Читать книгу The Chronocide Mission - Lloyd Biggle jr. - Страница 6

CHAPTER 1

BERNAL

Bernal awakened suddenly to the drumming of horses’ hoofs on a forest road. “Some idiot peerlings on a drunken frolic,” he told himself indifferently. He had spent more than half of his life deep in this enemy Peerdom of Lant, and he was fond of telling young scouts he survived only because he was most alert when he was sound asleep.

He raised up briefly to determine where the horses were and what direction they were going. Then he lay back, stretched his arms and legs luxuriously, and considered the one serious problem he faced at that moment, whether his beard needed trimming. The niot was only half advanced, the weather mildly warm, and his bed, fashioned of a chance accumulation of leaves in the shelter of an enormous, drooping prickle bush, the most comfortable he had experienced in more than a tenite. He loved the forest’s pungent scents, loved living in the open. For the second time that niot, he composed himself for sleep.

The distant horses rumbled across a bridge and left the main road for a little-used branch that led to a long-abandoned lumber camp. Bernal continued to listen with closed eyes. An experienced scout in a thick forest was in no danger from a rackety enemy on horseback. Almost subconsciously he analyzed the sounds he heard and pondered the question of whether there were four horses or five. He decided on five.

He had begun to doze off again when his ear caught the yapping of dogs, and that brought him tensely to his feet. Dogs meant the riders were Lantiff, the vicious, mounted warriors of Lant, and the yapping meant they were on leash. The Lantiff used dogs for only one purpose, tracking, and they leashed them only when someone wanted a fugitive taken alive—which never happened when the ferocious beasts ran loose.

A runaway worth that much trouble to the Lantiff would be worth the loss of a little sleep to him. If nothing else, the fugitive might have useful information. Bernal gave no thought at all to the odds he faced in taking on five Lantiff with dogs. Everything one did in life involved some risk.

He unsheathed one of the two long knives he carried, his only weapons, and moved like a flitting shadow through the dense undergrowth toward the approaching horses. He had the confidence of long experience, but the silent, swift sureness of his movements through a dark and dense forest was purely instinctive. The Easlon scout in Lant who could not move with silent swiftness did not survive to acquire experience.

A full moon, shining brightly in a clear sky, had ruined many a hunt for Bernal, but on this niot it would not be a factor. Only where roads and widely scattered clearings had made rents in the dense overhead canopy could the moonlight penetrate the forest.

The sound of the chase altered abruptly, and he paused for a few seconds to listen. The hunters had dismounted to follow their dogs on foot. The advantage now belonged to Bernal, for the squat, muscular Lantiff were clumsy in foot combat and bunglers in a dismounted chase. They crashed through undergrowth, got caught up in vines and bushes, and soon were adding their curses to the dogs’ yapping.

The dogs’ killing instinct rivaled that of their masters, and both knew that a panicky, exhausted fugitive could not outdistance them for long. The Lantiff’s course shouts became frenzied; so did the dogs’ yapping, and they snapped at their leashes as they hauled their masters forward. The Lantiff were trying to whip them into line for a methodical search.

Listening alertly as he ran, Bernal used an angling approach that would overtake them from behind and downwind. He would attack one Lantiff and dog at a time, beginning with the pair on his right—the man first, before he could sound an alarm. His death grip on the leash should hold the dog long enough for Bernal to deal with it.

Then he would circle and take the pair on the left, leaving the odds tilted in his favor. He had the advantage of surprise and a fight on his own ground and terms, and the dogs, straining as they were to overtake their prey, would be a deadly encumbrance when their masters were attacked from behind in thick undergrowth. On horseback, the Lantiff’s most effective weapons were their long-handled, flesh-ripping, multiple pronged and barbed lances. These were left with the horses when they fought dismounted, and their clumsy, curved swords were of no use at all in a dense forest.

Bernal slowed his pace and began stalking his first victim, moving with long, silent strides.

Suddenly a beam of light cut through the darkness, passing over his head with a deafening crash, severing branches, searing the foliage, and leaving in its wake tiny flames that flickered momentarily on the leaves it had touched.

Bernal sank to one knee and froze there. The light stabbed again and again with the same violent clap of sound. A dog screamed, and a man, and Bernal caught the revolting reek of burnt flesh. Then the air was rent thunderously just above his head, leaving him momentarily deafened, and he ducked as flames enveloped a dead bush close behind him. There were more screams. A beam of light bored into the ground almost at Bernal’s feet, and the thick forest humus emitted a rancid cloud of smoke.

Keeping low, Bernal began to edge forward.

A clearing opened before him, half illuminated by moonlight and strewn with death. The Lantiff lay crumpled in the semicircle they had formed when they brought their quarry to bay. Nearby, three dogs crouched with fangs bared viciously, still straining on their leashes in death. A fourth had broken away from its dead master and died in the charge. At the far side of the clearing, the moon glimmered on the most horrible sight of all: the one dog that survived was tearing at its victim.

Bernal leaped forward. His knife flashed, and he heaved the dog’s massive body aside to bend over a pathetic, moaning figure. It was an elderly man, hideously wrinkled as though wasted by illness. His head was totally bald but with incongruously thick eyebrows. He was of an age rarely attained in those unsettled times, but that was not why Bernal stared at him. This was no ordinary fugitive. For one thing, he was a foreigner. He possessed none of the usual Lantian racial characteristics. He was slight of build and fair-skinned. For another, he had no beard—merely an untidy growth of facial hair. He had shaved—or been shaved—within the last tenite, and beardlessness was the sternly enforced perogative of a peerager. He also wore finely woven, meticulously cut and fitted peerager trousers, but his blue smock was the one-name badge of high office in Lant. These two garments on the same person were a stark impossibility.

A strange black tube some twelve centimeters long and three in diameter lay on the ground beside him; nearby was a clumsily fashioned back pack with flimsy straps that had broken during the struggle with the huge dog. The old man had tried to protect himself with his arm and his pack, but the dog ripped the pack from his grip and made a gory mess of his arm.

Bernal examined him as carefully as the moonlight permitted. The entire forearm resembled shredded meat more than a human limb, but the artery seemed miraculously untouched. Clucking his tongue softly, Bernal went to the Lantiff, one after another, and swiftly sliced pieces of cloth from their clothing. With these he mopped up the blood and skillfully bandaged the arm. While he was working on it, the old man’s eyes opened, and he struggled to a sitting position.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“Bernal.”

“You killed the dog!” The old man sounded incredulous. He sat looking about him while his dazed mind groped to understand this miracle. The dog’s next lunge would have buried its teeth in his throat, and he had resigned himself to a hideous death.

“You are a one-namer!” he exclaimed, still sounding incredulous. “And you dare to help me?”

“I scout for the Peerdom of Easlon, and I dare many things,” Bernal said. He fashioned a sling from the back of a Lantiff’s shirt, tied it in place, and then asked, “Can you walk?”

With his help, the old man struggled to his feet. He was taller than Bernal had expected, and there was an amazing resilience his wiry form, for his teeth were clenched with pain and his breath came in shallow sobs. As the shock lessened, that pain would become throbbing agony.

For the moment, his mind was focused on the miracle of his rescue. “The Peer of Easlon must pay you well for taking such risks,” he said.

Bernal smiled. “A scout avoids risks as much as possible, and he works for a cause, not for a reward. In Easlon, I am considered a patriot. Come—there will be less danger if we move quickly. Let’s see if you can walk.”

“My pack!” the old man gasped.

Bernal retrieved the ripped pack and tied its torn straps together. The old man leaned unsteadily against a tree and followed every movement with anxious eyes. When Bernal stooped to pick up the strange tube, the old man exclaimed, “Give it to me!” and extended a trembling hand. He snatched it and tucked it under his blouse.

“Were there more of them?” Bernal asked.

“No. I only kept one. To defend myself.”

“It certainly did that,” Bernal remarked. If he hadn’t arrived on the scene when he did, he wouldn’t have believed that one elderly fugitive could have wrought the carnage that lay about them.

Blood was soaking through the bandage on the old man’s mangled arm, so Bernal added more layers of cloth. Then he picked up the pack and began to guide him toward the road, gently supporting him with an arm around his back.

“I am Egarn,” the old man said suddenly.

Bernal halted. He couldn’t contain his astonishment. “You are who?”

“Egarn.”

Bernal didn’t believe him. Egarn was Med of Lant and the peer’s most trusted advisor. He was an enigma even to the Lantians, living a solitary life, holding himself apart from palace intrigue and preferring the study of sorcery to the court cycle of hunts and parties. Younger peeragers avoided him out of fear that he might cast spells on them, or so it was said, but the Peer of Lant, the most cynical and cruel tyrant alive, was said to rely on him absolutely. Only a colossal court upheaval could have placed him in disfavor.

No hint of such a thing had reached Bernal, but court gossip was difficult to come by when a peerdom was at war. Certainly there always had been something peculiar about Egarn. He held a high office that was reserved for peeragers, and he enjoyed all of its privileges despite the fact that he had only one name.

Bernal could make up his mind later. The fugitive’s importance hardly mattered unless he could be kept alive and gotten out of Lant quickly. They would have to travel fast and cover their trail as well as they could. If this old man really was Med of Lant, the peer’s pursuit would be incessant and relentless. Only a great personal affront or the foulest act of treason would so infuriate her that she would send Lantiff with dogs in pursuit of a long-trusted official.

While he guided Egarn back along the trail left by the clumsy Lantiff, he considered what form the pursuit would take next. The peer’s commanders would suspect the old man had confederates waiting for him, and once the death scene was discovered, they would be certain of it. One elderly fugitive could not overcome five Lantiff and their dogs without help.

Every one-name village in the peerdom’s northwest province would become suspect. An army of searchers would comb the forest and question local inhabitants, who would be uncommonly lucky if they only suffered torture. Bernal wanted Egarn as far away as possible before that search got organized.

The horses were waiting quietly by the road. The Lantiff had dropped the reins when they dismounted for their dash to death, and these massive, superbly trained black beasts from the peer’s own stables would not move as long as the reins trailed.

The dense forest had hidden the moon the moment they left the clearing, but the road was illuminated brightly. Bernal looked about him with a scowl. The niot was dangerously bright for fugitives who might have an army on their heels before the darkness faded. The officer who considered five Lantiff, with dogs, an adequate force for tracking down one feeble old man would taste the whip himself before morning, and a hundred Lantiff would follow the first five—or a thousand, with all of the armed might of the peerdom in support.

Egarn could not ride unassisted. One of these magnificent steeds could easily carry both of them, but if Bernal took one and left the others, the pursuing Lantiff would deduce more than he wanted them to know. He had to take all five.

The first problem was to delay the discovery of the carnage in the clearing. The peer’s commanders would be less energetic about sending reinforcements if they thought the original pursuers were still on the fugitive’s heels.

Egarn sank to the ground the moment Bernal released him. The short walk had exhausted him, and his mangled arm had to be throbbing more intensely with each halting footstep. He was whimpering with pain.

“I must cover our tracks before we leave,” Bernal told him.

First he cut an armful of branches from a pungent stink bush. He spread them along the road and went back for another armful, which he distributed carefully over the trampled trail for a short distance into the forest. He crushed the leaves underfoot and swept the road with them where the old man’s tracks had veered aside when he heard the pursuit close behind him.

“Dogs won’t try to follow your scent through that,” he told Egarn cheerfully. “Especially if your trail continues along the road. You will have to walk about a kilometer. Can you do it?”

“If I have to, I can,” Egarn said grimly.

Bernal busied himself with the horses. The lances were a nuisance, but there was no time to find a secure hiding place for them. He tied the horses in tandem and helped Egarn struggle to his feet. Then he mounted the lead horse. Egarn staggered along feebly, clinging to Bernal’s leg with his good arm, and Bernal bent low to help him as much as he could. They made slow but steady progress. Bernal watched admiringly as the old man set his teeth against the steadily worsening pain and plodded forward without complaint.

Finally they reached their goal—a tiny, unbridged stream. It was an insignificant ribbon of water trickling off through the forest, but tonight it might save a man’s life. Egarn waded into it, and then Bernal hoisted him onto the horse he was riding. Egarn lost consciousness almost at once, but he had accomplished as much as Bernal had hoped for and far more than he had expected. If dogs tracked him to the stream, the Lantiff would waste hours searching it from source to mouth for the place he left it again.

Bernal made Egarn as comfortable as he could and let the horses run while he pondered the opportunity fate had given him.

The swolen armies of the Peer of Lant were everywhere invincible. The war in the north had long been finished. That in the east was in its final stages of plunder, destruction, and slaughter of noncombatants. The southern invasion was rolling relentlessly. Now the peer was looking westward. She had dedicated her life to war, and she had no other neighbors left to conquer.

To the west lay the Ten Peerdoms, protected throughout their independent existence by a formidable mountain range. The only passes known to the Lantians were blocked in winter and difficult even for intrepid explorers the remainder of the year. The scouts of Easlon, the easternmost of the Ten Peerdoms, regularly crossed the frontier on trails known only to them, but the Lantians would have considered these hazardous routes impassible. No sane Peer of Lant would attempt to march an army westward.

So the rulers of the Ten Peerdoms had always believed—while neglecting their defenses and failing to train even token armies. Clouds of war had hung over Easlon’s mountainous frontier all of Bernal’s lifetime, and Easlon’s scouts had skirmished regularly with scouts from Lant, but no army appeared. Unfortunately, those mountain passes were no obstacle for a determined commander, and the present Peer of Lant was a military genius. She could attack whenever she chose, and Easlon had only its few hundreds of scouts to oppose an army of thousands. The Ten Peerdoms were about to be devastated in an orgy of blood and fire.

In a desperate attempt to stave off disaster, the League of One-namers, a secret Ten Peerdoms organization, had attempted to make contact with the one-namers of Lant. The League wistfully hoped independent crafters everywhere could band together and constitute a force for peace and reason. Arne, their leader, had not subscribed to this silliness, but he was the designated emissary. Bernal had recently completed the most important mission of his life: guiding Arne to a series of secret meetings in Lant and bringing him back safely.

The noble errand was foredoomed to failure. The Peer of Lant was outstanding in her viciousness even in a world where evil tyrannies were the rule. All of Lant’s one-namers had been cowed by the brutality they suffered daily. They feared the sun and were terrified by darkness. There were no genuinely independent subjects left in Lant.

Arne himself had been an agreeable surprise. Son of a legendary father, already a legend himself, he was only twenty years old. Those few people who were still concerned with civilized values in a torn world could ill afford to lose him, and yet the idiotic council had sent him deep into enemy territory where capture meant instant death. He had been uncommonly lucky that the frightened Lantian one-namers had not betrayed him.

The mission failed utterly, and Bernal guided Arne back through the mountains with nothing accomplished. Now he was in Lant again with several new assignments, but he would willingly abandon all of them in order to lead Egarn to safety. The Med of Lant—with his strange weapon—would more than compensate for the failure of Arne’s risky mission.

Their niot-long dash through the thick forest was uneventful except for a few tense moments when the road took them close to a lumber camp. One-name foresters had felled select hardwoods the previous summer and trimmed them. Now a work crew of no-namers was hauling the logs to a near-by river. Bernal couldn’t risk having one of their lashers remember hearing horses pass, so he slowed their pace to a walk as they approached the camp. They were clearly visible on the moon-lit road if anyone chanced to look in their direction, but apparently no one did. As they moved quietly past the camp, Bernal could see the flickering torches and hear the cracks of the lashers’ whips and the grunts of the laboring no-namers straining to drag the logs. Not until they had placed the scene far behind them did he let the horses resume their frenzied flight.

The road led westward and upward as they passed through forested hills that anticipated the mountains beyond. Shortly before dawn, they encountered a rushing stream that was wide enough and deep enough to require bridging. Bernal turned aside and rode down a dip in the bank where travelers were accustomed to water their horses. There he dismounted. While all five of the huge animals drank and then waited patiently, knee-deep in water, he left Egarn balanced precariously in the broad saddle and went back to erase the tracks they had left on the river bank. No experienced scout would have been fooled by the hasty brushing he gave the ground with a tree branch, but there were no experienced scouts among the Lantiff.

Remounting, he turned the horses upstream and walked them in shallow water for more than two kilometers. His objective was a sketchy forest trail so overgrown that he had difficulty in finding it. When they finally left the water, he dismounted again to conceal their tracks before he hurried the horses forward.

The one-name foresters of Lant had carved this narrow path for their own use. It led from nowhere to nowhere, and since they hadn’t worked that sector for several years, the forest had almost reclaimed it. Probably the Lantiff were unaware of its existence. Even so, Bernal would have moved more cautiously if he hadn’t feared that Egarn would be dead before they reached a refuge. The going was arduous, and he had to struggle to keep encroaching branches from raking the old man as they passed, but he pressed on recklessly.

Egarn had become delirious. Bernal kept murmuring, “Just a little farther, old fellow,” but the old man’s feverish mind was beyond the reach of encouraging words. Finally they emerged in a small forest clearing, and Bernal began to whistle the lilting, tremulous call of the spotter, a bird rare in Lant but common beyond the mountains.

The song was answered faintly. Several minutes later, two unusually tall, gaunt men dressed in the rough leather clothing of Easlon scouts stepped into the clearing. Bernal was easing Egarn down from the horse, and they hurried forward to help him.

“Dog,” Bernal said, indicating the bandage. “He needs nursing. Probably he will die anyway. Do we have anything to feed the horses?”

Kaynor, the elder of the newcomers, answered, “A bit. But why five? Did you catch the Lantiff sound asleep?”

Bernal said indifferently, “I caught them dead. They and their dogs.”

“You took an unnecessary risk,” Kaynor said reproachfully. “The Lantiff might overlook one horse but certainly not five. They will turn out every dog in Lant to track you. Is the old man worth it?”

“They will turn out every dog in Lant to track the old man,” Bernal said. “Whether he is worth the risk depends on whether he lives. I am going to look after him myself. One of you will have to go south toniot.”

Roszt, the younger of the newcomers, said eagerly, “Give me a horse, and I will do it. Those bundles I stole last week had server clothing in them. I can go as a peer’s messenger.”

“Right now you can backtrack and cover my trail,” Bernal said. “If the pursuit comes this far, it will be hot. When you have done that, look after the horses.”

The younger man hurried away. Bernal and Kaynor picked up Egarn’s limp body and headed into the forest with it.

Kaynor had been scrutinizing Egarn perplexedly. “He is beardless, and he is wearing peerager’s trousers with a one-name smock. What is he?”

“I don’t know. He may be a peerager, but he has only one name.”

Kaynor was silent while they maneuvered Egarn’s light body through some dense undergrowth. Then he asked, “Don’t the rules forbid intervening in the peer’s private affairs? Inskor made it very clear we are to keep our hands off court doings unless it is something really important, and even then we are to make certain the result is worth the risk and the aftermath. This poor old crock probably did nothing more serious than sneeze in the peer’s presence, but there will be an army beating the forest tomorrow. When they find the bodies of those Lantiff and their dogs, only the evil gods of Lant know what will happen next. That was quite a deed, taking on all ten of them, but what have you gained?”

“I killed one of the dogs,” Bernal said. “He killed the rest. He is more important than all of the peer’s generals together—or he will be if he lives.”

“Be serious! An old crock like this? Probably he is the peer’s third assistant gardener wearing cast-off clothing.”

“He says his name is Egarn. I think he is the Med of Lant.”

The other nearly dropped the old man’s feet. When he spoke again, it was in tones that blended awe and skepticism. “The Med of Lant with five Lantiff and their dogs after him? What do you suppose he did?”

“I hope he lives long enough to tell us,” Bernal said soberly.

By the time the old man regained consciousness, he had been placed on a comfortable bed in a safe refuge. His arm had been bathed, treated with herbs, and rebandaged; and Bernal had a bowl of hot broth ready for him. Egarn ate slowly with Bernal assisting him. By the time he finished, he had revived sufficiently to take an interest in his surroundings.

He gazed about the small room wonderingly. It was lit by a flickering torch, and the smoke was sucked into a crack in the ceiling. There was a charcoal fire to take the edge off the cool, damp air, and skins were hung in two large openings. Comfortable chairs and beds had been improvised from branches and straw.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“In a cave,” Bernal answered.

“Are we safe here?”

“As safe as a fugitive can be in the Peerdom of Lant,” Bernal said gravely. “As soon as you are able to travel, we well take you to Easlon.”

“Across the mountains?”

“Of course.”

Egarn sank back comfortably. “I was hungry. They starved me. Is there more broth?”

“Better not overdo the eating for a few daez. You would make yourself sick.”

Bernal began to lay out rough garb that matched his own: leather jacket, pants, and mocs, with shirt and undergarments of wool. “When you feel up to it, I will bathe you and change your clothes. We need the things you are wearing. We also want your pack. I will give you another, and you can keep anything you think you absolutely must have. Just make certain you leave enough personal effects to identify you.”

Egarn gazed at him perplexedly.

“I am sending a scout south toniot,” Bernal said. “He will find a corpse in the Peerdom of Wymeff who resembles you as closely as possible. Fortunately for you—but not for Wymeff—there will be plenty of corpses to chose from. We are assuming the peer will order a massive search for you. If, in the middle of it, she receives word that your over-ripe body has been found in Wymeff, it will confuse the situation very satisfactorily.”

“I did it,” Egarn muttered.

“You did what?”

“The corpses. I did it. I made the weapons. To defend Lant, I thought, but the peer used them to destroy her neighbors. As if the len hadn’t tortured humanity enough.” He brightened. “But I got them back. I told her the lens would wear out if they weren’t replaced, and then I hid one and destroyed the rest. When I refused to make more, the peer stopped my food and then my water. When I got hungry and thirsty enough, I killed my guards with the weapon I had saved and escaped.”

“That was well done,” Bernal said. He knew, now, that he couldn’t rest until this old man was safely in Easlon.

“Some of the guards were my friends,” Egarn said despondently. “But I was afraid I would weaken if I got any hungrier. I had to escape or let her have the weapon.”

“It was well done,” Bernal said again. “Don’t look back, old fellow. Look ahead. The important thing now is to get well. Then maybe you can help us think of a few ways to have back at the Peer of Lant.”

Egarn grinned bitterly.

“What about your personal effects?” Bernal asked.

Egarn took a ring from his finger, surrendered a tooled leather belt that he wore, and then—with obviously reluctance—took a strange object from his pack. A blade snapped into view, and it was a knife.

“Jackknife,” Egarn said sadly. “And take this, it is called a coin. Anyone who knew me well will recognize them. They are the only things I have left from the place I came from, but they don’t matter now. Nothing matters.”

Bernal accepted them with a nod of approval. Next Egarn handed him a thin piece of wood with strange figures carved on it in orderly rows.

“Calculator I invented,” Egarn said. He added, when Bernal gave it a puzzled glance, “It is too complicated to explain, but my assistants will recognize it. Take it all. Take everything except the weapon. I wish you could take my memories, too—I no longer need them, either.”

One of the skins was pushed back, and Bernal’s two companions came into the room. Bernal gravely pronounced introductions: Roszt and Kaynor.

“They are so tall!” Egarn blurted. “Are they from Easlon, too?”

“They are from the Peerdom of Slorn. Their families were killed in the Lantian invasion, and now they scout for Easlon.”

“I have met people from Slorn, but they weren’t so tall and skinny. One doesn’t often meet tall people in this land.” Egarn returned his attention to Bernal. “Their families were—killed?”

Bernal nodded.

Egarn bowed his head. “All those corpses,” he muttered. “And I did it. I made the weapons.”

“Is it true that the Peer of Lant is getting ready to invade Easlon?” Bernal asked.

Egarn nodded miserably. Then he brightened. “But now she can’t! I destroyed all of her weapons except the one I brought with me!”

“She doesn’t need your weapons to invade Easlon, my friend. She has conquered all of her neighbors and added their lashers to her armies. If the Ten Peerdoms suddenly got energetic and formed a combined army of their own—which she knows their peers would never consent to do—she still would outnumber them twenty to one. Or fifty. Or a hundred. Probably she doesn’t know herself how large her armies are.”

Egarn covered his face with his good arm. “I suppose I must give the weapon to the Ten Peerdoms,” he muttered. “But after they have defeated Lant, they will use it on each other. Everything I do is cursed.”

“It needn’t happen that way,” Bernal said. “Don’t give it to the peers. Don’t trust any peerager. That was your mistake. Give it to us—to the one-namers. We are trying to live in peace and keep civilization going.”

“One-namers?” Egarn was incredulous. “But every one of them is servile to one peer or another!”

“Things are different beyond the mountains. Our first loyalty is to our own kind, and we have a League of One-Namers that extends through all of the Ten Peerdoms. The hope of the future lies with us, not with the rotten peeragers and certainly not with the no-namers and lashers. We one-namers don’t want to conquer anyone. We just want to protect our homes.” He added thoughtfully, “There is a rumor about a peerdom somewhere in the west that destroys its enemies with beams of light. Maybe someone already has your weapon.”

“A peerdom in the west is using a weapon like mine?”

“So it is rumored.”

“Any med server could make it if he knew how. If one of them has stumbled on the right combination of lens, the world is doomed. There is only one way to save humanity. I can’t do it alone—I would need help.”

“Tell Arne about it,” Bernal said. “He is first server of the Peer of Midlow and also of the League of One-Namers. He will see that you get all the help you need. What is the one way left to save humanity?”

Egarn’s gaze did not waiver. “By destroying it,” he said.