The Puzzler's War

by Eyal Kless

  “Amazing, isn’t it, Mistress?” Gret waved his hand around, as if he was showing me his own palace. “My missus liked to walk around and just look at all of this. How the hell did they manage to build all that? Must have been some kind of magic.”

  “Yes. Magic,” I agreed solemnly.

  “You look tired. We’ll be home in no time, and you can rest your legs after the climb.”

  I put a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “I know it’s a lot to ask, Gret, but since we are newlywed and all”—I winked and saw him blush a little—“could I ask a kind favour of you?”

  “Sure, Mistress.”

  “Would you drive around a bit? It’s been a long time since I last saw the city.”

  Gret turned his head in surprise. “I didn’t know you were a Towerian. I thought you said you came from Lakewood.”

  “Even farther than that, but I was born here, in this city, and I’ve missed it ever since I was a child.” It was only half a lie, and I could see he was tired, but Gret was a true gentleman.

  “Fine, we can drive a bit.” He shrugged. “But not too long. Summer needs a good rest and some more carrots. Where to?”

  I looked around at the city I grew up in. “Everywhere,” I said.

  Chapter 30

  Mannes

  They took turns beating him. In retrospect, the thought that a few words in clunky Russian, and an offer of peace and a reasonable exchange for mutual benefit, would translate into a warm welcome was naïve at best. Downright stupid, actually. And there was no point in trying to come up with a cover story, what with the Tarakan emblem on his suit, helmet, and kit.

  They made him strip to his undergarments, then proceeded to slap him around some more. The worst one was the man with the eye patch, obviously the youngest. He didn’t even ask questions, just pummeled Mannes again and again to the ground, lifting him to his feet just to hit him once more. All three were drinking heavily during the process, from personal and communal brownish bottles. By the smell of their breath Mannes guessed it was strong enough to fuel the shuttle’s engine. It certainly helped fuel their violence.

  At some point Mannes was hit over the head and lost consciousness again. When he woke up his brain amp was off line. At best, a standard procedure in such cases, or there was permanent damage to his internal hardware. Without the neural translator, Mannes could understand even less of what the three were asking him, and their own grasp of the foreign languages he had tried to use was not great either.

  He did grasp the gist of their meaning. They wanted him to lead them to the shuttle, obviously with the intention of dismantling the craft for anything useful. He tried to negotiate at first, but under the onslaught he broke down embarrasingly quickly, rationalizing that once he got to the shuttle, he might find a way, hopefully with the help of Norma, to defeat them. Truth was, he was terrified, hurt, and unused to violence of any sort.

  They started to head out midafternoon, and Mannes, practically naked except for his underwear and ill-fitting boots, was already shaking from the cold. The trio did not seem to care about Mannes’s condition or even their own. Their camouflage suits, heavy hats, and the vast amount of alcohol in their bloodstream took care of that.

  Without the brain amp or his ability to contact the AI, Mannes felt lost as soon as they entered the woods. It was almost pitch-black when his frustration took away caution and he shouted, “I don’t fucking know where I am. I can’t see a thing and I’m freezing.”

  His reward was as swift as it was painful. The one-eyed maniac actually put a hunting power knife to his throat. Looking into his one healthy eye, Mannes knew for a fact the man fully intended to garrote him there and then, and he lost his bowels. Only a sharp word from the older of the three, a man with a mouth full of golden teeth, stopped the knife from biting into Mannes’s throat. What the one-eyed man didn’t do with the blade, he did with the pommel. Mannes blissfully lost consciousness again, and when he woke up, he was slumped against a pole that had been driven into the almost-frozen ground, hands tightly tied behind his back.

  The trio might have been drunk brutes, but they were veterans at living in the wild. Several more poles were erected and a tight material was spread between them to create a roof over their heads. The one-eyed man turned out to be frightfully good at chopping firewood with his power hand ax. A small fire was soon going, and two portable heaters made the cold bearable. Just. Mannes faced the fire but he was tied to a pole at the edge of the roof, exposed to the elements, and his unprotected back was already throbbing from the cold. He knew that even if he did survive, he would get sick, and if the fire died during the night, so would he.

  After settling down, the trio ate dried meat and drank some more. No food was offered to Mannes, but even if they had offered him something, he would have found it impossible to chew considering the state of his jaw and teeth.

  Eventually one of the men offered Mannes a drink. When he refused, the man poured some of it forcefully down his throat. It was like drinking filtered petrol. He wheezed and coughed and puked to the sound of their guttural laughter. When he woke up again the fire was dying out, his back was getting numb from the cold, and he felt blood in his throat when he coughed. He was dying. And his captors couldn’t have cared less. They didn’t even care enough about what he had to offer them to keep him from dying until he delivered them to the prize. Such was the world he’d landed on.

  They say that before you die, you can see things clearly. It might have been a cliché, but for the first time since he’d encountered the three men, Mannes had a moment of clear thought. He had to escape, and testing the ropes that tied him to the pole, he suddenly had a notion of how to do it.

  The three didn’t bother to leave a guard out on watch and were soon fast asleep, wrapped in heat-trapping blankets. On his third try, Mannes managed to take the cap off his engineer finger. With his other hand, he bent his finger at a painful angle until it touched the ropes. The engineer fingertip contained a small flashlight, which could also be used as a laser pointer that generated a small amount of heat. It took forever, but the ropes slowly began to burn. It also burned Mannes’s skin. He tried to maintain self-control but the choked cry of pain which escaped from his clenched lips was enough to wake up the man with the eye patch, who rose unsteadily to his feet but looked straight at Mannes. There was no use in pretending he was asleep. Mannes watched the man heft his rifle onto his back, kick a small log into the dimming fire and walk slowly towards him. If he smelled the burned rope and flesh, Mannes knew that would be the end of him. Hovering above Mannes, the one-eyed man looked down with menace. Mannes heard his own trembling voice croak the words in Russian which somehow sprang into his mind: “Ya’zamerzayu.” I’m freezing.

  The man laughed and looked up to the sky, and Mannes followed his gaze. A small part of the sky was clear and at that moment something up high, perhaps another satellite, supernovaed and lit the night for a brief second. The man with the eye patch whooped and laughed and cursed in Russian, then looked back down at Mannes with intent.

  He pointed at Mannes, then up. “You,” he said slowly, in broken English, “Tarakan . . . did . . . this.” He pointed up and at Mannes again and said slowly and deliberately in Russian, “You think you are better than us, smarter than us, stronger than us, yeah? You think you can rule over us.” He reverted to broken English, “Here . . . you . . . now . . . slabak . . . veak man.” The man’s hands went to his groin and moved in a manner that all men, regardless of age or nationality, know how to recognise. Mannes’s broken jaw slacked in shock, but he managed to close his mouth and avert his face just in time for the first splash of warm urine to rain down on him. He turned his face to the side and held his breath for as long as he could, but the man had patience, good aim, and apparently a very full bladder. When he was done, the man turned and walked away without saying another word. A minute later he was asleep.

  When the heat seared his flesh again, Mannes bore it, biting his own
tongue till it bled. Eventually he felt his bonds loosen up and suddenly he was free. Mannes rose to his feet with one thought screaming through his mind, flee, but after only a few steps he stopped in his tracks. Where would he run to, naked and in the pitch-darkness of a frozen night? He would die from exposure, and even if he could survive somehow, how long would it take three veteran hunters to track him down?

  Mannes turned back to face the occupants of the tent. They were fast asleep, but in a manner of all battle-hardened soldiers, their weapons were attached to their bodies. Any attempt to seize one, even if successful, would surely wake the others, and he wouldn’t know how to operate a hunting rifle even if he had one in his hands. Mannes’s gaze fell on the power hand ax, lying near a small pile of chopped firewood. He could still smell, fuck, he could taste, the urine on him. A few tender steps and a crouch and the ax was held firmly in his hand. He watched, still crouching, as the three of them slept, then stretched and fished a half-burned log from the fire with his free hand. It would not take much to get them awake, he thought, better end it quickly. He raised the ax above his head and hit the power button as he lunged forward.

  Years later, Mannes would recall the man with the eye patch opening his eye and raising his head just as Mannes’s ax came down. It might not have been completely true, but it made the memory so much sweeter.

  Chapter 31

  Twinkle Eyes

  To my shame, it was Galinak who spotted the circling birds first. After that it was just a matter of following the markings of the tanks through the trampled corn field surrounding the small hamlet.

  So far from a major town, it probably began as a farm inhabited by the survivors of the Catastrophe. As the generations passed, several more houses were built and their inhabitants expanded the fields, added livestock, and heightened the fence to a protective wall, which was now completely in pieces.

  Death was everywhere, from the burned houses and destroyed barn to the animal carcasses that littered the place.

  Galinak kneeled next to a dead dog, ignoring the buzzing flies, and stated the obvious. “This was recent.” He got back to his feet and hefted his weapon.

  I scanned the area. “The only living things here are the crows,” I said.

  “We’ll see about that,” Galinak muttered and took point.

  With the crows feeding, it didn’t take long for us to discover the four rows of bodies. Most were adults, but I saw smaller ones, too. Galinak went to inspect the bodies, walking among the fearless, pecking crows while I stayed a little farther away, trying to look at anything else but the terrible scene before us. I kept my gaze at the direction of the fields though I couldn’t escape the horrendous stench of death.

  Eventually Galinak came back.

  “Soldiers, most of them,” he said. “Dead a day at most.”

  I turned my face towards him in surprise. “Soldiers so far away from the city, are you sure?”

  “They wore uniforms and these,” Galinak held up a torn sleeve with a crude but recognisable City of Towers insignia sewn to it.

  “The ones who fought died fast. Multiple wounds from different angles. The attackers came from at least two directions, and with them war machines to boot; those poor bastards didn’t have a chance.” Galinak turned back to the rows of bodies while I kept my eyes on the fields. “Those who were captured had been tortured, badly, then shot in the back of the head. There are a few farmers, too. Men and young boys. They probably joined the fight to protect their homes. The women got it worst, and the children were collateral damage, looks like from the blasts.”

  “So they took the rest of the farmers, destroyed the barn, tried to burn the field”—I pointed at a large blackened area—“but botched the job. Maybe the wind changed?”

  Galinak turned back and said something but at that moment I saw the figure rise from the corn stalks and aim a rifle at us. I slammed into Galinak’s back too late, the shot had already been fired, but it missed. We rolled over each other in the blood-soaked muck. Galinak was up in a heartbeat.

  It took me longer to get my bearings. I turned my head as I was getting onto my knees and changed my vision into heat-seeking sight. The world erupted into hot, white color, blinding me to almost everything, but I did spot a figure running away in the high corn. “Over there.” I pointed and blinked back to normal vision. Even in that state I could see the corn stalks move as the shooter tried to run away in a straight line from us.

  I made a mental calculation, as I saw Galinak in hot pursuit. The shot was not from too far away, the fact that the shooter missed meant he was probably one of the farmers, a survivor of the massacre. “Don’t kill him,” I shouted after Galinak as he disappeared into the vegetation. From my vantage point I could see the shooter’s line of movement and a second line as Galinak trampled his way astonishingly fast.

  As if this was not enough, Galinak suddenly leaped through the air and landed farther than any man could ever reach. A few moments later he emerged from the field carrying an unconscious body over his shoulder and an ancient bolt-action rifle in his other hand. He tossed the rifle at me and dropped the unconscious man on the ground. The rifle was in a sorry state; even I could see that. I looked at the prone body and berated myself for my hasty assumption. He was no farmer, but to call him a soldier would be stretching the definition of the word. I would have been surprised if he was old enough to shave, and the uniform was too large. The insignia was of the City of Towers, though.

  “Only six bullets.” Galinak patted a side pocket.

  “I guess we’re even on lifesaving moves now,” I said to him.

  “I carried you on my shoulder from a poisonous bunker, downed a Dwaine that was about to blow your head off, and you’re calling pushing me into the mud ‘lifesaving’?” Galinak wiped his hands on his trousers. “The state of this rifle, he wouldn’t have hit us if we were standing on each other’s shoulders.”

  “I think it’s the thought that counts.”

  “I think you still owe me. Big time.”

  “Fine. Now let me ask the right questions. Guess you’re the ‘bad Troll’ and I’m the ‘good Troll’ with this one?”

  Galinak’s smile was broader this time. “I’m always the ‘bad Troll.’” He gave the unconscious body a light shove with his boot, which rolled the soldier onto his back. There was blood coming out of his mouth. He moaned a little, then opened his eyes.

  I had come out of unconsciousness a few times just to see Galinak’s grinning face above me, so although he’d just tried to shoot us, I was feeling a little sorry for this boy.

  Once he managed to focus on Galinak towering above him, a look of utter terror swept across his face. I stepped in and got his attention by waving the rifle.

  “Let me make it nice and short. You answer my questions and you might live. You lie, and you join your friends over there.” I pointed at the row of bodies as he slowly got up to a sitting position. Galinak stepped aside so he could have a clear view. The effect was dramatic. A soft whine escaped his lips and he began to tremble.

  “Are they all . . . all of them . . . ?”

  “Tortured, raped, and murdered, sometimes not in that order,” Galinak said just as, in perfect timing, a crow hopped past holding an eyeball in its beak.

  The boy soldier turned to his side and threw up.

  I shot Galinak a warning glance. He shrugged back at me. I turned my attention back to the young soldier. “What is your name?”

  The boy spat out the last of his bile and straightened up again. He was as white as a ghost but was trying to control himself. His voice still trembled when he answered. “Dorian, sir, Dorian of the Swas family.” His foreign accent and the way he specified his family name betrayed him not to be a true Towerian.

  “Who did this?”

  Dorian did not hesitate. “Northerners, sir.”

  “Are you sure?” I said with enough surprise in my voice to cause a reaction. “I mean, the last time I was here, the Northerners w
ere quiet enough, selling oil for food and supplies and keeping to themselves.”

  The young soldier shook his head. “It musta been a while since you’ve been to these lands, sir. The war with the North been going on for three springs. They were Northerners, all right. I know it because we had to run away last year from me own home when the Northerners came to our town.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Heaven’s Retreat, Mister, it is . . . it was a small town, you probably haven’t heard of it.”

  “Actually I’ve been there,” I answered and somehow this fact cheered the boy up a little. “But it’s nowhere near the North.”

  “I know. We heard the Oil Baron took some land and that the city sent a force of Towerian Trolls to give him a good beating, but they say the Baron laid a clever trap for them and came with those war machines, slaughtering the Tower’s army to the last Troll.”

  The voice of my LoreMaster resonated in my mind. You invented something that gave you an edge over all others: steel-tipped spears, a war chariot, longbows, a cart that moved without horses, and suddenly the world fell at your feet. That is, until another nation found a better technological advancement, and your own empire crumbled to dust. When I was last in the City of Towers, the word on the Oil Baron was that he was just the weak son of a mercenary captain who had taken control of an oil refinery and with whom it was cheaper to do business than to conquer. A decade earlier his father tried to expand his turf and was beaten bloody. Now, it seemed, the tables had turned.

  Unaware of my inner thoughts, the young soldier continued to talk. “We thought the Baron would stop there, but the next year refugees began showing up at our gate, all telling the same story. A raiding party attacked them, or their neighbours. Those who were not murdered were taken as slaves, and their homes and fields were burned.