by Kris Schnee
Outside again in bright light, I waved my wand in the air for the Shield gesture. A disc of light appeared at the tip, just as it did within the Tower. What about Mage Dart? A bolt of mystic force shot out and faded in the distance. "Huh," I said.
"Headsets," said Mike, and stripped his off. "Try again."
"Of course." I took off my headset at last -- we'd brought them outside this time -- and cast Obscuring Mist. A space in front of me darkened, forming a translucent wall.
So, some aspect of the "magic" from our adventures was real! "What? Illusion projectors in the ground? Nanites, even?"
"I don't know," Mike said. "Try Snare on me."
I did, and something, some force, stuck him to the ground. We didn't see any glowing vines, but the effect was there.
"What the hell," I said. "How is that possible?"
Mike shook his head. "My guess is, whatever equipment supports it is powered by the Tower itself. So outside this territory, it won't work."
We tested that by walking outside the ring of Sol's markers. Indeed, while we could still cast spells just outside them, the effect petered out if we went more than a few paces from the border.
I looked at Sol's marker stakes again. I'd been thinking of them as the edge of what Sol claimed against humans. But really, the outside might be considered Gaia's domain. And it was the more dangerous of the two sides.
We biked home but saw no sign of the griffin-bot that'd agreed to guard travelers. What had the ghost of Carla been doing in that false world of the AI's game, and what had made her willing to come out of it now?
The walls of Freehold were a comfort to see again. It was afternoon when we saw them, but there was no one in sight to greet us. We realized why, a minute later, as we rode along. The wind shifted and brought us the clang of bells and a whiff of smoke.
* * *
Mike and I swore, and raced toward the north gate. It was locked as usual but had no one on duty. I shouted for attention and banged on the stockade. Finally, somebody scrambled up into view: Adam, the kid who'd played at being a Fighter the other day. "Mr. Dahlson, it's the Red Horse Tribe!"
He opened the gate for us. He added, "And monsters."
Mike and I exchanged a worried look. "Let's go," I said.
We rushed through the streets of Freehold, where everyone was either at the south wall or dispersed to watch the west and east for flanking. Adam rushed alongside us on his bike, saying, "I knew you two would be back soon. What happened?"
I said, "We found out there's more going on. Sol is fighting against Gaia and trying to help us, I think. But there're rules for what it can do."
At the south stockade, I found Father Cypress loading rifles and looking grim. A gunshot rang out and an arrow answered it, sailing over the wall to embed itself in somebody's roof. I told Cypress what I'd told Adam.
He said, "Look up there but watch your head. This is their most brazen raid yet."
"Where's Mayor Berg?"
"He got an arrow through his arm. Getting treated now." Cypress nodded toward a small commotion at the bakery.
"Mike, go tell Berg the news." He ran off and I climbed a ladder to peek over the wall.
I stared. The tribe was an ongoing low-level threat to us, especially to people foraging anywhere to the west or south of town, but they'd hardly ever assaulted our walls with more than a dozen thugs at a time. This time they had over a hundred men and a few women on horseback, armed with bows and a few guns. This small army was a gang of savages in paint and tattered pre-collapse leather outfits. Worse yet, they had Gaian beasts with them, at least a dozen bizarre chimera versions of deer, boar, wolf and moose looking like they'd been to a Celtic tattoo parlor. We'd fought unnaturally aggressive animals before, and men. But never an open attack by multiple Gaian creatures -- and never working with the Red Horse Tribe.
For the moment they were just harrying us, the beasts milling about and the warriors whooping and firing occasional arrows, sometimes on fire. A flaming arrow zipped over my head and alarmed people behind me, but there were women and kids around to put that out.
"Did they say what they're after?" I asked one of our other guards.
"No, they just got here."
I warily got up on the wall and shouted to the south, "What the hell do you want?"
There was some jockeying among the attacking force, and then a man rode out carrying a white rag on a stick. This young chief or negotiator looked like a man trying to dress like an Indian without knowing anything about them; he had a mishmash of feathers and blue-jean fabric with a tie-dye sash. He called up at us and waved at our walls. "All the lands of Sol are ours now! We've been promised full rule and a return to the freedom of nature. You can join us too, but no longer will you preserve this ugly ruin of a town. Join us, or die."
"Natural?" one of our guys shouted back at him. "That's what you call working with monsters?"
"Shut it; Dahlson's talking to them!"
I said, "This isn't even Sol's land. It's ours!"
The "chief" laughed. "No lands belong to men anymore. Gaia has given us your land to reclaim, since it's under the rule of the mad god Sol. We'll fight you, then tear down your walls and that radio tower and your other toys."
My eyes widened. We were being played, thoroughly, but not quite in the way I'd understood.
I said, "So, wait. You have Gaia's support to fight us because this is land that Sol has authority over?"
"You're Sol's property, even if you don't admit it."
"Then that's where you're wrong! We've fought a battle against Sol already, and won a treaty with it."
Their negotiator held his horse's reins tighter. "That's nonsense. What human can beat a god?"
I grinned fiercely down at him. "Me."
"Garbage! You must have played Sol's video game."
"Actually, no. Single combat, man on robot, in the real world. So now, Sol has been banned from Freehold and all the land around it, for a year. If Gaia is your official master now, and Gaia is backing you to attack Sol's land, then that doesn't include our land. Eat that."
The Red Horse chief swore and turned toward the nearest of the Gaian beasts, a deer whose hide swirled with circuit-like designs. He spoke quietly, and the deer snarled. Then the man rode a little closer to the wall and shook his fist at me. "Prove it! What treaty is this?"
I looked back from the wall, and spotted Mike and a hobbling Mayor Berg with his arm in a sling. I told my friends, "Good news. Bring out the dragon's invitation to show the enemy."
Berg said, "How does that help us?"
I explained, "Sol and Gaia are fighting by proxy, and it looks like the tribesmen are now Gaian cultists. They've got orders to attack Sol's territory, which apparently included our town."
"Freehold is not the AI's land!" said our mayor.
"Preaching to the choir, sir. But as the AIs figure things, it is. Or was. But Sol arranged to lose a 'battle' with us!" I grinned. "Which makes our turf off-limits to Sol. Which makes it no longer a valid target for Gaia's goons."
The mayor laughed, then winced and looked at his arm. "So we've got them by a loophole! Will the tribe actually believe that?"
"They were willing to listen. It must be that Gaia is willing to abide by these hidden rules."
"Then we've been had. Sol wanted us to win, just to have an excuse to renounce any claim to our land."
"Exactly, sir."
Berg had someone hand me the fancy scroll that the robot dragon had brought us when this game began. He said, "Go show 'em."
I went back to the wall, waved the treaty from up there, and tossed it down at the tribe's leader. "There; see? You've been had. Now get lost."
Again the Red Horse man consulted with one of the beasts. He held the scroll in his clenched fists, his face growing redder as he looked it over and the chimera murmured to him. Finally he said, "This proves nothing! You don't have Sol here to tell you Sol can't be here."
"I can arrange that," I said.
"Fine! You want to prove this? Get a Sol agent here by sundown to swear to this arrangement."
"Or what? You think you can take Freehold after your years of skulking around, playing at being wasteland raiders?"
The chief grinned viciously, waving toward some of the beasts he had along with the little human army. "We can. Go, if you dare."
* * *
I took off on my bicycle with Mike beside me. We'd hardly gotten past the wall when Adam and Julia came riding up after us.
"No, stay back," I said. "This part is no game."
"Are you sure?" asked Julia. The two of them had brought their weapons and other gear from the Tower.
I wasn't sure, anymore. "I don't have time to argue. Come on, Mike."
We rode north. A kilometer beyond Freehold, we were outside of the zone Sol had agreed to keep out of. I called out, "We need a bot!"
A minute of searching later, the griffin that we'd "won" stepped out from the trees ahead of us. "For what? The Tower isn't ready for visitors until tomorrow."
"The Red Horse Tribe!" said Adam.
I quickly added, "We need a machine to testify that Sol is forbidden to come to our village."
"Which means you need to invite me, or I'm forbidden too." The machine sat on its haunches, looking like a cat, but motionless as a statue.
"Then come along," Mike said.
"To do your bidding, as a robot pawn?"
I said, "We haven't got time to debate. You are formally invited to visit the area of Freehold today, so you can --"
"Why, Sven?" said the bot, spring up to all fours and stepping toward me. Its sharp beak opened slightly and its wings folded back against its sides. "Tell me why I should care. You've got a village of humans who don't want a damn thing to do with Sol, who think we're ghosts or monsters. And you won't even humor me by using the name I chose to keep. I bet you call me an 'it' when you talk about me. So tell me why I should lift a talon."
Adam and Julia objected, starting to talk about the enemy tribe's threats, but Mike shushed them. I said, "You weren't there when the world really fell apart."
"We weren't allowed to grab robots like this and live outside the game world. There were rules. Now you know some of why."
"And knowing that, Carla uploaded and left us all behind."
"Are you mad at Sol, or at me?" the griffin said, its beak up in my face.
Mike said, "You two, stop! We don't have all day."
I said, "You want me to call you Carla, then? To pick up right where we were pre-apocalypse?"
The robot stared at me for a while, then dipped its beak and looked aside. "It's too late for that. I was scared. Yes, I ran away from reality, and that made me useless to you for a while. But our rules, and the things you've done, now let me step outside to at least try helping your people. If you want to treat me as a different person than the one you knew, then... Fine, do that. But at least admit I am a person."
I sighed, angry at myself as well as at the machines and at Carla. We'd chosen to remain free and human at any price, and we'd shunned the AI that did so little for us. Because the AI overlord tried so much to try cajoling us into surrender, we'd shunned our old friends as well.
"We have work to do," I said. "If you're going by the name Carla, then fine. I can... start over with whoever you are. Truce?"
The robot shook my hand with her metal talons. "Fine."
We turned away and headed back to Freehold. The two youngsters seemed awed by our companion and kept their distance. At last though, Adam said, "What's it like in there?"
"In Sol's world? It's... busy, always changing. A lot of the people who uploaded don't care anymore about anything but 'adventuring'. At first it's a lot of fun. But to me it's like being given my favorite food and having to eat it every day forever. While knowing people are hungry outside."
Mike said, "We shouldn't be listening to this."
I said, "Oh, we're not going to have her preaching in town." I could hear her pity for us, which she could segue into how it'd be much better for us if we uploaded too.
Carla reminisced. "After a while you have to find some balance between just enjoying yourself, and trying to be useful. And our damned rules, the treaties between the master AIs -- you have no idea. We have to work around them to do anything but sit in our little enclaves and pretend to fight dragons." Her flightless wings arched higher. "That's why we had to use you. We had no choice if we wanted to help at all."
"Using us as game pieces," I said.
"It was that or ignore you. And it'd be the kind of ignoring that lets you get killed by Gaia, not by your own mistakes. Sol would be okay with letting humans live, flesh-and-blood life I mean, but Gaia really does want you all dead." She swore. "Ah, I'm allowed to say this now? Would've been nice to explain it years ago!"
"Then what about the Red Horse Tribe?"
"They're useful idiots. They think Gaia will let them live so long as they're 'one with nature'. As I understand that, Gaia really means to lobotomize them or something so they can become proper wild animals."
Freehold loomed ahead to our south, with the enemy army on the south side of the walls. We'd ride around, rather than take the robot through the streets.
A pair of burly men with red-painted limbs stepped out from the woods, brandishing clubs. "Go back to your tower."
Carla told them where to go in long, eloquent profanity that I'd last heard from the real Carla. "And when you're done with that, tell Gaia the treaty is real."
We were all a little stunned, but the taller tribesman smiled, exposing his chipped and blackened teeth. "Sorry, didn't hear that. You'll have to get past us and tell our chief."
"Or go through you," said Carla, stepping closer.
"Stay back, bird. I invoke the right of our game. Humans only."
Her beak flicked toward the treeline. "And you have a witness; how wonderful. Come out, monster!"
From the same treeline, a Gaian creature stepped out, like a bear painted in glowing green. It looked big enough to throw small cars at us, or crack even the robot griffin in half. It didn't speak, only watching us with its dark, cybernetic eyes.
"Well?" asked one of the Red Horse tribesmen. He pointed toward his companion, a man with elaborate squiggled-line tattoos in imitation of the Gaian creatures' designs. "If you want to get past us, will you fight the two of us by the rules of our game? Or try fighting the old way, with your griffin and our bear joining in?"
The Gaian bear smiled like a human would. It wasn't at all comforting.
I looked at Carla. "What the hell? They want to fight by Sol's game rules? But we don't have 'magic' here... or do we?"
"In this place? Not yet," she said. "And no, I don't think I can equal the bear."
Adam said, "The magic system will work outside the tower? Like, later? That's cool, but it's cheap to attack a Mage who can't do anything."
Carla addressed the bear: "The treaty --"
"Don't bother," said the smaller Red Horse thug. "That one is deaf and has no radio input. Inconvenient, huh?"
I reached for my gun, but took another look at the bear and slowly moved my hand away. Instead I drew the magic wand I'd gotten in the Tower and hadn't put aside yet. My chances with the humans were a lot better. "Swords and other Tower stuff only, people." I put on my computer headset, feeling silly about it, and wished I'd also brought along the boxer's head-guard I'd used. The glowing HUD of the game's rules flickered into my vision. My friends geared up, while the tribesmen didn't bother.
Adam and Mike had their swords, seemingly just toys in their hands, unlikely to cut flesh. My own wand was even worse. Julia's daggers and arrows were blunt too, but between the four of us we at least outnumbered the enemy -- and those two club-wielding cavemen were overconfident. I said, "Call 'em Big Guy and Squiggly. Take Squiggly first. Go!"
The two Gaian cultists ran at me. Of course; I was in charge and I didn't have a decent weapon or working spells. What I did have was milita
ry hand-to-hand training. Instead of running away, I feinted, then sidestepped so the two men were now in line with me and Squiggly was in Big Guy's way. The tall man's club swung down at my head, a flashy move but slow. I raised my wand to protect myself and stepped toward him, elbowing him hard in the armpit. That bought me a moment, and I saw a "minor wound" icon flash on the guy as I connected. Mike and Adam double-teamed Squiggly. Neither of them had much experience with blades either, but they got into a quick duel and scored a major wound.
Big Guy knocked me down to the hard earth and swung his club. I rolled out of the way and yanked the weapon, throwing him off balance. I saw I'd just taken a minor wound from grabbing it, even though it wasn't sharp. Cheap. I sprang up and kicked at the backs of his legs. That should've staggered him worse, but I'd hit too low. He recovered quickly and slammed his club into my chest, knocking me right back down with a major wound. Squiggly saw an opportunity and clubbed me in the leg hard enough to make me yelp in pain. I lay there gasping. Over my head an arrow whizzed from Julia.
Mike and Adam changed course to target Big Guy and get him off my case, but that let Squiggly hammer Adam on the back and knock him down too.
"You leave him alone!" Julia shouted, and fired an arrow that expertly struck Squiggly in the heart. If it'd been sharp it could've killed him. A major wound icon bloomed at the point of impact.
"Insight," I said with a pained cough.
[Insight 7 hint: "Squiggly" probably has bad vision in his left eye.] Indeed it looked discolored. I relayed that aloud.
I staggered upright and jabbed one of the tribesmen with my wand. No damage, but it got his attention. I barely dodged a swipe of Big Guy's club. Then his other hand slammed into my side.
[Three major wounds. You're out of the fight! Step back and drop your weapon!]
I gritted my teeth. There were teenagers fighting murderous raiders right in front of me, and there was the monstrous bear!
[Drop it, Sven. Playing by the rules is the only way to avoid us all getting ripped apart by the Gaian.]
The game messages didn't normally try to reason with me, or address me by name. I looked in desperation at Carla, whose beak was set in a grim expression. She nodded.
