Ice Dragon rb-10

by Джеффри Лорд

  There was nothing more for Blade to do here except leave his three companions to reinforce the elevator guard, then head for the stairway as fast as he could go. Leyndt would be safer here with nine men around her than anywhere else for the time being, and he would be unencumbered.

  Two raiders lifted their swords in greeting as Blade ran up to the stairway door and plunged in and down. His pounding feet raised echoes that boomed up and down the metal-walled tube as he raced downward, weapons at the ready, ears listening for signs of activity behind or ahead. He passed doors with the locks thrown from the stair side; it would take the guards and a battering ram to get through those doors and into the stairway now. At two of those doors Blade saw blood trickling from under the door’s edge, and at one of them two bodies-one a raider, one a guard-had been dragged to one side and piled on top of each other.

  From the elevator chamber to the bottom of the stronghold was some five hundred vertical feet, but down the endlessly spiraling staircase it seemed far longer. Blade’s legs began to feel rubbery as he approached the bottom, and the sweat was sluicing off him like water off a melting glacier. He estimated he was less than fifty feet from the bottom when he heard the sound of footsteps below him on the stairs-many sets of feet, climbing fast but irregularly. He tightened his grip on both sword and knife, wished briefly for a spear, then flattened himself against the wall, waiting for the climbers to heave into view around the bend.

  The footsteps rose to a tumult, with little whimpering cries and sobbing gasps mixed in, then Lora and another of the Girls trotted around the bend, each one carrying a guard’s spear in her right hand and a guard’s truncheon in her left. Behind them came a long straggling line of slaves and Girls, singly or in twos and threes, panting and struggling upward, urged on by the two Girls leading them. As Lora caught sight of Blade, her face split apart in a broad grin, but she was in too much of a hurry or perhaps too short of breath to say anything. The procession flowed on up past Blade; he counted seventy or more of them before the last Girl (another of the ones to whom he had given Pleasure, also armed) was out of sight. He continued downward, feeling better in the knowledge that at least a few of those whom the Ice Master had condemned to a living death in the stronghold might win freedom.

  Now sounds made their way up the staircase-people running, voices shouting, and occasionally short bursts of combat. Footsteps climbing upward sounded again below him, and again he plastered himself against the wall as another procession of slaves and Girls flowed upward and out of sight, this one escorted by three or four wounded raiders and moving faster than the first. Blade resumed his course downward, bounded down the last three steps at one leap, and stalked out onto the slave floor.

  He had barely time to notice the four raiders standing guard in a broad arc around the stairway door and the dozen or more bodies-one of them a Girl with a spear in her hand and another through her body-when he became aware of the odor that was drifting down the corridor that led to the central chamber of the floor. The central chamber-where the shaft that led down to the Menel began. And the odor was the musky, sour-bitter reek of the Menel themselves. He pushed his legs on, faster and faster, racing down the corridor to meet what he knew was coming. More than the odor now came down the corridor-uneasy mutterings, half-stifled cries of fear, inarticulate growls that he guessed might be from the Menel’s guards. He stepped up his pace again, saw the chamber’s lights glowing ahead at the end of the corridor, and reached his goal just as the first of the Menel rose out of the shaft and spread its four limbs over the heads of the guards surrounding the shaft.

  A wild cry burst from the throats of all the people in the huge chamber-triumph from the Menel-conditioned guards, amazement and some fear from the raiders hovering around the fringes of the cordon of guards, stark raw terror from the slaves and Girls lined up ready to be led off to the stairs. This time the Menel had come up without even triggering the conditioning; this time they were desperate, and would be twice as dangerous as before.

  No, even worse than that, said Blade to himself as he noticed that each Menel was carrying in one arm a long blue tube with a red lens at one end and several smaller black tubes on a mesh belt around their «waists.» This was obviously a weapon, probably one that made even the Graduk beamers look like a child’s rubber knife, and the only good thing about it was that it suggested where the Menel might be going. They would most likely be on their way up to the Main Control, to shut off the Pi-field and then turn their advanced weapons loose, to make a clean sweep of everything within the stronghold that opposed them.

  The Menel guards paid no attention to him as he dashed across the chamber; neither did the Menel. Both no doubt were too confident that they had victory almost within their grasp to worry about fighting the raiders now, with the crude weapons necessary as long as the Pi-field was active. Blade ran up to Stramod, who was busily sending off another mass of slaves and Girls. He reached out for the sack of bombs on Stramod’s back.

  «Quick! I need those.»

  Stramod nodded and handed the bag to Blade. As Blade had expected, the mutant’s cool head had not deserted him even in the uproar of battle and the shock of encountering the Menel. Blade quickly ran through his plan; Stramod nodded and grinned wolfishly.

  «I’ll throw in some men as a diversion while you make your move. Will you need anybody with you?»

  Blade shook his head. «I can move faster alone.»

  «Good.» The mutant’s huge hand came out and clasped Blade’s, then Blade turned around and began edging in toward the guards, the bulging bomb sack over his shoulder. Behind him Stramod was talking to Nilando, and Nilando was massing twenty men, to draw their swords and level their spears at the Menel guards. Then Nilando shouted, the twenty charged forward, and a second later so did Blade.

  There were better than a dozen Menel visible now, the lead ones already approaching the foot of the stairs, the cordon of guards altering shape now to make a protected passage from the shaft to the stairs. Blade ran in toward the end of the stairway, keeping outside the range of the Menel’s terrible crane-like arms, saw the end of the cordon near the stairway thinning out as the guards ran toward the shaft to meet Nilando’s charge, and lunged straight at the widening gap between the last two men.

  These at least did not ignore the huge and terrifyingly blood-spattered figure bearing down on them as harmless; their swords flashed up into a guard position-and then one fell from limp fingers as Blade kicked one man in the stomach and the other flew through the air and clanged off the wall as Blade smashed it out of the other man’s hand. He didn’t bother finishing off either man; he had to get up those stairs. He thrust the knife in his belt and drew the truncheon, for use against the Menel.

  The first of these was just within reach of the foot of the stairs as Blade leaped past the two fallen guards. Two arms darted out, the pincers snapping with a sound like chains clanking together. Blade struck savagely at the nearest pincer with his truncheon, hitting it so hard the blow jarred his arm half to numbness, then plunged up the stairs two at a time. As he reached the top, he heard the sound of footsteps pounding up the stairs as the guards came after him, and the slopping sucking sound of climbing Menel.

  The Main Control was an awesome array of consoles studded with switches and dials and readouts, a computerized technological paradise that would have made Lord Leighton turn pea-soup-green with envy. But Blade had no time to appreciate or analyze what he had come to destroy.

  First, turn off the Pi-field. The panel with the master switches was squarely in the center of the complex, with a hard plastic chair in front of it for those rare occasions when the Ice Master had actually needed to sit down and look at the key to his stronghold. Blade strode over to it, stared for a moment at the winking fights. Then he reached out and systematically began flipping every switch and pressing every button. The lights began to die, and then from one second to the next there was a subtle change in the air, a change that seemed to trickle
down on to Blade’s skin like a thin liquid and make every hair on his body cling more closely. He knew that something important had gone-he would have to gamble that it was the Pi-field. And the second after that, half a dozen things happened at once.

  A clutch of Menel guards burst into the room and dashed at him. He avoided their rush by a four-foot vertical leap to the top of one of the consoles, and batted the first two swords to reach for him away with his truncheon. With his right hand he reached behind him and began pulling bombs out of the pouch and setting the fuses with thumb and forefinger, then pitching them in long arcs through the open door with the sign Main Core above it. Exactly what was in there Blade had no real idea, but he found it hard to believe that anything would survive completely unscathed ten of those little bombs exploding in a confined space.

  Now the bag was empty and he threw it in a guard’s face and leaped down after it, smashing the man to the ground with his truncheon. The guards drew back to form another cordon around the head of the stairs as the first of the Menel appeared, with others beyond it, but Blade saw the Menel stop, turn, and retreat a few feet, almost to the edge of the top step. It had no time to go farther before the first of the bombs went off.

  In the confined space the explosion was terrific and the noise beyond belief. Blade was never sure afterward how he or anybody else in the chamber escaped being pulped into jam by the concussion. That the bombs went off separately rather than all together perhaps was their only salvation. Flying fragments screamed into the room like demented banshees and chopped down guards right and left. Blade dove behind a console at the first blast, huddled there while the debris from the remaining nine slammed into the metal with harsh clangs, then vaulted over the console and beaded for the stairs. From within the Main Core room he could hear satisfactory sizzling and hissing noises like a gigantic fireworks display.

  Those guards not too badly wounded seemed too stunned to resist as Blade brushed past them: Then he reached the first of the Menel. The creature’s companions had escaped the worst of the blast. In fact, as Blade looked down the stairs he could see them and their guards retreating downward as fast as their respective gaits could take them. But this Menel had been fully exposed to the blast. It lay on its side, motionless, one limb half-severed and oozing a sticky sap-like green fluid. Blade was about to leap over it as he would have leaped over a fallen tree, then remembered.

  This was an intelligent being. It might be dead. But it might not be, and if it wasn’t, it needed help. He turned back to the chamber and began ripping the shorts off the bodies of the guards and tearing the tough plastic-like material into strips. These he bound around the half-severed limb until the flow of fluid stopped, then used a broken spear as a splint tied on with several more strips to hold the limb rigid. Then with exquisite care he picked the creature up. It weighed too much for him to carry alone-nearly three hundred pounds-so he snapped an order at one of the guards. The man’s conditioning to serve the Menel was holding; he dutifully came over and picked up the «foot» end of the creature. Holding it between them like a misshapen log of wood, they descended the stairs.

  Reaching the bottom, Blade saw that Menel and Menel guards alike had vanished; the chamber was empty except for dead bodies and a rearguard of raiders under Stramod’s command, His eyes widened as he saw Blade appear with his burden, but he said nothing. Blade and the guard carried the Menel over to the shaft and slid it over the edge. It plunged out of sight like a rock; Blade hoped it would be detected and slowed before it hit bottom. But he could only hope. He had done all he could do for it; now it was time to get himself and his own people out of here.

  Stramod came up to him as he fell in with the rearguard and said in a half-grunt:

  «Why?»

  «You know.»

  «I suppose I do. I hope it affects the way they see us. Even if it does not-thank you. Our consciences will»

  «Never mind your consciences for now,» said Blade briskly. «I think we’d better move fast and save our necks. I started something in that-«and from above in the Main Core an enormous sizzling explosion, like fifty thousand pieces of bacon dropped at once into a giant frying pan, saved him the need for further explanation. Stramod nodded and the rearguard moved out at a brisk trot to the stairway, then turned in and began the long climb.

  They were halfway to the lift chamber when the first real explosion came-a tremendous thudding jar that rumbled through the very fabric of the stronghold and seemed to make Blade’s bones bounce and vibrate within his body. The forces let loose in the Main Core were on the march now; it was anyone’s guess whether they would devour the stronghold before the flier and its load could get clear. Though his breath was coming searing hot, as though he were breathing in hot pepper, Blade quickened his pace and urged the others on faster still.

  They came up to the elevator level almost at a dead run, sprinted across the chamber to where the guarding party there was herding the last handful of slaves on to the platform, and Blade ordered them off. So far whatever force powered the elevator was still working, but Blade would not want to risk its dying while they were halfway up the shaft, leaving them to fall hundreds of feet to certain death. Instead he led both parties back toward the stairs, setting a pace that made his breath burn hotter still, his leg muscles feel like rotted rubber bands stretched tight, and some of the weaker slaves falling out entirely. He would have liked to bring them all out, but now things were at the point where they couldn’t delay even seconds for stragglers.

  They reached the stairs and started up, Blade’s legs now pumping like machines, the slaves holding their own as the prospect of freedom seemed to give them a second wind. Up, up, up-halfway up there was another explosion, the lights dying, but Stramod switched on a handlamp that gave enough light to keep people from missing their footing. On and on upward, the rasping breath of fifty men and women now sounding loud enough to raise echoes above and beyond their pounding footsteps.

  The surface at last-light searing through the door, reflected off ice and off the great silver bulk of the flier visible beyond, with its hatches standing open and the last few people of the previous load disappearing into the black interior. The searing light and searing cold brought the slaves and Girls to a stop for a moment, but Stramod was urging them on, waving his arms and his truncheon and blistering the air with curses. The cold struck at Blade’s toiling lungs, bringing him to a stop for a moment as he leaned against the wall for support. By the time he recovered only Stramod was left inside the-stronghold; together they ran out across the ice and up the folding stairway into the flier.

  One of the four men Blade had trained as emergency pilots must have already been at the controls, because even before the hatch was completely shut the big flier lurched off the ice and zoomed upward, wobbling and lurching still, throwing people about in the hold with screams and yells and crashes. Blade lurched to his feet, every muscle in his body from his innermost viscera out to the tips of his fingers and toes clamoring for rest, denied their clamor, and made his way forward. The emergency pilot handed him the master key; Blade stuck it in his pocket and collapsed into the pilot’s seat.

  Under his relatively more experienced hand, the flier’s gyrations straightened out, the panicky uproar behind him faded, and the flier arrowed out on a course south. Blade stayed high and fast, figuring the Menel now had far too much to worry about to bother pursuing him. And perhaps they wouldn’t want to. He had won almost all the victory he had planned and dreamed of, but he would not mind staying in this dimension long enough to know what the future relations might be between human and Menel.

  Stramod came forward into the control room, his long face haggard and his longer arms sagging at his side in a way even more ape-like than usual. But there was contentment in his voice as he said, «I have done a count of the people we evacuated. Nearly four hundred slaves and Girls. And we lost only thirty-one men doing it. We have quite a few wounded, of course, but-«

  «No doubt,»
said Blade. He hoped weariness didn’t make him sound too callous. «How is Doctor Leyndt?»

  «Leyndt? She will be all right with a little care and much rest. I hope you and she will-.»

  Whatever Stramod might have hoped for Blade and Leyndt was lost, as the sun rose behind the flier. A searing light gushed across the landscape, turning the glaciers even whiter than nature could make them, then faded through purples, reds, and oranges. As the glow died, Blade turned the flier around in a wide circle so that he could look to the north, to see what he had known he must see.

  A creamy cloud was beginning to bulge above the horizon, like a blob of whipped marshmallow, with thin writhing tendrils creeping out in all directions, vivid against the blue sky. It took on no mushroom shape, but rather swelled continuously into a broad dome. Here and there in it flecks of gold, green, and silver sparkled as the sun was reflected off debris thrown up into what must already be well into the stratosphere if the cloud was visible from so far away.

  Blade turned the flier away and increased the speed. There was no point in not outrunning the shock wave, not when they could move at twice its speed. And there was little point in watching for anything more in the north-at least not now. The Ice Master’s stronghold was gone as if it had never existed; nothing could be back there now except a steaming hole chewed down through the glacier deep into bedrock, miles in diameter and buzzing with lethal radioactive particles.

  Stramod turned to him now and muttered, «I wonder what happened to the Menel in that blast? If their settlements were sufficiently far from the stronghold and sufficiently well-built, they may have survived. In which case-«

  Blade was not listening to him, however, because it suddenly seemed that a smaller version of the explosion in the north had flared in his own skull. Again the world turned white, then faded through purple, red, and orange. And his mind screamed out as though its voice could be hurled across the dimensions to where the computer was reaching for him: