Текст книги "The Sword and the Dagger"

Автор книги: Ardath Mayhar

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

"I'm glad you're happy. At least one of us is," he said crossly.

The creature sank onto its heels, staring at him. A complex series of grunts, honks, hoots, and chirrups gave him a notion of the source of some of the night-sounds that had troubled him. There was no point of similarity with any language Ardan had ever heard, however. He tried to shrug, but his broken arm made him groan instead.

The creature nodded twice, decisively. It touched his face with an inquiring finger, poked at his bare chest, examined his toes with much interest. Then it took itself and its glow-worm torch back off. The hut was dark again.

Ardan fell asleep, much to his surprise. When he woke, there was light in the hut. Dim green light that was filtered, he surmised, through the interlocking branches and leaves of tremendous trees.

He felt ill. Never in his healthy life, even when injured in battle, had he felt so awful. Fever shook him from time to time. Chills covered him with gooseflesh. His stomach heaved, but lacked anything more to eject.

He smelled smoke. These creatures had fire, then, as well as tools? They were sapient, then. A few other non-human sapients had turned up among the worlds of the Inner Sphere, but these were surely the strangest-looking of any yet known.

He lay still, waiting. The fever cushioned him somewhat from reality. Nothing made much difference now. Whatever happened, he didn't care a great deal.

When the procession came for him, he didn't struggle at all. They lifted him again, still tied, and carried him outside. There they laid him on a litter made of green branches tied together with the familiar fiber cording. When they had him situated, they decked the litter with odorous green, pink, and purple flowers resembling orchids, except for their dragonlike yellow maws.

"Here comes the bride," he murmured, quoting from an old book. Ancient traditions and rituals had always fascinated him. Now he looked fair to become a part of one.

One of the Pinks (he decided that he had to call them something, even if only in his thoughts) screeched shrilly. The rest lined up instantly, lifted the litter, and splashed into the water surrounding the hummock holding the hut.

It seemed to Ardan that they walked a long way. He stared up into the vine-clad trees. Birdlike creatures flitted overhead, while other creatures resembling the arboreal primates of Old Earth scampered along the branches and vines, keeping pace with the procession.

He fell into a peaceful state that was interrupted only when his bearers stopped. They tipped the litter up so that he was standing, supported by the wooden frame to which he was tied.

He was on a sizeable spot of solid ground surrounded by dark green water. A number of trees stood about at considerable distance from one another. There were eighteen, which, for some reason, Ardan counted. Bound to all but one tree were skeletons tied with seemingly indestructible cord.

The bones were indubitably of human origin. No Pink had ever grown to such height The skulls were distinctive, the rib-cages ribboned with climbing vines. The foot-bones were hidden in a light growth of thin grass.

"Oh, wonderful!" he groaned. How long had the Pinks waited for the last victim to complete their set?

"Stein? Is that you, old boy?" he asked aloud. The Pinks ignored him.

"Folly is right. I'll just bet you and your boys and girls tramped off into the swamp, bent on exploration and glory, and wound up as...what?" He turned his gaze to the Pinks, who were very busy about some inscrutable business.

Six approached him, cut away the litter with their clawed fingers, and propped him against the single undecorated tree. They flipped ends of cord about him, then wound them round and round the tree trunk and his body.

Without another sound, they were gone, leaving Ardan to contemplate his fate.

16

Hanse Davion stood beside the holotable, staring down at the nervous blinks that represented ships in transit. The fact that each of the distant craft had already reached its destination and that the table was only catching him up on the most recent information didn't comfort him. He knew his men had retaken Stein's Folly, but the struggle was not over yet. The Prince must now make decisions that might or might not aid those commanders whose instincts had pulled victory from the very jaws of defeat

He looked up as Ferral, his personal aide, entered the room. "We were lucky, Fer," he said. "If we didn't have the best commanders in the business, our strike would have gone down the tubes. Has the messenger finished his report?"

The younger man looked down. His jaw tightened, and his entire stance showed his reluctance to say the thing that had brought him.

When he looked up, Hanse was staring at him, worry already beginning to wrinkle his brow.

"The report is that...that Ardan Sortek has been lost in action. Not killed...no body has been found, though his Victorwas pretty well savaged. But there was no trace of him."

"Have searchers scoured the area?" The question was sharper than the Prince's usual even tone.

"No. There has been so much to do, what with the remaining stiff resistance. All available manpower has been occupied in keeping the areas we have taken. Liao troops are pulling off regularly, and we think they are withdrawing to Redfield, but we still have our hands full."

Hanse stared again into the holotable, as if the mechanism might tell him where his friend might be. When he looked up again, he was fully in control.

"Give orders that every effort be made to locate Sortek," he said. "Not only is he an old and dear friend, but he also knows things about me and our methods that the enemy might find most useful. Chemical questioning bypasses the instincts of the most loyal. He must not fall into the hands of the enemy. And if he should, then he must be rescued at any cost."

Davion turned to stare from his arched window into the afternoon sky. "Assign at least one unit to that task. It is of utmost importance, both to me personally and to our security." He did not look around as the aide replied.

Only when the door closed did Hanse turn again to the table. It had been a gamble balanced on a knife-edge of skill and luck. He was the most fortunate of men, lucky to have in his service men of the caliber of Felsner, Hamman...and Ardan Sortek.

He thought of Ardan as a child, riding on Hanse's own strong young back, later learning games and skills from him as they roamed the fields outside the town where they had been reared.

He shook himself and turned to a monitor. He must read the fresh reports. He must make the crucial decisions. He must not think of Ardan again until something concrete could be done about him.

* * * *

The tree was rough against his shoulders. The cooling vest, now much the worse for wear, did nevertheless protect the skin of his back. The Pinks had pulled his arms behind him when they retied him, however, and the ridges of tree bark dug into them.

Ardan, still protected by the fever, giggled softly. This had to be the silliest hallucination ever experienced. The Pinks themselves were ridiculous. This ritual with the skeleton-decorated trees was even worse.

He looked about at the nearest of the bony trophies. Most had turned brown with time, and some were also greenish with fungus. Grungy-Iooking things. How could his mind, even distorted with fever, come up with something so bizarre as this?

He stared at the adjacent tree. Its tenant grinned back at him absendy. The skeleton looked bored, as if the joke had long ago worn thin. A reptile, brilliant yellow striped with mud-green, came into view, crawling up through the rack of bones to coil about the collarbones.

His stomach heaved, and Ardan retched. The motion sent agony through him. The tight bindings had cut off circulation to his extremities, and they throbbed unmercifully.

The pain brought him entirely to his wits for the first time in many hours. This was no delusion. This was real. He was tied to a tree in the middle of a swamp with the remnant of some earlier human expedition. He would rot, as they had done, and snakes would nest in his belly.

He knew mere was nothing to be gained by shouting, but he shouted, anyway. To his surprise, he heard a distant but distinct "Hallooo!" in return.

Friend? Or enemy? At the moment, Ardan didn't much care.

* * * *

Henrik hated the swamp. His uniform, standard Liao-issue, was too thick, too hot, too constricting for moving about in such country. The foul water soaked through pants-legs and into the boots, making his feet swell and steam. He knew that his men were cursing him silendy. He was just as silendy cursing his own commander, though he knew that Ridzik had good reason to order this search.

The muck teemed with reptiles and even more evil-looking creatures. The air was aswarm with insects, most of which either stung or bit. He swatted aside a loop of vine, and found himself holding a long green body that wriggled about with terrible quickness to sink fangs into his sleeve.

For an instant, he blessed the same heavy clothing he had been cursing for so long. The fangs did not penetrate the tough fabric, and twin beads of yellow venom were left to roll off into the water about his boots.

He dropped the thing with a yell, and his men scattered to give it room to escape. Most were from worlds that had no serpents, and so most of them recoiled instinctively. Recoiling himself, Henrik stepped back into a deep hole, and fell backward with a mighty splash. The brown-green mud roiled up where his foot had slipped, and he ended up lying on his back, looking up into the tree that leaned overhead.

Henrik found himself staring into a pair of pink eyes, round and frightened in an almost featureless circle of face. Another oddball animal. Its pale fur clung to its colorless hide, and its short, useless tail was quivering nervously.

He was pulled upright again by a pair of his men, who helped him to scrape the foul muck from his uniform. Henrik dried his weapons carefully. What a place! Full of animals, snakes, insects, but seemingly empty of the one he wanted.

Yet they had found, back in the grassy verge of the meadows, a canister of field equipment marked with the Sortek sigil. There had been a clear trail crushed down through the growth, leading direcdy here. They had even found marks that looked like human tracks on a mudbank.

Sortek had to be here somewhere! Henrik told himself.

The day passed in more discomfort than even a soldier had a right to expect. Darkness came, finding them without any recourse but to climb into a slanting tree like a row of filthy and disgruntled birds, to roost there until the light came again. It was easy to lose men even in a familiar swamp. In an alien place such as this, there was no way to guard against its unknown perils.

His own group of four men had taken this route. Four more had gone the other way. Four more had struck out, as nearly as he could determine from his maps, for the center of the swampy stretch. Surely, among them all, they would find the man they sought!

The morning dragged on with terrible slowness. They slopped and crushed and slithered their way through the terrain, penetrating ever deeper into the wilderness of water and trees. The sun was dropping beyond the thick canopy overhead, when, in the distance, Henrik heard something. A shout. One of his other men? Someone.

He motioned for his group to halt. Then he cupped his hands about his mouth and yelled, "Hallooooo!"

There was a moment of silence. Then the shout again. As well as he could, he took a bearing on the direction from which it came. Then he signalled his men forward.

They moved as fast as was humanly possible, given the terrible footing. Before darkness was total, Henrik stood on a large mound of solid dirt that rose from the surrounding water to hold a stand of tremendous trees.

He saw the man first, squirming as much as his tight bonds would allow.

Two of Henrik's men dashed forward to cut him loose. A more pitiful remnant of humanity they had seldom seen. Almost naked, the man was covered with cuts, weals, bloody gashes, and the marks of the cruel cords. Enemy or not, Henrik pitied him.

The man was so covered with muck and mire that it was hard to tell what he looked like. The eyes, however, were distended, wild, disoriented.

"Folly!" the fellow was saying. "Stein's Folly! Look a-round you, will you? Did you see what I thought I saw? Or was it all in my head?"

Henrik snapped on his light-pack and scanned the surrounding trees. He almost dropped the pack, as he realized what those protuberances that he had taken for viny growths really were.

He heard gasps as his men, too, realized that they stood in the midst of many skeletal human remains. Henrik shivered. He was a soldier. Death was no stranger to him or any of his people. But this was no honest battle-dream. This was something strange and outre.

Quickly, the men rigged a litter. This might be solid ground, but no one suggested spending the night here. Only one thought occupied all their minds, including Henrik's.

They had to get out of the swamp. Whatever had done this had been intelligent. Inimical. It was something he had no desire to find or to face.

It was a terrible trek. Periodically, Henrik would pause to sound his audio-signal, telling his other searchers that the quarry had been found. That would set the denizens of the swamp to making greater efforts, and the noise that followed the signal was deafening.

The brilliance of the light-packs didn't really help much. Indeed, it brought into being terrifying shadows, and revealed myriad eyes shining malevolently about them every step of the way.

Before dawn, Henrik and his men rejoined the rest of the search party, but even that did not dispel their feeling of horror. When light came at last, bringing the misty surface of the water, the shadowy hulks of the trees, the mysterious deeps of the brush-clumps into sight, they breathed a mutual sigh of relief...and walked even faster through the nasty water and nastier mud.

They were not surprised that their captive had lapsed into unconsciousness. The thought of being alone in that swamp, tied to a tree among the remains of the long-dead, filled Henrik with an emotion he didn't examine closely.

By the time they reached the meadows, Sortek was thrashing violently in the litter, making it difficult for his bearers. He shouted and wept, by turns. Nothing in the Medkit seemed to relieve him, and so it was a relief when they finally loaded him into their land transport.

The party reached the main base without difficulty, for which Henrik was devoudy grateful. From the start, this had been the worst of assignments. He turned the captive over to Ridzik, with proper procedure, and then watched curiously as the MedTechs wheeled him away.

"I will be surprised if he lives to be useful," he said, almost to himself.

Ridzik turned with a glaring look. "Oh, he will live, Henrik. We will make certain of that. You have done well. Now prepare your unit for transport to Redfield. We will be pulling out over the next two days."

"What about him?" Henrik nodded in the direction taken by the Meds. "Sir?"

"He can't be moved. I can see that. He will be among the last to go. That will give us time..." Ridzik's voice dwindled, and he seemed to be seeing something inside his own mind.

"No time to speculate," he snapped. "Get ready, Henrik. And thank you."

Dismissed, Henrik thought about those last words. It must be important, the capture of that sick man. Ridzik was not known for thanking his subordinates.

17

"Culture thirteen, negative. Begin test of culture fourteen."

The voice seemed to be inside his head. Ardan tried to open his eyes to see who was speaking such odd words, but he couldn't. No muscle in his body seemed willing to move. Even his will was not working. He didn't want to move, to speak. Even to breathe.

He felt his chest moving. He knew that he was not expanding and contracting it...he was through with breathing. With everything. But the air pumped into and out of him inexorably.

He sank into black depths...like swamp water. He tried to scream, but nothing worked any longer. Then he was deep in the darkness, seeing swirls of light that were evil colors. Eyes with no bodies. Bodies without eyes.

Pink eyes. Eyeless skulls.

Tied to a tree was a child, its entrails dangling from a wound in its belly. A snake was trying to crawl in...to take the place of those lost intestines. And that would make the child into a monster! An alien monster, capable of any atrocity!

Ardan writhed and moaned. Hands touched him. Something burned along the vein in his left arm, and oblivion seemed to follow it Yet that turned into nightmare again.

He was walking in his Victorthrough a beautiful countryside. Before him were trees bearing ripe fruits, their boughs bending to touch the delicately colored flowers blooming in the grass beneath them. Houses stood in neat gardens, their walls covered with vines heavy with ripe bunches of grapes.

Croplands spread away from the road he followed. Birds sang as they flew in formations, catching insects. It was so beautiful! He took care to keep his 'Mech in the exact middle of the paved strip, so as to avoid damaging anything.

He entered a forest filled with deep green shadow. A sense of peace was upon the place, and he would have liked to stop and rest, but the 'Mech plodded onward. No matter what Ardan did, it was as though the Victor had a will of its own. He could not make it obey the controls.

At last, the 'Mech paused. It swayed...and then it turned on its metal heel.

Ardan gasped with shock. Behind him, there was complete devastation. The forest was splintered, ruined, with only stumps and charred remnants showing where it had been. The road was buckled. Weeds grew in cracks, and small trees were sprouting in the middle of it. The houses were gone. The croplands were barren, seared, brown. No fruit tree was left, no bird, not even an insect gave life to the empty landscape.

"I am a destroyer!" he said aloud. "I am a sword, and I work havoc, wherever I go. Even the most subtle dagger is no worse than I."

And with those words, he awoke fully for the first time in two days.

He looked about, his vision a bit hazy but adequate. There was nobody in the tiny room, though the curtain over the door was still moving as if someone had gone through recently. A tray beside his bed held medications in applicators, waiting, Ardan supposed, to be used on him.

He focused his eyes with some difficulty. On the containers was the tiny green triangle, crossed with armored hand and blade, that was the mark of House Liao.

He was a captive.

The thought sent adrenalin through him. He stirred. His muscles responded.

He lay for a moment, astonished. He had been so weak for so long...how was it that he could move now? The MedTechs in charge must be masters of their craft

He squirmed and sat up very cautiously, letting the reeling in his head subside before trying for more. He glanced down to see that he was neady clad in a white smock, hospital garb that hadn't changed in millennia. Below the edge of the litter on which he lay was a pair of flat slippers.

He swung his feet about carefully. Not too bad...a bit of dizziness, but it seemed to be subsiding. The slippers fit his big feet

When he stood up, Ardan almost fell. His head began its interior rocking, like a vessel on a stormy sea. But he was determined to stand, to walk. To get away while his attendant was gone.

Even as he made his legs cooperate, Ardan wondered a-bout his situation. He was a captive. Surely the MedTechs knew what their medications could do. Why had they left him alone just when he would be regaining consciousness?

He shook his errant mind back into order. Whatever the reason, he had to get out. Find his unit again. See if his Tech could repair his Victoror scrounge parts to make a hybrid 'Mech of it. There was so much to do...and he had no idea how the attack had gone.

Beyond the curtain was an empty hallway. At the end of it, behind a closed door, he could hear voices. He crept into the corridor and turned in the opposite direction. Doors lined the way, some open into empty chambers like the one he had left, some closed. Pushing one open, Ardan found himself staring at a bandaged shape spreadeagled on an orthopedic rack.

He moved on, trying a door from time to time. At last, he found one that led into another passageway. This was dark, as if little used. Glass-windowed doors on either side let dim light into the corridor, and he stepped to the one on his left and peered through into the room beyond.

It was a big chamber, filled with unusual and somehow disturbing equipment. Glass-fronted cubicles lined the side wall, and there was the throb of motors, as if compressors were operating beneath the floor.

He leaned against a metal table in the middle of the room. His head...his head was whirling again. Pictures were forming behind his eyes. As disturbing scenes bubbled up from some hidden place inside him, he put his hands to his eyes and moaned.

The sound was echoed faintly from one of the cubicles. He turned awkwardly, frying to see through the faint frost that covered the glass.

Someone was inside. Someone...familiar...? He moved closer, pressed his hands to the glass, and set his face between them, peering hard at the dim shape. As if summoned by his attention, the light intensified around the body inside.

"Hanse!" he whimpered, scrabbling at the glass with his numbed fingers. "Hanse, what have they done to you?"

The familiar face was blank. The eyes were closed.

As he stared, he began to see subtle differences. The lines of thought and humor that marked Hanse's square face were lacking in this version of it. The unique expression that made of Hanse's features something special and precious had not set its seal upon these identical features.

This was a blank, waiting to be finished. Waiting to be used...for what?

His head throbbed, and his brain seemed to whirl, like water sloshing about in a bucket. Ardan moved away from the cubicle. He had discovered something of terrible importance. Someone, surely, could interpret it.

But first, he must get away. Find the forces of Davion, wherever they might be. He turned blindly, his tiny hoard of strength expended. In a daze, he staggered back to the room in which he had awakened.

* * * *

Lees Hamman took the assignment enthusiastically. "I'll get him out," he told Felsner. "If the spy's report was correct, I’ll find him and bring him back. But he must be in pretty bad shape, if your information is to be believed. We've done harder things than breaching the Liao base."

"According to our information, there's not much armor or staff left there," Felsner agreed. "I wonder why they took the trouble to capture Ardan, only to leave him with such a light guard? Seems strange."

"Let's be grateful for small favors," said Hamman. "I’ll take an infantry unit for backup. This calls for something more subtie than a straightforward 'Mech attack. They might kill him before we could find him."

"I agree. We have a scout available. He might come in handy." Felsner thrust out a hand to his subordinate. "Good luck, Lees. A lot is riding on this."

"I know. Let's get moving, eh?"

Hamman found the scout, a man named Rem, waiting for him with the other six men assigned to the operation. When he reached his own quarters, they knelt on the floor and spread the detailed map of the Liao headquarters compound on the floor.

"Your man is in bad physical shape. The informant saw him brought in. Delirious, dehydrated. Starved. Injured ...Broken arm, bad cuts, and bruises all over him. And the Meds think he ingested some sort of organism that is playing havoc with his body chemistry and digestion. He is not going to walk out of there under his own steam." Rem pointed to an L-shaped extension of the main building.

"That is the main hospital area. At least, that's what our commanders used it for, and it has all the necessary equipment, beds, everything. So that's what they use it for, too. Hell be somewhere along this corridor, I'm pretty certain."

Hamman measured the distance from their present position to that of the Liao base. "How long will it take us to get there? And can we slip into the area unseen?"

"Six hours, by hovercraft," Rem replied. "And we can set down in the middle of this strip of woodland... see?" He touched the map. "Right there. We can go into a drainage tunnel that ends in this stream. It is one that serves the reactors, so we'll need radiation-shielded suits and boots. They won't expect anyone to come that way—even if they know about the tunnel at all."

He grinned. "They haven't been in control all that long. I doubt they've found it, yet"

"Good," said Hamman. "Can you get the necessary equipment issued within the next two hours? That will put us in the area just about sundown. A good time for this kind of foray."

"Done," the scout said. "Oh-nine-hundred hours for set-down?"

"Just right," the subcommander said.

They didn't quite make it, but their timing was close enough. It was dark when they set their hovercraft in a clearing in the forest. They donned their rad suits, then began creeping through the trees, on the lookout for the stream. They found it gurgling between narrow banks that were half-filled with rank growths of ferns and other vegetation. The stream would hide the eight of them until they reached the point where it met the mouth of the tunnel.

They moved as silently as possible through the water until a splotch of deeper darkness loomed beside them. The tunnel mouth.

They carefully removed the grating that covered it, using the special wrenches that Rem had thought to provide for the purpose. The flow of water was shallow, once they were inside. Their rad-counters began to click faster, as they made their way up the vaulted conduit

They used little light. There was only Rem's glimmer, which provided just enough to keep them from bumping into walls when the tunnel curved.

When they reached the shield-wall from which the main artery drained, they were faced with another grating. It, too, yielded to the wrenches. This time, they were so careful that almost no sound accompanied their work.

Then they were in the lower tier of the building. Hamman, having memorized the maps, turned to his right and climbed to a catwalk. Now was the time when luck would be with them...or not. He could only hope.