unbound her hair to wear it loose and long in nomad
fashion, and she had the one-piece wraparound of the
available. Gone was the crisp office manner: she spoke
only when addressed, knowing her place in the presence
of a warrior. Had Neq not known her origin, he would
have been fooled. Of course his close experience with
women was meager.
She, however, had to drive the truck. Neq had seen the
crazy vehicles on occasion, but had never actually been
inside one before. The handling of such machinery was
not his forte, obviously. So he rode beside her in the cab,
sword clasped between his knees, and clung to the seat as
the wheels bumped over the ruts. The velocity of the
thing was appalling. He kept expecting it to start panting
and slow to a walk, for no one could run indefinitely! He
had been told a truck could cover in one hour a distance
equivalent to a full day's march, if it had a good track,
and now he believed it.
The road was no pleasure. What suited for foot travel-
ing became hazardous for wheels, particularly at this
speed, and he was privately terrified. Now he understood
why the crazies had always been so fussy about the main-
tenance of their trails, cutting back the brush and remov-
ing boulders. Such natural obstacles were like swinging
clubs to the zooming vehicle. Neq refused to show it, of
course, but his hands were clammy on the sword and his
muscles stiff from tension.
But in time he became acclimatized, and watched Miss
Smith's motions. She controlled the truck by turning a
wheel around: when she pushed the top of it north, the
truck swung north. When she wanted to stop -she pushed
a metal pedal into the floor. Driving was not so difficult
after all!
All day they drove, stopping only to let Neq be sick
from the unaccustomed motion, and to refuel. The first
was mortifying, but Miss Smith pretended not to notice
and in time his gut became resigned. The second was just
a matter of pouring funny smelling liquid she called gaso-
line into the motortank from one of the large metal drums
carried in the back. "Why don't you just pipe it in from
the drums?" he asked, and she admitted she didn't know.
"These trucks were designed and probably built by the
Ancients," she said. "They did a number of inexplicable
things—like making a gas tank far too small for a day's
driving. Maybe they liked pouring gas from cans."
Neq laughed. "That's something! To the crazies, the
Ancients are crazy!"
She smiled, not taking offense. "Sanity seems to be in-
versely proportional to civilization."
Inverse proportion: he knew what that meant, for he
had been drilled like the others in the empire training
camp. They had used numbers to assess combat ranking:
the smaller the number, the higher the warrior stood.
They drove on, until they had to stop to do patchwork
on the road. A gully had formed, the result of some cloud-
burst, and made a tumble of boulders of the roadbed.
Here Neq felt useful, for Miss Smith could not have
budged all those rocks or shoveled enough sand into place
to make the passage.
Despite these delays, Neq estimated that they had come
a good five days march by dusk.
"How much do you normally march?" she inquired in
response to his remark.
"Thirty miles, alone. More if I'm in a hurry. Twenty,
with a tribe."
"So you make it a hundred and fifty miles today."
He worked it out, counting off fingers. He knew how to
count and calculate, but this was a different problem than
the type he normally encountered. "Yes."
"Speedometer says ninety-four," she said. "It must have
seemed faster than it was. On a paved road it would have
been double that."
"The truck keeps track of its own travels?" he asked,
amazed. "Maybe it forgot to count the section between
the tank-filling and the roadwork."
She laughed again. "Maybe! Machines aren't bright."
He had neither worked with nor talked with a woman
this way before, and was surprised to realize that it wasn't
difficult. "How far is this supplier?"
"About a thousand miles from the school, direct. Some-
what farther by these backwoods trails."
He figured again. "So we have about ten days of travel."
"Less than that. Some areas are better than others. Let
me show you our route on the map. I think we've been
through the worst already."
"No."
"No?" She paused with the map in her hand.
"The worst is what stopped your other trucks from
returning."
"Oh." She was prettily pensive. "Well, we'll find out.
The others didn't have an armed guard along."
She opened the map and pointed out lines and patches
of color to him, but it was largely meaningless to Neq,
who could not relate to the continental scope of it. "I can
find the way back, once I've been there," he said.
"That's good enough." She studied the map a bit more,
then put it away with a small sigh.
There were canned and even frozen goods. Miss Smith
lit a little gas stove and heated beans and turnip greens
and bacon, and she opened the little refrigerator and
poured out milk. Neq had never had a woman do for him
on a regular basis, and this was an intriguing experience.
But of course she only looked like a woman; she was a
crazy.
They slept in the truck—he in the back beside the gas
drums, she curled in the cab. She seemed to feel there
would be something wrqng if they both slept in the back,
though there was far more room there and she had to
know that no honorable nomad would disturb her slum-
ber without prior transfer of the bracelet. She could not
know, of course, that Neq had never had relations with
any woman. The only girl he had been close to was his
sister. In fact, had Miss Smith not been a crazy, he would
have been extremely nervous. As it was, he was only
moderately nervous, and relieved to sleep alone.
But in his dreams women were ubiquitous, and he was
not bashful. In his dreams.
The second day of travel was uneventful, and they
made almost two hundred miles. The novelty of riding in
the truck palled, and he stared moodily into the rushing
brush and covertly at Miss Smith's right breast, shaped
under the cloth as she steered. She seemed less like a
crazy, now.
He began to hum to his sword, and when she did not
object he sang to it: the folk songs he had picked up
from happy warriors like Sav the Staff, in the glad days
of the empire's nascence.
Oh, the sons of the Prophet were hardy and bold
And quite unaccustomed to fear.
But the bravest of all was a man so I'm told
Named Abdullah Bulbul Ameer.
The references were meaningless, as were the names,
b
ut the melody always brought pleasure to him and he
responded to the warrior mood of such songs. From time
to time he was tempted to change the words a bit, adapt-
ing to the things he knew, but that forfeited authenticity.
"Oh, the warriors of empire were hardy and bold . . ."
No—songs were inviolate, lest they lose their magic.
After a time he realized with a shock that she was
singing with him, in feminine harmony, the way Nemi
used to do. That jolted him back into silence. Miss Smith
made no comment.
The third day they encountered a barricade. A tree had
fallen across the road.
"That isn't natural." Neq said, alert for trouble. "See—
it has been felled, not blown. No nomad cuts a tree and
leaves it."
She stopped the truck. In a moment men appeared—
unkempt outlaws of the type he had encountered before.
"All right, you crazies—out!" the leader bawled.
"You stay here," Neq said. "This will be unpleasant for
you. Maybe you'd better duck down so you can't see." He
got out in one bound and lifted his weapon. "I am Neq
the Sword," he announced.
This time no one recognized the name. "You think
you're pretty smart, dressing like a man," a big clubber
said. "But we know you're crazies. What's in your truck?"
Miss Smith had not followed his suggestion. Her pale
face showed in the cab window. "Hey!" the leader cried.
"This one's a lady-crazy!"
Neq advanced on his man. "You will not touch this
truck. It is under my protection."
The man laughed harshly and swung his club.
He died laughing.
Neq let him drop and moved to the next, a scarred
dagger. At the same time he watched for bows, for out-
laws were capable of anything. He would have to per-
form some deft maneuvers if arrows came at him. "Run,"
he suggested softly.
The dagger looked at the bleeding clubber corpse and
ran. That was the thing about outlaws: they were easily
frightened.
Neq charged the leader, another dagger. This man, at
least, had some courage. He brought up his knives and
sliced clumsily.
It was axiomatic that a good dagger would lose to a
good sworder when the combat was serious. This man was
not good, and Neq cut him down immediately.
No one else remained. "Scream if you see anything," he
told Miss Smith. "I'm scouting the area." He had to be
sure that all the teeth of the ambush had been drawn
before he tackled the fallen tree.
She just sat there, her features stiff. He had known she
would not like it. Crazies and women were similar in that
respect, and she was both.
He located the outlaw camp. It was empty. The cowardly
dagger had lost no time spreading the word. From the
traces there had been at least two women and four men.
Well, now it was two women and two men—and he
doubted they'd attack any more trucks.
He went back. "It's clear," he told Miss Smith. "Let's
haul this trunk out of our way."
She seemed to wake, then. He surveyed the tree and
decided it was too much for him to move without cutting
in half. He made ready to hack at it with his sword, but
Miss Smith called to him. "There is an easier way."
She brought out a rope and hitched it to the base of
the tree trunk. Then she looped the other end into the
front bumper of the truck. Then she started the motor
and backed the vehicle away slowly until the tree was
dragged out lengthwise along the road. Neq gaped with
a certain confused respect.
She brought a peavy from the back. He limbed the tree
and used the tool to roll the main mass clear of their
path. This was still heavy work, but far more efficient
than his original notion.
He wound the rope and put the peavy away. They got
back into the cab. "Let's move," he said gruffly.
She drove mechanically, not looking at him.
"You surprised me," he said after a while. "I never
thought of using the truck like that."
She didn't answer. He glanced at her, and saw her lips
thin and almost white, her eyes squinting though the
light was not strong.
"I know you crazies don't like violence," he said defen-
sively. "But I warned you not to look. They would have
killed us if I hadn't wiped them out first. They didn't set
that ambush just to say hello."
"It isn't that."
"If we hit any more bands like that, it'll be the same.
That's why your trucks aren't coming back. You crazies
don't fight. You think if you're nice to everyone, no one
will hurt you. Maybe once that was true. But these out-
laws just laugh."
"I know."
"Well, that's the way it is. I'm just doing the job I
promised. Getting the truck through." Still he felt awk-
ward. "I was sick myself, the first time I fought a man
and wounded him. But you get used to it. Better than
getting hit yourself."
She drove for a while in silence. Then she braked the
truck. "I want to show you something," she said, her face
softening.
They got out under the shade of spreading oak trees.
She stood before him, breathing rapidly, her yellow hair
highlighted momentarily by a stray beam of sunshine.
She was as pretty a girl as he had seen, in that pose.
"Come at me."
Neq was abruptly nervous. "I meant no offense to you.
I only tried to explain. I have never attacked a woman."
"Pretend you're an outlaw about to ravish me. What
would you do?"
"I would never—"
"You're shy, aren't you," she said.
It was like a blade sliding wickedly through his de-
fense. Neq stood stricken.
Miss Smith shook her hand—and there was a knife in
it. No lady's vegetable parer—this was a full-length war-
rior's dagger, and her grip on it was neither diffident nor
clumsily tight. There was a way of holding that was a
sure signal of circle readiness, and this was her way.
Instantly Neq's sword was in his hand, his eye on the
other weapon, his weight balanced. One never ignored a
blade held like that!
But Miss Smith did not attack. She unwrapped her
wraparound, revealing one firm fresh breast, and tucked
the knife into a flat holster under her arm. "I just wanted
you to understand," she said.
"I would never have struck you," he said, numbed by
both her weapon-readiness and the glimpse of her torso.
But it sounded ridiculous, for there he stood with sword
ready. He sheathed it quickly.
"Of course not. I checked your file, once I got your
name straight. You were a tribal chieftain, but you never
took a woman. What I meant was: understand about me.
That I was wild once. I'm not really a crazy. Not when it
counts."
"You—used the dagger?"
"When I saw you fighting those brutes—the blood—it
was a
s though a dozen years had peeled away, and I was
the gamin again. I found the knife in my hand, there in
the cab."
"Twelve years! You fought as a small child?"
Her mouth quirked. "How old do you think I am?"
"Nineteen." It was an unfortunate fact that most mar-
ried women lost their beauty early. At fifteen they were
highly desirable; ten years later they were faded. The
unmarried lacked even that initial freshness. Miss Smith
was obviously not in the first bloom, but still pretty
enough.
"I am twenty-eight, according to Dr. Jones' best esti-
mate. No one knows for sure, since I had no family."
Three years older than Neq himself? That was incred-
ible. "Your breast says nineteen."
"When I was nineteen—" she said, mulling it over.
"When I was nineteen, I met a warrior. A strong, dark
man. Maybe you know of him. Sos—Sos the Rope?"
Neq shook his head. "I knew a Sos once, but he had no
weapon. I don't know what happened to him."
"I would have gone nomad with him—if he had asked
me." She thought for a moment, still breathing quickly. "I
would have gone nomad with anyone."
This was all awkward, and Neq's hands were Clammy,
and he didn't know what to say.
"I'm sorry," she said. "It was the blood, the action—it
made me react in an uncivilized way. I shouldn't have
shown you."
Neq the Sword Page 4
