Jim Baen's Universe Volume 1 Number 5

by Eric Flint

  Rinposh showed his teeth, white in the mass of brown wrinkles that was his face. "I know there's a war, Romas," he said lightly. "I can see it perfectly well."

  Romas opened his mouth, and closed it again.

  "And I can hear it, of course," the old lama went on. "Such a waste." He waved one hand in a gesture of irritation. "Still. Men make war until they learn its futility. There is nothing I can do about that." He took a deep breath, pursil smoke filling his nostrils. He breathed it out again, whiter and lighter than when he had drawn it in. "This vision came to me by way of a visitor. It's not a vision of something that has happened. It is an invitation to make something happen."

  "Vi—visitor?"

  The old man's eyes returned to him. "Do you have a speech impediment, Courier?"

  Romas set his jaw, trying to regain his composure. "No, Holiness," he said firmly. "But I am nervous in your presence."

  Rinposh showed his teeth again. "Of course," he said amiably. "And so you should be."

  He chuckled, and then linked his hands in his lap, and lowered his head as if to stare into the rising smoke. "I have had such visitors before," he said after a time. "But this is the first from Callis."

  Romas almost stammered "Ca—callis?" but caught himself.

  "He is a ghost," Rinposh said, as calmly as if he were ordering tea. "A Callistan ghost."

  * * *

  Callis City

  Irlen went for days without sleeping more than four hours at a time. Some patients she lost, both in the trauma room and in the children's ward. Some of the soldiers she could patch, though she did her work while they screamed in pain.

  The children didn't scream. As they got sicker and sicker, they grew more and more quiet. Once or twice, they died without anyone noticing, slipping away in silence, small heartbeats slowing, shallow breaths growing less and less frequent until they ceased altogether.

  Irlen lost track of time. She couldn't remember when her companion had last been at her side. On one clear, starry night, she left the trauma room and trudged slowly up the stairs to the children's ward. Evely was sitting between two cots, murmuring comforts to the children there. Two mothers hovered over their children, whispering, sponging them with cloths. Irlen went to the sink to wash her hands again, though she had done it before leaving the trauma room. She looked around at the ward, quiet for the moment, and then went out onto the balcony to breathe clean air for a few moments.

  She turned her gaze, as she so often did, to the skeleton of the spaceport. A ruin, like the beautiful and ancient arches spanning the Spiral Road had been ruined, blown to bits by the General's explosives. "Everything is falling apart," she murmured into the night. "Nothing lasts."

  "We do," came a soft voice at her shoulder.

  Irlen turned her head. "There you are, Old Man," she said tiredly. "Where have you been?"

  "I'm always with you, daughter."

  "Are you? I feel like I'm always alone." Irlen heard the bitterness in her voice, and shook her head sharply. "It's just that I'm so tired, Old Man. And it all seems pointless. The crystal fever, and then this damned war—pointless."

  His image wavered beside her, glimmering in the starlight. "Trying to save the children isn't pointless."

  "Except I can't do it," she said. "I have nothing to work with."

  "Because you have no medicines?"

  "Yes. The General cut us off from our medicines with his stupid war."

  She saw the familiar, gentle smile on her companion's face. "Why not go and ask for what you need?"

  "Ask whom, Old Man? I have asked the apothecary, I have pleaded with the General—it does no good."

  "Those people don't have what you need. You must ask those who have the medicines."

  She gave a sour laugh. "That would be the Alhasi. Our enemies. I hardly think they will be feeling generous toward us."

  "Perhaps not with all Callistans. Certainly not with the General. But a physician, struggling to save innocents . . ."

  Irlen put one hand to her temple, as if the thought had struck her with some physical force. "Go myself," she murmured. "And ask."

  "They can only say no."

  "But would I . . . could I find someone to ask?"

  Her companion gave the old, elegant shrug. "You will never know unless you try."

  She stood there, on the balcony, her vestment whipping about her ankles, for a long time, thinking. Pondering. She stared at the ruin of the spaceport, and then turned to stare up at the distant silhouette of Alhasa's plateau. She had never been there, but the traders who brought the Alhasi medicines down the Spiral Road had told her of the beauty of the city, the colorful houses jumbled together on steep streets, the dizzying cliff falling away to the sea, the ancient and glorious stone arches, carved by hand out of the living rock.

  It was the spaceport that caused the Callistans to build their city here, on the dry plain. The Alhasi had alienated Callis with their belief that the ships would never return, after one of their visionary monks had pronounced it. The Alhasi had moved all of their people to the high plateau, where the sun and the sea mists made gardens and fields richly productive. The Callistans had refused to adapt, but were happy to use the treasures the Alhasi found on their plateau. Pursil leaf in particular was prized for its opioid effect.

  Irlen wondered if the Alhasi thought of the Callistans as barbarians. She wondered if the Alhasi threw unwanted babies into the sea. A fire rose in her mind, a flame that burned away her restraint.

  She made a noise in her throat, one of acceptance. She whirled about, and left the balcony, leaving her companion hovering in the starlight.

  * * *

  Alhasa

  Romas moved down the Spiral Road at dusk the next evening. Over his shoulder he carried a woven bag, carefully sewn shut by his ama, whose faith in Rinposh's visions brought immediate obedience to anything he might say. As Romas stepped carefully along the steep, twisting way, he wished his own faith were as strong.

  To his right, and far below the precipitous road he followed, he heard the distant crash of the sea. Ahead, and almost as far below, the flashes and explosions went on, a barrage of noise and violence. The pile of rock that had once been Alhasa's pride had become its protection, and its prison gate. He heard faint cries from the archers, and from the soldiers on the other side. It was a sound as monotonous as the tides of the sea, the noise of men making war.

  The descent took two hours in the growing darkness, Romas placing his feet with care on the narrow, twisting path. He had made the full descent often, passing beneath the great arches and on, all the way to the foot of the plateau. He had once carried a message all the way to Callis City, a journey of a full day's run each way. In the days of peace, Callistan traders had moved easily back and forth, unloading their carts at the bottom of the Spiral Road. The Alhasi would descend with their bags of herbs and grapes, make the exchange, then hoist the cargo of grain and tools and cloth, Callistan goods, on their backs. It had seemed an adequate arrangement to the Alhasi. Angkar Rinposh said the Callistans lacked patience.

  As Romas drew close to the toppled arches, the noises grew louder. Alhasi archers had found perches in crannies and splits in the cliff. They waited, bows at the ready, for any Callistan who dared climb to the top of the ruin. The Callistans hurled spears and shao dan over the ruin, and the Alhasi archers did their best to dodge them. Rock and rubble crashed down on both sides.

  The problem, Romas knew, was that the Callistans could hold their position indefinitely. There were many, many more of them. This war could last a long time. The Alhasi would have to do without grain, and the Callistans would have no pursil, or gisko, or ice grapes. What both sides would have, in abundance, was spilled blood.

  Romas tightened the bit of scarlet ribbon around his arm that was Rinposh's token, a sign to all Alhasi that he was on the sanctuary's business. He adjusted the sack over his shoulder, and rounded a corner.

  The ugliness of the battle scene shocked him
to a standstill.

  He was no more than a spear's throw away from the crumbled first arch. As he stumbled to a halt, a flash and a blast of sound erupted a little way to his right, throwing him off balance so that he almost fell. He saw the Alhasi archers dive for cover behind smashed blocks of stone, saw some on the ground dashing up the road toward him. As gravel and dust fell across the scene, Romas saw that one archer, a gray-haired man he recognized from Chamber gatherings, lay still, his face covered in stone dust, one leg at a nasty angle. As the dust settled, and the rocks stopped rolling, two of his fellows hurried to him, lifting him between them and carrying him past Romas and to the left, in what he saw now was a bivouac snuggled close against the cliff wall. Off to his right, unprotected now that the arches had been destroyed, the precipice fell away in the darkness. The unobstructed wind blew hard, tugging at his hair and his leggings, making him lean inward, away from the drop. Ahead of him, the noises of battle continued, the archers scrambling back to their posts, loosing their arrows, the Callistans on the other side shouting, hurling spears almost at random over the pile of stone.

  Anger darkened every face he could see, and fury sounded in the voices from the other side of the tumbled stone. Peril vibrated in the air, threatened with every flying rock, every spear, every hand bomb. And Rinposh wanted him to walk through all of this as if it didn't exist.

  The blind lama's scarlet token seemed almost to burn his arm.

  He forced himself to take a step forward, and then another. Some of the Alhasi caught sight of him, and turned to call out. He saw their faces when they saw the token, watched them catch back their words, then turn away to hide their sympathy. There were many who could not understand the commands of the lama. No one disobeyed them.

  Romas pressed on, putting one foot in front of the other. He winced as another blast shook the ground beneath his feet, and a flare of sparks shot past his head, but he had set his goal, now, and he kept moving. A spear flew above him, and he ducked, but it rattled uselessly against a chunk of rock. One of the archers shouted, and stood up to loose an arrow. Romas watched in horror as an answering spear nearly caught the archer, just missing his head as he ducked. It sailed past him into the darkness, over the precipice.

  Romas forced his eyes forward, and kept moving.

  Rinposh had described his vision, a channel through the chaos, a corridor created by the tumbled stone. Romas scanned the ruin ahead of him as he drew closer, but it looked impassible, a jagged mass of rock, huge tumbled blocks of stone footed in rubble of every size. Romas tried to suppress his fear that Rinposh's vision was more pursil smoke than prognostication. It didn't seem possible that there was a passage through the ruin, that a slender, wide-eyed woman would be waiting for him there.

  * * *

  The Spiral Road

  Irlen was given a tent with the camp followers, the only other women in the encampment at the foot of the Spiral Road, but she spent no time there. The moment she stepped off the caravan, she was swept into the hospital tent, where she labored for hours with the medics. It was unbearably hot, with the great plateau blocking the wind from the sea. When she stepped outside as evening approached, a tantalizing whiff of salt carried on the still air, and made her long to be on the other side, where the road wound up the cliff above the water.

  All the wounded had been either treated and sent back to their barracks, or shipped back in the caravan to Callis City. And now, as darkness approached, Irlen saw that the fighting would begin again. She knew it was dangerous, she had seen the damage done to the Callistan soldiers. But compulsion drove her. What she needed for the children in her ward was on the other side of that pile of blasted rock, and that was still an hour's walk away. The fighters were already on their way, marching up the twisting road, disappearing around the curve as they climbed.

  Her companion hovered beside her in the dusk as she hesitated. "You've come this far," he said. "You won't give up now."

  "I was crazy to come," she muttered. "But the General couldn't accept my offer fast enough."

  "No, of course not," he smiled. "A real doctor, a volunteer . . . a patriot."

  She snorted, the sound lost in the clatter of boots on rock, of orders being called, of conversations around campfires and in the cooktents. "I'll probably get myself killed."

  "Oh, no," he said. "You'll find a way through."

  His was the very voice of her compulsion. "Well." She straightened her long jacket, dusted her palms together. "Now that I'm here, I'm going to try."

  The last of the soldiers had already rounded the curve in the steep road above her head. She set out after them with a determined step. She had nothing with her, deliberately. Her plan—inasmuch as she had one—was simply to arrive with empty hands, to find someone to ask for what she needed, to beg for help for the children in her care. Her head buzzed with the odd drive that had brought her here. It was not like her to act on impulse, and she had never done so before. But now . . . she put one foot in front of another, and climbed.

  One of the medics spotted her before she had gone far, and came running after her, his boots clacking against the stone. She turned to face him.

  "Doctor," he cried breathlessly. "Don't go up there! Those barbarians—they shoot arrows and throw huge stones—you've seen the damage!"

  "And what do we throw at them?" Irlen asked.

  His look of concern transformed instantly into a scowl of disapproval. "They are Alhasi," he said, sternly, as if she were a child. "Godless. Immoral. They are our enemies."

  Irlen spun away from him, her long coat flaring. "Enemies," she muttered to herself as she resumed her climb.

  "The way to destroy our enemies is to befriend them," her companion said, at her shoulder.

  "Ah, I remember your saying that, Old Man. Quoting again. Lin Chu, I believe."

  "You remembered this time, daughter! Good for you."

  She didn't answer. The climb took all her breath.

  * * *

  The opening was slender and irregular, a corridor of stone formed by two great chunks that had fallen at angles to each other, frighteningly close to the precipice. Romas found that once he had inched along the base of the ruin, he was beneath the trajectory of the Callistan spears, but the explosives were still a danger. Something fell near him, and rolled across the rubble. Instinctively, he turned his face to the rock and covered his head with his arms. The hand bomb, blessedly small, blew up with a popping sound, and bits of gravel stung his back and bounced off the walls. He held still, more afraid of the drop than the bomb.

  An archer above him cried, "Khu bo! They'll kill you!"

  Romas looked up at him. He gave a slight shrug, and held up his arm.

  The man nodded understanding, and touched his own arm, acknowledging the lama's token. Romas turned around, his back to the rock, and sidestepped toward the opening. When the next bomb fell, he simply closed his eyes. His fate was no longer in his hands.

  * * *

  Irlen, after climbing for half an hour, rounded a sharp turn. To her left, the cliff fell away into utter blackness. Ahead, the battle was in full spate. Callistan soldiers stood in lines, braving the arrows of the Alhasi, and threw spears and shou dan with all their might over the ruin of stone. There were already wounded, lying on stretchers in the road. Piles of the nasty-looking hand bombs lay in wagons, and bundles of spears with barbed tips waited in racks. The men shouted orders and questions at each other over the noise of the detonations on the other side. The explosions lit up the night, and Irlen could see how beautiful the arches must once have been, crenellated edges and scrolled lintels now decorating jagged fragments. As she approached, one of the captains caught sight of her.

  "What's a woman doing here?" he demanded.

  Someone else glanced around, and said something to the captain Irlen couldn't hear. The captain whirled, and stamped toward her through the noise and confusion.

  She stopped where she was, but it was hard. The impulse that pushed her
on burned in her mind. Her companion wavered, frowning, looking ahead. He lifted one arm, only faintly visible in the starlight, and pointed at the jumble of broken stone ahead. She tried to see what he was pointing at, but at that moment the captain reached her.

  He stopped abruptly, his hard boots spitting bits of rock at her ankles. "What do you think you're doing?" he said harshly.

  The burning in her mind became an inferno. She could hardly think how to answer the man. "I—" she faltered. "I—I'm a doctor," she said, not knowing how else to persuade him.

  He gave her a hard look. "There are wounded on those litters, there," he said, pointing back the way she had come.

  "I know," she said. Her eyes strayed past him, raking the ruin for a way through. Her feet inched forward of their own volition. "I know, but—"

  And there it was. She knew, distantly, that the captain shouted something at her, but the compulsion in her mind allowed nothing but the awareness that her goal was just ahead, perhaps thirty yards away. She strode forward. The captain's hand grasped at the back of her coat, but she was already gone. He shouted, but her mind would not permit her to hear it. She started to run toward the cliff's edge, where she saw the break in the pile of rock. She ran directly into the path of the arrows and stones from the Alhasi side of the barrier.