by Джеффри Лорд
Besides, a journey to Dimension X spent wrestling carnivorous plants and climbing hills in his birthday suit would produce nothing likely to increase enthusiasm and support for Project Dimension X. Blade agreed with Lord Leighton that politicians tended to be shortsighted about the need for basic research. He also agreed with the politicians that scientists like Lord Leighton often expected the ultimate value of their projects to be taken on faith.
Blade stood up, stretched, and waded farther out into the river. It was too beautiful a day for worrying about Lord Leighton’s running battle with the politicians. The sky was clear, with only a few puffs of cloud, and the sun was almost hot. The river was washing away the filth of his days in the jungle, and the hills on both banks of the river were a healthy green, with none of the man-eating plants anywhere in sight.
Blade had to wade nearly out to the middle of the river before it reached his waist. He dove and rose several times, splashing happily like a porpoise, then started scrubbing off the jungle filth with handfuls of sand from the bottom of the river. By the time he’d scrubbed off all the filth, he felt as if he’d also taken off the top layer of skin, but he didn’t care.
From a hilltop on the bank behind him he’d seen that the river flowed from south to north. To the north it joined a larger river about a day’s march farther on. To the south Blade had seen what looked very much like the ruins of a bridge and a town or at least some collection of structures far too regular to be natural. Whichever way he went, he’d have plenty of water, and there were probably fish in the river.
He decided to take another look, now that it was full daylight. He climbed out of the water, shook himself like a dog, picked up his club, and walked toward the hill. He’d covered about half the distance when three of the gray cats seemed to spring out of the ground almost at his feet. A single glance told Blade they weren’t wild. Each wore a leather collar decorated with brass and soft leather protectors on their legs.
Just as clearly, they were trained to hunt, and right now they were hunting Blade. One crouched in front of him, just out of reach of his club, growling and digging its hind-claws into the ground as if it was about to leap at his throat. While the first cat held his attention, the other two loped around to his right and left. They could attack him from both sides at once, and move almost as quickly to cut off his retreat to the river.
The first thing Blade did was put down his club slowly and carefully, with no sudden moves to startle the crouching cat in front of him. The club wouldn’t make much difference against three of the cats working together, and it might provoke their masters, who couldn’t be far away.
Again moving slowly, Blade crossed his arms on his chest. Then he heard the thud of hooves from beyond the hilltop. A horse neighed sharply, and four riders came trotting over the crest and onto the slope facing the river. Blade had plenty of time to study them as they approached. Their mounts sounded and moved like horses, and perhaps their ancestors had been horses, but they definitely were different from horses in England. Their tails were long and bare, with only a tuft of brown hair, their ears were hairy and even longer than a mule’s, and their hooves divided into four toes ending in stubby claws. Their enormous eyes were a blue so dark it was almost purple. All four wore elaborate muzzles of boiled leather.
Two of the riders were men, wearing boiled-leather jackets and helmets and carrying long knives and twelve-foot lances. The other two were women, wearing soft leather shirts and knee-length leather trousers that admirably displayed excellent figures. They carried shorter lances and bows slung across their backs. One of the women was a short, snub-nosed blonde; the other was tall and brown-haired with a vaguely Oriental look.
The brunette whistled sharply to the three cats, and they sprang away from Blade. The blonde spurred her mount forward, swinging her lance down so that when she reined in its point was only a foot from Blade’s chest.
«I hadn’t expected such good hunting here,» she said. She was smiling, but Blade didn’t find the smile reassuring with the steel point so close. «How long have you been here, and who among the Elstani sent you?»
Her language was high-pitched and full of sibilants but reached Blade’s mind as fluent English. He knew his reply would come out in the woman’s language. The transformation of his brain so that he could understand and be understood by the people of each new Dimension was still one of the mysteries of Project Dimension X. Blade was willing to live with the mystery, considering how often it had saved his life.
«I have been here since dawn, and I call none among the Elstani master. I am a warrior from a distant land called England.» A good cover story in this or any other Dimension was always as true as possible, but he decided to say that he’d left his heavier gear behind in the ruined city, then lost his clothes while bathing in the river.
One of the men cursed, and his cursing was echoed by a snort from his mount. He rode up to Blade and drew his silver-mounted sword. Blade saw elaborate engraving on the blued steel.
«Lying to Tressana of Jaghd is not wise for anyone, man. For spies from Elstan, it is very foolish. Do you want a good death, or-?» The sword twitched.
The blonde woman-Tressana? — held up a hand. «A moment, Curim. You are not of Elstan, you say?»
«No.»
Well-groomed blonde eyebrows rose skeptically. Then the tall, brown-haired woman rode up and looked down at Blade. «Your Grace,» she said to the other woman, «it could be so. Certainly few men of Elstan are so tall, and I have never seen one with a beard like that.»
«Looking for some new toy for your bed, Jollya?» said the swordsman, with a coarse laugh. The brown-haired woman glared at him, and Tressana held up her hand again.
«Silence, both of you. Whatever he is, this man is no fit audience for your quarrel.» She turned to the second man. «Fayod!»
«Yes, your Grace?»
«Ride and bring the others.» She pulled a ring out of a pouch at her belt and tossed it to the man. As he rode off she turned back to Blade.
«Man of Elstan or stranger, I hope you have some notions of honor. Will you swear not to try escaping until my hunters come?»
«I swear it,» said Blade, spreading both hands in a peaceful gesture. He grinned. «I doubt if I’d have much hope of escaping anyway.» He pointed at the three cats now sitting quietly to one side. One was washing a paw in the self-absorbed fashion of cats of every size in every Dimension, but the other two still had their eyes on Blade. «Even if I could hope to kill the three of you, they wouldn’t leave much of me.»
Jollya smiled. «You are no fool, whatever else you are.» She’d looked rather forbidding, but the smile transformed her. Unlike Tressana’s smiles, Jollya’s reached her eyes.
Blade sat down, keeping his hands carefully in sight. After a moment Tressana thrust her lance point-first into the ground, dismounted, and tied her mount’s reins to the lance. Jollya and Curim remained mounted.
Blade did his best to relax. He’d be under the women’s protection unless he did something stupid, and he wasn’t going to take any chances. The Jaghdi appeared to be at least half civilized, and they might be interesting. In any case, he’d rather trust himself to almost any human beings than to the killer plants of the jungle behind him.
Chapter 5
Blade resisted the temptation to try making polite conversation. These people suspected him of at least one serious crime: being a spy for Elstan, whatever and wherever that might be. Silence might teach him nothing, but it would be far less likely to provoke Curim or her Grace, Tressana of Jaghd. In spite of her small escort and casual manner, Tressana behaved like someone who expected to be obeyed. If she wasn’t the local monarch, she was certainly someone of sufficiently high rank to be a good friend and a dangerous enemy.
At Tressana’s order Curim dismounted, but he didn’t sheathe his sword or take his eyes off Blade. Tressana sat down cross-legged in the grass and unhooked the top of her shirt. Blade approved the view. He also noticed that the
short trousers left bare two tanned, dimpled knees, with an ugly scar running across the right one. She pulled a knife out of one boot and a whetstone from her belt pouch, then started sharpening the knife. She whistled tunelessly as she worked.
Jollya was the busiest of the three. She went to each of the mounts and unbuckled their muzzles. Then she pulled three large hams out of the saddlebags and threw one down on the grass in front of each animal. They had chewed the hams down nearly to the bare bones when the rest of the Jaghdi hunting party arrived.
There were at least a hundred mounted men and women, a dozen large wagons, a string of at least fifty spare mounts, and more of the hunting cats. Blade was glad he hadn’t tried to escape from his first captors. A band this size could quickly have run him down.
About twenty of the riders were women, dressed and armed like Jollya and apparently taking their orders from her. Another twenty men seemed to obey Curim. The other riders were probably huntsmen or servants. The wagons were elaborately painted, and each was pulled by four hairy, slab-sided animals that reminded Blade of a cross between a dairy cow and a goat.
All the wagons had leather canopies except the one in the lead. Its canopy seemed to be yellow silk, and at the rear a tall pole supported a green banner showing a winged black helmet. Tressana and Jollya mounted again and urged him toward this wagon with precise flourishes of their lances. Blade suspected they were both showing off their skill at his expense, but the skill was real. Both rode as if they and their mounts had one mind and one body, and handled their lances as deftly as if they’d been knitting needles.
In the back of the silk-canopied wagon a man was sitting. At first he seemed to be almost as old as Lord Leighton, with stiff white hair fringing a nearly bald skull and bushy white eyebrows shading deep-set eyes. At a second look, Blade saw that the man could hardly be more than forty, and his body was sound and whole, although softened by too much food and too little exercise. The eyes were black, and instead of Lord Leighton’s sharpness they had a cloudy, vacant look.
«My dear one,» Tressana said. «Look what I have here.»
«Eh?» The dark eyes focused slowly on Blade. «Oh. A man, with no clothes on.»
«Yes. I found him.»
«Good for you.»
«Thank you, Manro.»
«Is he of Elstan? Is he?» Manro’s voice had the eagerness of a child wanting to know if there will be ice cream for dessert.
«Oh, I think he might be. I found him like this, where our people don’t go.»
«They don’t go-?» Manro seemed to be trying to grasp an idea just beyond the reach of his wits.
«No. They don’t. Do you remember? You gave the order yourself last year.»
«Ah, yes. It was a good order. I remember now.» Blade wondered if Manro could remember as much as his own name.
«Yes,» Tressana continued, «and the Jaghdi love you and obey that order. So a man who comes where we found this one may be of Elstan.»
Manro struggled to get the next question out. «You-you-know-don’t-sure-he is Elstan?»
«He says he is not. Indeed, he is very tall for an Elstani. May I have the right of First Justice upon him, until we are sure?»
Tressana had to repeat the question three times before Manro would answer. Then he nodded. «Yes. Yes, pretty Tressana. You have First Justice on the man.»
«Thank you, my dear.» She leaned out of the saddle and patted the man on the cheek. The expression on her face would have turned Blade’s stomach, if it hadn’t already been turned by the rest of the conversation between Tressana and her half-witted husband.
Tressana turned in her saddle and signaled to Curim. He rode forward, and Blade saw that he was carrying something like a large dart in one hand. He waved it, and Blade saw that the point gleamed darkly with some tarlike substance. Before Blade could react, Curim raised his hand and threw the dart.
It sank deep into the flesh of Blade’s left buttock, and he wanted to yell out loud with both pain and surprise. He also wanted to drag Curim out of the saddle and break every bone in the man’s body.
He’d taken two steps toward Curim when suddenly his legs felt weak and his head began to spin. Curim laughed. Blade took one more step, then fell face down into the trampled and dung-spattered grass and passed out with Curim’s laughter in his ears.
Blade’s first sensations on waking up were dizziness and nausea. Fortunately he was lying down and his stomach was completely empty, so neither sensation did any harm. He lay quietly until he could get a better picture of his position and the world around him.
The first thing he noticed was that the length of wire was gone from his wrist. He briefly cursed the Jaghdi.
Losing the wire meant losing a good part of the value of the experiment of carrying it into Dimension X. Also, there was the matter he’d mentioned to Lord Leighton, about advanced technology looking like magic. They might be even more suspicious of him after they discovered that nothing they had could cut, work, or melt the wire.
Blade was lying among wooden boxes and empty sacks in the back of a wagon. Both ankles were shackled and the shackles were fastened to the wagon bed by a length of chain strong enough to hold a gorilla. Now that the Jaghdi had him, they obviously intended to hold on to him. They also intended to keep him alive for whatever «First Justice» might be. The wound in his buttock was not only bandaged, but padded so heavily that he could almost sit comfortably on it. He’d been bathed and rubbed down with some sort of perfumed oil, and there was a bowl of porridge and a leather bottle of water within easy reach. He wasn’t hungry, but he drank half the water before looking around him again.
The wagon was parked facing the west and a glowing red sunset. Against the glow Blade saw the silhouettes of several more wagons and, beyond them, mounted sentries trotting back and forth. He couldn’t see out the front end of the wagon. All around he heard the sound of neighing and grunting animals and smelled smoke, animal dung, and roasting meat. Voices murmured, sometimes rising in song, and once someone started beating a small drum.
As the drum died away, a tall, shadowy, mounted figure seemed to materialize in front of Blade. He saw a lance and a helmet silhouetted against the sunset, thought of Curim, and was glad his hands were free. Then Jollya’s voice said:
«Blade?»
«Yes. I’m here. In fact, I’m likely to stay here for a while.»
She laughed. «I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you do so. But you’re under Tressana’s protection now, so you don’t need to be afraid of Curim.»
Her tone irritated Blade slightly. «What makes you think I’m afraid of Curim?»
«If you aren’t, you aren’t enough of a warrior to spot an enemy when you see one. And if you’re not a warrior, then you’re a liar, even if you’re not of Elstan. And if you’re a liar, why should I come here to talk to you?»
«I’m not going to try guessing your reasons for doing anything, Jollya.»
«Wise of you.» The sarcasm was unmistakable.
Blade ignored it. «So Curim is my enemy. Are you going to tell me something I don’t already know, such as what you are?»
«You won’t take Curim’s word that I want you for my bed?»
«I wouldn’t take his word for the sun rising in the east,» said Blade, laughing. He was enjoying the verbal fencing, although he knew he’d have to be careful not to reveal too much about himself.
The laughter seemed to irritate Jollya. «Are you a lover of boys, then?»
Blade would have laughed even louder if he hadn’t been afraid of being overheard. «When I want company in bed, I take a woman. But that doesn’t mean I expect your company there.»
She thought for a moment, then said, sounding almost relieved, «I believe what you have told me about yourself, even if you lied about your camp in the ruins of the city.»
Blade realized he was on very delicate ground and was being warned about it. «I hid my camp very well. It is not my fault that you couldn’t find it.»
«It is said by some that there was no camp.»
«Foolish men will say all sorts of things.»
«So will desperate men, Blade.»
«Also tree.»
Jollya was silent for so long that Blade wondered if she had anything more to say. Then she spoke quickly, in almost a whisper.
«Blade, I do believe that you are not of Elstan. The metal of your bracelet makes me sure of that. It is not-«
«You have it?»
«Yes. I said I wanted to show it to my father. He is Keeper of the Animals, but there was no one here to speak for the Keeper of the Stones. Also, this wire is neither animal nor stone, so any of the Keepers could really claim it.»
Part of this speech might as well have been in Arabic for all Blade could understand of it, but he was relieved to know that for the moment at least the wire was in safe hands. He’d worry about getting it back later.
«Thank you, Jollya. There is a warrior’s honor in you.» He didn’t mind letting her know that he was grateful. She might not be his friend, but she seemed at least to be the enemy of his enemy Curim.
Another long silence, then she spoke in a strangely subdued voice. «Thank you, Blade. I-that-my father-«She gave up the struggle for words, dug in her spurs so violently that her mount squealed, then rode off at a trot. Blade knew that he’d said something right, but wished he knew what it was. Right now, though, the best thing for him to do was get some more sleep.
Blade drank the rest of the water, piled some sacks under his head and his wound, then fell asleep quickly. The wagon was a more comfortable and secure sleeping place than any he’d found in the jungle.
Blade rode in the wagon for three days and caught up on a good deal of the sleep he’d missed during his trek through the jungle. During the day he listened carefully. The men and women around him talked as freely as if he was deaf, but the wagon ride came to an end just as he was beginning to understand something of what was going on in this Dimension. He’d played the same game with captors in many different Dimensions and often saved his life with what he learned. This time what he learned made him feel he’d read a book with every other page torn out. There were two lands in this Dimension, or at least two everyone knew about. There was Jaghd, where Blade was, and Elstan, on the other side of the forest of Binaark with its killer plants. Although the forest and the mountains on either side of it were almost impenetrable barriers, somehow the Jaghdi and the Elstani managed to conduct a flourishing trade.