Dimension Of Dreams

Chapter Nine

Erlik was Blade's first recruit after Narlena, but he was far from the last. Blade made rapid progress in the next few weeks and part of the reason for that was Erlik himself. The Puran had no more aptitude for fighting than most of his compatriots, but he was willing enough to learn. After he got himself in condition, he was strong, fast, and skilled enough so that he could defend himself from many of the Wakers and guard Blade's back during their night patrols in search of more Dreamers. The average Waker was not a very good fighter. Nor was there any reason why he should be. The Dreamers were usually helpless prey and too scared even to run the way Erlik had. Because the Wakers were always fighting among themselves, the Dreamers could often get away with their bungling and bumbling. Blade began to be a good deal more optimistic about the chances of a Dreamer fighting force against the Wakers.

In the meantime he and Erlik had the satisfaction of leaving one or two or even half a dozen Wakers dead each time they prowled through the dark streets of Pura. Although Erlik was a small, thin man, barely taller and heavier than Narlena, he seemed to expand and grow taller and stronger each time he stood over a dead Waker that he had killed.

But Erlik's greatest value to Blade was not his sword arm but his tongue and his quick brain. Both were more nimble than his sword arm would ever be if he lived a thousand years. Erlik did not preach Blade's views on the salvation of Pura with the fervor of a totally new convert. He wasn't one and couldn't have pretended to be one to save his life. That kind of honesty made Blade respect him even more. He held on to much of his skepticism and pessimism even while watching their strength grow and more and more Wakers fall dying in the streets.

His honest skepticism was the great secret of Erlik's success. The average Dreamer had been resigned to wait passively in his vault for Pura to collapse entirely about his ears or for the Waker gangs to eat each other up. He would have called anybody who went around joyfully promising the sure salvation of Pura a madman and would have ignored him completely. This was particularly true when the prophet was a man who said he was from another world, where all the people were Wakers. But the same average Dreamer was willing to listen to a fellow Dreamer talk about Blade's plans in tones of, «Well, I'm not sure myself that we can do any miracles. But let's give it a try. We can't be any worse off than we will be if we don't do anything at all. And we can at least kill off a lot of Wakers.» That made a lot of people sit up and take notice and eventually join up. And the trail of dead Wakers Blade and Erlik left behind them was another convincing part of the argument.

In any case the Dreamers kept coming in. For good reasons, bad reasons, or no reason at all except that they wanted a little real-life excitement and feeling. Before a week was out, there were too many to be accommodated in Narlena's vault. Blade had to appoint some of the promising ones as subcommanders and have them each lead a group out to their own vaults.

Before two weeks had gone by, Blade had nearly sixty men and women scattered in half a dozen vaults on the south side of Pura. He and Erlik had trained a dozen men and three women in fighting of a sort, and Blade had gathered enough weapons from dead Wakers to arm twice as many.

The most welcome discovery among the recruits was a big barrel-chested man with a broken nose and a long scar across his left arm and shoulder. This man was named Yekran, and he was a former captain in the security troops. He not only knew how to fight; he actively enjoyed it. And he threw himself into training his fellow Dreamers with an enthusiasm that surprised and delighted Blade. Perhaps part of Yekran's enthusiasm came from guilt over his retreat to his vault. After all, he had been an officer in the force intended to protect Pura, yet he had run away like any ordinary citizen and let things fall apart. But Blade did not really care much. Yekran was doing the work of three men within days after joining up. And killing Wakers was such a delight to him that within a week he had killed nearly as many as Blade had.

As the nights became slowly but definitely shorter, the hours for prowling the streets, rescuing Dreamers, and killing Wakers became fewer. Instead, Blade stepped up his training. Often he led as many as half the fighters from the different vaults on long trips deep into the city. They explored the ruins, noted buildings that might be rebuilt or at least defended, and got used to moving and working by day. Gradually the Dreamers' morbid fears of daylight vanished, and their reason took over, telling them what Blade had been saying from the beginning; if they learned to use the daylight before the Wakers did, they would have a deadly advantage over their enemies. Blade and Yekran both conjured up exciting visions of Dreamer fighters stealing undetected into the strongholds of sleeping Wakers while the noon sun beat down and slaughtering them right and left. Of course, the Dreamers would have only a few such easy victories before the Wakers also learned to fight by day, but Blade and Yekran thought it better not to mention that. And Blade hoped the Wakers might not take too well to daylight. They might possibly be more reluctant to change their century-old ways than were the more civilized Dreamers.

But Blade was still worried about that one Waker gang that had been trained to a polished weapon by their unknown leader. Blade had no doubt that they would adapt with deadly speed to fighting by day if they ever felt they had to. Before that day came, Blade knew he had to have his Dreamer fighters so numerous and well-trained that they could stand off even the best of the Wakers. Perhaps they could even take the offensive and force a pitched battle at a time and place of their own choosing. With the advantage of surprise the Dreamers might break the back of their most dangerous opponent.

But who were these people, and who under the heavens of every conceivable and inconceivable dimension was their leader? Yekran had no idea. Several of the recruits recognized Blade's description of the Waker gang that fought in well-coordinated pairs, but none of them could give him the faintest clue about where it came from or who led it. One thing stood out; the other Waker gangs seemed to have limited territories, but the trained one roamed freely all over the city.

Blade was not surprised. Such a gang would be able to march through the territories of other gangs and raid where it wanted to as easily as a fox prowling through a nest of field mice. And things would be just as one-sided if the gang came up against his Dreamers before he, Yekran, and Erlik had the chance to put several more months into recruiting and training. When he thought of that possibility, a cold sweat broke out all over him. He would pace up and down the vault like a caged animal, face working in frustration at the small amount of time he had to do so much. Then Narlena would come to him and caress him until he was calmer outside if not inside.

More weeks passed; the Dreamers now had over two hundred people and nearly fifty fighters, and the Waker gangs were becoming fewer and farther between. Blade doubted that the losses he and his followers had inflicted were enough to account for this. The word was out among the Wakers, no doubt. The darkness, for generations the time when they moved about and raided with impunity, had suddenly become deadly. Now it was infested with gangs of Dreamers that did not cower or flee but fought back and, turning the tables completely, hunted down the Wakers! Blade wondered if the Wakers were concerned about a mysterious new leader that the Dreamers had found! The Wakers at least had the advantage of knowing what Blade looked like. Would any of them be able to put two and two together?

As the activity of the Waker gangs declined, more and more of the Dream patrols drew a blank. They continued to bring in Dreamer recruits in ones, twos and half-dozens until there were enough to fill more than forty vaults. But there were nights when not even a single wandering and bewildered Dreamer appeared. When that happened, Blade would inevitably lead his patrol into one of the regular hiding places and wait for daylight to spread across Pura and give them a safe return home.

The night had become unexpectedly chill and rainy toward the end of one of those useless patrols. The first gray light of a tentative dawn found Blade, Erlik, Narlena, and four other Dreamer fighters huddled on the tenth floor of a tower in the western section of Pura. The small windows had kept out much of the wind and rain. But the chill seeped through nevertheless. And the dampness in the air turned the dust on the floor to a thin layer of slimy mud that covered the tiles and smeared the clothing of the people squatting there and shivering.

Blade wondered, not for the first time, why he was here, doing what he was doing. For the marconite, of course-that might be worth more than everything else he had brought back from Dimension X put together. But that wasn't enough to explain why he was training and leading the Dreamers, risking his neck every day and night for them.

It wasn't that he had forgotten Home Dimension. On his early trips into Dimension X, he had. Then there had been a new Richard Blade who came out of the computer, a Richard Blade who barely remembered that there was a Home Dimension. Alterations in the computer had taken care of that. Now Blade not only remembered Home Dimension as he struggled to survive in Dimension X but had total recall of everything that happened to him there and took it back with him to Home Dimension.

Remembering Home Dimension didn't help. He still tended to get involved with the people he encountered, tended to hope that the computer would not snatch him back until he had finished whatever work he had set himself to do. Was that foolish sentimentality, something he would have to root out of himself? Maybe it was, but he clearly saw he couldn't do things any other way. He would just have to struggle along, getting sucked into every local problem that came along and hoping he was fast and smart enough to get out again.

All this deep thinking wasn't going to make him any warmer, drier, or less muscle-cramped, he reminded himself. He stood up and looked out the window. A watery dawn light was gradually washing away the darkness. Blade hoped that the sun would be out shortly, drying the streets and banishing the rest of the gloom from the city. In this shadowy morning light a few bold Wakers might continue their prowling beyond the normal time. Both he and his companions were chilled and weary after a long night of tramping through the pitch-black streets, slipping on wet rubble with clatters and crashes that made them clutch their weapons and would certainly have attracted any Wakers within earshot. He did not want to face a fight now on the way home.

He decided that if another week went by and the night patrols continued to draw a blank, it would be time to seek out and raid a Waker stronghold. He hoped this would not be throwing away the lives of his followers and their hard-won self-confidence. Right now they saw him as an almost super-human being and in spite of their occasional losses they were developing an almost arrogant belief in their own prowess. Yekran was the only one not so naive. He shook his head when he heard boastful talk of rooting the Wakers out of their lairs like the vermin they were.

The sullen gloom of the morning bothered Blade. It gave him the feeling that such an unusual light might hide more than it revealed. And what it hid might be unwelcome. The feeling was too vague for him to make anybody else believe it, almost too vague to be put into words, but it was there. And he would not ignore it. Those same vague forebodings had put him on the alert and saved his life three or four times during his career as an agent. Perhaps it had taken his brain this long to create these feelings of adjustment to Dimension X — certainly he had never felt this way during any of his previous trips.

It was time to move. His six companions were experienced soldiers by Dreamer standards. By now they all had swords and spears. They also had heavy sandals, and most had leggings to protect their shins and calves from grazes and scrapes on the rubble. They had gear pouches and waterbottles but no food, because the food machines' sweetish cake would not travel well. Another point to check-could the machines be readjusted to make something more durable? Dreamer patrols would soon be out for days on end and would need field rations. Blade sighed and shook his head. It seemed that every time he knocked one problem down, two more popped up.

The seven men moved out into the morning in two lines of three, one on each side of the street, with Blade himself taking the lead, spear in hand. He would have liked to head for the nearest Dreamer-held vault by the shortest route, but that route ran for a mile along a level street so broad that even the debris from collapsed buildings on either side had hardly narrowed it at all. By now even the newest Dreamer recruit understood why it was not wise to travel along a wide street where one stood out like a fly on a tabletop to anyone watching from above.

Blade brought up the rear while they crossed the avenue. Crouching behind a fallen slab of metal roofing, Blade watched the other six dash in succession across the open street, scramble up the ridge of debris on the far side, and vanish down the other side. To the north of the avenue lay a maze of smaller streets that offered a far more sheltered route than the avenue's hundred-foot expanse of stone.

The last of the six vanished, and now it was Blade's turn. He nearly fell on his face as his foot came down on a rainslick patch, but miraculously he kept his balance and charged across the street. Using hands and feet, he hurled himself at the twenty-foot slope of rubble. Loosened chunks toppled down into the street with nerve-racking crashes and thumps. He reached the crest, flung himself over it, then turned back to search the avenue in both directions. As his eyes swung to the left and east, he saw something moving furtively on the far side of the avenue.

Blade froze and fixed his eyes on the spot. But the pavement there lay deep in shadow, too deep for him to clearly make out what was moving. What else could it be but a Waker moving by day? One or many? Again he couldn't see, not even with his abnormally acute vision. But still less could he wait to find out. Time was suddenly precious. They would have to make their way east and into shelter before the Wakers could detect them and launch a full-scale hunt.

He scrambled down into the street. His haste should have told the six waiting below that something was wrong, even if he hadn't quickly explained the situation. Narlena paled, and the four recruits frantically tried to look in all directions at once.

Erlik, however, nodded in the same resigned way he usually did when he heard bad news. He said with a sigh, «Well, if they catch up with us it won't be as easy for them as it would have been back in the spring. We've given them a good run so far, and we'll give them another before we go down» Then he shrugged and turned away to take up his place at the end of the left-hand line.

Back in formation again the seven moved north two blocks and then turned right. Blade did not want to get too far north of the avenue. If all else failed, they could always try to reach it and then try outrunning any pursuing Wakers. Two forlorn hopes.

They moved forward in leap-frog fashion, hurrying down each block where buildings on either side rose high enough to block the view on either side. At each north-south street they halted to make sure that it was clear in both directions and then scurried across the street and on along the next block. Occasionally masses of rubble from collapsed buildings forced them into a noisy scrambling climb. Once they found the decaying body of a Waker who, must have fallen while climbing a tower. Blade wondered if the man had been killed instantly or died slowly in the darkness.

Now they were perhaps halfway to their goal. no hunted looks of the six Dreamers were slowly beginning to ease. Then a swsssssh sounded close overhead. Down from a building high above flashed an arrow, trailing a thick cloud of blue-green smoke. The arrow smacked into the street fifty feet ahead, and the smoke poured up in a thick column, rising steadily and greasily into the damp air. Even in the morning gloom it would be visible from a great distance.

Blade went cold inside. Instead of his finding the trained Waker gang, the gang had found him. There was at least one archer, with marker arrows that could give away their position and make both flight and concealment hopeless. Would the Wakers have other bowmen to pick off the patrol when they had been surrounded and trapped? Or would it come to a final, hand-to-hand clash of weapons in the streets of the dying city?

Blade waved the patrol forward. They followed at a run, up the block to the next corner, where they continued around to the right and headed south toward the avenue. The avenue offered their last hope for escape. They pounded down the block, hearing another arrow swssssh so high overhead and so far away that for a moment Blade hoped they had given the bowman the slip. The corner was only fifty yards away now; beyond it only one more block to the avenue. Fifty yards, forty, thirty, twenty.

And from both east and west Wakers poured into the intersection with a great pounding of feet and howling of war cries. Blade did not even need to look at them to know that they would form in pairs, one with a sword and one with a spear. In the next few seconds he put together more than twenty years of training and experience.

Instead of stopping dead, Blade kept on going, closing in to less than spear-throwing distance before the Wakers realized that he was still moving. He held his own spear out in front of him like a knight's lance as he crashed down into the ranks of the Wakers. His thrust was aimed at a tall, bearded man who appeared to be the leader. But the man jumped aside at the last possible split-second. The sharp spear point tore along his upper arm and sank deep into the chest of the man behind him. The man died so quickly that he did not even have the time to look surprised before the light went out of his eyes and he sagged downward, pulling the spear out of Blade's hands.

Seeing a gap open in the Waker line, the other Dreamers charged toward it. For a moment Blade was in as much danger of being trampled or speared by his companions as he was by the Wakers.

«Head for the avenue and run! Run!» he roared. But as the Dreamers tried to push on through the gap, Wakers came up on either side to close it. Two of the Dreamers went down, thrust through with spears. One of them rolled against Narlena's legs just as she gathered herself to sprint forward through the confusion, knocking her to the ground. In an instant four Wakers pounced on her, three pointing their spears down at her stomach while the fourth reversed his with a lightning snap and brought the butt end crashing down on her bead. She went limp. Blade let out an animal roar and charged at the four men.

The one who had struck Narlena died before he could reverse his spear again. As he raised it across his chest like a quarterstaff, Blade's descending swordstroke chopped through the solid metal shaft, the man's collarbone, most of his ribs, and his heart. The blood spewed all over Blade's arms and hands so that he nearly lost his grip on his sword. He held on to it, batted a spear-point down with the fiat of the blade, thrust the spearman through the neck, then kicked another swordsman in the stomach and sliced his head off as he crumpled.

As the space around Blade suddenly cleared, another clump of Wakers surged toward him, furiously dueling with Erlik and the other two surviving Dreamers. Before another attack could move against him, Blade charged at the new clump with the speed and ferocity of a springing tiger, hitting them with the same deadly suddenness.

With a spear he snatched from the ground, he hurled his two hundred plus pounds forward and tore the clump of Wakers apart like a rotten cabbage. The Wakers leaped aside in every direction and the two Dreamers broke free. Blade saw Erlik turn toward him, raising his bloody sword with a savage look in his eyes.

Before the man could start back into the fight, Blade yelled again, «Run, you fool! Run for your life!» He had the small joy of seeing Erlik turn away and sprint for the avenue as though monsters were at his heels, sword still waving in his hand. Then Blade turned back to the Wakers crowding around him.

They did not crowd too closely. Although he now panted for breath and his body glistened with sweat and the blood from half a dozen minor slashes and punctures, he could still lash out with deadly skill at anyone who approached too closely. Two more men went down, one dead with a spear in his stomach, the other dying with his hand hanging from a spouting wrist. Then the tall leader loomed up before Blade again. The other Wakers fanned out on either side to tighten the circle around Blade. Then the tall man dropped his hand and the Wakers rushed in.

Blade had only a few seconds to realize that they were approaching with their spears turned butt-end on and their swords swinging with the flat of the blades toward him. But he had no time to be surprised at this. There were too many of them. He knew he had destroyed one man's leg with a spear thrust to the thigh before a spear butt slammed down across the back of his skull. He went forward down onto his knees. He thought he thrust upward with his sword into another man's stomach before more blows on his head and shoulders drove hi m to the ground. And after that he knew he did nothing. He drifted down into blackness to the sound of the shouts of the Wakers all around him.