“I am being a false Kavalar in aiding Jaan at all,” Janacek said in a faintly troubled voice. “Thus I will be just a bit more false. In that lies our best chance. We will fly in openly, and I will hand you over as I have said. That act should gain at least a grudging trust from them. Then I will join the hunt, and do all that I can short of murder. Perhaps I can provoke a quarrel and call some of them to duel in a manner that will not make it seem as though I am protecting Jaan Vikary.”
“You could lose,” Dirk pointed out.
Janacek nodded. “Truth enough. I could lose. Yet I do not think so. In singled duel, only Bretan Braith Lantry is a really dangerous antagonist, and he and his teyn are not among the hunters, if the aircars you saw are all. Lorimaar has his skills, but Jaan wounded him in Challenge. Pyr is fast and talented with his little stick, but not with a blade or a sidearm. The others are old men and weaklings. I would not lose.”
“And if you can’t trick them into dueling?”
“Then I can be near when they run down Jaan.”
“And then?”
“I do not know. They will not take him, though. I promise you that, t’Larien. They will not take him.”
“And meanwhile, what about me?”
Janacek looked over once again, and once more the blue eyes regarded him thoughtfully. “You will be in great danger,” the Kavalar said, “but I do not think they will kill you immediately, and certainly not as I will hand you to them, bound and helpless. They will wish to hunt you. Pyr will probably claim you. I hope that they will cut you free and strip you and set you to running in the forest. If some of them elect to hunt you, less will be hunting Jaan. There is another possibility as well. In Challenge, Pyr and Bretan were near to quarreling over you. Should Bretan ever join the hunters, it is likely they would resume their conflict. We can only benefit by that.”
Dirk smiled. “Your enemy has an enemy,” he said sardonically.
Janacek grimaced. “I am no Arkin Ruark,” he said. “I will help you if I can. Before we enter the Braith camp, we will drop—dark and secret, if we can—to this downed aircar you saw, this dead fire. We will leave your laser in the wreck. Then, after they have cut you free and sent you naked into the forest, you can make for the weapon, and hopefully surprise those who come after you.” He shrugged. “Your life may depend on how fast and straight you can run, and how accurately you can fire your rifle.”
“And whether I can kill,” Dirk added.
“And whether you can kill,” Janacek acknowledged. “I can give you no better chances, t’Larien.”
“I accept the ones you offer,” Dirk said. Then they flew in silence for a long time. But when the black knives of the mountainwall had finally fallen behind them, and Janacek had doused all the aircar’s lights and begun his slow, careful descent, Dirk turned to speak to him once more. “What would you have done,” he asked, “if I had refused to play along with your deceit?”
Garse Janacek swiveled in his seat and laid his right hand on Dirk’s arm. The untouched glowstones burned very faintly in the iron of his bracelet. “The bond of fire-and-iron is stronger than any bond you know,” the Kavalar said in a grave voice, “and far stronger than any bonds of fleeting gratitude. Had you refused me, t’Larien, I would have cut your tongue from your mouth so you could not tell the Braiths of my plans, and I would have proceeded. Willing or unwilling, you would have played your role. Understand, t’Larien, I do not hate you, though you have earned my hate several times over. At times I have even found myself liking you, as much as an Ironjade may like an outbonder. I would not have hurt you out of malice. Yet I would have hurt you. For I have considered carefully, and my plan is Jaan Vikary’s best hope.”
As he spoke, not the faintest trace of a smile could be seen on Janacek’s face. For once he was not joking.
Dirk did not have long to reflect on Janacek’s words. They dropped down through the night like some impossibly light boulder and flitted wraithlike above the tops of the chokers. The wreck still smoldered a dim orange (the light seeping from the core of a blackened, fallen tree), and a haze of smoke obscured its contours. Janacek hovered over the crash, opened one of the great armored doors, and tossed the laser rifle to the forest floor a few meters below. At Dirk’s insistence, he also threw out the Braith jacket Dirk had been wearing, whose fur and heavy leather would be a godsend to a man running naked through the forest.
Afterwards they soared straight up again, high into the sky, and Garse bound Dirk hand and foot, the thin cords tight and painful, threatening to cut off circulation, and so very authentic. Then, after flicking on his headlamps and running lights, Janacek took them swooping toward the circle of lights.
The hounds were staked out and sleeping by the water’s edge, but they woke when the strange aircar descended, and Janacek landed in the midst of their wild howling. Only one of the Braiths was about, the skin-and-bones hunter whose unkempt black hair stood out as stiffly as if it had been fried to a charcoal crisp. Pyr’s teyn, Dirk knew, though he did not know his name. The man was sitting by a low campfire near the Braith hounds, a laser rifle by his side, when they first saw him, but he scrambled to his feet swiftly enough as they came down.
Janacek unsealed the massive door again, swinging it up and open and letting the cold night flow into the warmth of the cabin. He pulled Dirk to his feet and shoved him roughly outside, forcing him to kneel in the cool sand.
“Ironjade,” the man on guard said harshly. By then his kethi had started to gather, pulling themselves from their sleeping bags and piling out of the aircars.
“I have a gift for you,” Janacek said, his hands on his hips. “An offering from Ironjade to Braith.”
The hunters were six in number, Dirk saw as he looked up from where he knelt; all of them had been in Challenge. Bald, bulky Pyr had been sleeping outside near his teyn; he was the first one on hand. Soon afterwards Roseph high-Braith and his quiet muscular companion joined them. They too had been asleep on the ground near their aircar. Lastly Lorimaar high-Braith Arkellor, the left side of his chest wrapped in dark bandages, came slowly from the domed red aircar, leaning on the arm of the fat man who had been with him before. All six of them appeared as they had slept—fully dressed, and armed.
“The gift,” Pyr said, “is appreciated, Ironjade.” He wore a sidearm on a black metallic belt, but his baton was missing, and he looked almost incomplete without it.
“Your presence is not appreciated,” Lorimaar said, as he struggled to join the circle. He was leaning much of his weight on his teyn, so that he seemed hunched and broken, no longer quite the giant he had been. And Dirk, looking at him, thought he could see new creases in the dark, deeply lined skin—fresh-carved runnels of pain.
“It is obvious now that the duels for which I was named arbiter will never come to pass,” Roseph said evenly, with none of the heavy hostility that thickened Lorimaar’s voice, “so I have no particular authority, and I cannot pretend to speak for High Kavalaan, or Braith. Yet I am certain that I speak for all of us. We will not tolerate your interference, Ironjade. Blood-gift or no.”
“Truth,” Lorimaar said.
“I do not seek to interfere,” Janacek told them. “I seek to join you.”
“We hunt your teyn,” Pyr’s companion said.
“He knows that,” Pyr snapped.
“I have no teyn,” Janacek said. “An animal roams the forest, wearing my iron-and-fire. I would help you kill it, and reclaim the thing that is mine.” He sounded very hard, very convincing.
One of the hounds was stalking back and forth impatiently on its chain. It growled and stopped long enough to wrinkle its rat’s face at Janacek and bare a row of yellowed canines. “He is a liar,” Lorimaar high-Braith said. “Even our dogs smell out his lies. They do not like him.”
“A mockman,” added his teyn.
Garse Janacek turned his head very slightly. The shifting firelight woke red highlights in his beard as he smiled his thin and threatening smile.
“Saanel Braith,” he said, “your teyn is wounded and thus insults me with impunity, knowing I cannot call on him to make his choices. You enjoy no such safety.”
“For the moment he does,” Roseph said harshly. “That is a trick we do not allow you, Ironjade. You will not duel us, one by one, and save your outbond teyn.”
“I have sworn that I have no wish to save him. I have no teyn. You cannot strip me of my rights under the code.”
Small, shriveled Roseph—the smallest of the Kavalars by half a meter—stared at Janacek and refused to flinch. “We are on Worlorn,” he said. “And we do what we will.” Several of the others muttered agreement.
“You are Kavalars,” Janacek insisted, but a flicker of doubt passed across his face. “You are Braiths and highbonds of Braith, bound to your holdfast and your council and its ways.”
“In years past,” Pyr said with a smile, “I have seen many of my kethi and even more the men of other holdfasts abandon the old wisdoms. ‘This and this and this are wrong,’ the mincing Ironjades would say. ‘We will not follow them.’ And the sheep of Redsteel would echo them, and the womanly men of Shanagate, and sadly many Braiths. Are my memories false? You stand and preach code at us, but do I not recall the Ironjades in my youth telling me that I may hunt mockmen no longer? Am I misremembering the soft Kavalars who were sent to Avalon to learn spaceships and weaponry and other useful things, who returned full of lies about how we must change this way, and that way, how so much of our old code was a thing of shame, when it had been so long a pride to us? Tell me, Ironjade, am I wrong?”
Garse said nothing. He folded his arms tightly against his chest.
“Jaan Vikary, once high-Ironjade, was the greatest of the changers, the liars. You were not far behind,” Lorimaar said.
“I have never been to Avalon,” Janacek said simply.
“Answer me,” Pyr said. “Did you and Vikary not seek to change old ways? Did you not laugh at the parts of the code you disliked?”
“I have never broken code,” Janacek said. “Jaan . . . Jaan would sometimes . . .” He faltered.
“He admits it,” fat Saanel said.
“We have talked among ourselves,” Roseph said in a calm voice. “If highbonds can kill outside the code, if the things we know as truth can be changed and disregarded, then we too can make changes, and shun false wisdoms we do not care for. We are bound by Braith no longer, Ironjade. It is the best of holdfasts, but that is not good enough. Our old kethi had taken too many soft lies to their hearts. We will be twisted and toyed with no more. We will return to the old true things, to the creed that was ancient before Bronzefist fell, even to the days when the highbonds of Ironjade and Taal and the Deep Coal Dwellings fought together against demons in the Lameraan Hills.”
“You see, Ironjade,” Pyr said, “you call us false names.”
“I did not know,” Janacek said, a bit slowly.
“Call us truly. We are no Braiths.”
The Ironjade’s eyes seemed dark and hooded. His arms were still crossed. He looked at Lorimaar. “You have made a new holdfast,” he said.
“There is precedent,” Roseph said. “Redsteel was birthed by those who broke from Glowstone Mountain, and Braith itself grew out of Bronzefist.”
“I am Lorimaar Reln Winterfox high-Larteyn Arkellor,” Lorimaar said in his hard, pain-filled voice.
“Honor to your holdfast,” Janacek answered, holding himself stiffly, “honor to your teyn.”
“We are all Larteyns,” Roseph said.
Pyr laughed. “We are the highbond council of Larteyn, and we keep the old codes,” he said.
In the silence that followed, Janacek’s eyes went from one face to the next. Dirk, still helpless and kneeling in the sand, watched his head move, turning from one to the other. “You have named yourself Larteyns,” Janacek said at last, “and so you are Larteyns. All the old wisdoms agree on that much. Yet I remind you that all the things you speak of, the men and teachings and the holdfasts you invoke, all these things are dead. Bronzefist and Taal were destroyed in highwars before any of you were born, and the Deep Coal Dwellings were flooded and empty even during the Time of Fire and Demons.”
“Their wisdoms live in Larteyn,” Saanel said.
“You are only six,” Janacek said, “and Worlorn is dying.”
“Under us it will thrive again,” Roseph said. “News will go back to High Kavalaan and others will come. Our sons will be born here, to hunt these chokerwoods.”
“As you will,” said Janacek. “It is no matter to me. Ironjade has no grievance with Larteyn. I come to you openly and ask to join your hunt.” His hand dropped to Dirk’s shoulder. “And I bring you a blood-gift.”
“Truth,” Pyr said and was silent for a moment. Then, to the others: “I say let him come.”
“No,” said Lorimaar. “I do not trust him. He is too eager.”
“For a reason, Lorimaar high-Larteyn,” Janacek said. “A great shame has been put on my holdfast and my name. I seek to wipe it clean.”
“A man must keep his pride, no matter the pain,” Roseph said, nodding. “That is truth enough for anyone.”
“Let him hunt,” Roseph’s teyn said. “We are six and he is alone. How can he harm us?”
“He is a liar!” Lorimaar insisted. “How did he come to us here? Ask yourselves that! And look!” He pointed at Janacek’s right arm, where glowstones burned like red eyes in their settings. Only a handful were missing.
Janacek put his left hand on his knife and slid it smoothly from its sheath. Then he held out his right hand to Pyr. “Help me hold my arm steady,” he said in a calm conversational tone, “and I will cast away Jaan Vikary’s false fires.”
Pyr did as he was asked. No one spoke. Janacek’s hand was sure and quick. When he was finished, glowstones lay in the sand like coals from a scattered fire. He bent and picked one up, tossed it lightly into the air and caught it again, as if he were testing its weight, smiling all the while. Then he drew back his arm and threw; the stone sailed up and off a long way before it began to fall. At the far end of its arc, sinking, it looked a bit like a shooting star. Dirk almost expected it to hiss when it sank into the lake’s dark waters. But there was no sound at all, not even a splash at this distance.
Janacek picked up all of the glowstones in turn, rolled them in his palm briefly, and gave them to the lake.
When the last of them was gone, he turned back to the hunters and held out his right arm. “Empty iron,” he said. “Look. My teyn is dead.”
After that there was no more trouble.
“Dawn is near upon us,” Pyr said. “Set my prey to running.”
So the hunters turned their attention to Dirk, and it went much as he had been told it would go. They cut him free of his bonds and let him rub his wrists and ankles a bit to get his blood moving once again. Then he was pushed back against an aircar, and Roseph and fat Saanel held him still while Pyr himself cut his clothes away. The bald hunter handled his little knife as deftly as he did his baton, but he was not gentle; he left a long cut down the inside of Dirk’s thigh, and a shorter deeper one on his chest.
Dirk winced when Pyr slashed him, but made no effort to resist. Until he was finally naked, and beginning to shiver in the wind, his back pressed too hard against the cold metal flank of the aircar.
Pyr frowned suddenly. “What’s this?” he said, and his small white hand wrapped around the whisperjewel where it hung against Dirk’s chest.
“No,” Dirk said.
Pyr yanked hard and twisted. The fine silver chain dug painfully into Dirk’s throat; the jewel popped free of its improvised clip.
“No!” Dirk shouted. He threw himself forward suddenly and began to struggle. Roseph stumbled and lost his grip on Dirk’s right arm and went down. Saanel hung on grimly. Dirk punched him hard in his bull-thick neck, just beneath his chin. The fat man let go with an oath, and Dirk swung around at Pyr.
Pyr had picked up his baton. He was smiling. Dirk took a
single quick step toward him and stopped.
That was enough of a hesitation. Saanel slid a thick arm around his head from behind and began applying a headlock that gradually turned into a choke.
Pyr watched with disinterest. He thrust his baton into the sand and held the whisperjewel between thumb and forefinger. “Mockman jewelry,” he said disdainfully. It meant nothing to him; there was no resonance in his mind with the patterns esper-etched into the gemstone. Perhaps he noticed how cold the little teardrop was to his touch, perhaps not—but he heard no whispers. He called to his teyn, who was kicking sand onto the fire. “Would you like a gift from t’Larien?”
Saying nothing, the man came over and took the jewel and held it briefly, then put it into a pocket of his jacket. He turned away unsmiling and began to walk around the perimeter of the Braith camp, extinguishing the ring of electric hand torches planted in the sand. As the lights went out, Dirk saw that the first blush of dawn was on the eastern horizon.
Pyr waved his baton at Saanel. “Release him,” he ordered, and the fat man undid his chokehold and stepped away. Dirk stood free again. His neck ached, and the dry sand beneath his feet was coarse and cold. He felt very vulnerable. Without the whisperjewel, he was now very much afraid. He looked around for Garse Janacek, but the Ironjade was off on the other side of the camp talking intently to Lorimaar.
“Dawn is already here,” Pyr said. “I can come after you at once, mockman. Run.”
Dirk glanced over his shoulder. Roseph was frowning and massaging his shoulder; he had fallen hard when Dirk yanked loose. Saanel, smirking, was leaning back against the aircar. Dirk took a few hesitant steps away from them, toward the forest.
“Come, t’Larien, I am certain you can run faster than that,” Pyr called out to him. “Run fast enough, and you may live. I will be on foot as well, and my teyn, and our hounds.” He took out his sidearm and tossed it through the air, spinning, toward Saanel, who caught it and smothered it in two massive slab-fingered hands. “I will carry no laser, t’Larien,” Pyr continued. “This will be a pure clean hunt, of the oldest sort. A hunter with his knife and his throwing-blade, a naked prey. Run, t’Larien, run!” His bony black-haired companion had come over to join him. “My teyn,” Pyr said to him, “unchain our hounds.”