“Defense. Every man’s hand turned against the other. The first local who sees me will probably try to brain me just to get these antique furs that I’m wearing. Defense.”
His knife had vanished along with his flashlight, so a sharp fragment of split rock had to do. A straight sapling was raw material and he worried it off close to the ground with the chip of stone. Taking off the branches was easier, and within the hour he had a rough but usable quanterstaff. It served first as a walking stick as he hobbled eastward on a forest path that appeared to go in the right direction.
Toward evening, when his head was starting to swim again, he met a stranger on the path. A tall, erect man in semimilitary uniform, armed with a bow and a very efficient-looking halberd. The man snapped some questions at Jason in an unknown language, in answer to which Jason simply shrugged and made mumbling noises. He tried to appear innocent and weak, which was easy enough to do. With his drawn skin, tangled beard and filthy furs, he certainly couldn’t have looked very ominous or appetizing. The stranger must have thought so too, for he did not use his bow and came forward with his halberd only indifferently at the defense.
Jason knew that he had only one good, or halfhearted, blow in him, and he had to make it count. This efficient looking young man would eat him alive if he missed.
“Umble, umble,” Jason muttered, and shrank back, both hands on the length of stick
“Frmblebrmble!” the man said, shaking his halberd menacingly as he came close.
Jason pushed down with his right hand, pivoting the quarterstaff with his left so that the end whipped up. Then he lunged it forward into
the other’s midriff in the region of the solar plexus ganglion. The stranger let out a single, mighty whoosh of air and folded, unmoving, to the ground.
“My fortunes change!” Jason chortled as he fell on the other’s bulging purse. Food perhaps? Saliva dampened his mouth as he tore it open.
18
Rhes was in his inner office, finishing up with his bookkeeping, when he heard the loud shouts in the courtyard. It sounded as though someone were trying to force his way in. He ignored it; the other two Pynrans had gone, and he had a lot of work to finish up before he left. His guard, Riclan, was a good man and knew how to take care of himself. He would turn any unwanted visitors away. The shouting stopped suddenly, and a moment later there was a noise that sounded suspiciously like Riclan’s armor and weapons falling onto the cobbles.
For two days Rhes had not slept, and there was still much to be done before he went away for good. His temper was therefore not of the best. It is very unhealthy to be around a Pyrran when he feels this way. When the door opened, he stood prepared to destroy the interloper. Preferably with his bare hands so that he could hear the bones crunch. A man with an ugly black beard, wearing the uniform of a freelance soldier, entered, and Rhes flexed his fingers and stepped forward.
“What’s the trouble? You look ready to kill me,” the soldier said in fluent Pyrran.
“Jason!” Rhes was across the room and pounding his friend on the back with excitement.
“Easy,” Jason said, escaping the embrace and dropping onto the couch. “A Pyrran greeting can maim, and I haven’t been feeling that good lately.”
“We thought you were dead! What happened?”
“I’ll be happy to explain, but would prefer to do it over food and drink. And I would like to hear a report myself. The last time I heard about Felicitian politics was just before I was pushed off a cliff. How does the trade go?”
“It doesn’t,” Rhes said glumly, taking meat and bread from a locker and fishing a cobwebbed bottle of wine from its straw bed. “After you were killed, or we thought you were killed, everything came to pieces. Kerk heard you on his dentiphone and almost destroyed his morope getting there. But he was too late, you had gone over the edge of Hell’s Doorway. There was some jongleun who had betrayed you, and he tried to accuse Kerk of being an off-worlder as well. Kerk kicked him off the cliff before he could say very much. Temuchin was apparently just as angry as Kerk and the whole thing almost blew up right there. But you were gone and that was that. Kerk felt the most he could do for you was to try and complete your plans.”
“Did you?”
“I’m sorxy to report that we failed. Temuchin convinced most of the tribal leaders that they should fight, not trade. Kerk aided us, but it was a lost cause. I eventually had to retreat back here. I’m closing out this operation, leaving it in good enough shape for my assistants to carry on, and the Pyrran ‘tribe’ is on its way back to the ship. This plan is over, and if we can’t come up with another one, we have agreed to return to Pyrrus.”
“You can’t!” Jason said in the loudest mumble he could manage around the mouthful 0f food.
“We have no choice. Now tell me, please, how did you get here? We had men down in Hell’s Doorway later the same night. They found no trace of you at all, though there were plenty of other corpses and skeletons. They thought you must have gone through the ice and that your body had been swept away.”
“Indeed swept away, but not as a body. I hit a snowbank when I landed and I would have been waiting for you, cold but alive, if I had not fallen through the ice as you guessed. The stream leads to a series of caverns. I had a light and more patience than I realized. It was nasty, but I finally came out below the cliffs in this country. I knocked a number of citizens on the head and had an adventurous trip to reach you here.”
“A lucky arrival. Tomorrow would have been too late. The ship!s launch is to pick me up just after dark and I have a ten-kilometer row to reach the rendezvous point.”
“Well, you’ve got a second oar now. I’m ready to go anytime after I get this food and drink under my belt.”
“I’ll radio about your arrival so that word can be relayed to Kerk and the others.”
They left quietly in one of Rhes’s own boats and reached the rocky off shore islet before the sun touched the horizon. Rhes chopped a hole in the boat’s planking and they put in some heavy rocks. It sank nicely, and after that, all they could do was wait and admire the guano deposits and listen to the cries of the disturbed seabirds until the launch picked them up.
The flight was a brief one after the pilot, Clon, had nodded recognition at Jason, which was about all the enthusiastic Pyrran welcome he expected. At the grounded Felicity, the off watch was asleep, and the on watch, at their duty stations, so Jason saw no one. He preferred it this way because he was still tired from his journey. The Pyrran tribesmen were to arrive some time the following day and socializing could wait until then.
His cabin was just as he had left it, with the expensive library leering at him metallically from one corner. What had ever prompted him to buy it in the first place? A complete waste of money. He kicked at it as he passed, but his foot only skidded off the polished metal ovoid.
“Useless,” he said, and stabbed the on button. “What good are you, after all?”
“Is that a question?” the library intoned. “If so, restate and indicate the precise meaning of ‘good’ in this context.”
“Big mouth. All talk now, but where were you when I needed you?”
“I am where I am placed. I answer whatever questions are asked of me. Your question is therefore meaningless.”
“Don’t insult your superiors, machine. That is an order.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s better. I maketh and I can breaketh just as well.”
Jason dialed a strong drink from the wall dispenser and flopped into the armchair. The library flickered its little lights and hummed electronically to itself. He drank deep, then addressed the machine.