The Sunset Warrior - 01 (13 page)

Then. In the hollow of the creature’s neck a glint of metal. Slowly, carefully, so as not to alarm it, Ronin reached for it: a crusted square on a grimy chain. He rubbed his thumb across the surface and brought it into the light.

‘“Korabb; Neer; Ninety-Nine,”’ he read.

K’reen said, ‘This is a Neer? But how—If she was assigned to the ninety-ninth Level, what is she doing this far Upshaft?’

‘And with an arm recently taken off.’ He thought of the Neer in Stahlig’s quarters. ‘The largest and most complex Machines are on that Level—’

‘It’s the lowest Level, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, and only the best Neers work Down there—’

Boots echoed more urgently along the walls, stopped at the landing above them. Ronin thought he could hear the low murmuring of voices.

‘Ronin, who—?’

He put his finger to his lips, turned to the Neer, whispered, ‘Korabb, can you understand me?’ The figure looked from him to K’reen and back again. It nodded, and at that moment he became aware that the Neer was a female. A combination of the uncertain light, her position, and her filthiness had prevented him from seeing her clearly.

The Neer raised a thin finger, nailless, the end torn and black with blood.

‘Ronin. Ronin, you have reached the end!’ a cold voice called from above. ‘We have come for you!’ There came to them the grate of metal on stone, a singular sound that they could not mistake, and K’reen gasped, realizing what Ronin had understood all along: they were on their way to Sehna, and he was weaponless.

He felt something touch his shoulder. The Neer’s finger pressed against him urgently. She pointed at him and then K’reen, then down into the pitch of the stairs.

He shook his head and said, ‘We cannot leave you; you will surely die here if we do. Do you understand?’ She shook her head and her mouth worked soundlessly. It struck him then that something was wrong. Apparently it had occurred to K’reen also, for she reached out and gently opened the Neer’s mouth. Her eyes grew round and frightened and she jerked her head, trying to pull away, but K’reen held her firmly.

‘Oh, Frost!’ she whispered, and involuntarily swallowed. Ronin looked, saw a mouth with teeth and gums and palate and a dark bit of flesh that was trying to move. Where the base of the tongue should have been. And was not.

K’reen let go of the mouth and turned her pale face to Ronin’s. ‘What could have happened? How could this—’

‘Ronin. Ronin, we know the Med is with you!’ There was a mocking tone to the voice. ‘K’reen? Yes, K’reen, that is her name.’ There was scraping again from above as someone shifted. ‘Do not delude yourself into believing that you will die quickly and honourably. No Bladesman’s death for you, my friend. We shall cut the tendons in the backs of your legs so that you will stay and watch us while we find out what the woman is made of. Cut your eyelids and we will all take turns holding your head so that you get the best view. We would not want you to miss a moment while we see how many of us she can take!’ And the voice laughed, high and piercing and unpleasant. ‘I mean at a time!’ The laughter echoed about them and K’reen shivered.

There was a sudden scuffle of boots and the still air eddied, sending a chill through them. Ronin flipped the torch away from them, down into the pit of the Stairwell. Shadows became visible above them, shuffling and moving. Red light from the torch played far below them but they were wrapped now in darkness.

Hulking shapes advanced down the stairs, the shadows closing in. Ronin counted four and knew that there was little hope. Orange light flashed briefly on an upraised sword and Ronin readied himself for the desperate charge up the stairs.

A thin shadow blurred past him, hurled itself like a bolt, leaping obliquely up the stairs, crashing into the now quickly descending figures. The Neer!

There were shrieks, and for a terrible instant, a clawing mass of arms, legs, and torsos was limned in the shuddering illumination of the dying torch, and it seemed as if the bodies hung suspended in the air. Then they all hurtled into the black well of the pit, gaping and irresistible. He tried to catch a glimpse of a face, any face. The Neer’s face. But the mass had dropped out of sight and they heard very loud the sickening wet smacks like giant sacks ripped open far Downshaft, reverberating up the ragged sides of the pit.

K’reen huddled against the outer wall, her body convulsed in long racking sobs.

Ronin turned away from the well.

She came into his arms then and clung to him, trembling. ‘I cannot,’ she cried through the tears. ‘I cannot—’ He stroked her hair and hugged her to him, learning something important about himself.

And in that crumbling twilight world, at the edge of a grinning death, with loss and destruction nearly triumphant, they held each other for a very long time.

The elliptical stone slab, squat and changeless, dominated the darkness. He stood just inside the threshold, waiting for his pupils to dilate. They were still out there, around the sweep of the Corridor: daggam.

And Nirren had not been at Sehna.

Afterward, K’reen had left him to finish her Cycle’s work on the Med Level. ‘It will be best for me,’ she said.

There was no light anywhere, and it was very quiet, so that he would have to be extremely careful in his movements. The surgery looked all right. The back cubicle was deserted.

In the Corridor, G’fand had caught him up.

‘Going Upshaft?’

He nodded. ‘Back to my quarters.’

‘Do you mind if I accompany you part of the way?’

He did not see how he could avoid it. He was thinking only of Borros. Time was suddenly very important. ‘Come along then.’

They passed a Stairwell and Ronin thought he could hear the lentitudinous drip of viscous fluid. They took the next one, climbing in silence for a time. There was a fine dust in the air and every now and then they heard small sounds from inside the walls.

G’fand cleared his throat. ‘I just—wanted to say that—umm—no one wanted to bring up the subject of Class at board. In case you were wondering.’

‘I was thinking on other matters.’

‘Oh. Well. Everyone was a bit worried because—you know—of you perhaps being out of Class and—’

‘I appreciate your concern.’

‘We are
all
concerned,’ G’fand said carefully.

Ronin glanced at him and smiled thinly. ‘Yes. You can tell them then not to worry.’

‘But Combat is your life! I would be inconsolable!’

‘You talk about it as if it were a disgrace,’ said Ronin. ‘I acted honourably. It is others who have bent the Code.’

‘But it is what the Instructor says that matters,’ G’fand protested, misunderstanding him.

‘Only to some people.’

‘Yes,’ he said bitterly, ‘the ones that matter.’

Another shadow; he moved silently and swiftly across the room, touched the wall. The hidden door opened and he stepped through.

The small room was as it had been before: the narrow beds, the low lamps, Borros.

He was sitting up now, staring down at the backs of his hands. The yellow hairless head whipped around on its long neck. The grey eyes were dull and expressionless. He stared again at his hands.

Ronin sat beside him. ‘Borros—’

‘Go,’ said the Magic Man in a tired voice. ‘Go and tell your Saardin that the answer is still no. It can only be no.’ The long fingers strayed to his forehead, touched the fading Dehn spots. ‘Tell him that there is nothing left worth having. He has tried it all and failed. All the shiny bits gone—I can no longer remember. So his attempt to affiliate me fails, too. I cannot help him, even if I wanted to.’ He made a gesture. ‘Now go and report on what the Magic Man has said; perhaps he will believe you, he does not believe me.’

‘Borros, you must listen to me carefully,’ Ronin whispered. ‘I am not a daggam; Freidal is not my Saardin. Frost, look at me! I was here last Cycle. You were very ill.’

The grey eyes glanced at him, dull gold in their depths. He laughed grimly. ‘That is what they call it now?’ The eyes blazed briefly. ‘You do not fool me. Deceit without end; I expect it from him. But your time is up. Let him send in the next one; but you can tell him when you leave. It will not work. He has failed.’

This did not sound like the man he had tried to talk to just a Cycle ago; the man whose life he preserved. And now he was worried because Borros no longer sounded like a madman. Freidal would recognize this immediately; perhaps he already had. Ronin himself could see that if the Magic Man had held on this long he would, finally, tell Freidal all that he wanted to know before he went mad, if the Saardin wanted the knowledge badly enough. Freidal could do it, he knew that.

‘What can I do to convince you?’

Borros heard the urgency in Ronin’s voice and he smiled thinly, secretively. ‘All right. I direct it. I ask, you answer. Any hesitation—any hint whatsoever that you are fabricating your answers—and it is over.’

‘We have no time for this.’ Ronin glanced at the door to the Corridor.

Borros shrugged, his lips curling. ‘It is the only way.’

Ronin made a gesture. ‘Get on with it then, if it will satisfy you.’

The grey eyes were cold and watchful, perfectly clear. ‘I did not say that it would.’

Ronin made an exasperated noise.

‘What are you?’ Borros said shortly.

‘A Bladesman.’

‘Who is your Saardin?’

‘I have none.’

The eyes narrowed. ‘What?’

‘I am unaffiliated.’

His hands were like white flowers against the dark fabric of the blanket. ‘An interesting response.’ His head jerked once, involuntarily. ‘Which faction will you side with?’

‘Freidal is my enemy.’

‘Huh! Is that so.’

‘He has already tried twice to have me killed.’

‘Do you expect me to believe that?’

There were limits. Ronin grabbed the front of his shirt, jerked him forward until their faces were very close. ‘I should have let you die last Cycle. It does not appear to have been worth the effort to save you.’

‘Let me go.’

Ronin sat back and the Magic Man pulled at the bottom of his shirt. ‘Tell me,’ Borros said, ‘what happened.’

Ronin recounted the Combat with Marcsh and a wistful smile creased the Magic Man’s countenance. ‘You broke his back?’ he asked. ‘Are you sure?’

Ronin shrugged.

The Magic Man closed his eyes briefly. ‘Oh, if it were so.’ He looked at Ronin. ‘Go on.’

Ronin told him how he and K’reen had been forced to take a rarely used Stairwell because of the rubble, which, he believed now, had been planned; how they had found the Neer. ‘Her tag was marked “ninety-nine” but I have no idea what she was doing that far Upshaft. She was—mutilated. Perhaps the loss of the arm had been an accident, but not the tongue. She—’

Gold flecks danced in the grey eyes, and the head twitched again. He shivered.

‘We could not leave her, and in the end—’

The yellow head whipped from side to side. ‘I think I—’

‘—she took them with her—’

‘It cannot be.’

‘—down into the pit.’

‘No, it cannot—Her tag, you saw her tag. What was her name?’

‘I do not see what—’

‘Just do it!’ Cold grey boring into him.

‘Korabb,’ said Ronin. ‘Her name was Korabb.’

And abruptly, like a sword being sheathed, the eyes softened. Then the head turned away. ‘Chill take them! What have they done?’

Ronin shook his head. ‘I do not understand any of this.’

‘Yes,’ the Magic Man said in a whisper. ‘I believe that.’

‘I believe at first they felt that I would never actually get so far as to actually be able to build it,’ said Borros quietly. ‘After all, Mastaad was there reporting on every step I took. In the beginning I paid him no notice, let him do as little as possible because that is the way I am. But he lacked patience and because of his singlemindedness I became suspicious.

‘There are always stories, you know, of Security keeping track of all the Magic Men, but’—he lifted his hands—‘one is never sure what to believe. But once I was sure that the construction was possible I became suspicious of everyone. Then I caught him going through my notes and I was sure. I threw him out and burned the notes.

‘He could not read them, of course, but he already knew enough to tell them that I would build it. So they came in directly.’

‘But you said that this—Machine you had devised would be able to detect temperature and winds on the surface. Why—?’

‘Why are they so afraid? Because it would have proved that there is life Up there. Human life. They do not want that.’

He sighed. ‘The old order is entrenched in its power. Never mind the confrontation. If it happens it will not matter who is victorious. The Saardins are secure in their control over all the peoples of the Freehold. The ancient patterns have been set; they are changeless. If war comes, there will be destruction and loss of life. But then there will be stabilization, and the structure will remain.’

He stared at Ronin. ‘Imagine what would happen if people knew that there were men on the surface, that it could support life. There would be a movement to go Up, open the Freehold, live Above. That would blow everything apart, and their power would be gone. Confined here, we have no choice.’

‘But we are slowly dying,’ Ronin said. ‘That surely must be obvious to them.’

Borros nodded. ‘Oh, it is. But it is a death by slow attrition. As they view it, death may not truly come for a century, perhaps two. By then—’ He shrugged. ‘They live in an eternal present.’ The hands moved over the dark blanket.

‘I have seen the surface,’ said Ronin.

‘Ah.’

‘A Machine called a Lens. The surface is—covered in ice and snow. Completely.’

The Magic Man smiled without warmth. ‘Above us, yes. The ice is quite solid for a kilometre or more, I believe, although there is no real way of determining that. But I have learned that the Freehold is located near one end of the planet’—he gestured—‘like this, and we are here, near the top. Ice covers the planet at top and bottom. Millennia ago it was more confined, I believe, now it covers more of the planet. But not all. You see? Near the centre it is warmer, the land is brown, the sun shines out of a clear sky and heats the land and the people.’