by Джеффри Лорд
No doubt there were Dimensions where people who behaved like the Shoba's soldiers were really the side Blade ought to be on. Perhaps this was one of them. Common sense told Blade that he should wait a little longer before making an enemy of the Shoba. No doubt making an enemy of the Shoba would make him a friend of the villagers, but was it worth it?
It was. Never mind what common sense told him. Blade had to listen to his instincts. Those instincts told him to strike. They told him that people who kidnapped young men and women, who shot small children and smashed up village walls, who carried off gold and grain, were people who would be his enemies sooner or later.
So why not now?
Chapter 4
The Shoba's men marched only about five miles to the south before making camp for the night. They settled in by a thick stand of scrubby trees and sent out woodcutting parties. By the time darkness fell, a score of fires was blazing cheerfully.
From the shelter of the trees, Blade watched the camp settle down. He smelled wood smoke and roasting meat, heard the drunken laughter of soldiers and ragged trumpet calls. He saw the women's wagons parked in the very center of the camp, but none of the women. Finally, he saw sentries take up positions all around the camp as the fires began to die down.
When Blade saw that, he suspected he wouldn't be able to rescue Twana tonight. He was certain that he could enter the camp and bring her out with surprise on his side. With thirty sentries on the prowl, it would be hard to get that surprise.
Besides, if he struck this close to the village, the Aygoon would probably conclude that the people of Hores were responsible for the incident. Blade and Twana might escape, but not the villagers. The cannon and the soldiers would take a gruesome vengeance on them for what they hadn't done.
Blade wouldn't risk that. He'd wait for a day or two, then move in. By then the soldiers would be a good many miles from Hores, and they'd be less alert. The only other alternative seemed to be doing nothing, and Blade refused to consider that.
The smell of roasting meat from the camp reminded him that he hadn't eaten for two days. He made a brief search of the forest for something edible, found nothing, and resigned himself to sleeping on an empty stomach. The ground under the trees was covered with needles and dead leaves. Compared to sleeping on the bare rock, tonight would be like sleeping on a feather mattress.
Blade found a hiding place well inside the trees, lay down, stretched out, and was comfortably asleep within minutes.
The next morning the soldiers were slow to waken and slow to get on the march. After that, they moved briskly enough and by noon were coming up to a pair of smaller villages. From these they took five men, two dozen goats, and several baskets of fruit. By now it was obvious to Blade that much of the tax or tribute was intended to feed the tax collectors and their animals on the march. The young men and the gold were another matter. The men no doubt went to the Shoba's army and the gold to the treasury.
That night the soldiers camped ten miles beyond the village and five miles from the nearest forest. From behind a low rise in the ground, Blade watched them closely. They built no fires, and only a handful of men came out on sentry duty. The wagons formed a ragged circle more than a hundred yards across, wide open to someone who could move in quickly and silently.
Far off to the southwest, the hills seemed to rise higher than usual. Blade studied them in the dying glow of the sunset and noticed a peculiar regularity in their crests. It looked almost as if someone had built a wall along the crest of the whole range. The «wall» seemed to stretch for at least twenty miles before vanishing in the distance. Blade's curiosity was aroused. He found himself hoping that the next day's march would lead him off toward the hills.
Just before dawn Blade woke to hear something scampering past him. He watched several gopher-like creatures pop out of holes in the ground while he quietly picked up his staff in one hand and a loose stone in the other.
Crack, whack, bang. Blade killed three of the creatures before they could get back into their holes, two with the staff and one with a thrown stone. Then he skinned them with the sickle blade and ate them raw. The flesh was gamy, but it was food, and food meant the energy he would badly need.
He saved the skins, which might be useful to protect Twana's feet.
By the time Blade finished his bloody breakfast, the soldiers were moving out again. He was happy to see them swinging off toward the southwest and moved out on their trail the moment it was safe.
By noon Blade could see that the hills ahead rose more than a thousand feet from the plain, their bare flanks always sloping at a forty to sixty-degree angle. Along the crest of the hills ran what was undeniably an artificial structure, a blue-gray wall nearly fifty feet high. It did not run completely level but instead rose and fell slightly with the line of the crest. It reminded Blade very much of pictures he'd seen of the Great Wall of China. Like the Great Wall, it seemed to go on forever.
As the wall came closer, Blade's impression of it began to change. For one thing, it seemed to be made of some solid and homogeneous material rather than built up of individual blocks. The amount of material in just the part of the wall Blade could see must be enough to build a fair-sized city.
There were no towers, there were no gates, there were no stairs or ladders. In many places vines and trees seemed to have sprouted from the hilltops and crept up the wall. Otherwise the outer face of the wall was as bare and unbroken as the face of a dam.
At times Blade thought he saw a faint gold-tinged shimmering along the top of the wall, like waves of heat in the air over a hot road. Twice he thought he saw the sunlight reflected from a large surface of brightly polished metal: Once he could have sworn the metal surface was moving along the top of the wall, at least when he first saw it. When he looked again, it had stopped. When he looked a third time, it had vanished.
The mystery of the wall grew each time Blade looked at it. Certainly it would be the next thing he'd study in this Dimension, after he'd rescued Twana and returned her to Hores.
Or he might have to study the wall even before that. If he and Twana didn't get clean away, the wall offered a possible escape route. If the trees and vines grew on one side of the wall to provide a way up, they probably grew on the other side to provide a way down. The soldiers might be able to climb up after him, but they could hardly get their mounts over the wall. Blade was quite certain he could keep ahead of them on foot.
First, however, he had to get Twana free. There seemed to be no more villages in sight, and by now it was midafternoon. The soldiers might be making a rather ragged camp tonight. That would give Blade an opportunity to strike-as good a one as he could expect.
The darkness reduced everything to ghost shapes. Deep inside the camp, Blade saw two torches glowing faintly among the wagons. Each torch threw a faint circle of pale yellow light. Everywhere else there was blackness and starlight. Sometimes an ox or riding animal would stamp or rattle its harness. Otherwise all was silent. The whole camp might have been dead, not just asleep.
Three hundred yards from the camp, Blade went down on hands and knees and crawled forward. Here was where the sentries had walked the last two nights. Tonight the ground ahead was empty. Blade moved to the left, toward a small fold in the ground. It gave him cover for a hundred yards. He crawled another hundred yards after that, then lay down to watch and listen again. The darkness was unbroken. The silence was not. Now he was close enough to hear the heavy snores of the sleeping men. They slept as though there were no possible danger within a hundred miles.
Certainly they were in no danger from him. Blade wanted Twana. He wouldn't lift a finger against any soldier who didn't interfere with that. If they all stayed asleep, they would all wake safely in the morning.
Blade rose on bare feet and padded forward, as alert and deadly as a prowling tiger. The sickle blade was thrust into his belt. In his left hand he carried the staff, in his right a loop of leather he'd picked up on the trail. The soldiers had dis
carded it as junk. To someone with Blade's skills, it was a perfect weapon for silent killing.
The tents and the wagons, the animals, and the sprawled blanket-wrapped forms on the ground, grew larger. Blade swung around the end of the wagons. One of the riding animals raised its head and made a sizzling sound like grease in a frying pan. Blade froze. The sound drew an answering hiss from one of the wooden cages. The musky odor exhaled from the cages was strong in Blade's nostrils.
He didn't move until he was sure that the noise of the animals would not wake any of the sleeping men. Then he moved on. Before darkness fell, he'd counted the wagons. The women's wagons were fourth and fifth in line. He'd seen nine women taken out of them for dinner and an airing, Twana among them. He'd seen all nine put back before darkness fell.
He was passing the first wagon, and then the second. The third was coming up. Blade advanced one step at a time, lifting his feet carefully and setting them down still more carefully. He was passing the third wagon now. From just ahead he could hear the whimpering of some woman in a nightmare and smell faint hints of perfume.
Squeeee-eeee-eeeeyi! The sound was like a door closing on enormous rusty hinges, and it seemed to come almost from under Blade's feet. He froze, raised the staff, then looked down. A small ape-like animal was chained to the forward axle of the third wagon. Now it was jumping up and down and squealing like a nest of mice. Blade saw it hop up on the axle and draw breath to cry out again.
Blade didn't like the idea of killing someone's harmless pet, but the creature had to be silenced. He shifted his grip on the staff and struck downward. In the darkness his aim was off. The creature leaped nimbly down from the axle and darted away under the wagon to the full length of its chain.
From the other side of the wagon, Blade heard the sound of someone getting to his feet. He set his back against the wagon as two soldiers came stumbling around the end of it into view. From the way they moved and held their swords, Blade realized they were still half asleep.
He thrust his staff into the first soldier's throat. He felt the windpipe collapse under the blow, saw the man fall, and heard him choking as he thrashed on the ground. His comrade slashed at Blade, who stepped back and whirled his staff end for end. It smashed across the back of the soldier's neck, sending him forward on his face. Then the other end came down with all of Blade's strength behind it, against the base of the soldier's skull. He died without a twitch or a whimper.
Both men were down, but the animal under the wagon was still piping shrilly. Blade could hear the snorts and curses of other soldiers rising out of sleep. He had even less time to waste than before.
He dashed to the fourth wagon, drew the sickle blade, and slashed at the curtains. After the first slash, he put the steel away and ripped with his bare hands. The curtains gaped open, and several women stuck their heads out to stare at Blade.
«Twana?» he called softly. Then, louder, «Twana!» A faint cry of surprise, then the sound of a struggle. A woman screamed; another sprawled on her stomach, half out of the wagon. Beside her, Twana's face appeared out of the darkness. Blade reached with both hands, clutched the girl by the shoulders, and heaved. With an astonished yelp, she flew out of the wagon. Blade's grip on her was all that kept her from sprawling on the ground.
She was barefoot and wore nothing but a length of cloth knotted about her waist. Even the quickest of glances told Blade that she was breathtakingly lovely, although shaking with cold, surprise, and fear. He snatched up a blanket dropped by one of the dead soldiers and ripped the shirt off the back of the other, then thrust both garments at Twana.
«Put these on and then run!»
«Run?» she repeated, her eyes wide and her hands trembling so that she could hardly grip the clothes.
«Yes, run!» said Blade. He would have liked to be gentle with the terrified girl, but there was no time. «Run toward the hills and the wall.» He pointed into the darkness. «Find a spring at the foot of the hills and hide there.»
«The Wall? It is forbidden. I cannot…»
«If it's forbidden, then the soldiers won't think of looking for you there,» said Blade. He felt like shouting. «Or do you want the soldiers to catch you again?»
That thought seemed to frighten Twana out of her paralysis. She snatched the garments from Blade's hands and dashed off into the darkness without bothering to put them on.
Blade hoped she'd be able to outrun any pursuers and wouldn't hide herself so thoroughly he couldn't find her himself. Meanwhile, a little quick work around the camp, and the soldiers might have too much on their minds to pursue him or Twana.
All the women in the two wagons started screaming at the top of their lungs. Blade couldn't make out a single word. He ignored them and bent to strip the dead soldiers of their weapons. He'd picked up a sword and was just picking up a bow when he saw two more soldiers coming at him out of the darkness.
Blade swung the bow sideways, cracking one man across the ankles. He yelped and began to dance around as if on hot bricks. Blade raised his sword and blocked the second man's thrust. The man's momentum carried him past Blade, who whirled and took his head off with a single slash. Blade slung the bow, picked up the quiver, and jumped onto the driver's seat of the nearest wagon. Now he could see more clearly what lay around him.
The camp was coming awake slowly, but too fast for Blade's comfort. He pulled an arrow from the quiver and looked for the two torches. If he could shoot them out, he'd have total darkness on his side. Then the musketeers and archers might not risk shooting for fear of hitting a friend.
Someone in the camp fired a musket, and someone else screamed in agony as the ball plowed into him. Blade found the first torch, aimed at it, and loosed his arrow. Someone ran into the circle of light around the torch just in time to take the arrow in his chest. Another scream tore the night, and a dying hand clutched the torch for a moment. Then the hand unfolded, and the torch dropped to the ground, going out as it struck.
Two arrows whistled over Blade's head; then a musket ball thudded into the wagon just below his feet. Some sharp-eyed soul had apparently picked him out as the source of the trouble in the camp.
Blade sprang down from the wagon seat, slung his bow, and charged into the camp. That was the last place anybody would think of looking for him at the moment. He ran until he felt as if he were skimming the ground, leaping over tent cords and men still wrapped in their blankets. As he approached the second torch, he saw a group of four men burst out from the tents, heading in the same direction. They reached the torch first. As the man in the lead clutched it, Blade recognized him. It was the Aygoon.
Blade didn't even break stride. He was on the men before they could even see him coming. They wore no armor. Blade's sword swung, taking two of the men in a single slash. One clapped his hands over a gaping chest; the other gushed blood where his jaw had been. They fell back, driving the third man with them. Blade turned to face the Aygoon.
The Aygoon started to drop the torch, raising his sword with his free hand. Before he could complete either movement, Blade's left hand closed on the shaft of the torch. Blade's enormous strength snatched the torch away as if the Aygoon had been a child. The man struck a desperately clumsy, one-handed blow with his sword. Blade blocked it easily, then thrust the torch into the Aygoon's face. His beard and hair blazed up. He dropped his sword with a scream and clawed at his face. Blade put an end to the Aygoon's agony by splitting his skull with an overhand slash. Then Blade turned and ran, bloody sword in one hand and torch blazing in the other.
He didn't throw the torch away. A plan had leaped into his mind. If he carried out that plan, not only he and Twana, but Twana's village, might be safe from the Shoba's soldiers.
On the far side of the camp lay the five cannon and the canvas-covered wagons that held their powder and shot. Blade charged across the camp toward those wagons as if he were trying to set an Olympic record. The torch danced and flickered wildly but kept burning. Arrows and musket balls whistled past
him in all directions. Everyone in the camp seemed to be in a panic of firing. None of the shots came close to Blade, but he heard a number of screams as men hit their own comrades. With their commanding officer dead, it might be quite a while before even the best-trained soldiers got themselves sorted out.
Blade ran past the cannon and up to the first of the wagons. He yanked off the cover and saw a pile of canvas bags. They bulged as if they held shot. Not what he wanted. He moved on to the next wagon.
A bullet whistled inches from his ear as he tore the cover off the second wagon and saw a dozen fat wooden barrels, all heavily tarred. A large wooden mallet lay in the bottom of the wagon. Blade picked it up, as another musket ball flew so close he felt the wind on his skin. Two sharp blows, and the wood of the barrel's head cracked. Black grains trickled out. Blade thrust the torch against the canvas cover, waited until the flames began to rise, then threw the canvas over the barrels. The tar took fire. Blade threw the torch in among the barrels and ran, as arrows began to whistle down around him. He ran off into the darkness, and he'd covered about two hundred yards before the power wagon exploded.
The sheet of flame seemed to wash over the whole camp, and Blade saw tents go down and wagons topple over as if they'd been shoved by a giant hand. Bits and pieces of flaming wreckage shot into the air like fireworks. Then the long rumble and roar of the explosion surrounded him. The shock wave was so violent he nearly stumbled. He kept on until the last of the flames died. Then he slowed down and made a wide half-circle around to the other side of the camp, where the animals were tethered.
By that time some of the soldiers were mounting up. The first few had just climbed into their saddles when Blade's arrows came slicing down out of the darkness. He was firing almost blind, but the mass of tethered animals and men working around them made a target impossible to miss.
He shot eleven arrows, leaving him with a dozen in the quiver. He couldn't see who or what he was hitting, but he heard a good many screams and cries, both human and animal. Hitting even half a dozen animals would probably throw the rest into such a panic that it would be hours before anyone could ride them. During those hours he and Twana could build up a long lead.