My army . . . I said:
“He has told you what happened—or what he knows of it?”
“We knew already,” Murphy said. “From Grimm.”
Of course. Pigeons might not fly in a blizzard, but nothing stopped the invisible radio waves which bound the Seers in the cities to the High Seers in Sanctuary.
“I have served you and your cause,” I said. “Now I come to you for help.”
“You were right to do so.”
“I want . . .”
I started to rise from the bed but weakness made me fall back. Murphy said:
“There will be plenty of time to talk of what you want. Get your strength back first.”
“Is Hans . . . ?”
“We had difficulty in getting him from your bedside but in the end tiredness overcame him. He is sleeping. You need to do the same.”
• • •
It was two days later—days marked by electric clocks, not by the rising and setting of the sun—that I spoke to the High Seers together. We sat in the big room whose walls were painted with landscapes, a trick to deceive the mind into thinking we were not underground but looking out through windows at the living earth. I do not know about the High Seers but my mind was not deceived. It made me miss the reality all the more.
But the High Seers, perhaps, having lived in this way so long, had grown used to it. And they had their mission, compared with which nothing else mattered. I looked at them: Lanark, Murphy, Robb, Gunter and the rest. They wore no formal robes but ordinary simple clothes, and their heads were not cropped. There was nothing to remark on in them. Nothing except the knowledge they held and hoped to restore; and the power that knowledge gave.
They put questions to me and I answered them as patiently as I could. Murphy said:
“It is a setback. There is no denying it. But there are favorable possibilities. This Eric of Oxford, who favors change. He is only Prince in Waiting, but we may be able to do something about that. Lukis is Seer in Oxford . . .”
I interrupted him. “I am sure there are intrigues that can be woven. But I did not come for this.”
Murphy started to speak again but old Lanark put a hand up to stop him. He said:
“Let Luke speak.”
I tapped the sword in my belt. There was no need for it here but I wore it. Perhaps it did for me what the painted walls did for the High Seers. What tricks the mind is what the mind is glad to be tricked by.
“You gave me this,” I said, “the Sword of the Spirits. I killed my brother with it and took the city which you had planned I should have. But the city is lost to us now, and no sword will win it back. I need another weapon.”
They were silent, watching me.
“Our ancestors had weapons which killed at a distance. They called them firearms. You know of them and can make them for me.”
Robb said: “You would still need an army. One man cannot conquer a city even with firearms.”
“I will get an army.”
“From Oxford?” Murphy said. He shook his head. “Even if Eric were Prince he could not put guns in the hands of his army. There more than in most places their minds are closed against such things, but there is not a city throughout the civilized lands where men would accept them.”
“Not in the civilized lands,” I said, “but there is a city. The Prince at night watches a cinematograph film. They cut grass with machines and have crossbows to drive arrows. His Chancellor is polymuf.”
“Klan Gothlen? It lies very far away. And what makes you think that Prince would help you? His daughter is in Winchester, and your enemy.”
“He owes me a debt.”
“Debts are not always paid.”
“One can seek payment.”
Murphy shrugged, in doubt. But Lanark said:
“This may offer something. There is no harm in trying in that quarter as well as at Oxford. We could send someone north in the spring, and see how the land lies.”
“The weapon,” I said. “You could give me such a thing?”
Lanark said to Robb: “Do you have a film to show us?”
“I think I can find what you want.”
While he was getting the film and others set up screen and projector, I said to Lanark:
“I thought I might find Martin here. He arrived safely?”
Lanark nodded. “And went on.”
“Went on? Where?”
“To the other Sanctuary. In the ruins of London.”
“You sent him there?”
“No. It was his choice.”
“What is it he is seeking?”
“I do not know,” Lanark said, “but he did not find it here.”
Robb ran the film. It was not like that scratched and jerky picture of comic animals which I had seen at Cymru’s court. What one saw, unlike the paintings on the wall, looked almost real enough to touch. Men walked across a field, a line of fifty or more of them. They walked easily, talking and laughing. Then one saw other men, a few only, waiting in a thicket at the field’s end. They carried long tubes of metal, with a triangle at the end and something sticking down underneath. They raised the triangles to their shoulders and put their hands round the part beneath. Harsh and savage sound, the stammering of tongueless giants, broke out. And the line of men fell, sinking like wheat to the sickle’s sweep.
Robb switched off the projector and put up the room lights. He said:
“Is that the sort of thing you want?”
I was amazed and shocked, but I said: “Yes. And they can be made? Not just one, but many?”
Robb was a short thin man, with a skin even more pallid than the other High Seers. He wore spectacles with lenses of thick glass. He said:
“Many of our ancestors’ weapons were complex things, but this is not. They called it the Sten gun. It can be made fairly easily.”
“Can it be used on horseback?”
“Probably. But a man on foot would control it better.”
Lanark said: “You say the sword we gave you is no longer enough, Luke, that you need a far more powerful weapon. You may be right. But you must understand that other changes follow the changes of weapons. Horses are bigger targets against guns than men on foot. When the Sten gun returns there will be no more riding into battle.”
I nodded, scarcely listening, seeing my enemies—Harding, Blaine, Edmund and the rest—struck down in their triumph and laughter.
“There is another thing,” Lanark said. “You are a man of Winchester. You found it hard to believe that Blaine could put swords into the hands of the Wilsh to fight his own people. Will you take a whole army of Wilsh against your city, and with weapons such as these? Do you think you can?”
I saw the council of Captains with their hands raised against me. And I remembered Edmund and Blodwen in the dream, whispering, laughing, kissing.
I said: “Have no fear, Lanark. I will do it.”
SEVEN
THE PEOPLE OF THE BELLS
HANS, AFTER THE FIRST SHOCK, accustomed himself well to life in Sanctuary and to the wonders the High Seers showed him. He watched them at work in the laboratories, and put questions which they answered. Apart from the power it might give, this science of theirs had small interest to me. It was not so with Hans. Although his chief passion had been to serve as a warrior, rather than be an armorer like his father, he came of a long line of metal-working craftsmen. Once he had accepted the idea of machines he saw easily enough how they worked. The High Seers were ready to instruct him, and he was quick to learn.
Robb and a man called Kinnell were the ones principally concerned with the Sten gun. I listened when Hans spoke to them but made little sense of it. There was talk of cordite, of percussion caps, of blow-back open-bolt action—and a dozen other things which to me meant nothing. All I was aware of was the gun itself taking shape. I gazed at it as a hungry man might watch a rabbit roasting, tantalized and impatient.
At last it was finished and we gathered in one of the storerooms to see
it work. A target was set up at the far end. Robb showed me how to hold the gun and press the trigger. I lifted it and fired. I felt it jerk, almost like a living thing, and the noise of the tongueless stammering giant echoed in the room. And the target showed a ragged line of holes.
Until now, despite the ancient film they had shown me, I had not really believed in the power of this weapon. But it was no longer possible to doubt. I lowered the gun and said:
“You have done well, Robb.”
“It is not so accurate as other weapons of the past,” he said. “And the range is no more than about two hundred yards.”
“Two hundred yards is enough. Give me a hundred of them, fifty even, and no army will stand against me.”
Robb laughed. “We chose this gun because it was the simplest to make, but it still needs making! And we have no more than two hands apiece. Fifty, you say? By next autumn, perhaps, but I would not guarantee it.”
“Autumn! I need them long before that.”
“You are impatient, Luke,” Lanark said, “and we understand why. But things must take their time. It is not only a question of guns. You have an army to find as well. We must wait till winter ends before we can sound out the Wilsh King. And then our messenger will need to go about it warily.”
“It is I who must ask it of Cymru.”
“And chance being sent back to Winchester with your hands roped behind you? Or maybe executed on the spot for the insult to his daughter? It would be an absurd risk to take. No, Luke, this is something you must leave to us.”
• • •
I spoke to Hans next morning when he came to clean my room.
The High Seers had no servants, except for the machines invented by our ancestors to ease house labor. Each looked after himself, even old Lanark. But Hans would have none of this. It was not proper, he said, for a Prince to do such things. The High Seers laughed, but Hans paid no heed and continued to serve me. And I accepted the service, knowing that to reject it would be an insult.
So I watched while he used the machine that cleaned the floor, sucking up dirt and dust. It made a whining noise as it moved, a scream of protest such as one would never have heard from a polymuf. At last he switched it off and it was possible to speak. And for once we were alone with none to hear what passed between us.
I said: “This Sten gun, Hans—you have watched the making and listened to what Robb and Kinnell said of it?”
“Yes, sire.”
“And understood?” He nodded. “You could make such a thing yourself? The bullets also? And teach others to do the same?”
“Yes. It would not be difficult, as long as one could get the materials. For cordite one needs gun cotton and nitroglycerine. Gun cotton itself requires sulphuric and nitric acids . . .”
I cut him short. “It means nothing to me. What matters is that it does to you. The Wilsh would have these things? Or could get them?”
“Yes. It would be no more difficult than making the asbestos cloth, out of chrysotile, which the peddler used to cross the Burning Lands.”
“And therefore their craftsmen could make these Sten guns?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Even though most of them are not dwarfs, they do not lack skill.”
“Good! That is what I hoped to hear. Hans, I think it is time we went on another journey.”
“To Klan Gothlen? But the High Seers forbid it.”
“They had me penned in once before,” I said, “for the greater part of a winter. But I was a boy then. I did not come here to be treated like a boy again.”
“Sire,” he said earnestly, “hear me. There is wisdom in what they say. If you go to Cymru, he may imprison or even kill you. They are a strange people, the Wilsh. They smile easily, but they are good haters too. And the lady Blodwen meant much to them.”
“I will take that chance.”
“And it is high winter. And we have no horses. Those on which we came were sent to the Seer’s stable at Amesbury.”
All this was true and made sense. Few traveled in the winter, and then no farther than to the next city. Earlier that morning I had looked through the television scanner and seen nothing but a white whirling wilderness. It made no difference. I said:
“Will you come with me, Hans, if I ask it?”
He looked at me. “You know it, sire.”
The blizzard raged two days more. The morning after the snow stopped we left Sanctuary before anyone else was stirring. I pressed the button on the top landing of the staircase and the trap door opened over our heads, creaking more than usual under its weight of snow. Some of the snow scattered down on us. It brought with it the cold sting of fresh air and I drew deep breath to fill my lungs.
During those two days, taking care not to be observed, Hans had packed rucksacks for us, with food and other things we would need on the journey. He had also made us snowshoes, such as peasants wear to cross their fields in winter, using plastic instead of the usual strips of hide in a wooden frame. They were oval in shape, about a foot long, and had straps that buckled over our boots.
Even so the going was hard. I was not used to walking; even to go from the palace to the River Road I would have taken horse. And although the shoes prevented one’s feet from sinking below the surface, the snow dragged at them. It was not long before the muscles at the backs of my legs were aching from the strain, and within an hour I had to call a halt to rest. Hans fared better: a dwarf is more strongly muscled in the leg and he had used his more.
I had forgotten also how much wider the world is to a man on foot than it is to a horseman. One would see a mark in the distance and reckon ten minutes as the time needed to reach it. Half an hour later it would seem scarcely nearer. The monotony of the trudging was worse than the fatigue; my muscles accustomed themselves to the strain sooner than my mind did.
We were nearly three days getting to the pass that crossed the Burning Lands. We avoided towns and villages, where travelers at this season would excite interest, but did stay one night at an isolated farm. I told a story of a pilgrimage imposed by the Seer on account of an unwitting act of impiety toward the Spirits. They accepted this but expressed surprise that a dwarf should be my servant. Hans accounted for it by telling them he was not dwarf but polymuf, with marks on his body beneath his clothes. It must have cost him dearly in pride to do so.
The second night we found a deserted hut and slept there. And in the afternoon of the third day we came to the dead landscape lying under the hills of the Burning Lands, where snow gave way to black rock and steaming pools. We took off our snowshoes and started on the last mile or two leading to the pass.
I had thought winter might have chilled the black sand underfoot and made our crossing easier, but it seemed to have had no effect on it. We had each brought three extra pairs of boots, changing them as they got too hot, but we scorched our feet all the same. We crossed, however, and soaked our legs in a tepid pool while our last pairs of boots cooled off. They had suffered badly; and we still had something like two hundred miles of rough and wintry country to travel.
At least it no longer mattered who saw us. We found a village before nightfall, a primitive place but with a cobbler who, for gold, sat up all night and had new boots ready for us in the morning. Hans shook his head over the workmanship—they were poor objects by our Winchester standards—but they would serve.
So we went north, taking much the same route as we had taken under Greene’s command when the peddler guided us. But that had been in spring and on horseback. Now we plodded over fields of snow, wearily through a barren world. We saw few animals, rabbits or an occasional hare, its ears pricked in silhouette against the white skyline, slinking foxes, ermine, once a wild boar. I would have welcomed a change from the dried meat we had brought with us. Given a horse and spear I could have run it down easily. I thought of the Sten gun, which would have killed it more easily still, and put my hand to where it hung at my belt. But though we had brought several magazines of bullets, I would not use it.
We must make do with the rations we had.
At last we reached the river whose valley we had followed before. Fresh blizzards sprang up soon after, but we found shelter in a village. We stayed two days, in a stinking hut with stinking savages, taking turns to sleep at night in case one of them seized an opportunity to cut our throats. Though I doubt if there was any real danger of it. They were a cowed lot, undernourished and of poor physique, and they seemed to regard us with fear. All the same I was glad when we could go on.
The river was frozen and there were marks on the fresh snow that covered it, showing where animals had crossed. Some of the prints were very large, much bigger than those of a man, and made, I realized when I studied them, by some creature that walked upright as a man does. Whatever it may have been, we did not see it.
Although the snow had stopped, the wind remained strong and a little west of north. It blew in our faces on the valley floor and we went up onto higher ground where pine trees covering the ridge offered some protection. It was from these trees, in mid-afternoon, that the attack came.
I was not looking that way and my first awareness arose from Hans’ cry of alarm. We were some ten yards apart—he had stopped to tighten a strap on his snowshoes while I plodded on—and I looked back to see long dark shapes racing down the slope toward him. I barely had time to recognize them as huge dogs, a dozen or more, before they reached him. The leader leaped in a great arc, covering many feet of intervening space. Hans put up his arms in defense, but the beast’s weight smashed him to the ground.
Others were on him as he fell. They had swept down from the trees in silence but now they gave savage tongue. Half of them were mauling Hans and the rest ran on toward me. I lifted the Sten gun, not bothering to aim, and fired at them. One fell; at once the others turned tail.