Var the Stick

CHAPTER TEN

Var woke several times in the night, beset by the chill of this height. A wind came up, wringing the precious warmth from his back. Only in front, where he touched Soli, was he warm. He could have survived alone but it was better this way.

Every so often the girl stirred but when her limbs stretched out and met the cold, they contracted again quickly. Even so, her hands were icy. Had she slept by herself she would hardly have been able to wield a stick in the morning. Var put his coarse hand over her fine one, shielding it.

Dawn finally came. They stood up shivering and jumped vigorously to restore circulation, and attended to natural calls again, but it was some time before they both felt better. Fog shrouded the plateau, making the drop off unreal, the sky dismal.

"What's that?" Soli inquired, pointing.

Once more, Var was at a loss to answer. He knew what it was, but not what women called it.

"My father Sol doesn't have one," she said.

Var knew she was mistaken, for had that been the case, she herself would never have been born.

"I'm hungry," she said. "And thirsty too."

So was Var but they were no closer to a solution to that problem than they had been the night before. They had to fight. The winner would descend and feast as royally as he or she wished. The other would not need food again, ever. He looked at the two singlesticks lying across the centerline. A pair but one his, the other hers.

She saw his glance. "Do we have to fight?"

Var never seemed to be able to answer her questions. On the one hand he represented the empire; on the other he had his oath to Sola to uphold. He shrugged.

"It's foggy," she said wistfully. "Nobody can see us."

Meaning that they should not fight without witnesses? Well, it would do for an excuse. The mist showed no sign of dissipating, and no sound rose from its depths. The world was a whiteness, as was their contest.

"Why don't we go down and get some food?" she asked. "And come back before they see us."

The simplicity and directness of her mind were astonishing! Yet why not? He was glad to have a pretext to postpone hostilities, since he could not see his way clear either to winning or losing.

"Truce until the fog lifts?" he asked.

"Truce until the fog lifts. That time I understood you very well."

And Var was pleased.

They descended on Var's side of the mountain, after retrieving the stick harnesses. The third and fourth sticks themselves had bounced and rolled and been lost entirely, but the harnesses had stayed where they fell. Soli had feared that the underworld had ways to spot anyone who traversed her own slope of Mt. Muse. "Television pickups can't tell where they're hidden."

"You mean sets are just sitting around outside?" Var knew what television was; he had seen the strange silent pictures on the boxes in hostels.

"Sets outside," she repeated, Interpreting. "No, silly. Pickups little boxes like eyes, set into stones and things, operated by remote controL"

Var let the subject drop. He had never seen a stone with an eye in it, but there had been stranger things in the badlands.

The fog was even thicker at the base. They held hands and sneaked up to the Master's camp. Then Var hesitated. "They'll know me," he whispered.

"Oh." She was taken aback. "Could I go in, then?"

"You don't know the layout."

"I'm hungry!" she wailed.

"Sh.." He jerked her back out of auditory range. A warrior sentry could come on them at any time.

"Tell me the layout," she whispered desperately. "I'll go in and steal some food for us."

"Stealing isn't honest!"

"It's all right in war. From an enemy camp."

"But that's my camp!"

"Oh." She thought a moment. "I could still go. And ask for some. They don't know me."

"Without any clothes?"

"But I'm hungry!"

Var was getting disgusted, and didn't answer. His own hunger became intense.

She began to cry.

"Here," Var said, feeling painfully guilty. "The hostel has clothes."

They ran to the hostel, one mile. Before Var could protest, Soli handed him her harness and stick and walked inside. She emerged a few minutes later wearing a junior smock and a hair ribbon and new sandals, looking clean and fresh.

"You're lucky no one was there!" Var said, exasperated. "Someone was there. Somebody's wife, waiting to meet her warrior. I guess they're keeping the women out of your main camp. She jumped a mile when I walked in. I told her I was lost, and she helped me."

So neatly accomplished! He would never have thought of that, or had the nerve to do it. Was she bold, or naive?

"Here," she said. She handed him a bundle of clothing. Dressed, they reappraised the main camp. It occurred to Var that there should have been food at the hostel, but then he remembered that the nomads cleaned it out regularly. It took a lot of food to feed an armed camp, and the hostel food was superior to the empire mess. Otherwise they might have solved their problem readily. Their food problem.

"I'll have to go to the main tent," she said. Var agreed, hunger making him urgent, now that their nakedness had been abated. "I'll pretend I'm somebody's daughter, and that I'm bringing food out to my family."

Var was fearful of this audacity, but could offer nothing better. "Be careful," he said.

He lurked in the forest near the tent, not daring to move for fear she would not be able to find him again. She disappeared into the mist.

Then he remembered what her motel- omment should have jogged into his head before: the entire camp was not only masculine, it was on a recognition only basis. No stranger could pass the guards particularly not a female child.

And it was too late to stop her.

Soli moved toward the huge tent, fascinated by its tenuous configuration though her heart beat nervously. She would have felt more confident with a pair of sticks, but had left them with Var because children especially girl children did not carry weapons here.

A guard stood at the tent entrance. She tried to brush past him as if she belonged, but his staff came down to bar her immediately. "Who are you?" he demanded.

She knew better than to give her real name. Hastily she invented one: "I'm Semi. My father is tired. I have to fetch some food for"

"No Sam in this camp, girl. Id know a strange name like that, sure. What game are you playing?"

"Sam the Sword. He just arrived. Here"

"You're lying, child. No warrior brings his family into this camp. I'm taking you to the Master." He nudged her with the staff.

No one else was in sight at the moment. Soil vaulted the pole, shot spoked fingers at his eyeballs, and when his head jerked back in the warrior's reflex she sliced him across the throat with the rigid side of her hand. She clipped him again as he gasped for breath, and he collapsed silently.

He was too heavy for her to move, so she left him there and stepped inside, straightening her rumpled smock and retying her hair. She could still get the food if she acted quickly enough.

But the morning mess was over and she did not dare pester the cook directly.

"Kol has been attacked!" someone shouted, back at the entrance. "Search the grounds!"

Oh oh. She hadn't gotten out in time. But her hunger still drove her. She would have to make up for her vulnerability by sheer audacity, as Sosa put it. Sosa knew how to make the best of bad situations.

She retreated to just shy of the entrance, knowing what must happen there.

Warriors rushed up, hauled the unconscious Kol to his feet, exclaimed. "Didn't see it happen." "Clubbed in the throat." "Spread a net he can't have gotten far."

Then a huge man came. Soil recognized him at once: the Nameless One, master of the enemy empire. He moved like a rolling machine, shaking the ground with the force of his tread, and he was ugly. His voice was almost as bad as Var's:

"That was a weaponless attack. The mountain has sent a spy."

Soil didn't wait for more. She ran out of the tent and threw herself at the monster, hands outstretched.

Surprised, he caught her by the shoulder and lifted her high, his strength appalling. "What have we here?"

"Sir!" she cried. "Help me! A man is chasing me!"

"A child!" he said. "A girl-child. What family?'

"No family. Im an orphan. I came here for food."

The Master set her down, but one hand gripped her thin shoulder with vicelike power. "The hand that struck Kol's neck would have been about the size of your hand, child. I saw the mark. You are a stranger, and I know the ways of the-mountain. You"

She reacted even before she fully comprehended his import. Her pointed knuckles rammed into his cloak, aiming for the solar plexus as she twisted away.

It was like hitting a wall. His belly was made of steel. "Try again, little spy," he said, laughing.

She tried again. Her knee came up to ram hard into his crotch, and one hand struck at his neck.

The Nameless One just stood there chuckling. His grip on her shoulder never loosened. With his free hand be tore open his own cloak.

His torso was a grotesque mass of muscle that did not flex properly with his breathing. His neck was solid gristle.

"Child, I know your leader's tricks. What are you doing here? Our contest was supposed to be settled by combat of champions on the plateau.

"Sir, I-I thought he was attacking me. He moved his shaft" She searched for a suitable story. "I'm from Tribe Pan." That was Sosa's tribe, before she came to the mountain, that trained its women in weaponless combat. "I ran away. All I wanted was food."

"Tribe Pan." He pondered. Something strangely soft crossed his brutal face. "Come with me." He let go of her and marched out of the crowd.

No other warrior spoke. She knew better than to attempt any break now. Docilely, she followed the Weaponless.

He entered a large private tent. There was food there; her empty stomach yearned to its aroma.

"You are hungry eat," he said, setting the bowl of porridge before her, and a cup of milk.

Eagerly she reached for both then fathomed the trap. Nomad table manners differed from underworld practice. Her every mannerism would betray her origin. In fact, she wasn't sure the nomads used utensils at all.

She plunged one fist into the porridge and brought up a dripping gob. She smeared this into her mouth, wincing at its heat. She ignored the milk.

The Nameless One did not comment.

"I'm thirsty," she said after a bit.

Wordlessly he brought her a winebag.

She put the nozzle to her mouth and sucked. She gagged. It was some bitter, bubbling concoction. "That isn't water!" she cried, her anguish real.

"At Pan they have neither hostels nor home-brew?" he inquired.

Then she realized that she had overdone it. Most nomads would know the civilized mode of eating, for the hostels had plates and forks and spoons and cups. And the truly uncivilized tribes must drink brew.

Soil began to cry, sensing beneath this brute visage a gentle personality. It was her only recourse.

He brought her water.

"It doesn't make sense," he said as she drank. "Bob would not send an unversed child into the enemy heartland. That would be stupid-particularly at this time."

Soli wondered how he had learned her chief's name. Oh they had communicated, to arrange the fight on Muse plateau.

"Yet no ordinary child would know weaponless combat," he continued.

She realized that somehow her very mistakes bad helped put him off. "Can I take some back to my friend?" she asked, remembering Var.

The Nameless One looked as though he were about to ask a question, then exploded into laughter. "Take all you can carry, you gamin! May your friend feast for many days, and emerge from his orgy a happier man than I!"

"I really do have a friend," she said, nettled at his tone. She realized that he was mocking her, supposing that she wanted it all for herself.

He brought a bag and tossed assorted solids into it, as well as two wineskins. "Take this and get out of my camp, child. Far out. Go back to Pan they produce good women, even the barren ones. Especially those. We're at war here, and it isn't safe for you, even with your defensive skills."

She slung the heavy sack over her shoulder and went to the exit.

"Girl!" he called suddenly, and she jumped, afraid he had seen through her after all. Bob, the master of Helicon, was like that; he would toy with a person, seeming to agree, then take him down unexpectedly and savagely. "If you ever grow tired of wandering, seek me out again. I would take you for my daughter."

She understood with relief that this was a fundamental compliment. And she liked this enormous, terrible man.

"Thank you," she said. "Maybe some day you'll meet my real father. I think you would like each other."

"You were not an orphan long, then," he murmured, chuckling again. He was horribly intelligent under that muscle. "Who is your father?"

Suddenly she remembered that the two men had met for the Nameless One had taken the empire and her true mother from her father. She dared not give Sol's name now, for they had to be mortal enemies.

"Thank you," she said quickly, pretending not to have heard him. "Good-bye, sir." And she ducked out of the tent.

He let her go. No hue and cry followed, and no secret tracker either.