast as they could. Meanwhile, the Wolves gathering to search for them could not collect taxes and slaves or rape women elsewhere in Rentoro. By simply staying alive and on the move, Blade and Lorya would be interfering with the Wizard's ability to rule the land of Rentoro.
Unless the Wizard decided to ignore them completely? That didn't seem likely. The Wizard's power depended on the Wolves, and the Wolves' power depended on their ability to crush any rebellion the moment it reared its head. If those who'd slain three Wolves were allowed to go unpunished, who knew what might happen? One unpunished rebellion could inspire a dozen others-and there could be only so many of the Wolves.
No, he and Lorya would have the Wizard and the Wolves on their trail for a long time-perhaps as long as he was in this Dimension. Learning more about the Wizard was no longer just a matter of discovering his secrets-it was a matter of life and death.
With dry pith from the heart of a dead tree and flint and steel from the village, Blade was able to start a small fire. He dried kindling, then step by step built up the fire until it was blazing merrily. He pulled off his own clothes and hung them over branches stuck in the ground by the fire. Lorya took some of the clothes from the village and modestly retired behind a tree to pull them on. Then she hung her sodden shift over the branch and huddled as close to the fire as she dared while Blade prepared dinner.
They ate smoked meat, cheese, loaves of flat dark bread, and washed it all down with wine. The wine was raw, but it warmed them from inside as the fire warmed them from outside. When they'd eaten all they could, Blade wrapped a blanket around Lorya and put an arm across her shoulders in a brotherly fashion.
«Now, Lorya,» he said. «I have traveled to Rentoro from a distant land. I have been here for more than a week, and I still do not understand much of what I have seen. Indeed, I have seen nothing like the Wolves in any of the lands I have visited. Tell me about the Wolves and about the Wizard who is their master.»
Lorya shivered at hearing the name of the Wizard from Blade's lips. He tightened his arm around her and gently drew her head down on to his shoulder. «No, Lorya. I will not believe that the Wizard can punish us for saying his name.»
«You must believe it,» she said. «You must. He can. I know it.»
«You will have to tell me more,» said Blade. «How can the Wizard do this?»
«It is easy, when you are-«she hesitated.
«The Wizard,» said Blade firmly. «Get used to calling him by his proper name, and perhaps he will not seem so terrible.»
«That cannot be,» said Lorya. «He always has been terrible and always will be. By magic he sees all that happens in Rentoro, and by magic he sends the Wolves to punish his enemies. It has been so since my great-grandfather's time, and it will always be so.»
«Now it is my turn to say 'That cannot be,'» said Blade with a smile. «The Wizard of Rentoro sounds even stranger than his Wolves. Tell me about him.» His voice was low, but he used the brisk, firm tone of a man who would not argue any further.
So Lorya told him about the Wizard of Rentoro.
Chapter 8
The Wizard came to Rentoro a century ago, she told him. No one knew where he came from, then or now. For all that anyone could tell, he might have fallen from the sky, and indeed there were some in Rentoro who believed that he had done so. Certainly it was hard to believe that any man born of woman on this earth could do all the things the Wizard of Rentoro had done in his hundred years of rule.
The first thing he did was call all the men and women of the nearest town to come forth to him. Some came of their own free will, because they were curious. Others at first refused to come, out of fear of a man they believed to be an evil sorcerer. Those who refused to come heard a voice in their minds-a voice that spoke without any words, but one which commanded them to come forth and meet the Wizard. At last even the bravest and strongest could no longer resist the commands in their minds.
So a whole town came forth and the Wizard put them to work. They built him a castle like none ever seen before in Rentoro, with four round towers as tall as great trees and walls so thick men could ride on heudas along their tops. They built houses all around the castle, and then another wall outside the houses. They built still more walls, running in all directions and meeting each other at odd angles. This caused some to say that the Wizard was mad. Finally they built another wall outside everything else, with huge gates in it.
Most of the children of the town died of hunger while their parents worked to build the Wizard's castle. Many of the men also died. Some died from too much work. Others were simply found dead in their tents in the morning. It was said that men who talked of escaping were particularly likely to be found dead in this way. Some of the women also died, and many were called to serve the lust of the Wizard or of those men he had found to serve him.
Not everyone hated the Wizard or saw him as an enemy. There were those who saw him as a powerful friend, whose magical powers might do much for those who served him freely. Most of these were men without masters, trades, or homes, rough strong men with little but their swords, the clothes they wore, and the heudas they rode. Many of these came to offer their services to the Wizard. He accepted them and made them into his Wolves.
He taught them to use weapons never seen before in Rentoro, such as the crossbows that could shoot bolts through oak doors. He taught them to make and wear the armor of steel plates and steel rings that few weapons in Rentoro could pierce, He divided them into bands of seven, each with a leader who wore armor all over and six who followed him, all seven mounted on fine, strong heudas.
The Wolves served the Wizard faithfully. He spoke to the leaders in the voice that had no words, giving them their orders. They in turn passed on the orders to those who followed them. The bands of Wolves swept all before them.
It took a generation and a few years more, but at the end of that time the Wizard ruled in Rentoro. Many fought against his rule and most of them died. They outnumbered the Wolves, to be sure, and after the first ten years they had weapons as good as the Wolves'. In a fair fight, the men of Rentoro might have beaten the Wolves.
But there had never been a fair fight, and there never would be, not against the Wizard's Wolves. The Wizard's magic fought on their side, and so no man could beat them.
«How does the Wizard's magic fight for them?» was Blade's question at this point.
Lorya could only tell Blade what she'd heard, and even about that she was vague. It took some time for Blade to understand what the Wizard's magic did-or at least seemed to do.
First, the Wizard saw everything that happened in Rentoro. At least he saw everything that went on in any city or town. Sooner or later, he also learned everything that happened in any village or farm that might be the smallest danger to his rule.
Whenever there was any such danger, the Wolves struck with their swift swords and bows. Men, women, and children died, many of them in particularly horrible ways. No one who survived could ever forget what he'd seen happen to those who defied the Wizard.
The Wolves rode into battle on their fine heudas, but they did not ride about Rentoro on them. The Wizard's magic sent them from place to place, faster even than a bird could fly through the air. This was certain, for the same Wolves had been seen fighting on the same day, in two towns more than a week's ride apart. This had happened not just once but many times.
So no army could assemble to fight the Wizard without his quickly learning of it. Indeed, it was dangerous to even talk of asse
mbling such an army. Long before the rebels could be ready, the Wolves always came down upon them. No matter how many men the rebels might hope to have, when the battle was joined the Wolves always had more. So the Wolves always won, and then the survivors of the rebel army were burned or impaled or flogged to death, saw their wives raped, heard their children scream as they were thrown off walls.
It did not take many such battles and the butchery that came after them to drive home the lesson. Soon the Wizard had few enemies, and many men and women in the cities and towns who served him. Some served him out of fear, some out of hope of reward, some to be avenged on enemies. A few saw his rule as a good thing for Rentoro. In time the Wizard had so many servants he hardly needed his magic to tell him what was happening in Rentoro. In any city or town he had a hundred pairs of eyes to watch his enemies and a hundred pairs of lips to tell him what they might be planning. Sometimes he even had men willing to take up their own swords for him, so that the Wolves were not needed.
Although rebels were now few, the Wolves still had plenty of work. The Wizard's castle had as many people in it as a small city. It needed food and wine, firewood and iron, wagons and harness, heudas and draft animals, and much else. The Wolves regularly gathered all these things throughout Rentoro.
They also gathered an annual tax, paid in gold, silver, and jewels, silk and fine weapons, young women and young men.
The young women were always beautiful and everyone understood why the Wizard wanted them. The men were always the strongest and healthiest to be found, and it was less certain why the Wizard needed them. Certainly even his vast castle could not need so many servants and laborers? In any case, neither the men nor the women were ever seen again after the Wolves took them away.
This was the life the people of Rentoro had now led for three generations, since the last rebels were crushed outside the walls of the city of Morina. It was not the best life imaginable, but it was far from unbearable. The Wizard's taxes were never more than a man or a town could easily pay, and the Wolves seldom stole anything or hurt anyone without the Wizard's orders. Of course, if one was a strong young man or a beautiful young woman, an unknown fate was always hanging over one's head. Even that was something people could come to endure, given time.
Lorya herself was twenty, the daughter of a stablekeeper. She'd made a good marriage at eighteen, to the son and heir of a master harness maker. At nineteen she was a widow, for the Wolves came and took her husband away, leaving her with a child three months old. Four months after that, the child was dead of a fever. So being raped by the Wolves did not seem to her a great deal worse than what had already happened to her. She'd been quite ready to endure it as best she could when Blade came on the scene, as unexpected and as deadly as a thunderbolt. Now she found herself safe from some dangers, but in other ways even worse off, for she was a rebel against the Wizard.
«If so much had not already happened to me, I think I might want to throw myself into the nearest river. That would be a quicker, cleaner death than what the Wolves will give me when they catch me. Yet even the Wolves cannot frighten me that much now. It is also good that you are with me. I do not know what you can do, one man, a traveler who is not even from Rentoro. Yet you have slain three of the Wizard's Wolves. A man who can do that may do many other things.»
«Do not hope for too much from me,» Blade said. «Certainly I can kill Wolves and I will go on killing them as long as I can. This will certainly do us no harm and the Wizard no good. But it will not keep us alive forever, not with all the Wolves and all the Wizard's friends against us. We must find other answers.»
What the answers would be, Blade could still only guess. At least it would be a more intelligent guess than he'd been making before. Lorya had told him a great deal.
She'd implied that the Wizard was one man, but that was no doubt merely a tale. The terror-filled legends of a century had combined the deeds of three or four men into the single-handed achievement of one immortal superman. So Blade would use «the Wizard» as a sort of mental shorthand, but he'd really mean «the Wizard and his descendants down to the present ruler of Rentoro.» He'd been right about the dynasty of tyrants.
Clearly there was something like mental telepathy at work in Rentoro, The «voice that spoke without words» could hardly be anything else. The Wizard controlled workers, commanded the leaders of the Wolves, and perhaps detected rebellion by reading and controlling minds.
Blade did not find it easy to accept the idea or comfortable to live with it. In Home Dimension telepathy was still something for science-fiction stories. A good many experiments had been made, but only the boldest parapsychologists dared claim they'd proved anything positive. Yet here in Rentoro, there was no escaping the evidence. So much fell into place now, even the way the leaders of the Wolves sat on their heudas, looking up at the sky. They were waiting, their minds a blank, to receive their master's telepathic commands!
So much for part of the Wizard's «magic.» The other part was a little harder to analyze, at least from what Lorya had told him. Blade was quite willing to believe that the Wolves were comparatively few in number and had won their victories by concentrating with supernatural speed. Nothing else made sense. An army outnumbering the combined forces of all the cities and towns of Rentoro would be impossible for the Wizard. In this medieval economy he could never support it. The Wolves would eat the country bare, until the last man in Rentoro died of starvation and left the Wizard in his castle to rule over a desert that he'd made himself. The Wizard had done many strange and evil things in Rentoro, but he obviously hadn't turned it into a desert.
So a small army of picked troops who moved like the wind was the only answer. How did they move?
The most obvious notion was that the Wizard had some sort of mechanical transport, perhaps airborne, A few large helicopters or transport planes could move a hundred Wolves from one end of Rentoro to the other between dusk and dawn. If no one saw the machines, the swift movement would seem magical.
The notion was obvious, but it had too many holes for Blade to be happy with it. It would not be easy to conceal the existence of something as large and noisy as a transport plane or a helicopter for a single year, let alone a whole century.
Also, if the Wizard had airplanes, why did he insist on using medieval weapons against the people of Rentoro? He could easily have given the Wolves machine guns, artillery, and rockets. With modern firepower a few hundred Wolves would be enough to rule Rentoro, able to blow apart any city whose people weren't already too scared to lift a finger. They would also be much cheaper than the force of Wolves and heudas the Wizard used now.
So the Wizard did not have airplanes or any other modern method of transport for his army. What did he have? Something, certainly. But what Richard Blade had was an unsolved, and for the time being unsolvable, mystery.
Except-what about those Wolves who'd come to Dodini, apparently riding out of thin air? Blade was now reasonably certain that his brain and eyes had both been working properly. So perhaps he'd actually seen what he thought he'd seen-the Wizard's Wolves suddenly emerging from nowhere and charging down the hill toward Dodini.
Unfortunately, that left things nearly as confusing as before. There was such a thing as teleportation-moving oneself through space by pure mental effort. There was also such a thing as telekinesis-moving other objects or people the same way.
Blade mentally corrected himself. These things existed in the theories of some parapsychologists.
In Rentoro, did they exist in reality? Did the Wizard have the mental powers to pick up a whole army of mounted and armored men and hurl them hundreds of miles?
That was as hard to accept as the airplanes. If the Wizard had that kind of mental power, he wouldn't need the army. He would be able to stand on a hilltop, say to himself, «Let the walls of Dodini fall down,» concentrate his mind-and a thousand miles away the walls of Dodini would crumble into rubble. He didn't do this, although it would be an even more powerful w
eapon than machine guns or airplanes. Therefore he probably couldn't do it.
But what did he do?
Blade shook his head in exasperation. There was no doubt about it. The mystery of the Wizard of Rentoro took the bloody cake, when it came to weird mysteries!
There was also no doubt about what he had to do. He had to seek out the present Wizard himself, whoever the man might be and whatever the dangers involved in approaching him. There was nowhere else to get the answers he needed-although he might not get them even there.
Deciding on his next move was always a load off Blade's mind. He stood up and flexed his arms and legs. Then he asked Lorya, «Do you know the way to the Wizard's castle?» She stared at him, wide-eyed and confused. He laughed. «Never mind. We'll talk about it in the morning. Let's get some sleep.»
They curled up under a pile of blankets and spare clothing, snuggling together for warmth. Blade thought he saw a disappointed look on Lorya's face when he only patted her shoulder as he lay down. He ignored it. Neither of them needed anything but a good night's sleep, not after this day and not here in the woods, with the damp earth under them and the wet leaves still shaking down drops on them.
Blade slept and his sleep was filled with strange dreams. He saw himself walking through the streets of London, entering J's office, talking with the man, being called by his full name. Then he saw a burning medieval town and himself standing in front of a pile of blackened timbers that had once been a house. He had the feeling there were many other things, even stranger, but he remembered none of them.
They awoke to find blue sky visible through the branches. The roads would be drying out, speeding their travel and easing the burden on the heuda, It seemed to be in fairly good shape as it browsed quietly on the ferns, but Blade wanted to go on spearing it as much as possible. They had to keep ahead of the Wolves' search and that would be easier mounted than on foot.
The fire was down to ashes. Blade churned the ashes into the damp ground to conceal their campsite while Lorya packed the gear. Then they mounted and rode back on to a trail bathed in sunlight.