The noble errand was foredoomed to failure. The Peer of Lant was outstanding in her viciousness even in a world where evil tyrannies were the rule. All of Lant’s one-namers had been cowed by the brutality they suffered daily. They feared the sun and were terrified by darkness. There were no genuinely independent subjects left in Lant.
Arne himself had been an agreeable surprise. Son of a legendary father, already a legend himself, he was only twenty years old. Those few people who were still concerned with civilized values in a torn world could ill afford to lose him, and yet the idiotic council had sent him deep into enemy territory where capture meant instant death. He had been uncommonly lucky that the frightened Lantian one-namers had not betrayed him.
The mission failed utterly, and Bernal guided Arne back through the mountains with nothing accomplished. Now he was in Lant again with several new assignments, but he would willingly abandon all of them in order to lead Egarn to safety. The Med of Lant—with his strange weapon—would more than compensate for the failure of Arne’s risky mission.
Their niot-long dash through the thick forest was uneventful except for a few tense moments when the road took them close to a lumber camp. One-name foresters had felled select hardwoods the previous summer and trimmed them. Now a work crew of no-namers was hauling the logs to a near-by river. Bernal couldn’t risk having one of their lashers remember hearing horses pass, so he slowed their pace to a walk as they approached the camp. They were clearly visible on the moon-lit road if anyone chanced to look in their direction, but apparently no one did. As they moved quietly past the camp, Bernal could see the flickering torches and hear the cracks of the lashers’ whips and the grunts of the laboring no-namers straining to drag the logs. Not until they had placed the scene far behind them did he let the horses resume their frenzied flight.
The road led westward and upward as they passed through forested hills that anticipated the mountains beyond. Shortly before dawn, they encountered a rushing stream that was wide enough and deep enough to require bridging. Bernal turned aside and rode down a dip in the bank where travelers were accustomed to water their horses. There he dismounted. While all five of the huge animals drank and then waited patiently, knee-deep in water, he left Egarn balanced precariously in the broad saddle and went back to erase the tracks they had left on the river bank. No experienced scout would have been fooled by the hasty brushing he gave the ground with a tree branch, but there were no experienced scouts among the Lantiff.
Remounting, he turned the horses upstream and walked them in shallow water for more than two kilometers. His objective was a sketchy forest trail so overgrown that he had difficulty in finding it. When they finally left the water, he dismounted again to conceal their tracks before he hurried the horses forward.
The one-name foresters of Lant had carved this narrow path for their own use. It led from nowhere to nowhere, and since they hadn’t worked that sector for several years, the forest had almost reclaimed it. Probably the Lantiff were unaware of its existence. Even so, Bernal would have moved more cautiously if he hadn’t feared that Egarn would be dead before they reached a refuge. The going was arduous, and he had to struggle to keep encroaching branches from raking the old man as they passed, but he pressed on recklessly.
Egarn had become delirious. Bernal kept murmuring, “Just a little farther, old fellow,” but the old man’s feverish mind was beyond the reach of encouraging words. Finally they emerged in a small forest clearing, and Bernal began to whistle the lilting, tremulous call of the spotter, a bird rare in Lant but common beyond the mountains.
The song was answered faintly. Several minutes later, two unusually tall, gaunt men dressed in the rough leather clothing of Easlon scouts stepped into the clearing. Bernal was easing Egarn down from the horse, and they hurried forward to help him.
“Dog,” Bernal said, indicating the bandage. “He needs nursing. Probably he will die anyway. Do we have anything to feed the horses?”
Kaynor, the elder of the newcomers, answered, “A bit. But why five? Did you catch the Lantiff sound asleep?”
Bernal said indifferently, “I caught them dead. They and their dogs.”
“You took an unnecessary risk,” Kaynor said reproachfully. “The Lantiff might overlook one horse but certainly not five. They will turn out every dog in Lant to track you. Is the old man worth it?”
“They will turn out every dog in Lant to track the old man,” Bernal said. “Whether he is worth the risk depends on whether he lives. I am going to look after him myself. One of you will have to go south toniot.”
Roszt, the younger of the newcomers, said eagerly, “Give me a horse, and I will do it. Those bundles I stole last week had server clothing in them. I can go as a peer’s messenger.”
“Right now you can backtrack and cover my trail,” Bernal said. “If the pursuit comes this far, it will be hot. When you have done that, look after the horses.”
The younger man hurried away. Bernal and Kaynor picked up Egarn’s limp body and headed into the forest with it.
Kaynor had been scrutinizing Egarn perplexedly. “He is beardless, and he is wearing peerager’s trousers with a one-name smock. What is he?”
“I don’t know. He may be a peerager, but he has only one name.”
Kaynor was silent while they maneuvered Egarn’s light body through some dense undergrowth. Then he asked, “Don’t the rules forbid intervening in the peer’s private affairs? Inskor made it very clear we are to keep our hands off court doings unless it is something really important, and even then we are to make certain the result is worth the risk and the aftermath. This poor old crock probably did nothing more serious than sneeze in the peer’s presence, but there will be an army beating the forest tomorrow. When they find the bodies of those Lantiff and their dogs, only the evil gods of Lant know what will happen next. That was quite a deed, taking on all ten of them, but what have you gained?”
“I killed one of the dogs,” Bernal said. “He killed the rest. He is more important than all of the peer’s generals together— or he will be if he lives.”
“Be serious! An old crock like this? Probably he is the peer’s third assistant gardener wearing cast-off clothing.”
“He says his name is Egarn. I think he is the Med of Lant.”
The other nearly dropped the old man’s feet. When he spoke again, it was in tones that blended awe and skepticism. “The Med of Lant with five Lantiff and their dogs after him? What do you suppose he did?”
“I hope he lives long enough to tell us,” Bernal said soberly.
By the time the old man regained consciousness, he had been placed on a comfortable bed in a safe refuge. His arm had been bathed, treated with herbs, and rebandaged; and Bernal had a bowl of hot broth ready for him. Egarn ate slowly with Bernal assisting him. By the time he finished, he had revived sufficiently to take an interest in his surroundings.
He gazed about the small room wonderingly. It was lit by a flickering torch, and the smoke was sucked into a crack in the ceiling. There was a charcoal fire to take the edge off the cool, damp air, and skins were hung in two large openings. Comfortable chairs and beds had been improvised from branches and straw.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“In a cave,” Bernal answered.
“Are we safe here?”
“As safe as a fugitive can be in the Peerdom of Lant,” Bernal said gravely. “As soon as you are able to travel, we well take you to Easlon.”
“Across the mountains?”
“Of course.”
Egarn sank back comfortably. “I was hungry. They starved me. Is there more broth?”
“Better not overdo the eating for a few daez. You would make yourself sick.”
Bernal began to lay out rough garb that matched his own: leather jacket, pants, and mocs, with shirt and undergarments of wool. “When you feel up to it, I will bathe you and change your clothes. We need the things you are wearing. We also want your pack. I will give you another,
and you can keep anything you think you absolutely must have. Just make certain you leave enough personal effects to identify you.”
Egarn gazed at him perplexedly.
“I am sending a scout south toniot,” Bernal said. “He will find a corpse in the Peerdom of Wymeff who resembles you as closely as possible. Fortunately for you—but not for Wymeff— there will be plenty of corpses to chose from. We are assuming the peer will order a massive search for you. If, in the middle of it, she receives word that your over-ripe body has been found in Wymeff, it will confuse the situation very satisfactorily.”
“I did it,” Egarn muttered.
“You did what?”
“The corpses. I did it. I made the weapons. To defend Lant, I thought, but the peer used them to destroy her neighbors. As if the len hadn’t tortured humanity enough.” He brightened. “But I got them back. I told her the lens would wear out if they weren’t replaced, and then I hid one and destroyed the rest. When I refused to make more, the peer stopped my food and then my water. When I got hungry and thirsty enough, I killed my guards with the weapon I had saved and escaped.”
“That was well done,” Bernal said. He knew, now, that he couldn’t rest until this old man was safely in Easlon.
“Some of the guards were my friends,” Egarn said despondently. “But I was afraid I would weaken if I got any hungrier. I had to escape or let her have the weapon.”
“It was well done,” Bernal said again. “Don’t look back, old fellow. Look ahead. The important thing now is to get well. Then maybe you can help us think of a few ways to have back at the Peer of Lant.”
Egarn grinned bitterly.
“What about your personal effects?” Bernal asked.
Egarn took a ring from his finger, surrendered a tooled leather belt that he wore, and then—with obviously reluctance—took a strange object from his pack. A blade snapped into view, and it was a knife.
“Jackknife,” Egarn said sadly. “And take this, it is called a coin. Anyone who knew me well will recognize them. They are the only things I have left from the place I came from, but they don’t matter now. Nothing matters.”
Bernal accepted them with a nod of approval. Next Egarn handed him a thin piece of wood with strange figures carved on it in orderly rows.
“Calculator I invented,” Egarn said. He added, when Bernal gave it a puzzled glance, “It is too complicated to explain, but my assistants will recognize it. Take it all. Take everything except the weapon. I wish you could take my memories, too—I no longer need them, either.”
One of the skins was pushed back, and Bernal’s two companions came into the room. Bernal gravely pronounced introductions: Roszt and Kaynor.
“They are so tall!” Egarn blurted. “Are they from Easlon, too?”
“They are from the Peerdom of Slorn. Their families were killed in the Lantian invasion, and now they scout for Easlon.”
“I have met people from Slorn, but they weren’t so tall and skinny. One doesn’t often meet tall people in this land.” Egarn returned his attention to Bernal. “Their families were—killed?”
Bernal nodded.
Egarn bowed his head. “All those corpses,” he muttered. “And I did it. I made the weapons.”
“Is it true that the Peer of Lant is getting ready to invade Easlon?” Bernal asked.
Egarn nodded miserably. Then he brightened. “But now she can’t! I destroyed all of her weapons except the one I brought with me!”
“She doesn’t need your weapons to invade Easlon, my friend. She has conquered all of her neighbors and added their lashers to her armies. If the Ten Peerdoms suddenly got energetic and formed a combined army of their own—which she knows their peers would never consent to do—she still would outnumber them twenty to one. Or fifty. Or a hundred. Probably she doesn’t know herself how large her armies are.”
Egarn covered his face with his good arm. “I suppose I must give the weapon to the Ten Peerdoms,” he muttered. “But after they have defeated Lant, they will use it on each other. Everything I do is cursed.”
“It needn’t happen that way,” Bernal said. “Don’t give it to the peers. Don’t trust any peerager. That was your mistake. Give it to us—to the one-namers. We are trying to live in peace and keep civilization going.”
“One-namers?” Egarn was incredulous. “But every one of them is servile to one peer or another!”
“Things are different beyond the mountains. Our first loyalty is to our own kind, and we have a League of One-Namers that extends through all of the Ten Peerdoms. The hope of the future lies with us, not with the rotten peeragers and certainly not with the no-namers and lashers. We one-namers don’t want to conquer anyone. We just want to protect our homes.” He added thoughtfully, “There is a rumor about a peerdom somewhere in the west that destroys its enemies with beams of light. Maybe someone already has your weapon.”
“A peerdom in the west is using a weapon like mine?”
“So it is rumored.”
“Any med server could make it if he knew how. If one of them has stumbled on the right combination of lens, the world is doomed. There is only one way to save humanity. I can’t do it alone—I would need help.”
“Tell Arne about it,” Bernal said. “He is first server of the Peer of Midlow and also of the League of One-Namers. He will see that you get all the help you need. What is the one way left to save humanity?”
Egarn’s gaze did not waiver. “By destroying it,” he said.
2. EGARN (1)
Egarn remembered little about the first daez in hiding. His fever worsened, and Bernal told him later he had been circling much of the time, which meant deranged or out of his head. His dim awareness of the cave—of Bernal anxiously changing the dressing on his mangled arm and brewing herbal poultices for it; of the two scouts from Slorn just as anxiously discussing the gathering fury of the peer’s search—was less vivid than his nightmarish recollections of the distant past.
During those first confused days, when he easily could have been spirited to safety beyond the mountains, he lay in helpless delirium and could not be moved. While the worried scouts watched over him, and he ranted wildly, sometimes in words incomprehensible to them, his feverish mind passed a lifetime in review.
His name was Vladislav Kuznetsov, and he had been a twenty-one-year-old student at Mount Harwell College in Mount Harwell, Ohio. On a Friday afternoon, March 24, 2001, he succumbed to a sudden attack of spring fever and cut his classes for a stroll in a public park near the campus. Even after fifty years and several hundred centuries, he remembered it as vividly as though it had happened an hour before.
It was a warm, fresh day with a promise of spring—the first really pleasant day of the year after the usual vagaries of a midwest winter. He strolled leisurely through the park, thinking with shameless delight of the stuffy classrooms he was avoiding. Eventually he seated himself on a patch of greening grass with a convenient tree to lean against and enjoyed the soft breeze and the peaceful surroundings while he absently whittled on a twig he had picked up. He felt sleepy. Probably he dozed off.
For decades afterward he relived that afternoon again and again with retrospective editing: What if he had not cut classes, what if he had turned in the opposite direction and avoided the park, what if he had not sat down to rest, what if he had not fallen asleep?
He was awakened by a violently squealing and squirming young pig that had landed in his lap. The pig’s fore and hind legs were tied together with strips of leather. Kuznetsov knew at once he was on the receiving end of a heavy-handed practical joke, and he also knew the ones responsible. He had been the victim of their pranks often enough. Before looking about for the culprits, he good-naturedly set about freeing the pig. His open jackknife was still in his hand, and he quickly sliced the leather restraints. He hoped the pranksters would have to spend the afternoon trying to catch it, which would deftly turn the joke on them.
The pig scurried for cover. Kuznetsov looked after
it in puzzlement, wondering what unlikely porcine species it belonged to. He had never seen a pig with long hair before. Perhaps he had unfairly maligned his practical-joking friends. The animal looked peculiar enough to have come straight out of another dimension. So many odd things had happened to him in his short lifetime that he would have felt more resigned than surprised to find himself the target for a materializing pig.
As a child, he had blamed all of his misfortunes on his name. It had blighted his life in so many ways. Not even a boy’s best friend could be expected to call him Vladislav Kuznetsov, and the changes rung on it varied from the humiliating to the obscene. As he grew older, some of his friends began to call him Wally Kuznet, which seemed like a substantial improvement but failed to alter his life an iota.
He finally accepted the fact that his luck was going to be bad no matter what people called him. A snowball thrown into a crowd unerringly sought out his nose, which was broken three times before he finished grammar school. A bully always acquired a yen for beating up a smaller boy a moment before Kuznetsov innocently walked into view. Teachers invariably scheduled surprise quizes on the one day of the term he failed to prepare an assignment. If, after timidly admiring a girl for months, he finally nerved himself to ask her for a date, it always turned out she had agreed only the day before to go steady with a star halfback. Every job he applied for had three relatives of the employer in line just ahead of him. Nothing overwhelmingly bad ever happened to him, but he found life a long succession of increasingly intolerable frustrations and petty failures.
He’d had a single-minded passion for space engineering. By the time he reached college, the space program had been curtailed, and he’d had to face the bitter fact that with so many experienced engineers out of work, a brand new degree in space engineering wouldn’t even qualify him for a job as bus driver at Cape Canaveral. Reluctantly he switched to something solid, conservative, and perpetually reliable: automotive engineering. It would not surprise him in the least, now that he was about to graduate, if the auto industry suddenly collapsed and his brand new degree would not even qualify him to drive a bus in Detroit.
The Chronocide Mission Page 2
