Authors: Piers Anthony
Months passed, his circles widened, and he accomplished nothing. But he would not stop. Instead he became more devious in his questioning. "Six years ago, perhaps seven--did a stranger pass through your territory? A lone sticker? A small woman? Someone masked or hidden or mysteriously wounded?"
And finally he got a meaningful response, from an old warrior of the defunct empire, who had drifted to this region before the siege and remained, retired. "I saw a stranger then--a pale, slender man who spoke no word."
This did not sound like Var the Stick, who was a large, grotesquely mottled youth. "What was his weapon?"
"I did not see it. But he hauled a barrow with a staff protruding, and he reminded me of--"
"Of whom?" Neq prodded, remembering a man who had hauled a barrow.
"Of Sol of All Weapons. But that could not be, for Sol went to the mountain half a dozen years before."
So he had looked for Sosa, but found Sol! But that was almost as good, for surely they had escaped Helicon together. His long search had been rewarded... perhaps.
Suddenly the trail was hot. There were passes where a man would normally travel, places where he might camp. Neq traced Sol's course, finding many who had seen the barrow-man pass. Some had challenged him to the circle, for that was before the effect of Helicon's fall had been felt in the nomad society and honor was strong, but the man had avoided all such contacts. No one Neq met claimed to have fought the barrow-man in the circle.
That proved they were speaking honestly. Sol had been the greatest circle warrior of all time, except for the artificially forged juggernaut of the Weaponless--and the battle between the two had been so even as to be merely chance in the decision. Sol might have lost his edge during six years in Helicon--but not much, if he were training his daughter regularly. Any man who brought Sol to combat against his preference must have paid the obvious penalty. Only those who had failed to fight him could have survived. And why had Sol avoided encounters? Obvious, now: because he had more important business. He was going somewhere.
But not, it seemed, with Sosa. No one had seen her. Sol was traveling alone. Why should that be?
Neq knew. Sol was following the man who had killed his daughter. Var the Stick. Vengeance.
A lone warrior would not have been remarkable. That's why Var himself hadn't been remembered. But the barrow--that stuck in many minds, because it was unusual. Because it brought to mind the one warrior everyone knew about. Now that Neq inquired about that specifically, the long faded memories returned.
Sol had departed Helicon and traveled northwest, detouring around badlands and avoiding established tribes. Why northwest? Because Var the Stick must have fled that way.
And he had! Neq picked up the memories now--the skin-mottled man, also no talker, deadly with the sticks... and his boy companion.
Boy companion?
And abruptly--the Weaponless. He was on this route too, incredibly. Was he following Var--or Sol? To protect the first from the second? What a battle of titans, if Sol and the Weaponless should meet again!
Yet none of them had returned. All the key figures had vanished, and not in the Helicon conflagration. Where had they gone?
And where had the boy come from--the boy with Var the Stick? Had he had a little brother? After months of finding too little, Neq had found too much!
He continued the chase doggedly. His hopes for the, restoration of Helicon were somehow bound in with this mystery, and he would not stop without the answer. His cast of characters remained set: three men and a boy, not together, traveling northwest. The riddle of Helicon's demise... perhaps.
But the trail faded near the northern limit of the former crazy demesnes. Neq cast about for a month in the increasingly bitter winter, but the natives knew nothing. He had either to give up, or to leave the territory of the nomad society, as his quarry seemed to have done.
He hesitated to go farther north. His metal extremities were excellent for combat and simple hunting, for he had a bow he could brace on his sword and fire lefthanded with the pincers with fair accuracy. But against true wilderness and snow he was weak, and he knew that guns were more common in the northern realm. He could not use a gun himself, and had to be extremely wary in the presence of such a weapon.
And so he continued his futile search in the land of the nomads long after his real hope of success was gone.
One day Tyl of Two Weapons appeared, alone. "Are you ready for help?" Tyl inquired as if this were routine.
Neq's pride had suffered with the winter. '"I welcome it," he said.
Tyl did not clarify the obvious: the word had reached him of Neq's futility. "I do not wish to bargain with a comrade of empire, but the crazy has laid his stricture on me as on you. My help is for a price."
Dr. Jones' peculiar yet subtly forceful hand again! "What price?"
"I will name it when the occasion arises."
Neq knew Tyl for an honest man. "Accepted."
"We travel north?"
"Yes." With Tyl along, they could manage. The search could resume. "Sol of All Weapons. The Weaponless. Var the Stick. A boy. All went north, none returned. Find one of these, and we may learn why Helicon failed. Var might have learned the truth from Soli, before he killed her; Sol might have gotten it from Bob of Helicon, before he killed him. The Weaponless... may have his notions, for he negotiated with Bob about the combat of champions. The boy--I don't know."
Tyl considered. "Yes. The secret lies between Bob and Soli. Too bad neither survived...." He trailed off, pondering something; but he did not amplify his thought.
Tyl had a gun, and was competent with it. Tyl had hands. Tyl had a way with strangers that Neq lacked. The trail reappeared.
And disappeared. They followed it to the northern ocean, where a forbidding tunnel went under, and there it stopped. "If they went in there," the natives opined, "they are gone forever. The machine-demon consumes intruders."
Tyl distrusted it for a more practical reason. "I saw strange things come from the tunnels as the mountain burned. Animals with tremendous eyes and mouths, that a sword would not stop. Rats with no eyes. Some of my men died after merely touching such creatures. Jim the Gun said they carried radiation kill-spirits; he heard them on his click-box. I would not enter such a place without an army, and then I would need good reason."
Neq agreed. He had seen strange corpses in the fringe passages beyond the burn-zone of Helicon, and many radiation markers, and at night he had heard the scamperings of things that could have been similar to those Tyl described. Had he not had strong motivation, he would never have completed the long chore of cleaning the underworld rooms and passages. It would be folly to brave this unfamiliar tunnel as anything but a last resort. Rumors of horror were often well-founded, these days.
So they quested north, along the coast--and the trail resumed! Two men, one grizzled and huge, the other pale and silent. No blotch-skinned sticker; no boy.
Then Tyl spied a nomad campsite. "See--they built a fire, here, and pitched some kind of tent here, with guides around it to lead off the water from rain. The locals don't do that; they stay in square houses."
"But this is recent. Five, six days, no more. It can not be our quarry."
"True. But what would nomads be doing here? We should question them."
"Question the locals. Some would have seen the nomads pass."
Tyl nodded thoughtfully. "Strange we have heard nothing of these before."
They questioned, the locals, and learned that two nomads, a man and a woman, had passed through, traveling south.
"South?" Neq demanded. "Where did they come from?"
The people only shrugged, not knowing or caring what the barbarians did or which direction they went.
Sol and the Weaponless had gone north; these others were from the north. Their trails might have crossed.
They made a rapid excursion south again, tracing the strangers, following a course that skirted dangerously close to posted radiation zones. A large, gruff man and a rather pretty woman who kept to themselves and made swift progress. Tyl would question native villagers--a village was a kind of stationary tribe, unique to this locale--while Neq scouted the countryside for further traces.
Neq looked up one such afternoon to discover a grotesque man watching him. Huge and shaggy, hunched-backed, with grossly gnarled hands curled about home-made singlesticks, and mottled skin showing under his heavy winter coverings--the man was more like a badlands beast that a nomad. But nomad he was, and he had already assumed a stance of combat. His long arms and heavy chest suggested enormous power; he would be savage with those sticks!
Mottled skin....
"Var the Stick!" Neq cried, amazed.
The other spoke, but it sounded more like a growl. By concentrating, Neq made out the gist. "You followed me for days. Now give cause why I should not drive you off."
Neq unveiled his sword. "Cause enough here. But first you must answer my questions, for I have sought you long."
"A changeling!" Var rasped, seeing Neq's arms. "Do you know the circle?"
Neq was surprised. "You speak of the circle? You, slayer of children?"
"Never!" Var roared, coming at him. There was something wrong about his legs; though he wore boots, he did not walk like a man. A true beast in nomad outfit... it was no longer a mystery why he had killed the young girl Soli. He had probably eaten her.
Var struck at him and Neq parried, smiling grimly. He had no fear of hand-hewn weapons, and a clumsy charge was the simplest to terminate. But first he needed information.
Var was more artful than his appearance suggested. As Neq dodged aside, so did he, so that they met squarely. One stick shot toward Neq's face while the other blocked his sword. Var had met many a blade before!
So much the better. Neq's pincers also blocked defensively while his sword whistled. He struck first at the other's weapon, seeking to cut a stick in half. He preferred to disarm this monster gradually, lingeringly, not hurting him much... until after the truth was known.
"Before I down you," Var grunted, "tell me your name."
"Neq the Sword." This courtesy of identification was due even for a beast.
Var fought for a while, quite skillfully, pondering behind his overhanging brows. "I know of you," he grunted. But he showed no fear, only caution.
It was increasingly apparent that this was no warrior of the decadent post-empire ilk. Var's technique was unconventional, but he was years younger than Neq, and much larger, so that even with his considerable stoop he stood taller. He had quick brute power, and the crude-seeming sticks were more solid than they looked, blocking sword-thrusts with considerable authority. The wood tended to catch the blade, holding it instead of bouncing it back, and that was dangerous indeed. The two sticks beat a tattoo on both his metal arms, their violent force bearing him back. Had his sword not been part of him, Neq could have been disarmed early, and certainly he was giving way before the onslaught.
Yet there was a certain eloquence about Var's attack, ferocious as it was. His balance was excellent. Without pausing, the man kicked off his boots and exposed homy bare feet--and then his footing was not clumsy at all. He was astonishingly agile for his bulk, yet his motions were economical.
A master sticker, in fact. Neq had encountered only two empire stickers with power and finesse like this. One was Tyl--greater on the finesse, less on the power--and the other was Sol... whose whereabouts Var must know.
But the sticks were not like the sword, and Neq's sword was not like others. His wrist was invulnerable. Though he was not young himself, he knew of no man who could match him in fair circle combat today, other than Tyl. Var might hold him off for some time, but Var had to tire, to make mistakes, to overreach himself. The real strength of a sticker lay in his endurance under stress and his continuing judgment. There was where Neq had him: experience.
Neq fended off the blows and maneuvered for a clean opening himself. This was difficult, for Var danced about on his hooves and ducked his shaggy head sometimes almost to the ground--without ever exposing it.
"You are skilled, man of metal hands," Var muttered. "As befits a chief under the Master."
Neq eased his fencing, spying an opportunity to leam something. If Var were attempting to lull him by conversation, he would fail. "You are skilled too. I heard the Weaponless trained you himself."
"The Master is dead," Var said, relaxing his attack.
Neq let the pace slow, but remained vigilant. Var's companion might be near, ready to pounce treacherously during the double distraction of battle and dialogue. What kind of woman would mate with this kind of man, if not a beast-woman? "You could not have slain the Weaponless."
"Not in the circle," Var said grimly.
Neq stiffened. In that moment the sticker could have scored, had he been alert. Then the sparring resumed. "Sol of All Weapons followed you. You could not have slain him either."
"Not with the sticks."
This time Neq stiffened deliberately, proffering a seeming opening. Still Var did not strike. He was either too clever or too stupid. "You admit you killed them treacherously?"
"The radiation."
That blotched skin of his! Neq remembered now--there had been a story that the beast-boy could feel radiation, avoiding lethal concentrations himself while leading others into some badlands trap. So it was true, and Var had doomed both his friend and his enemy by luring them through an unmarked radiation pocket! Now he dared to return with his bitch, thinking his crime unknown or forgotten.
So Neq's sources of information were gone. But there was one more thing to know. "Soli--the child of Helicon--"
Var actually smiled. "Soli exists no more."
Neq could hardly speak. "The radiation?" he whispered with biting irony.
But this question Var avoided, as though some lode of buried guilt had finally been tapped. "We have no quarrel. I will show you Vara."