Voidfarer

by Sean McMullen

  "Perchance I did not hear that. On your way, Inspector." XXX

  Large but sparse drops of rain were falling as we passed through the main gates of the town. Soon we were driving through the fields, still slightly ahead of the storm. Wallas's task was more to keep us on the road than navigate, for although he made several determined attempts to misdirect us, the flashes of lightning were only a half minute or so apart, and were enough to indicate our location.

  "Ladyship, I was filled with admiration by your mathematical study of the Lupanian heat weapon," I said quite suddenly.

  As far as I could tell I was not even thinking, but suddenly I was hearing myself speak the words.

  "Why, Inspector, thank you, that means a lot to me," Lavenci replied, without a trace of anything but sincerity in her voice.

  "Ah, so you do like to be admired for your intellect?"

  "Perhaps, I do not think upon it. But I certainly like to be regarded well by intelligent men, like you."

  That taxed my talent for snappy replies. Again I was confronted with the depressing fact that I liked her, even though she was liable to do something horribly hurtful to me, and probably with the aid of a less intelligent man—if I let her near me again. It was all so unfair.

  "What do you think the Lupanians have come here to do?" Lavenci asked presently.

  "Were I a Lupanian, I would not come all this way to hide in a pit," I replied. "They must have things that pass for horses and armor. If they can move with that heat beam, we are in very serious trouble."

  "But why are they here?" Lavenci insisted.

  "Why does any ruler invade the lands of another?" I asked. "Why do tomcats piss in each other's territory?"

  "I do no such thing!" cried Wallas, who was now more angry than afraid. "I use the privy like real people. Have to maintain cultural connections with my true species, you know."

  'The duke set off for the third cylinder with his river galleys within two hours of sunset," I continued. "We shall arrive there later than he."

  "And do what?" asked Lavenci.

  "Wait at the cylinder until it opens, probably a little after dawn. Every mother's son of them will be watching the hatchway as it unscrews. Lady Lavenci, you must set off a brilliance casting right over it, and while they flounder about blinded, I shall step past them, flame the Lupanians before they can deploy their weapons, then get back on the cart with you and leave with all possible haste."

  "I am not a powerful sorceress, I am more of a scholar," said Lavenci, cowering slightly. "Such a casting will leave me too weak to walk more than a few steps for many hours."

  "If all goes well, you will not have to do much walking." We passed through a village, and lightning briefly illuminated a sign declaring it to be Thissendel. We continued on into the darkness. Suddenly the storm front lashed across us, but Lavenci had borrowed two raincapes from Madame Norellie, so we remained passably dry. As we skirted the edge of the forest through a continuous wall of pelting rain, lightning burst across the sky every five or ten heartbeats. Wallas complained continually.

  "I have averaged three hours sleep for the two nights past," I shouted back at him. "I suspect that this night will allow me no sleep at all."

  "I could have been safe and asleep in Norellie's house," said Lavenci, "and you could probably have been safe and asleep in Mervielle's bed, Inspector. Did you realize she was helping Norellie just so that she could see you again?"

  "Who is Mervielle?" asked Wallas.

  "A rather pleasant wench," I replied.

  "My type?"

  "Were you not in feline circumstances, perhaps." "That was uncalled for. So, you and Lady Lavenci are not, er..."

  "Our relationship is quite professional," replied Lavenci tonelessly.

  "Oh, you mean he has to pay first?" asked Wallas.

  "How would you like a flight halfway across the River Al-ber?" I asked.

  "With half a brick tied to your tail?" added Lavenci.

  "I say, I say, hate to change the subject, but I see the glow of lanterns up ahead," said Wallas. "I believe that we may have reached the third cylinder, and that the duke has indeed arrived there first."

  At that moment an extended blaze of lightning lit up the countryside with a purple glow. A thing burst out of the forest ahead of us, a nightmare that had no precedent in all of my life's experience. It was about the height of Gatrov's watchtower. Imagine a battle helmet ten feet high, connected by complex, jointed latticework to a second helmet below it, with three latticework legs supporting the second helmet. Every joint glowed with crackles of violet fire. The entire thing must have stood a hundred feet tall, and I caught sight of tentacles holding a glowing sphere that was a heat weapon.

  "Friggin' enormous spider with tentacles and wearing a helmet, dead ahead!" shrieked Wallas. "Suggest evasion!"

  "Would you like the bag with the crossbows?" asked Lavenci, whose experience with battles was so limited that she could not distinguish between vague threat and mind-numbingly overwhelming danger.

  Another burst of lightning lit up the descent of the enormous latticework leg of a second tower not thirty feet in front of us and right in the middle of the road. My subconscious apparently told my reflexes that seizing a handful of Lavenci's clothing and dragging her from the cart with me as I leaped was the most sensible thing to do in the circumstances. She shrieked with the pain of my touch, and along with her came the sacks with Wallas and the crossbows. Our descent was cushioned by a deep puddle. I tried to gasp, swallowed water, surfaced, and heard the clatter of the cart and pony continuing along the road, apparently missing the tower's leg that had descended before us. A half-dozen heartbeats later the tower's controlling intelligence—which could apparently see in the dark—caught sight of our vehicle, decided that it was a threat, and raked it with the heat weapon. The hellfire oil for the flamethrower detonated in a quite impressive fireball.

  "Shit me," declared Wallas from somewhere in the sodden darkness.

  "Shit yourself," I replied, lying low.

  "Actually, I have."

  "Ladyship, are you all right?" I called above the hiss of rain.

  "My right knee hurts, and my left hand hurts a lot more," reported Lavenci from nearby. "Inspector, you said nothing about huge, walking towers."

  "This is the first I've seen of them," I responded.

  "My fur is soaked, I'm up to my balls in water, and I think I have a broken rib!" said Wallas. "Can I be released from this bloody bag?"

  "No!" I hissed. "You'll take off like a scalded cat."

  "We're lying in a puddle of water in freezing rain, and you talk about being scalded?"

  "Draw the attention of those towers to yourself and you'll soon be more than scalded."

  The pony was dead, having been sliced open and burst by the heat casting. I could see this by the light of the burning cart, which was still more or less harnessed to it. We were only a quarter mile or so from the third cylinder, and I did not need another lightning flash to see the fireballs roiling up into the air as the two tripod towers annihilated the duke's flamethrowers. The duke's river galleys and marines soon went the same way. We took the opportunity to crawl out of the puddle and into the relative shelter of a small stand of trees at the edge of the forest. From here we saw that one tripod had straddled the pit containing the third cylinder, and was shining an intense green light down onto it while the other strode about warily, occasionally picking off a surviving river marine with a spat of heat.

  "It seems to be reaching its tentacles down into the pit," said Lavenci.

  "Perhaps it is helping the new arrivals get their hatch open faster," I suggested—correctly as it turned out. "The rain does not seem to affect them."

  "How could they have brought such huge towers across with them?" asked Lavenci. "I doubt that they would have fitted in the cylinder." I considered our position. The attack had failed before it had started because of the towers, but it was still possible to do some good by discovering where
the towers had come from. I released Wallas from the sack.

  "Lavenci, Wallas, there's a half-fallen tree over there. We can use it for shelter."

  The tree's wide trunk kept most of the rain off, but the view was no better. Light, smoke, clanking, and ululations were all that we could see and hear from the Lupanians, and that told us very little.

  "Can't see what's doing," I said, straining to peer through the gloom with my farsight.

  "To crawl to the edge of the pit would be death," said Lavenci.

  "But they might not notice a cat—" I began.

  'Wo.'" snapped Wallas. "Not under any circumstances."

  'Then I'll do it," I decided.

  "After all we have just seen and been through, you want to get closer?" responded Lavenci.

  "He's a hero, they do things like that," said Wallas. "I prefer the way of cowardice, because it is obvious that a live coward makes a better bedmate than a dead hero—ow!"

  The green light from the tower lit my way as I slipped among the trees. The edge of the forest came to within perhaps two hundred yards of the third cylinder, and it was here that I climbed a tree for a better view. The bark was wet and slippery in the rain, but it was better than approaching the pit over open ground. As I climbed, I noticed a stray crossbow bolt stuck in the trunk. The river marines had fought back, that was clear enough. My farsight gave about as good a view as might have been hoped for.

  The first thing I noticed was that there was a ghostly casting in the shape of a tower's hood floating in the air not far from the cylinder. Below this was a puddle of molten soil, apparently melted by a heat casting from the cylinder. Other magical castings flickered about in the pit, all trailing long, glowing webs and filaments. After observing their work for some time, I realized that the filaments were of molten soil, and that they were being woven into a third tower. The Lupanians did not bring their towers through the void, they spun them from the soil of the world they were invading. I thought long and hard on this as I huddled beneath the tree in my rain cape. The glass of a bottle is very hard, yet brittle. Draw molten glass into a long fiber and it becomes quite flexible. Perhaps weaving glass fibers produced a material that was hard without being brittle.

  I spent more than three hours in the tree, during which the Lupanians began to assemble yet another tower as the third one began to grow legs. I decided to climb down and return to Lavenci, partly because I was no longer learning anything

  new, and partly because I was almost too stiff with cold to move.

  "They are assembling two more towers," I reported as I returned to the shelter of the leaning tree. "We should flee while they are busy, and while it is still dark."

  "First sensible thing you have said all night," grumbled Wallas.

  "How do they make the towers?" asked Lavenci.

  "They are spun out of molten sand and soil, as far as I can make out. That green light is the glow from their fabrication castings."

  'They must have passed by the second cylinder and seen what Halland's flamethrowers did there," said Lavenci. "No wonder they were a bit cross."

  "More to the point, they will make sure that there is a tower or two standing guard over all the remaining cylinders as they open. We have lost surprise, our only advantage over them."

  "But there are powerful beings on our world, too," said Lavenci. "Perhaps the glass dragons can be rallied."

  "Then we had better start rallying them right away. The rain seems to be easing, so time to begin a very, very cautious, and furtive walk back to Gatrov."

  Lavenci's knee was quite painful, but I could not carry her because of the glamour. I improvised a crutch from a sapling, however, and she was soon able to manage quite a reasonable pace. We got about a mile before we came upon an empty cowshed on the edge of the forest. It seemed to have been struck by a heat casting, because part of its roof had caught fire and fallen in. The walls were of stone, and were still more or less intact, however. It did not take much persuasion to convince me to stop there, because the walls were a windbreak and we could dry our clothes and warm ourselves with the embers.

  "Why do you think they blasted a cowshed?" said Wallas as he selected a warm and sheltered spot for himself. "Even I have never felt threatened by a cow."

  "It was a target, and they were of a mind to shoot. I have seen lancers ride down and slaughter the enemy's sheep for sport, then leave the bodies to rot."

  "Oh! I don't suppose they slaughtered any cows, did they? You abducted me before dinner."

  "Feel free to search, Wallas. My priority is to get warm and dry."

  "On second thought..." said Wallas, yawning.

  Wallas curled up on a fire-warmed stone and was soon asleep. Lavenci and I spent the best part of the night steaming parts of our clothing over the glowing embers of the roof beams, and by first light we were dry, dressed, and ready to travel. By then the storm clouds had cleared to reveal a crystal-clear sky.

  "Gatrov is the only large town within a thirty-mile circle; so the towers will attack there soon," I said as we got ready to leave. "We must go there."

  "You want to go where those things are sure to follow?" asked Wallas.

  "Yes. The folk there need to be warned. We go to Gatrov."

  "After all you've done to me, why should I?"

  "Because you are a cat, and because my hand has just seized you by the neck, and because I am a person who has had a very, very bad night, and is feeling inclined to take it out on anyone who crosses me."

  "All right, all right, just making sure I know where I stand."

  "We can have the town warned and evacuated with time to spare," I explained.

  "It took two days for the Lupanians in the first cylinder to build their fighting towers, those in the second cylinder are dead, so we have a day and a half before the towers from the third cylinder are ready. My theory is that the two operational towers back there will stand guard until the next two are complete."

  "It sounds plausible," said Lavenci.

  As theories went, it was extremely plausible, yet like most plausible theories, it was wrong. The towers had opened the third cylinder only hours after it had landed, then had added their casting power to that of the Lupanians who had just arrived. This had speeded up the construction process considerably. The invaders certainly knew the value of pressing an advantage, and of never allowing an enemy to pause and take stock.

  Chapter Ten

  WHAT I SAW OF THE DESTRUCTION OF GATROV

  It would have been an hour or so after dawn when Lavenci, Wallas, and I reached the village of Thissendel. Nearly everyone was still asleep, owing to some World Mother revel conducted the night before—as far as we could tell from the empty jars, discarded clothing, and fertility charms under a large pavilion on the village green. Only the more dedicated drinkers were awake. We made an attempt to warn them about Lupanians in hundred-foot-high walking towers of spun glass, armed with heat castings, and possessed of bad attitude, but our audience merely asked what we had been drinking and whether there was any left for them. We left the village to its fate and hurried on.

  "Those in Gatrov will pay us no more attention," Wallas pointed out.

  "The head of the militia, Commander Halland, believes us," I replied. "Our warning will be voiced about, and those with the sense to flee will at least have a chance."

  "Well, of all people, we ought to have the sense to flee, yet what are we doing?"

  "Wallas, by noon you may rest assured that I shall be on a barge bound for Alberin or a haycart bound for deep in the forest. You are welcome to join me, as are you, ladyship. The Lupanians will not arrive for another twenty-four hours. I think— what's that?"

  "The Lupanians?" gasped Wallas and Lavenci together. Not far ahead of us, a figure strode out of the cover of some bushes and stood confronting us in the middle of the road. He held an ax at the ready.

  "Drop your purses and weapons, then turn back to Thissendel," he ordered. "A dozen crossbows are trained on you
r hearts."

  "Pelmore, that's bullshit and we know it as well as you do," I replied.

  "You!" he gasped, then he recognized Lavenci and began backing away from us as we approached.

  "Don't tell me, you are leaving Gatrov due to the humiliating circumstances of your wedding," I said as we advanced on him. "You thought to rob a few florins on the way."

  "At least you can no longer rob by seduction," growled Lavenci. Pelmore seemed to deduce that we did not mean to attack. He put the ax back in his belt and stopped.

  "So, how did the wedding go?" I asked brightly. "Was your sweetheart surprised by your, er, shortcoming?"

  "My sweetheart, the pure and unblemished country maiden!" exclaimed Pelmore.

  "Pah!"

  "What do you mean?" I asked, although I already had a fair idea.

  "The wedding was at dusk, every vendor's family from the market was there. All went well until... until my false true-love came abed with me. She, she, she

  ..."

  "She told you she had been led to believe by older and wiser women that something more substantial was to be expected?" I ventured.

  "She laughed. Laughed! I tried to explain that it was normal, but she ..."

  "Was only seventy-five percent virginal, and thus knew better?" I asked.

  "The vile betrayer."

  "Fifty percent?"

  "The dirty little baggage."

  "Twenty-five percent?"

  "The shameless slut!"

  "Surely not zero?"

  "She had a fit of the giggles at the sight of my ... problem. It loosened her tongue, and she let slip shameful truths."

  "So, she'd had experience with the dalliance equipment of another?" I asked, welcoming the brief diversion from matters of mass slaughter, heat weapons, giant fighting tripod towers, and how to incinerate homicidal Lupanian warriors before they managed to do that to oneself.

  "Half a dozen others!" snapped Pelmore. "At least. She said that their, their attributes were all ten times more impressive. Even Horry Cutfast had a bigger one."

  "Who is Horry Cutfast?" asked Wallas, who was sitting on my backpack and keeping watch behind us.