Part 3 (1/2)

Blade shot a third arrow into the men as they kicked themselves free of their blankets. Then he dropped the bow and drew both sword and knife.

”Get the animals,” he called to Twana and ran forward. He knew without hearing or seeing her that she was running forward with him, knife in hand. Now it would be all close-quarters fighting, where Blade's strength and speed would be deadly and the enemy's bows and muskets useless.

A soldier came at Blade, trying to cut between him and the animals. The man wore only boots and breechclout but carried sword and s.h.i.+eld. His sword whistled at Blade's head. Blade savagely parried the cut with his knife. Sparks sprayed down, and the man was a little slow in drawing back his arm. Blade thrust his knife deep into the flesh of that arm, then swung his sword. The man's throat gaped wide as though he'd suddenly opened a second, blood-gus.h.i.+ng mouth.

One of the druns screamed, in pain this time. Twana was at work with her knife. Another man came at Blade, this one carrying s.h.i.+eld and a single-handed axe. He used both of them skillfully, forcing Blade to give ground. Blade would have liked to close and kill the man, but he knew he couldn't afford to let himself be held in any one place for long. That would give the others time to surround him and put their superior numbers to work.

Blade kept backing, until he realized be was in danger of being backed right out of the camp, leaving Twana alone. He charged, swinging around to the left of the axeman, faster than the other could turn, then closing in. He stabbed the man in the groin with his knife and hacked his weapons arm nearly free of the shoulder. The man reeled back, dropping his axe. Blade s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, looked for Twana's slim figure darting about among the animals, saw her. He raised the axe, shouted ”Get this!”, and threw it. The axe would be a good weapon for killing the sniffers.

Now Twana had released one of the druns and prodded it into a panic-stricken flight. It charged through the camp, nearly knocking Blade flat. He leaped clear in time, got his feet tangled in someone's discarded blankets, went down, rolled with expert skill, and came up still armed and ready.

His opponent's weren't quite so fortunate. The maddened drun knocked two of them flat and brought the rest to a standstill. Before they could recover, Blade charged.

He leaped over one of the fallen men and came down on the chest of the other in an explosive crackling of shattered ribs. He leaped down to the ground as the man went into a final blood-spraying convulsion. His sword cut the air in a flat arc and took a head off its shoulders. The corpse toppled almost at Blade's feet. He stepped behind it, keeping two more men at a distance great enough to spoil their attack. Their swords lashed out. Blade parried one with his knife, immobilizing it. He lopped off the hand that held the other sword, then turned back to the first man.

As he did, Twana screamed in raw terror. Blade smashed the s.h.i.+eld of the man facing him with a brutal downcut, laid open his chest with a second cut, and backed away as the man fell. Now he could clearly see Twana and why she'd screamed.

One of the sniffers was loose. Twana was backed against the wagon, shaking with fear as she stared wildly at the creature in front of her. Every time she moved so much as a finger, the deadly spine-studded tail waved toward her. Every time the poisoned tips stopped inches from her skin. At other times the sniffer opened its mouth and hissed angrily. The mouth was full of teeth, chisel-shaped like a beaver's-long and sharp enough to do plenty of damage if they sank into human flesh. Twana's axe lay on the ground at her feet, its head dark with blood.

Blade's sword chopped into the base of the sniffer's spine. The poisoned tail lashed wildly back toward him, so hard that some of the spines raked across his boots. They left dark, oozing lines across the leather but didn't penetrate to the skin. Then the tail flopped limply to the ground as the sniffer lost control of it. Half mad with pain, it turned to face Blade, and Blade's sword came down across the back of its neck. The sniffer dropped nose first to the ground and lay there, quivering all over. It made noises so much like the cries of a kitten that Blade was relieved when Twana picked up the axe and brought it down hard, ending the sniffer's death agony.

Then she was dropping the axe and clinging desperately to his left arm. Gently he shook her loose and turned to face his remaining human enemies. After a long moment's staring into the darkness around him, he realized there weren't any in sight.

Instantly Blade's mind conjured up a picture of the Shoba's men backing away until they could fill him and Twana with arrows, with little danger to themselves. He grabbed Twana by the wrist and dragged her with him under the sniffer's wagon. They lay flat, eyes searching the darkness for any sign of the enemy, ears listening for the whistle of descending arrows.

He heard and saw nothing. He whispered to Twana, ”What about the other sniffer?”

”I killed it with the axe before the other one came at me.” He could feel her s.h.i.+vering. The generations-old terror of the Shoba's sniffers was still in her.

Blade waited, but gradually he began to suspect there was nothing to wait for. With both their sniffers dead, the rest of the Shoba's men might have decided they had no chance anymore of carrying out their mission. The best course would be to clear out, try to run down their scattered druns, and then ride to rejoin their comrades.

Blade wondered, in spite of this. The Shoba's men could still have made a good try at killing him while he was busy with the sniffer. As far as he knew, they hadn't lifted a finger. They'd just vanished into the night. It wasn't what he would have expected from soldiers who'd shown themselves so tough and determined.

Slowly Blade crawled out from under the wagon. When this drew no shouts or arrows, he called softly to Twana. She scrambled out with frantic haste, and together they searched the camp. Blade gathered up two more knives, a sword, and a spare bow. He packed his quiver full of arrows, but decided against picking up a musket. It would be far too heavy in proportion to its range and striking power, and useless when its powder ran out.

Meanwhile, Twana had been collecting pouches of dried meat and hard biscuit scattered among the blankets. They were a welcome find, one that promised better eating on the way north. But why had the soldiers abandoned them? And it made no sense for them to abandon the food . . . ?

Oh well. Blade decided to put the matter of the strange behavior of the Shoba's soldiers out of his mind. He knew he was only guessing-always a waste of time when he knew so little for certain.

At last Blade led Twana out of the camp. He wanted to get well away from it and then under cover, in case one or two of the soldiers might have the courage to return. A night's sleep, a quick climb up the hill to make sure the enemy was really gone, and they could start back toward h.o.r.es. Once there, he could leave Twana and get about his real business in this Dimension, which was now the Wall and whatever might lie beyond it.

They slept behind some squat trees, so close to the foot of the hills that the ground already sloped upward. Blade and Twana had to brace themselves against gnarled roots, and against each other, to keep from rolling down the slope into a pond.

At dawn they rose, filled their water bottles, and climbed the hill together. Blade was happy that Twana had found the courage to climb up with him. If she returned to her village with some of the terror of the Wall shaken out of her mind, it might be a good thing for her people.

They had to climb farther than usual to get above the morning mist. At last they climbed into clear air and looked to the north. Blade looked for a long time-then his angry words echoed around the rocky hillside, until Twana stared at him as if he'd gone mad. Then he started to laugh, and she stared even more. She was beginning to look frightened, when Blade threw out one arm and pointed to the north.

”Look again, Twana!”

She did so and saw what Blade had seen. Moving steadily south on their trail was another party of the Shoba's soldiers. In this one there were at least thirty men, as many druns, and no less than five sniffers.

Blade stopped laughing. ”I can see what they must have done. They must have been sending the men we fought on ahead by day. The others stayed well behind and probably moved only by night, when we couldn't have seen them even if we'd been looking for them. That's why the soldiers ran away last night. They knew they had some place to run to. Now they're back on our trail again.” He didn't add that this seemed to be the second time he'd badly underestimated the Shoba's men.

Aloud, he went on. ”There are too many of them for us to fight, I'm afraid. We either stay down here and die, or climb up to the Wall and let the Watchers do their worst.”

Twana s.h.i.+vered, but her voice was steady as she replied, ”The Wall. I do not know for certain what the Watchers can do. I know the Shoba's men.”

They began their climb to the Wall.

Chapter 8.

They climbed in as nearly a straight line as they could manage. Blade wanted to get high above the plain and well out of bowshot before the second party of pursuers caught up with them.

This stretch of hillside was steeper than most and also b.o.o.by trapped with loose slabs of rock. In spite of the occasional falls and sc.r.a.ped skin, Blade was happy about the difficult slope. The Shoba's heavily equipped soldiers would have a slow and painful time tackling the hillside. In the process, they would make fine targets of themselves for a man waiting above with a bow and a large supply of arrows.

This hill was also higher than usual-in fact, it almost deserved the name of mountain. The base of the Wall was nearly half a mile above the plain. Long before Blade and Twana reached it, the Shoba's men had ridden up to the foot of the hill. After they'd proved to their own satisfaction that they were out of range, with a few useless musket shots and arrows, they settled down to wait. Blade felt a moment's temptation to thumb his nose at the enemy. They would have a long wait for him and Twana to come down. The temptation vanished swiftly as he looked upward to the endless grim Wall that loomed steadily closer with each step they took.

At last there was no more upward slope in front of them. Far below the Shoba's men looked like ants crawling about on the plain. Directly above them rose the Wall, so close that Blade could reach out and touch it. The blue-gray material was cold, as hard as metal, and faintly rough to the touch, like fine sandpaper. Here and there in the blue-grayness, Blade could see faint swirling patterns, but he could see no seams or cracks. The technology that had built the Wall was certainly far ahead of Home Dimension. More than ever, Blade was curious to see what lay beyond the Wall. What would the builders have considered so valuable that they would build this Wall along a hundred or more miles of hill crest to protect it? Or what danger was so great that the Wall was needed to guard against it?

All along the base of the Wall, shrubs and vines crept upward in thick, tangled clumps, as if the presence of the Wall made the soil at its base more fertile than elsewhere on the hills. Blade and Twana started north, while Blade looked for a vine or tree strong enough and tall enough to carry him to the top of the Wall. Twana kept an eye out for the Watchers. She was pale and moved with little jerky steps, as though she expected the Watchers to rise out of the ground in front of her at any moment. But she was also alert and kept up well.

In an hour they'd left the Shoba's men out of sight in the haze and mist to the south. Twana was beginning to mutter, ”Where are the Watchers?” Blade would have liked an answer to the same question. Here they are, marching steadily along the very base of the Wall, without the faintest sign that the Watchers even existed. If the legends were entirely true, they should have been dead by now.

Somebody else had risked the Watchers, a long time in the past. Blade saw a place where at least a ton of gunpowder must have been set off against the base of the Wall. The rock was split and shattered, and a blackened hole revealed several feet of the Wall's foundations. The Wall itself showed a faint discoloration and some barely visible pitting, but otherwise the explosion had left it completely unaffected.

Another hour's walking brought Blade and Twana to a stretch of Wall three hundred yards long and completely overgrown with ma.s.sive vines from ground level all the way to the top. A six-year-old child could have scrambled up those vines, let alone a trained athlete like Blade, who had climbed the face of the Eiger.

He went up carefully though. He weighted a good deal more than any six-year-old child. If the vines did break under him, he might be dropped forty or fifty feet onto hard rock.

A broken leg here and now could be a good deal more fatal than the Watchers.

Foot by foot, Blade clambered upward. In places his fingers pushed through the tangle of vines and touched the Wall itself. When he did that, he could feel a faint, irregular vibration within the blue-gray material. It was like putting his fingers on the head of an enormous drum being gently tapped by an invisible drummer. Once he was able to put his ear against the Wall and hear a distant humming that came and went in irregular pulses. The Wall was not as dead as it seemed, or perhaps even as solid.

The last few feet were particularly tricky. The vines were growing thinner, the twice strands broke as Blade gripped them. Both times he hung there with a death clutch on the broken strands, barely breathing, toes curling for a better foothold.

At last there was no more Wall to climb, only a flat surface like a blue-gray tabletop stretching out of sight. The golden s.h.i.+mmering in the air above the Wall was clearly visible now. It seemed to start three or four feet above the top and then curve upward and away toward the inner side of the Wall. It was soundless, odorless, unchanging, and totally unlike anything Blade had ever seen or imagined. It reminded him that, as he explored the Wall, he might be in the position of a caveman trying to examine and understand a jet bomber -or an atomic reactor.

Blade scrambled out onto the top of the Wall. On hands and knees he crawled forward. He held his sword in one hand, probing the featureless surface ahead of him as he moved.

He covered forty feet, and then suddenly he could no longer see. It was as if he'd stuck his head into a black sack. He drew back, startled, and vision instantly returned. He looked ahead, at both the Wall and the air above it. High above he caught hints of the golden s.h.i.+mmering. Directly in front of him, he could see nothing at all except the top of the Wall. He crawled forward-and again the world vanished around him.

He tried three more times, until his head was beginning to spin with the repeated coming and going of his vision. By that time he realized what had to be wrong. The Wall was generating some sort of field that completely deprived him of vision. That field started at a point only a yard or so in front of him and continued until . . .

That was a question he'd have to answer, sooner or later. Not now though. Not when he had Twana to get back home and the Shoba's men were still close enough to take advantage of any mistakes he might make. He crawled back to the edge of the Wall and stood up slowly. As his head rose into the golden s.h.i.+mmering, he had a moment's sensation of being jabbed with thousands of tiny blunt needles. Then the sensation faded. Whatever the s.h.i.+mmering meant, it did not appear to be dangerous.