The War Of The Lance (12 page)

The draconians heard her. One lashed forward with a spear. Panicked, Mara dropped flat.
The spear nearly parted her hair. Another draconian hissed and slashed sideways with his
sword. She leapt up, dodged the sword, backing farther away. A mace raked her shoulder.

She began running, heading for escape out the skylight. I should stop them! she thought
frantically, but a cold voice in her mind said, “Face it. You're not a warrior, not even a
thief. You're only a very stupid little girl.”

She bounced from wall to wall randomly to dodge more thrown weapons, stumbling over a pile
of canisters. She paused. The top one had a label; in the middle of the polysyllables,
Mara recognized the common word for PEST. She picked the canister up and tucked it under
her

arm. If it was the new batch of pesticide, she could dump it over herself and it would
make her invisible. She began opening it, then stopped.

If it was the old batch, it might kill her.

But then, she could throw it back at the approaching draconians and kill them. She tugged
at the top again.

Or she might make them invisible. She had a brief vision of herself surrounded by
invisible draconians. She tossed the canister aside and kept running.

The draconians were close behind her when she reached the skylight. She leapt for the
opening lever, pulling it down with her full weight. It groaned as it moved ... and
lowered a cantilevered weight, which tugged a guy rope, which spun a flywheel, which
rotated an axis, which turned a worm gear, which wound up the pull rope . . .

Which broke. The whole system coasted to a stop, the end of the rope flapping uselessly.

“It would be nice,” Mara muttered between clenched teeth, “if just once, a gnome invention
worked reliably.” And that gave Mara the idea.

She grabbed the dangling rope, swung up on it, pumping her legs vigorously. Kicking off
the ceiling, she spun around and swung back over the heads of the astonished draconians.
One of them raised a spear, but not quickly enough; it barely scratched her.

Mara let go of the rope, landing well behind the confused draconians, and dashed back the
way she had come. But she had to make certain they followed her. At the bend in the
tunnel, she scooped up a handful of decaying spare parts from old mechanisms and skimmed
them off the tunnel walls and ceiling into the draconians. A rusted bolt caught the
captain on his reptilian snout.

The captain howled. “After her! Kill her!” “Quickly, or slowly?” A subordinate asked.
“Quickly,” he hissed. A hex nut clanged off his

helmet. “But not too quickly.” They dashed after her again, weapons ready, their

terrible jaws open. Mara fled, but made sure that they saw which way she turned. They
chased her confidently; after all, what did they have to fear from a single unarmed human
child?

The draconians came on her suddenly, around a

comer. She was apparently helpless with fear. The draconian captain leered at her and
barked

unnecessarily, “Now you die.” “If you must!” she said more coolly than she felt. "But

be quick." The draconian eyed her with resentment, tinged with

admiration. “Don't we frighten you?” “You? Never.” Mara pointed to the floor. "That thing

frightens me. I can bear anything,“ she said earnestly, ”but the Flying Deathaxe."

At a gesture from his captain, the lead draconian picked it up. “This thing?” he said,
laughing, incredulously.

Mara shrank away. “Don't pull that cord. Please. Put it down - ”

The captain smiled at her, revealing an amazing quantity of pointed teeth. “Of course,
I'll put it down.” He set it on the ground in front of her with a low bow. As he
straightened up, with one swift motion he pulled the starting cord, setting the propellers
in motion. He watched, chuckling evilly.

The propellers spun and, unbelievably, the Deathaxe rose into the air. As it cleared the
floor, the razor-sharp axe blade swung back and forth with a loud shearing noise. It
hovered, hesitated, then began slowly spinning in a circle. Mara watched, open-mouthed, as
the axe blade sliced through a boom extending from the tunnel wall. Now the axe was moving
faster, and the circle was widening as well. Mara took a nervous step backward.

The Deathaxe hit the roof and bounced off. The blade sliced through the helmet and head of
a draconian soldier without slowing down. The soldier turned to stone and toppled.

The captain uttered a command, succinct even for draconian field orders: “Run!”

Mara obeyed. So did the other draconians. The axe gashed the wall where she had been
standing a moment before, spun back on itself, and cut one of the draconian soldiers in
the chest before careening upward to strike the ceiling and spin back down. The wounded
draconian, shouting in panic, crashed head-on into one of his companions. Both sank to the
tunnel floor, unconscious but not dead. The remaining two

sprinted after Mara, just ahead of the whining, humming Deathaxe.

Mara wouldn't have thought that the heavy draconians could run that fast, but then she
surprised herself with her own speed. Once, in a crazy rebound off a hanging pulley, the
Deathaxe spun into the floor in front of her and shot straight up at her. She fell
backward, rolled between the legs of the startled draconian soldier behind her, and leapt
to one side. The Deathaxe cut off his head. Turning to stone, it thudded to the floor
where she had been. The draconian captain behind her screeched with frustration. The
Deathaxe, now behind him, spun back toward both of them, and they were off again.

Perversely, the axe continued after them, instead of backtracking or taking wrong tunnels.
Mara wondered if that was a side-function of Standback's sensors. She also wondered how
long she and the draconian captain could keep up their pace; she was naturally faster, but
he had more endurance. If she should tire or fall. . . She grit her teeth and kept dodging
and running.

After what seemed like days, Mara thought that the axe might be slowing down. A minute
more and she was positive; it was losing forward momentum and spinning more slowly.
Finally, with a creak from its handle and a flutter of propellers, the Deathaxe crashed to
the tunnel floor. Mara and the draconian, wheezing, collapsed - a spear's length apart -
just beyond it.

The draconian recovered first. He rose unsteadily and searched for the sword. He had
dropped it when he fell. The weapon was now lying within Mara's reach.

Mara staggered to her feet, picked up the heavy sword and nearly overbalanced. The
draconian laughed at her and moved forward to recover it and kill her.

Mara heard an uneasy rustling on the tunnel ceiling above her, though she could see
nothing. She swung the sword against the tunnel wall and banged it, shouting.

The air was suddenly filled with a terrible chittering and the sound of hundreds of wings.
The draconian, disconcerted, waved his arms in the air. Mara steadied the sword, gathering
her strength.

The draconian opened his mouth and snapped at the noises in the empty air; there was a
tiny shriek, which cut off abruptly. Mara, feeling sick, took a deep breath and

lunged with the sword. It was far too heavy for her, but she managed to catch

the draconian captain just below the kneecap. He roared, driving away all the flyers. Mara
let go of the sword and backed off.

Grimacing, he looked down at his leg. Green blood oozed from the wound. He opened his
mouth to shout at her; nothing but snarling and flecks of foam came out.

Mara dashed away, thinking to herself, “I'll need a new name. Mara the Warlike . . . Mara,
Queen of Battle ...” A thrown dagger flashed between her arm and her side. Mara, Queen of
Battle, legged it like Mara the Rabbit down the left fork of the tunnel. The draconian
lumbered after her, limping painfully.

Mara dashed into a room. The draconian found her, crouched against the far wall. She stood
holding the leg of a splintered chair as a weapon. As the captain came forward, she
dropped it and shrank against the wall, her face a mask of terror.

“I have you,” he said slowly, with satisfaction. He limped into the center of the room,
smiling -

Mara tapped the wall lightly with one finger.

The Thudbaggers activated. The draconian lost his footing. Both his arms were pinned in
place by the bags; he couldn't reach the sword he had dropped when the first bag inflated
in his face. He poked his head up out of the balloons, and glared helplessly at Mara, who
had clambered onto the bags. “You!” he said bitterly, beside himself with rage. “You - ”

“Shut up,” said Mara and, pulling off his helmet, knocked him cold.

She heard the sound of running feet, and then Standback appeared in the door.

“Are you all right?” He was panting.

Mara slid off the balloon. “Mara the Bold is always all right.”

“That's good. When I arrived at the top level, I thought that it was a false alarm, and I
came back down, and then I saw the dead and knocked-out draconians - ” He paused. “You're
bleeding.”

She looked at her shoulder in surprise. “Not too badly.” She grinned. “I gave better than
I got.”

Standback looked at the unconscious captain. "I see

that,“ he said, impressed. ”Were they after my weapons?" Mara nodded. Standback, looking
again at the pinned

and unconscious captain, said thoughtfully, “Mount Nevermind isn't at war with draconians.
We don't dare kill them, and they're too dangerous to take prisoner. What are we going to
do with them?”

“I've thought about that.” Mara paused for effect. “Let them escape.”

Standback goggled at her. “But if they escape, they'll take our weapons or plans for our
weapons away with them - ”

“You want them to,” she said simply.

Standback was now a complete rarity in Mount Nevermind or anywhere else: a speechless
gnome.

“Think about it,” she went on. “The draconians want the weapons. You need the weapons
tested. They're soldiers. Who could better test them?”

As he still hesitated, she added, “And isn't the theft by real warriors a kind of
validation that your weapons are worth testing? You'll be able to tell that to the
committee and then ask for the hand of Watchout.”

Standback blinked. “But you're not afraid to let them use these . . . terrible weapons
against your people?”

Mara thought about draconian troops setting off the Portapults in the field. “They are
indeed terrible weapons,” she said, “but letting the draconians have them will only make
it a more even battle. It's a matter of honor - something the knights are big on.”

Standback took her hand, pumping it up and down. “Never have I met a warrior of so much
integrity - ”

“Oh, I wouldn't say that.”

“ - and modest too.” He looked back at the unconscious draconian captain. “I'll let them
escape with the Portapult, the Flying Deathaxe - ”

“Um, I don't know that they'll want the Deathaxe. Why don't you let them have the
Thunderpack, instead?”

Standback protested. “This is too much. Won't you take anything for yourself?”

“Sometimes,” Mara said nobly, “there's a greater joy in giving.” She had a sudden thought.
“If you don't mind, I'll just take the little failed dowser.” She picked it up.

“The one that can't even find water? You want it?” “Just as a souvenir.”

Standback, tears in his eyes, said, “You're amazing. Nothing but a trinket for yourself,
while you give full- scale gnome weapons to your worst enemies.”

Mara, pocketing the jewel-finder, beamed. “Well,” she said modestly, “I'm like that.”

Once, very recently, this had been a city. Only days before, there had been a tiered
castle on the highest point of the hill. Studded battlements overlooked the lands for
miles around. In a walled courtyard, throngs gathered.

Below the battlements, spreading down toward the fields, had been a raucous, bustling city
- inns and dwellings, shops and markets, public houses, smithies, barns and lofts,
weavers' stalls and tanneries, music and noise and life.

Chaldis had been a city. But the dragonarmies of the Dark Queen had come and the city was
a city no more. Where battlements had stood was smashed and blackened rubble, and all
beneath was scorched, twisted ruin. Of Chaldis, nothing was left. Only the road it had
defended was yet intact, and its surface showed the tracks and treads of armies just
passed. The people who had been here were gone now - some fleeing, some dead, some led off
as slaves. Where there had been herds now were only scorched pastures, and where crops had
grown now were ruined fields.

Stillness lived here now. A somber stillness - shadows and silence, broken only by the
weeping of the wind.

Yet in the stillness, something lurked. And in the shadows, small shadows moved.

Muffled voices, among the rubble: “What kind place this? Ever'thing a real mess.” 'Talls
been here. Somebody clobber 'em, I guess.“ ”This all fresh scorch.“ ”Forget scorch! Look
for somethin' to eat."

And another sound, from somewhere in the lead, “Sh!” A thump and a clatter.

“Sh!” “Somebody fall down.” “SH!” “Somebody say, 'Sh.' Better hush up.”

Another thump and several clatters. “Wha' happen?” “Somebody bump into somebody else. All
fall down.” “SSSH!!” “What?” “SHUT UP AN' KEEP QUIET!” “Oh. Okay.” Abruptly hushed, the
shadows moved on, small

figures in a ragged line, wending among fallen stone and burned timbers, making their
cautious way through the rubble that once had been a city. For several minutes, they
proceeded in silence, then the whispers and muted chatter began again as the effect of
exercised authority wore off.

“Wanna stop an' dig? Might be nice stuff under these gravels.”

“Forget dig. Need food first. Look for somethin' make stew.”

“Like what?” “Who knows. Mos' anything make stew.” "Hey! Here somethin'. . . nope, never
mind. Just a

dead Tall.“ ”Rats."

“What?” “Oughtta be rats here. Rats okay for stew.” “Keep lookin'.” “Ow! Get off a my
foot!” Thump. Clatter. “Sh!” “Somebody fall down again.” "SH! They were travelers. They
had been travelers since long

before any of them could remember, which was not very long unless the thing to remember
was truly worth remembering: traveling generally was not. It was just something they did,
something they had always done, something their parents and their ancestors had done. Few
of them had any idea why they traveled, or why their travels - more often than not -
tended to be westward.

For the few among them who might occasionally wonder about such things, the answer was
simple and extremely vague. They traveled because they were in search of the Promised
Place.

Where was the Promised Place? Nobody had the

slightest idea. Why did they seek the Promised Place? No one really

knew that, either. Someone, a long time ago - some Highbulp, probably, since it was
usually the Highbulp who initiated unfathomable ventures - had gotten the notion that
there was a Promised Place, to the west, and it was their destiny to find it. That had
been generations back - an unthinkable time to people who usually recognized only two days
other than today: yesterday and tomorrow. But once the pilgrimage was begun, it just kept
going.

That was the nature of the Aghar - the people most others called gully dwarves. One of
their strongest driving forces was simple inertia.

The size and shape of the group changed constantly as they made their way through the
ruins of the city, tending upward toward its center. Here and there, now and then, by ones
and threes and fives, various among them lost interest in following along and took off on
side expeditions, searching and gawking, usually rejoining the main group somewhere
farther along.

There was no way to know whether all of them came back. None among them had any real idea
of how many of them there were, except that there were more than two - a lot more than
two. Maybe fifty times two, though such concepts were beyond even the wisest of them.
Numbers greater than two were seldom considered worth worrying about.

Gradually, the stragglers converged upon the higher levels of the ruined city. Here the
fallen building stones were more massive - huge, smoke-darkened blocks that lay aslant
against one another, creating tunnels and gullies roofed by shattered rubble. Here they
found more dead things - humans and animals, corpses mutilated, stripped and burned, the
brutal residue of battle. They crept around these at a distance, their eyes wide with
dread. Something fearful had happened here, and the pall of it hung in the silent air of
the place like a tangible fear.

At a place where a flanking wall had fallen, some of them paused to stare at a tumble of
great, iron-bound timbers that might once have been some piece of giant furniture but now
was a shattered ruin. The thing lay as though it had fallen from high above, its members
and

parts in disarray. Having not the faintest idea of what it might be, most of them crept
past and went on. One, though, remained, walking around the huge thing, frowning in
thought.

His name was Tagg, and an odd bit of memory tugged at him as his eyes traced the
dimensions of the fallen thing. He had seen something like it before . . . somewhere.
Tugging at his lip, Tagg circled entirely around the thing. A few others were with him
now. They had seen his curiosity and returned, curious themselves.

“Got a arm,” he muttered, squatting to reason out the placement of a great timber jutting
outward from the device. Within the twisted structure itself, the timber was bound to a
sort of big, wooden drum, with heavy rope wrapped around it and a set of massive gears at
its hub.

“Fling-thing,” he said, beginning to remember. It was like something he had seen from a
distance, atop some human structure his people had skirted long ago in their travels. He
remembered it because he had seen the Talls operate it, and had been impressed. It was a
wooden tower atop a tower, and a lot of the humans - the Talls - had gathered around it
and slowly cranked the extended arm around and back, then abruptly had released it. It had
made a noise like distant thunder, and the thing that flew from it had been very large and
had knocked down a tree.

“That it,” he decided. “One a' them. Fling-thing.”

Several other gully dwarves were gathered around him now. One asked, “What Tagg talkin'
'bout?”

“This thing,” Tagg pointed. “This a fling-thing. Throws stuff.”

“Why?” another wanted to know.

“Dunno. Does, though. Throws big thing, knock a tree down.”

“I know. Cat'pult.”

“Nope. That some other kind. This called a . . . uh . . . dis . . . disca . . . somethin'.”

“Okay.” Losing interest, some of them wandered away again, though Tagg and two others
lingered, creeping through the wreckage in wonder. One was a white-bearded ancient named
Gandy, who was given to occasional bursts of lucid thought and served as Grand Notioner to
the combined clans of Bulp. The other was a young female named Minna.

Tagg was vaguely glad that Minna was interested in the same thing that interested him. He
found her presence pleasant. His eyes lighting on a glistening bauble among the rubble, he
picked it up and held it out to her. “Here,” he said, shyly. “Pretty thing for Minna.”

Climbing among the twisted members of the fallen discobel, Tagg helped Minna across a
shattered timber, then turned and stumbled over old Gandy. The Grand Notioner was on his
knees, staring at something, and Tagg tripped over him and thudded facedown in the sooty
dust.

Barely noticing him, Gandy brushed his hand over a vague shape on the floor and said,
“Here somethin'. What this?”

Tagg crawled over to look, and Minna peered over his shoulder. The object was a big, iron
disk with sharpened serrations all around its edge, except for one area where it had been
blunted and bent.

“That disk,” Tagg said. “It what th' fling-thing fling. Knock down trees with these.”

“Knock down somethin',” Gandy decided, looking at the blunted edge. The disk had hit
something very solid, very hard. He rubbed it again and looked at the dark stains on its
surface. There were other stains on the cracked floor nearby, as though blood had
congealed there. He scraped the stain with his finger, then tasted his finger. He frowned
and spat. It was not any kind of blood he knew about.

It reminded him, though, of the primary goal of the moment. He stood, tapping the ground
with the battered old mop handle he always carried. “'Nough look at stuff,” he proclaimed.
“Look for food first. Come 'long.”

Obediently, they followed him out of the wreckage of the war engine, then paused and
looked around.

“Where ever'body go?” Tagg wondered.

Gandy shrugged. “Aroun' someplace. Can't get far, followin' Highbulp. Glitch don' move
that fast.”

From where they were, a dozen tunnels and breaks in the rubble led away. Choosing one at
random, old Gandy led off, with Tagg and Minna following. “Now watch good,” he ordered.

“Watch what?” “What?” “You gonna do trick or somethin'?” "No! Watch for food. Need to find
stuff for make

stew." The tunnel they were in was a long, winding way

created by the spaces between building stones that had fallen on one another. After a few
minutes, Tagg asked, “What kind food Grand Notioner expect find here?”

“He didn' say,” Minna said.

Just ahead of them, Gandy turned, frowning in the shadows. “Any kind food,” he snapped.
“Keep lookin'. If it moves, it prob'ly good for stew.”

“Okay.” Moving on, Tagg stepped into the lead.

They had gone only a few steps when Tagg, his alert young eyes scanning everywhere, saw
something move. It was something that protruded, curving downward,

from a crack between fallen stones. It was a tapered thing, about as long as his arm. Dark
and greenish, it was almost invisible against the muted, mottled colors of the rubble
around it. But as his eyes passed over it, it twitched.

Tagg stopped, and the others bumped into him from behind. Old Gandy tottered for a moment,
then regained his balance. Minna clung to Tagg, her pressure against him totally
distracting him. He decided at that moment that any time Minna wanted to bump into him, it
was all right as far as he was concerned.

“Why Tagg stop?” Gandy snapped. “I nearly fall down.”

“Okay,” Tagg murmured, paying no attention at all to the elder. “That fine.”

“Not fine!” Gandy pointed out. “S'posed to be lookin' for food, not foolin' aroun'. You!”
He nudged Minna with his mop handle. “Leggo Tagg. Stop th' foolishness!”

“Oh.” Minna backed away, shrugging. “Okay.”

With a sigh, Tagg turned to go on, then saw the thing he had seen before. The thing that
twitched. He pointed at it. “What that? Maybe food?”

They gathered close, and Gandy bent for a better look. The thing was sticking out of a
small crevice in the rubble. It was hard to tell in the subdued light, but it seemed to be
round and tapered, with a sort of sharp ridge running along the top of it. Its color was
dark green. And as they stared at it, it twitched again.

They stumbled back, wary. “What it is?” Tagg asked. Gandy peered again. “Dunno. Maybe half
a snake?”

“Might be.” Tagg approached it carefully, thrust out his arm and prodded the thing with
his finger, then jerked away. When he touched it, it writhed with a motion that was more
than a twitch. Like the tail of a huge rat, it swayed this way and that. But it seemed
otherwise harmless. Whatever might be at the other end of it, this end had no teeth or
claws.

“This food?” Tagg asked the Grand Notioner.

“Might be,” Gandy decided. “Snake okay for stew sometimes, if not bitter. Check it out.”

“What?” “TASTE it. See if it bitter.” Reluctantly, Tagg approached the thing again,

grasping it with both hands. It writhed and struggled in his grip. Whatever it was, it was
very strong. But he held on, and when it seemed a bit subdued, he lowered his head, opened
his mouth and bit it as hard as he could.

Abruptly, the thing flicked and surged, flipping Tagg across the jagged tunnel into the
far wall. And all around them, seeming to come from the stone itself, a huge roar of
outrage rang through the air.

Tagg got his feet under him just as the Grand Notioner surged toward him, running for his
life, with Minna right behind. Both of them collided with Tagg, and all three went down,
rolling along the cracked floor, a tumble of arms, legs and muffled curses.

They had barely come to a halt when others - a lot of others - piled into them, over them,
and onto them. The main party, led by the Highbulp Glitch I himself, had been emerging
from a connecting way when they heard the roar and panicked. In an instant, there were
gully dwarves tumbling all along the tunnel, and a great pile of gully dwarves at the
convergence where Glitch I - and everyone behind him - had stumbled over the flailing trio.

It took several minutes to get everyone untangled from everyone else, and Tagg - at the
bottom of the heap - was thoroughly enjoying being tangled up with Minna again until he
looked up and gazed into the thunderous face of his lord and leader, Glitch I, Highbulp by
Persuasion and Lord Protector of This Place and Anyplace Else He Could Think Of.

Glitch glared at the three just getting to their feet. “Gandy! What goin' on here?”

“Dunno,” Gandy grumbled. “Ever'body pile up on me. How I know what goin' on? Couldn' see a
thing.” “Heard big noise,” the Highbulp pressed. "You do