Rohvim #1: Metal and Flesh

Rohvim I:

Metal and Flesh

By

Siesta Luista

With

Endi Webb

For Jenny, who taught me editing, and for Lucy and Calvin, who put up with Dad’s new hobby but it meant they got to watch more cartoons, so who’s complaining? No one, that's who.

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Rohvim II: Water and Blood
, will be released in May 2013.

Also by Endi Webb:
The Maskmaker’s Apprentice
, now available on Amazon.

Map by Jared Blando, © 2012

Art by Sara B. Anderson, © 2012

Author’s Note

Hi. I’m Endi. The author. Well, according to the contract, the ghost writer.... There I was, minding my own business in the lab, finishing my experiments on quantum entanglement when all of the sudden, there was a flash and before me stood a man. He introduced himself as “Siesta Luista” and shook my hand, saying that he was from the future and that he was a robot! Well, stuff like this happens all the time at the national lab where I work (but most of it is classified, so don’t ask), and I told him to go on his merry little way back to the future.

Before I could press the power button on the laser, he shocked me using his fingers (which, I admit, got my attention) and begged me to listen. He said his publisher, Nile Holdings Inc., wanted not only to dominate their current market some fifty thousand years or so in the future, but also to dominate all markets, past and future, and thus had sent him back to the past to write books about the future. Unfortunately, he could not bring any books with him (at least he arrived with clothes on!), which meant that we would have to write the books together.

“But,” I said to the very man-like robot before me, “I’m a scientist! Not a writer!”

“That matters not, my good man,” he said. “I’ve already written the books in the future—your future, my past—and all I have to do is tell you about them. Plus, I’ll give you half the royalties.”

Well that sold me, and I brought him home and away we went. He started telling me a tale of a distant future where humans had lost all knowledge of their past, society had degenerated to a medieval-type culture, and where everyone was a robot—metal for bones, software for brains, but covered in flesh and blood. “Wait,” I said, “You want me to write a book about robots in the future who aren’t really robots, that kind of live in an ancient culture even though it’s my future, but your past?”

“Right!” he said, “You catch on quick—you must be a scientist.”

“But,” I said, “who in the world would read a book like that? I mean, maybe, if we turned it into a story about
vampire
robots with wands that fought gladiator style tournaments, well yeah, then we’d have something.” But he refused to alter his history, and honestly it’s not like I was in a position to argue about details from the future. So just to warn you: there are robots ahead, and swords, in the future, but it’ll seem like the past. Enjoy.

 (Real) Author's Note

Greetings, fair paying reader! My name is Siesta Luista! From the future! I have come back to tell you my story. Well, not mine per se, but the story of my people. And maybe your people too! Just a few notes: I call myself a robot—or
Rohva,
as my people say it, but I think, I feel, I cry, I laugh, I look just like my ghostwriter, though with quite a bit more hair mind you, and I am indistinguishable from a regular human except for the metal in my bones, and by the fact that I am very, very, oh so very much smarter than my ghostwriter, which is why my name appears first—and please don’t tell him this, but first placement on the title page grants me all movie rights.

So, moving right along, please pay no attention to the frets and worries of my easily excitable friend—yes, this is a story about robots in the future—your future, my past—and yes, these robots look and act like you and me, mostly me, and yes, these robots in the future—your future, my past—have no knowledge of technology but instead live in a brutal world of swords and blood and perhaps even magic. Be that as it may, I have no concern whatsoever with regards to the book’s immense potential for financial profit. And its quality, of course.

So, go ahead. Read my book. Tell your friends! Write a good review! A
good
review, mind you: I still possess the ability to travel though time, and therefore can hunt you down wherever and whenever you are, if needs be.

Prologue

He looked down at the hand at the end of the arm connected to his body—a hand that had healed hundreds of the sick and maimed, a hand whose still youthful pink skin now trembled slightly as he held the knife up to a fingertip. A thought entered his mind, unbidden:

I wonder if it will hurt?

He pressed the blade into the skin as he methodically removed the final inch of flesh that covered the shining metal bone underneath.

Curious. There is pain. But I don’t care.

As the first finger oozed blood, he proceeded to repeat the process on the remaining nine fingers. Finished, he then held all ten fingertips over the nearby torch, scorching the flesh until it sealed shut and bled no more. The metal protruding out from his finger stumps was rounded at the tips, and so he picked up a metal file on the table next to him and set to work grinding them down to sharp points. Great splatters of rain soon washed the hand clean as he held it up and nodded his approval. The grizzly work now complete, he looked out over the edge of the second floor portico.

Lightning surged across the sky—a storm rising up out of the great western ocean lashed the low foothills of the distant coast. Here, further inland, the storm intensified until by the time it raged overhead, the man could hardly hear his attendants over the howling wind as he looked out over his masterpiece. There was little to hear, really. The hooded man stood near the edge of the second floor portico of a large stone building, looking out over the drab plain before shifting his gaze back to his fingers. He motioned to an attendant—a middle aged woman with an expressionless face.

“Stand there.”

He indicated a spot near the wall. She trudged to where he pointed, and he stood near the opposite wall some twenty feet away. He aimed his now steel-clawed hand at her, and shafts of blinding white energy leapt out like lightning from the sharpened tips, instantly striking the woman who crumpled without a noise into a smoking, bleeding corpse.

A thought echoed through the man’s mind:
A wonderful innovation, I should have done it earlier.
He looked out again over the dark plain, dotted with hundreds of shacks caked with mud from the driving rain. Lightning flashed overhead once more, illuminating the scene before him—an army of thousands stood at attention—men and women, all equipped with swords, armor, and slight provisions. The raging storm overhead belied the mood of the huge crowd. They stared ahead dispassionately, unblinking, displaying no reaction to the deluge pouring onto them. They neither spoke, nor looked at their neighbors, but stood before the man, patiently (if one could call it that) awaiting his word with faces like stone.

How long have I labored? How many trials passed? Enemies secretly subdued? How long and deeply have I planned? And now, it begins.

His gaze focused on a tall man at the head of the army—his lieutenant and most trusted champion, who, unlike the others surrounding him, grinned slightly and squinted his eyes against the driving rain. On the portico, an attendant approached the hooded figure from behind and whispered something in his ear. He nodded, and lifted one hand into the air. There was no fiery speech. No passionate plea for bravery and valor. None was needed. The man simply raised his voice and shouted, “Begin!” Without so much as a murmur, the vast army turned to the south and started running.

The world will change.

Act I

Chapter one

“… and they did write them, every one their own, so that their sons and their daughters might have the knowledge of their mothers and their fathers …” —Beginnings, 9:12

A servant knocked on the bedroom door and entered. He dutifully marched to the window and pulled back the magnificent dark drapes, bathing the room in mid-morning light. He picked up a few stray pieces of clothing off the floor, grabbed the full bed pan from under the large, plush bed, and announced, “Your father wishes you to come to breakfast, sir.” The servant’s name is not important, though the occupant of the bed, now grunting his disapproval, would have you believe that his was very important. Aeden Rossam, second son and heir of his lordship, the Lord Alastair Rossam, sixth duke of the city of Elbeth for his majesty the king, and holder of the ancient scepter of King Rossam the second. Minor nobility, really, but the servants didn’t dare tell the young man that.

“Shall I send a response to his lordship?”

Grunt.

“Very well, Master Rossam,” he imitated the grunt “ … shall be my response to your father.” And looking less than happy with his current employment, he left the room.

The young man in the large, luxurious bed lay there awhile, then, groaning a bit, rolled out of bed and dressed himself in the tossed-aside clothing that the servant had just picked up. He walked over to his mirror. Aeden Rossam, at seventeen, looked more like an athletic man in his mid twenties—tall, broad shoulders, muscular arms and chest. He looked in the mirror. He considered himself one of the best looking young men in the kingdom. Unfortunately, for his ego and for justice in general, he was possibly correct. He smugly admired his hair, his square jaw and long, dark eyelashes, and flashed his smile—the one that could get him anything he wanted.