Neq the Sword (15 page)

Suddenly she turned away and kicked back, her heel striking for Tyl's knee. But again he moved aside in time.

"The Weaponless--your other father?--crippled me with that blow when he was driving for the empire himself. But after my knees healed they became leary, and have not been injured since."

If Vara had not realized she was sparring with the top warrior of the old empire, she surely knew it now. Tyl was no longer young, but nothing short of Neq's sword had hope of moving him out of the circle. Vara was fifteen and female; those were insurmountable obstacles.

Tyl was merely blocking, of course. He had no interest in hurting this beautiful girl; he only meant to convince her that she could not have her way.

Vara required considerable convincing. She whirled, she feinted, she sent a barrage of blows against the man. She knew an astonishing variety of tricks--but there was no trick that could overmatch Tyl's reach ami strength and experience.

Finally, panting, she yielded far enough to speak. "Warrior, what is it you want?"

"Neq slew Var in fair combat. Even as I could disarm you now, so could Neq defeat Var. I would not face Neq with the stick myself. Forswear your vengeance."

"No!" she cried, and launched another flurry of blows at him.

"No!" Neq also cried. "It was not fair combat. Var withheld his attack, he opened his guard, saying we had no quarrel. Then I slew him."

Tyl retreated, dismayed by the words rather than by the girl's offense. 'This is not like you, Neq."

"It is too much like me! I have slain innocent men before. I did not understand in time. I thought it was a combat mistake, or a ruse. My sword was there--"

"Desist, girl," Tyl said, just as though she were his daughter playing a game. And Vara desisted. "Neq, you place me awkwardly."

"Let her have her vengeance. It is fair."

"That I cannot."

"You admit you slew him unguarded!" Vara blazed at Neq.

"Yes. As I have others."

"In the name of vengeance!" Tyl cried, as if proving a point.

"In the name of vengeance." Neq was sick of it.

"In the name of vengeance," Vara repeated, and now the tears showed on her cheeks.

"Yet you could have slain him fairly," Tyl said. "And you thought you were avenging--her."

"I misunderstood. I did not let him explain. I slew him without reason, and I am tired of slaying, and of the sword, and of life." Neq faced Vara. "Come, widow. Strike. I will not lift weapon against you."

"If you strike him thus," Tyl said to her, "you become guilty of the same crime you avenge. Knowingly."

"Nevertheless," she said.

"Understand him first--only then are you justified. Leam what he is, what he contemplates."

"What can he be, what can he plan, that will repay what he has stolen from me!" she cried.

"Nevertheless."

She cried, she cursed in Chinese, she threw her sticks at the ground; but she was already committed. As was Neq.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"Melt that?" the smithy cried incredulously. "That's Ancient-technology steel! My forge won't touch it!"

"Then sever it," Neq said.

"You don't understand. It would take a diamond drill to dent that metal. I just don't have the equipment."

No doubt an exaggeration, for Helicon had made the weapon. But these northerners were closer to the past wonders than were the nomads, having houses and heaters and even a few operating machines, and so they stood in greater awe of the Ancients. Neq himself stood in awe, after learning what had been done at Helicon. Perhaps this smithy was superstitious; at any rate, he would not do the job.

"I must be rid of it," Neq said. As long as his sword remained, he was a killer. Who would fall next--Vara? Tyl? Dr. Jones? The sword had to go.

The smithy shook his head. "You have to cut off your arm at the elbow. And that would probably kill you, because we don't have medical facilities in this town for such an operation. Find the man who put that sword on you; let him get it off again."

"He is three thousand miles away."

"Then you'll just have to wear it a while longer."

Neq looked at his sword-arm, frustrated. The shining blade had become an anathema to him, for while he wore it he was inseparable from his guilt.

He looked about the shop, unwilling to give up so readily. Metal hung from all the walls--horse shoes, plowshares (so that was what the crazies had suggested he make his sword into, facetiously!) axes, bags of nails. All the products of the smithy's art. The man was evidently competent; he must make a good living, in the fashion of these people who worked for recompense. In one corner dangled a curved piece of metal with a row of little panels mounted along a center strand. Neq could envision no possible use for it.

The smithy followed his gaze. "Don't you nomads believe in music?"

"A harp!" Neq exclaimed. "You made a harp!"

"Not I," the man said, laughing. He took it down fondly. "This is no harp; it has no strings. But it is a musical instrument. A glockenspiel. See--these are chimes--four-teen plates of graduated size, each a different note. I traded a hundred pounds of topgrade building spikes for this. I'm no musician, but I know fine metalwork! I've no idea who made it, or when--before the Blast, maybe. You play it with a hammer. Listen."

The smithy had become quite animate as he described his treasure. He fetched a little wooden hammer and struck lightly on the plates. The sound was like bells, seldom heard m the crazy demesnes. Every tone was clear yet lingering, and quite lovely.

Neq was entranced. This evoked old and pleasant memories. There had been a time when he was known for his voice as well as his sword... before the fall of the empire and horrors thereafter. He had sung to Neqa....

He could not make his sword into a plowshare, obviously, but it gave him an idea. He did not have to cut off his weapon; he merely had to nullify it. To make it impossible for him to fight.

"The glock and spiel--fasten it to this sword so it won't come off," he said.

"To the sword! A marvelous instrument like this?" The smithy's horror was genuine.

"I have things to barter. What do you require for it?"

"I would not sell this glockenspiel for barter or for money! Not when it is only going to be destroyed by a barbarian with no appreciation for culture. Don't you understand? This is a musical instrument'."

"I know music. Let me have your little hammer."

"I won't let you close to an antique like this! Get out of my shop!"

Neq started to raise his sword, but caught himself. This was the very reaction he sought to quell: sword before reason. He had to convince the smithy, not intimidate him.

He looked about again. There was a barrel of water near the great anvil, and he was thirsty. He had walked all day with Tyl and Vara, and come into this village on sudden inspiration when he saw the smithy shop. If the man could only be made to understand....

All day I faced the barren waste

without the taste of water--

Cool, clear, water!

Dan and I with throats burned dry

and souls that cry for water--

Cool, clear, water!

The smithy stared at him, astonished. "You can sing! I never heard a finer voice!"

Neq had not known he was going to sing. The need had arisen, the mood fit--and a silence of six years had been broken. "I know music," he said.

The man hesitated. Then he pushed the glockenspiel forward. "Try it with this."

Neq took the hammer awkwardly in his pincers and tapped a note. The sound thrilled him, more perfect than any voice could be. He shifted key to match, striking the same note steadily to make a beat.

The nights are cool and I'm a fool

each star's a pool of water--

Cool, clear, water!

The smithy considered. "I would not have believed it! You want this to play?"

Neq nodded.

"Price was not my objection. I see you would have trouble playing the glockenspiel in the wilderness, unless it were attached. Yes. It could be done... I would have to coat the blade with an adhesive... but you would never be able to fight again. Do you realize that?"

They bargained, and it was done. He became Neq the Glockenspiel.

"A what?' Vara demanded, surprised and suspicious. "You have beaten your sword into a what?'

"A glockenspiel. A percussion instrument. My sword was too bloody."

She faced away angrily. Tyl smiled.

They traveled south and east. Tyl and Neq were returning to make their report to Dr. Jones. Vara, though she did not see it that way, was that report. She was the only one remaining who could answer the necessary questions about the nature of Helicon's demise. But she thought she was coming to have her vengeance on Neq; she did not mean to let him escape.

Tyl did not start any conversations. Neq hardly felt like talking himself, and Vara remained sullen. They had about three thousand miles to go: between three and four months at their swift pace. It was not likely to be a pleasant trip.

But they had to work together, for the natives were generally unfriendly and the old hostels no longer existed even in the formal crazy demesnes. They were cutting across what had been known as western Canada, intending to skirt the southern boundaries of a series of large lakes, and the northern boundaries of the worst badlands. Tyl had a crazy map; it claimed such a route existed.

Someone had to forage each day for food; someone had to stand guard each night; someone had to get them safely through outlaw territories. Tyl did most of it at first. Then Vara, shamed, began to help.

Neq, stripped of his sword, could neither fight nor forage effectively. He was dependent on the other two, and mortified by the situation. It was hard to give up a weapon, and not merely in the circle! All he could do was keep watch--and for that he had to stay awake. That was not easy after a twelve hour hike, each day.

One night as they camped by a river, Neq consoled himself by striking the tip of his pincers against the bells of his glockenspiel. He had not tried to play it since leaving the smithy's shop. But the sound was not proper; metal on metal annoyed him. He took the little wooden hammer and tapped the notes experimentally, regaining the feel of the music. Soon he was running through the scales, improving his competence while the others slept. It was possible to play entire melodies with no more than the hammer! He began to hum, measuring his voice against the clear tones of the instrument. It was there in him yet: the joy of music.

Finally he unstopped the voice that had been dormant during the entire time of killing, and that had emerged only when his sword was buried. He sang, accompanying himself carefully on the glockenspiel:

Then only say that you'll be mine

And our love will happy be

Down beside some water flow

By the banks of the O-hi-o.

He sang all of it, though this was not that river and his voice, despite the smithy's compliment, was imperfect now, a creaky shadow of its prime. But the instrument gave him a certainty of key he had not had before, and the spirit of the melody suffused him with its odd rapture.

As he sang, he rocked to the lovely, tortured vision of it: the young woman taking a walk by the river strand, refusing to marry the suiter, being threatened by his knife at her breast, and finally drowned. An ugly story but a beautiful song--one of his favorites, before he had come too close to living it. There were tears in his eyes, making his watch difficult.

"Your wife--did you kill her too?"

He was not startled to find Vara awake. He had known he could not sing aloud without arousing her curiosity or ire. "I must have."

"I ask only because I have to," she said bitterly. "Tyl balked me, on pain I should know you. Before I kill you. I saw you had no bracelet."

"She was a crazy," he said, not caring what she might think about Neqa.

"A crazy! What have you to do with them?"

"I thought to rebuild Helicon."

"You lie!" she cried, clutching at her sticks, which were always with her, warrior-style.

Neq looked at her tiredly. "I kill. I do not lie."

She turned away. "I may not kill you yet."

"You want the mountain dead?"

"No!"

"Then tell me: what is Helicon to you? Were you not kept prisoner there, and betrayed at the end? Don't you hate it yet?"

"Helicon was my home! I loved it!"

He studied her in the moonlight, perplexed. "Do you want it restored, then, as I do?"

"No! Yes!" she cried, crying.

Neq let it be. He kn�w what grief was, and the burning for revenge. And futility. Vara was in the throes of it all, as he had been when Neqa died. As he was still. It might be months, years before she made sense to others or to herself, and she would not be so pretty, then.

He tapped the flat metal bells of the glockenspiel again, picking out a new tune. Then he sang, and Vara did not protest.

"I know my love by her way of walking And I know my love by her way of talking..."

Tyl slept on, though their conversation was not quiet.

"When I first saw Var," Vara said, "he was standing on the plateau of Mt. Muse, looking down from the rim. He could have dropped a rock on me, but he didn't, because he wasn't the kind to take advantage."

"Why should anyone drop a rock on you?" Neq demanded, disliking this reference to the dead man.

"We were meeting in single combat. You know that,"

"Why did Bob send a child?" Was the truth at last within reach?

"And after we fought, it was cold, and he held me so I would not shiver. He gave me his heat, for he was always generous."

They were working at cross purposes.

"Would you warm your enemy if he were cold?" she asked him.

"No."

"You see. Var was a giver of life, not of death."

She had meant to hurt him, and she had succeeded. How could he return to this bitter girl what he had taken from her?

"Ambush," Tyl murmured. "Well-laid; I saw it too late. You two break while I cover the retreat."

Neither Neq or Vara reacted openly; both were too well versed in tactics. They exchanged a glance of chagrin, for neither had been aware of the situation. But if Tyl said there was an ambush, there was an ambush, though the forest seemed deserted.