The Chronocide Mission

7. ARNE

Lashers raided Midd Village at dawn.

Arne heard shouts and the neighing of horses long before the winding dirt road took the final, downward curve that would bring the village into view. He turned abruptly and fought his way through thick undergrowth to the top of the wooded hill, leaving old Marof gaping after him bewilderedly.

At the crest, an ancient lookout gave him a sweeping view of Midd Valley. The rushing river that cleft it was lined with stone buildings where it passed the village: saw mill, flour mill, tannery, various craft factories. The village lay directly below him at the valley’s edge—three long cobbled streets of neat stone houses of two or three stories built on the terraced hillside. Scattered among the dark roofs were several new thatches that gleamed yellow in the early sunlight. The badly cracked and weathered red tiles that roofed a small shed stood out starkly. Farlon the potter had been trying for sikes to fire durable roof tiles.

The mills were already in operation, and a sudden, rasping whine announced the saw mill’s first cut of the day. All was normal there. The workers were unaware of what was happening to the homes they had left only moments before.

The village was a turmoil, and Arne studied the scene unfolding there with sickening apprehension. The Great Secret had been in his trust for more than three sikes without a breach of any kind, and he found it difficult to believe this was happening. It meant the collapse of all their plans. He had known from the beginning that a mere whiff of suspicion might be ruinous. All of Egarn’s equipment would have to be moved and his machines taken apart and rebuilt in new quarters, and that might set his work back fatally. And where could a secure workroom be found for him if the present one failed?

Stirring events had occurred on the Ten Peerdoms’ frontiers since Egarn’s arrival. The Peer of Lant sent force after force into Easlon, increasing the size of the invasion each time. All had been annihilated, though of course it was impossible to say whether every last Lantiff had been killed. A few might have escaped. If any did, what they told their peer had no affect on her tactics. After a series of defeats, she should have known—or at least suspected—that Easlon had Egarn’s weapon. Either she refused to believe, or she thought the weight of numbers must ultimately triumph.

Finally Easlon scouts sent back word that the peer had lost patience and was about to invade Easlon with two armies, moving one through High Pass and the other through Low Pass. Inskor led his scouts on a bold raid that pushed the Lantiff back from the passes, and Egarn’s weapon was applied in a new way: rocks, dirt, trees, entire mountain sides were sliced off to pour down into those critically important gaps. The water that had fed High Pass Falls was diverted westward into Easlon—whose dry eastern province needed it—and both passes were blocked permanently. Enterprising Lantian scouts might find high, hazardous ways through the mountains like those the Easlon scouts used, but no army could make the crossing until time or the weapon cut a passage for it.

The Peer of Lant accepted the inevitable and turned her armies southward. Their onslaught had long been expected there, and they no longer had Egarn’s weapon to terrorize their victims. The southern peerdoms were making the invasion a costly one, and it seemed likely to occupy Lant for sikes to come.

On the opposite frontier, the Peerdom of Weslon had been overrun by marauding lashers out of the far west, and its rotten nobility fled in panic—as did the cowardly peeragers of neighboring peerdoms. Fortunately Arne and Inskor had prepared for such an emergency. With the help of the League of One-Namers, they had formed a one-name defense force with Arne as the commander. A select group of one-namers from all of the Ten Peerdoms, both men and women, secretly trained as scouts and received lessons in warfare. From time to time a few one-namers who could absent themselves for a few monts without being missed went east to train with the scouts of Easlon or west to train with the scouts of Weslon, who likewise had a long border to guard.

This small army numbered only two hundred at the time of the Weslon crisis. It was pathetic force compared with the hordes of Lant but a respectable one for dealing with renegade lashers—especially since half the volunteer warriors were armed with Egarn’s weapon. Arne led his tiny force to battle and quickly cut the invaders to pieces.

The peeragers returned, Arne received commendations from all ten peers—who of course had no notion of how such a resounding victory had been accomplished—and with the critical eastern frontier sealed off and the western threat dispelled, an attitude of complacency, even somnolence, settled on the Ten Peerdoms—so much so that the Peer of Easlon gave up her agitation for a common army.

Through all of the turmoil, Egarn’s work had quietly gone forward, protected against every contingency except one— treachery by someone they trusted. Now it had happened.

The raid was meticulously organized. Lasher captains had taken up central positions on the three village streets, and their lieutenants patrolled on foot, looking into the houses and calling orders. Squads of lashers were searching each dwelling systematically and reporting to the lieutenants when they finished. Even the waiting horses had a role. They were held in readiness outside the houses their riders were searching in case there was a need to remount quickly.

The lashers wore uniforms Arne had not seen before: black cloaks with a slash of white, leather jackets, high boots, and red overs. For generations, Midd Village had made uniforms for the peeragers’ servers, whether for ceremonial or common use. This clothing, too, should have been designed and sewn by the village’s crafters from cloth woven in the mill below and leather from the tannery, but no part of that absurd dress had come from Midd.

Arne grimly turned this riddle over in his mind as he watched. The answer probably involved several loads of grain that were mysteriously unaccounted for and prentices the prince insisted on sending to the Prince of Chang in an exchange she worked out herself. The prentices she received in return vanished like the grain—probably into the prince’s own household. If they were seamster and leatherer prentices, that accounted for the uniforms. The vanished grain had gone to Chang to pay for the cloth and leather.

The Prince of Midlow suddenly rode into the center of High Street, the village’s topmost street, and halted there, sitting sternly erect on a creamy white horse that stood with its nose pointed at the largest house in the village, Arne’s dwelling. The polished leather of her boots and jacket and the flaming red of her overs gleamed in the early sunlight. Her long, golden hair tumbled in careless disarray on her shoulders. Only peerager females had the perogative of long hair, and they guarded it jealously—as peerager males defended their distinction of being clean-shaven—but most of the women piled their hair into elaborate structures dictated by the latest fad. The Prince of Lant scorned fashion and allowed her hair to fall freely.

Even from a distance, she was awesomely beautiful. Arne had admired her since they were children, but that did not prevent him from holding her in utter comtempt. He might have been hopelessly infatuated with her—liasons between peeragers and one-namers were unheard of in Midlow except for an occasional scandal involving a one-name server who lived at the court—if he had found it possible to love a woman he despised. The Prince of Midlow’s fellow peeragers were notable for sexual excesses and fits of selfishness and cruelty, but even they considered her flagrant misconduct shocking.

Old Marof took his place at Arne’s side. He had approached without a sound, and he stood motionless for a moment, staring down at the village, before he began muttering curses.

“Let’s burn ‘em,” he said scornfully. “Let’s get the weapons and burn ‘em. The prince, too. It will be easy. They aren’t expecting a thing. We can cut ‘em to pieces and dump their bodies in the quarry.”

Arne said soberly, “We can’t. The entire village would know, and an entire village can’t be trusted with a secret like that.” He paused. “There is nothing we can do. We don’t dare offer any kind of resistance to the next Peer of Midlow.”

“Her mother must be told at once,” Marof said. “We can do that.”

“The lashers are members of the prince’s new guard. Has there been any gossip at court about those uniforms?”

Marof shook his head.

“The Prince of Chang has a personal guard of uniformed lashers,” Arne said. “When our prince visited Chang Court last Haro, she saw the prince’s guard and wanted one for herself. The peer her mother said no. The prince must have recruited one without the peer’s knowledge, which is why she has been so secretive about it. I would like to know where she got the uniforms.”

He was anxiously scrutinizing the activity around his dwelling. As he watched, a lasher emerged from it, strode up to the prince, saluted, and handed something to her.

Marof cursed again. “He don’t even kneel. A lasher, and he don’t kneel to his prince. Let me tell the peer.”

Arne spoke slowly, keeping his eyes on the drama being enacted in the street below. “You came to me last night to report a rotten plank in the bridge below the east pasture.”

Marof chuckled. “Aya. Bad plank, that. If you say so, that’s what I did. Is there really a rotten plank there?”

“There is one that looks rotten. I have been saving it for an emergency like this. We went out before dawn to have a look at it. Then I sent you on a watchwalk along the South Wood Road to see whether the other bridges show signs of rot.”

“Aya. We parted at the fork. Do you want me to give the alarm at the ruins?”

“Tell them what is happening. Someone has talked, and the prince is looking for something—if she hasn’t already found it. Roszt and Kaynor were staying at my house.”

Marof turned in alarm. “Aya. That sounds bad. I’ll give the alarm.”

“Circle around by the swamp road and inspect the bridges there. Then head back and approach the court from the south. If anyone asks, tell him you have been inspecting bridges all day, and you have come to tell the land warden about that rotten plank.”

“Aya.”

“The prince’s guard may may bar the road to keep news of this from reaching the peer, but I don’t think they will stop one-namers arriving from the south. If they do, come back and tell me, but don’t enter Midd Village unless the lashers are gone.”

“Aya.”

“If you are able to talk with the land warden, tell him what you saw here. He will decide whether the peer should be told— or when.”

“Aya. This wouldn’t have happened if the peer weren’t so sick.” Marof nodded at the village. “Are you going down?”

“Of course.”

“You will get a lashing.”

“I must do what I can.”

They returned to the road. Old Marof, giving Arne a grim nod and an absent gesture of farewell, started back the way they had come. Arne turned in the opposite direction.

As the road approached the village, it passed through a barrier wall that Arne had designed himself. A tall, sod-covered mound of dirt with steep sides ran from river to hill and back to the river. Dwellings on High Street, at the top of the village, had walled gardens. Thus the entire village was enclosed, including the mills and a large garden common that was used as a sheepfold in winter. In other peerdoms, drunken or bored lashers had slipped their restraints and rampaged through the one-name villages, vandalizing, raping, and looting, and Arne used these incidents as an excuse for fortifying Midlow’s one-name villages.

Midd Road, which became Midd Street as it passed through the village, was supposed to be blocked from dusk to dawn by logs slid into place between stone pillars where the road passed through the barrier on either side of the village. Further, Arne had ordered a niot watch kept on barriers and foot paths and a dae watch by village children. Unexpected though the raid was, there would have been ample warning if Arne’s orders had been followed.

This was no blundering assault by drunken lashers. It was a carefully calculated military operation by a peerager’s personal guard, and nothing like it had happened in Midlow within living memory. It seemed all the more sinister because Roszt and Kaynor had moved from the ruins to the village only two daez before. They wanted to be closer to Wiltzon, the elderly schooler, who was drilling them in studies Egarn had prescribed.

Arne never wasted time looking for scapegoats when something went wrong. He accepted the responsibility himself and set about salvaging what he could, even if—as in this case—he had to take a lashing. He approached the village boldly as though nothing unusual were happening.

Two hulking lashers were posted at the barrier opening. They stood like grotesque statues with whips poised and black capes flapping in a brisk breeze. Their horses were munching grass in the nearby drainage ditch. Arne walked past them without a glance, and a blow from a heavy whip sent him sprawling. The lashers roared with laughter; Arne calmly got to his feet and walked on. They made no further attempt to interfere with him, which meant they knew who he was.

He strode along Midd Street for some distance before another lasher noticed him. This one charged from a dwelling bellowing angrily. “Inside! You heard the orders!”

For a lasher to speak unbidden to the peer’s first server, let alone attempt to order him about, was a flagrant breach of custom. If the peer had been present, she would have ordered the man lashed severely. Merely to take notice of him was beneath Arne’s dignity. He walked on, and another vicious snap of a whip hurled him to the cobble stones. He was seized and marched away with one arm brutally twisted behind his back. At the first crossing, he was jerked to the right and rushed up the slope to High Street where the prince still sat on her horse. By the time he reached her, he was stumbling badly, and only the excruciating grip on his arm kept him from falling. He was flung casually to the ground in front of her.

As calmly as he could he got to his feet, performed the obeisance of touching one knee to the ground, and rose.

The prince spoke with chilling sarcasm. “Does the peer’s first server care so little for the responsibilities of his office that he can’t be on hand to greet his peer’s heir?”

Arne sensed her rage, but he kept his eyes averted and spoke calmly, quietly, firmly. “Word of your intended visit failed to arrive, Highness.”

“Where have you been?”

For the first time Arne looked at her directly. Her windswept hair caught the sun like gold. Anger had distorted her face, and she seemed the more beautiful for it.

“Inspecting a bridge, Highness.”

When she spoke again, her fury made her almost inarticulate, but she also sounded triumphant. “You were asked to report the appearance of strangers immediately—any strangers. Not only have you not reported them, but you are caught in the act of harboring them in your own dwelling.” She added scornfully, “Such is the faith of the one-named.”

The sensation of despair that swept over Arne was more painful than his bleeding back, but he managed to keep his voice steady. “I harbor no strangers, Highness.”

“Then what do you call this?” A bundle of garments landed beside him. “Discovered this morning when your dwelling was searched—along with the unmade beds their owners had slept in.”

Arne knelt and spread the contents of the bundle on the cobblestones. Time remained suspended while he sifted through the paltry assortment of garments and personal oddments with the prince glaring down at him.

Then he stood up and met her eyes boldly. “These garments, Highness, and these other possessions, belong to two of the new sawyer prentices from South Province.”

The prince said blankly, “Sawyer prentices—living in the first server’s dwelling?”

Arne continued to meet her gaze. “Midd Village has been assigned more prentices than it can accommodate, Highness. The sawyer prentices you sent to the Prince of Chang had to be replaced. Because I have more room than I need, two of them are living with me. We didn’t consider them strangers because they arrived with credentials signed by the dom warden’s high server. I apologize for not reporting them, Highness. The error was mine.”

The prince stared down at him. Arne met her eyes unwaveringly.

Abruptly she turned her horse and rode away. The lasher cast a last, perplexed glance at his late captive and shuffled after her. At the cross street, the prince called an order. A lasher captain turned and blew a piercing blast on his whistle. In a matter of moments the lashers remounted, formed up, and collected the sentries left at the barriers. They flashed along Midd Street with a sustained rumble of hoofs and were gone.

Even before the last of them had disappeared, villagers poured into the streets. Many of the crafters worked at home, and the raid had come so early that children were not yet at their tasks or studies. Arne was quickly surrounded by a sympathetic crowd.

“Never mind,” he said as a woman tugged worriedly at his ripped and bloody shirt. He gathered the prentices’ belongings into a bundle and handed it to her. “Would you take charge of this, Erinor? It must be returned to the owners with our apologies. The clothing is soiled, and small objects may have been lost.” He turned to another woman. “Margaya, I want a full report in writing describing what the lashers did in every dwelling in the village. I want a list of anything that was taken or damaged and the names of anyone who was injured or mistreated in any way. Would you see that this is done?”

He hurried up the rough stone walk to the schooler’s house and burst in without knocking. Old Wiltzon, massively gray, rugged like a granite boulder, irrepressibly good humored in most situations, was ruefully surveying a room littered with books. Those precious objects had been ripped from their shelves; several had lost their covers.

But the schooler smiled delightedly when he saw Arne. “The prince was hunting blind,” he said. “She knew nothing, and she got nothing.”

“Roszt and Kaynor?”

“I moved them over here after you left yesterday. I was worried that one of those nosey prentices might have noticed something. One of my students brought the alarm the moment the lashers entered the village, and I had them bundled away, nary a trace, long before the search reached this street. The lashers vented their spite on my books. They have an instinctive hatred for books.” He sadly picked up a detached cover and placed it lovingly around a bundle of loose pages. “Sit down. Rest. Have a little wine—you look as though you need it. Let me take care of your back. It is still bleeding. Don’t worry about the raid. The prince got nothing.”

“You would have had more time if the barriers had been up and a watch kept.”

“The barriers weren’t up?” Wiltzon asked wonderingly.

“We were lucky. We were extremely lucky. The prince was not hunting blind. She knew exactly what to look for. She wouldn’t brave the peer’s wrath without good reason. I need to think about this.”

Tiredly he dropped into a chair. He sat there, turning the events over in his mind, stirring them, rearranging them, while Wiltzon, clucking his tongue with concern, washed the blood from Arne’s back and applied a dressing. When the old schooler had finished, he righted a chair the lashers had knocked over and sat down to wait.

Arne gingerly leaned his sore back against his own chair. Now that the suspense was over, he felt exhausted. He said finally, “While the prince was getting nothing, she gave us something. Two things.”

“Aha!”

“For one, she gave us a lever. To her mother, she pretends she is still a child amusing herself with war games, but this raid can’t be called a game. The guard and the prince must be disciplined severely, or the peer will lose her authority.”

Wiltzon nodded excitedly. “Yes. Of course. It wasn’t merely her mother’s orders that the prince violated. It was years of tradition. What is the other thing?”

“We have a traitor among us. We ought to thank the prince for letting us know.”

“A traitor? Are you sure?”

“The prince wouldn’t have raided Midd Village unless she had good reason to believe there was something here. She wouldn’t have dared. When I arrived, she was triumphant. She had caught me violating the rule about reporting strangers— she thought—and that would have justified her own violations. It was my house the lashers concentrated their search on. The prince must have known two strangers were staying there. Thanks to your foresight in getting Roszt and Kaynor hidden, the only evidence they found belonged to the sawyer prentices. Now she has no justification at all for her raid, and she will be extremely worried about the peer’s reaction.”

Wiltzon’s gentle face suddenly became flushed with anger. “You are right. There must be a traitor. What can we do? We have a long road to travel yet. Not even Egarn knows how long. If the prince has any kind of suspicion about the Secret—”

“The Secret is safe, and this is one spy she will never believe again, but I wonder why she suddenly became so obsessed with the notion there are strangers about.” He thought for a moment, and then he said slowly, “When she visited Chang, she may have heard rumors about the League of One-Namers. The League is in difficulty there. Chang viciously mistreats its one-namers, as you know, and during the prince’s visit, a local officer of the League was questioned under torture. He recited a lot of nonsense, but he also let slip some truth. Peeragers are suspicious of crafts and learning because they know so little about either, and many of them fear a one-name revolt. Also, the idea of an organization that reaches through all of the Ten Peerdoms and transcends peerdom loyalties is frightening to them. That was the reason for the order to report the arrival of strangers. The League couldn’t exist without a system of messengers, and the peeragers know that. When the prince’s spy informed her I was harboring unknown persons, she hoped to capture a pair of League officials. She intended to use torture to strip their secrets from them.”

“We were lucky,” Wiltzon agreed. “We must be more alert in the future. Did they really fail to put the logs in place? That is frightening.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “But what happened? In all of this confusion, I forgot why you were away. Did the thing work?”

“It worked perfectly. The first flare went out during passage, and that worried us. I fastened the others to stones to keep them upright, and they kept burning.”

“The rabbits?”

“As far as we could tell, they went precisely where we intended them to go and arrived in excellent condition. There is quite a jolt to the landing, and some of them seemed momentarily stunned, but they got over it quickly and hopped away. The sending has never been a problem. It is the sending to a precise place and a precise time that is difficult. Now Egarn has identified two places and two times, and that gives him a basis for calibrations.”

“What did Egarn say?”

“He was pleased, of course, but he said little. He is extremely tired. He has been working too long without a break. I wish we could make him rest occasionally.”

“Did you remind him about the money?”

Arne shook his head. “We were much too preoccupied with the experiment. But he will remember. He will scan again today, I’m sure. Perhaps he will be able to suck some up for you.”

“The money is important. Roszt and Kaynor are having trouble understanding it. Don’t go—you are hurt, and you have been up all night. Rest yourself and take some food.”

Arne shook his head impatiently. “I must see about replacing a rotten bridge plank.”

“Surely it can’t be that urgent!”

“It must be done at once. I will tell you about it later. Everyone deserves a rest, especially Egarn, but he won’t take one, either. It was an eventful night. Tell Roszt and Kaynor, will you?”

“I will tell them,” Wiltzon promised. “It has been an eventful morning, too. Don’t try to do more than you have to.”

Arne nodded and went out. In his anxiety about the prince and her lashers, he had forgotten just how eventful the night had been. When Inskor first mentioned Egarn’s plan to him, he thought it an old man’s senile fantasy. Now each incredible step forward seemed no more remarkable than reaching the next kilometer stone on a well-marked road.

And the Great Secret was still safe. The villagers he came in contact with on this day might notice that he seemed more tired than usual, but none of them would suspect that he had just spent a night looking some three hundred sikes into the past and transposing objects through time.