by Джеффри Лорд
It was time to move. His six companions were experienced soldiers by Dreamer standards. By now they all had swords and spears. They also had heavy sandals, and most had leggings to protect their shins and calves from grazes and scrapes on the rubble. They had gear pouches and waterbottles but no food, because the food machines’ sweetish cake would not travel well. Another point to check-could the machines be readjusted to make something more durable? Dreamer patrols would soon be out for days on end and would need field rations. Blade sighed and shook his head. It seemed that every time he knocked one problem down, two more popped up.
The seven men moved out into the morning in two lines of three, one on each side of the street, with Blade himself taking the lead, spear in hand. He would have liked to head for the nearest Dreamer-held vault by the shortest route, but that route ran for a mile along a level street so broad that even the debris from collapsed buildings on either side had hardly narrowed it at all. By now even the newest Dreamer recruit understood why it was not wise to travel along a wide street where one stood out like a fly on a tabletop to anyone watching from above.
Blade brought up the rear while they crossed the avenue. Crouching behind a fallen slab of metal roofing, Blade watched the other six dash in succession across the open street, scramble up the ridge of debris on the far side, and vanish down the other side. To the north of the avenue lay a maze of smaller streets that offered a far more sheltered route than the avenue’s hundred-foot expanse of stone.
The last of the six vanished, and now it was Blade’s turn. He nearly fell on his face as his foot came down on a rainslick patch, but miraculously he kept his balance and charged across the street. Using hands and feet, he hurled himself at the twenty-foot slope of rubble. Loosened chunks toppled down into the street with nerve-racking crashes and thumps. He reached the crest, flung himself over it, then turned back to search the avenue in both directions. As his eyes swung to the left and east, he saw something moving furtively on the far side of the avenue.
Blade froze and fixed his eyes on the spot. But the pavement there lay deep in shadow, too deep for him to clearly make out what was moving. What else could it be but a Waker moving by day? One or many? Again he couldn’t see, not even with his abnormally acute vision. But still less could he wait to find out. Time was suddenly precious. They would have to make their way east and into shelter before the Wakers could detect them and launch a full-scale hunt.
He scrambled down into the street. His haste should have told the six waiting below that something was wrong, even if he hadn’t quickly explained the situation. Narlena paled, and the four recruits frantically tried to look in all directions at once.
Erlik, however, nodded in the same resigned way he usually did when he heard bad news. He said with a sigh, «Well, if they catch up with us it won’t be as easy for them as it would have been back in the spring. We’ve given them a good run so far, and we’ll give them another before we go down» Then he shrugged and turned away to take up his place at the end of the left-hand line.
Back in formation again the seven moved north two blocks and then turned right. Blade did not want to get too far north of the avenue. If all else failed, they could always try to reach it and then try outrunning any pursuing Wakers. Two forlorn hopes.
They moved forward in leap-frog fashion, hurrying down each block where buildings on either side rose high enough to block the view on either side. At each north-south street they halted to make sure that it was clear in both directions and then scurried across the street and on along the next block. Occasionally masses of rubble from collapsed buildings forced them into a noisy scrambling climb. Once they found the decaying body of a Waker who, must have fallen while climbing a tower. Blade wondered if the man had been killed instantly or died slowly in the darkness.
Now they were perhaps halfway to their goal. no hunted looks of the six Dreamers were slowly beginning to ease. Then a swsssssh sounded close overhead. Down from a building high above flashed an arrow, trailing a thick cloud of blue-green smoke. The arrow smacked into the street fifty feet ahead, and the smoke poured up in a thick column, rising steadily and greasily into the damp air. Even in the morning gloom it would be visible from a great distance.
Blade went cold inside. Instead of his finding the trained Waker gang, the gang had found him. There was at least one archer, with marker arrows that could give away their position and make both flight and concealment hopeless. Would the Wakers have other bowmen to pick off the patrol when they had been surrounded and trapped? Or would it come to a final, hand-to-hand clash of weapons in the streets of the dying city?
Blade waved the patrol forward. They followed at a run, up the block to the next corner, where they continued around to the right and headed south toward the avenue. The avenue offered their last hope for escape. They pounded down the block, hearing another arrow swssssh so high overhead and so far away that for a moment Blade hoped they had given the bowman the slip. The corner was only fifty yards away now; beyond it only one more block to the avenue. Fifty yards, forty, thirty, twenty.
And from both east and west Wakers poured into the intersection with a great pounding of feet and howling of war cries. Blade did not even need to look at them to know that they would form in pairs, one with a sword and one with a spear. In the next few seconds he put together more than twenty years of training and experience.
Instead of stopping dead, Blade kept on going, closing in to less than spear-throwing distance before the Wakers realized that he was still moving. He held his own spear out in front of him like a knight’s lance as he crashed down into the ranks of the Wakers. His thrust was aimed at a tall, bearded man who appeared to be the leader. But the man jumped aside at the last possible split-second. The sharp spear point tore along his upper arm and sank deep into the chest of the man behind him. The man died so quickly that he did not even have the time to look surprised before the light went out of his eyes and he sagged downward, pulling the spear out of Blade’s hands.
Seeing a gap open in the Waker line, the other Dreamers charged toward it. For a moment Blade was in as much danger of being trampled or speared by his companions as he was by the Wakers.
«Head for the avenue and run! Run!» he roared. But as the Dreamers tried to push on through the gap, Wakers came up on either side to close it. Two of the Dreamers went down, thrust through with spears. One of them rolled against Narlena’s legs just as she gathered herself to sprint forward through the confusion, knocking her to the ground. In an instant four Wakers pounced on her, three pointing their spears down at her stomach while the fourth reversed his with a lightning snap and brought the butt end crashing down on her bead. She went limp. Blade let out an animal roar and charged at the four men.
The one who had struck Narlena died before he could reverse his spear again. As he raised it across his chest like a quarterstaff, Blade’s descending swordstroke chopped through the solid metal shaft, the man’s collarbone, most of his ribs, and his heart. The blood spewed all over Blade’s arms and hands so that he nearly lost his grip on his sword. He held on to it, batted a spear-point down with the fiat of the blade, thrust the spearman through the neck, then kicked another swordsman in the stomach and sliced his head off as he crumpled.
As the space around Blade suddenly cleared, another clump of Wakers surged toward him, furiously dueling with Erlik and the other two surviving Dreamers. Before another attack could move against him, Blade charged at the new clump with the speed and ferocity of a springing tiger, hitting them with the same deadly suddenness.
With a spear he snatched from the ground, he hurled his two hundred plus pounds forward and tore the clump of Wakers apart like a rotten cabbage. The Wakers leaped aside in every direction and the two Dreamers broke free. Blade saw Erlik turn toward him, raising his bloody sword with a savage look in his eyes.
Before the man could start back into the fight, Blade yelled again, «Run, you fool! Run for your life!» He had the small joy of s
eeing Erlik turn away and sprint for the avenue as though monsters were at his heels, sword still waving in his hand. Then Blade turned back to the Wakers crowding around him.
They did not crowd too closely. Although he now panted for breath and his body glistened with sweat and the blood from half a dozen minor slashes and punctures, he could still lash out with deadly skill at anyone who approached too closely. Two more men went down, one dead with a spear in his stomach, the other dying with his hand hanging from a spouting wrist. Then the tall leader loomed up before Blade again. The other Wakers fanned out on either side to tighten the circle around Blade. Then the tall man dropped his hand and the Wakers rushed in.
Blade had only a few seconds to realize that they were approaching with their spears turned butt-end on and their swords swinging with the flat of the blades toward him. But he had no time to be surprised at this. There were too many of them. He knew he had destroyed one man’s leg with a spear thrust to the thigh before a spear butt slammed down across the back of his skull. He went forward down onto his knees. He thought he thrust upward with his sword into another man’s stomach before more blows on his head and shoulders drove hi m to the ground. And after that he knew he did nothing. He drifted down into blackness to the sound of the shouts of the Wakers all around him.
Chapter Ten
Blade was becoming increasingly aware of several unpleasant sensations-he was regaining consciousness. His head ached abominably, his shoulders were bruised and swollen, the thongs bound tightly around wrists and ankles were cutting into the flesh, and his mouth was dry and sour. His nose was assaulted by a stench compounded of unwashed humanity, smoke, spoiled food, and the tantalizing scent of roasting meat. That made his mouth water. It also made him start with surprise. Did the Wakers roam into the countryside beyond Pura to hunt for their food? He stopped the questioning; his head was aching too badly to cope with the effort of thinking.
His vision was clearing now; he made out a too-familiar figure looming over him and looking grimly down at him. It was the leader of the Waker force that had tracked him down, as tall and lean as ever. He wore a rough bandage around the spear gouge in his upper arm and a thoroughly hostile expression on his bearded face.
«‘You wake. Good.» The tone was curt and clipped. He sounded more like a man who regards speech as a waste of time than a man who uses short and simple words because he knows no other kind. Then he barked, «Water!» and from behind him a hunched figure in filthy rags shambled out and cringingly offered a bowl of water to Blade’s lips. Blade looked at the slave, keeping his face expressionless with considerable effort. If this was the way the Wakers treated their slaves, it was no wonder that the Dreamers feared Waker slavery almost more than death itself.
Blade drank the water, which was not much cleaner than the slave who brought it. In spite of its sour taste it refreshed him and helped clear his head. Now he was able to look beyond the man standing above him and take note of his surroundings. For the moment he was not thinking of escape, but every bit of information about where he was might come in handy when the time came.
It was twilight again; evening must have come. Ahead on either side of him, were dozens of Wakers busily carrying out the affairs of a tribal encampment preparing for night. The carcass of some animal turned on a spit over a wood fire that burned in a soot-blackened hearth built up with slabs of stone and metal roughly mortared together. Beside it a large pot of water simmered on another fire, and two slave women supervised by a Waker crone were dropping handfuls of leaves and bits of what looked like dried fruit into it. A whiff of the odors rising from the pot reached Blade’s nose; spicy and sweetish at the same time.
Beyond the fires rose a vine-covered wall, still intact except for a few stones missing from the crest. Along the wall ran a wooden walkway raised ten feet above the ground on stout poles. In the shelter of the walkway were a dozen roughly made tents. There was a continuous coming and going around the tents-mostly men and women in the rags and filth of slaves. Armed men occasionally wandered out from the largest of the tents and over to one of the slave tents. Blade could hear snatches of song float from inside this tent; the words were indistinct but no doubt bawdy. Metallic bangings and scrapings of metal being worked came from another.
Twisting himself around slowly and painfully, the grit and pebbles on the ground clawing at his bare skin, Blade saw that the whole encampment lay within a square courtyard roughly a hundred feet on each side. Three sides were formed by walls with walkways running along them and broken only in one place by a massive wooden gate. The fourth side of the courtyard was the wall of one of the great towers. It reared up so high into the fading light that Blade could barely make out its blue-paneled top. Lights showed at some of the windows, flickering pale yellow lamps that suggested torches or oil lamps. Apparently the slaves lived in the open, along with the men who guarded them and the entrance to the camp. The rest of the gang lived in the greater comfort and shelter of the tower itself.
That was as far as Blade got with his observations before the tall man was back again, looming over him more closely and grimly than before. He drew a long, sharp knife from his belt. Blade tensed. He was ready to make a fight, but how much of a fight could he manage with both wrists and ankles bound?
Instead of driving the knife in, the man bent down, keeping well clear of Blade’s reach as he did so, and slashed the thongs around Blade’s ankles. A quick barked order and two men came over from the guard tent. They hauled Blade to his feet and held him upright while he stamped his swollen, numbed feet and felt the fiery prickles of returning feeling in them. Then one of the guards lifted his spear and prodded Blade gently in the small of the back with the point, gesturing toward the tower with the other hand. Blade nodded and stumbled forward.
Inside the darkness was almost tangible-and certainly pungent. There was only an occasional wavering spot of smoky yellow light, where torches burned in metal holders driven into the wall or standing on the floor. Under Blade’s feet the floor seemed to be free of the ancient accumulation of dust he had noticed in nearly every other building in Puri.
They came to a staircase and started up it, the tall man leading and the two guards following behind Blade with their spears still pointed at his back. Up they went through the darkness for three flights, passing doorways hung with patchwork curtains roughly splashed with incomprehensible badges of white paint. Finally they came to the fourth door, which was covered by a curtain of solid blue, with a single gigantic eye painted on it in white. Two guards stood in front of it.
«I bring the prisoner Blade before Krog,» said the tall man. The guards nodded; one of them reached up and lifted the curtain aside. Blade’s guards prodded him onward again as the tall man led the way through the arched doorway into the room beyond.
Blade had half-expected something the size of the interior of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a ceiling soaring out of sight into the gloom above and a floor the size of a football field. Instead the chamber was almost cozy, barely forty feet on a side, and lit almost as well as a Dreamer’s vault. It was a moment before Blade recognized the color of the light and where it was coming from. Then he stared in frank amazement at the marconite capsule in the base of the heavy iron lamp that hung on a chain from the ceiling. He stared at the capsule and the bulbs wired to it, his mind working furiously to find some plausible explanation for this Waker gang using marconite. Then a sharp cough came from the end of the room. Blade immediately forgot about the marconite and turned his entire attention to the two people sitting on a bench there. Both were contemplating him as though he were a specimen under a microscope.
The girl-woman-drew his eye first. Which was she? It was hard to tell her age. From the slim, hard lines of her body and the proud jut of her small, firm breasts, he would have guessed her to be nineteen, perhaps twenty at most. She wore only a kilt and a dazzling array of knives that sparkled and glinted at her waist, wrists, and ankles. What seemed like fair skin was darkened by
grease and dirt, as were the foamy curls of blonde hair covering her neat little head. Blade could see from even across the room an intentness and a calculating quality in the wide blue eyes-and a streak of savage cruelty that struck Blade with almost physical force and made him instantly alert. Here was a possible enemy, and a deadly dangerous one. Woman, definitely, not a girl. To call her a girl would be to risk making himself just a little bit less alert. He could not afford that with this woman.
A beautiful woman, also. And obviously interested in him, the way her eyes were roaming over his body. Nine times out of ten he had found a way to put that interest to some sort of use, but he had a feeling that this might be the tenth time. He jerked his attention away from the woman and turned to the man.
Here was a very different type. The young woman was obviously a barbarian; this man was just as obviously civilized or at least trying hard to look that way. The woman’s father, Blade realized, noting the unmistakable facial resemblance. Like his daughter he was slender-the slenderness of a man who carries nothing but muscle and sinew on his bones-and blond. His hair was close-cropped and clean enough for Blade to make out the numerous strands of gray in it.
He wore a blue kilt and a dark red tunic. Both his garments and as much of his skin as Blade could see appeared to be a good deal cleaner than the average among the Wakers. He was clean-shaven which also set him apart from the generally hairy Wakers. He appeared to be unarmed, but why not, considering the arsenal his daughter was carrying? He was, however, wearing the first piece of jewelry that Blade had seen among the Wakers-a silvery medallion with a blue jewel in the center, carved in the form of an eye. It hung around his neck on a gold chain.