Golden Torc - 2 (50 page)

For a hundred years, the eggs of the brine shrimp and the spores of minute algae had waited for rain. Safe beneath the cracked saline crust of the playa, they had husbanded their tiny portions of life-force, resisting heat and drought and chemical action until yet another extraordinary once-in-a-century rainstorm should drench the Pliocene Betic Cordillera, swell the Proto-Andarax River, and fill the Great Brackish Marsh to overflowing.

Then for a few short weeks the thousands of square kilometers of dry lakebeds that lay between the normal western boundaries of the marsh and the gentle Alboran Rise would burst into teeming life. The brine shrimp and the algae and a few other hardy aquatic forms would thrive until the waters drained and evaporated away, leaving fresh eggs and spores entombed in the sediment to await the next Hundred-Year Storm. No rain fell. The Pliocene sky of early November was clear and the bed of the Andarax carried only a thin trickle from the Spanish heights into the basin of the Mediterranean. Nevertheless, the playa filled. The water spread and deepened in a manner unprecedented.

Brine shrimp hatched by the billions, ate algae, and hastened to lay the softer-shelled eggs that they produced in a well watered environment. The water was muddier than usual and it harbored alien competitors, oceanic plankton that vied with the shrimp for the drifting greenery and even tried to prey upon the little crustaceans themselves. But the creatures of the playa had no true awareness of that, nor of the fact that they would never have to endure the long drought-sleep again.

"Trust me!" said Aiken Drum, amid the fire, smoke, mindbellowing, and carnage.

"If this doesn't work," Bunone Warteacher told him, "there's a good chance that Nukalavee will nail you."

Aiken jabbed his saucy banner skyward. "Fear not! Just keep your fewkin' illusions intact and see that none of the gang here tries any heroic chivalrous bullshit to louse up the ambush. You hear me talkin', Tagan baby?"

The Lord of Swords said dryly, "We are so menaced by the Foe that I will bow to any expedient giving promise of reprieve. Even to you, Aiken Drum."

"Attaboy, Coercive Brother! Look sharp, then. I'm off!" The golden figure on the magnificent charger vanished in a puff of purple smoke.

Lord Daral of Bardelask said, "Have confidence, Lord of Swords. Aiken has led us with brave ingenuity all this day. We have more than twoscore of the Firvulag battle standards through following his banner-as well as the head of their hero, Bles Four-Fang!"

"Lying in ambush isn't our way," grumbled Tagan.

"It's a way to win," Bunone shot back. "You old soldiers give me a pain in the-heads up!"

Out of the dusty imbroglio surrounding the six depleted Tanu companies emerged a new sound-an infuriated roar from more than a thousand throats, carrying over it a whistling squeal that reminded the human fighters of a king of Brobdingnagian electronic feedback. In an instant, all of the five hundred or so mounted knights disappeared, transformed into piles of miscellaneous corpses lying on both sides of a fairly clear corridor perhaps thirty meters in width and nearly ten times as long.

"The illusion is firm," Celadeyr told them. "And now-en garde!"

Into the cleared area came galloping a hipparion, one of the donkey-sized three-toed horses of the Pliocene Epoch. It was bridled and plumed and caparisoned with purple and gold garniture. Standing upon its back, waving a small-sized version of his digitus impudicus banner and laughing like a maniac, was Aiken Drum. He was wearing his golden suit of many pockets.

Charging hot on his trail was a legion of monsters, Firvulag stalwarts clad in their most fearsome illusions, led by a towering apparition resembling a centaur from which the skin had been flayed. Its raw muscles and sinews and red and blue blood vessels glistened and throbbed; the eyeballs started from its skull in frenzied rage; a lipless mouth with broken tusks gaped as it voiced its appalling scream. Nukalavee the Skinless, one of the premier Firvulag champions, pursued the small figure on horseback, flinging lightning balls that hit some invisible metapsychic barrier around the fleeing jester and exploded into harmlessness.

"Nyaa-nyaa!" cried Aiken Drum.

The hipparion galloped flat out. The youth bent to peer backwards through his legs and stick his tongue out at Nukalavee, clinging to the reins with one hand and flourishing his midget banner with the other. Then he dropped the flap of his golden suit.

Nukalavee's feedback howl soared to a hundred and ten decibels. The trampling Firvulag mob came to be entirely encompassed by the twin lines of corpses.

Bunone and Alberonn and Bleyn gave a simultaneous mental command:

Now.

"Wake up, Bryan. Can you hear me? Wake up now." The dream of darkness began to fade, that cavern swallowing him with sweet and awful finality. He opened his eyes and there were Fred and Mario, the silver-torc redactors who had been his warders. And there was Creyn, now setting aside a small golden censer from which lingering acrid fumes swirled. "I'm quite all right," Bryan said. (But soon to return to be engulfed.)

The deepset exotic eyes with their flat-blue pupils were very close to him. "Tana be thanked, Bryan. We had feared for you."

Good old Creyn was concerned. But why? She had promised to come for him.

"You have been asleep for three days, Bryan."

"It doesn't matter, really."

"No," the Tanu healer replied in gentle agreement. "I suppose it doesn't. But you must rise and prepare yourself now. Mario and Frederic will help you dress appropriately. It's time for you to leave Redact House. In an hour, after the sun sets, we will have the second Recess Before Night. There is to be a gathering of the entire Tanu battle-company in extraordinary conclave. You are summoned to the White Silver Plain." Bryan managed a slight smile. "Another command performance before Their Awful Majesties? I should think they'd have... more diverting entertainment these days than the likes of me."

"You are summoned by Nodonn," Creyn said. He extended one bony hand all covered with rings and lightly touched the fingers of the still recumbent anthropologist. "You have no torc and so I cannot reach you in the fullness of fellowship, nor heal you even if it were allowed, or possible. You are unaware of what you have done, and in Tana's mercy you may never know. So go, Bryan. Receive your last gift. Goodbye." Bryan's wondering gaze followed the exotic man to the door of the suite. And then Creyn was gone and Fred and Mario were helping him into the sumptuous bathroom.

"They weren't listening to me!" Bewildered, Thagdal sank back into his throne.

The banqueting pavilion was a turmoil of conflicting thoughts and shouts. Nobody was sitting formally at table any more; they were jumping up on top of them to deliver impromptu harangues; or gathered around this champion or that, consuming heroic quantities of liquor as they debated and quarreled about the remarkable events of the day, the Tanu comeback in the face of lengthening odds and what-or who-had been responsible for it.

"I thought it was a lovely speech, dear," Nontusvel assured him. "Setting differences aside and all working together. What could be more logical?"

The King only gave a hollow laugh and drank from his gilded-skull goblet. Morosely, he stared into the inset carbuncle eyes.

"Remember this good old boy? Maglarn Wrinkle-Meat. Ugliest mother's son of the whole Firvulag tribe, and a fighting fool. I finally zapped him through the gizzard after we'd walloped each other for three mortal hours in the Heroic Encounters. Now that was Combat! None of this hole-in-a-corner sneaking around and dirty tricks. But now-! The Foe fights dirty, and so do we. And unless some miracle supervenes, the dirtiest trickster of the lot will end up King of the Many-Colored Land."

"Here's Nodonn," Nontusvel said softly. "He has... brought someone with him."

The King looked up and uttered a mild blasphemy. "I might have known who had that anthropologist stashed away! My boys combed the whole city and half of Aven and couldn't find hide nor hair of him."

Nontusvel regarded her husband with sorrow. "But they found poor Ogmol, didn't they?"

The royal beard sparked ominously. "You're an innocent, Nonnie. I was trying to save us all."

The arrival of the Battlemaster inspired cheers from the thousands of feasters, and a single impudent nyaa. Nodonn made his duty to his parents with accustomed serenity and then took Bryan around to a prominent position in front of the High Table. The human scientist appeared dazed; an odd smile touched his lips and from time to time one of his hands strayed to his open collar, from which came a telltale golden gleam.

"Noble battle-company!" intoned the storm-loud voice. The chain of silence was not needed. "We have suffered defeats in this Grand Combat.. .and victories!"

Plaudits and groans and not a few drunken curses. "The first round of the High Melee saw us faced with disaster when our gray-torc cavalry and charioteers faltered in the face of novel tactics from the Foe. The misfortune was compounded when the commanders of the gray levies, half-bloods and goldtorcs, as we know, failed to rally their troops according to the tenets of our ancient battle-religion."

Catcalls and shouting of indignant denials, mingled with taunting epithets and a scattering of "Shame!"

The Battlemaster held up one mailed fist. "Let those deny it who will! The ranks of humankind were shattered. And as a consequence we suffered grave setbacks. The blame, however, lies not with humanity, fellow warriors of the Tanu, but with ourselves!"

The hubbub, which had been swelling in intensity, suddenly fell away to silence.

"We have come to depend overmuch upon humanity in our Grand Combat. We have become lax and decadent as we adopted first their domesticated animals as battle-mounts, and then their very selves. Yes... we adopted humanity. They fight our battles, they grow our food, they operate our mines and factories, they administer our commerce, they infiltrate our sacred guilds, they mingle their very blood and genes with our own! But that is not all. We are faced with the ultimate humiliation-and once again, we have brought it upon ourselves. For a human now aspires to our High Kingship!"

In all the vast tent there was no sound. And then came the mighty bellow of Celadeyr, Lord of Afaliah: "And is this to our shame, Battlemaster? When Aiken Drum goes himself to meet the Foe, unarmed and unafraid, while certain Exalted Personages rest secure behind impregnable screens, dithering about antiquated tactics that no longer dismay the Firvulag-much less defeat them?"

A thunderclap of mental and vocal shouting greeted this sally. Celadeyr added, "The Foe has consorted with humans. This is how Finiah fell. This is how their pikemen learned to devastate our cavalry. Shall we then return to the ancient ways you champion and all lose our heads-rejoicing that at least our honor is intact? Or shall we follow this golden youth, the chosen of Mayvar, and know victory?"

This time the outcry made the very walls and ceiling of the pavilion billow and the cups and plates dance on the tables. The face of Apollo was apparently unmoved; but Nodonn was now glowing so furiously that those closest to the High Table fell back, shielding their eyes from the rose-gold glare. "I only wish to show you," the Battlemaster said, and now his voice was very soft in the reborn silence, "what the price of such a victory must be. You will see and hear what future lies ahead of us from the lips and mind of this human scientist, who enjoyed the highest reputation in his own Galactic Milieu. His survey of our relationship with humanity and the attendant stresses was commissioned by the Thagdal himself in the hope of confuting my own long-stated opposition to human assimilation. This scientist carried out his analysis freely, without prejudice. Many of you were interviewed by him or by his associate, our late Creative Brother Ogmol."

Now Nodonn held high the book-plaque that had been Bryan's love-gift to Mercy.

"Here is a copy of the survey he recently completed. He will explain it to you himself. He wore no golden torc while he worked-and he wears one tonight only so that you may examine his mind yourselves and see the truth of his statements. Because I compel him through the torc, he will carry out the survey's extrapolations in full, including the impact of humanity's use of the iron. Listen to what this man, Bryan Grenfell, says. It will not take long. And then return to the White Silver Plain for our night affray and think as you contend against the Firvulag! When dawn brings the final day of our Grand Combat, you may then choose which banner to follow until the end-that of your Battlemaster, or that of our true Foe."

The marshgrass flats and the lotus beds of the Great Brackish Marsh were gone now, and mangrove jungles were the ibises and egrets and pelicans once nested were completely submerged.

Only the highest islets still poked above the rising waters; here crazed animals fought one another in the dwindling space until they were drowned or pushed off to swim for their lives. The luckier of the refugees found sanctuary on the great dam of volcanic rubble; but it was necessary for them to keep climbing higher and higher up the clinkery slope as the water continued to rise. Once the summit had been attained, many of the animals were too weary and traumatized to go farther (and down the eastern flank of the dam it was all desert, anyway); and so they crouched there beneath the moon that lacked one day to fullness-the tusked water deer and the otters and the pygmy hippos and the aquatic hyraxes and the long-bodied felids and the rats and the turtles and the snakes and amphibians and a myriad other displaced creatures-not one showing aggression toward another, instincts of predators and prey alike dulled by the devastation of their world.

The water rose higher. The weight of it thrust against the natural dam; water seeped into every crevice and percolated through the coarser strata of ash. Some found its way among the debris clogging the Long Fjord. When this reached the head of the narrow Southern Lagoon estuary, a thousand little jets of water squirted from the rubble-face.

The water in the erstwhile Great Brackish Marsh was now more than eighty meters deep where once the flamingos had waded. For the first time in more than two million years it was possible for a fish to swim from the cliffs of southern Spain to the Morocco shore.