Mobius

by Garon Whited

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s a vendetta thing. I get it.”

  “I do have a solution,” I offered. “A potential solution, anyway.”

  “Oh?”

  “I know a place where no one can find you. You can live there without anyone having to guard you. Later, when you’ve had the child and feel you’re back in fighting form, you can come back without anyone worrying about kidnappers. If we’re right and Naskarl wants you as you are, before you have the child, this should shoot down his plans and put you outside his sphere of thought.”

  “Hmm. That would solve everything, I guess…”

  “Think about it.” I glanced over the side of the box, down at the guards below. “Talk it over with someone.”

  “Yes, sir,” she sighed. “I’ll think about it.”

  “All right, I think I’m done here. You have anything for me?”

  “I do have a question.”

  “Sure.”

  “When do we get a temple? Most of us haven’t seen a priest since Sarashda.”

  “I have no idea. It’s a matter for the priests, isn’t it?”

  “Well… yeah, I guess. Haven’t they asked you to build a temple, yet?”

  “Should they?”

  “I think that’s how it works.”

  I didn’t like the idea, but I couldn’t tell Renata. The last thing I needed was another complication, especially a religious one.

  “Maybe their messenger spoke to Leisel,” I hedged. “It hasn’t reached me, yet. Think I should mark out a spot for a temple, just to get ahead? Or places for individual chapels?”

  “It’d be nice to know it’s on the way,” Renata agreed.

  “I’ll talk to Leisel,” I hedged, again.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Happy to help,” I lied, and climbed down the pegs.

  Cahira brought Firebrand to the tower. I’d seen her before, but she didn’t make any real impression. Medium height, the usual dark hair and dark eyes, strong hands, and so on. I’d remember her from now on, though. Firebrand considered her “vicious.” I’m not sure that’s a recommendation, exactly, but it is an attention-getter.

  A little later, Leisel brought in one wounded tribesman and a pair of dead ones.

  “But did we get the steel?” I asked.

  “Yes. Second squad found them lurking in a dense thicket and sounded their horns. They dropped the steel and ran for it, fought when they were pursued.”

  “Why bring back the corpses?”

  Leisel glanced at the guards before she answered.

  “It would be uncivilized to leave them for the wolves. You can decide what to do with them.”

  “Ah. Uncivilized. Right. I’ll see to it they’re dealt with.”

  “Since we have a wounded one, do you want to interrogate him, too?”

  “Of course. Good thinking. He probably needs some treatment. You escort him. I’ll carry the bodies.” I dismissed the guards as I hoisted a corpse over each shoulder. They saluted with their rotating hand gesture and vacated in a hurry. Leisel slapped the wounded man awake and tried to talk with him.

  “Keep an eye on him for a minute. I’ll be right back.” I carried the bodies upstairs and laid them out in my workroom. I cast my translation spell again and headed back down. “Now, you,” I said to the captive. “What’s your name?”

  “You speak my language!”

  “Nice to meet you, Youspeakmylanguage. I’m going to treat your wounds and make them stop hurting. Then I’m going to ask you some questions. If you’re extremely helpful, I’ll allow you to go home. If you are not helpful…”

  “That’s not my name.”

  “I only asked to be polite, because I don’t care what your name is—”

  His name is Tarak, Firebrand supplied.

  “—but, Tarak, I will have your help or I will have your skin.”

  “What!”

  I sighed and crouched next to him. I gently took the more damaged of his arms and laid one finger on the worst of the cuts.

  “Observe closely, Tarak. I am a wizard of great power. Your wound is closing, vanishing almost as though it never was. I will do the same with other wounds. But you must answer my questions.”

  “What if I don’t want to?”

  I looked him over. He was typical of the breed—swarthy, hairy, muscled, and somewhat bloody. Someone chose to leave him with a fur-lined jockstrap, possibly because no one wanted to touch it.

  “If you refuse,” I told him, “I will peel your bones out of your living flesh and use them to make toy rattles for babies, so they can enjoy the screams of agony from your ghost as they play with them.”

  “But—”

  “Look behind me.”

  “What?”

  “I said, look behind me.”

  He looked behind me. The three lights on the ground floor of the tower never go out. They’re spaced around the room, so they throw triple shadows. Not for me. Mine stood on the wall behind me, sharp and dark. It waved at Tarak. He went white and started to tremble.

  “Do we understand each other?” I asked. He nodded frantically, almost convulsively.

  “Good. Come along upstairs. Leisel?”

  Leisel gulped and shook her head.

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not. I don’t want to step on your shadow.”

  “It won’t mind.”

  “But I will!”

  “Fair enough. Speaking of which, would you get a drawbridge ready?”

  “Uh… here?”

  “No, at the fort, out at the bridge. Get a drawbridge set up and we’ll take a piece of bridge out from under it.”

  “Oh. All right. I’ll get a crew on it.”

  “Thank you. Tarak—heel.”

  I took him up to the workroom and repaired his wounds, or mostly. He tried to jump me when I finished putting his guts back together. No doubt he felt his weakened condition would be offset by the element of surprise. When it was all over, his wounds were mostly healed—nothing a week of rest wouldn’t cure—with the exception of the broken bones in his feet. All ten of the foot-bones were neatly snapped. I didn’t even break the skin.

  “I’m not fixing those,” I told him.

  His reply was, shall we say, less than polite. I slammed him to the floor, on his back, and sat on his chest. I put a knee on either bicep, lightly circled his throat with my fingers, and grinned my best fang-displaying grin. There was a sudden mess to clean up, but I have spells for that.

  “Now, you seem to think I healed you so you could escape. Maybe you think being kind is a weakness. What you’ve done is abuse my kindness, which tells me you’re likely to die here rather than be allowed to crawl home. Still, we’ll take a chance. Maybe you’re smarter than you look and can be taught. Here’s the question. Are you going to cooperate with the predatory thing? It’s not like you can run.”

  “Anything! Anything you want!”

  He’s lying, Boss.

  Oh?

  He’s willing to say anything to get out of this mess and he thinks he can lie his way to freedom. You did offer to let him go home, you know. He has hope.

  My reply was, shall we say, less than polite.

  “Well, fine. It looks as though I’ll be killing you and interrogating your corpse. You’re freshest, so you go first.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will in two minutes.”

  I came down as Leisel came up. She jerked a thumb toward the doorway in the wall.

  “What’s going on with the stairs?”

  “Oh. I got tired of trapdoors. With doorways in the inner wall, we need real doors. The stairs will still circle the tower between an inner and outer wall. Think of it as a narrow hallway specifically for the stairs. The tower will continue to grow, though, so it’ll continue to change.”

  “Convenient. Creepy, but convenient.”

  “I’m glad you approve.”

  “Sort of. What’s with the m
onster skull?”

  I ushered her down toward the bedroom, avoiding the workroom.

  “I’m thinking of having it delivered to a warmeet.”

  “What for?”

  “Huron. He did an impressive job of killing the monster. All I did was flash a mirror at it. He killed it. He deserves the recognition.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “Oh, yes. Those teeth are what killed him.”

  “Then it doesn’t need to go to a warmeet,” she corrected. “It goes to the Temple.”

  “Uh?” I asked.

  “Clearly, he proved himself a capable warrior. He wanted to remain one in his next life?”

  “He said so.”

  “Then send it to the Temple in his name. They’re the ones who need to see it.”

  “I guess so. Can you arrange it?”

  “Certainly. What did you get out of the prisoner?”

  “Before I report, I need to ask a question. How do you feel about me dragging the soul out of someone to interrogate it? Assuming, of course, I let it go afterward.”

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I’m not a priest. I don’t guess there’s much difference between that and killing someone outright. Your idea takes a little longer before they move on. Is this what happened to the thieves?”

  “One of them.”

  “Good. What did you find out?” she asked.

  “I have some insights into barbarian culture, metalworking, and commerce, but not much else.”

  “I don’t know much about the kustoni,” she admitted. “Tell me everything.”

  So I broke it down for her. The barbarians, as they’re called, are more than simple tribesmen. The local barbarians are simple tribesmen, but they’re the fringe of a much larger set of families and clans. The corpses I questioned were a bit fuzzy on any math beyond fingers and toes, but I got the impression they thought the clans, as a whole, might number as much as a million people—“a sea of men too wide to see across.” A million might be wildly off, though. It’s hard to judge a whole society from one little village in the middle of nowhere. It’s like kidnapping someone from a backwater village and quizzing them on geopolitics.

  The clans don’t all get along. They tend to steal from each other, raiding for goods and women. Where other societies would raise up a war party in response, the clans tend to shrug it off and mount a raid of their own—maybe on the offenders, maybe not. It’s more than counting coup, since they’re not a wealthy society; they need the things they steal. It’s also how they get wives from outside their own village. Apparently, they’re treated as wives, although I’m not sure their women are treated much better than slaves in the first place.

  Occasionally, someone takes the results of a raid personally. An only son dies, a particularly cherished wife is kidnapped, something like that. When that happens, the reaction is a bit more than a shrug. Rather than escalate into all-out conflict between two villages, they have an informal council of the Great Clans. If you’re willing to head northwest for a couple of weeks, there’s a city of stone where the old people of each clan gather. You can tell them what happened and they’ll hand down a ruling. It’s not binding in the sense they make laws, but generations of custom and tradition mean their word is more powerful than law.

  I took a scrying flyover of their city of stone. Imagine big, flat, standing stones. Now stack them like a house of cards—no more than two levels, but the idea is the same. They have some masonry as adjuncts, but most of the major construction is made of big slabs of stone. It’s also laid out horribly, with no sense of pattern or purpose. It’s almost a labyrinth, parked in and around a series of barren hills. A work crew with a team of oxen hauled another stone along a dirt and gravel road, using log rollers. The city was large and, from the looks of some of the quarried rocks, old enough to be prehistoric. I saw a number of heavy poles and a lot of rope, but I wasn’t sure how they lifted blocks to a second level. I also wondered if they had any way to dispose of sewage. The dirt streets had no gutters, there was a surprising amount of livestock, and I’m not sure how they got enough water. I didn’t bother checking right then, either.

  Why do they have oxen and cattle and the Empire doesn’t? Does it have to do with the Kasnakani Range? Or does the Empire find cattle “unclean” in some way? Or what?

  As for our local village of barbarians, it mined a little iron, raised some crops and animals, and was mostly a subsistence economy. Iron was their main trading good, but they regard iron as cheap. Bronze is a better metal in most respects. They don’t know how to make steel, so they like steel better than they like gold. You’ll find a cheap knife or arrowhead made of iron. An actual weapon, something used by a man who makes his living as a fighter, will be bronze. So will his greaves or bracers, maybe even his helmet. But steel? Only the wealthiest have a steel weapon, probably stolen or salvaged from a warrior of the Empire.

  The metalwork looked out of place, at least to me. The whole setup struck me as reminiscent of a Neolithic civilization exposed to something more Middle Ages. The society was still on the caveman level, but some of the technology was artificially advanced simply because they stole it.

  They would cheerfully steal more, but it’s a long, dangerous trip through the mountains. Once they have their loot and run for it, it’s even more dangerous on the way back—warriors of the Empire tend to chase them, riding horses. No sense of fair play, that’s the trouble. Our valley is much closer. They didn’t think it would be too hard to get in, swipe some steel, and get out again. The trouble came, as usual, from those fast horses! That, and maybe they got a little greedy, trying to carry too much metal in one trip. They had a hard time going up the steep slope to the barren ridge, so they gave up on it and started working their way toward the river outlet. When they heard the horses, they hid in a nearby thicket, where the patrol found them.

  Leisel listened intently, asking questions here and there. Finally, she nodded.

  “I know the rest. I presume I need to dispose of bodies?”

  “If you would be so kind. It’s daytime, so there are bloodstains, too.” She waved that aside as only to be expected.

  “What have you got planned for the rest of the day?”

  “I was thinking lunch, then a trip out to the western rise. It’s not really a barrier. I’d like to fix it so the easy way in is to follow the river up over the falls.”

  “That’s not exactly an easy way.”

  “I know, but we can watch it easily.”

  “You do know there are other ways into the valley, right?”

  “Yep. I plan to make them more inhospitable. How’s the drawbridge coming?”

  “It’s being built. You didn’t say how big to make it, though.”

  “As wide as the road and however long you want it to be. I’ll adjust the bridge to fit.”

  Leisel shook her head.

  “You amaze me.”

  “How so?”

  “Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if everyone was like you.”

  “Trust me, it wouldn’t be a good thing. Lunch?”

  “Of course.”

  We ate at the tables, as usual. Even with the input from the solar panels, the keep was still growing the added rooms, so we didn’t have an indoor messhall yet, but I live in hope. Technically, I live in a state of anxiety and anticipation, but there’s some hope mixed in with it. I ate well, but I also kept an eye on the pile of food—I know I can eat like a platoon, but other people need to eat, too, and they need it more than I do.

  Afterward, Bronze carried me off to the western rise. She even climbed it, right up to the ridge of rock crowning it. She was showing off. No mortal horse could do it. She carved her way up the slope—I sometimes think she sharpens the edge of her hooves—and stood at the top, puffing small clouds of flame and looking out over the trees.

  I had to admit, it was a nice view. The forest beyond was nearly a jungle and marched right up to the foot of the ridge like a gre
en ocean hitting beach. The sun was bright, the clouds sparse and fluffy, and the trilling of strange birds made everything seem peaceful. Too bad I knew the forest contained barbarian tribes ready to kill and eat us—hopefully in that order.

  I really need to work on just enjoying the moment.

  The next couple of hours went by fairly quickly. I did some design work, deciding on the shape of the wall, how high it would need to be, and what sort of alterations to make to the rocky prominences on either side. I settled on a nearly-vertical face of stone, leaning outward slightly. Nothing too fancy or complicated. It would grow down through the rise to solidify its base, and sideways, to make scaling the rocks to either side less appealing. Given a week, it would take climbing equipment to get over it. Given a month, only birds would willingly cross it. I energized my spells, set the termination conditions, and left it to simmer.

  Bronze and I went back down and I learned it’s harder to stay in the saddle going down a steep slope than it is to stay in it going up. It doesn’t help that Bronze is so huge my stirrups are somewhat more sideways than is usual for a horseman.

  Saddle horns are useful, but not always user-friendly. Let’s leave it at that.

  At the base of the slope, I sat there with Bronze and regarded the rise. Something about it didn’t sit right with me. What was it?

  It took a little while, but I finally figured it out. One of Murphy’s Laws of Combat: If you make it too hard for the enemy to get in, you make it too hard for you to get out. What if this rise became impassable? The only two ways for people to get in and out on foot would be the bridge and the river falls. What happens if the wildfires and tornadoes and stampedes of demon-bears come crashing into the valley? Sure, I can get out, but what about the thousand or so people living here?

  A tunnel would help. In fact, a tunnel might be ideal. If I put a tunnel right here, through the “impassable” barrier, it’s an obvious point of entry. Barbarian hordes can roll up and assault it. They might not even try infiltrating through the river falls. No, I’m kidding myself. They will. But it might change the tactic from trying to infiltrate a real force to trying to infiltrate a crew of saboteurs to allow entry through the tunnel. We can fortify the tunnel at this or both ends and let them think we don’t know about the falls—and watch the falls carefully.