“Soon,” Radmer says, eyeing his old monarch appraisingly. “I will protect you as best I can. If we're separated, it's imperative that you make your way to Timoch. I cannot emphasize this point enough. There is information in your skull—at least I pray there is—on which the fate of this world depends.”
“So you've said, yes. May I have one of those weapons, then?”
Bruno can see the wheels of Radmer's mind turning. He conceives of Bruno as a fragile thing, a wrung-out old man. Which is absurd, since they were both ruggedized by the same fax filters, back when such things existed, and have been worn down by an identical span of years. Here is a man who's spent—clearly!—decades upon decades of his life at war. Perhaps not all at once, and not against such enemies as these. But he trusts himself, trusts his instincts and movements, whereas this hoary old King Bruno is, at best, an unknown element upon the field.
“I invented the blitterstaff,” Bruno says in his own defense, “in the heat of a battle as fierce as the one we now face. At my back was Cheng Shiao of the Royal Constabulary, with a pistol and a sword and an abject refusal to die. And we won the day, sir. Just the two of us.”
“And you captured Marlon Sykes' fortress and saved the sun from destruction, yes,” Radmer says. “Every schoolchild knows that, even today. I do not mean to offend you, Sire. My aim is to maximize the chance of getting you, in one piece, to the place where you're needed. How deep are your pockets?”
“Monetarily?” Bruno asks, bewildered for a moment.
“Literally,” Radmer says impatiently. “How much can they hold?”
Bruno turns them out for inspection, and seeing them, Radmer nods.
“I will give you two of the glue bombs. They adhere very well indeed to impervium skins, and they peel right off of human ones. Beware your clothing, though, and the metal of the trenching hook, and the stones and branches upon the ground. If you get into trouble, throw the bombs at their feet—at their feet, mind you!—and run like hell. Don't worry about me, or anything else except your own escape. Are we clear on this point?”
“Very clear,” Bruno confirms, slapping the shaft of his hook. “But out of curiosity, sir, don't you think I could run more quickly without this hunk of iron?”
“Oh, definitely. But a man in danger needs something stout in his hands. It will make you brave, though I hope not stupid, and with any luck that will keep you alive. You can always drop it later if you need to.”
“Ah,” Bruno says, satisfied with that explanation. Those who have lived a long time accumulate this sort of folk wisdom as surely as a hiking sock accumulates burrs.
And then, before another word can be spoken, a pair of gleaming metal forms break through the tree line and come at the two men, moving with that ancient fluid grace and speed which no citizen of the Queendom could ever forget. Robots. Household servants, actually, but no less formidable for that. And now that they're close, Bruno can see that they've been modified, their heads drilled open and some sort of black, auxiliary circuit box affixed to one side.
To override the Asimov protocols? Certainly, it should be very difficult to get robots such as these—wherever they've come from—to raise a hand in anger. And yet, these two are carrying swords, and dancing forward with grimly mechanical intent. Behind them, another two robots burst through the trees, and then three more, and then another eight. Within moments, Bruno and Conrad are surrounded, and the younger man is shouting, “Behind me, Sire! Get behind me!”
For the moment, Bruno does as he's told, although he knows enough of battle to realize that Radmer's best intentions are little more than hot air once the uncertainties of the action begin to unfold. He stays loose. He is not afraid of dying, has in fact tried at various times to extinguish this mortal coil of his. But in the peaceful tropics of Varna that proved nearly impossible, and having resigned himself now to helping a planet full of people he has never met, he feels rather strongly that he should live a while longer. Too, he is burning with curiosity at this turn of events, and wants very much to find out what will happen next.
This, at least, is the pleasure of a long life: the very large number of unexpected things which can happen to you before it's done.
Bruno watches as Radmer fires three carefully aimed shots, each one striking the black box on the side of a robot's head, bursting it, causing the owners to clatter to the ground like puppets with their power switched off. Which is, of course, exactly what they are. But the remaining attackers cover ground very quickly, so Radmer holsters his weapon and hurls a glue bomb at the feet of another two.
It bursts with a comical farting sound, and Radmer's aim is either very lucky or very sure, because filaments of yellow-brown glue spring up between the two robots' legs, joining them to each other and to the ground and the rocks, so that in spite of their grace the robots trip and fall on their faces. They still grip their swords, though, and the joints of their arms can bend and swivel every which way, so when Radmer grabs Bruno by the ruff of his leather jacket and tows him forward, there is a bit of leaping and sword dancing involved. In fact, one of the blades strikes Bruno on the back of the thigh, gashing the skin there, a fact which he will not realize until later.
Had they been fighting humans, taking down five of them would've left an opening large enough to escape through, assuming they ran for safety with all their might. But the robots are too quick, and the two men too grossly outnumbered. The broken circle of attackers smears out into a horseshoe, and then a closed ellipse, and the two of them are caught again.
“Royal Override!” Bruno shouts at them, summoning his most kingly tone. “Stand down and await instructions!”
It's a desperate and probably futile gambit, but if these ancient machines are of Queendom manufacture, mightn't they heed their old king? The Royal Overrides are woven deeply into their being, far more so than even the Asimov protocols.
And indeed, they pause at his voice, slowing their forward rush, lowering their weapons slightly. Considering this new data, yes, sifting the input through what remains of their ancient programming. For a moment, Bruno thinks perhaps this disastrous war might be brought to a swift conclusion after all. They listened! They heeded!
But no, alas, even before the echoes have died they are shaking off their moment of indecision and advancing once more with murderous intent.
“What do they want?” Bruno cannot help asking.
“To kill us,” Conrad answers simply. “To loot our bodies and steal any metal they can find.”
As he speaks, he draws out two more glue bombs and uses them to immobilize another trio of robots. But then the robots are upon them, and the battle is hand to hand, and Radmer is pulling out that stubby little blitterstaff of his, whose basket hilt appears, to Bruno's eye, to have been hammered from ordinary metal. So, he judges, were the swords of the robot army, which clang like bells when Radmer parries them.
The business end of the blitterstaff flickers with colors and patterns, with blurring lights too quick for the eye to see. It is a short rod of wellstone shifting between various highly reactive states, noxious chemicals and fields and software all churning together in a deadly, unpredictable mess. Where the swords touch it, they spark and smoke, bend and twist, but do not come apart the way wellmetal would. The steel, being ordinary and nonprogrammable, is blit-proof. Whether this is a sign of a very enlightened attacker or a very crude one, Bruno cannot say, and at this particular moment it hardly matters.