The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (9 page)

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Authors: Vernor Vinge

BOOK: The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
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“We’ll still get something, but it looks like we’ll have to go honest for a while. I figure on guiding him down, say to where the leaf forests start, and then asking pretty please for half of what he promised us back at the Corners.”
“I sure as hell ain’t going to follow nobody that far down toward the Valley.” Bathecar frowned.
“Well, then, you can just turn around and head back. I’m running this here gang, Bathecar, don’t you forget it. We already got something out of this deal, them silver balls he give us as first payment—”
Something went
hisss
and then
thuk
: Hanaban sprawled forward, collapsed on the moonlit ground beyond the tree’s shadow. A crossbow bolt protruded from his throat.
As Wim and Bathecar scrabbled for the cover of the rotting root system, Shorty rose and snarled, “That damn peddler!” It cost him his life; three arrows smashed into him where he stood, and he collapsed across Hanaban.
Wim heard their attackers closing in on them, noisily confident. From what he could see, he realized they were all armed with crossbows; his boys didn’t stand a chance against odds like that. He burrowed his way deeper into the clawing roots, felt a string of beads snap and shower over his hand. Behind him Bathecar unslung his own crossbow and cocked it.
Wim looked over his shoulder, and then, for the length of a heartbeat, he saw the silvery white of the moon-painted landscape blaze with harshly shadowed blue brilliance. He shook his head, dazzled and wondering; until amazement was driven from his mind by sudden screams. He began to curse and pray at the same time.
But then their assailants had reached the fallen tree. Wim heard them
thrusting into the roots, shrank back farther out of reach of their knives. Another scream echoed close and a voice remarked, “Hey, Rufe, I got the bastard as shot Rocker last fall.”
A different voice answered, “That makes five then. Everybody excepting the peddler and Wim Buckry.”
Wim held his breath, sweating. He recognized the second voice—Axl Bork, the oldest of the Bork brothers. For the last two years Wim’s gang had cut into the Bork clan’s habitual thievery, and up until tonight his quick-wittedness had kept them safe from the Borks’ revenge. But tonight—how had he gone so wrong tonight? Damn that peddler!
He heard hands thrusting again among the roots, closer now. Then abruptly fingers caught in his hair. He pulled away, but another pair of hands joined the first, catching him by the hair and then the collar of his leather jerkin. He was hauled roughly from the tangle of roots and thrown down. He scrambled to his feet, was kicked in the stomach before he could run off. He fell gasping back onto the ground, felt his knife jerked from the sheath; three shadowy figures loomed over him. The nearest placed a heavy foot on his middle and said, “Well, Wim Buckry. You just lie still, boy. It’s been a good night, even if we don’t catch that peddler. You just got a little crazy with greed, boy. My cousins done killed every last one of your gang.” Their laughter raked him. “Fifteen minutes and we done what we couldn’t do the last two years.
“Lew, you take Wim here over to that cave tree. Once we find that peddler we’re going to have us a little fun with the both of them.”
Wim was pulled to his feet and then kicked, sprawling over the bodies of Hanaban and Shorty. He struggled to his feet and ran, only to be tripped and booted by another Bork. By the time he reached the cave tree his right arm hung useless at his side, and one eye was blind with warm sticky blood.
The Borks had tried to rekindle the campfire. Three of them stood around him in the wavering light; he listened to the rest searching among the trees. He wondered dismally why they couldn’t find one wagon on open ground, when they’d found every one of his boys.
One of the younger cousins—scarcely more than fifteen—amused himself half-heartedly by thrusting glowing twigs at Wim’s face. Wim slapped at him, missed, and at last one of the other Borks knocked the burning wood from the boy’s hand; Wim remembered that Axl Bork claimed first rights against anyone who ran afoul of the gang. He squirmed back away from the fire and propped himself against the dry resilient trunk of the cave tree, stunned with pain and despair. Through one eye he could see the other Borks returning empty-handed from their search. He counted six Borks altogether, but by the feeble flamecast light he couldn’t make out their features. The only one he could
have recognized for sure was Axl Bork, and his runty silhouette was missing. Two of the clansmen moved past him into the blackness of the cave tree’s heart, he heard them get down on their hands and knees to crawl around the bend at the end of the passage. The peddler could have hidden back there, but his wagon would have filled the cave’s entrance. Wim wondered again why the Borks couldn’t find that wagon; and wished again that he’d never seen it at all.
The two men emerged from the tree just as Axl limped into the shrinking circle of firelight. The stubby bandit was at least forty years old, but through those forty years he had lost his share of fights, and walked slightly bent-over; Wim knew that his drooping hat covered a hairless skull marred with scars and even one dent. The eldest Bork cut close by the fire, heedlessly sending dust and unburnable bark into the guttering flames. “Awright, where in the mother-devil blazes you toadgets been keeping your eyes? You was standing ever’ whichway from this tree, you skewered every one of that damn Buckry gang excepting Wim here. Why ain’t you found that peddler?”
“He’s gone, Ax, gone.” The boy who had been playing with Wim seemed to think that was a revelation. But Axl was not impressed, his backhand sent the boy up against the side of the tree.
One of the other silhouetted figures spoke hesitantly. “Don’t go misbelieving me when I tell you this, Axl … but I was looking straight at this here cave tree when you went after them others. I could see that peddler clear as I see you now, standing right beside his wagon and his horse. Then all of a sudden there was this blue flash—I tell you. Ax, it was
bright
—and for a minute I couldn’t see nothing, and then when I could again, why there wasn’t hide nor hair of that outlander.”
“Hmm.” The elder Bork took this story without apparent anger. He scratched under his left armpit and began to shuffle around the dying fire toward where Wim lay. “Gone, eh? Just like that. He sounds like a right good prize … .” He reached suddenly and caught Wim by the collar, dragged him toward the fire. Stopping just inside the ring of light, he pulled Wim up close to his face. The wide, sagging brim of his hat threw his face into a hollow blackness that was somehow more terrible than any reality.
Seeing Wim’s expression, he laughed raspingly, and did not turn his face toward the fire. “It’s been a long time, Wim, that I been wanting to learn you a lesson. But now I can mix business and pleasure. We’re just gonna burn you an inch at a time until you tell us where your friend lit out to.”
WIM BARELY STIFLED THE WHIMPER HE FELT GROWING IN HIS THROAT; AXL Bork began to force his good hand inch by inch into the fire. All he
wanted to do was to scream the truth, to tell them the peddler had never made him party to his magic. But he knew the truth would no more be accepted than his cries for mercy; the only way out was to lie—to lie better than he ever had before. The tales the peddler had told him during the day rose from his mind to shape his words, “Just go ahead. Ax! Get your fun. I know I’m good as dead. But so’s all of you—” The grip stayed firm on his shoulders and neck, but the knotted hand stopped forcing him toward the fire. He felt his own hand scorching in the super-heated air above the embers. Desperately he forced the pain into the same place with his fear and ignored it. “Why d’you think me and my boys didn’t lay a hand on that peddler all day long? Just so’s we could get ambushed by you?” His laughter was slightly hysterical. “The truth is we was scared clean out of our wits! That foreigner’s a warlock, he’s too dangerous to go after. He can reach straight into your head, cloud your mind, make you see what just plain isn’t. He can kill you, just by looking at you kinda mean-like. Why”—and true inspiration struck him—“why, he could even have killed one of your perty cousins, and be standing here right now pretending to be a Bork, and you’d never know it till he struck
you
dead … .”
Axl swore and ground Wim’s hand into the embers. Even expecting it, Wim couldn’t help himself; his scream was loud and shrill. After an instant as long as forever Axl pulled his hand from the heat. The motion stirred the embers, sending a final spurt of evil reddish flame up from the coals before the fire guttered out, leaving only dim ruby points to compete with the moonlight. For a long moment no one spoke; Wim bit his tongue to keep from moaning. The only sounds were a faint rustling breeze, hundreds of feet up among the leafy crowns of the grandfather trees—and the snort of a horse somewhere close by.
“Hey, we ain’t got no horses,” someone said uneasily.
Seven human figures stood in the immense spreading shadow of the cave tree, lined in faint silver by the setting moon. The Borks stood very still, watching one another—and then Wim realized what they must just have noticed themselves: there should have been eight Bork kinsmen. Somehow the peddler had eliminated one of the Borks during the attack, so silently, so quickly, that his loss had gone unnoticed. Wim shuddered, suddenly remembering a flare of unreal blue-white light, and the claims he had just made for the peddler. If one Bork could be killed so easily, why not two? In which case—
“He’s here, pretending to be one of you!” Wim cried, his voice cracking.
And he could almost feel their terror echoing back and forth, from one to another, growing—until one of the shortest of the silhouettes broke and ran out into the moonlight. He got only about twenty feet,
before he was brought down by a crossbow quarrel in the back. Even as the fugitive crumpled onto the soft, silver dirt a second crossbow thunked and another of the brothers fell dead across Wim’s feet.
“That was Clyne, you … warlock!” More bows lowered around the circle.
“Hold on now!” shouted Axl. There were five Borks left standing; two bodies sprawled unmoving on the ground. “The peddler got us in his spell. We got to keep our sense and figure out which of us he’s pretendin’ to be.”
“But Ax, he ain’t just in disguise, we woulda seen which one he is … he—he can trick us into believing he’s anybody!”
Trapped beneath the corpse, all Wim could see were five shadows against the night. Their faces were hidden from the light, and bulky clothing disguised any differences. He bit his lips against the least sound of pain; now was no time to remind the remaining Borks of Wim Buckry—But the agony of his hand pulsed up his arm until he felt a terrible dizziness wrench the blurring world away and his head drooped …
He opened his eyes again and saw that only three men stood now in the glade. Two more had died; the newest corpse still twitched on the ground.
Axl’s voice was shrill with rage. “You … monster! You done tricked all of us into killing each other!”
“No, Ax, I had to shoot him. It was the peddler, I swear. Turn him over. Look! He shot Jan after you told us to hold off—”
“Warlock!” a third voice cried. “All of them dead—!” Two crossbows came down and fired simultaneously. Two men fell.
Axl stood silent and alone among the dead for a long moment. The moon had set at last, and the starlight was rare and faint through the shifting branches of the grandfather tree far overhead. Wim lay still as death, aware of the smell of blood and sweat and burned flesh. And the sound of footsteps, approaching. Sick with fear he looked up at the dark stubby form of Axl Bork.
“Still here? Good.” A black-booted foot rolled the dead body from his legs. “Well, boy, you better leave me look at that hand.” The voice belonged to Jagit Katchetooriantz.
“Uh.” Wim began to tremble. “Uh. Mr. Jagged … is that … you?”
A light appeared in the hand of the peddler who had come from Sharn.
Wim fainted.
EARLY MORNING FILLED THE GRANDFATHER GROVE WITH DUSTY SHAFTS OF light. Wim Buckry sat propped against the cave tree’s entrance, sipping
awkwardly at a cup of something hot and bitter held in a bandaged hand. His other hand was tucked through his belt, to protect a sprained right shoulder. Silently he watched the peddler grooming the dappled cart horse; glanced for the tenth time around the sunlit grove, where no sign of the last night’s events marred the quiet tranquility of the day. Like a bad dream the memory of his terror seemed unreal to him now, and he wondered if that was more witchery, like the drink that had eased the pains of his body. He looked down, where dried blood stained his pants.
I’ll take care of the remains
, the peddler had said. It was real, all right—all of the Borks. And all of his boys. He thought wistfully for a moment of the jewelry that had gone into the ground with them; shied away from a deeper sense of loss beneath it.
The peddler returned to the campfire, kicked dirt over the blaze. He had had no trouble in getting a fire to burn. Wim drew his feet up; the dark eyes looked questioningly at his sullen face.
“Mr. Jagged”—there was no trace of mockery in that title now—“just what do you want from me?”
Jagit dusted off his leather shirt. “Well, Wim—I was thinking if you was up to it, maybe you’d want to go on with our agreement.”
Wim raised his bandaged hand. “Wouldn’t be much pertection, one cripple.”

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