The Chronocide Mission

by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

  She shrugged. Then she nodded dully.

  He wondered how long it would take to teach her how to work. This was something she knew nothing about. She was accustomed to physical exertion, she was an excellent rider, and the way she controlled a horse showed that she had strong hands and arms, but Arne couldn’t even guess how she would react to unending, monotonous labor.

  She also had to learn to walk. She was accustomed to riding her horse everywhere, and one-namers traveled on their feet. The walk to Midd Village would be the longest she had ever taken.

  “You made yourself my enemy when we were children,” Arne said. “You probably aren’t aware that I have never been yours. Now you need help, and I am prepared to give you as much as I can—but you must earn it. You must work hard and well. You must want to succeed, or no one can help you.”

  “I know the peer my mother won’t order you to keep an assistant you don’t want,” she said. “Both she and my uncle the land warden made that very clear.”

  Arne didn’t want to begin their relationship with a threat, so he made no comment. “Your life is in your own hands, now,” he told her. “It will be whatever you make it. If you hate your neighbors and those who work with you, don’t be surprised if they hate you. If you share your joy with them, they will share theirs with you.”

  “What joy?” the former prince demanded.

  Arne got to his feet. “The peer asks this of both of us, and she expects us to do our best. We will go to Midd Village now, and find a dwelling place for you, and get you settled there.”

  He began demonstrating the first server’s responsibilities on the walk to Midd Village. They took West Valley Road, which had not been repaired that sike, and even though dusk was approaching and the light was poor, he showed her places where soil erosion was about to undermine the road and told her the procedure for ordering repairs and seeing that they were done. He showed her how to inspect beams and planks in the bridges they passed, how to spot a defective roof in a no-name compound, how to quick-survey a wooded plot to determine the number of trees ready for cutting. He turned aside to speak sharply to the lashers in charge of a group of no-namers whose cultivation sledge was not cutting deeply enough.

  She watched and listened sullenly without the slightest spark of interest. It seemed like a most unpromising beginning, and while he talked, he was pondering another problem that had to be faced: How would Midd Village receive his new assistant?

  He feared it would be horrified. Since the lasher raid, everyone had become spy conscious. Neighbors and fellow crafters who had lived and worked together amicably for a lifetime suddenly suspected each other of betraying the village to the wicked prince, and now that same wicked prince, disguised as a one-namer, would be living among them and doing her own spying.

  Perhaps Deline sensed the irony of her returning as a one-namer to the village she had arrogantly raided as prince. By the time they arrived, she seemed to be in a state of shock and incapable of speech. Arne arranged lodging for her in a boarding commons, a house where unattached women lived. Her room was on the ground floor with its own private entrance, an important convenience. The first server’s assistant would have to work odd hours, and she could come and go without disturbing the other lodgers. For a one-namer’s quarters, the room was comfortably sized and adquately furnished.

  He left her there, telling her he had other arrangements to make for her, and he would look in on her again when he had finished with them.

  He first had a long talk with Gretley, the common’s manager. Then he went to see one of the Three, old Toboz the sawyer. Toboz and his wife Midrez were aflutter with news of the happening. Arne told them the peer had chosen an assistant for him, a young woman, and they excitedly wanted to know all about her. When they learned who it was, they were outraged.

  “Why couldn’t the peer send her out of the peerdom—to Chang, or Easlon, or anywhere a long way off?” Midrez demanded.

  “Deline has great ability. That is why the peer tolerated her for so long. If she had been able to think of the peerdom rather than herself, she had the potential to become a great peer. Her mother doesn’t want that ability wasted. She is counting on us.”

  “Will she make a good assistant?”

  “She will make an excellent assistant—if she can reconcile herself to being an assistant.”

  “And if she is willing to work,” Toboz said with a scowl. “I suppose she doesn’t even know how.”

  “All her life she has never done anything except what she wanted to do. She will need help with the simplest things. She is even accustomed to having a server help her dress. She won’t know how to clean her room, or her clothing, or maybe not even herself. She won’t know how to cook. Until now, everything has been done for her.”

  “She won’t get waited on here,” Toboz said. “She won’t get to do what she wants to do, either. We will help her just as much as she is willing to be helped but not a jot more.”

  “She can’t expect more than that.”

  “If she tries to boss people around, there will be trouble even if she is your assistant. Does the peer plan to get rid of you and make her first server after you train her?”

  Arne shook his head. Such deviousness was not part of the peer’s nature—nor of the new prince’s, either. “The peer had to decide quickly what to do with Deline, and I have long needed an assistant.”

  “Learning all the things the first server’s assistant has to know will be a slow process. What if she gets impatient?”

  “She will. She will also get bored, and edgy, and weary, and everything else that discontented people feel. Remember—until today, whenever she felt any of those things she could call for her horse and go for a wild ride, or a hunt, or jump obstacles, or spear a porkley that someone else would have to haul back to court and prepare for dinner, or order her guard to race with her. Or she could change lovers. Or she could order her servers—and the peeragers, too—to play whatever game appealed to her. Now she will sit at a workbench doing one dull task after another until she is told to go home to a meager supper. Her sanity may be tested severely, but she will do her best to control it. She knows this is the only opportunity she will ever have to redeem herself, and a single complaint from me will end it. The peer her mother very much wants her to succeed, but the peer will never again listen to her excuses. If I tell her Deline is making a nuisance of herself, she will remove the nuisance.”

  “If the peer lives. What about the new prince?”

  “She may be an agreeable surprise to all of us. If she is willing to work, and learn, and accept advice, the Peerdom of Midlow might have a future none of us would have expected. She will have to grow up quickly, though. Would you tell the other villagers about Deline? It will take time for her to become accustomed to life as a one-namer, and it will take time for us to get used to her. Ask people to treat her politely even if she is rude. Ask them to keep offering friendship to her even if it is spurned.”

  He talked with Wiltzon and several others before he returned to Deline. He found her standing by the window with tears in her eyes looking out at the cold gloom of the village’s garden common and the dark mills beyond.

  She turned on him with fierce resentment because he had surprised her in a moment of weakness. He pretended not to notice. “You know where the first server resides. Report to me there at dawn. We will discuss the day’s work and plan your schedule.”

  She nodded resignedly.

  “Gretley will bring you some supper and help you decide how you want to take your meals. There is community dining for single people and those who aren’t householders. If you decide to join, the community kitchen will draw your rations, but everyone who eats there takes turns preparing the food and helping with the cleaning and chores. If you don’t care for community dining, you can arrange to eat with a hospitable family—Toboz the sawyer and Midrez his wife are willing to have you on a trial basis. If you eat with them, Midrez will draw your rations for
you—but you still would be expected to help prepare the meals and clean up afterward. That is the rule among one-namers, and it is the only way you can learn to do things for yourself, so you should offer to assist people at every opportunity.

  “Suppose I decide to draw my rations myself?” she asked defiantly.

  “You can whenever you like, but then you will have to do all the work of preparing the food and cooking it yourself. It would be best to wait until you have learned how. And even when you think you know how, it would be wise to wait until you have your own kitchen or can arrange to use someone else’s.”

  “I see.” Deline turned to the window and looked again at the cold gloom of the common. “There doesn’t seem to be much happening here.”

  “A great deal,” Arne said with a smile, “but one-namers keep their happenings private. Come to my house first thing in the morning, and we will plan your schedule.”

  Arne slept lightly, as usual. While he slept, his mind sorted through his responsibilities for a long procession of tomorrows and busily arranged and rearranged the multitide of details he had to keep track of.

  He awakened suddenly. There was someone in his bedroom—an astonishing occurence. No one barred doors in Midd Village, but neither did anyone prowl about at night. A server with an urgent message would have called his errand from the street door.

  A cold hand touched his face. Then the blanket was pulled aside and the weight of another body settled into the bed.

  Deline’s voice said, as her arms encircled him, “It is time to plan my schedule.”

  12. DELINE (2)

  They floated from darkness into the brightly dawning new dae, Deline the imperious, demanding princess, he the obedient subject; and then, in a dazzling reversal, he the lordly conqueror, she the humbly submissive slave. They remained long abed—remained there until a court server arrived to demand Arne’s attention.

  Arne told himself Deline was friendless and lonely, she had desperately needed to forget her shattered her life for a few hours, and the incident really meant nothing at all. Her passion seemed genuine and limitless, but of course she’d had many lovers. That was the custom with peeragers. Most one-namers quickly settled on a life-long partner; few peeragers ever did. There were other differences. No village girl had ever made love to Arne the way Deline did, but in their most enraptured transports, when he murmured every tenderness at his command, she remained silent.

  The court server brought a bundle of messages and requests that had accumulated during the days of upheaval. He also brought a verbal message from the new prince. She wanted to see the first server that afternoon if he could spare the time. The phrasing was so unusual that it took Arne a moment to recognize it as a command.

  He sent his customary formal assent and sat down to deal with the other business, going over each request carefully with Deline. Most concerned items that were in short supply at the court because there had been no recent deliveries. A train of wagons would be needed to correct the deficiencies. Wagons and drivers had to be assembled from all of the one-name villages. He showed Deline how to write the requisitions and explained what was supposed to happen at their destinations.

  When this work was completed, they ate a late meal at Arne’s dining common, ignoring the curious stares of the attendants, and then he took Deline to Farlon the potter. Farlon gave her a workplace beside those of the two prentices he was training, and he began a lengthy discourse about clay. Deline fingered the samples gingerly, holding them as though she feared to soil her fingers. Her attention had been caught by a pot that was miraculously arising from a prentice’s wheel.

  It was the ideal place for her to begin. She could fashion simple things at once, and the complexities of the craft could be left until she became interested. The pot so fascinated her that she didn’t notice when Arne left.

  He busied himself with a number of petty chores. He checked the maintenance at the mills—all of the machinery was old, and it broke down frequently if it wasn’t properly cared for. He also made certain the orders from the court were being handled properly and supplies of meat and flour were being distributed again throughout the peerdom. Food reserves had been depleted while the lashers were guarding the village. He saw that his own private food cache was well stocked. By artfully juggling records, he kept a secret store of food in a stone shed at the rear of his garden. Old Marof, working quietly in the dead of night, wheeled bags of grain and an occasional haunch of beef or mutton to the shed in his barrow. An increasing amount of food had gone that route in recent years, but few villagers knew this. Those who did neither asked nor wanted to know what became of it. As in the past, some found its way into secret reserves the League of One-Namers maintained all across the Ten Peerdoms, but most went to Egarn’s team—his helpers took whatever supplies were needed, entering Arne’s garden at night through the concealed door in the wall.

  It was late morning when he finished his chores, and he left at once for Midlow Court. The twenty-four members of the former prince’s guard were waiting in orderly ranks just outside the court gate. The land warden had formally restored their numbers, telling them Arne requested it. Now they were the first server’s guard. Whatever he told them to do they were to do instantly, or the peer would condemn them to a worse punishment.

  They had been fanatically loyal to the prince. That loyalty now belonged to Arne, reinforced by an emotion lashers rarely experienced—gratitude. They were embarrassingly worshipful and eager to please him.

  Here, thanks to Deline’s disgrace, was the beginning of an army, something he and Inskor had long advocated in vain. What it became depended on him, and he hadn’t the faintest notion of what he should do with it. His vague intention was to train these lashers as officers for the troops he would obtain later, but how did one train an army officer, and what did one train him to do? The lashers had lost their horses and their whips. The horses could be returned to them, but they had to be armed differently. A whip, however skillfully wielded, would count for little in battle.

  With the land warden’s assent, he sent a message to Inskor, asking for an Easlon scout to train the new army. The Ten Peerdoms would never have a force large enough to stand up to the mounted hordes of Lant. Their army would have to conserve its strength and substitute skill for might, doing battle only under conditions of its own choosing and trying to inflict maximum destruction with minimum loss. It would be an army of scouts.

  Arne first examined the lashers’ cruelly cut backs and saw that they were dressed properly. Then he took them on a walk through the forest. The ground was uneven. The path rose and fell steeply, and by the time they returned to Midlow Court, the lashers were exhausted and visibly wilting. Probably none of them had ever walked so far.

  He placed their former commander in charge and instructed him to begin a regimen of physical conditioning with several long walks each dae. He wanted them away from the corrupting influence of the court, so he asked one of the peer’s servers to find housing for them at a remote no-name compound. Then he went to the Land Warden with another request.

  As soon as the former guardsmen were adequately trained, he wanted to begin drafting lashers from the no-name compounds for his new army. He also wanted no-namers who could be formed into military labor platoons. He had already discussed the necessity of this with Inskor. The Ten Peerdoms needed a defensive barrier along their entire southern frontier, and that would require enormous amounts of labor.

  The land warden referred the question to the peer’s council, which consisted of the prince, the wardens, and other advisors. None of them objected, not even the no-name warden, who had the responsibility for the peerdom’s lashers and no-namers. All of these stuffy officials had just seen the former prince lose one of her names, and at this juncture none of them were inclined to oppose the peer’s first server.

  The new prince listened attentively, but she said little. Afterward, she conferred with Arne privately. “Have you any advice for me?” she
asked.

  “These are times of conflict, Highness,” Arne said. “We defeated a threat from the west. There may be others, but the real danger lies in the south. Eventually the Peer of Lant will cross the mountains and turn north, and there is no other barrier to stop her. We should have begun our preparations long ago. When the Lantiff come, we must fight—and win—or those of us who survive will be the slaves of Lant.”

  “I have heard Lant has thousands and thousands of mounted lashers, and they sweep over the land like plague and fire combined.” She walked to the window and looked out. “It is hard to imagine that happening here. Do you think it could?”

  “It could and will if we don’t prepare to stop it. Perhaps we will fail and it will come anyway. But we must do our best.”

  She turned. “You stopped the wild lashers in the west,” she said. “I don’t understand battles. You must tell me what to do.”

  “The peerdom is home to all of us, Highness. One-namers are willing to fight and die for that home. That is why they fought the wild lashers so fiercely, but they would be helpless before the armies of Lant. There are too few of them. We can’t begin to defend ourselves against Lant unless each of the Ten Peerdoms contributes as much as possible—not only one-namers, but also lashers and no-namers. All must be trained with care and determination so they know what they have to do and how to do it.”

  The prince listened with a frown. Her sister had been ruled by impulses, but Elone Jermile would consider every move carefully and try to understand what was involved before she made up her mind. She would make few wrong decisions, but she might be unable to act quickly.