by Eric Flint
Terrence changed the subject. "We plan to leave in the morning. We'll follow the old Roman road west. Brother Bernhard says it's still open as far as Reims. That's farther than we'll be going."
"It is passable much farther than that, at least as far as Tours. I've been there, you know."
Terrence knew—Gregory was a bit of a bore on the subject of his famous relative, the former bishop at Tours. "Our immediate plans don't go that far. Maybe someday."
"Miracles are said to occur there, at the tomb of Saint Martin. Did not Clovis himself become Catholic after beholding miracles at the tomb? My very kinsman, the bishop, reportedly was cured of disease by drinking water mixed with dust from the tomb."
That concoction might have cured the good bishop; the thought of it made Terrence want to gag.
The abbot didn't notice, or chose to ignore, Terrence's expression. Gregory looked sadly at Harry. "Perhaps a pilgrimage would cure our friend."
If only it could help Harry, Terrence thought. "Sometime, I'm sure, we'll see Tours. For now, Father, we must continue our search."
"Will you consider one more idea from an old man?"
"Of course."
"Wait for a few days. The merchants who arrived here this morning from Augusta Treverorum will continue on soon to Parisii (Paris), farther down the road that you mean to take. There are five of them, plus their guards and servants. You would be much safer in their company. I will introduce you."
"Would they take us?"
"Promise them a story every night. How could they refuse you?" Gregory had to laugh, just thinking of Terrence's tales. "Do you know my favorite?"
Terrence shook his head. "No, which?"
Gregory smiled. "The one where the sailor washes ashore in the land of the hand-sized people. Gulliver? Tell the merchants the start of that story when you meet. I promise that they will not say no."
It made sense. Terrence said, "You have a deal."
* * *
The good-natured bellowing at the guesthouse was louder than usual tonight; the crowd was only casually attentive to the evening's installment of Treasure Island. Harry took his first opportunity to sidle, cup in hand, to the raucous group in a far corner of the hall. The focus of their attention turned out to be what looked like a checkerboard. This was apparently the new game, alluded to by Father Gregory, which the Franks used to teach war strategy.
After almost every move some of the onlookers groaned, while others clinked coins and offered new wagers. Brother Wolfgang unhappily held the bets.
Harry knew quickly that this game wasn't checkers. It seemed more like an early version of chess, although the crudely carved tokens bore little physical resemblance to the game pieces he knew. He observed the unfolding duel with deep interest, whispering questions to Father Gregory. The abbot whispered back the names of the pieces and their moves: He had played the game often before joining the priesthood. The vying warriors both employed a slogging style of play, grimly exchanging pieces through a brutal and uninspired middle game.
Romulfus, the warrior playing the Black pieces, crowed in triumph. He slid a Bishop two squares diagonally—its limit, in this early version of the game—to capture White's Minister. In this male-dominated age, that dominant piece that had not yet been transformed into the Queen. White's backers grumbled in disappointment. Sensing victory, Black's cronies clamored for new bets.
Sigismund, playing White, frowned at the board. His King stood mid-board amid a cluster of pawns, but he had no pieces left. Black still had a Minister and a Bishop with which to attack those remaining pawns. Shrugging in resignation, Sigismund stood to concede. A round of ale for his backers quieted their complaints.
Harry kept studying the board as Romulfus's followers shouted for payment. Brother Wolfgang doggedly counted out the coins. Harry's mind clicked through the possibilities: push a pawn here; guard a pawn with the King there; stay off the black squares where possible to reduce the usefulness of the Bishop . . . He had another whispered exchange with Father Gregory about the local rules of play. "Wait!"
Harry's audacity silenced the room.
Romulfus spoke first. "What is it then, storyteller?" Such as Harry were tolerated as sources of amusement, but certainly not respected.
Harry took a deep breath. "I'll bet fifty gold solidi that I can take White's position and at least draw."
Terrence shoved through the crowd, hissing in English, "Are you daft? We don't have that much money. Debtors here become slaves. Say you were joking."
"Quit your foreign gabble." Romulfus fumed at the temerity of a mere jongleur. This was a warrior's game. "Are you prepared to pay if you lose?"
"Of course." Harry took the challenge as acceptance. He claimed the chair Sigismund had vacated. Smiling bravely at Terrence, Harry advanced a pawn.
The game settled into a contest of position and maneuver—not, Harry had observed, the local style of play. Carefully, he shepherded forward a cluster of pawns. Romulfus seethed with impatience, downing beer after beer in frustration, as White's pawns and King maneuvered in a self-protecting block. Only now did the warrior glimpse what Harry had seen: The one way to prevent one of Harry's pawns from crossing the board was to sacrifice Black's Minister. The unequal trade meant a draw in the game and loss of the wager; declining the trade would allow the pawn, upon reaching the final rank of the board, to be promoted into a new White Minister.
With near parity in pieces Harry felt certain White would win.
Romulfus stood, growling. He flung a sack of coins onto the board, scattering the chessmen. "Bah, I tire of this game." He stormed into the night with his cronies in tow.
Sigismund and his backers clapped Harry on the back and plied him with beer. Not too many drinks, however, to keep Harry from tripling his new stake over the course of the evening.
NEAR LIMOGES, AQUITANIA, 730
Bertha mindlessly worked her broom, pushing the nonexistent dust across the stone floor to the doorway. She was, for these times, a mature woman: twenty-three years old. Her hair was a dark blond, almost brown; her eyes were crystal blue. Only her too-strong jaw had denied her beauty and a husband. That hardly mattered now.
There were two more rooms to sweep, then Bertha would start cooking for the garrison. That chore, at least, she did not mind: The food that she, too, ate would be as good as she could make it. After cleaning up from dinner, she could hide in her own tiny room, there to collapse into the fitful sleep of exhaustion. Alone.
A night untroubled by these devils was the best Bertha could expect in life now. She had been abducted by Saracen raiders and kept here as a slave, wherever here was. Her only clue to her location was the warmth. She did not think she had been prisoner long enough for winter to have passed, yet it was mild as long as the sun was out. South, somewhere, then, judging from the stories her father had told her. She had never left her village until the attack. She wondered if she would ever see it again.
Water bubbled in the iron cauldron as she prepared the evening meal. The first day here, she had prepared simple Frankish fare; one savage beating had taught her that not even that reminder of home would be allowed. She now threw handfuls of white grains—rice, were they called?—into the water.
The drumming of hooves and calls of greeting heralded the arrival of more men. She added rice to the pot, then stepped outside to get more meat from the smokehouse.
"Come here, little one."
Bertha froze. She knew that voice all to well. She knew it from waking horrors and sleeping nightmares. Slowly she turned toward the man who had spoken.
Too slowly, apparently, for the hulking brute back from a raid. He took two steps forward and backhanded her across the face. "Gamal wasted all the fine women we had taken. You shall have to satisfy all of us tonight." He raised an arm again, threateningly, to cut off her sniffling.
She stood, her limbs aquiver with fear, dread, and loathing. She had only a moment in which to study the jagged scar across his jaw, the cruel eyes
, and the evil, gap-toothed smile before he ripped open her simple dress. Knocking her down onto the hard courtyard, he took her violently to the echoing cheers of the garrison.
NEAR ORLEANS, 730
Stronger men than Bertchramm would have quailed at the sights in the crossroads clearing. Several of his men, their faces ashen, ran back into the woods; retching noises followed. The warlord resisted the urge to join them.
Body parts littered the clearing. Some monster had assembled the pieces into cruel little statues: Here a head grew straight from the bloody stump of a leg, there a limbless torso lay mounded over with severed fingers and toes. Rage filled the warrior, hatred consumed him. Carrion was all that remained of people stolen from his village.
He prodded his skittish horse forward with a squeeze of his heels. Lupus growled in dismay, but silently padded after. At the far edge of the clearing, Bertchramm dismounted. When he stepped inside the primitive hut, the dog refused to follow.
"Magnulfus!" Bertchramm's grim stoicism deserted him. Facing him from atop a cracked pottery ewer was the accusing head of his brother. Magnulfus did not stare, exactly, for his eyes had been gouged out. Dried blood filled his mouth, lay caked thickly down his chin. Into his head was deeply carved the crescent moon. Bertchramm knew who made that mark: Saracens.
The bastards who killed Magnulfus were the same ones who had raided the village months earlier. The same ones who had taken Magnulfus's only daughter, his niece. Magnulfus had sworn to save Bertha if he could and to avenge her in any case.
Bertchramm lovingly picked up the bloody remnant of his brother and cradled it in his arms. "By your wounds and God's wounds, I swear that I will avenge you."
Leaving two warriors to bury the dead, Bertchramm and the war party pressed on.
About the Author
Edward M. Lerner has degrees in physics and computer science (and, curiously enough, an MBA). Now writing SF full-time, Lerner worked in high tech for thirty years (including seven years as a NASA contractor), as everything from engineer to senior vice president. That experience includes techie havens (such as Bell Labs and Northrop Grumman), an Internet company, and a software start-up. It all shows up in his fiction.
His books include Probe, Moonstruck, and the collection Creative Destruction. His short fiction has appeared in Analog, Artemis, and Jim Baen's Universe magazines, on Amazon Shorts, and in the anthologies Year's Best SF 7 and Future Washington.
In the pipeline are Fool's Experiments and two "Known Space" novels in collaboration with Larry Niven: Fleet of Worlds (October 2007) and Juggler of Worlds.
The Ancient Ones, Episode Five
Written by David Brin
Illustrated by Chantelle Thorne
8.
"Keep moving," said the guy jabbing a stake into my back. It didn't feel all that sharp—just a pointed stick. But I knew that the other end fit snugly into some kind of arbalest or shooting device, capable of propelling the shaft with considerable force.
Any weapon that could terminate a blood-sucking vampire was powerful enough to inconvenience a poor Earthman like me, stranded and isolated on a strange—make that bizarre—alien world. Nor did I feel protected by the crowd surrounding us, in a huge and garishly-lit atrium.
"Don't try to draw attention," growled my captor, prodding me forward through a bustle of tourists and gamblers, who thronged the lobby of the Golden Palace—willing victims in a commercial version of the predatory lifestyle that pervaded this planet. If the word "lifestyle" applied to a place where much of the population consisted of walking dead.
Still, even as my captor shoved me forward, I gave the crowd a quick scan for a pair of figures—two "recent" zombies who had been my only friends, so far, here on Oxytocin 41c. But if I really had glimpsed Sully and Moulder a moment ago, pushing luggage carts while dressed as bellboys, there was no sight of them now. Instead, I nearly got trampled by crowd of lycanthrope families on holiday, gnashing their tusks and baying at scantily-dressed succubi. Beyond them, a row of dapper dracula-types stood transfixed before flashing slot machines, pulling coin after glittering coin out of their silken capes to keep feeding those fanged, mechanical maws.
I guess it's true that everybody has a weakness, I pondered, feeling a bit detached and hardly fearful at all. Perhaps there is only so much that a nervous system can take before going numb, after several days of being pummeled by every variety of undead creature imaginable. And now, amid all the lights and noise, there was that added poke in the spine. It sent me stumbling toward a curtain that partly concealed a narrow side door, like a broom closet, where things were sure to get no better.
"Where's a cop when you need one?" I murmured, quite tired of being pushed around, ever since I slurried down to this benighted world.
"It is funny you should mention that," said the trench-coated figure propelling me along. "I am the police. And you are under arrest."
* * *
My new predicament came accompanied by one blessing. As soon as that door closed behind us, some of the casino cacophony subsided. Especially that continuous, hypnotic jangling sound of one-arm bandits, robbing the population without prejudice over such minor matters as race, creed or pulse. The sudden release of pressure on my abused eardrums provoked an overwhelming, irresistible need to yawn.
A voice spoke from my left. "We are so sorry to bore you, Alvin Montessori."
Turning, I saw that we were now in a statuary vestibule, lined with effigies in a variety of poses. And across the hallway, standing next to one larger-than-life figure, was a gaunt, almost fleshless man, holding a strange weapon aimed at my midriff.
"Dr. Katske," I acknowledged with a nod, while covering my mouth for another yawn. "Forgive me . . . for not being surprised. After that encounter in the museum hallway, I figured we might meet again."
"Never mind that," the old man said. This is a semi-public gallery. Someone may come through at any moment. Quickly, pull this finger."
Blinking, I answered. "I beg your pardon?"
He gestured at the sculpture next to him—evidently an early-type vampire with a visionary look in his eyes, pointing at a dim tomorrow. "The finger," Katske urged, brandishing his gun. "Pull it now!"
"Pull it yourself!" I growled back at him, then snapped at the fellow behind me. "And the next time you poke me with that thing, I will take it from you and cram it where you'll need a sonogram to find it!"
Both of them seemed surprised and nonplussed for a moment. Then Katske shrugged. Reaching up to grab the mannequin's digit, he give it a sharp tug. I cringed a little, breathing shallowly. But there was only a soft, blatting hiss . . . and suddenly a wall panel slid open behind it, revealing a hidden chamber.
"Move," the fellow behind me urged. But I noticed that there was no shove, this time, as we hurried through and the panel slid closed again, behind us . . .
. . . and I found myself in a laboratory of some sort, lined with all the requisite items, from clean-air hoods to heater flames and glassware that frothed with bubbling mixtures.
"Well, he is a cool one, I'll give him that," commented the man in the trenchcoat, who came around to face me at last, plopping onto a stool and dropping his fedora onto a nearby table. His face was very humanoid, like most of the "standard" denizens of this world—those who weren't undead in one manner or another. After several days in the city of Squid, I knew what signs to look for—like tusks, or pointy canines, or the aroma of gradual decomposition. This fellow had a scent of living sweat and tension.
"Did you say you're a policeman?" I asked.
"Inspector Coalshack, of the Cal'mari Cops,"he said, with a shallow nod.
"Coalshack?" I gave the side of my head a rap, to inform the pesky nanomite translators that I was onto their game. As if that would do any good. "I thought there wasn't much civil authority left, around these parts."
"There isn't. We are a commercial enterprise," he acknowledged with a nod. "Police work has been left to the free market, ever since m
ost government collapsed, a century ago."
"Wait a minute," I snapped my fingers. "I saw you, yesterday . . . or was it the day before . . . nosing around an alley near the city gate. Just before crewman Wems appeared and gave me a whack—" I reached up and felt one of the many bumps on the back of my head.
"Recruit Wems was supposed to take you to a holding cell for questioning. But apparently he had something else in mind. I'd like to know where he took you. And why."
"You aren't the only one. I don't suppose Wems is unavailable, to provide answers?"
"He has gone missing."
"Hm, yes. Wems apparently has a knack for doing that. Well, okay then, officer. I mean inspector. You say that I am under arrest. What's the accusation?"
Despite affecting a casual slouch, the fellow had been keeping his stake-thrower leveled at my chest. Now he jutted it forward a bit.
"Alien invasion."
Ah. That accusation. I kept a blank expression, while pondering my options. On the basis of technological achievement alone, Oxytocin was over sixteen on the Polanski scale, so I could admit the truth without violating their innocence, under the Consent Imperative. On the other hand, innumerable botches and disasters have ensued, whenever fools rush in to say "Take me to your leader." And this society seemed fragile enough, without taking another shock.
Hence, I felt some reluctance. An impulse to evade.
"Alien . . . invasion?"
"That's right."
"And . . . that's an official crime?"
"Oh, yes," Dr. Katske answered, while keeping his little gun aimed at my midriff. "I can show it to you in the law books."
"Fascinating. Do aliens invade often?"
"As far as I know, this is the first time. At least where there's proof."
"But if it never happened before, how could there be a law?"
"Ah, good question!" Grinning, the little man clearly enjoyed any opportunity to show off some historical erudition. "It was the infamous Paranoid Congress of 30952 that passed eight thousand, three hundred and twelve just-in-case ordinances, banning everything from time travel to summoning demons from the planet's core. From turning yourself invisible to spontaneous combustion. From national totem-burning to making mountains out of molehills."