The Chronocide Mission

by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

  “When the Peer of Lant looks toward Easlon, Majesty, she sees nothing. For sikes, every scout she has sent out has disappeared. If she strikes—with another raiding force or with an army—it will be a blow launched in the dark without knowing what or where the target is. We will fight her at a time and place of our own choosing. We will win the first battle, Majesty, and also the second.”

  “Will you defeat her severely?”

  Inskor nodded slowly and spoke in measured tones. “We will defeat her horribly. We will fill the valleys with dead Lantiff. If she finally attacks in a blind rage, throws in every reinforcement from her conquered lands, and pursues her revenge to the bitter end, she will outnumber us tens of thousands to one. Only the peer and her generals know how large the armies of Lant really are. In the end, she may crush us with the sheer weight of numbers, but in doing so she will destroy herself. She knows that danger. She is surrounded by defeated enemies who will seek their own revenge the moment she weakens herself. For that reason, she must prepare her moves with care. If we use our bought time well, we will be ready for her. If we don’t, we will be in the position of sitting and waiting until she discovers a sure method of destroying us.”

  The peer gestured helplessly. “I know. You have been telling me for sikes that the Ten Peerdoms need an army.”

  “If not the Ten Peerdoms, then Easlon. We should have formed our own army long ago.”

  “My neighbors would have thought I was plotting against them—as you well know. Perhaps now that Lant has actually invaded us, one or two of them will listen to me and a beginning can be made.”

  “It may be too late for beginnings, Majesty,” Inskor said. “The war will be over before the Ten Peerdoms can field an army competent to do battle with Lant. Armies aren’t assembled in a day, and even if one were, who in the Ten Peerdoms knows how to train and command one? Not I, and the Peer of Lant is unlikely to give us time to learn. But such an army is impossible while the peers fear each other more than they fear Lant. They will still be trying to cut each others’ throats when the Lantiff arrive to do it for them.”

  The peer got to her feet. “The blunt truth is that we are doomed.”

  Inskor slipped from his chair and sank his knees. “We at the eastern gates have always been doomed, Majesty. I offer you no pledge of a long life, but this I can guarantee: If the Peer of Lant leads her army through the mountains this year, the Peer of Easlon will survive her.”

  “Thank you, Inskor. I would like to thank your scouts personally, but I understand that most of them have returned to their posts.”

  “Victory over a few raiders doesn’t end a war, Majesty. It only begins one. There is much to do.”

  “Please give them my thanks when you are able.”

  There were six scouts resting at his headquarters, and Inskor ordered them to escort the peer all the way to Easlon Court. He saw the riders off. Then he returned to the house and sank into his chair. Talking with a peer was exhausting—especially when that peer was the Peer of Easlon.

  Arne entered the room and took the chair the peer had just vacated. Inskor asked, “Were you able to hear?”

  Arne nodded. “Your peer has a shining goodness. The Peer of Midlow has it in almost the same degree. The two of them are far too gentle and righteous for these troubled times.”

  “That is why I think Egarn should work in Easlon. The only places worth considering are Easlon and Midlow, and only Easlon has a prince.”

  “It is true that the Prince of Midlow will turn that peerdom into another Lant the moment she becomes peer,” Arne said. “If that were the only consideration, I would choose Easlon without hesitation. But how long will the scouts of Easlon be able to hold off the massed armies of Lant, even with Egarn’s miraculous weapon?”

  “Who knows? If the Peer of Lant is able to practice patience, and if her generals are capable of learning new tactics, we won’t last long. But I don’t think either of those things will happen.”

  “I have heard refugees describe a Lantian invasion. ‘Lantiff like the trees of a mountain forest,’ one said. You told your peer you would be outnumbered tens of thousands to one. While your few hundred scouts are massacring the Lantiff facing them, the other thousands upon thousands will simply flow around them. If you block the passes, there are other passes far to the south from which the Lantiff can turn north to attack you. They may find a way unknown to us through the mountains far to the north and attack from that direction. If the Peer of Easlon relents and lets you have an army, will it make any difference?”

  “Not at any time soon. Lashers learn too slowly. If the war lasts long enough—and I intend to make it last as long as possible—then an Easlon army could become important. Peeragers know almost nothing about history, and it is tragic that the one event they do remember has prevented all of us from defending ourselves.”

  In the dim past, at a time almost beyond memory, the army of one of the Ten Peerdoms had revolted. Peeragers were slaughtered, and the rebel officers tried to set themselves up as the peerdom’s rulers. The remaining peers had been horrified. They massed their own armies and hunted down the rebel officers and lashers without mercy. Then they resolved never to trust their armies again. They gradually replaced them with elite guards of lashers owned by individual peeragers—none of them large enough to cause trouble. These guards provided escorts for their masters and took turns patroling the roads and harassing the peerdom’s innocent, hard-working one-namers. Even with the armies of Lant on the march, the peeragers of the Ten Peerdoms were still too frightened by that spector out of the past to establish their own army.

  “In any case, Easlon is too close to Lant,” Arne said. “We don’t want Egarn recaptured. The peer wouldn’t allow him to escape a second time. And then—Easlon has no ruins of the kind Egarn described. He said he must scavenge them for the materials he needs, and that would be difficult if he settled in Easlon. It also would be difficult to find a place for him to work here and people to help him. He must have his own little self-contained community of guards and crafters. They should be refugees from the wars—fugitive one-namers who have lost their homes and no longer have positions and responsibilities. They can dedicate themselves to assisting Egarn without being missed and causing questions to be asked.”

  “That is almost a village you are describing.”

  “Exactly. And it must be as secure as we can make it. We can’t expect Egarn to pack everything periodically and cart it into hiding. The machine he described will be too large to be moved, and it would be catastrophic to have to abandon it. The materials he needs are so scarce it might not be possible to build it more than once.”

  “Then you will take Egarn to Midlow?”

  “Midlow has the ruins Egarn needs. It is far from Lant, and as long as the peer lives, it is the safest place in the Ten Peerdoms.”

  “But how long will that be? It’s rumored her health is poor. What will happen when the prince becomes peer?”

  Arne smiled. “It is precisely because Easlon has an admirable prince that I choose Midlow. The Peers of Easlon and Midlow are both intelligent. Both are kind. Both have wisdom. If the direct support of the peer became essential, both would sacrifice much for the future of humanity. But the Peer of Easlon has the hope of a brilliant daughter. She would sacrifice herself, but she would never deny the prince her own opportunity to heal humanity’s hurts. The Peer of Midlow knows her daughter only too well. She has no such hope. Therefore Egarn’s plan to save humanity by sacrificing ourselves should not be based in Easlon.”

  “Can humanity’s hurts be healed?”

  “I fear not. We one-namers could take Egarn’s weapon and eliminate the rotten peeragers in all ten peerdoms, but we would still need no-namers to produce our food and repair our roads. We would need lashers to supervise them and to fight for us when the invasion comes, whether from east, west, north or south, as it certainly will. We would end by replacing the peeragers with a new group of rotten peeragers�
��ourselves. Our revolution would have changed nothing.”

  Inskor said, “I still feel troubled about Egarn working in Midlow. I accept your decision for only one reason.” He smiled. “ Youwill be there. My instinct tells me this project will require all of your skill to keep it going.”

  “There is one thing I can do for Egarn that no one else could do—in Midlow or anywhere else. The crafters who assist and guard him must be fed and clothed. I can apportion food and other supplies so they won’t be missed. It is a problem that will last as long as Egarn’s work lasts.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. Of course—you run the peerdom. Your father did it before you, and now you are doing it. That is why Midlow has the Ten Peerdoms’ most efficient government.”

  Arne shrugged and got to his feet. “We have made the two decisions we had to make. Egarn will start work immediately, and he will work in Midlow. We will leave tonight. Later, I may send for Inskel. He is the best len grinder in the Ten Peerdoms, and the large lens Egarn needs may cause problems. But keep Inskel here for now. I want him to make enough of Egarn’s weapons to arm one-namers throughout the Ten Peerdoms.”

  Rapid hoofbeats brought Inskor to his feet. The door was flung open, and a scout burst into the room. Behind him, his lathery horse stood snorting and panting.

  “The Lantiff,” the scout gasped. “They are coming through Low Pass.”

  “Another reconaissance group?” Inskor asked calmly.

  “Bigger than the last. Bernal thinks two hundred, at least.”

  “Very well. I will come at once. Everyone knows what to do. Look to your horse.”

  Inskor turned to Arne. “You are right about the danger of leaving Egarn too close to Lant. The peer has allowed her personal feelings to override her military judgment. She is impatient to know what has happened to her sons and her prince. I suppose she will probe with heavier and heavier forces until the losses become too costly. The sooner you take Egarn out of Easlon, the better.”

  “She may already suspect that we have Egarn’s weapon— or something like it,” Arne said. “I wonder what she will do when she is certain.”

  They paused just inside the door. Beyond it lay the future with all of its enormous uncertainty. Both were accustomed to exercising responsibility and authority, to making far-reaching decisions, but they felt totally unprepared for this reckless plunge into the unknown. Egarn’s quest pointed beyond their vision and even beyond their imagining. The two of them— young first server and old chief scout—only knew that humanity was in desperate straights and a venture aimed at saving it was worth setting out on.

  7. ARNE

  Lashers raided Midd Village at dawn.

  Arne heard shouts and the neighing of horses long before the winding dirt road took the final, downward curve that would bring the village into view. He turned abruptly and fought his way through thick undergrowth to the top of the wooded hill, leaving old Marof gaping after him bewilderedly.

  At the crest, an ancient lookout gave him a sweeping view of Midd Valley. The rushing river that cleft it was lined with stone buildings where it passed the village: saw mill, flour mill, tannery, various craft factories. The village lay directly below him at the valley’s edge—three long cobbled streets of neat stone houses of two or three stories built on the terraced hillside. Scattered among the dark roofs were several new thatches that gleamed yellow in the early sunlight. The badly cracked and weathered red tiles that roofed a small shed stood out starkly. Farlon the potter had been trying for sikes to fire durable roof tiles.

  The mills were already in operation, and a sudden, rasping whine announced the saw mill’s first cut of the day. All was normal there. The workers were unaware of what was happening to the homes they had left only moments before.

  The village was a turmoil, and Arne studied the scene unfolding there with sickening apprehension. The Great Secret had been in his trust for more than three sikes without a breach of any kind, and he found it difficult to believe this was happening. It meant the collapse of all their plans. He had known from the beginning that a mere whiff of suspicion might be ruinous. All of Egarn’s equipment would have to be moved and his machines taken apart and rebuilt in new quarters, and that might set his work back fatally. And where could a secure workroom be found for him if the present one failed?

  Stirring events had occurred on the Ten Peerdoms’ frontiers since Egarn’s arrival. The Peer of Lant sent force after force into Easlon, increasing the size of the invasion each time. All had been annihilated, though of course it was impossible to say whether every last Lantiff had been killed. A few might have escaped. If any did, what they told their peer had no affect on her tactics. After a series of defeats, she should have known—or at least suspected—that Easlon had Egarn’s weapon. Either she refused to believe, or she thought the weight of numbers must ultimately triumph.

  Finally Easlon scouts sent back word that the peer had lost patience and was about to invade Easlon with two armies, moving one through High Pass and the other through Low Pass. Inskor led his scouts on a bold raid that pushed the Lantiff back from the passes, and Egarn’s weapon was applied in a new way: rocks, dirt, trees, entire mountain sides were sliced off to pour down into those critically important gaps. The water that had fed High Pass Falls was diverted westward into Easlon—whose dry eastern province needed it—and both passes were blocked permanently. Enterprising Lantian scouts might find high, hazardous ways through the mountains like those the Easlon scouts used, but no army could make the crossing until time or the weapon cut a passage for it.

  The Peer of Lant accepted the inevitable and turned her armies southward. Their onslaught had long been expected there, and they no longer had Egarn’s weapon to terrorize their victims. The southern peerdoms were making the invasion a costly one, and it seemed likely to occupy Lant for sikes to come.

  On the opposite frontier, the Peerdom of Weslon had been overrun by marauding lashers out of the far west, and its rotten nobility fled in panic—as did the cowardly peeragers of neighboring peerdoms. Fortunately Arne and Inskor had prepared for such an emergency. With the help of the League of One-Namers, they had formed a one-name defense force with Arne as the commander. A select group of one-namers from all of the Ten Peerdoms, both men and women, secretly trained as scouts and received lessons in warfare. From time to time a few one-namers who could absent themselves for a few monts without being missed went east to train with the scouts of Easlon or west to train with the scouts of Weslon, who likewise had a long border to guard.

  This small army numbered only two hundred at the time of the Weslon crisis. It was pathetic force compared with the hordes of Lant but a respectable one for dealing with renegade lashers—especially since half the volunteer warriors were armed with Egarn’s weapon. Arne led his tiny force to battle and quickly cut the invaders to pieces.

  The peeragers returned, Arne received commendations from all ten peers—who of course had no notion of how such a resounding victory had been accomplished—and with the critical eastern frontier sealed off and the western threat dispelled, an attitude of complacency, even somnolence, settled on the Ten Peerdoms—so much so that the Peer of Easlon gave up her agitation for a common army.

  Through all of the turmoil, Egarn’s work had quietly gone forward, protected against every contingency except one— treachery by someone they trusted. Now it had happened.

  The raid was meticulously organized. Lasher captains had taken up central positions on the three village streets, and their lieutenants patrolled on foot, looking into the houses and calling orders. Squads of lashers were searching each dwelling systematically and reporting to the lieutenants when they finished. Even the waiting horses had a role. They were held in readiness outside the houses their riders were searching in case there was a need to remount quickly.

  The lashers wore uniforms Arne had not seen before: black cloaks with a slash of white, leather jackets, high boots, and red overs. For generations, Midd Village
had made uniforms for the peeragers’ servers, whether for ceremonial or common use. This clothing, too, should have been designed and sewn by the village’s crafters from cloth woven in the mill below and leather from the tannery, but no part of that absurd dress had come from Midd.

  Arne grimly turned this riddle over in his mind as he watched. The answer probably involved several loads of grain that were mysteriously unaccounted for and prentices the prince insisted on sending to the Prince of Chang in an exchange she worked out herself. The prentices she received in return vanished like the grain—probably into the prince’s own household. If they were seamster and leatherer prentices, that accounted for the uniforms. The vanished grain had gone to Chang to pay for the cloth and leather.

  The Prince of Midlow suddenly rode into the center of High Street, the village’s topmost street, and halted there, sitting sternly erect on a creamy white horse that stood with its nose pointed at the largest house in the village, Arne’s dwelling. The polished leather of her boots and jacket and the flaming red of her overs gleamed in the early sunlight. Her long, golden hair tumbled in careless disarray on her shoulders. Only peerager females had the perogative of long hair, and they guarded it jealously—as peerager males defended their distinction of being clean-shaven—but most of the women piled their hair into elaborate structures dictated by the latest fad. The Prince of Lant scorned fashion and allowed her hair to fall freely.

  Even from a distance, she was awesomely beautiful. Arne had admired her since they were children, but that did not prevent him from holding her in utter comtempt. He might have been hopelessly infatuated with her—liasons between peeragers and one-namers were unheard of in Midlow except for an occasional scandal involving a one-name server who lived at the court—if he had found it possible to love a woman he despised. The Prince of Midlow’s fellow peeragers were notable for sexual excesses and fits of selfishness and cruelty, but even they considered her flagrant misconduct shocking.