Wizard Of Rentoro

Chapter 4

It was nearly dark before Blade found any sort of dry shelter. It was a woodcutter's hut, obviously abandoned for years but still almost intact. It was closer to the road than Blade would have liked, but he'd heard no signs of pursuit.

The boots he'd snatched up turned out to be three or four sizes too small. If he tried to walk a mile in them he'd be crippled for a week with blisters. He threw the boots into a corner and tried on the rest of the clothing. Some of it actually fitted, after he'd ripped a few seams here and there. This was a problem he was used to facing in Dimension X. Even in Home Dimension his massive frame-six feet one, two hundred and ten well-muscled pounds-was hard to clothe. In Dimension X, where people were often smaller, it was sometimes impossible.

Blade pulled on all three pairs of stockings and swept dead leaves into a rough bed. Then he lay back on the leaves and munched a loaf of bread while he considered what he'd seen.

The more he thought about it, the stranger it seemed. The seven riders were obviously highly trained, expert fighting men. In the face of the villagers' lack of resistance, they could have made a shambles of the place, looting, burning, slaughtering people right and left.

Yet what had they actually done? They'd kidnapped three men and two girls. They'd raped a few women, and frightened a good many children out of their wits. They'd done a lot of vandalism, but nothing that even these peasants couldn't make good in a few months. They'd only killed one man, although they'd obviously had the skill and weapons to kill fifty.

They must have had orders, Blade realized. Orders to take able-bodied prisoners, terrorize women and children, smash enough property to annoy everybody, but kill only when absolutely necessary. If that man hadn't come dashing out with the ax, he would probably be alive and drinking his beer tonight.

The riders had their orders. From whom? That was an entirely different question, and one not so easily answered. Blade remembered the leader sitting on his mount, eyes fixed on the sky, apparently lost in a trance. Had the man been waiting for orders? If so, how had he expected to receive them, doing nothing but sitting on his mount and staring up at the gray sky?

That helmet of his was roomy enough to hold a radio, but radio made no sense in a Dimension of peasant villages and riders in plate armor. Maybe he'd been seeing some signal from outside Blade's field of vision. Maybe-

Maybe it was time to stop guessing! This Dimension contained extremely well-trained fighting men, who seemed to follow the orders of some distant master. Both the men and their master could be dangerous enemies or powerful friends.

That was all Blade could know for the moment. He would just have to do what he'd done in a dozen other places, both in Home Dimension and in Dimension X. Watch his step and his tongue, guard his back, and keep his eyes and ears open. It was an effective prescription for survival. If it hadn't been, Richard Blade would have been dead many times over.

Blade finished the first loaf and ate half of a second. The bread was lumpy, coarse gray stuff, sour, damp, and heavy. It lay like a brick on his stomach, but almost any sort of food gave some energy. There'd be no shortage of water, either, not with this rain.

Blade pulled the blanket tightly around himself and lay down to get some sleep.

The rain must have stopped well before dawn. Blade awoke in full daylight, with sun flooding the forest and the only sound the drip of water from the leaves and needles. He found a spring only a few yards away, drank, shouldered his ax, and moved on.

In daylight he could get a better look at the clothes he'd snatched up from the village and roughly pulled on. No two garments were the same size, the same color, the same material or texture. He looked like a scarecrow run away from its field, a tramp dressed in stolen castoffs-or perhaps a footloose woodcutter, with no home but the forest and no roof but the sky. A footloose woodcutter, exactly the sort of man who might be found in this forest. Certainly no one would suspect a man looking like Blade, tramping along with an ax over his shoulder, of being from a world far beyond the imagination of anyone in this Dimension.

He couldn't have found himself a better disguise if he'd thought the matter over for a solid week. The computer had done its usual job of altering his brain so that he both spoke and understood the local language, so he'd have no problems there. He could move on at his own pace, going where he wanted, listening and learning without attracting any notice.

That would be more than useful. It could save his life. Blade suspected that sooner or later rumors of wandering strangers in this Dimension reached the wolfs-head riders or their master. He didn't want them coming after him before he knew more about them.

Blade still did not have quite enough faith in his disguise to head openly down the road. He kept under cover of the trees, just within sight of the road, as long as the forest lasted. Once he saw a civilian rider pass, spurring his shaggy mount to a ponderous gallop. Another time he saw a cart loaded with clattering barrels rumble past behind four yoked oxen.

After three hours Blade was out of the forest and into cultivated land again. Here there were orchards instead of vineyards, row after row of squat close-grown trees with blackish green leaves and small blue flowers that exhaled an overpowering sweetness. Men and women were already busily at work among the trees with knives, hooks, and binding ropes, or on the stone walls that separated the orchards.

Each party of workers greeted Blade as they saw him, dropped their tools, and crowded around him. In a medieval world of isolated villages, any stranger could earn a welcome by bringing news.

«We heard that the Wolves came down on Frinda,» said one man. «Did you hear or see anything of it?»

Frinda must be the village Blade had seen raided, and the Wolves could only be the armored riders. He shook his head, hoping in that way to learn more from these people. «No. They had no work for me, so I passed on through. I must have been in the forest before the Wolves came to Frinda, and yesterday was not a time to see far.»

The man nodded. «Perhaps it's a good thing you didn't stay. You'd have stood great good chance of the Wolves taking you. Strong, young, healthy, wandering with no kin to miss you and mutter-aye, the Wolves like such as you.»

«So I've heard,» said Blade cautiously. «What of your village, my friend? I'll work for you with pleasure, but if the Wolves are going to come down on you like they did on Frinda-«

«Na, na,» the man said, shaking his head. «We of Isstano are not those of Frinda. We'd not shelter a Chosen Girl like those fools did. They brought the Wolves on themselves, they did. We know better.»

So the Wolves collected tribute or taxes for their unknown master and punished those who tried to evade their share. That didn't surprise Blade. What did surprise him was the way those peasants spoke of the Wolves. They seemed to be proud of being dutiful and obedient, with no thought of resisting the Wolves, any more than of resisting the weather or the passage of the seasons. Something had driven all thought of rebellion out of their minds. Was it the skill in arms of the Wolves, or perhaps something more? Blade wondered.

He listened carefully to the gossip in the village that afternoon as he chopped firewood, split rails for fences, and cut beams for a cattle shed. What he heard confirmed his first impressions. This Dimension-or at least this land of Rentoro-was ruled with an iron hand by some powerful tyrant. The Wolves on their shaggy white heudas were the tyrant's army and police. They enforced his laws, collected his taxes and his slaves, and suppressed any signs of rebellion against his authority. A Chosen Girl was one the tyrant had picked out, no doubt for his harem. The one who'd fled to the village of Frinda instead of meekly accepting her fate had committed an act of rebellion. By sheltering her, even out of pure kindness, the village of Frinda joined her in that rebellion. To be sure, it was only a small act of rebellion, so the punishment was light. The tyrant seldom turned the Wolves loose to kill, destroy, and burn indiscriminately.

That made a grim sort of sense. The tyrant appeared to see everything and everyone in Rentoro as his personal property. A wise man, no matter how brutal he might be, did not wantonly destroy his own property. This tyrant was wise-the careful training he'd given his Wolves showed that clearly enough.

The Wolves had their training and their armor, while the people of Rentoro seemed to have nothing but axes, light hunting bows, and boar spears. So half a dozen Wolves could do as they pleased in a village. A hundred could no doubt do the same in a town.

Blade learned a good deal about the Wolves from listening to village gossip, but not much about their master. In fact, he didn't even learn the man's name or title. Neither was ever mentioned. The villagers seldom mentioned the tyrant at all, and when they did they referred to him solemnly as «he.»

Blade was frustrated and annoyed, although he was also sorry for the villagers. Asking them to violate what seemed to be a rigid taboo would simply frighten them. That would cost Blade his chance of a hot meal and a warm bed in the village tonight, and perhaps more. The villagers talked of the tyrant as if he knew everything that went on in Rentoro. This suggested a large force of loyal spies. Suspicious questions might lead Blade not to information but to a lonely grave.

So he kept his mouth shut, ate the bread and meat the village headman offered him, and slept comfortably in the straw of a barn. In the morning he ate more bread, drank warm milk fresh from the cow, accepted a bundle of sausage, and moved on.

Blade was on the move for the next six days, from village to village and from farm to farm. He drifted north, then east, then back toward the south, guiding himself by the sun and by the peasants' advice. In each village and at each farm he was able to exchange a few hours' work with his ax for a bed and a meal. Once they threw in a handful of crude brass coins.

No one seemed to suspect that Blade was anything other than what he seemed to be-a traveling woodcutter and carpenter. No one hesitated about talking freely in his presence. No one told him anything he hadn't learned in the first village. After the first couple of days he more or less gave up expecting to hear anything new.

Rentoro was a rich and fertile land, the people well-fed, the animals sleek, the houses snug and clean. Apart from the Wolves, the tyrant's hand did not seem to fall heavily on his people. In this land of fertile soil and hard-working peasants, a wise ruler could certainly collect all the wealth he wanted without leaving anyone hungry or homeless.

Blade's six days of travel were one of the most pleasant vacations he'd ever had. He had plenty of food, fresh air, and exercise, and very little to guard against or worry about. He knew he could quite cheerfully wander about Rentoro this way for another month.

One of these days, if he went on traveling into Dimension X, he would probably have to do just that. One of these days he would find a Dimension with no technology, no great empires, no wars to fight, and no resources or secrets to be dug out and brought back to Home Dimension. Then there would be nothing for him to do but find a place to live and a way to make a living until it was time to return to Home Dimension. He'd have to thank Lord Leighton for the excellent vacation when this happened.

It wasn't going to happen in this Dimension, though. There was no sign of the Wolves during Blade's days on the road, but they were never entirely out of his mind. The Wolves and the mysterious tyrant who sent them out were a mystery. Behind every mystery Blade had ever found in Dimension X lay something dangerous, and also something valuable.