Ariel (30 page)

* * *

A huge pendulum swung before me. It was a top-shaped weight attached to a long cord that disappeared up into the high ceiling. It swung leisurely like God's Own planchette between bright orange highway safety cones arrayed in a twenty-foot circle. Some of the cones had been knocked onto their sides.

"They tell me the earth's rotation keeps it swinging back and forth," Mom told me as we passed it. "It's supposedly been swinging like this for years and years. I always liked to think the nightwatchmen at this place used to stop it at closing time and then give it a push to get it going again before they left."

I laughed, shaking my head slowly. I didn't get it—this thing was proof that
some
of the laws of physics still applied. In fact, so was the fact that objects fell down when I let them go. How could the Change have been so selective?

Beyond the pendulum, looking as absurdly out of place as the spaceship in the living room toward the end of
2001: A Space Odyssey,
was a locomotive. It looked too huge, larger than life in its dark contours. I wondered if it really was oversized or if being indoors just made it appear so. In front of it stood Malachi, Tom Pert, and Mac. Malachi had his sword with him—of course. I felt somewhat reassured; I'd brought Fred.

Mom cleared her throat. "Here you go," she said, voice reverberating in the huge room. "'Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor gloom of night  .  .  .  .'"

All three men smiled. "Thanks, Mom," said Tom.

"No trouble a'tall." I had to suppress a smile—this woman ought to bake gingerbread cookies for a living and give them out to little kids. She squeezed my shoulder. "Just go easy on him. He's not as tip top as he'd like us to believe."

I wanted to say aw, shucks. Mom did that to you.

"We'll be gentle," said Mac.

Mom "hmmph"ed and left us. "Neat lady," I said when she had passed the pendulum and was out of hearing range.

"Yes," said Tom. "Her husband was killed by the griffin at our farming community. Mac says he told you about it."

I nodded. There was an uncomfortable pause. "I, uh, I'm sorry about last night."

He waved his big hand. "Don't be. We've all been under a lot of pressure these past few weeks."

"Let's get this over with, Pete," said Malachi. "We've got to rake you over the coals."

My smile was mirthless. "Rake away."

Tom let out a long breath and began. "Between Malachi, Mac, and the young lady—Shaughnessy—we know enough about you to save you a lot of story telling. What we need from you is what happened between the time you set foot in New York and the time you found Mac."

I told them, in as much detail as I could, what had happened, trying not to embellish but to remember exactly what I'd seen. They listened without interruption. When I finished Tom offered me a drink of water from a dark brown canteen set behind him on the sideboard of the locomotive. I accepted gratefully. "Anything else?" I asked, wiping water from my mouth with the back of my hand.

"Tons," said Tom.

And
then
the interrogation started. Where was the necromancer, exactly? At the top? What floor? Where on the eighty-fifth floor? Could you draw us a map? Could you show us the route you took from the eighty-sixth floor observatory deck to the necromancer's room? Could I draw them a map of the observation deck—the eighty-sixth floor, which I'd landed on atop Shai-tan. What about the strength of their group? Why a thousand? Why not more, or less? Supplies—what sort of arms did you see? How is their food supply holding up in the city—you mentioned their difficulties with loners working away at what they needed to scavenge. How about division of their manpower?

They digested my responses for a few minutes, and then Tom folded his bowling-pin-sized arms and said, "Go over your escape again, Pete. Maybe there's something there. As you said, you shouldn't have got away."

I went over it again, trying not to seem testy. "I don't know if that's any more help," I added after I'd finished. "I still think I got away because they're not well organized and didn't have the manpower to effectively cover something the size of the Empire State Building, as I said before. That, and I was descending, which made it a little easier—for me. I'd say it would be difficult to damn near impossible for us to fight our way up elevator shafts and stairwells. They almost killed me by just tossing bricks down the shafts. Having three hundred people's not going to help; it'd be like shooting fish in a bucket."

We were interrupted by the hollow echo of running feet. The poundings seemed to underscore the Smithsonian as the dead museum it was. He was about my age, I noted as he stopped before us, breathless. "Sorry to interrupt," he panted, "but the rest of Mac's scouting party is back—what's left of it."

"What? What happened?"

"They were ambushed. Walt came in with Esteban tied to the horse in front of him. He's been wounded pretty bad. Walt's okay but he can barely talk, he's so exhausted."

"What about the others?" demanded Mac.

The kid—funny I thought of him as a kid, despite the fact that he was about my age—tightened his mouth and turned palms up helplessly. "Walt says it happened about thirty miles north of here. Everyone else was killed."

"Were they followed?" Tom wanted to know.

"Walt's pretty sure they weren't."

He stopped, thinking. "Send out six people, and make sure they all have bows. Have them retrace Walt's route for twenty miles. Tell them to shoot anything that looks like a scouting party heading for New York. Have them report back to me immediately when they return. And make sure Esteban's getting whatever help we can give him."

"Doc Mundy's working on him now."

"How bad is it?"

"He took an arrow in the chest. Doc says he'll do what he can."

"All right."

I pictured a doctor working frantically and swearing because medicine was nearly a frontier practice again—only hand-powered instruments, a shortage of drugs, no anesthesia save alcohol or ether.

Tom looked thoughtful while the messenger bit his lip and eyed me openly. I stared back, blank-faced.

"Tell Walt I'll see him soon," said Tom.

"Right." He nodded importantly, turned, and trotted away, leaving behind the echoes of his running and one last speculative glance at me. Tom watched him go, then turned back to us. "Christ, I hope they weren't followed. All right, then, gentlemen, we've got to step things up. Unless we can think of a practical way to reach the top, I'm afraid we're going to have to stick to the only plan we've got: fight it out floor by floor, all the way up.

Malachi and Mac said nothing, but I knew what they were thinking: it's literally uphill all the way—and at more than three-to-one odds. We'll be slaughtered.

"Well, obviously we can't use their methods," said Mac. "Pete, you're sure the griffin was their only way up and down?"

I shrugged. "I didn't see anything else. You could go down easily enough by walking down the stairs, but I didn't see another way up besides Shai-tan. I can't think of anything else that might work, except a hot-air balloon, which would be just—wait a minute! You could hang glide!"

They were already shaking their heads. Their expressions were a mix of despair and urgency. "We talked about it," said Tom. "It won't work."

"Why not?"

"Because the only point in Manhattan higher than the Empire State Building is the World Trade Center."

"Right! You could—"

"Let me finish. The World Trade Center is three and a half miles south of the Empire State Building. If you jumped off the top
you'd be descending all the way
. Oh, you'd probably make it to the Empire State Building—but at best you'd only be halfway up."

"But that still cuts your climbing time in half," I protested. "Plus it gets rid of about eight hundred enemy soldiers below you.

Tom shook his head. "Still no good, Pete, believe me. I've done it a few times. Hang gliders are maneuverable, but they can't dodge arrows—and three hundred people in the air aren't going to take anybody by surprise, no matter how unorganized they might be. And there's nothing to land on halfway up. The sides of the buildings are too smooth. The windows are too small to afford entrance. A small force might work because it might retain the element of surprise—but only if it could come in from above. That means landing where you did—the eighty-sixth floor."

"But—" I shut up, frustrated. He was right.

"Then it's uphill all the way," said Mac.

"Back to square one," said Tom. "No worse off than before." He stood from where he'd been leaning against the locomotive. "Okay, we've all got things to do. I need to see Walt and Esteban. We'll meet here at noon tomorrow and see if any of us has anything new to kick around. Pete, be thinking about your experiences in New York. Maybe you'll think of something else that may help us. As it is you've given us a lot of information we needed."

We broke up and I left with Malachi Lee.

* * *

"I guess we have some catching up to do," I said. We sat on the front steps of the Smithsonian. Fred lay across my thighs. I'd found some duct tape in a maintenance closet and was wrapping the wide, strong, gray stuff around the end of Fred's black scabbard where it had cracked.

White plastic spoon in hand, Malachi scooped beef stroganoff from the paper plate on his palm and pushed it automatically into his mouth. We'd found the food piled in the East Storage Wing. Malachi said they were freeze-dried emergency rations retrieved from underground bomb shelters beneath the government buildings. Tom Pert had led the foraging parties that had stockpiled the preserved foods.

I chewed a bland spoonful from my own plate, waiting for him to reply. When he didn't, I washed it down with warm Tang from a foam cup and tried again. "Of course, you already know most of what happened to me."

He finally looked at me as if just realizing I was there. "What happened to your sword?"

I felt guilty. "I fell down an elevator shaft in the Empire State Building. The scabbard cracked. This is the first chance I've had to repair it." I pulled more tape from the roll. As a saving grace, and because I felt foolish, I added, "The blade's in good shape, though."

"Let's see it." I tried to think his eyes weren't accusing. His gift of that sword had been a trust. I smoothly drew the blade and held it vertically, edge toward me. He took it from me and lay the backside of the blade across his blue-clad left shoulder. He bent his face closer, closed one eye, and sighted down the edge. "Mmm."

Now what the hell did that mean?

He straightened, nodding. Favorably, it seemed. I hoped. "Still straight. A few nicks, but a blade's the better for those." He smiled ruefully. "If you're alive then they were well-earned."

I started to reach for it. He shook his head. "You've tried to clean it but there's still the trace of blood—it smears the tempering pattern. Go ahead and finish fixing your scabbard," he said, not taking his eyes from the slightly dull mirror-metal. "I'll clean your sword." He frowned. "Needs sharpening, too."

His backpack leaned beside him on the dark old steps. He reached into it and began removing things: a black silk rag; two small, milky plastic, thin-nozzled bottles, one with liquid the color of motor oil, the other clear. Both were half full. He moved my sword gently onto one knee and turned it to one side, blade toward him. The twined handle lay in the corner formed where right leg met hip. He squeezed fluid onto the silk rag and began rubbing it onto the blade slowly and methodically. I finished taping the scabbard.

"The night Faust and I left Atlanta," said Malachi abruptly, "there was a wind. I never saw anything like it. It seemed confined to a very small area. Faust kept growling and howling. I kept an eye on him. He kept turning, sniffing the air. He looked as if he wanted to attack something but didn't know where it was. I felt something searching, but I couldn't tell what it was or who it searched for. And then it was gone, as fast as it had come. It headed south; I could see it bending the trees as it went.

"Faust and I kept walking until two in the morning. I slept beneath a tree." He paused. His rubbing ceased. "Faust would always bark when the sun came up. I still don't know why. Some dogs bark at thunder or lightning; he barked at the sunrise." The rubbing resumed. "He was my alarm clock the entire trip. I'd make camp at one a.m. and get up at sunrise. We hunted along the way. Faust ate rabbits."

The black silk was now three-quarters of the way to the tip of the blade. "I thought you'd follow me."

I watched him cleaning the blade, fascinated by the deft movements of his hands, the patience exhibited as he worked one small area and moved on to the next. I blinked, realizing he'd been talking and I'd tuned him out.

"—didn't want to, because a horse would have been too noisy, too conspicuous. Hard to find, hard to feed, hard to get rid of in a hurry. And it would have been hard for Faust to keep up that kind of pace." The rubbing paused once more. "Saw dragon fire in Tennessee and went across some scorched ground. Saw a roc once, in the late afternoon, but it was flying away."

Roc: picture that prehistoric flying reptile, the pterodactyl. Now picture it twenty times bigger and add a taste for fresh meat—whole cows, for instance. You've got it.

"The only incident we had was in Alexandria." I remembered the aftermath of the swordfight that Shaughnessy, Ariel, and I had come across in Alexandria and knew what was coming next. "I got caught sleeping. I usually looked back every few minutes to make sure nothing was headed up the road toward us. I hadn't looked in at least ten minutes. Too much faith in Faust's nose. But they were upwind, and by the time I looked back and saw them they were too close for me to make myself scarce without raising eyebrows. It was all open road, anyhow, and no place to hide—no exit coming up I could pretend to take, just the highway and more streets off of that. I had to let them come up on me. When they were close enough Faust started growling. I hushed him up. I turned around about the time I knew I had to, and there they were. There were four of them, all armed, of course. Their weapons were out and there wasn't going to be any bullshitting; they didn't want to stop and palaver. There was a man with a double-bladed axe, one with a cutlass, another with a rapier, and one with a katana. I drew. Faust crouched down low."

He began rubbing the blade with the clear fluid from the other bottle. The smeared look he'd given the entire blade began to glisten where he rubbed.

"They never said a word. The one with the rapier brought his arm back for a side strike. It was meant to distract me; he was too far away to touch me. The one with the axe swung, hoping I'd shift my eyes, maybe my blade. I crossblocked. I cut through his handle, reversed direction, and took him off at the shoulders.

"Faust got to the one with the cutlass as he lunged for me. Faust went for his throat; I saw what was coming and didn't have time to stop it. He just kept his blade straight and Faust speared himself. I got to him just as Faust was sinking his teeth into his throat. I came down and cut his arm off, but it was too late. I turned and met the thrust of the one with the rapier—the fall of his axe-carrying friend's body had cut him off from me and he'd stumbled over him. I barely caught the thrust—it nicked my arm—and sliced him across the belly. His guts fell out and he landed on them.

"I turned. The last one was standing there. He hadn't moved the entire fight, except to return his sword to the sheath. He looked from the man I'd belly-cut to me. He nodded. I turned around and cut low and the man on the ground stopped moving. I looked back. The remaining man hadn't moved, other than to put his right hand on the handle of his sword. 'I figured,' he said to me, 'that if you got through them you'd be worth it." He told me I was as good as he'd heard I was, but from the way he said it I could tell he thought he was better. I nodded at him and asked if he had a clean rag. He gave me one—this one—" he held up the black silk rag "—and I wiped
Kaishaku-nin
clean and sheathed it. We stepped away from the bodies and onto the road where there were only a few cars. We bowed—neither of us took our eyes away from the other. When we straightened up he told me his name was Jim D'Arcy and that his sword's name was
Migi-no-te
. It means 'right hand.' I told him it was a good name and gave him my name and
Kaishaku
's. After that there wasn't much left to do, so we hit our stances—and started playing mind games. We stared at each other for two or three minutes, waiting for a waver, a blink, a passing bird. Or for the other one to draw." He straightened a wrinkle on the silk rag. "A draw is a committal move. I was going to wait until he began his and counter-draw, trying to beat out his blade on speed alone. You know what my draw's like."

I nodded.

"His was at least as good. His arm twitched and his sword was out, and so was mine. They met halfway. For a second there, while our blades were locked, I saw the surprise in his eyes—and I knew he could see it in mine. I tried to come in over his blade and thrust. He backstepped, batted my blade aside, and almost took my head off in the same motion. No surprise there, though—as soon as our draws had met I'd known he was at least as good as me. I ducked the head slash just in time and brought
Kaishaku
up, sliding in as I did. Anyone else I'd have cut from hip to opposite shoulder; he just stopped the slash midway and blocked down, then tried to do the same to me. I jumped back and we squared off again, blades pointed at each other's throats. We had already been fighting twice as long as it had just taken me to kill three men—about ten seconds. Once it's actually started and metal begins to swing, ten seconds is a
long
time for a swordfight."

He was quiet a minute, finishing up one side of Fred. The blade was bright now, like a new dime. He turned it over. Another spot of the clear fluid on the rag, and he resumed speaking as he began to rub. "We circled each other like alleycats, attacking, trying different combinations, counters. It was always the same. No ground yielded on either side. Once, when we were circling, we saw each other—I mean
saw
each other, our fighting concentration broken—and I knew he was thinking the same thing I was: should we quit? We were both good, had pretty much proven ourselves equal—it would seem a waste if either one of us died. A kind of honor among thieves, a mutual respect, I guess you'd call it. We stopped circling and he and I came out of our stances at the same time. 'I get the feeling one of us will live to regret this,' he said. And he sheathed his blade. I didn't say anything, but I sheathed mine, too. He turned around and walked away. He didn't look back."

He finished cleaning my blade and tossed the rag back into his backpack. "How's that?" he asked.

It took a moment before I realized he meant Fred, which he held before him to catch the fading sunlight. "Um  .  .  .  ." I looked at the blade. It was better, a hundred percent better, gleaming like captured moonlight against the daytime sky. "It's better, it's much  .  .  .  . Thank you. Thank you very much."

"It still needs sharpening." He pulled a small grinding block from his pack.

"We found the bodies," I said. "And Faust's grave."

He hunched forward and began sharpening Fred, holding it by the handle across both knees. "Hold this for me," he said. I took the handle. He leaned to his right, retrieved the black silk rag, and wrapped it around the blade, holding it with one hand to steady it while sharpening with the other. I tightened my grip so the sword wouldn't move as he worked on it.

I thought of Russ Chaffney, and of Asmodeus. It reminded me of something Malachi had said: if a person's buddy dies, he'll live through it. The pain will subside in a few years, and in maybe ten years he won't even hurt anymore. Faust hadn't been Malachi's buddy; he hadn't been held to him by a loyalty spell—but the relationship between the dog and the man had probably been stronger because of that. He'd lost a friend, and I wondered if his—outward hardness was because he was trying not to let the hurt show.

He stopped grinding the blade with the stone. "Turn the blade over," he ordered. I complied.

"Right after the fight in Alexandria I headed north. I decided to go as directly as possible to New York, cutting across anything that might be in the way. I didn't need to run across more scalp-hunting parties. It turned out to be a good decision; I'd no sooner left the road than Shai-tan and the rider flew overhead. There was a pyramid of sewer pipes not far from me and I hid in one. They landed on an overpass ahead of me and stayed there for about half an hour. The rider looked around with a telescope, then they flew away. I waited another half-hour to be on the safe side. Or as near to it as I ever get. I don't know if he was looking for you and Ariel or me."

"Both, probably. We came close to having a run-in with him in the same place a few days later."

He nodded. "I crawled out of the sewer pipe and headed north. When I came into Washington I was spotted by a road watch—one of about two dozen they have watching the main roads through here. I talked with him a bit. He was friendly but guarded, which made me suspicious—sentries are posted so
somebody
gets warned. I tried to convince him I was one of the good guys and that I wasn't stupid. I kept at him, trying not to invite any more suspicion. The name Tom Pert came up somehow." He shook his head. "Tom and I were in the Society for Creative Anachronism together."

"The  .  .  .? Those nuts you told me about, the ones who played King Arthur before the Change?"

"Yes. But don't call them nuts. If you ask, you'll find a lot of the people still around were S.C.A. members at some time or another—not a large percentage, certainly, but enough to be noticeable. They had learned medieval combat before it was forced back into being; they were—combatively, at least—ready for the Change before it occurred. Some of them couldn't have been happier when it happened; it was tailor-made for them."

"Like you."

He shrugged. "Tom and I were knighted at the same tournament."

"Tournament?"

He nodded. "We used to make our own armor and go at it with rattan swords. I was one of the few Japanese personas around; most people were European knights. Tom was one of those. Combat was mostly honor system—if somebody hit you a shot that would have put you out of the running had it been real, you were expected to fall down and die. Or lose the use of the limb you'd been hit on."