The Torian Pearls rb-25

by Джеффри Лорд

  They were also a great deal slower on their feet and hopefully slower in their wits. Whoever drove them on to the attack could not give them speed that was not in their massive bodies or intelligence that was not in the tiny brains inside the thick skulls.

  Blade kept shouting his instructions, until his breath rasped in his raw throat, his chest heaved as if he'd run ten miles, and he could see that he was being heard. Ten, twenty, thirty warriors at a time would gather, then spread out into a line. Single lines at first, then double and triple lines as more warriors ran up from the rear or in from the flanks. The short lines grew longer, grew toward each other, formed longer lines of a hundred or two hundred warriors.

  These lines were beginning to do what Blade had hoped they would. Where they found the lines across their paths, the sea reptiles were slowing down. Sometimes they would stop or even draw back when they felt a dozen spear points pricking their snouts, stabbing at their nostrils or eyes or into their open mouths. Others would press on, snapping and clawing as ferociously as ever. With warriors all around them, they did not last long. There was always someone ready and willing to strike when a beast was stopped. They struck with spears at the brain, down through the eyes or up through the open mouths. They struck from beneath with whatever weapon came to hand, ripping through the lighter belly scales. They struck at the necks, the flanks, the legs, even under the tails. They struck everywhere they could find a target. Blade heard a continuous drum roll of metal and wood pounding on scaly skin and slicing deep into the flesh beneath it. He also heard the bellows and roars of monstrous beasts in mortal agony. The warriors of the Kargoi were still going down, but now so were the attackers.

  Once or twice a reptile plowed clear through a line, to break into the open beyond it and go rampaging among the tents. Blade heard screams as women who hadn't fled in time died in those tents, and hoped Naula had run fast enough and far enough.

  Other beasts had the good luck or the good sense to find open flanks where the sections of line hadn't linked up. They plunged on toward the tents and the wagons, heads down and feet churning up the ground.

  One of these beasts got as far as a trio of tethered riding drends. With a bellow, one of the drends broke its tether and charged the oncoming reptile. They met head-on, the drend's long horns hooking wickedly, driving the reptile's head to one side. Before it could recover a second drend came lumbering in and butted it in the flank. A full-grown riding drend weighed nearly a ton, and the impact shoved the reptile bodily to one side. Then someone dashed up and drove a cooking spit into one eye, deep enough to reach the brain. The beast slumped down into death and the drends lumbered off, bellowing in noisy triumph.

  Blade realized it was time he got into the fight. He'd done about all he could do by standing on the back of a drend and shouting orders at the top of his lungs. Besides, his voice was completely gone.

  So he leaped down from the back of the drend and ran forward. A dead reptile lay in his path. He swerved, ran across a patch of ground turned into mud by the beast's blood, leaped over its outstretched tail, and found himself in the rear of a line of warriors. He ran along it until he came to the right flank and stepped into place.

  Several of the warriors recognized him and shouted greetings, bared teeth startlingly white in blood-smeared faces. Shouts from farther along the line told of another reptile making its charge. As spears rose into position, it slowed but did not stop. A warrior ran out of the line with a spear and thrust at the beast's eyes. The fanged head swung sideways, knocking the man down. He was unhurt. Before the jaws could close on him, he rolled clear, leaped up, and returned to the attack. Blade dashed forward to join the man.

  Blade had to hear what he did after that from other people, who saw it all and marveled at it. He was never sure how much of what they said was the truth and how much of it just a good tale they enjoyed telling about a hero.

  The Kargoi said he killed seven of the reptiles himself, helped other warriors kill five others, and drove half a dozen more back into the sea. He was willing to believe them. Certainly by the time he became aware of the world around him again, all his weapons were blunted and he was exhausted, aching, horribly thirsty, and covered with blood from head to foot.

  He was less willing to believe that he'd strangled one of the beasts with his bare hands and lifted another completely off the ground, to drop it on its head and break its neck. Other tales of what he'd done were even less believable. It was, however, believable that the Kargoi had won. In fact it was certain.

  Except for a dozen of so that had made their way back into the sea, all of the beasts were dead, more than two hundred of them. So were nearly three hundred warriors and a hundred women and children of the Kargoi. A hundred drends were dead, and a thousand more scattered all over the countryside by stampedes. Twenty wagons were smashed to splinters. Blade's idea of forming lines hadn't prevented a considerable toll of casualties, but it had certainly prevented disaster.

  The drends were rounded up and harnessed; one by one the wagons rolled out of their circle and headed south. Blade bathed in the sea and climbed into his wagon, quite content not to be asked for any advice at the moment. The only thing he would have advised, the Kargoi were already doing-getting out of here! He fell asleep with his head in Naula's lap as the wagon creaked into motion.

  Chapter 12

  Blade rode out with the scouts that afternoon. They spread in a line five miles wide, stretching across the front of all the wagons. Blade rode within sight of the water.

  The scouts beside him rode with one eye on the land and the other uneasily turned toward the water, waiting for whatever might come out of it. Fortunately the sea reptiles, like the bat-birds, seemed to be creatures of the night. Once Blade saw a dark head and back rise from the waves a few hundred yards off shore, then sink down again after a minute or two. Otherwise the water shone in the sun, kicked up into whitecaps by a brisk wind. It rolled in peacefully on the shore, with no sign that it had ever spawned last night's horrors. Yet the reptiles were still out there, and so were their masters. They would come again, Blade was certain.

  Once they'd made the new camp, Blade planned to ride back to the dead reptiles. He wanted to study them, learn more about what they could do, what could be done to them while they lived, and perhaps what could be done with them after they were dead. He might also find some clues about who their masters might be. At the moment this was such a total mystery that Blade refused even to guess.

  The Kargoi made camp late that day, under the glaring sunset sky with the shadows already stretching far across the beaten-down grass. They made a camp huddled close against the foot of the hills and as far from the water as possible. The wagons of all three Peoples were drawn into an immense triple circle and all the warriors took up positions between them and the water. Except for the warriors no one left the wagons. No tents were pitched, no fires were lit.

  No one in the whole camp slept that night except out of sheer exhaustion. All the wakefulness was unnecessary. Nothing came out of the sea or down from the sky.

  At dawn Blade rode back to the battlefield. He would have preferred to ride alone, but that wasn't possible. The moment he mentioned he was going to ride back, Paor insisted on coming with him. Then Naula swore she also would come and share his danger. Several other warriors immediately decided that they would be shamed if a woman went where they would not. They insisted on joining the party. In the end Blade rode back at the head of fifty warriors.

  That was far too many witnesses for much of what Blade wanted to do. So far no one among the Kargoi had the faintest notion that the attacks of the bat-birds and the sea reptiles were anything but more monstrous freaks of nature, like the volcanoes or the rising sea. Blade desperately wanted them to stay ignorant as long as possible. He suspected that not even the courage of the Kargoi would survive the knowledge that the bat-birds and reptiles were being directed by some unknown intelligence greater than theirs. He also suspected that if w
arriors like Paor watched all he did on the battlefield, they would begin to wonder what he was looking for and then ask questions to which he could give no safe answers.

  He might have done better to ride back by himself in the night, secretly, risking the bat-birds and reptiles and anything else that might be tempted to attack a lone rider. He would far rather risk his own neck ten times over than risk a panic among the Kargoi that could leave them helpless in the face of their enemies.

  Blade was able to get some use out of his unwanted escort by making the warriors help him butcher the dead reptiles. At first the warriors drew back at the idea of cutting up two thousand tons of rapidly-decaying corpses in the hot sun. The smell alone already lay across the shore like a fog.

  Blade ignored their protests and hesitations. He and Paor and Naula and a few other willing spirits stripped off their clothes, drew their swords, and went to work. After a little further hesitation, the rest of the warriors joined in, except the few on guard duty. They could not refuse to follow the lead of the hero Blade, or refuse to go where even Blade's woman went.

  The work was every bit as gruesome as Blade expected. He was glad he hadn't eaten any breakfast. Most of the warriors didn't have stomachs as strong as his. Blade felt sorry for them, but he wasn't too unhappy to see them dropping out one by one. There were plenty of hands left to do the necessary work, and fewer eyes to watch him.

  It was soon clear that the reptiles could be put to all sorts of uses. Their scaly hides made excellent body armor, shields, and helmets-heavy, smelly, and hot, but tougher than boiled leather and almost as tough as mail. Their bones came in all shapes and sizes, from tiny ones that could be carved into buttons, through larger ones that would make good axe handles, to the ribs that were as tall as a man and would make good roofbeams for fair-sized huts if the Kargoi ever had a chance to build any.

  The claws and teeth would make excellent arrowheads and speartips-not as hard as metal, but more easily replaced and hard enough to deal with most human opponents. The internal organs were too far gone in decay to be much use. Taken from a freshly-killed beast, on the other hand, thoroughly cleaned, and cured in the sun, they would make large, sturdy bags and bottles.

  Blade hacked and slashed, pried and pulled, splattering himself from head to foot with blood and filth until he looked like something found on the floor of a hutcher's shop. Even if the other men had been watching him every minute, they wouldn't have seen anything suspicious. He carved his way deeper and deeper into the decaying bodies without finding anything that shouldn't have been there in a normal beast.

  At last Blade asked everyone to stand back and leave him alone for a short time. It was the custom among the English, he said, to offer the brain of a slain animal as a sacrifice to the Earth Wisdom. It was improper for anyone but a warrior of England to witness the sacrifice.

  The few warriors still on their feet were more than happy to leave him alone, out of respect for his customs and out of a great desire to get away from the acres of reeking carrion. No curious eyes were around when Blade went to work on the skull of the most intact of the reptiles. That was the most likely place left to find some trace of whatever intelligence might lie behind the beasts' attacks.

  Blade closely examined the hide stretched over the huge skull. Any scar, any unnatural bulge might give him a clue. He looked until his eyes were watering and his fingers raw from prodding the scaly hide. All he could find was one strip about a foot long and a couple of inches wide, where the hide seemed a little smoother than elsewhere. It could be the scar of an operation to implant something in or near the brain. It could also be a scar left by a battle against another reptile or by running into a submerged boulder!

  Blade began cutting, slowly and methodically, keeping well clear of the scar. He cut through the hide and into the skull, then began working his way around the scar. At last a circle of hide about a foot in diameter was loose. Blade gripped it by one side and thrust his sword gently in under it, to pry it free.

  As he thrust, the point of his sword struck something solid. Blade poked gently and heard a sound that could only have been made by his sword striking metal or plastic. He drew his sword out, put it down, and began carefully stripping the hide off by hand.

  At last a bloody circle of skull lay exposed. A little to one side of the center was a disk of translucent glass or plastic, about six inches in diameter. Several wires crisscrossed the surface. Blade could make out the faint patterns of what was unmistakably advanced microcircuitry.

  There it was-complete and undeniable evidence that someone was implanting something, probably a control device, in the brains of the sea reptiles.

  Who? The device itself gave no real clues. Microcircuitry obeyed certain basic laws that were the same for any people or race. All that was implied was a certain level of technology-and the existence somewhere in this Dimension of somebody with that level of technology.

  That meant the Kargoi and anybody else who managed to survive the rising waters were in more danger than they could know. No matter how much Blade taught them, they could still be doomed.

  Blade swore, first mentally, then out loud. He didn't feel helpless-he never did-but for once he did feel that the opposition might be a trifle overpowering!

  He put the flap of hide back in place, stood up, and signaled to the others to gather around him. They came slowly, Paor leading them.

  Blade laid his sword across the beast's skull and spoke loudly.

  «The brains of these creatures are not fit for sacrifice. They have been attacked by an evil growth, that makes them mad.»

  Paor nodded. «So that is why they were attacking us?»

  «Yes «

  It was not the best possible lie, but it should last until the Kargoi were ready to learn the truth-if that time ever came.

  Chapter 13

  With all the other men who'd worked beside him, Blade went down to the sea to scrub off the blood and filth. Then Blade rode up to where the smashed wagons lay. He began picking up boards and tying them on the back of his drend.

  Paor followed him. «What are you doing, Blade?»

  «I'm going to build a raft. Do you want to help me?»

  «I suppose I can. Why do you want to build it?»

  «I want to go out on the water farther than I can swim and see how these beasts live there.»

  Paor's mouth opened and he stood speechless for a moment. «Blade, they will come and smash the raft. Then they will gulp you down in a mouthful!»

  «Perhaps. But I do not know that. I do not know many things about these creatures, and I need to know them. The Kargoi need to know them too.»

  «You cannot do this any other way?»

  «Not without sending someone else into danger that I will not face myself. Would you have me do that?»

  Paor was silent again. He could recognize a man who'd made up his mind to the point where there was no arguing with him.

  With the help of half a dozen warriors, the raft quickly took shape. It was about ten feet by six feet, just able to keep Blade afloat and dry. It would never support a sail, so Blade carved one of the reptile ribs into a combination pole and paddle.

  The warriors watched grim-faced from the shore as he set out, and Naula was weeping openly. No doubt his voyage seemed as mad to them as that of Columbus had to his Spanish friends. Blade was not going nearly as far-in fact, he was barely going out of their sight. But he was in just as much danger, if not more.

  Blade had to push and pull the raft some distance before it would float with his weight on it. Then he scrambled aboard and began paddling steadily. Behind him the figures of the watchers on shore grew slowly but surely smaller.

  Blade headed straight away from land. Every few minutes he took soundings with an improvised lead line, a rock tied to a length of rope. He was pleased to find the water getting steadily deeper.

  Out in deep water he would be no more vulnerable to the reptiles then he would be in the shallows. They cou
ld come at him in either place. He would have a better chance of catching a glimpse of the beasts' masters. Those masters would probably keep their distance from shore, even if they swam in the water along with their pets. If they used something like a submarine to control the reptiles' attacks, they would probably have to stay in deep water.

  What they would do to somebody who came out seeking them in deep water was another matter, one not at all pleasant to think about. Again Blade had a painful sensation of going up against outrageously long odds. He would have felt a little better with a rocket launcher, or even a single hand grenade!

  Blade kept paddling until the lead showed eighty feet of water under the raft and a bottom that might have once been a forest. He untangled the half-decayed, weed-grown branch the line brought up and threw it over the side. Then he put up his paddle and squatted in the middle of the raft, waiting and trying to look in all directions at once across the water.

  Slowly the sunset colors blazed in the sky, then faded into darkness. Somewhere beyond the horizon a storm was raging across water and land and the endlessly changing frontier between the two. Blade saw dim, noiseless flashes low down in the dark sky and felt the raft rise and fall on a gentle swell, all that was left of the distant waves. It was a warm night, and so quiet that when Blade dipped a hand over the side of the raft and held it up, the falling drops sounded almost loud.

  Clouds came and went across the face of the moon at irregular intervals. When the moon shone clear there was enough light to see clearly. On Blade's left an isolated hill rose clear of the water. An almost intact stone building was perched halfway up the side facing him. To his right lay a wide stretch of swamp where a large flat hilltop lay just below the surface of the water. Between the two was a wide stretch of empty water, suggesting a valley that was now a deep channel. Certainly that would be a logical route for the sea reptiles and their masters, if the masters were logical-if the masters existed at all.