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II

A fresh fastiga—slightly larger than a horse, long-eared, long-snouted, feathery-furred, with a loud bray and a piny smell—waited in the cruciform courtyard. A remount and pack animal were strung behind. A guardsman held the leader's bridle. He wore a breastplate of reinforced leather, a helmeting network of iron-studded straps woven into his mane, and a broad-bladed spear across his back. Beyond him, lesser folk moved across the cobblestones: servants in livery of black and yellow shorts, drably clad peasants, a maneless female in a loose tunic. Around them bulked the four squat stone buildings that sheltered the household, linked by outer walls in which were the gates. At each corner of the square, a watchtower lifted its battlements into the deep greenish sky.

"Are you certain you do not wish an escort?" Rebo asked.

"There is no danger in riding alone, is there?" Falkayn replied.

"Gr-rm . . . no, I suppose not. I keep this region well patrolled. God speed you, then."

Falkayn shook hands, a Larsan custom, too. The Marchwarden's three long fingers and oppositely placed thumb fitted awkwardly into a human grasp. For a moment more they looked at each other.

The bulky garments Falkayn wore against the chill disguised his youthful slenderness. He was towheaded and blue-eyed, with a round face and a freckled snub nose that cost him much secret anguish. A baron's son from Hermes should look lean and dashing. To be sure, he was a younger son, and one who had gotten himself expelled from the ducal militechnic academy. The reason was harmless enough, a prank which had been traced to him by merest chance; but his father decided he had better seek his fortune elsewhere. So he had gone to Earth, and Martin Schuster of the Polesotechnic League had taken him on as an apprentice, and instead of the glamor and adventure which interstellar merchants were supposed to enjoy, there had been hard work and harder study. He had given a whoop when his master told him to ride here alone and arrange for local help. It was vastly disappointing that he couldn't stay awhile.

"Thank you for everything," he said. He swung himself into the saddle with less grace than he'd hoped, under a gravity fifteen percent greater than Earth's. The guard let go the bridle and he rode out the eastern gate.

A village nestled below the castle walls, cottages of dovetailed timber with sod roofs. Beyond them that highroad called the Sun's Way plunged downhill toward the distant Trammina Valley. It wasn't much of a road. The dirt surface was rough, weed-tufted, bestrewn with rocks which melting snows had carried down year after year from the upper slopes. Not far ahead, the path snaked around a tor and climbed again, steeply.

Falkayn glanced southward. The depot gleamed white on a ridge, like Heaven's gate before Lucifer. Otherwise he himself was the only sign of humankind. Coarse gray grass and thorny trees stretched over the hills, with here and there a flock of grazing beasts watched by a mounted herder. At his back, the Kasunian Mountains rose in harsh snow peaks, a wall across the world. One great moon hung ghostly above them. The ember-colored sun had just cleared the horizon toward which he rode.

Wind roared hollowly, thrusting at his face. He shivered. Ivanhoe was not terribly cold, in this springtime of the middle northern latitudes; the dense atmosphere gave considerable greenhouse effect. But the bloody light made him feel forever chilled. And the fastiga's cloven hooves beat the stones with a desolate sound.

Forgetting that he was Falkayn of Hermes, merchant prince, he pulled the radio transceiver from his pocket and thumbed the switch. Hundreds of kilometers away, an intercom buzzed. "Hullo," he said rather thinly. "Hullo, What Cheer. Anybody there?"

"Si." Engineer Romulo Pasqual's voice came from the box. "Is that you, Davy muchacho?"

Falkayn was so glad of this little company that for once he didn't resent being patronized. "Yes. How's everything?"

"As before. Kirsh is brooding. Martin has gone to the temple again. He said it would probably be no use trying to talk them out of their prohibition on the wheel that you called us about last night. I?" Falkayn could almost see the Latin shrug. "I sit here and try to figure how we can move a couple tons of generator without wheels. A sort of giant stoneboat, quizá?"

"No. I thought of that, too, and discussed the notion with Rebo, when we spent a lot of the dark period hunting for ideas. Not over a road like this."

"Are you certain? If we hitch enough peasants and animals to the thing—"

"We can't get them. Rebo himself, if he drafted all the people and critters he can spare—remember, this is the planting season in a subsistence economy, and he also has to mount guard against the barbarians—he doubts if there'd be enough power to haul such a load over some of these upgrades."

"You said that quite a few of the caballero class were disgruntled with the priests. If they contributed, too—"

"It'd take a long time to arrange that, probably too long. Besides, Rebo thinks very few would dare go as far as he will, to help us. They may not like being tied hand and foot to Consecrate policy, when there's a whole world for them to spend their energies on. But quite apart from religious reverence, they're physically dependent on the Consecrates, who supply a good many technical and administrative services . . . and who can rouse the commoners against the wardens, if it ever came to an open break between the castes."

"So. Yes, Martin seemed to think much the same. We also were threshing this matter last night. . . . However, Davy, we should have at least a few score natives and a couple of hundred fastigas at our disposal, if Rebo is willing to help within the letter of the damned law. I swear they could move a stoneboat over any route. They might have to use winches—"

"Winches are a form of wheel," Falkayn reminded him.

"Ay de mí, so they are. Well, levers and dikes, then. The Mayans raised big pyramids without wheels. The task would not be as large, to skid the generator from Gilrigor to Aesca."

"Oh, sure, it could be done. But how long would it take? Come have a look at this so-called road. We'd be many months dead before the job was finished." Falkayn gulped. "How much food have we got if we ration ourselves? A hundred days' worth?"

"Something like that. Of course, we could live without eating for another month or two, I believe."

"Still not time enough to get your stoneboat across that distance. I swear it isn't."

"Well . . . no doubt you are right. You have inspected the terrain. It was only a rather desperate idea."

"Wagon transport is bad enough," Falkayn said. "I don't think that would make more than twenty kilometers per Earth-day in this area. Faster, of course, once we reached the lowlands, but I'd still estimate a month altogether."

"So slow? Well, yes, I suppose you are right. A rider needs more than a week. But this adds to our trouble. Martin is afraid that even if we can arrange something not forbidden by their law, the priests may have time to think of some new excuse for stopping us."

Falkayn's mouth tightened. "I wouldn't be surprised." His fright broke from him in a wail: "Why do they hate us so?"

"You should know that. Martin often talked to you while you rode westward."

"Yes. B-but I was sent off just a couple days after we landed. You three fellows have been on the scene, had a chance to speak with the natives, observe them—" Falkayn got his self-pity under control barely in time to avoid blubbering.

"The reason is plain," Pasqual said. "The Consecrates are the top crust of this petrified civilization. Change could only bring them down, however much it might improve the lot of the other classes. Then, besides self-interest, there is natural conservatism. Martin tells me theocracies are always hidebound. The Consecrates are smart enough to see that we newcomers represent a threat to them. Our goods, our ideas will upset the balance of society. So they will do everything they can to discourage more outworlders from coming."

"Can't you threaten revenge? Tell 'em a battleship will come and blow 'em to hell if they let us die."

"The first expedition told them a little too much of the true situation, I fear. Still, Martin may try such a bluff today. I do not know what he intends. But he has gotten . . . well, at least not very unfriendly with some of the younger Consecrates, in the days since you left. Has he told you of his lectures to them? Do not surrender yet, muchacho."

Falkayn flushed indignantly. "I haven't," he snapped. "Don't you either."

Pasqual made matters worse by laughing. Falkayn signed off.

Anger faded before loneliness as the hours wore on. He hadn't minded the trip to Gilrigor Castle. That had been full of hope, and riding on animals purchased with gold from a wealthy Aescan, through an excitingly exotic land, was just what a merchant adventurer ought to do. But Rebo had smashed the hope, and now the countryside looked only dreary and sinister. Falkayn's mind whirled with plan after plan, each less practical than the last—recharging the accumulators by a hand-powered generator, airlifting with a balloon, making so many guns that four men could stand off a million Larsans. . . . Whenever he rejected a scheme, his father's mansion and his mother's face rose up to make his eyes sting and he clutched frantically after another idea.

There must be some way to move a big load without wheels! What had he gone to school for? Physics, chemistry, biology, math, sociotechnics . . . damn everything, here he was, child of a civilization that burned atoms and traveled between the stars, and one stupid taboo was about to kill him! But that was impossible. He was David Falkayn, with his whole life yet to live. Death didn't happen to David Falkayn.

The red sun climbed slowly up the sky. Ivanhoe had a rotation period of nearly sixty hours. He stopped at midday to eat and sleep awhile, and again shortly before sunset. The landscape had grown still more bleak: nothing was to be seen now but hills, ravines, an occasional brawling stream, wild pastures spotted with copses of scrubby fringe-leaved trees, no trace of habitation.

He woke after some hours, crawled shivering from his sleeping bag, started a campfire and opened a packet of food. The smoke stung his nostrils. Antiallergen protected him against such slight contact with proteins made deadly alien by several billion years of separate evolution. He could even drink the local water. But nothing could save him if he ate anything native. After swallowing his rations, he readied the fastigas for travel. Because he was still cold, he left the lead animal tethered and huddled over the fire to store a little warmth in his body.

His eyes wandered upward. Earth and Hermes lay out there—more than four hundred light-years away.

The second moon was rising, a mottled coppery disc above the eastern scarps. Even without that help, one could travel by night. For the stars swarmed and glittered, the seven giant Sisters so brilliant in their nebular hazes that they cast shadows, the lesser members of the cluster and the more distant suns of the galaxy filling the sky with their wintry hordes. A gray twilight overlay the world. Off in the west, the Kasunian snows seemed phosphorescent.

Hard to believe there could be danger in so much beauty. And in fact there seldom was. Nonetheless, when a spaceship ran on hyperdrive through a region where the interstellar medium was thicker than usual, there was a small but finite probability that one of her micro-jumps would terminate just where a bit of solid matter happened to be. If the difference in intrinsic velocities was great, it could do considerable damage. If, in addition, the lump was picked up in the space occupied by the nuclear fusion unit—well, that was what had happened to the What Cheer.

I suppose I'm lucky at that, Falkayn thought with a shudder. The pebble could have ripped right through Me. Of course, then the others would have been all right, with no more than a job of hull patching to do. But at his age Falkayn didn't think that was preferable.

He had to admire the way Captain Mukerji had gotten them here. By commandeering every charged accumulator aboard ship, he'd kept the engines going as far as Ivanhoe. Landing on the last gasp of energy, by guess, God, and aerodynamics, took uncommon skill. Naturally, the sensible thing had been to make for Aesca, the capital, rather than directly for Gilrigor. One did not normally bypass local authorities, who might take offense and cause trouble. Who could have known that the trouble was already waiting there?

But now the spaceship sat, without enough ergs left in her power packs to lift a single gravity sled. The accumulators in the depot were insufficient for transportation; besides, they were needed for the repair tools. The spare atomic generator couldn't recharge anything until it had been installed in the ship, for it functioned integrally with engines and controls. And a thousand wheelless kilometers separated the two. . . .

Something stirred. One of the fastigas brayed. Falkayn's heart jumped into his gullet. He sprang erect with a hand on his blaster.

A native male trod into the little circle of firelight. His fur was fluffed out against the night cold and the breath steamed from below his jaws. Falkayn saw that he carried a rapier and—yes, by Judas, there was a circle emblazoned on his breastplate! The flames turned his great eyes into pools of restless red.

"What do you want?" Falkayn squeaked. Furiously, he reminded himself that the Ivanhoan's hands were extended empty in token of peace.

"God give you good evening," the deep voice answered. "I saw your camp from afar. I did not expect to find an outlander."

"N-n-nor I a Sanctuary guard."

"My corps travels widely on missions for the Consecrates. I hight Vedolo Pario's-Child."

"I, I . . . David, uh, David Falkayn's-Child."

"You have been on a visit to the Marchwarden, have you not?"

"Yes. As if you did not know!" Falkayn spat. No, wait, watch your manners. We may still have a chance of talking the Consecrates into giving us a special dispensation about wheels. "Will you join me?"

Vedolo hunkered, wrapping his tail about his feet. When Falkayn sat down again, the autochthon loomed over him on the other side of the flames, mane like a forested mountain against the Milky Way. "Yes," Vedolo admitted, "everyone in Aesca knew you were bound hither, to see if that which your fellows laid in the sealed building was still intact. I trust it was?"

Falkayn nodded. Nobody in the early Iron Age could break into an inertium-plated shed with a Nakamura lock. "And Marchwarden Rebo was most kind," he said.

"That is not surprising, from what we know of him. As I understand the matter, you must get certain spare parts from the building to repair your ship. Will Rebo, then, help you transport them to Aesca?"

"He would if he could. But the main thing we need is too heavy for any conveyance available to him."

"My Consecrate masters have wondered somewhat about that," Vedolo said. "They were shown around your vessel, at their own request, and the damaged section looked quite large."

That must have been after I left, Falkayn thought. Probably Schuster was trying to ingratiate us with them. And I'll bet it misfired badly when they saw the circular shapes of things like meter dialsstiffened their hostility to us, even if they didn't say anything to him at the time.

But how can this character know that, unless he followed me here? And why would he do so? What is this mission of his?

"Your shipmates explained that they had means of transport," Vedolo continued. "That makes me wonder why you returned this quickly, and alone."

"Well . . . we did have a device in mind, but there appear to be certain difficulties—"

Vedolo shrugged. "I have no doubt that folk as learned as you can overcome any problems. You have powers that we thought belonged only to angels—or to Anti-God—" He broke off and extended a hand. "Your flame weapons, for instance, which the earlier visitors demonstrated. I was not present in Aesca at the time, and have always been most curious about them. Is that a weapon at your belt? Might I see it?"

Falkayn went rigid. He could not interpret every nuance in the Larsan voices, so strangely unresonant for lack of a nasal chamber. But—"No!" he snapped.

The delicate lips curled back over sharp teeth. "You are less than courteous to a servant of God," Vedolo said.

"I . . . uh . . . the thing is dangerous. You might get hurt."

Vedolo raised an arm in the air and lowered it again. "Look at me," he said. "Listen carefully. There is much you do not understand, you bumptious invaders. I have something to tell you—"

In Ivanhoe's thick air, a human heard preternaturally well. Or perhaps it was only that Falkayn was strung wire taut, trembling and sweating with the sense of aloneness before implacable enmity. He heard the rustle out in the brush and flung himself aside as the bowstring sang. The arrow buried its eight-sided shaft in the earth where he had been.

Vedolo sprang up, sword flashing free. Falkayn rolled over. A thornbush raked his cheek. "Kill him!" Vedolo bawled and lunged at the human. Falkayn bounced erect. The rapier blade snagged his coat as he dodged. He got his blaster out and fired point blank.

Light flared hellishly for an instant. Vedolo went over in smoke, with a horrible squelch. Afterimages flew in rags before Falkayn's eyes. He stumbled toward his animals, which plunged and brayed in their panic. Through the dark he heard someone cry, "I cannot see, I cannot see, I am blinded!" The flash would have been more dazzling to Ivanhoans than to him. But they'd recover in a minute, and then they'd have much better night vision than he did.

"Kill his fastigas!" called another voice.

Falkayn fired several bolts. That should make their aim poor for a while longer, he thought in chaos. His lead animal reared and struck at him. Its eyeballs rolled, crimson against shadow-black in the streaming flame light. Falkayn sidestepped the hooves, got one hand on the bridle, and clubbed the long nose with his gun barrel. "Hold still, you brute," he sobbed. "It's your life, too."

Feet blundered through the brush. A lion head came into view. As he saw the human, the warrior yelled and threw a spear. It gleamed past, flattened shaft and iron head. Falkayn was too busy mounting to retaliate.

Somehow he got into the saddle. The remount shrieked as two arrows smote home in its belly. Falkayn cut it loose with a blaster shot.

"Get going!" he screamed. He struck heels into the sides of his beast. The fastiga broke into a rocking gallop, the pack animal behind at the end of its reins.

An ax hewed and missed. An arrow buzzed over his shoulder. Then he was beyond the assassins, back on the Sun's Way, westward bound again.

How many are there? it whirled in him. Half a dozen? They must have left their own fastigas at a distance, so they could sneak up on me. I've got that much head start. But no remount anymore, and they certainly do.

They were sent to waylay me, that's clear, to cause delay that might prove fatal while the others wondered what had happened and searched for me. They don't know about my radio. Not that that makes any difference now. They've got to catch me, before I get to Rebo's protection.

I wonder if I can beat them there.

With hysterical sardonicism: Anyhow, I guess we can forget about that special dispensation.

 

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