Looters Of Tharn

Chapter 15

A month of hard work followed.

Blade began to train ninety picked fighters in his methods for attacking Looter machines. Much of the training was guesswork, and would be guesswork until it was tested in combat. This bothered Blade.

It didn't bother the people. They would follow wherever Mazda led, sure that Mazda could and would lead them only to victory.

Blade wished he could be that confident. Pretending that he was soon became one of the hardest parts of his job.

None of it was easy. Day in and day out, he spent twelve and fourteen hours a day in grinding training. He ended each day sweat-soaked, dry-throated, dust-covered, all his muscles aching. But then he would have to face a council meeting, and finally take a woman determined to have Mazda's seed in her.

That normally would have been a very pleasant part of his duties. But now more often than not a woman was the last thing Blade wanted to face at the end of the day.

Fortunately Blade had the capacity of at least three ordinary men when it came to sex. Otherwise there would have been a good many disappointed women among the people, and rumors running about that Mazda was not all that a man should be!

The machine's power lasted nearly a month. By the time it became immobile, it had given up nearly all the secrets Blade felt he needed to know. Meanwhile the building of teksin weapons and armor, research into explosives, and a dozen other projects went forward at top speed.

A week after that Blade rode east with an expedition fifty strong. Besides himself there was Anyara and eight fighting teams of six. The other forty trained fighters stayed behind, to start the training of more of their comrades. «In time a thousand or more of the people will know how to fight the machines of the Looters. In every town and village, on every farm, in each band of herdsmen, there will be some. Against such numbers the Looters cannot win.»

«They may kill many of us,» said King Rikard soberly, concerned for his people.

«True. But those who die will make sure that the people live.» Blade did not mention his reason for saying this more confidently than before. He was more and more certain that the Looter command system must be incredibly cumbersome, inflexible, unable to adapt rapidly to meet new threats.

In war, that was a sure road to defeat.

Nearly two months had gone by since he captured the machine. Surely a command with any sort of normal wits about it would have done something to search out the missing war machine! But the eastern horizon remained bare of any signs of Looters.

Now, however, they would be riding out toward that horizon. For the first time in two years the fighters of the people would ride out, hoping to see the machines of the Looters ahead of them.

Each of the fifty rode his own horse. Along with them went a string of baggage animals, carrying extra food and weapons. Some also carried the few pieces of metal the expedition needed-cooking pots, arrowheads, and the like. If they met the Looters, those animals would be cut loose and driven away. Otherwise not a man, woman, or animal of the expedition carried anything that had not once been living. There were a good many grumbles and growls of «A little bit won't hurt,» but Blade was taking no chances.

They rode toward the city of Miros. The councilors and experienced fighters and neuters suggested it might be the Looters' next target. Certainly the Looters would most likely be seeking new prey by now. Even if Miros was not yet under attack, it was better and wiser to go there than to ride up and down and back and forth across the endless plains, hoping by chance to meet the Looters.

Eight days' travel brought them to Miros. It had been a small city, a tenth the size of vanished Urcit. It stood on a low rise of ground, looking down on a shallow lake surrounded with bushes almost the height of trees.

Blade walked along the white gravel beach on the side of the lake nearest the city. Anyara walked beside him. Behind them they heard cheerful shouts and playful splashings as half the fighters stripped and plunged into the lake. The other half remained on guard by the horses or in a mounted scouting line thrown out toward the east. That was another strict rule Blade had laid down-half the force on the alert at all times by day, a third of it on guard by night.

Anyara looked up at the city above them and shivered.

«I feel as though the ghosts of all of the people who lived in that city are up there, watching us and judging us.»

Blade could see that she was genuinely on edge. «What do they think of us, I wonder?»

«You-you are something apart from the rest of us, for you are Mazda. But the rest of us-I don't know. They may wonder who these horse barbarians are. Surely not their descendants! We came so far, to build that city and the others like it, and then it all faded away when the men were driven out.»

«They have come back now,» said Blade gently. «And none of the people will ever make that mistake again.»

Anyara shuddered. «No, by all that we believe in and hope for!» She laughed. «No doubt we shall make every other mistake a people can make, twice or three times over. But that one we shall never make again.»

Blade was about to suggest that they also get into the water, when a shout from behind froze the words in his throat. He turned, to see one of the scouts come galloping toward the lake. The young woman took her horse over the bushes like a steeplechase rider, then came plunging down the bank. As she rode, she waved an arm and shouted. She reached the beach, and Blade made out what she was shouting.

«Looters! Looters come! Four war machines! They are coming!»