"I think not," Dirk mused. "You strike me as having no shortage of brains. But you certainly find yourself in congenial company."
Gar nodded. "What kind of anomaly is this planet? Do only the brains turn to theft?"
"They aren't thieves," Dirk said softly. "Not a one of them."
"What, then?"
Dirk looked up into his eyes. "You really haven't figured it out yet? The whole purpose behind this gladiator's charade?"
Gar frowned down at him a moment, then rolled his head back against the wall, lips pursed in thought. "I've figured out that the purpose of it is to cull out the brainy ones-but I haven't gone too deeply into the mechanism. This is one place where you don't ask a man about his background. Why are they here?"
"They're rebels. Any man who's here was overheard speaking against the Lords-maybe just a joke, or a drunken curse. Or both. And most of them have good senses of humor-they would've pulled a large audience."
"Including Soldiers?"
Dirk nodded. "And didn't particularly care. Because, of course, there was a lot of anger behind them-to make them lose their heads that way."
"I'm surprised all they did was talk."
"If they'd actually done anything, they wouldn't be here. If they'd tried to kill a Lord, or stake out the local squire with a set of sickles, they'd have been strung up by the heels and beheaded right there. No, this place is for the ones with sharp wits and hot blood-too smart to do something instantly fatal, too hot-tempered to be able to hide their anger and hatred."
"It comes to the same thing," Gar said slowly. "Instantly fatal, or fatal within the year-what of it? Dead is dead. There must be some with more brains and cooler blood."
Dirk shrugged. "If a man looks intelligent but doesn't make waves, they put a robe around him and call him a priest. They have to have a few churls who can read or write, after all-and who can preach resignation and humility to the masses."
Gar raised his eyebrows. "You've got a religion?" "Oh yes. Eighteenth-century Christianity, with all the trimmings. The Lords thought of everything. And they preach patience, all right-but the Lords don't know that, with most of them, the patience they preach is just a matter of waiting for Decade to come back to life. They're the focal points of the communities-priests always have been. But the Lords don't know what they're focusing the churls on."
Gar nodded slowly. "And, of course, they have to be celibate."
Dirk nodded. "The penalty for fornication is death -for both parties. And any children born of it." Gar scowled, nodding. "So the hot-tempered intelligent ones get killed off in the Games, and the cool-tempered intelligent ones don't pass on their genes. Either way, smart genes get filtered outbut only the ones smart enough to be troublesome, of course. Couldn't have a population of idiots.... Yes, very neat."
"Not completely. These berserkers may be smart enough to stay unmarried, but they are passionate. They've usually passed on a gene or two before they got caught."
"So," Gar said slowly, "the filtering never ends. It's got to be continual, a regular event."
"Yes, and they do make quite an event of it. They gather all the available churls together to watch it."
"That should have a very salutary effect." "Oh, it does," Dirk said softly, "but not quite the one they expect. The whole mob comes away every year, more determined than ever to turn out for a bloodbath"-his mouth twisted-"as soon as DeCade rises again."
"Yes, there is that little problem," Gar mused. "How do you plan to start the revolution if DeCade doesn't rise?"
"We haven't quite got that one figured out yet," Dirk admitted.
"And who's going to figure it out?" Gar smiled wryly. "By your account, all the brains get killed off or culled out."
"No," Dirk said slowly, "not all. Not the really smart ones, no."
Gar frowned, puzzled; then his face cleared, with something like shock. "Of course. The really intelligent ones would be smart enough to hide itsuccessfully. They'd never be caught or found out."
Dirk nodded. "All we're left with is geniuses. And, with the kind of inbreeding we've got, there're a lot of them-almost as many as there are idiots. The Wizard was no accident."
"Yes. The Wizard." Gar chewed at his cheek, thoughtfully. "Most of your boys-the spacersmade it off-planet because they had to leave their homes rather suddenly, didn't they?"
"Most of us, yes. Which means we were found out while we were still very young. So, in answer to the question you're polite enough not to ask, surprisingly. No. We don't consider ourselves geniuses. Smart, yes, most of us-but not that smart."
Gar nodded. "So where do you find them?" "A few in the forests, with the outlaws-they got sick of pretending. But most of them are in the cities, in the secret organization."
"The secret society." Gar's eyes widened; he nodded slowly. "Yes, of course. It has a long and honorable history."
"Well, not exactly honorable; I can think of quite a few that weren't. But, shall we say, effective?" "Let us hope so, in this case." Gar raised a skeptical eyebrow. "And just how do these geniuses of yours plan to start the revolution without DeCade?" "I don't know," Dirk said slowly, "and I'm not sure they do, either."
CHAPTER 6
For all their good cheer, the prisoners' nerves began to fray as the days slipped by. The tension was partly fear, of course; but it was partly eagerness, too. The boxing practice became more feverish, less deft. They began to bark at one another during the slivers of free time, after supper; there was an occasional quarrel.
Their last dinner, the night before the Games, was better than usual-they actually had a few ounces of meat each. But afterward, they sat around the walls of the great chamber, turned in on themselves, occasionally muttering to one another-or, more often, growling.
One of the Merchants sat idly throwing a pebble against the wall, catching it on the rebound, and throwing it again. Chink, chink! It began to get on Dirk's nerves, even though he was fairly sure of living through the debacle tomorrow. Oliver; the Farmer, paced the chamber, back and forth, back and forth, like a caged gorilla-huge, lithe, and deadly, and ready to erupt into snarling fury.
"Cease that infernal pacing, Farmer!" one of the Woodsmen rasped. "It's bad enough in here tonight, without you winding it tighter!"
Oliver whirled, his fists coming up; but before he could speak, Gar snapped, "Hold!"
His voice wasn't loud, but it stopped Oliver-or at least changed his direction. He turned toward Gar slowly, eyes narrowing. "And who are you to command me, Outlander?"
Gar lifted his head, raising his eyebrows. "Why, I am myself. Care to debate the point?"
Oliver started toward him, fists coming up. Hugh, the big Tradesman, growled, "Oh, stop it, the pair of you! Isn't it bad enough the Lordlings'll be hacking us to bits tomorrow, without our tearing at each other now?"
Oliver slowed, turned toward him, puzzled. He looked back at Gar; his mouth tightened in a quick grimace, and he turned away, to take up his pacing again.
The Woodsman glared at him and started to speak; but Hugh caught his eye and he subsided. Oliver began to beat his fist into his palm in time to his pacing. "Something's got to break. It's got to."
"It will," a Hostler growled. "Tomorrow." "Don't speak of tomorrow." Hugh snapped. His mouth tightened in chagrin. "Damn! I'm doing it too, now." He looked about him, glowering. "We need a song."
The room fell suddenly silent. They all knew which song he meant-and they also knew the penalty for singing it. Death. Instant.
Dirk raised his head and looked slowly about the room, saw the naked craving in each face, but also the fear that overlaid it.
So slowly, softly, Dirk began to chant the Lay.
When DeCade was young, he fell in love, As even churls may do;
His lass was bonny, bright, and gay; For them the world seemed new.
Heads came up slowly, all around the room. They stared at him, startled, a little shocked. Then the hunger rose in their faces, and their eyes fastened on him,
greedily.
Dirk sang on:
When you take joy, remember priceEach pleasure must be paid.
Before they wed, the charge came dueA Lord espied the maid.
He sang the whole tale-how DeCade had wakened at midnight, hearing the screams of his love, had caught up his staff and bolted from his but to fall on the band of Soldiers who were stealing her away-a huge bear of a man, nearly seven feet tall, three hundred pounds of silent homicidal muscle, with a hardwood quarterstaff as heavy as a bar of iron, laying about him in fury, not counting the tally of dead.
The leader of the party held a knife to the girl's throat, and DeCade broke the man's skull and spilled his brains. But the leader was quick-he sliced her throat as he fell-and DeCade stood, numbed, staring at his love, lying dead in a pool of her own blood, all trace of pity and forgiveness pouring out of him as the blood poured out of her. Then, only when she lay emptied before him and only a hollow, frozen void remained within him, did he turn his eyes to the leader, and realize it was the Lord's son.
So Dirk sang the tale; and Gar looked down, staring at him as though he were insane. Dirk took a breath and took up the ballad again.
DeCade fled to the forest that night and hid for some time, living on poached meat and killing any Lord or Soldier foolish enough to come in under the trees, alone or in company.
And, finally, the outlaws found him and took him for their leader.
Then churls began to escape to the forest-a few at first, then more and more, hundreds, thousands, who never would have thought of escape before, risking their lives to come join the Lordkiller in the forest.
And the Wizard found him, too-some unnamed genius with magical powers, or so the legend said, who had appeared out of nowhere and given DeCade an enchanted staff. With it, DeCade took on a small army that came to clean out the forest-a band of a hundred-and he slew them all, by himself, alone.
The word was brought to the King, in his castle at Albemarle. At last, he realized that a vast churl army lay hidden in the huge forest that was nearly at his doorstep. So he summoned his Lords from the length and breadth of the kingdom and their armies with them, to raze the forest, if they had to, to wipe out the outlaws.
But DeCade didn't wait for His Majesty. On the Wizard's advice, he marched out of the forest with a horde at his back, to storm the nearest castle and take it, by surprise and sheer weight of numbers. He armed his men and moved on, his army swelling into the tens of thousands as he marched. He stormed and took castle after castle-until the King moved out of Albermarle.
The King marched out with a hundred thousand well-armed Soldiers at his back, and five thousand Lords with laser rifles to watch the Soldiers. He met DeCade at the field of Blancoeur and raised a clamor that clawed at the sky and brought vultures down; for, at the end of the battle, DeCade retreated, leaving a third of his men dead or dying. The King marched after him and met him again at the foothills of Mont Rouge. DeCade lost half his men before night; but darkness and a heavy overcast saved him, covering his retreat up the mountain to Champmortre, the bone-white, sunbleached plateau high in the mountains near Albemarle. There he stationed his remaining men in a human parapet, armed with spears, bows, and a few captured laser rifles. The King, in a rage, marched up against him, and the churls mowed his army down-till the archers ran out of arrows and the rifle power-packs ran dry.
Then the King scaled the heights and drove DeCade back to the center of the bald plain with his men grouped around him, fighting a last, desperate, doomed battle with no quarter given or asked, knives and swords against swords and lasers, each churl thinking only of how many Soldiers and Lords he could take with him, killing and dying in an orgy of blood-lust and vengeance, till the setting sun threw the long shadow of a ring of dead churls on the plain; and, within the ring only DeCade and the Wizard stood alive, back to back, with a circle of King's men outside the rampart of dead. Then the King shouted the command, but the Soldiers stood, surly, unwilling to attack DeCade. Laserbolts crackled; the rearmost soldiers fell, screaming, and the rest pressed forward, flowing over the heap of corpses to press in. Then DeCade's staff whirled, threshing out a crop of death, and hundreds of Soldiers died before they buried him under sheer weight of numbers. Then the Lords broke his neck, broke his back, stripped his body and cut his flesh into ribbons, tore out his entrails to prophesy that the churls would never rise again, broke each separate bone in his body-and took up the golden staff, and broke it in two.
Then, as the shouting and madness subsided, they looked all about the plain, and found it filled only with dead. The Wizard was gone. They searched, but did not find him. They never did.
Sated, the King and his men marched away, leaving DeCade's corpse to the vultures. But the next day, the King realized that even DeCade's bones could threaten his peace. A host of churls might rally around them. He sent men to take the bones away and burn them. But they came too late. The giant body was gone, and the golden staff with it, never to be seen by Lordling or Soldier again. Only the churls knew where he lay, beneath a great hollow mountain, the mountain from which the Wizard fled into the sky. But he would return-oh yes. He would return when the churls' time had come; he would return, to waken DeCade. Then Decade would ring the bell and march out to challenge the Lords, with new and magical weapons and a churl army behind him. They would crush the Lords then; they would free all the churls ...
Dirk took a long, deep breath; then, more loudly, he began to intone the last verse; after a few words, Hugh joined him, his voice a low chant; then Oliver joined, then the Merchants, then more, till all the prisoners together roared out the last lines, shaking the chamber around them:
Each worn knife and blade you must bury and save, For when Decade wakes and comes out from his grave, Then dig up the weapons that you have laid by, And sharpen their edges and do not ask why. For when my far towers drop down from the skies, Decade shall call out, and all churls shall rise. For Freedom!
The echoes faded; the chamber was still. Each churl looked at his fellows, eyes glowing, filled with the fire of a Cause.
Dirk leaned back, drained and satisfied. It was worth the risk.
Then armor jangled in the hall, a harsh voice bawled out, and he suddenly wasn't so sure.
The guard came into sight on the other side of the bars, carrying an ugly, short-barrelled weapon-a laser pistol. He shoved it through the bars and glared around at the prisoners, eyes probing their faces. "All right. Who started it?"
Fifty-odd pairs of eyes swiveled toward him, chilled holes in hating masks. The room was as quiet as a sepulcher.
Gar straightened, seeming to gather himself, his gaze becoming remote, abstracted. Dirk took notice of it and frowned.
"Somebody talk!" the guard snarled. "Talk, or we'll pound you flat. Oh, you'll be able to totter out into the arena tomorrow just barely!"
His voice rang off the granite walls and was swallowed up in the cavern of fifty united minds. The guard's lips writhed back with his snarl; the pistol rose ...
"And what will you do to the man who sang it?"
Dirk looked up, startled. The voice had come from Gar; but it was deeper, more resonant, almost seeming to come from someplace else.
The pistol tracked toward him, steadied. "Who asks?"
Slowly, Gar stood-unhurried, easy: And ready.
"What will you do? Kill the man? Will that hold the song from its ending?"
The guard's eyes narrowed. "Are you saying you began it?"
"Why, no." Gar moved toward him, easily, almost causally, slow movements hiding the speed of long strides.
"You lie!"
"Why would I do such a horrible thing?" He was halfway to the guard.
The pistol flicked upward toward Gar's head. "Stand where you are!"
"Why? Are you afraid to speak to my face?" Gar kept moving. And suddenly, somehow, something clicked together in Dirk's mind, and it all made some sort of crazy sense. Nothing he could say, but ... He rose to his feet and pa
ced after Gar.
"Stop!"
"Why? I can come only as far as the bars," Gar said reasonably. "Are you afraid of me even behind bars?"
The prisoners watched-tense, ready.
Gar was a stride away from the bars. The guard took a step back. "If you did it, say so!"
"But I didn't," the strange voice purred. Gar took the last stride and raised his fists to clasp the bars at shoulder level. "Would I be fool enough to talk this way if I had?"
"Then tell me who did!" The pistol rose level with Gar's eyes. "Or I promise you, you'll die in his place!"
Dirk ducked around between Gar and the bars. "I sang it!"
The guard's eyes flicked down to him, startled; the muzzle wavered.
Gar's whole body went rigid-and the bars bent.
The guard looked up, saw, and wild terror spread over his face. The gun muzzle jerked upward-Dirk leaped through the bars and slapped it aside. The searing light-lance spat wide, shearing through four more bars as Gar's huge fist closed around hand and gun both, squeezing. The guard's face went white; his mouth stretched in a silent scream as he dropped, unconscious.
Gar stood over him, his body slowly loosening. Dirk could almost see him changing back to his normal self. It was as though something were lifted off of him, out of him ...
The prisoners rose as though one string pulled them all upright, with one massive shushing hiss of straw sandals on stone.
Dirk looked up, ducked back through the hole in the bars, sure of what to do without knowing why, as the prisoners began moving toward him like a single enormous machine. "Oliver, Hugh, Gaspard!" he called out softly, but the prisoners paused while the Tradesman, the Woodsman, and the Merchant stepped forward to Dirk.
Dirk whirled back to Gar. "It's your party. What do we do?"
Gar shook himself, looked up, frowning. He gazed at the churls, seeming to see them for the first time. He nodded. "The guards should be gathered in the wardroom by the main gate. But we've made something of a noise, so they may have a patrol out checking the halls, and they may have put a guard on the armory. Divide into three partiesone to the armory, one to the arena gate, and one to the wardroom. That'll cover all the halls, and the trouble points, too."
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