Robb switched off the projector and put up the room lights. He said:
“Is that the sort of thing you want?”
I was amazed and shocked, but I said: “Yes. And they can be made? Not just one, but many?”
Robb was a short thin man, with a skin even more pallid than the other High Seers. He wore spectacles with lenses of thick glass. He said:
“Many of our ancestors’ weapons were complex things, but this is not. They called it the Sten gun. It can be made fairly easily.”
“Can it be used on horseback?”
“Probably. But a man on foot would control it better.”
Lanark said: “You say the sword we gave you is no longer enough, Luke, that you need a far more powerful weapon. You may be right. But you must understand that other changes follow the changes of weapons. Horses are bigger targets against guns than men on foot. When the Sten gun returns there will be no more riding into battle.”
I nodded, scarcely listening, seeing my enemies—Harding, Blaine, Edmund and the rest—struck down in their triumph and laughter.
“There is another thing,” Lanark said. “You are a man of Winchester. You found it hard to believe that Blaine could put swords into the hands of the Wilsh to fight his own people. Will you take a whole army of Wilsh against your city, and with weapons such as these? Do you think you can?”
I saw the council of Captains with their hands raised against me. And I remembered Edmund and Blodwen in the dream, whispering, laughing, kissing.
I said: “Have no fear, Lanark. I will do it.”
SEVEN
THE PEOPLE OF THE BELLS
HANS, AFTER THE FIRST SHOCK, accustomed himself well to life in Sanctuary and to the wonders the High Seers showed him. He watched them at work in the laboratories, and put questions which they answered. Apart from the power it might give, this science of theirs had small interest to me. It was not so with Hans. Although his chief passion had been to serve as a warrior, rather than be an armorer like his father, he came of a long line of metal-working craftsmen. Once he had accepted the idea of machines he saw easily enough how they worked. The High Seers were ready to instruct him, and he was quick to learn.
Robb and a man called Kinnell were the ones principally concerned with the Sten gun. I listened when Hans spoke to them but made little sense of it. There was talk of cordite, of percussion caps, of blow-back open-bolt action—and a dozen other things which to me meant nothing. All I was aware of was the gun itself taking shape. I gazed at it as a hungry man might watch a rabbit roasting, tantalized and impatient.
At last it was finished and we gathered in one of the storerooms to see it work. A target was set up at the far end. Robb showed me how to hold the gun and press the trigger. I lifted it and fired. I felt it jerk, almost like a living thing, and the noise of the tongueless stammering giant echoed in the room. And the target showed a ragged line of holes.
Until now, despite the ancient film they had shown me, I had not really believed in the power of this weapon. But it was no longer possible to doubt. I lowered the gun and said:
“You have done well, Robb.”
“It is not so accurate as other weapons of the past,” he said. “And the range is no more than about two hundred yards.”
“Two hundred yards is enough. Give me a hundred of them, fifty even, and no army will stand against me.”
Robb laughed. “We chose this gun because it was the simplest to make, but it still needs making! And we have no more than two hands apiece. Fifty, you say? By next autumn, perhaps, but I would not guarantee it.”
“Autumn! I need them long before that.”
“You are impatient, Luke,” Lanark said, “and we understand why. But things must take their time. It is not only a question of guns. You have an army to find as well. We must wait till winter ends before we can sound out the Wilsh King. And then our messenger will need to go about it warily.”
“It is I who must ask it of Cymru.”
“And chance being sent back to Winchester with your hands roped behind you? Or maybe executed on the spot for the insult to his daughter? It would be an absurd risk to take. No, Luke, this is something you must leave to us.”
• • •
I spoke to Hans next morning when he came to clean my room.
The High Seers had no servants, except for the machines invented by our ancestors to ease house labor. Each looked after himself, even old Lanark. But Hans would have none of this. It was not proper, he said, for a Prince to do such things. The High Seers laughed, but Hans paid no heed and continued to serve me. And I accepted the service, knowing that to reject it would be an insult.
So I watched while he used the machine that cleaned the floor, sucking up dirt and dust. It made a whining noise as it moved, a scream of protest such as one would never have heard from a polymuf. At last he switched it off and it was possible to speak. And for once we were alone with none to hear what passed between us.
I said: “This Sten gun, Hans—you have watched the making and listened to what Robb and Kinnell said of it?”
“Yes, sire.”
“And understood?” He nodded. “You could make such a thing yourself? The bullets also? And teach others to do the same?”
“Yes. It would not be difficult, as long as one could get the materials. For cordite one needs gun cotton and nitroglycerine. Gun cotton itself requires sulphuric and nitric acids . . .”
I cut him short. “It means nothing to me. What matters is that it does to you. The Wilsh would have these things? Or could get them?”
“Yes. It would be no more difficult than making the asbestos cloth, out of chrysotile, which the peddler used to cross the Burning Lands.”
“And therefore their craftsmen could make these Sten guns?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Even though most of them are not dwarfs, they do not lack skill.”
“Good! That is what I hoped to hear. Hans, I think it is time we went on another journey.”
“To Klan Gothlen? But the High Seers forbid it.”
“They had me penned in once before,” I said, “for the greater part of a winter. But I was a boy then. I did not come here to be treated like a boy again.”
“Sire,” he said earnestly, “hear me. There is wisdom in what they say. If you go to Cymru, he may imprison or even kill you. They are a strange people, the Wilsh. They smile easily, but they are good haters too. And the lady Blodwen meant much to them.”
“I will take that chance.”
“And it is high winter. And we have no horses. Those on which we came were sent to the Seer’s stable at Amesbury.”
All this was true and made sense. Few traveled in the winter, and then no farther than to the next city. Earlier that morning I had looked through the television scanner and seen nothing but a white whirling wilderness. It made no difference. I said:
“Will you come with me, Hans, if I ask it?”
He looked at me. “You know it, sire.”
The blizzard raged two days more. The morning after the snow stopped we left Sanctuary before anyone else was stirring. I pressed the button on the top landing of the staircase and the trap door opened over our heads, creaking more than usual under its weight of snow. Some of the snow scattered down on us. It brought with it the cold sting of fresh air and I drew deep breath to fill my lungs.
During those two days, taking care not to be observed, Hans had packed rucksacks for us, with food and other things we would need on the journey. He had also made us snowshoes, such as peasants wear to cross their fields in winter, using plastic instead of the usual strips of hide in a wooden frame. They were oval in shape, about a foot long, and had straps that buckled over our boots.
Even so the going was hard. I was not used to walking; even to go from the palace to the River Road I would have taken horse. And although the shoes prevented one’s feet from sinking below the surface, the snow dragged at them. It was not long before the muscles at the backs of my legs were aching from the strain, and within an hour I had to call a halt to rest. Hans fared better: a dwarf is more strongly muscled in the leg and he had used his more.