J. F. Bone, page 5
I had come from a pleasant and active day helping supervise the construction and layout of a new irrigation system, and Martha was waiting for me in our quarters.
“Have a good day, dear?” I asked as I took off my cloak and walked toward the fireplace to warm myself.
“Ha! I had a good day all right! It was a real gasser! I found out why I’ve been so popular among the female element; and it’s not because of my brains or my foreign accent!”
I shrugged and said nothing. I had learned from experience not to interrupt when she used this tone of voice.
“Can’t you guess why this room has been filled with Tharn females every day?”
“No,” I said.
“I’ve endured their mindless chatter for weeks. I’ve listened to them nibble cliches to bits with their sharp little teeth. I’ve auditioned soliloquies and choruses of domestic difficulties and servant problems until my head ached. And for what?” Martha gripped the collar of my jerkin with spasmic fingers and glared at me. “Do you know why I’ve done this? Do you know why I’m so popular? Do you know why? I thought it was because I’ve tried to inject some social consciousness into this gaggle of geese. I thought they came because they wanted to learn something. They didn’t want to learn anything. They just wanted to look at the freak who has menstrual periods in the wintertime; the freak who’s fertile all year around! Or did you know they’re seasonally polyestrus?”
“I know.” I nodded. “After all the Hundred Days are a major topic of male conversation.”
“They would be,” she said. “That maid of ours, Gayla! I’m going to make her regret the day she ever opened her big mouth about me.
“So what’s the harm?” I asked. “Everyone knows we’re strangers.”
“Not that strange!”
“Well, maybe not. Possibly you could have lied.”
“I didn’t even consider it. It was something of no importance.”
“To you, maybe, but not to them. Sex is a big thing in this culture.”
“So I realize. Well, I hope I didn’t ruin your standing.’”
“Oh mine isn’t hurt. Males are fertile and capable sexually all year, and there are such things as harlots— surgically altered females who are sterile but capable of sex all year. Nice ladies don’t mention them, though.”
“And so the women think that I’m—”
“I doubt it.” I smiled benevolently. “No, you’re just a freak.”
“How nice.”
“But you can be grateful that females don’t count for much in Tharn. The men don’t ordinarily listen to them. Other than being mildly envied for having a sexpot for a wife, I doubt if I suffer at all.”
“Damn! I think you planned it this way!”
I laughed. “Do me a favor,” I said, “and ask the women back for tea, or whatever.”
“Why? They won’t come anyway. I pointed out a few unpleasant truths to them about their mental level.”
“Oh they’ll come, if only for curiosity. And they may be useful. We’ll need to work together if we are to get off here.”
Martha looked thoughtful. “Okay, I’ll invite the yak club back. I’ll talk about you. That should bring the subject low enough to attract a mob.”
I shrugged. Women!
“You know,” she said after a moment’s silence, “maybe we should stay here and get this culture moving. If I could be certain that I was accomplishing something to better this society I wouldn’t mind being a kitchen agitator.”
I shook my head. “No way. We concentrate on getting out.”
“So you can save the confederation from Dad?”
“Something like that.”
“Just what do you think he’s doing?”
“He’s breaking up the union. He’s trying to make enclaves of the united worlds.”
Martha looked at me oddly. “Is that all you can see?”
“Isn’t it enough? Economic disintegration, chauvinism, mutual distrust and antipathy would lead to war and social chaos. People would suffer; many would die.”
“I suppose so.” Martha’s voice was neutral and I had the impression that I had been turned off, that I had voiced a political cliche of no importance. “That’s a matter between you and Dad if you ever get together.”
“Oh, we’ll get together.” My voice was assured. “And he’ll know when I’m back.”
“I have no doubt he will,” she replied. For some reason she sounded amused, and it bothered me. “But first you must get there.”
“Don’t worry.”
“But when?” she grinned at me. “You’re going to be an old man before you get back, and by that time the confederation should have changed beyond recognition.”
“Not necessarily,” I said.
“Surely you don’t think you can get pure copper wire all at once. The technological problems are enormous.”
“We’ll handle them as we come to them.”
“We?”
“Of course. You and I must work together.”
She kissed me then. “You say the nicest things every now and then. I’ll help you. I won’t double-cross Dad, but I’ll help you. And maybe in the meantime we can do something for this world.”
“I’ll make a bargain with you,” Martha suggested.
“Ah, the kicker,” I thought.
“If you get home too late to change things, you’ll turn us over to Dad. Agree, and I’ll help you all the way.”
Why not, I thought. I have nothing to lose. “Okay, I agree.”
CHAPTER 9
“Why don’t you play sorcerer to Sar Malthor’s swordsman?” Martha asked. “You know enough to be a fairly good technological wizard and I can help you. Between us we can move this bunch of clods into dynamism, and with Sar Malthor to front for us we can gain a position of power.”
“Like this year, maybe,” I added. “I’ve thought of that, but he’s honorable and he believes in the code. He might not approve.”
“Does that matter? You don’t have to tell him everything. Suggest; let him think he’s doing it himself. One thing’s certain; you’re not going to get a ton of copper all by yourself, let alone purify it and turn it into drive wire. You’re going to need help and lots of it, so you might as well get it through Sar Malthor. After all, he did swear an oath.”
“Why the sudden change in attitude?”
“I said I’d help and I’ve been asking questions and studying manuscripts. Since the Hunt-Winslow taught us the language these studies have been relatively simple. The local temple has quite a library, and Alfon, Sar Malthor’s page, has been bringing me manuscripts. He thinks I’m beautiful and exotic.”
“Smart boy.”
“He also thinks I’m sexy,” she added smugly.
“He’s too smart.”
“So with Alfon’s help I have learned a lot about Tharn, and I’m impressed. It’s one of the strongest and most stable governments I have ever seen; a self-renewing pyramidal structure composed of secular and religious divisions, both of which are united in the Tarnas or priest-king.”
“Spare me the details,” I said. “Just tell me if it can be penetrated without inside help.”
“It can’t.”
“Well, that settles it. We’ll have to use Sar Malthor.
Fortunately, he’s ambitious and not too bright. I don’t want to be responsible for setting a man on horseback—”
“You mean jessetback,” Martha interjected.
“—loose on this country,” I continued, ignoring the interruption. “This is a nice stable state and it would be a shame to disrupt it. It has considerable charm.”
“To a vegetable, perhaps,” Martha said acidly. “But we don’t agree on the functions of society, so let’s drop it.”
I nodded. Martha thought society’s function should be to stimulate; I thought it should be to protect. We didn’t agree and probably never would, but there was no sense fighting about it.
“Okay, so we push Sar Malthor up the hierarchial ladder. We’ll have to use the Hunt-Winslow to do it. And he’s going to learn a lot of things not in the Tharn curriculum. That machine isn’t selective. Already, from the one talk we had while the cyborg extracted his language and knowledge, he knows altogether too much about how our culture operates. He uses words I never taught him.”
“It’s something we’ll have to live with; without the technology the concepts can’t do much harm.” Martha eyed me curiously. “What rank do you figure he’s good for?”
“Provincal,” I said. “I think he’d make a fine replacement for our present one. Sar Virra of Valthi is someone Tharn could do without.”
“Who told you that?”
“Rumors only. He’s a pretty foul specimen if they are even partly true. Personally, I think Sar Malthor would be a better lord than the one we have.”
“Particularly for our purposes?”
I grinned. “Anyway he’s tentatively agreed to let me groom him for the trials, and he’s teaching me the manual of arms in return. I’m going to become a swashbuckler.”
“Between you and me,” she said, “I’d rather have a kelly.”
Feeling slightly deflated, I went down to the tiltyard to find Sal Malthor or Jorn the Smith. I felt that I was right to point Sar Malthor at Sar Virra. I had the perfect solution for the cultural contribution essential to qualify a man for anything higher than a Marchal—the next step above a manorial lord and a dead end of soldiery that guarded the borders of the island against pirates and raiders, and collected customs and export taxes.
From Regionals on up through Provincials and Councillors to the Tarnas himself all candidates must present some worthwhile contribution to Tharn at their trial. It could be either aesthetic or practical, but it had to be original.
For Sar Malthor, Martha had dreamed up the invention of the age—a jesset collar. Believe it or not, the human race would still be in the Dark Ages if it hadn’t been for the invention of the horse collar, which revolutionized transportation and made it possible to use something far more efficient than bullocks or human muscles as a power source.
But my work was just beginning. The Hundred Days were initiated with the festival of the Lucerpal, and that little orgy was just around the corner, temporally speaking. Already the spring plowing and sowing was under way, and everyone from adolescent to ancient would stop in the temple court to observe the shortening of the shadow cast daily by the stele upon the stone.
The trials were held at the end of the Hundred Days. Even with the cyborg and the temple and manor manuscripts we poured into it, there was hardly enough time to make a background of knowledge sufficient to turn Sar Malthor from a victim into a victor. He had tried and failed twice before, and as I saw it, he’d need to be nearly letter-perfect to survive the third trial. I didn’t tell him this, but I made the cyborg sessions as difficult as I dared and kept him under the helmet until his ruddy bronze skin turned green with strain and fatigue. I watched his diet and saw that he stayed healthy. His wives resented me for wearing him out with study almost as much as I despised them for feeding him sugars when what he needed was steak.
Martha stated it better than I could when she observed that Sar Malthor had better be teachable, because without him we’d never get off the ground. The more I learned about Tharn society, the more I became convinced that the first Tarnas was a genius. The pyramidal structure was bad enough, but when it was reinforced with popular participation in decisions and continual renewal from below, and buttressed with checks and safeguards against dynastic control, badly trained officials and administrators, the result was virtually crackproof.
And Sar Malthor got his revenge for the skull-cracking sessions with the cyborg through muscle-wrenching sessions in the tiltyard.
It began with simple exercises. Then it graduated to exercises in armor. Then it postgraduated into the manual of arms.
“With what do you wish to begin?” Sar Malthor asked.
“Something simple, I think. Mace or axe maybe.”
“Do you think you’re ready for the mace? You pick a strange weapon to begin with. An it were I, I’d choose the sword anytime. Observe.” He walked over to the arms rack and selected a mace. The handle was short, heavily ribbed and wrapped with leather to ensure a firm grip. At one end was a loop of leather through which Sar Malthor slipped his wrist. At the other end was a stout metal ring to which was fastened half a meter of chain and a spiked ball of steel about ten centimeters in diameter.
“This is a mace,” Sar Malthor said. “It looks simple does it not?”
“Simple and effective,” I agreed. “You swing it and bash the other guy.”
“Like this?” Sar Malthor flicked the handle and the spiked ball came hurtling at my head. I didn’t even have time to duck. But the ball stopped millimeters from my nose, reversed its course, came back again, clicked against my corselet and dropped to the ground. “Broken skull, smashed ribs,” Sar Malthor said. “Nice, isn’t it?”
“What?” I sputtered. Suddenly I revised my opinion of the weapon.
“It is one of the deadliest against an armed man,” Sar Malthor said.” In the hands of an expert it is irresistible; particularly if he is mounted and can deliver the ball on the downward swing. But it is not for beginners. Here, let me show you. Ho! Ranver, set up the targe!”
The man-at-arms standing by the arms rack turned toward the wall and picked up a man-sized, wooden dummy, roughly shaped to resemble a Tharn warrior, and thrust it into a stone socket embedded in the ground.
“Now watch,” Sar Malthor advised as he mounted his jesset and rode at the dummy. The ball whirled overhead and descended as the jesset raced past. There was a glint of steel, a heavy crack of metal against wood, and then the targe was missing half the knob that had formed its head.
“Helm,” Sar Malthor ordered, and Ranver placed a metal drum over the battered head of the targe. Once more Sar Malthor rode down on the figure. This time the sweep of the ball ended in a ripping clang and the metal drum, bent and torn, went sailing through the air.
“See,” Sar Malthor said, as he reined the jesset to a halt and dismounted beside me.
“All right, you name the weapon. I don’t think I’m ready for the mace.”
“The axe is good,” Sar Malthor said thoughtfully. “Yet it is inferior to the sword at close quarters and to the mace at middle distance. However, it is easy for beginners, for everyone has chopped wood, and thus the rudiments of axe work are known to the muscles.”
Not to mine, I thought. I’ve never chopped a stick of wood in my life! But I nodded.
“The technique is easier,” Sar Malthor said. “It merely depends on pressing home a continuous attack that keeps your opponent constantly on the defensive, waiting for a chance to counter. With the axe you cannot let up. I can see where it might appeal to one like you. Now pick you an axe and let us get to work.”
I selected an axe and followed the Tharn into the sunlight. The air was warm. The sand was hot underfoot. I felt oddly alive.
“Now,” Sar Malthor said. “Let me see you swing the axe.”
I swung.
“No, not that way; you’re swinging cross-handed on the forward stroke, and you follow through too far. You’re off balance for the return cut that must follow immediately before your enemy can skewer you like a fowl on a spit.
Keep the stroke shorter. Ah! That’s better. You swing well to the left and poorly to the right, which is normal for a right-handed man. Don’t shift your grip; turn your wrists and swing cross-handed. Sure its hard to get power in the stroke but you’ll learn. That’s it! Get the idea? Keep the stroke short. The leading arm should be straight from wrist to shoulder. Back and forth with the edge. Now the spike. Fine, but get some body into the blow.
“Weave the steel in front of you. Move forward; keep the blade moving. Don’t stop! Press on! Don’t slow it down! Back—Forth—Back—Forth—get the rhythm of it? Now keep swinging until you can’t hold the axe, and keep the strokes short!”
The axe fell from my limp fingers. “Good God! Malthor! Are you trying to ruin me?”
“A boy of sixteen summers would class that as a light workout in the School of Arms. You’re strong all right, but you’re soft. You have no endurance.”
“I’m not a boy of sixteen.”
“No, you’re a man; older, stronger, smarter. Your trouble is that you’re not used to hand weapons. It is tiring to wield them, but that will pass. Ere the time of the trials you will be competent.”
“I asked for this,” I muttered.
But finally the drill was over, and I had my innings.
“All right, you’ve had your turn. Now it’s mine.”
The Tharn’s face lengthened as we mounted our jessets for the ride to the ship. “I despise this priestly study,” he said. “Yet were I sure ‘twould help, I would submit with less reluctance.”
“You have my word it will.”
“I have failed twice before.”
“You will not fail this time.”
“I am ambitious, but—”
“What you have done so far would hardly be a workout for a high school freshman,” I said with malice. “But when you’re through you’ll be a competent scholar and well grounded in all your knowledge. Now let’s be off. We have a date with the cyborg, and you’ll feel like a squeezed fruit when it’s over.”
CHAPTER 10
Spring in Lothain was green and lovely. As the peasants turned the rich brown earth with their crude plows and sowed the crops for another year, life burst from the soil in an ecstasy of growth. It was a time of activity as the sun rose higher in the sky each day.
The village priest, Vra Cedras, a young man who eyed me with suspicion whenever we met, watched the stele in the temple court, noting the ever-shortening shadow cast at high noon. The progress of the shadow was also noted by the village elders, and the tempo of the work in the fields increased. Everyone labored.
As the work proceeded there was an undertone of excitement. Sar Malthor, lord though he was, was still a farmer and the son of a farmer. The excitement of the manor roused a sympathetic emotion in his breast as he rode across the acres watching his people at work. I rode with him and eyed the activity with interest but without emotional involvement. I was tired from drilling in arms and laying out lesson plans, and this kind of activity wasn’t really my bag.
