Ice Dragon

Chapter 18

The Ice Master came to Blade the neat morning in such a state of nerves that before he said a word Blade knew that his plans were working. The other man could not sit, could not stand, could not do anything for more than a minute at a time except talk, and not always coherently. He presented the spectacle of a man watching twenty years' cherished dreams fall apart around him, as well as being in danger of his own life, a spectacle that in this case Blade was entirely happy to see.

The Ice Master's eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep and the lines of his face seemed to have been chiseled inches deeper into the flesh. His hair was unkempt; he kept plucking at his beard; Blade would not in fact have sworn that both beard and hair didn't show a good deal more white and gray than the last time he had seen the man. And all the confidence and arrogance was gone from his voice. In its place was an almost pleading note, so strong that Blade would have felt qualms about his plans if they had been laid against a person less unpleasant and dangerous than the Ice Master.

The broken sentences tumbled out of the Ice Master's mouth for better than an hour, and Blade picked them up one by one, made ideas out of them, assembled the ideas into a picture of the situation-and could barely keep from grinning broadly. The Menel-conditioned guards were firmly convinced that somewhere among the regular guards was a conspiracy dedicated to killing them-or even the Menel. The regular guards were equally convinced that the Menel-conditioned guards had all at once gone off their nut and decided to kill them. The two factions had been fighting in the corridors of the stronghold all night. Blade gathered that at least twenty more bodies had joined the fifteen or so he had seen before returning to his chamber. At this rate the guards might well kill off half of their own number before he could return with his own force!

The Girls and slaves cowered panic-stricken in their quarters; no Pleasure was given, no food was prepared, the bodies and the debris of battle lay about the stronghold with none to pick them up. And the Menel!

For the first time in twenty years the Menel were taking an active and direct interest in the inner workings of the stronghold that they had so casually created and presented to their human ally. It was this more than anything else that was paralyzing the Ice Master with fear. He was trying to persuade them to stay out of the stronghold, because if they came up, the lights and sirens would freeze the regular guards and leave them to the mercy of the Menel-conditioned ones, who would slaughter them without mercy and leave the Ice Mister without a single guard who would not in a crisis dance to the Menel's tune. The reply of the Menel to this was that obviously the regular guards were no longer trustworthy; their conditioning had been faulty-perhaps deliberately so? (The Ice Master broke into a cold sweat in recalling the moment of the Menel's veiled accusation of treachery.) Therefore why should they care what happened to the Ice Master's own guards? If these unreliable guards were to seize the Main Core (which Blade recognized as the place called the Heart by the Girls), a dangerous situation would be created for all concerned The Ice Master could hardly blame the Menel if under the circumstances they took concern for their own survival before his convenience, could he?

Mentally, Blade noted the confirmation of his previous guess that the Heart (or Main Core) was something important and even potentially dangerous to both Ice Master and Menel. Aloud, he went to great lengths to assure the Ice Master that he was being ill-treated by his ungrateful patrons. He spared no effort to build up the Ice Master's selfrighteousness and thus increase his stubborn resistance to the Menel. The Ice Master nodded at each phrase Blade threw him, like an eager dog begging for a bone-a dog that Blade, after a little while, would cheerfully have kicked across the room. But finally he felt the Ice Master was primed and ready, and launched his own proposal.

«I know where I can get at least a hundred fighting men loyal to me personally, who could stand against the Menel's guards all by themselves.»

The Ice Master's head jerked up as though somebody had tightened a noose around his neck, and stared at Blade with hope dawning in his greedy, panic-stricken eyes. «Where?» he croaked.

«In the south,» said Blade. «They would certainly fight against the Menel if I told them to. Many of them are Treduki, trained in weaponscraft from their childhood and better fighters than any of these hot-house plants you call guards. Others are Graduki, and among them are most of the leaders of the resistance to the Conciliators.» He saw a light begin to dawn on the Ice Master's strained face, nodded, and before the man could say anything, filled in for what he guessed must be the man's thoughts.

«Exactly. Once they've killed off the Menel-conditioned guards and given you the whip hand, you can have them killed, or conditioned, or turned into slaves and Girls, or anything else you want. And you'll be wiping out the last bit of resistance to the Conciliators. There won't be anybody left to teach the Treduki how to fight the Ice Dragons, and you can accumulate even more slaves without any problem.» At that point the Ice Master's face became so wrought-up that Blade for a moment was afraid he had overplayed his hand. Then he realized that the Ice Master was simply stunned at the unexpected prospect of having still more of his enemies delivered into his hand, and was struggling to grasp the idea. It took him a while, like a child confronted with an unlimited stack of Christmas presents. Finally his astonishment faded enough for him to smile and nod slowly.

«Yes. They will make good slaves. And their women will make good Girls for Pleasure.»

«Except Leyndt.»

«You wish her for yourself?»

«Yes. Not as a Girl. As she is-or as close to it as you think safe.»

«Well,» said the Ice Master slowly, «if you do this thing for me that you promise, I will certainly give you Leyndt. You will be responsible for seeing that she does not endanger us, and I will not condition her at all. But I will keep her close by me until you return from the south with your fighters.»

«Of course. Will you be sure to keep her safe from the guards, if they go on fighting?»

«I will do my best. I will keep her in my own quarters, with a room to herself. All the guards are conditioned to stay out of my private chambers, Menel and regular alike.»

«Good.» It was even better than he dared let the Ice Master know. For the first time he had a reasonably good notion of where to find Leyndt. And find her he would! One of the first things to do when he returned was to get Leyndt beyond the reach of Menel, Ice Master, or guards. He did not imagine that Stramod or Nilando would argue that point.

He debated for a moment whether he should ask for a map of the stronghold to help in training his raiding force. It might seem like asking too much, so much that the Ice Master's suspicions would be aroused. On the other hand, the Ice Master would certainly want the raiders to be ready to go into action the moment they arrived. Blade decided to risk it.

«It might save time if my men knew their way around your stronghold when they arrived. Otherwise the guards would have an advantage in any fighting. And we don't know that my men won't have to go straight into action when they arrive.» Blade knew perfectly well they would.

The Ice Master frowned. «I hope I can make some sort of arrangement with the Menel to calm things somewhat before then. But you may be right. Very well. I will give you a map before you leave. How soon will you be ready to leave?»

«As soon as you want me to be.»

The Ice Master rose and clasped both of Blade's hands. For a moment Blade was closer than he had ever been to feeling sorry for the Ice Master, but the moment passed quickly. Blade knew this man's motives, saw them for what they were, and could despise them and him. He could not do the same with the Menel, and so he had spared one and would spare the rest if there were any way to do this without betraying the human population of this world.

With that in his mind, he followed the Ice Master out into the corridor and down it to the Ice Master's own chambers. There the Ice Master gave him the clothing and survival gear he would need on the surface, the charts and navigational instructions for the flier, the diagram of the stronghold, and finally one of the electronic master keys that unlocked the controls of the great fliers. Those keys, like the Dragon wands, were prodigies of electronic science. Then they rode up on the secondary elevator to the hangar, and Blade went to his flier.

The Ice Master would not step inside with him-no doubt, Blade thought, afraid of my betraying him by taking off with him and turning him over to the Graduki. The man's trust did have its limits. Blade closed and sealed the door behind him and walked forward through the vast echoing cargo hold that stretched two hundred feet fore and aft and rose thirty feet above his head, to the control room in the nose.

As he went through the five simple steps that brought the huge flier from a slumbering mass of inert metal to a machine ready to hurl itself into the skies, he again felt frustrated to the point of almost physical pain at the impossibility of bringing one of these machines back to Home Dimension. With its electronics, its power plant, and above all the array of tubes and circuits that somehow neutralized and manipulated gravity, it would hurl England and the whole human race two centuries into the future at once. Or perhaps such a leap might be more than human wisdom could handle? It had taken nearly the whole of Blade's adult life to hammer out some sort of precarious control over the atomic and hydrogen bombs.

Perhaps the larger pieces of the Menel's wisdom were best left here?

A moment later he saw the huge hangar's darkness broken by light pouring down from above, as the Ice Master opened the great sliding doors to the surface. He twisted the power dial and simultaneously pulled back on the main control lever. There was a mighty lurch that sent vibrations and metallic clangings surging through the whole structure of the flier as it came up off the floor, wobbling in the air currents now flowing through the hangar. He eased it forward, waiting until the open door above showed a broad rectangle of blue sky and searing golden sun, with wisps of snow darting past to suggest a strong wind. He twisted the power dial further and pulled back yet farther on the main control. The flier reared up on its broad-finned tail, pushing Blade deep into the cushions of the control chair, then leaped into the sky.

Blade rather doubted that the Menel would be likely to try to stop his flight. But he preferred to be on the safe side, so kept the flier as low as possible, so low that radar would find it hard to pick him up and even seeing the flier, silver-gray against the blaze of the snow-covered ice cap, would be chancy. This meant flying slowly, because neither the automatic pilot nor his own skills were up to hedgehopping the flier at its normal cruising speed of twice the speed of sound. The fact that he had been able to learn to handle the big flier at all was more a tribute to its simplicity and foolproof design than to his own piloting abilities.

So he crept along at barely half the speed of a Home Dimension jet airliner for better than two hours. He skimmed less than a hundred feet above fangs of intricately sculptured ice, watching streamers of snow blow out like the plumes of a cavalry helmet from blue-green shimmering ice domes, feeling the updrafts as the wind struck vertical cliffs of chiseled whiteness and hurled itself upward, to strike the flier and toss it about. The sky was a flawless blue that might have been enameled and then polished to a glowing sheen tinged with gold and silver, and neither storm nor whiteout threatened him.

At the end of the two hours, neither his own eyes nor the far-reaching radars of the flier showed any signs of pursuit. He checked the charts again for the precise course south to Tengran, then set the auto-pilot and lifted the flier up to cruising speed and altitude. At more than twice the speed of sound he raced south, the flier locked on course, the ice now ten miles below and reduced to a featureless plain of blazing white, only the faintest blue lines etched across it to mark where crevices plunged down into cold blue darkness.

Less than two hours at cruising speed took the flier clear of the glacier land and out over the narrow belt of tundra, green now at the height of summer. The river whose banks he had reached the first night in this dimension began there, a silver thread creeping south across the tundra, losing itself for a while in the tumbled gray masses of the mountains down which he had climbed, and then appearing again in flashes of light under the trees of the forest that spread to the horizon on either side. Blade dropped the flier down to treetop height again to avoid giving premature alarm to the Tengrans.

He flashed over the ruins of Irdna low enough to see figures squatting around a campfire in the now weed-green town square. They jumped up, pointed, and scattered, running frantically for cover. He wished the flier had an outside speaker system, so that he could explain himself before climbing out and exposing himself to the arrows and musket balls of people who might be too frightened to ask questions before they fired. Then he stopped himself. Time spent wishing for what you didn't have and weren't going to get was usually a gift to an enemy who acted at once with what he had.

Three days' travel along the river by boat was less than half an hour at the speed of the flier, even at low altitude. Blade saw the mountains that marched across the southern end of the lake jutting up on the horizon, their snowcaps sadly shrunken under the summer sun. Then the gap in the trees far ahead showed where the river flowed into the lake, and a minute later Blade raced out over the lake and saw Tengran on its island dead ahead. As he sailed over the town he saw the smoke of the alarm fires starting to puff up. It struck him that it was going to be a delicate process landing the huge flier on the island without flattening half a dozen buildings and possibly the people in them. That would damn well get him shot the minute he stepped out the door!

He came around in a wide circle, losing speed as he did so, searching the island for a space long enough and wide enough to accommodate the huge flier. The town itself was largely inside or near the walls, but for reasons good or bad odd buildings sprouted like mushrooms almost everywhere he looked, and where there weren't buildings there were trees and ditches.

He had to circle the island three times before he found what he hoped would be a large enough space. He lined the flier up, sighting on a low unpainted wooden building visible through the lower nose port, dropped slowly until the indicator spurs dug in and their lights flashed green on the master control board, then cut all power. The flier dropped with a solid jar and then a series of lighter ones as the whole huge structure wobbled and wiggled itself to a secure rest, with the hull belling and clanging as the stresses and strains shot through the metal. Blade braced his feet under the panel and stayed in his seat until the dance was through, then unbuckled himself and dropped through the floor hatch to the emergency hatch in the very nose of the flier.

Flattening himself against the floor in case somebody outside was ready to fire into the nose the minute the hatch opened, he pressed the switch and the hatch clanged open. Blade cautiously raised his head and looked out.

There was nobody in sight except three or four pigs rooting around the plank building, so Blade swung himself over the edge of the hatch and dropped to the ground. He landed with a squashy thump and went waist-deep in something soft and damp, and as he did so a gangling youth ran around the edge of the building. Blade raised his hands, then looked down-and sight and smell together made him realize that he was standing up to his middle in a manure pile.

«Damn!» was the first thing he said, in a roar that made the boy jump and drop his crossbow, then:

«Hello. I am Blade, a friend of the Treduki. Your town elders have heard of me. Could you send word to them, please?» Then with a mighty lurch he pulled one leg free enough of the mess to take a stride forward, and staggered out into the open, heading for the lake. The boy picked up his crossbow and clutched it tightly. Blade didn't care. He was damned if he was going to try to explain himself to the elders of Tengran while he was half-covered with manure.