The Chronocide Mission

6. INSKOR

Sheer happenstance had given the the Ten Peerdoms’ critical mountain border to the peer most capable of defending it. The Peer of Easlon was a rotund little woman with sharp eyes and a plain but kind face. Her eldest daughter, the prince, was as unlike her mother as possible in appearance, being tall, slender, and handsome; and as much like her as possible in intelligence and ability.

An equally fortunate twist of fate had given Easlon a genius for a chief scout at the precise moment when he was most needed. Inskor was a grizzled veteran of conflict on Easlon’s eastern border and the survivor of more hazardous missions into Lant than he could recall. His effectiveness was enhanced enormously by his relationship with his peer, which was one of respectful admiration and also of mutual affection—emotions rarely found in contacts between different social classes. They worked together in perfect rapport. Inskor was of course a one-namer. The job of scout—full of danger and severe hardship with small reward—held no appeal for peeragers.

When word reached Easlon Court that raiders from Lant had crossed the frontier, the peer sent no orders to Inskor. None were necessary. The event had long been considered inevitable, and plans for dealing with it had been formulated sikes before. In principle, Inskor’s task was to make the raid as costly as possible for the Lantiff with the smallest possible loss to Easlon. He was not to offer battle. Instead, his scouts were to hang on the flanks of the raiding force, picking off stragglers and restricting the activity of the Lantian scouts but without risk to themselves.

If time permitted, he was to evacuate everything of value in the path of the raid. He was to ambush the raiders whenever the opportunity occurred—but only if this could be done without endangering his own force—and repeat the ambushes until the invaders were wiped out or driven out of Easlon.

The plan had worked to perfection, but Inskor had no time to savor his victory. He hurried his scouts back to the frontier to await Lant’s next move while he set about disposing of the Lantian dead and their possessions. He also had to decide what should be done with Egarn. He was still pondering that perplexing question two daez later when Arne finally arrived.

Inskor greeted him with mingled affection and relief. Arne’s father, Arjov, had been the old scout’s lifelong friend. They got to know each other well because Arjov, as first server for the Peer of Midlow, often performed errands for her throughout the Ten Peerdoms, and they had become friends in a way that was unusual for one-namers who were subjects of different peers.

Inskor had known Arne since he was a grave-eyed boy of six accompanying his father. Whereas others were astonished to see a child with so much intelligence and maturity, Inskor perceived the truth: Even at six, Arne was no child. He was a childish-looking adult who matter-of-factly accepted adult responsibilities and made decisions that would have frightened men many times his age. As illness incapacitated Arjov, Arne gradually assumed his duties. When the Peer of Midlow appointed him first server after his father’s death, she was merely confirming him in a post he already held.

At twenty, Arne still looked like a mere boy despite his sturdy build. His short facial hair had scarcely attained the status of a beard, but when there was anything to be discussed, when there was a decision to be made, everyone waited for Arne to speak—and then did what he suggested. He had ample opportunity to meet marriageable girls throughout the Ten Peerdoms, and girls everywhere thought him handsome despite his short stature, but he was still unwived. The girls may have been put off by his overwhelming seriousness of manner and total devotion to his duties; or perhaps girls his own age seemed frivolous to one who bore the cares of ten peerdoms on his shoulders.

“You have finally come!” Inskor exclaimed, grasping his hands. “Did you have trouble getting away?”

“Some. You know I can’t absent myself without a reason.”

“Have you heard what happened?”

“I heard your scouts wiped out two Lantian armies, burned Lant Court, and captured the peer. If it is true, I will apologize for not believing it.”

“You will find the truth just as unbelieveable.”

They talked for the remainder of the dae. Inskor described the rescue of Egarn, the strange weapon he carried, and the copies of it made under Egarn’s direction for the scouts. Then he called for horses, and they rode to the ford where the ambush had occurred. Inskor showed Arne where each scout had been hidden, described the Lantiff’s disarray in crossing the river— evidence of deplorable discipline, it had played into the scouts’ hands—and spoke with awe of the carnage the weapon had wrought. He pointed out the places where each peerager had fallen: The first general here; the prince over there; one of the peer’s sons by that tree; two high officers in a clump of bushes where they thought to hide; another of the peer’s sons while crossing the river, his body was recovered later; the third son…

Arne listened quietly and had few questions except when Inskor tried to describe Egarn’s weapon. Arne knew len grinding well. Arne knew everything well—that was part of his job. Inskor was unable to explain how or why the weapon worked, but he had no difficulty in describing its effects and discussing the most effective tactics for its use.

They returned to Inskor’s headquarters, and Arne was given one of the weapons to examine and a porkley to try it on. That niot Egarn and the two scouts from Slorn, Roszt and Kaynor, joined them. First they feasted on roast porkley—the porkley being the one Arne had killed with Egarn’s weapon— eating it with critical interest and trying to determine whether the strange beam of fire had tainted the meat. It tasted delicious. Then Egarn described his plan and the role Roszt and Kaynor were to play in it. Arne said little, but he was willing to listen as long as Egarn was willing to talk, and they sat late over the remains of the porkley and heard Egarn’s tales of his own country and a time he called the past.

Early the next morning, Arne and Inskor rode to a high bluff and sat on a log looking at the sweep of forested hills that marched in diminishing order into Easlon. Beyond the horizon were the other nine peerdoms—safe for the time being from the ravages of Lant because of Egarn’s weapon and the valiance of the Easlon scouts. The grizzled old scout wore leather scouting garb; Arne, the wool jacket and trousers of a one-name crafter, much stained by travel. As first server of the Peer of Midlow, he was entitled to a uniform appropriate to that high office, but he disdained it. Two more nondescript-looking men had ever held the fate of a world in their hands—if they actually did. That was what they were trying to decide.

“All of this is beyond me,” Inskor said. “I can’t believe it is possible to travel through time and kill someone. We both know the past is over and done with, but if what Egarn says is true, while you and I are sitting here talking, I also am sitting somewhere else and talking with your father as we often did many sikes ago.”

Arne’s gray eyes were fixed on more remote horizons. “What Egarn said about the past—the wars and the destroyed civilization—explains much we have wondered about.”

“Maybe,” Inskor said doubtfully, “but talking about the past and traveling there are two different things. This Johnson must have been a monstrously evil man if the len he invented really did destroy the world and kill off most of the human race. If that could be prevented by murdering him, there is no doubt someone should do it. But who would believe such a thing is possible? Even if it could be done, Easlon has dozens of len grinders who can make a Honsun Len with ease. So does Midlow. So does every other peerdom. Why does Egarn think killing one man would make the len disappear? Surely someone else would have made it if this Johnson hadn’t.”

“A complicated thing like the Honsun Len can’t be made until it has been thought of,” Arne said. “It is the idea of the len that must be destroyed. If our own len grinders had neither seen nor heard of a Honsun Len, none of them could make one. This Johnson must be killed before he tells anyone else about it, or writes a description, or draws plans. Better yet, before he even thinks of it. Egarn made that clear enough. Has he said what will happen to us if he succeeds in changing human history?”

“He doesn’t know,” Inskor said. “He hopes the past will be set on a new path toward a future without war and catastrophe. If many futures can exist at the same time, whatever that means, then we may not notice anything different. If the past has only one future, then the world we know would simply stop existing. We might vanish like the flame when you blow out a candle. Obviously he doesn’t know—he is simply guessing. He says if we do disappear into nothing, we would be sacrificing ourselves for the welfare of humanity. This is the one chance humanity has to keep most of the people of Earth from living out their lives in mindless slavery.”

“It is difficult to believe.” Arne turned and looked thoughtfully at Inskor. “But if Egarn hadn’t brought the weapon with him, would you have believed him when he told you what it would do?”

“No. Not a word of it. I would have asked him to make one and show me.”

“We are in the same position with this talk about time travel, so we will ask Egarn to build his machine and show us. He may not be able to. Some of the things he needs are so rare they may no longer exist, and without them he can’t even make a beginning. Even if he builds his machine, it may not do what he expects it to, and I have my doubts that Roszt and Kaynor can learn the past’s ways well enough to carry out his mission. If a total stranger who talked and behaved oddly suddenly appeared in Midd Village, people would keep an eye on him and stop him if he tried to kill someone. The past shouldn’t be much different in that respect.”

“That is true,” Inskor agreed. “Egarn says there were guardians who did nothing but try to prevent serious crimes like murder.”

“In any case, it may be sikes before Egarn’s machine is ready, and we can stop the the project any time we choose—if it doesn’t stop itself because of difficulties that can’t be overcome. There are only two decisions that must be made now. The first is whether to let Egarn start—because if he is to do this thing, he must start at once. He is elderly, and the future for the Ten Peerdoms looks bleak. The longer we wait, the more likely it is that events beyond our control will decide this for us.”

“I hate having to make decisions about things I don’t understand.”

Arne smiled at the old scout. “You have already made several important decisions about this, my friend, and all of them have been correct. The most vital was deciding not tell your peer about the weapon. I would trust my own peer with my life. I already have, several times. I feel the same way about the Peer of Easlon. Among the ten peers, they alone merit any kind of trust, as you well know, but I wouldn’t trust either of them with Egarn’s weapon.”

Inskor glumly agreed.

“Do your scouts know how totally secret all of this must be?” Arne asked.

“Only Bernal, Roszt, Kaynor, and one len grinder know about Egarn. The len grinder is Inskel.”

Arne nodded approvingly. Inskel was Inskor’s son, now middle-aged himself and highly skilled.

“The moment they were safely within Easlon, Bernal came on ahead to tell me what had happened, and I made certain no one else saw Egarn. Roszt and Kaynor have been with him ever since. Egarn showed Inskel how to make the weapon. Inskel divided the labor among the best len grinders in the peerdom. No one of them did enough work to understand what it was Inskel was making, and none of them knew that anyone else was helping him. Each was sworn to secrecy, of course. That was as much care as we could contrive when copies of the weapon were needed so urgently. The scouts who used them also were sworn to secrecy, but except for Bernal, none of them knows anything about Egarn. Are you really going ahead with this?”

“I will decide before I leave here. There are so many uncertainties in Egarn’s plan that it will probably come to nothing anyway, but the decision to start must be made at once. If we delay, we may find that it can’t be done at all. We will have ample time later to decide whether we really want him to send assassins into the past.”

“Will you confide in the League of One-Namers?”

“Not even the League can be trusted with this. I have to guard against spies in everything I do. There are always a few one-namers who will sell their birthrights for favors and advancement. Where Egarn is concerned, we can’t afford a single act of treachery. No one is to know this secret who doesn’t need to know it.”

“Where will Egarn work?”

“That is the second thing to be decided,” Arne said with a smile.

“I suggest Easlon. The Prince of Midlow will turn that peerdom into another Lant within a tenite of her mother’s death.”

“Some of us doubt that she will wait a tenite.”

“Yes. A pity. It is Midlow’s tragedy, but it is bound to affect all of us. I haven’t seen her since she was a child. They say she is a beautiful woman.”

“The most beautiful in the Ten Peerdoms. And the most vicious.”

Inskor leaped to his feet. A horseman was approaching in the valley far below them. “Messenger,” he said. “We had better meet him.”

They mounted and rode back down the slope. The messenger brought his galloping horse to a halt when he saw them approaching.

“The peer is coming!” he gasped.

Inskor turned to Arne. “I must be there to greet her.” He rode off at a furious pace with Arne and the messenger trailing after him.

Inskor’s command post was a large stone building artfully concealed in a mountain forest. It served as his residence and also as a supply depot for his scouts. Usually there were several of them resting there between missions. He was waiting at the entrance when the Peer of Easlon rode up at a smart canter.

She rode superbly despite her short, plump stature. Her daughter the prince was with her, only eighteen sikes old but already a radiantly beautiful woman. Their only escort consisted of two elderly servers, one of whom had been sent on ahead to announce her coming.

Inskor greeted them warmly and assisted them in dismounting. Then he sank to both knees and told the peer quietly, “Majesty, you should not have come here. You should never travel anywhere without a strong escort. You should never come this far east no matter how many servers accompany you. You and the prince should never travel together. These are perilous times.”

“Perilous for an invader, certainly,” the peer said. “But surely not for a peer traveling in her own domain.” She signaled Inskor to rise.

He did so, and then he committed an unthinkable breach of decorum by speaking while looking the peer squarely in the face. “Majesty, we know how easily our scouts penetrate the Peerdom of Lant. The Lantian scouts only require practice to become as skilled as we are. It would be a rare coup for them to carry the Peer of Easlon to Lant as a prisoner. It would be a disaster for Easlon and the Ten Peerdoms if peer and prince were lost together. You must not travel without a strong escort. You must never travel together. Neither of you should venture so close to the frontier.”

His intensity disconcerted them. They followed in silence when he turned and led them into the building. Plao 3 mornings were chill at that altitude, and a fire crackled in the enormous stone fireplace. The furniture was roughly fashioned—the chief scout of Easlon did not maintain his home as a place of ease— but Inskor made them as comfortable as possible.

When they had seated themselves, Inskor again sank to his knees. “Your bidding, Majesty.”

“My bidding is that you bring a chair and sit with us,” the peer said impatiently. “We need to talk.”

Inskor obediently brought a chair and composed himself to listen. When a peer told a one-namer, “We need to talk,” she usually meant she had much to say to him.

She was deeply disturbed. When, years earlier, she had approved Inskor’s plan for defending Easlon against raids—with the provision about annihilating the invaders if possible—she had been thinking of small parties of scouts, not a raid of a hundred warriors led by notables from the Peer of Lant’s own family, the prince among them.

She was not surprised to learn that Inskor and his scouts had attacked and defeated a vastly superior force. They were expert night fighters. They could choose the time and place of their attack, and they were fighting for their own peerdom in territory where they knew every twig. The enemy had been far from home and fighting blind. She fully expected Inskor to send even such a large raiding force as this one reeling back over the mountains in bloody defeat. It was essential that he do so—essential that the raid be made a cautionary example for the Peer of Lant.

She had not expected him to launch a daytime attack with a mere twenty-five scouts and kill more than a hundred of Lant’s best warriors and all of their officers at the cost of two scouts slightly wounded.

Peer and prince had ridden to the scene of the carnage before they called on Inskor, but they quickly withdrew. The sickening sweet odor of death hung over the river valley, blended with the stench of burning flesh, for Inskor had decreed the complete destruction of the corpses and all of their equipment. One of his scouts was in charge, and a force of no-namers—supervised by lashers—was dealing with the battle’s debris. All of the metal had been hammered into unrecognizable shapes to be hauled away for salvage. Everything else was being burned or pulverized. If a dedicated Lantian scout somehow managed to penetrate that deeply into Easlon, there would be no shred of bone, no splinter of tooth remaining to mutely proclaim the fate of his prince. The captured horses had been taken west to places of concealment. Along the border, Inskor’s scouts were already poised to turn back Lant’s inevitable probes for news of the lost raiding party.

The peer said soberly, “I am sorry the Prince of Lant and her brothers were killed. Couldn’t they have been made prisoners?”

Inskor kept his gaze on an opposite window while he spoke. “In battle, Majesty, it is often difficult to know who is present until it is over.”

“Yes, yes, I understand that. You were only carrying out a plan long agreed upon, but I really didn’t think it possible to totally destroy such a large force. Now I am wondering whether it was necessary and whether it wouldn’t have been wiser to take prisoners.”

“Majesty, our plan was not devised merely to be vindictive. It was based on a sound military premise. In her insolence, the Peer of Lant thought to demonstrate that all the massed might of Easlon was not strong enough to interfere with a mere hundred Lantian warriors. She thought us far weaker than we are. Now that her force has disappeared without a trace, her sleep will be troubled with imaginings about how powerful we are. She may even suspect we use sorcery. Already our scouts have begun planting rumors across the border, and we will harvest a goodly crop from them. The next Lantiff raiding party that comes west will do so reluctantly, and it will be better prepared to flee than to give battle.”

“The Peer of Lant is not one to be influenced by rumors,” the peer said.

Inskor kept his eyes on the window. “Majesty, the Peer of Lant will not require assistance from anyone to see the truth in this matter: What Easlon has done once, it can do again, and unless she learns what befell the first force, a second force may commit the same errors and disappear in the same way. She will send scouts—many scouts. If she is the military genius her victories suggest, she won’t raid Easlon again until it has been successfully scouted, and she won’t send an army until it has been successfully raided. We have bought ourselves something beyond price, Majesty. Time.”

The peer was still troubled. “I know we had to strike as hard as possible. Still—the prince and her brothers would have made valuable hostages.”

“Dangerous hostages, Majesty. The peer would have spared nothing to rescue them.”

“But now she will spare nothing to avenge them,” the peer objected.

“You can’t have it both ways, Majesty,” the prince said impatiently. “They invaded us. They plundered and burned Eas, and if Inskor hadn’t evacuated it, they would have brutalized and murdered our one-namers. If the Peer of Lant sends her children into a neighboring peerdom to loot and kill, the deaths that result are her own doing.”

The peer murmured sadly, “I wish there were a better way.”

“Majesty, all of us wish the Peer of Lant would leave her neighbors in peace,” Inskor said dryly. “That would solve so many problems. But she won’t. If we hadn’t given battle, if we had let the Lantiff raid unopposed, the peer would have taken that as a sign of weakness and followed the raid with her army. If we had merely defeated the raiders and chased them back into Lant, she would have tested our strength by sending a stronger force. Now she will be uneasy. She will suffer many troubled nights when all of her dreams end in unanswered questions. Very soon she will have to accept that her Lantiff have been wiped from the Earth like the vermin they are. She will be enraged, but she is too good a general to rush west with another force that may vanish in the same way. We have bought time, Majesty. How well we use it depends on us.”

The peer sighed. “On us and on the other nine peerdoms— which means it will be used badly. I will do what I can, of course. Inskor, I want you to speak frankly. If the Peer of Lant seeks revenge with her army this year, what chance do we have?”

Inskor smiled. The outlook had been dismal before Egarn’s arrival. Now, for the first time in years, he could look eastward with confidence. He would soon have all of his scouts armed with the miraculous weapon—all except those who ventured into Lant. He could not risk having the weapon recaptured; but for a time, until Lant produced something to counter this astonishing force or managed to overwhelm it with sheer numbers, the scouts defending the border would be invincible. He wished he could tell the peer about that, but of course he could not.

“When the Peer of Lant looks toward Easlon, Majesty, she sees nothing. For sikes, every scout she has sent out has disappeared. If she strikes—with another raiding force or with an army—it will be a blow launched in the dark without knowing what or where the target is. We will fight her at a time and place of our own choosing. We will win the first battle, Majesty, and also the second.”

“Will you defeat her severely?”

Inskor nodded slowly and spoke in measured tones. “We will defeat her horribly. We will fill the valleys with dead Lantiff. If she finally attacks in a blind rage, throws in every reinforcement from her conquered lands, and pursues her revenge to the bitter end, she will outnumber us tens of thousands to one. Only the peer and her generals know how large the armies of Lant really are. In the end, she may crush us with the sheer weight of numbers, but in doing so she will destroy herself. She knows that danger. She is surrounded by defeated enemies who will seek their own revenge the moment she weakens herself. For that reason, she must prepare her moves with care. If we use our bought time well, we will be ready for her. If we don’t, we will be in the position of sitting and waiting until she discovers a sure method of destroying us.”

The peer gestured helplessly. “I know. You have been telling me for sikes that the Ten Peerdoms need an army.”

“If not the Ten Peerdoms, then Easlon. We should have formed our own army long ago.”

“My neighbors would have thought I was plotting against them—as you well know. Perhaps now that Lant has actually invaded us, one or two of them will listen to me and a beginning can be made.”

“It may be too late for beginnings, Majesty,” Inskor said. “The war will be over before the Ten Peerdoms can field an army competent to do battle with Lant. Armies aren’t assembled in a day, and even if one were, who in the Ten Peerdoms knows how to train and command one? Not I, and the Peer of Lant is unlikely to give us time to learn. But such an army is impossible while the peers fear each other more than they fear Lant. They will still be trying to cut each others’ throats when the Lantiff arrive to do it for them.”

The peer got to her feet. “The blunt truth is that we are doomed.”

Inskor slipped from his chair and sank his knees. “We at the eastern gates have always been doomed, Majesty. I offer you no pledge of a long life, but this I can guarantee: If the Peer of Lant leads her army through the mountains this year, the Peer of Easlon will survive her.”

“Thank you, Inskor. I would like to thank your scouts personally, but I understand that most of them have returned to their posts.”

“Victory over a few raiders doesn’t end a war, Majesty. It only begins one. There is much to do.”

“Please give them my thanks when you are able.”

There were six scouts resting at his headquarters, and Inskor ordered them to escort the peer all the way to Easlon Court. He saw the riders off. Then he returned to the house and sank into his chair. Talking with a peer was exhausting—especially when that peer was the Peer of Easlon.

Arne entered the room and took the chair the peer had just vacated. Inskor asked, “Were you able to hear?”

Arne nodded. “Your peer has a shining goodness. The Peer of Midlow has it in almost the same degree. The two of them are far too gentle and righteous for these troubled times.”

“That is why I think Egarn should work in Easlon. The only places worth considering are Easlon and Midlow, and only Easlon has a prince.”

“It is true that the Prince of Midlow will turn that peerdom into another Lant the moment she becomes peer,” Arne said. “If that were the only consideration, I would choose Easlon without hesitation. But how long will the scouts of Easlon be able to hold off the massed armies of Lant, even with Egarn’s miraculous weapon?”

“Who knows? If the Peer of Lant is able to practice patience, and if her generals are capable of learning new tactics, we won’t last long. But I don’t think either of those things will happen.”

“I have heard refugees describe a Lantian invasion. ‘Lantiff like the trees of a mountain forest,’ one said. You told your peer you would be outnumbered tens of thousands to one. While your few hundred scouts are massacring the Lantiff facing them, the other thousands upon thousands will simply flow around them. If you block the passes, there are other passes far to the south from which the Lantiff can turn north to attack you. They may find a way unknown to us through the mountains far to the north and attack from that direction. If the Peer of Easlon relents and lets you have an army, will it make any difference?”

“Not at any time soon. Lashers learn too slowly. If the war lasts long enough—and I intend to make it last as long as possible—then an Easlon army could become important. Peeragers know almost nothing about history, and it is tragic that the one event they do remember has prevented all of us from defending ourselves.”

In the dim past, at a time almost beyond memory, the army of one of the Ten Peerdoms had revolted. Peeragers were slaughtered, and the rebel officers tried to set themselves up as the peerdom’s rulers. The remaining peers had been horrified. They massed their own armies and hunted down the rebel officers and lashers without mercy. Then they resolved never to trust their armies again. They gradually replaced them with elite guards of lashers owned by individual peeragers—none of them large enough to cause trouble. These guards provided escorts for their masters and took turns patroling the roads and harassing the peerdom’s innocent, hard-working one-namers. Even with the armies of Lant on the march, the peeragers of the Ten Peerdoms were still too frightened by that spector out of the past to establish their own army.

“In any case, Easlon is too close to Lant,” Arne said. “We don’t want Egarn recaptured. The peer wouldn’t allow him to escape a second time. And then—Easlon has no ruins of the kind Egarn described. He said he must scavenge them for the materials he needs, and that would be difficult if he settled in Easlon. It also would be difficult to find a place for him to work here and people to help him. He must have his own little self-contained community of guards and crafters. They should be refugees from the wars—fugitive one-namers who have lost their homes and no longer have positions and responsibilities. They can dedicate themselves to assisting Egarn without being missed and causing questions to be asked.”

“That is almost a village you are describing.”

“Exactly. And it must be as secure as we can make it. We can’t expect Egarn to pack everything periodically and cart it into hiding. The machine he described will be too large to be moved, and it would be catastrophic to have to abandon it. The materials he needs are so scarce it might not be possible to build it more than once.”

“Then you will take Egarn to Midlow?”

“Midlow has the ruins Egarn needs. It is far from Lant, and as long as the peer lives, it is the safest place in the Ten Peerdoms.”

“But how long will that be? It’s rumored her health is poor. What will happen when the prince becomes peer?”

Arne smiled. “It is precisely because Easlon has an admirable prince that I choose Midlow. The Peers of Easlon and Midlow are both intelligent. Both are kind. Both have wisdom. If the direct support of the peer became essential, both would sacrifice much for the future of humanity. But the Peer of Easlon has the hope of a brilliant daughter. She would sacrifice herself, but she would never deny the prince her own opportunity to heal humanity’s hurts. The Peer of Midlow knows her daughter only too well. She has no such hope. Therefore Egarn’s plan to save humanity by sacrificing ourselves should not be based in Easlon.”

“Can humanity’s hurts be healed?”

“I fear not. We one-namers could take Egarn’s weapon and eliminate the rotten peeragers in all ten peerdoms, but we would still need no-namers to produce our food and repair our roads. We would need lashers to supervise them and to fight for us when the invasion comes, whether from east, west, north or south, as it certainly will. We would end by replacing the peeragers with a new group of rotten peeragers—ourselves. Our revolution would have changed nothing.”

Inskor said, “I still feel troubled about Egarn working in Midlow. I accept your decision for only one reason.” He smiled. “ Youwill be there. My instinct tells me this project will require all of your skill to keep it going.”

“There is one thing I can do for Egarn that no one else could do—in Midlow or anywhere else. The crafters who assist and guard him must be fed and clothed. I can apportion food and other supplies so they won’t be missed. It is a problem that will last as long as Egarn’s work lasts.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. Of course—you run the peerdom. Your father did it before you, and now you are doing it. That is why Midlow has the Ten Peerdoms’ most efficient government.”

Arne shrugged and got to his feet. “We have made the two decisions we had to make. Egarn will start work immediately, and he will work in Midlow. We will leave tonight. Later, I may send for Inskel. He is the best len grinder in the Ten Peerdoms, and the large lens Egarn needs may cause problems. But keep Inskel here for now. I want him to make enough of Egarn’s weapons to arm one-namers throughout the Ten Peerdoms.”

Rapid hoofbeats brought Inskor to his feet. The door was flung open, and a scout burst into the room. Behind him, his lathery horse stood snorting and panting.

“The Lantiff,” the scout gasped. “They are coming through Low Pass.”

“Another reconaissance group?” Inskor asked calmly.

“Bigger than the last. Bernal thinks two hundred, at least.”

“Very well. I will come at once. Everyone knows what to do. Look to your horse.”

Inskor turned to Arne. “You are right about the danger of leaving Egarn too close to Lant. The peer has allowed her personal feelings to override her military judgment. She is impatient to know what has happened to her sons and her prince. I suppose she will probe with heavier and heavier forces until the losses become too costly. The sooner you take Egarn out of Easlon, the better.”

“She may already suspect that we have Egarn’s weapon— or something like it,” Arne said. “I wonder what she will do when she is certain.”

They paused just inside the door. Beyond it lay the future with all of its enormous uncertainty. Both were accustomed to exercising responsibility and authority, to making far-reaching decisions, but they felt totally unprepared for this reckless plunge into the unknown. Egarn’s quest pointed beyond their vision and even beyond their imagining. The two of them— young first server and old chief scout—only knew that humanity was in desperate straights and a venture aimed at saving it was worth setting out on.