by Джеффри Лорд
«Who are you?»
«I–I-my name is Rena.»
«Was this your village?»
«Oh-I-yes. I-«and she burst into tears. Blade put his arms around her and held her against him while she choked and sobbed and gasped out words like «the Ice Dragons» and «murdered, murdered everybody they didn’t take away.» Gradually she calmed, but as she did so Blade was aware that the pressure of her slim, delicately curved body against his was beginning to arouse him, and looking into her eyes he saw the beginning of a strange arousal there, too.
Stepping back a pace, he put his arms on her shoulders and looked straight at her. There was a long pause while he watched her eyes, to see whether acceptance or revulsion would show there, then moved his hands gently down the rounded slope of her shoulders to cup her breasts. She gave a little gasp, but Blade felt the small brownish nipples rising to delicately firm points against his palms. She gave a louder gasp now, and her own hands rose seemingly of their own accord to press against his chest and wander from there up to his face and down again, feeling the massive muscles of his arms and torso, over his board-hard and board-flat stomach, down to wrap work-hardened but delicate fingers around his swollen manhood.
Now it was his turn to gasp as his urgency increased. He drew his own hands down from her breasts, down to her hips, to cup her buttocks and pull her against him still harder. As he did so, she let her knees bend and folded herself backward, down to the ground. He followed her, and as he bent down on top of her she spread her legs and let him into her. Again she gasped, and her legs bent again, rising and locking around his back as he drove deep into her, at first as gently as he could, then with ever increasing force and speed as his control slipped. But her passion mounted to match his, and in the end his wild spurting into her and her twisting and moaning were almost at the same moment. He rolled off her after a little while, then pulled her gently against him again, as he would have done with a kitten or a child. After a while her eyes, closed during her climax, fluttered open, and her weather-chapped lips crinkled faintly in a smile.
«I-you are not a Dragon Master, I know now. They-if they see a woman they want, they-«She could not go on. Blade nodded and held her again. Gradually, the relaxation of tension and the new trust in him that their lovemaking had brought to her loosened her tongue, and bit by bit, still halting, she told him of herself, her village, and what had happened to it.
Rena’s village-she knew it as East Pass Town-had been one of the northernmost villages of the Treduki-the «Coldlanders»-as opposed to the Graduki-the «Warmlanders,» who lived in the warmer, temperate regions of this world, rather than farther north, nearer the glaciers. The glaciers had been advancing south for many generations, grinding out of existence one Treduk community after another, and driving the people farther and farther south. Some had, over the centuries, given up and tried to flee all the way to the cities of the Graduki. But these despised the Treduki as barbarians. Those who fled were usually killed outright or enslaved; at times they might be allowed to live free but confined to menial tasks and poor areas. In the end this discouraged refugees.
But the Treduki in their turn saw how physically feeble the Graduki seemed as a result of their reliance on machines, and in turn came to despise them. Blade could understand why the Treduki might despise a more mechanized people, if Rena’s endurance, muscles, and genuine skill in unarmed combat were typical of her people.
But neither the glaciers nor the undeclared war between the two peoples was the greatest danger any more. In the past few years the Ice Dragons had come, monstrous creatures that swarmed out of the night to fall on Treduk villages. The Dragons smashed and slaughtered with their stamping feet and their lashing tails and their terrible jaws. And the men who rode and controlled them, the Dragon Masters, added to the horrors by orgies of looting and raping, and by capturing with the sticky webs scores of younger men and women, to carry them away to the north and an unknown and unthinkable fate. Rena had at first feared Blade was a Dragon Master returned to visit the scene of the raid of the previous night. Rena and perhaps a few others had escaped by simply running into the forest at the first sound of the Dragons crashing into the town’s walls. But most of the people had either failed to run, or decided to stay and actively fight with their weapons-spears, axes, swords, pikes, bows, and what Blade recognized from Rena’s description as crude but workable black-powder guns.
The Ice Dragons particularly intrigued Blade. It took him many patient questions and much soothing of Rena’s trembling and shivering at the memory of seeing them looming out of the night, to get anything like a coherent description of them out of her. They were apparently enormous-Blade realized that his guess about dinosaur-sized creatures had been right-incredibly savage, and apparently invulnerable to any weapons the Treduki possessed. (That was another reason for their hatred of the Graduki-the latter, it appeared, possessed weapons that could have sliced the Ice Dragons and their Masters into little pieces or broiled them like steaks in a matter of seconds. But they would not make these available to the despised Treduki.) The Dragon Masters rode on the backs of their mounts, and controlled them with small rods-ridiculously small, it seemed to Rena, to have any effect on such great beasts. Perhaps the Dragon Masters themselves had advanced knowledge, like the Graduki?
That seemed to Blade a virtual certainty. The Ice Dragons did not sound like the product of any sort of natural evolution that he was prepared to believe in, at least not on this world. Moreover, from Rena’s account, he had the impression that the worsening of the climate that brought the glaciers south-and presumably north from the opposite pole-had moved in with unnatural speed. But the earlier days of the glaciation were far back in a now legend-haunted past, so he could not be sure.
Whatever was abroad in this world, it deserved more inquiry. But the first step in that would have to be finding clothes and food, then making his way with Rena to the nearest surviving Treduk village. Rena indicated that the town of Irdna would be-if not stricken by the Ice Dragons also-off to the south and about two hours away. The day was wearing on; Blade knew it was time to equip themselves and move out.
Rena was understandably reluctant to return to the wreckage of the village which hid the mangled bodies of her family. Blade scrounged the necessary gear for their cross-country hike, though he found it a thoroughly unpleasant job. It involved burrowing into the ruins of cottages and shops and finding in nearly every one the bodies of villagers-chests crushed in by falling timbers, limbs bitten off by Ice Dragon jaws, some showing signs of torture and mutilation by the Dragon Masters. As he had expected, most of the young men and women were entirely gone-spirited away on the backs of the Dragons. After a quick meal of salted meat and crackers, they dressed themselves and began the hike to Irdna.
Rena’s idea of two hours walking was rather generous. It was well into the evening before they met the Irdnan patrols flung out along the riverbank toward East Pass. The Irdnans were suspicious of Blade until Rena explained who he was, and somewhat reserved even after that. He understood their attitude; living out here on a frontier in constant deadly danger had made the Treduki draw in on themselves and become cautious with strangers. He made no attempt to question the Irdnan patrol, but simply fell in behind them for the last miles of the march to the town.
He was impressed by the discipline and order of the patrol. Although they all wore the tunic-breeches-boot combination that seemed to be standard among the Treduki, it was as close to a uniform as the crude materials and tailoring permitted. Most of them carried long, heavy flintlock muskets as well as swords or axes. Their leader, a youngish man named Nilando with a Viking-style blond beard and braided hair, carried a large pistol with a silvered mounting and wore a chain of heavy brass links around his thick, tanned neck. The patrol kept good march order, and there was much looking from side to side of the path until finally the gate towers of Irdna came in sight beyond the treetops.
Irdna was many times the size of East
Pass Town. Not only was its wall of stone and brick, but it was further surrounded by fields laboriously hacked out of the forest, in which anemic crops of grain were beginning to sprout. It lay close to the riverbank, and alongside a pier mounting several small guns on swivel mounts lay a number of stout, slab-sided boats.
Nilando turned to Blade after the gate had slammed shut behind them and said gruffly, «Rena tells me you saw nothing of the Ice Dragons’ attack on her village. Is that right?»
«It is. I had traveled far that day, and-«
«No matter. There would have been nothing you could have done in any case. But we bring all survivors of Ice Dragon attacks before our town leaders. They send what the survivors tell them to the Council of Resistance in Tengran.»
«The Council of Resistance?» Blade sensed that there was something here that Nilando might not reveal if he thought Blade was probing directly.
«We of the Treduki are sworn to resist the Ice Dragons and their Masters to the death. Our hearts are not rotted by warmth like those of the Graduki. So from each survivor of an attack we learn what he saw and heard, and the Council adds it to their great books. Someday we will use what is in those books to destroy the Ice Dragons and make the ice go back north, to where the legends say it once was.»
Blade shook his head. He could hardly explain to this tough young soldier that his people were fighting a foredoomed battle, as hopeless as that of a tribe of savages against a modern army. Nor did he really feel like undercutting the man’s courage by even trying to do so.
Nilando went on. «Rena has made us believe that you are no Dragon Master, and I trust the word of a Free Woman of the Treduki. Even more do I trust one who would have been my betrothed within the space of another moon’s waning. But until we know what you are, we must confine you. It will be only for a few days, and you need have little fear for yourself. We are not the Graduki, to slay or enslave a stranger merely because he is a stranger.» He and Blade shook hands, then two of the patrol stepped forward and led Blade away.
Chapter 4
The sparse comforts of the room in the town hall where Blade was confined did more to increase his confidence in the Treduki than all Nilando’s promises, however sincere the man might be. The room had a rough wooden bedstead with a straw-filled mattress and plenty of pillows and coarse wool blankets, a chair, a table with a water jug and eating utensils on top of it, a large chest, and in one corner a wooden bucket with a lid. It was, Blade suspected, hardly more uncomfortable than the rooms in which many of the Irdnans themselves lived. Only the locked door with the armed sentry outside suggested that he was not a guest.
The light coming in through the bars of the single high window gradually turned red, then faded away entirely, and the sounds of daytime gradually gave way to those of evening and night. An elderly woman brought in a large loaf of coarse gray bread, an equally large lump of pale yellow cheese, a pot of stew, a handful of apples, and a bucket from which she filled the water jug. Blade thanked her and proceeded to dismantle the meal with an appetite sharpened by the day’s activities and unhindered by any fear of poison or drugs. Nothing about the tough, proud Treduki suggested they would do such a thing, even to a person more dangerous than himself-except perhaps to a Dragon Master. If one of those could be somehow captured and interrogated, he might reveal much of what was going on up there to the north where the Dragons laired. Or rather, where whoever was responsible for the Dragons caused them to lair.
The more he considered what he had seen and heard, the more he was convinced that at some point along the line from the first advance of the glaciers to the Ice Dragons and their Masters a superior technology was operating. Not that of the Graduki either. Unless those people were extraordinarily willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces, they could hardly be responsible for systematically creating an ice age simply to attack the Treduki. Especially when one considered that the Graduk-Treduk rivalry had apparently become really serious only after the glaciers began their march.
Even if the Graduki were not responsible for the glaciation, they were certainly the people whom Blade had to approach while in this dimension. As much as he liked the Treduki, he had to face the fact that they had little to teach him or give him to bring back to Home Dimension. Possibly the Graduki didn’t either, since Blade was not at all sure how good the Treduki were at recognizing a «superior» technology. But the Treduki had so far shown nothing that would have caused surprise in the days of Oliver Cromwell. Even if he wanted to help them in their resistance to the ice and its monstrous spawn, he would also need to meet the Graduki and find ways of making use of their superior technology for that purpose.
But how to get to the Graduki, without simply fleeing into the forest or stealing a boat and making his way down the river? That would betray the considerable trust Nilando and Rena had already placed in him, and besides, what he had heard suggested that the nearest Graduk settlement was at least two thousand miles farther south. He would be doing well to cross that distance unhampered by natural accidents, let alone by hostile Treduki.
The question kept, his mind working for a time, but it was not so urgent that he felt inclined to lose sleep over it, and fatigue gradually crept over him without resistance. His last thoughts as he drifted off to sleep were erotic memories of Rena.
He was awakened by a continuous blaring of trumpets from the wall, interspersed with the occasional boom of the guns on the river pier. Crimson light from torches was pouring in through the cell window. He heard shouts of anger, screams of panic, feet pounding past in all directions and in all numbers from one man to a score, ponies neighing, pigs squealing, the clatter of weapons, and the rumble of cartwheels. He hurled himself out of bed and snatched up his clothes, jerking them on as though the devil himself were knocking at the door. That might not be too far from the truth. Only one thing could be making the Irdnans turn out like this in the middle of the night.
The sentry at the door was gone, but the door was still locked. Blade shook the bars until they rattled and clanged like a smithy, bellowed in a voice louder than the panic-stricken livestock, and finally picked up the table and began swinging it against the lock. Wood splintered and smashed, metal groaned and twisted. He nearly had the lock freed when two guards came running up with pistols in their hands.
«Let me out, you idiots!» Blade yelled. «I’m a fighting man in my own land. I can help you.»
«N-n-no one can help us n-n-now,» moaned one of the guards. «Only maybe the Keeper of the Gates of the Dark World. The Ice Dragons are on us!»
«Damn you!» roared Blade. «All the more reason to let me out. Do you want to let a man die like a trapped animal here?» The two guards looked at each other, and some of the panic faded from their eyes. Dying on one’s feet was a message they understood. One of them pulled out a key and turned it in the battered lock. Miraculously it still functioned, and the door clicked open.
As the door swung free, the noise outside grew to a terrible droning roar that seemed to come from all sides at once. The two guards took off at a dead run, leaving Blade to make his own way out of the cell.
The hall was almost deserted. The few people scuttling aimlessly about had too much on their minds to notice Blade. None were prepared to challenge him when he ran down to the cellar to where he suspected the armory would be, and was rewarded by the sights of muskets, pikes, and bows. He had no idea of how to handle a flintlock muzzleloader and obviously would have no time to learn; tonight it was going to be cold steel for him. He snatched up an axe in one hand and hooked the thong through his belt, and with the other hand scooped up a five-foot bow and a quiver of arrows. Even in the seconds that this took, the noise outside rose still further, until it seemed that the robust stone arches of the building and its heavy roof timbers must crumble, crack, and fall down about his ears. As he sprinted up the stairs again, it was like running in a dream-the clatter of his boots on the stone stairs was noiseless in all the surrounding uproar.
Irdna was built around a central square, with the town hall and other public buildings in the middle of the square. The shops and houses stood in two concentric rectangles around it, their windowless outer walls forming extra barriers to anyone penetrating into the town even if they breached the outer wall.
Blade saw that the rooftops and walls had sprouted clusters of armed men. Two additional groups had stationed themselves in the main square, each facing down one of the wide streets that led to the two main gates. Both streets had also been blocked with overturned carts, and Blade saw working parties busily piling timbers and sacks of grain to strengthen the barricades. All the people-a good proportion of the fighters were women-seemed armed to the teeth, with firearms, cold steel, and bows. The parties facing the streets each had a small artillery piece on a four-wheeled carriage, and Blade saw fuses smoldering and shot stacked ready for use.
Hundreds of old people and children were pouring into the square, huddling against the walls of the inner layer of buildings and avoiding both the streets and the open center of the town square. Blade wondered why they had not stayed in their homes, then remembered the way the village houses had been pushed in on themselves. Anyone caught in his house would be likely to die under the collapsing rubble, while in the open he might at least run. And no doubt the people had vain, vague hopes that the walls and the fighting parties would keep the Ice Dragons from ever reaching the center of town.
