Golden Torc - 2 (17 page)

Greg-Donnet tittered. "Snapped his neck. Well-there's one for Dionket's baggie-bin!"

The Queen told the appalled Bryan, "He will be restored, dear boy, never fear. We're a very tough race, you know. But that poor fellow will be sidelined for the Grand Combat while he heals within the Skin. He's lost great prestige by being so clumsy."

The deinotheria and the surviving knights retired to applause.

"None of the animals are to be killed?" Bryan asked. "There will be only two battles to the death tonight," said the Queen. "Ah. That's the end of that. And now..." An elaborate blast of brasses sounded. The Marshal of Sport came to the steps in front of the royal box and Aluteyn translated his announcement for Bryan.

"Be pleased, Awful Majesties, to accept the homage of the Novice-at-Arms Stein Oleson, loyal servant of the Candidate Aiken Drum!"

Stein cantered out on his chaliko, rode up to the steps, lowered his long-hafted glass axe, and saluted by touching his gray torc. The cheers were loud but tentative. When the King arose and made a gesture, the crowd fell silent. Stein turned his mount to face the chosen antagonist. Animal handlers on the other side of the arena opened a stout gate on the wheeled cage that held the hyainailouros.

The beast seemed to flow across the pocked and stained expanse of sand. It had the snakey neck and relatively small head of a polar bear. Its body, however, bulked at least twice as large as that of the unborn ursid. The hyainailouros might have weighed a ton or more; it moved with speed and agility, flattening its large rounded ears against its head and heading directly for Stein in a kind of galloping slither. The animal's mouth hung wide open, displaying a pair of oversized upper canines that were longer than Stein's mailed hand. "Oooh!" shrilled Lord Greg-Donnet.

Following the obligatory etiquette of the arena, Stein came at a gallop to meet the creature, swerving aside at the last second to whack it on the rump, en passant, with the flat of his glass axe. It whirled, giving a kind of hissing hoot, and slashed with one clawed forefoot, then the other. Stein returned to count more coups, attacking and retreating, smacking the animal on flanks, back, neck-even gently tapping its flat skull. The hyainailouros spun about in a frenzy, trying to disembowel the chaliko or catch the tormenting rider in its gnashing jaws. The spectators greeted each coup with a roar of approbation. Finally, when the sabertoothed beast was beginning to reel with vertigo and frustration, scattered voices among the fans started to shout: "A kill! A kill!"

Stein spurred his mount and galloped in a tight circle around the swaying creature, which had risen to its hind legs. It uttered a series of short, high-pitched bleats, like demon laughter. Thagdal stood up once more and gestured.

"A kill!" howled the crowd in unison.

And then there was silence, except for the thud of the chaliko's clawed feet as Stein guided it away from the hyainailouros, and the rasping exhalations of the winded prey waiting for its enemy to return. Stein dismounted. At the end of his axe was a stout lanyard; the advancing Viking began to swing the weapon by this cord, whirling it around and around his horned head. He approached the now rampant brute with every facet of his armor aglitter and the rotating vitredur blade all but invisible. Then he sprang, his body's trajectory timed to coincide with the swaying of the sabertoothed prey, and scythed its head off.

The spectators erupted in a mental and vocal tumult, shouting, clapping, and stamping. Thagdal opened a wicket in the front of the box and descended the stairway that led into the arena. Down below, the Marshal's attendants threw wide the gate in the protective fence so that Stein could approach the sovereign. The Viking took off his emerald helmet and clumped forward.

And then the crowd gasped. From the other side of the stadium came thundering a black steed bearing a small rider armored in gold-lustred glass. Just as Stein paused in front of the King, Aiken Drum reined up in a sliding halt scarcely a meter behind his "servant," grinning like the personification of Jack O'Lantern.

"And he did it all himself!" the jester said. "No assists from mighty Me!"

The Marshal of Sport had been obliged to act fast with his PK to keep the great dust cloud Aiken had generated from enveloping the disconcerted King. Now the official stepped forward and declaimed: "Pray silence for the accolade of His Awful Majesty!"

"Yeah," said Stein, giving Aiken a look. "You'll get your chance."

Thagdal produced a large chained medallion embossed with the heraldic male face. He raised it. As the crowd cried, "Slonshal!" he hung it around Stein's neck.

"Accept this our accolade, and be forever our faithful man-at-arms."

The people cheered, and Queen Nontusvel sent down a napkin threaded through a magnificent ruby thumb ring (Stein didn't mind at all that it was a little messy with banana), and the Tanu ladies exuded concupiscence, and very guarded hostility emanated from the Tanu gentlemen, and a hostler brought Stein's chaliko to him, and he rode away. Aiken followed after, broadcasting, "That's my boy!" on a highly amplified farspeech mode.

When Thagdal returned to the box there was a distinct atmosphere of jovian pique.

"Now, Thaggy," soothed the Queen.

"Didn't you love it?" Greggy squealed.

A great crack of thunder rang out. "My sentiments exactly," growled the High King of the Many-Colored Land. "You will all excuse me. I am going for a royal leak."

"He doesn't really care for humans, you know." Lord Greg-Donnet's cheery infant face was illuminated by momentary sanity. "No more than you do, my Queen, and all your Host. The King endures humanity as a necessary evil. But you would rather the timegate had never opened."

"Shame on you, Greggy," said Nontusvel. "Some of my best friends are human. You mustn't talk like that, naughty boy. What will Bryan think? Here-have a nice hard-boiled egg."

The Genetics Master took the proffered silver dish and stared into it, apparently puzzled. "Eggs? Eggs? But they, dearest Lady, are the matter of contention! A quarter of a million of them tucked within her human ovaries! So generous, so wasteful, so providential of Mother Nature to stuff every human female with such a superabundance of ova!" He peered sideways at Bryan, took up an egg and dipped it into a jar of Grey Poupon mustard before taking a meditative bite. "Do you know, Dr. Grenfell, that in the Pliocene, dear Mother Nature's name is Tana?...Or Te, if you're of the Firvulag persuasion."

"Don't talk with your mouth full, Greggy dear," said the Queen.

Tears began to trickle down the madman's smooth cheeks. "If only we could clone her!" And Bryan was quite aware that the Genetics Master no longer referred to Mother Nature. "You wouldn't believe, Grenfell, how primitive this outfit really is compared to my old lab back at Johns Hopkins."

"Watch the tournament, Greggy," Nontusvel urged. "See? There's Ogmol coming into the lists."

The Lady Eadone Sciencemaster gave Bryan an appraising glance. "And what preliminary conclusions have you been able to draw in these first weeks of your culture-impact survey, Doctor? Genetic considerations aside, we're worried that the Tanu may be becoming too dependent upon human workers and human technology. As you've noted, none of our young people choose a career in agriculture any more. The same is becoming true in other practical disciplines: mining, architecture, civil engineering, manufacturing."

"All activities that fall into my province," Aluteyn put in, looking harried. "Creation House is overflowing with musicians and dancers and sculptors and apprentice couturiers. But do you know how many signed up for bioluminescence technology this year? Five! Another couple of hundred years and we'll have to light our cities entirely with olive oil and reed pith soaked in tallow!"

"You may have grounds for your concern," Bryan said carefully. The indignant Craftsmaster said, "There's even talk of separating the arts and sciences entirely-spinning off a new Guild, if you please!-with mostly gold humans in charge of technology!"

"Gomnol's idea, of course," Eadone remarked, entirely sedate. "I've been in harness since the old days," Aluteyn said. "I was one of the First Comers who defied the federation and made contact with Brede. There aren't many of us left now among the Tanu-the Thagdal, Dionket, Mayvar, Lady Eadone, the Lord of Swords, poor old Leyr sulking in the Pyrenees... There! Even I give the damn mountains their human name! Just sixty-odd years of the time-gate and a millennium of Duat culture nearly gone down the drain. Even the best fighters these days are mostly hybrids! The world's gone to hell in a nightsoil cart."

"Compose yourself, Creative Brother," the Queen said. Greg-Donnet showed his teeth in a wide grin. "You can't stand in the way of progress."

"Oh, really?" said Nontusvel.

A gray-torc usher opened the curtains at the rear of the royal box. He announced: "The Exalted Lord Nodonn Battlemaster and his consort, Lady Rosmar."

A towering form in rosy-golden armor stood in the doorway, almost blinding Bryan with sunrise radiance.

"My son!" cried the delighted Queen.

"Mother!"

"I'm so glad you're in time for his testing."

The visage of Apollo displayed an ironic smile. "I wouldn't have missed it for the world. I've brought a little present for Mayvar's fancyboy."

The Queen had risen from her seat to kiss her eldest child. Now she took the hand of a human woman dressed in a splendid costume and headdress of auroral hues and led her to the still-dazzled anthropologist.

"And here's a surprise for you, Bryan. Just as we promised! Dear Nodonn will want to go down to the arena to witness the trial of Aiken Drum, so you two must sit together and get reacquainted. You do remember Bryan Grenfell, don't you, darling Rosmar?"

"How could I ever forget?" Mercy said. Tenderly, she bent and kissed the anthropologist on the lips, then raised a playful eye to her resplendent Lord. "You mustn't be jealous, my daemon lover. Bryan and I are old, old friends."

"Enjoy one another," said the Battlemaster.

He opened the wicket and descended the stairs to the arena.

The stadium crowd and the stormy sky thundered together in a concert of adulation.

Watching from the opposite side of the stadium, Aiken asked the Lord of Swords, "Who's the badass archangel?"

"You'll be finding out shortly! I understand he's brought something special for your testing from the marshes of Laar." Tagan went out of the sideline dugout to meet the Tanu champion. The jousting had come to a standstill in the uproar attending Nodonn's appearance.

Stein, free now of his glass armor and gnawing the roasted leg of some large fowl, called from the passageway leading to the dressing rooms. "Hey, kid! Somebody here to see you. Your old pal, the B.C. stud."

Raimo Hakkinen slid furtively into the dugout, pale eyes darting. None of the human or Tanu warriors was paying any attention to him, but he spoke in an anxious whisper just the same. "Only a minute of your time, Lord Aiken. That's all-" The trickster was aghast. "What's this fewkin' lord bullshit? It's me, Chopper-your li'l bitty buddy!"

Aiken sent a quick probe behind bloodshot Mongol eyes... and found chaos. There was hardly a sensible thought to be found in that bog of weariness and dread that was Raimo's mind. Somehow, the silver torc had exacerbated the personal devils of the former woodsman. His experiences during the previous two weeks combined with this functional derangement to drive him to the brink of brain-wreck.

"The women, Aik! The goddam man-eating Tanu bitches! They been squeezing me like a lemon!"

Stein slapped one great thigh and gave a roar of cruel laughter. Raimo only hung his head. He looked as if he had lost ten kilos. The formerly arrogant Finnish face had gone pinched and blotchy, the blond hair hung lank beneath a jaunty cap, and the once powerful body was shrunken within a costume that mimicked Italian Renaissance styling with its puffed sleeves, trunk hose, and codpiece. Raimo paid no attention to the Viking's derision but raised clasped hands and fell on his knees before the mischief-maker.

"For the love of God, Aik-help me! You can! I heard how you got this fuckin' town eatin' outa your hand." Redaction was not Aiken's long metapsychic suit, but he plunged in to do the best he could for the tottering psyche. Some of the Tanu contestants for the games had begun to stare curiously, so Aiken pulled Raimo out into the corridor. Stein trailed after, chewing his bone.

"They been passing me from one to the other," Raimo said.

"All the ones who don't have kids-and there are a coopful! They try out all the silver guys-grays, too, if they like the looks of 'em. But if it turns out that you don't knock any of 'em up, they quit being nice and get their buzz by-by-Jeez, Aik! D'you know what they can do to a guy wearin' this friggin' torc?"

Aiken saw. He moved quickly through the limbic system of the humiliated, hagridden brain, turning off pain circuits and putting up a temporary mitigating structure that would help... a little. When things were at their worst, Raimo would be able to retreat into it and stay sane. As the woodsman's twitching features calmed, he pleaded, "Don't let'em get me, Aik. We were buddies. Don't let the Tanu bitches ball me to death."

A sudden burst of conversation and laughter sounded from the other end of the long passageway. Six tall apparitions of unearthly beauty, all rainbow chiffon and sparkling gems and floating blonde hair and on-the-gad pheromones, came gliding toward the three men with eager exclamations.

"We farwatched you and knew you'd be hiding here!"

"Wicked, delicious Raimo, to run away!"

"Now we'll have to punish you again, won't we?"

"Sisters! Do you know who the big one is? It's Stein! Let's take him, too!"

There was a perfumed scurrying and a clash of coordinated coercive power against a mind-shield of gold, followed by mental giggles and impudent tweaks that set Aiken and the Viking on fire even though the psychic barriers were up. A single moan: "Don't let 'em." And then Raimo and the Tanu women were gone.

"Holy shit," whispered Stein.