the Deadliest Game (1998)

by Tom - Net Force Explorers 02 Clancy

  Megan shook her head. "Nobody except the Net itself," she said. "There's no faking your identity when you log in, after all. It's your brain, your body, and your implant. And as for the rest of it..." She shrugged, and then added with just the slightest smile, "I'm not sure how I would have driven from here to Bloomington, Illinois, in time to run Elblai--Mrs. Richardson--off the road with a car."

  "There is that," Winter said, and cracked a small smile himself. "Never mind. You're covered for the moment. Go on, go to school, and get that report done for me tonight, if you would. We'll be sending in operatives ASAP. Meanwhile, you should consider yourself relieved of responsibility for this business. But I want to thank you very much for your help so far. You've at least given us a lead to follow, you two, and some potentially useful theories. Plus a much better strategic assessment than we could have managed on short notice. It's much appreciated. You put your talents and your time on the line...and possibly, considering the nature of the person we seem to be hunting, your personal safety as well, if that person got any sense of who you were and what you were up to."

  "I don't think we were anywhere near him," Megan said. "Thanks anyway."

  She cut off the connection, thought a moment, then spoke to her implant and had it call Leif.

  He was sitting in his workspace in the stave-house, looking profoundly depressed--an unusual expression for him. He glanced up as Megan appeared in his space.

  "You talk to him?" Leif asked.

  "Yeah."

  "We're off the case."

  "Yeah."

  Leif looked up at Megan sideways. "Are we off the case?"

  "What do you mean? Of course we're off. He took us off."

  "And you're just going to sit back and let it be that way? Just like that?"

  "Well." Megan looked at him.

  Leif got up and started pacing. "Look," he said. "I don't want to sound unduly heroic or anything. I don't know about you, but I'm feeling a little bit responsible."

  "For what? We didn't run that lady off the road!"

  "We tried to warn her. We did it wrong. She didn't get it. Don't you feel responsible for that?"

  Megan sat down on that severely plain couch and dropped her head into her hands. "Yeah," she said. "I do. A lot. And I don't know what we can do about it, now that it's happened."

  "Not just give up," Leif said.

  "But, Leif, you heard Winters. He's taken us out of the loop. If they catch us--"

  "How are they going to catch us? It's not like we're not Sarxos players. It's not like we don't have a right to be in the game when we want to. Isn't that so?"

  "Yeah, but--Leif, if we do that, they're gonna know right away what we're doing!"

  "Are they? But we're good little Net Force Explorers, aren't we?" Leif's grin popped out, and looked unusually mischievous for a moment. "Who'd ever suspect us of disobeying orders? Intentionally, anyway." Leif held his head high and looked for a moment impossibly noble, innocent, and dim.

  Megan had to laugh at the sight of him.

  "Not that they can give us orders," Leif said. "Suggestions, yes..."

  "You are amazing," she said.

  "Thank you. And modest."

  "Oy," Megan said.

  "Look," Leif said. "Think about it. The reason we're lucky enough to be Explorers in the first place is because they saw something in us that was not the usual kind of behavior. A little more willing to swing out into the unknown, maybe. If we just give up now because we're told to--"

  "If we were in Net Force, we'd have to do what we were told, Leif! Discipline--"

  "Frack discipline," Leif said. "Well, I don't mean that. But we're not fully in. It gives us a little--"

  "--Latitude?" She scowled.

  "Megan, I'm telling you, I'm right on this one. And you know I am. That's why you're making those weird faces at me. You should see yourself."

  She looked at him dubiously. It went right against her grain to ignore Winters's "suggestion." She understood his concern. She knew what her parents would say if she told them anything about this. But whether she planned to tell them anything about this, right this minute anyway, was another story. Maybe later. But right now--I have to make a choice.

  "Well--" she said.

  "And look," Leif said. "We've still got problems. Argath, or whoever, is still out there, and I bet he, she, they, or it--"

  "He, for my money," Megan said.

  "Yeah--anyway, they're still targeting people. What about those other two lords that Elblai was mentioning? Fettick and Morn? To judge by what she was saying last night, they're likely to be the next targets. I mean, look at it, Megan! Whoever's doing this, they're not waiting around to hit someone who's beaten Argath anymore. Whether it is Argath himself, or someone using some kind of weird cover--"

  "What I still don't get is why anyone would do that."

  "A grudge," Leif said. "Or the attacker is crazy. Never mind...there's still time to work that out. But whatever the cause, whoever it is that's doing this, they've stopped being patient about it. They're hitting people before they actually fight Argath, when it just looks like there's a possibility they might beat him."

  "Yeah. All right. I see your point. So--what'll we do? Go try to warn them? Which kingdoms were in question?"

  "Errint and Aedleia," she said. "I know them slightly: they're northern neighbors of Orxen. I've got more than enough transit to get us there. We can be there tonight. Their battles weren't scheduled to happen right away. It's just possible that we can--"

  "What? Get them not to go ahead with a campaign that they've been planning, and that they really want? That's gonna be a good trick."

  "We've got to try. We didn't try hard enough last night...and look what happened. You want to see these new targets run off a road...or worse? And what about all the others who might shortly be in the same situation? There have to be other players who've been waiting their chance to take Argath on. After these guys, they'll be a threat, too. If we can find out what other players are eager to fight him, we may be able to find some other connecting strand, some line of data that'll lead us to whoever's doing this. And I want them," Leif said softly. "I want them."

  Megan nodded slowly. She did not often feel physically violent. Even when she managed to engineer situations that gave her an excuse, every now and then, to toss her brothers around, it was mostly enjoyment she felt, and amused satisfaction at the looks on their faces as she reminded them that life was not always predictable. But now...now she felt, uncharacteristically, like she wanted to hurt somebody. Specifically, whoever had sent Elblai into the hospital, pale, with an oxygen mask hiding her pretty, motherly face.

  "Look," Leif said. "Do your briefing for Winters. Get that finished, leave it on timed-send in your computer, and get it off to him tonight...after we're already in Sarxos. Or after we've come out."

  "Leif, I can't tonight," Megan said. "I told you, I have this family thing--"

  "This is an emergency," Leif said. "Isn't it? Can't you beg off just this once?"

  She thought about that, thought about the concerned look on her father's face. "Probably," she said. "I don't usually do this."

  "Come on, Megan. It's important. And it's more than just those other people." He looked at her, intense. "What are you really thinking about doing after you get out of school?"

  "Well, strategic operations, obviously, but--"

  "But where? For some think tank? Doing it in some dry boring place where you'll never actually get out to see whether what you've planned is happening? You want to do it in Net Force, don't you?"

  "Yeah," Megan said. "Of course I do. It's...I think it's one of the most important agencies we've got now, though there are probably people who would say that's overrating it." She shifted a little uncomfortably. "It's the cutting edge."

  "Well, you want to stay there, don't you? If you back off from this now, just because Winters told you to get out of danger, out of trouble...If we succeed in making it into Net Force
someday, there's going to be danger and trouble. This is just practice. Besides--they're watching us. You know they're watching us. If we go in alongside them--maybe even ahead of them--and crack this thing, with our eyes open and our brains hot, you think they're going to be angry about that? I don't think so. They're going to be impressed. If we impress them now--"

  Megan nodded. "I can't believe," she said slowly, "that we're not at least as good as any operatives they're going to send in there. Besides, we know Sarxos better than anyone they've got. That's why they asked us to go in in the first place. Because we're best..."

  She looked up at Leif, grinned, and got up. "I'm with you," she said. "Look, I'm not sure what time I'll get into the game tonight. Opting out of family night is going to take some explaining."

  "Okay...well, I'll go in before you, and wait for you--and I'll leave some transit in your account. We'll meet in Errint, and see if we can catch Fettick first and warn him off. The place is just a little city-state, kind of like Minsar. When you get to the city, there's a little cookshop just inside the third wall, a place called Attila's."

  Megan raised her eyebrows.

  "Yeah," Leif said, "they make good chili there. I'll sit there and amuse myself until you get there. Then we'll go in and engineer a chat with Fettick...take our time and make sure he understands."

  "All right," Megan said. "We do have to try. But talking someone out of a campaign is going to be interesting."

  "I think we can change his mind. After that, we can start looking around for some more indicators to what's really going on. I'm sure we can crack this if we just have a little more time...."

  "Right. I'll see you tonight, then."

  She vanished.

  Leif came to Errint in the late afternoon of a clearing golden day. The city stood in a small glacial valley associated with the furthest eastward-flung massif of the great northern Highpeak range. Sometime far back in the place's apparent geological history, when the continent of Sarxos was supposed to have been glaciated, a huge broad-bottomed river of ice had come grinding slowly down from the wide and snowy cirque of Mount Holdfast above the valley, and had burred the valley down into a long, gentle U-shaped trough nearly nine miles long. Now the glacier was gone, retreated to the very feet of Holdfast, with only the telltale threaded stream running down from the glacier's terminal moraine left winding down the valley, in a meander of scattered white rounded stones and the peculiar milky green-white water that betrayed a riverbed covered with glacial "flour."

  Up on a little spur of stone that somehow had avoided being ground down by the glacier, Errint rose. It had been a wooden city in its earliest incarnations, but it kept burning down, and so it was finally rebuilt in stone, and its sign and sigil became the phoenix. Its population was not large, but they were famous: sturdy, independent mountain people, dangerous in battle, good with a halberd or a crossbow. They tended to keep themselves to themselves and not mix in foreign wars...unless the pay was good. Their city had a small but steady source of wealth from the salt and iron mines in the mountain, which they controlled jealously, telling no one the secrets of the labyrinthine ways in and out. They farmed the long, gentle, stony valley in a small way, oats and barley mostly, and tried to mind their own business.

  That had become less easy of late. Argath's rise in the Northlands had meant that the kingdoms on the fringes of his realm had started looking for allies, or buffer states that would protect them from the unfriendly neighbor just over the mountain passes. To the countries to the north--meaning Argath--and to the south--meaning the realms of Duke Morgon and others--Errint looked like a perfect possibility: a small population unlikely to put up much of a fight; ground not worth much except as a buffer, so that battles fought across it wouldn't ruin its value; and the mines, source of the peerless Holdfast iron, much sought after in Sarxos for weapons.

  The Errint did not take kindly to the thought of being anybody's buffer state, however. When Argath first came down out of the mountains to annex them, they had fought him and driven him back. Just last year they had done it again. But then Argath had twice made the mistake of attacking into the teeth of their weather, which the Errint knew better than anyone. Even in the summer, those somnolent-looking dolomite peaks could wrap themselves around in cloud and turn ferocious, and down the valley would come screaming the killing wind, the fierce hot wind that poured itself over the northern mountain crests, stirred the few little glacial lakes to madness, and kindled thunderstorms that seemed almost pathologically fond of striking invading troops with lightning.

  It was a tough nut to crack, little Errint. Not that it was uncrackable, nor was its leadership so misguided as to think it so. They knew very well Argath's brooding power to the north. They had never been in a position to attack it independently. But things might be changing now....

  So Leif stood in the open gate of the city, looking around the place, and the gate-guards, leaning on their straight sharp halberds, looked back at him with equanimity. They were big, dark-haired, blunt-featured men, typical of Errint blood, favoring leather instead of cloth for wear. Leif nodded to them, knowing that they had already sized him up as harmless and friendly--otherwise he would have been flat on the ground, with one of those oversized army canopeners stuck in his gut. The guards nodded to him affably enough, and Leif went in.

  Errint's basic structure was a little like Minsar's, except on a much smaller scale. Also, there were no outbuildings permitted beyond the fifth wall, the outermost one. The bakers and tanners and so forth were pushed well back in the rearmost curve between the fourth and fifth walls, but no one pitched tents or temporary buildings outside for the simple reason that one of those sudden summer windstorms or rainstorms could simply wash them right down off the Errint Hill and into the river. The marketplace inside the third wall, therefore, was unusually crowded with tents and awnings and tables and pallets and bales. Every day was market day in Errint. A thriving trade made its way up and down the valley's single road toward the lowlands, people who had come for metal or an animal-skin and stayed to pick up something extra, a firkin of mountain butter or the famous glacier wine.

  It was late enough in the day that the market had lost much of its agitation. There were still a few cries of "Buy my beer!" or "Skins, good skins here, no holes!"--but it all had a desultory feel, as if everyone was already thinking of heading out to get something to eat or drink. The one steady sound there was a ting-CLANK, ting-CLANK that Leif knew, and he smiled a little as he made his way through the market stalls toward the source of it.

  Here in iron-mine country, lots of people knew a little about forging--the rudiments--but a really good blacksmith was harder to find, and harder still to find was a really good farrier. They tended to travel around to where the business was good. Only the very best would have a fixed place of work where they could expect clients to beat a path to their doors with their horses in tow. This one, though, was plenty good.

  Leif pushed his way through the part of the market reserved for the butchers, past the last few beef carcasses hanging in the late sun with clouds of flies shrilling about them, and came to a spot by the curve of the wall where someone had parked a cart. It was from here that the rhythmic ting-CLANK sound came. Nearby, its head down and its reins fastened to an iron ring in the back end of the cart, a big, patient blond draft horse stood. Just in front of the horse, working at an anvil lifted up onto what had been some rich Errint's mounting-stone, was a small, fair man in a light, worn tan canvas shirt and well-worn leathern breeches, with a thick leather apron over it all, hammering away at a horseshoe that had just been in the portable forgepit, which had come out of his cart and now stood near the anvil on the ground. The bellows hung at hand in the cart's framework, ready to work. The farrier paused a moment to pick up the horseshoe with his tongs and shove it in among the coals to heat again. When it came up to cherry-red, he took it out with the tongs and began beating it again on the anvil.

  "Wayland," Leif said.
>
  The face that looked up at him was deeply lined, all smile lines. The eyes had that distant-looking expression of someone mountain-bred, though not these mountains. "Well, it's young Leif," Wayland said. "Well met in the afternoon! What brings you up here this time of year?"

  "Just wandering around," Leif said, "as usual."

  Wayland looked at him with a grin that suggested he might be taking what Leif said with a grain of salt. "Ah, well, may be, may be."

  "I might ask the same of you," Leif said. "You're not usually up here this close to autumn. I thought you'd decided you didn't want any more of this weather. Lowlands for me, I thought you said, come the fall."

  "Aah, it's still summer, though, isn't it?" said Wayland. He dropped his voice. "And as for you, with your healing stone and all, I don't think you're just wandering. My money says you have some other reason to be here."

  "Hate to see you lose your bet," said Leif, sitting down on the side-step of the cart, out of the way. For a couple of minutes he just sat and watched Wayland finish hammering the horseshoe. Wayland plunged it into a bucket of water nearby; the water boiled and hissed in a rush of steam. The horse flicked its ears back and forth, unconcerned. "Man wants to make a living," Wayland said casually, "you've got to go where the business is going to be."

  "You think there's going to be business here?"

  "Oh, aye," said Wayland, fishing with the tongs in the bucket to get the horseshoe out. "Plenty of business soon, I think." He glanced in the direction of the city gates, up and over the walls, eastward down the long valley. "Going to be fighting around here before long."

  He lifted the draft horse's right forefoot, caught it between his knees, and turned his back on Leif for the moment. "Who would you say?" Leif said.

  For a moment Wayland didn't say anything. He glanced over his shoulder--rather hurriedly, Leif thought--and then down to his work again. Leif looked over his shoulder, the way Wayland had looked, and saw, past the various people still walking in the marketplace, past the beef carcasses, a strange little shape go by. A strange small man, less than four feet high. Not, as correctness would have it, a small person, but definitely a dwarf. He was dressed in noisy, eye-hurting orange and green motley, with a scaled-down lute strung on a baldric over his shoulder.