Master Of The Hashomi

Chapter 5

Blade was pleasantly surprised to wake up at all. He knew that people could die from losing the amount of blood he'd lost, even with Home Dimension's medical science to help them. Under the more primitive conditions of Dimension X, it would not have been at all difficult for him to slip away in spite of the best efforts of the men tending him.

He was still more pleasantly surprised to wake up in a bed, with the smell of clean linen and flowers around him, and in the background the crackling of a fire and the splash of flowing water. Mere comfort could not pull him through, if the doctors of the poppy-flower warriors didn't know their business. It would help him regain his strength more quickly once he was out of danger. That was all to the good. Being weak and helpless was never safe in Dimension X. It was even less safe when you were in the hands of people whose intentions toward you had once been murderous; and might easily become so again.

Blade shifted position slightly, to uncramp his legs. He felt pain stabbing him in a dozen places, and the constriction of bandages. He knew he must look as though he'd been run through a mowing machine. It was a miracle that none of those heavy, hard-swung swords had sunk through flesh into bone or vital organs. As it was, he would have a whole new crop of spectacular scars to add to the many he already bore in various places. Plastic surgery had kept his face in good repair, but the appearance of his body had caused at least one woman to ask if he made his living wrestling tigers and bears.

Someone in the room must have been watching for Blade to show signs of life. Suddenly there were two figures in white robes standing by the bed. The robes were so loose and flowing that it was impossible to tell whether the figures were men or women. One held a steaming bowl and a sponge, the other a large jar of glazed pottery and a bronze cup.

The first attendant pulled the light linen covering away from Blade and began sponging all the exposed areas of his skin. Then the second attendant poured something from the jar into the cup and held the cup to Blade's lips. That was a good sign. It suggested he had no internal injuries worth bothering about.

The cup held cool water, slightly sweetened with honey and holding a faint hint of some unknown drug. In spite of this it was the most delicious drink Blade could ever remember having. His throat seemed to be packed solid with dust and phlegm, and the sweet water washed it all away like the flood from a broken dam. Blade emptied the cup twice, and found he could move tongue and lips enough to say, «Thank you.»

He thought he saw the two attendants smile, but couldn't be sure. Sleep was taking him away again, and he didn't resist.

Gradually Blade spent more time awake and less time sleeping. Even more gradually the pain of his wounds faded, and inch by inch the areas covered by the bandages shrank. There was no sign of infection in any of the wounds, another pleasant surprise for Blade. These people seemed to have at least a practical understanding of infections and how to prevent them.

Without infection, none of Blade's flesh wounds were serious enough to be dangerous to someone in his superb physical condition and with his healing powers. He did not know exactly how long it was before he was able to get out of bed and take a few steps. It was certainly soon enough to surprise his attendants. They insisted that he get back into bed and stay there. He insisted just as vigorously that he should be allowed to move around.

Blade had never been a very good patient. He disliked the sensation of being helpless and bedridden even when he was safe in Home Dimension. Here he disliked it even more. He could not regain his strength lying in bed. Nor could he learn most of what he would need to know about these people who were holding him-as guest, or prisoner?

Probably prisoner, but certainly a valuable, even honored one. The attendants seemed genuinely concerned about his health as they urged him to return to bed. The room itself was plainly furnished-only a bed, a low table, and some cushions and mats on the floor-but it was spotlessly clean. The food they began to serve him was plain-more of the honeyed water, bread, cheese, fruits and vegetables, clear soups-but excellent. No damp cells, no moldy straw, no scampering rats, sour porridge, or prison fevers to worry about. He could survive this sort of captivity as long as he might need to.

He no longer needed to sleep more than his normal five hours a night, but found it useful to pretend that he needed more. When they thought he was asleep, the attendants would talk freely in his hearing, as they sponged him down, changed his bandages, and swept the room. They were all women or old men; not deep into the secrets of the poppyflower warriors, but what they said told Blade a good deal of what he needed to know.

He was among the Hashomi. The Hashomi were a band of warrior adepts, like the ninjas of medieval Japan or the hashshashin of the medieval Arab world. There were several thousand of the sworn, trained adepts. Most had been born among the Hashomi and brought up from infancy in their way of life, a way of life that depended heavily on various drugs.

In addition to the sworn fighters, there were men and women to tend the crops, heal the sick and wounded; repair the houses, bear and raise the children who would become Hashomi, and do everything else needed to maintain a civilized society. All of them lived within the great valley that stretched east and west from the great mountain with its plume of snow. Few outsiders had ever sought to penetrate the mountains that stood between the valley and the desert. Fewer still had succeeded, and none had ever returned alive to outside world.

The Hashomi did not remain entirely hidden within their home valley. Far across the desert lay a great city called Dahaura, apparently the center of an empire that spread across most of the Dimension. There was envy and hatred on people's faces and in their voices when they spoke of Dahaura. They also spoke of Hashomi going forth from the valley and entering Dahaura. What the Hashomi did in the city was never stated, but Blade suspected it was nothing approved of by the rulers of Dahaura.

All of the Hashomi, warriors and workers alike, were ruled by the Master. The man appeared to have no other name. At least Blade never heard him referred to as anything but «The Master.» Nor did Blade ever hear «The Master» spoken of except with genuine awe and reverence. Clearly the man had gifts or at least a strength of personality that made him someone to be followed-and someone for Blade to deal with very carefully.

Blade was glad he had all this firmly in mind before the day came for him to meet the Master of the Hashomi.

It was just before sunset, and Blade was sitting on a cushion on the terrace of one of the buildings that served as a hospital. On the valley floor far below the terrace, the fields of wheat and flax were already disappearing behind a rising veil of mist.

A wooden railing ran along the edge of the terrace. It was only waist-high and painted white for visibility in the darkness. Beyond the railing, the valley wall plunged away, four hundred vertical feet to the fields below. The rock of the cliff was as free of handholds as a billiard ball. Anyone going over the railing to escape would not get far.

There was another way out of the hospital, to be sure. It lay through a tunnel carved from the solid rock behind the ledge where the hospital buildings stood. The tunnel began just behind the attendants' huts and ran straight, to come out five hundred feet farther along the valley wall and a hundred feet below the hospital. Several smaller side tunnels or caves opened off it on the inward side. Each one was closed off by a heavy wooden door with a small iron grating in the center. Blade caught faint smells and still fainter sounds through these gratings that hinted of prison cells or even worse behind the doors.

He could move freely up and down the chill, dim tunnel. He could not leave it. A few yards beyond the lower end of the tunnel was a twenty-foot gap in the ledge, spanned by a light wooden footbridge.

Beyond the bridge was a shallow cave. In that cave fifteen or twenty of the fighting Hashomi were always on guard duty. No one could come out of the tunnel mouth and across the bridge without being seen and met by the guards.

Blade knew he would not be getting out of the hospital without the consent of the Hashomi. At least not downward, and as for going upward, that would require more time. Time to regain his full strength, time to study the slopes above him, time to assemble some sort of climbing gear, food, and weapons. He would not plunge back into the mountains with nothing but a knife and raw goat's meat between him and death, not when the Hashomi might be hard on his trail.

He was considering where to look for climbing gear when he heard someone padding silently across the stones of the terrace behind him. Blade rose, turning until he could face the newcomer without having his own back to the edge of the terrace and the cliff below.

He knew with a single glance that this must be the Master of the Hashomi. No one else in this valley would be carrying himself like this man, with the same air of command, of confidence, of total assurance that no one would show him anything but due and proper obedience.

From the remarks he'd overheard, Blade would not have been surprised to find the Master a man seven-foot-tall and broad in proportion. He was taller than any man Blade had seen among the Hashomi-a hair under six feet. He was slender and supple as a whip, almost gaunt. Instead of trousers and vest, he wore a dark-blue robe embroidered with white poppy flowers, gathered in at the waist with a white sash. His bare feet were leathery brown, as was the face framed by a square-cut gray beard. His skull was bare and hairless. Two knives were slung at his waist and he carried one of the long staves in his left hand. This one was thicker than the one carried by the leader in the battle at the bridge. It seemed to be gilded, and there was a large silver ball at one end, perforated with a number of small holes.

Blade decided against kneeling or bowing, even though it was probably expected. It might help to seem a man who could not be intimidated, cowed, or brought to obedience against his will. That might anger the Master, but it might also arouse his curiosity. Such a man could be something new in the Master's experience, something not to be destroyed until its possibilities had been explored.

It was a gamble, but it was a gamble that offered Blade more hope than jumping off the terrace or hurling himself barehanded at the guards below the tunnel.

Blade stood calm and straight, hands clearly visible and motionless at his side. He never took his eyes off the Master, and particularly the Master's hands. Both hands were long fingered and narrow, with prominent bones, encased in tightfitting white gloves. In those gloves they reminded Blade of the hands of a corpse or a skeleton.

Then the Master spoke.

«So. You have come to the Valley of the Hashomi, in the shadow of the White Mountain. That is a journey that few have made. None have returned from it, except as Hashomi or as corpses carried away by the streams of the mountains that shield us. Which will it be for you, far-traveling stranger?»

Blade shook his head. «Neither.»

The Master's wide black eyes narrowed slightly. «That cannot be.»

«With all respect, Master of the Hashomi, you are wrong.»

Being flatly contradicted was defiantly something the Master seldom experienced. His eyes narrowed practically to slits, and his free hand tightened into a fist. His whole body seemed to be vibrating slightly, like a plucked harp string.

Here was the first crisis. The Master's notion of dealing with opposition might be a simple «off with his head.» In that case Blade had only a few minutes to live. The Master had even less. Blade was not completely well yet, but he knew he was perfectly able to wring the Master's lean neck.

The crisis passed. The Master's fist unclenched, his eyes opened, and he hooked a thumb into his sash. With a look that might have held the hint of a smile, he nodded at Blade.

«Very well. You will not become either a Hashom or a corpse. Tell me how this is to be.»

«My name is Blade,» said the Englishman. «In my homeland, I was of an order not unlike the Hashomi» He gave a quick description of the British Intelligence Service, translating it into terms the Master would grasp. He described J as a man who'd been a mighty warrior in his youth and now instructed the young adepts of «the British agents.» Lord Leighton was a scholar and doctor, so learned and with so many devices and potions at his command that some suspected him of wizardry.

«Do not think that because my Order has two men to do what the Hashomi do with one Master, we are weaker. In Britain, it has been found that the warrior and the scholar each do their own task best when they do not have to do the other's as well. Matters seem to be different among the Hashomi, and I would gladly learn why.»

«If you become one of the Hashomi, you will learn that and much else,» said the Master.

Blade smiled. «I am sorry, but that is not possible. I cannot become of the Hashomi. At least I cannot become of the Hashomi as you have made them, with the drugs you take from the flower on your robe.»

«I think it is for me to say what is and is not possible, herein the Valley of the Hashomi. If you become of the Hashomi, handr potions will be in your body. If you do not become of the Hashomi-«

«Yes, I know, I know,» said Blade. «Then my body will be in the mountain streams, food for the fish. You have said this before, and I know well enough what you believe: I say that this is not so. May I tell you why?»

Either the Master was getting used to Blade's contradicting him, or he was curious about how Blade proposed to accomplish the impossible. He nodded.

«You may speak further.»

«We use no drugs among the British agents, except for one. That is a drug that makes it impossible for us to receive any other drug into our bodies.»

«How-impossible?» The Master at least seemed willing to hear him out.

«Any other drug that is given to us will either kill us or at least make us sleep like men struck on the head.»

«Any drug?»

«Yes. The more powerful the drug, the more likely we are to die. The drugs you give the Hashomi must be very powerful. Also, I have not yet gained back all my strength. So if you were to give me the drugs of the Hashomi, I would most certainly die.»

The Master took a strand of his beard between two fingers and twirled it. «This is as it may be. Yet it seems to me that you must die, in one way or another. If you do not take the drugs, we must-«

Blade gently shook his head, until the Master broke off and looked at him, both suspicious and curious. Good. The Master of the Hashomi was a man willing to argue and capable of weighing the merits of a case put before him. Blade was not completely surprised to find that the Master was such a man. He'd always heard the Master spoken of as a wise leader as well as a mighty warrior. Such leaders could usually use their heads as well as their sword arms. He would still move cautiously, though. Strange orders of warrior adepts like the Hashomi sometimes had equally strange leaders, as deadly and ultimately as deaf to argument as the sands of the desert.

«There is another possibility, if you are willing,» said Blade. «I am an exile from my homeland, with small chance of returning. The fanatical rulers of our land have suppressed the British agents. Some have remained, in the vain hope of rebuilding the Order in secret. They will not succeed, not in Britain and not in their lifetimes.

«I would not spend the rest of my years living like a rat in a cellar. If the British agents are to rise again, it will be with the aid of other warriors, their kin in spirit. Warriors such as the Hashomi. So I came to your valley in peace, and I would stay here in peace.»

«Your arrival at the bridge was not the most peaceful sort,» said the Master.

«No, it was not. That was not my choice. I do not know what level of skill the Hashomi who guarded the bridge that night have reached. I would say that it was not high. They may be brave and good with their swords, but I cannot say much for their ability to think.»

The Master refused to be baited into giving a definite answer to Blade's question. His lips wrinkled in a sour smile that showed Blade's thrust had gone home. Then he spoke soberly, picking his words with care.

«You, Richard Blade of the British agents, think that you are worthy to join the Hashomi, as you stand before me here and now?»

Blade wanted to say «Yes,» but something told him that would be pushing matters too far too fast. So he shrugged.

«I have been wounded, and that takes strength from a man. I must regain all the strength I had the day I came upon your Hashomi at the bridge. When I have done that, I will perhaps be worthy to join the Hashomi.»

«You will submit to a proper testing of your worth?» The note of hope in the Master's voice rang encouragingly in Blade's ears. He felt like grinning. The Master wasn't going to let a willing and gifted fighting man slip out of his grasp, even if he had to bend a few rules of the Hashomi to do it.

«That depends on what you mean by a proper testing,» said Blade. He wasn't going to let himself be trapped into promising to attempt the impossible.

«You must face Hashomi fighters again,» said the Master. «You must show everything you have learned as a British agent. If you are superior to the Hashomi, certain things may become possible that would not be possible otherwise.»

«What if I am not superior to the Hashomi? What if I am only-different?» Blade was equally unwilling to be caught in a «win or die» situation if he could avoid it.

The Master's fist clenched again. His voice did not change, but Blade sensed the impatience beginning to build up in the man. He decided to end this argument over the testing as quickly as he could without too much danger to himself.

«Very well. I will go against the Hashomi.»

«Barehanded,» interrupted the Master. «Barehanded, and your opponent will have a sword.»

Blade shook his head. Talk about attempting the Impossible! «No. Think of the wounds a sword can inflict. I could win, slay my opponent, and still die myself. Even if I did not die, what could I teach the Hashomi if I had to spend the rest of my life with one leg or one arm? If I must fight unarmed a man with a sword, you risk losing my knowledge regardless of how the fight comes out. That does not seem the wisest course of action. I would be ready to go against two of the Hashomi together, if they have only their knives and the drug-staves.»

«Two Hashomi, chosen by me?»

«Yes.»

«They will be chosen for their skill and speed, I warn you.»

«I would not ask that it be otherwise,» said Blade. «You must give me a proper testing, and I must pass it. Otherwise you are setting aside the ways of the Hashomi to no good purpose.»

«That is true,» said the Master. «Yet the ways of the Hashomi have only one aim, and that is to make the Hashomi fit for war. If this is not done, how can we pass the tests the future holds for us? If we fail, what good will it be to us that we have failed according to the ways of our fathers?» He raised a hand in a farewell salute to Blade. «In three weeks time, will you be strong again?»

«I expect to be.»

«Very well. In three weeks, then.» The Master turned and strode across the terrace, quickly vanishing among the buildings of the hospital.

Blade found it easier to breathe after the Master was out of sight. He'd won himself at least three weeks more of life for certain. If he passed his testing, he'd win more life, perhaps freedom of movement, perhaps even the favor of the Master.

That was not altogether a good thing. The Master's favor could protect him, but it would also mean the Master's eye on him and the Master's keen mind analyzing all his actions.

It was not necessarily safe to have someone like that watching you, even if for the moment he might be on your side.