THE PEDDLER’S APPRENTICE
by Joan D. Vinge and Vernor Vinge
Lord Buckry I of Fyffe lounged on his throne, watching his two youngest sons engaged in mock battle in the empty Audience Hall. The daggers were wooden but the rivalry was real, and the smaller boy was at a disadvantage. Lord Buckry tugged on a heavy gold earring. Thin, brown-haired Hanaban was his private favorite; the boy took after his father both in appearance and turn of mind.
The lord of the Flatlands was a tall man, his own unkempt brown hair graying now at the temples. The blue eyes in his lean, foxlike face still perceived with disconcerting sharpness, though years of experience kept his own thoughts hidden. More than twenty years had passed since he had won control of his lands; he had not kept his precarious place as lord so long without good reason.
Now his eyes flashed rare approval as Hanaban cried, “Trace, look there!” and, as his brother turned, distracted, whacked him soundly on the chest.
“Gotcha!” Hanaban shrieked delightedly. Trace grimaced with disgust.
Their father chuckled, but his face changed suddenly as the sound of a commotion outside the chamber reached him. The heavy, windowed doors at the far end of the room burst open; the Flatlander courier shook off guards, crossed the high-ceilinged, echoing chamber and flung himself into a bow, his rifle clattering on the floor. “Your Lordship!”
Lord Buckry snapped his fingers; his gaping children silently fled the room. “Get up,” he said impatiently. “What in tarnation is this?”
“Your Lordship.” The courier raised a dusty face, wincing mentally at his lord’s Highland drawl. “There’s word the sea kingdoms have raised another army. They’re crossing the coast mountains, and—”
“That ain’t possible. We cleaned them out not half a year since.”
“They’ve a lot of folk along the coast, Your Lordship.” The horseman stood apologetically. “And Jayley Sharkstooth’s made a pact this time with the Southlands.”
Lord Buckry stiffened. “They’ve been at each other’s throats long as I can remember.” He frowned, pulling at his earring. “Only thing they’ve got in common is—me. Damn!”
He listened distractedly to the rider’s report, then stood abruptly, dismissing the man as an afterthought. As the heavy doors of the hall slid shut he was already striding toward the elevator, past the shaft of the ballistic vehicle exit, unused for more than thirty years. His soft-soled Highlander boots made no sound on the cold polished floor.
From the parapet of his castle he could survey a wide stretch of his domain, the rich, utterly flat farmlands of the hundred-mile-wide valley—the lands the South and West were hungry for. The fields were dark now with turned earth, ready for the spring planting; it was no time to be calling up an army. He was sure his enemies were aware of that. The day was exceptionally clear, and at the eastern reaches of his sight he could make out the grayed purple wall of the mountains: the Highlands, that held his birthplace—and something more important to him now.
The dry wind ruffled his hair as he looked back across thirty years; his sunburned hands tightened on the seamless, ancient green-blackness of the parapet. “Damn you, Mr. Jagged,” he said to the wind. “Where’s your magic when I need it!”
The peddler came to Darkwood Corners from the east, on Wim Buckry’s seventeenth birthday. It was early summer, and Wim could still see sun flashing on snow up the pine-wooded hill that towered above the Corners; the snowpack in the higher hills was melting at last, sluicing down gullies that stood dry through most of the year, changing Littlebig Creek into a cold, singing torrent tearing at the earth below the cabins on the north side of the road. Even a week ago the East Pass had lain under more than thirty feet of snow.
Something like silence came over the townspeople as they saw the peddler dragging his cart down the east road toward the Corners. His wagon was nearly ten feet tall and fifteen long, with carved, brightly painted wooden sides that bent sharply out over the wheels to meet a gabled roof. Wim gaped in wonder as he saw those wheels, spindly as willow wood yet over five feet across. Under the cart’s weight they sank half a foot and more into the mud of the road, but cut through the mud without resistance, without leaving a rut.
Even so, the peddler was bent nearly double with the effort of pulling his load. The fellow was short and heavy, with skin a good deal darker than Wim had ever seen. His pointed black beard jutted at a determined angle as he staggered along the rutted track, up to his ankles in mud. Above his calves the tooled leather of his leggings gleamed black and clean. Several scrofulous dogs nosed warily around him as he plodded down the center of the road; he ignored them as he ignored the staring townsfolk.
Wim shoved his empty mug back at Ounze Rumpster, sitting nearest the tavern door. “More,” he said. Ounze swore, got up from the steps, and disappeared into the tavern.
Wim’s attention never left the peddler for an instant. As the dark man reached the widening in the road at the center of town, he pulled his wagon into the muddy morass where the Widow Henley’s house had stood until the Littlebig Creek dragged it to destruction. The stranger had everyone’s attention now. Even the town’s smith had left his fire, and stood in his doorway gazing down the street at the peddler.
The peddler turned his back on them as he kicked an arresting gear down from the rear of the painted wagon and let it settle into the mud. He returned to the front of the cart and moved a small wheel set in the wood paneling: a narrow blue pennant sprouted from the peak of the gable and fluttered briskly; crisp and metallic, a pinging melody came from the wagon. That sound emptied the tavern and brought the remainder of the Corners’ population onto the street. Ounze Rumpster nearly fell down the wooden steps in his haste to see the source of the music; he sat down heavily, handing the refilled mug to Wim. Wim ignored him.
As the peddler turned back to the crowd the eerie music stopped, and the creek sounded loud in the silence. Then the little man’s surprising bass voice rumbled out at them. “Jagit Katchetooriantz is my name, and fine wrought goods is my trade. Needles, adze-heads, blades—you need ‘em?” He pulled a latch on the wagon’s wall and a panel swung out from its side, revealing rows of shining knife blades and needles so fine Wim could see only glitter where they caught the sunlight. “Step right on up, folks. Take a look, take a feel. Tell me what they might be worth to you.” There was no need to repeat the invitation—in seconds he was surrounded. As the townspeople closed around him, he mounted a small step set in the side of the wagon, so that he could still be seen over the crowd.
Wim’s boys were on their feet; but he sat motionless, his sharp face intent. “Set down,” he said, just loudly enough. “Your eyes is near busting out of your heads. They’d skin us right fast if we try anything here. There’s too many. Set!” He gave the nearest of them, Bathecar Henley, a sideways kick in the shin; they all sat. “Gimme that big ring of yours, Sothead.”
Ounze Rumpster’s younger brother glared at him, then extended his jeweled fist from a filthy woolen cuff. “How come you’re so feisty of a sudden, Wim?” He dropped the ring peevishly into the other’s hand. Wim turned away without comment, passing the massive chunk of gold to Bathecar’s plump, fair girlfriend.