Triplet

Chapter 33

This isn't fair, was the first, resentful, thought to cross Danae's mind as the sky-plane settled toward a landing. We're tired and hungry, we've been hunted and harassed by an entire world and nearly killed in the process, and my eyes still hurt from what happened to them. And now this. Damn it all, it isn't fair.

And then her fatigued mind caught up with her... and she felt her stomach muscles freeze.

"Ravagin!" she hissed, "Those trolls—"

"Keep back," he said without turning around. "Something's very, very wrong here."

"They're not supposed to be this far out of their Protectorate, are they?"

"They're not supposed to be anywhere out of their Protectorate," he replied. "Stay back, Danae—if I have to fight them, I want to have room to maneuver."

Fight them? Danae shifted her eyes back to the sky-plane and the two figures rising to their feet there. Sophisticated machines—she knew that much from her Triplet orientation—but from less than twenty meters away she found it hard to accept that fact on a gut level. True, their barrel chests and tubular limbs showed too much curvature and too little muscular definition beneath their orange/

black/yellow garb; and their almost non-existent necks, overlarge bald heads, and pale skin kept them from ever being mistaken for human beings. And yet, there was something else about them—

the ease and fluidity of their movements, perhaps—that seemed to belie their mechanical nature.

And in the midst of her sidetrack reverie, Danae's eyes fell on the crossbow pistol strapped to each troll's right thigh. Fight them... and she suddenly felt sick.

Ravagin let them get within ten meters of him and then raised his hand. "Hold, servants of Castle Feymareal," he called in a firm voice. "As a law-abiding citizen of Shamsheer, I am entitled to know the charges against me."

The first troll stopped; the second took another step before following suit. "You are trespassing on soil of the Feymar Protectorate," the first said.

"But the soil of all Protectorates is free to all lawabiders," Ravagin insisted. "What law-breaking charge is listed against me that my way may be interfered with?"

For the first time the troll seemed at a loss for words. "You will submit to my command or be executed," it said at last.

"Yes, you've already said that," Ravagin reminded him. "But if you cannot list any law-breaking charges you have no authority to detain me."

Again the trolls hesitated... and abruptly, the sense of aliveness that had been nagging at Danae's subconsciousness vanished. They were, really and truly, nothing more than machines—

"I think they're deciding how they're going to handle this," Ravagin said quietly over his shoulder, his voice tight. "Get ready to duck back into the Tunnel if this doesn't work."

"All right," she replied. The words felt odd in her mouth; abruptly, she realized Ravagin had spoken and she'd answered in Standard, not Shamahni.

The first troll seemed to make up its mind. "You will both return with us to Castle Feymareal," it said, its hand dropping down next to the crossbow at its thigh. "If you refuse—"

"You will leave me alone," Ravagin said suddenly, "or I will kill that woman." His hand swung back, his dagger flashing as he turned half around—

And sent the knife spinning toward Danae.

It was so unexpected she didn't even have time to gasp. Reflexively, she ducked, throwing up an arm in token defense as something only half seen darted in from the direction of the trolls. An instant later there was the crack of metal on metal and the dagger shot sideways off into the forest. Opening her eyes again—she didn't remember closing them—she saw the first troll standing with crossbow pistol at the ready, its string still visibly vibrating... and suddenly she understood what Ravagin had done. He'd forced the troll to move to her defense, and in doing so to waste its first shot.

And then she shifted her attention to Ravagin... and saw that the trick had been a waste of time. Even as Ravagin yanked his scorpion glove free and jammed his hand into it, the second troll was already bringing its crossbow to bear.

It was as if time had suddenly slowed to a crawl, freezing the tableau before her. She could almost see the slight damped-sine oscillations of the troll's arm as it corrected to its final aim; glimpsed the flat-tipped stun bolt which would be slamming into Ravagin's solar plexus in the trolls' normal socalled mercy shot... and when he was down and helpless before them...

And without any real thought of what she was doing, her sluggish brain finally reacted. "Man-sy-hae orolontis!" she screamed.

The troll seemed to start at the sound of her voice. Its bolt shot out—

And missed.

Danae felt her jaw drop. No, she thought wildly. No—I didn't see that. I couldn't have; Shamsheer's trolls never miss. Never. But it had...

And even as her peripheral vision recorded the fact that Ravagin, too, seemed to have frozen at the impossibility they'd just witnessed, both trolls lowered their crossbows and started forward.

Danae shot a quick glance at Ravagin, saw her own disbelief mirrored there. The trolls' casual manner could have only one reasonable interpretation: they were on their way to pick up what they clearly expected to be a gasping, helpless victim of their marksmanship. Not only had the computerized marksmanship failed, but they apparently weren't even aware that it had done so.

This isn't happening, Danae told herself again. It's an illusion—some crazy dream left over from Karyx. But the trolls looked solid enough... and they were still advancing on Ravagin.

Abruptly, they stopped. For an instant they just stood there, as if just noticing Ravagin still on his feet and startled by the sight. Then, in unison, each reached to the extra crossbow bolts strapped to its other thigh—

And with a snap, the whip from Ravagin's scorpion glove lashed out to yank the crossbow from the first troll's grip.

Danae half expected a bellow of pain, but the machine made no sound in response. Nor did it show any further interest in the crossbow as Ravagin sent the weapon flying over the trees. Reaching behind its back, it drew a short sword and continued to advance. Ravagin ignored it for the moment, sending the scorpion whip lashing out instead to wrap around the second troll's crossbow—

But whatever other problems the trolls were having, their capacity to learn was apparently still intact.

The second troll had just seen what had happened to its companion; and with blinding speed its free hand darted up to grab the scorpion whip coiled around its weapon.

"Damn," Ravagin snarled, bracing his left palm against the right as he tried to pull the trapped whip free. "Danae!—distract it somehow!"

The fascinated paralysis freezing Danae in place snapped. Snatching out her dagger she slid one foot forward and dropped slightly into the position Hart had long ago taught her for target throwing. At this range the troll was far too big a target to miss—

But where the hell was she supposed to try and hit the damn thing? All right: it's a machine, damn it

—weak points ought to be joints, sensors, powerpack, power leads—

"Anywhere!" Ravagin shouted as she hesitated in indecision. "Hit it anywhere!"

Gritting her teeth, she hurled the dagger with all the power and accuracy she could muster; and as it caromed off the troll's face near its eyes, Ravagin suddenly leaped into the air, twisted his body to bring tucked legs up toward the troll—

And was yanked horizontally through the air to slam feet first into the machine's chest and head as the untrapped part of the whip coiled back into place on the top of the glove.

They went down together, Ravagin managing to hold onto most of his balance and land on his feet.

It took another second for him to extricate the end of his whip from the troll's loosened grasp, and then he was spinning to face the remaining troll, the whip snapping out into a defensive Z-shape in front of him.

The troll's blade arced down to catch the upper arm of the Z, the stiffened whip deflecting it just enough to send it wide of its intended mark. Ravagin countered instantly, slashing the whip hard across the troll's face. The machine staggered backward with the impact, waving its arms for balance

—

And Ravagin coiled and snapped the whip out to wrap around the troll's legs. With a horrendous thud the machine slammed flat on its back.

And lay still.

Danae took a deep, shuddering breath. "Ravagin...?"

"I think it's over," he said, wincing as he carefully massaged his right upper arm. "Come on."

Swallowing, she started tentatively forward, a wary eye on both inert trolls. If this was some sort of trick on their part...

But they remained motionless, not even stirring as Ravagin leaned over and relieved them both of their swords. "Well, at least we got some new weapons out of the deal," he remarked tiredly. "Too bad they're not spark-swords."

Danae shook her head. "I give up," she said. "What the hell just happened here?"

He frowned at her. "I thought you'd figured it out. You're the one who distracted them with that spiritprotection spell, after all."

"The—? Oh." She felt heat rising to her cheeks. "That wasn't really planned. It was just a reflex reaction, I guess, left over from too much time on Karyx."

"Yeah, well, reflex or not, it worked beautifully. Not really worked, of course, the way it would've on Karyx. But it did enough."

"Did enough what? Are you trying to tell me Shamsheer trolls can be that easily distracted by words in a language they've never even heard before—?"

"Not the trolls, Danae. The spirits."

She opened her mouth, closed it again. "If that was supposed to be an explanation, it didn't work. Try again?"

Rubbing the sweat off his forehead, Ravagin glanced skyward. "I just hope there aren't any more of them on their way... Look, you saw just as fast as I did that there was something seriously wrong with these trolls. Way out of their jurisdiction, though they thought they were still there, giving the wrong responses, having to stop and think their way through what should have been a pretty standard challenge and rebuttal session—the whole thing was cockeyed."

"I caught the jurisdiction part, anyway. All of that was wrong?"

"Uh-huh. And then, when they finally attacked, they couldn't seem to handle all of their systems at once—they could shoot but not simultaneously process incoming sensory information, to the point where it took an incredible amount of time for them to even notice that they'd missed me. And for that spell to have distracted them the way it did—" he shook his head. "That was the last bit of proof."

"Proof for what?"

"Proof that you were right. Some of Karyx's spirits have invaded Shamsheer."

An icy chill ran down Danae's back. "You mean... there were spirits controlling the trolls? How in the worlds could they do that?"

Ravagin shook his head, slipping his scorpion glove back onto his belt. "I don't know. But remember that on Karyx, anyway, the spirits are able to interact some with matter, especially on the microscopic level. Maybe that's how they're doing it here."

Danae thought back to the throbbing pain in her side that had been the result of her tangle with the demon in Melentha's mansion. "So instead of finagling synapse chemistry and neuron pathways like they do there, here they're fiddling with microfine circuits?"

"It seems reasonable enough. In fact, compared to what they handle on Karyx, pushing picoamps of current around must be a breeze."

"Oh, God." Danae felt her knees begin to shake, and let herself sink awkwardly to the ground. "You have any idea what this means?"

"In terms of our safety or Shamsheer's?"

"Either. Both."

"It's a hell of a mess for both of us." Ravagin took a deep breath. "Look, before we go looking for a place to give up in, let's see if there's a bright side we can look at. One: we don't know how many spirits are actually here—and if there're only a few of them we'll have a pretty good chance of getting through their cordon. Shamsheer is a mighty big place for two people to lose themselves in.

"Except that we eventually have to get to the other Tunnel."

"Yes, well, we'll cross that one when we get to it. And second: it's clear that these spirits, at least, were way in over their heads on this one. You and I and a dozen more shouldn't have been able to handle even one troll, let alone two. But apparently there're so many separate systems the spirits couldn't keep control of all of them. Which is what eventually tripped them up—they got sloppy and let the trolls realize where they were, which in turn tripped the deadman switch."

Danae looked down at the motionless trolls. "The what?"

"We call it the deadman switch. It prevents people from stealing trolls and transporting them out of their home Protectorate for illegal purposes. Basically puts them into a shutdown mode once they're a certain distance outside their boundaries. Once activated, it supposedly can't be lifted except back at their original castle and by their castle-lord."

"Not even by something inside with the circuitry?"

"Yeah. Well..." Ravagin looked down at the trolls and grimaced. "That is a point. Let's not hang around to find out. You as good with a crossbow as you are with a throwing knife?"

"I've never used a crossbow, but I'm pretty good with normal projectile guns. Hart made me learn all this stuff when I was younger."

"Good for him." Reaching down, Ravagin pried the crossbow pistol from the troll's grip and then collected both sets of spare bolts. "Take one of the swords, too," he said, handing the weapons to her.

"I don't think we should take the time to go hunt for our daggers, if you don't mind. Come on—let's go."

"Wait a second," Danae growled as a horrible thought suddenly hit her. "You mean you knew they wouldn't be able to shoot straight and you still threw that dagger at me?"

He turned back, frowning. "I threw it to miss you. Didn't you notice?"

"No, I did not notice," she said stiffly. "And I'd appreciate it if next time you'd try and find a safer way to handle things."

"I'll do what I can. Come on; we'll try for the Darcane Forest way house, about ten kilometers due south."

She blinked. "We're going on foot? With a perfectly good sky-plane right over there?"

"You mean the sky-plane that brought the bewitched trolls here?" he asked pointedly.

"Yes, I mean—oh." Danae glanced back at the sky-plane, licked her lips. "Yeah. Okay; on foot it is."

"And stick close to me," he added over his shoulder as he started off toward the edge of the clearing.

"A few of the forest's predators—not many, but a few—do hunt during the day."

Great. Gritting her teeth, Danae hefted the crossbow and followed.