Did a Hunter want battle armor? The nearest information corner contained computerized directories of the enterprises located in the Palace. He could select from a variety: Armor Omnipotent, Body Block, the Body Guard, Corpus Electric.
After this buildup from the tapes and Baldur, arrival in Sinopol came as a shock. Baldur’s rented room was a hole in the wall, a clean hole in the wall, but a hole in the wall, nonetheless.
Baldur wasn’t in any shape to discuss the matter. While I could see that he wanted to get the whole thing over, under the body-dyeing job he was pale. I shoveled some rations in him, and then into me. Then I insisted he lie down on the single couch. He did and was out in less than a unit.
At first glance the room could have been anywhere on a dozen planets. Just a synthetic-veneered room with a couch, a table and two chairs for eating, an armchair, a corner full of cooking gear, and a separate room with funny-looking facilities for hygiene.
One window, and when I went to look out, trying to ignore Baldur’s snores, another oddity struck me. Supposedly, this was a poor area, but the window was spotless. So were the others I could see. The air was clear. The orange sun made the whole city shimmer in the noon light.
I sat down in the big chair for a while, hoping Baldur would wake up, but he just kept snoring away. I tried to remember the briefing, running over one item at a time in my mind. Baldur kept sleeping.
I stood up. Somehow the chair didn’t feel right. I studied it, but couldn’t figure out why.
I walked back over to the window. Baldur snored and turned in his sleep. I checked the lock and bar on the doorway. I presumed it led to a hall. The security equipment was dusty. Baldur rolled back over, stopped snoring, and stayed asleep.
I’d had it. The mission’s first step was to get a pile of stellars—the local currency—in order to buy the generator. Baldur had been more vague about the reasons, but he clearly believed that we couldn’t or shouldn’t steal the generator outright. I had to accept that. So I checked my outfit over once more, as carefully as I could.
Then I slipped undertime to take a look around Sinopol. I figured I could find my way back, but as a precaution I’d locked the location into my wristbands.
I made my first breakout into a quiet corner of the Palace of Technology and popped out when no one seemed to be looking. As I strolled through those endless halls, I put a few pieces together.
Item: Only the biggest and toughest-looking men walked alone.
Item: Women could and did walk unescorted.
Item: The smallest of the male Hunters were taller than I was. Most were at least Baldur’s size.
Item: Stellars were carried in sealed belt pouches like mine, attached with the same synthetic as the bodymesh.
There wasn’t much chance of liberating the coin of the realm through cutpursing.
A pair of young Hunters came out of a metal-mirrored emporium, their eyes swinging across the hall. The flowing script above the door they left proclaimed the store as “The Reflection of the Honorable Pursuit.” A smoother translation would have been “War Reflects Honor.”
The two Hunters didn’t seem that much older than me. They walked quickly. I moved aside, recalling Baldur’s recommendations to avoid trouble.
They moved in the same line.
I started to avoid them again, then saw the pattern. If I kept clear of them, I’d be called for cowardice or its socially acceptable equivalent. If I didn’t, one or the other would brush me and claim that I had insulted his honor by not recognizing his passage.
The corridor was wide, well lighted, moderately traveled. The Faffnirians could smell a fight. People were already turning in anticipation before the two bullyboys started their final approach. Unless my neck was really at stake, sliding undertime with a crowd watching wasn’t the best idea. All we needed was an entire high-tech culture looking for a stranger who disappeared in full public view. Baldur, not to mention Heimdall, would have my hide.
If I’d been Heimdall, or Freyda, even Baldur, I might have been able to plan a graceful way out. But I wasn’t. I just kept marching straight ahead until the thinner one, and both were whipcord lean, like a Hunter of Faffnir sounded, brushed my shoulder.
“Honored young Hunter, I do believe you have conducted your passage with less than the requisite discretion,” intoned the thin one. The elaborate phraseology underscored the deadliness of the game somehow.
“Honored old Hunter, I do believe you have contrived a lack of clearance in your own passage merely to reaffirm past glories,” I responded. Better to be shot as an eagle than a dove.
His eyes widened slightly. His companion smirked, I thought.
“I regret,” he retorted, “your passage from this veil will provide such an opportunity, for the Hunters need young hounds of spirit.”
The “corner” arena was not far. Too close. After the first rush, I’d been tempted to disappear and try to reason with Baldur and company, but the thought of all the high-tech goodies of Sinopol being brought to bear on Baldur and me dissuaded me, as did the thought that Heimdall just might have recommended a tour on Hell for calling attention to the Guard.
No … better I fought out of it—if I could. I could always dive at the last minute before the lean Hunter tried to cut my throat—I hoped.
He folded his cloak and stepped over the circular edge of the “arena” etched on the faintly gritty stone glass pavement. All the pavements in the Palace of Technology pulsed with a faint light, but the “arenas” glowed reddish while the corridor floors glowed with a faint yellow.
I folded my own cloak, studying him as I did.
The knife would be more of a hindrance than a help. I decided I would throw it as soon as convenient.
“I favor the one with the spotted face.”
I scanned the smooth brown faces around the circle before I understood the voice meant me. Damn! My freckles hadn’t been covered totally by the cosmetic job, or the Hunters saw at slightly different frequencies. The two bullies had immediately gone for the difference, just like Baldur had said they would.
“He’s smaller.”
“But to reach his age with such blotches …”
“At three to two.”
The companion Hunter stepped into the middle of the circle and began a spiel. “Is there no other way for the two honorable individuals to reconcile their difficulty?”
“I would accept only a profound apology and the necessary departure from the Hunters, and that with difficulty,” replied the one I would have to kill or dive from. That was right. No honorable bloodletting, scratch-on-the-shoulder, old-chap stuff. One victor and one body would result.
“An apology will not suffice, not for one who provokes for mere vanity,” I snapped, not thinking.
That didn’t set well with the crowd. They lived for mere vanity. The mutter that went around the circle turned opinion against me. These people expected pointless duels.
“Arrogant young dog.”
“Surprising what these young mongrels say.”
There was more, little of it complimentary.
I was experiencing culture shock. I was not standing in a bloodstained arena, on sand baked by a sun burning overhead, with a bloodthirsty crowd jeering and cheering.
No … I was waiting in a wide, cool, and spacious corridor with the scent of trilia flowers, or something similar, wafting around me, with well-cloaked weapons shoppers stopping for a casual look, as if it were the most common sight in the world to see two young men getting ready to kill each other.
Maybe it was in High Sinopol in the Five Thousandth Century of Glory, but as a young, time-diving Temporal Guard from Query, I had more than a few reservations about the matter, including a real concern about my ability to get out of the mess anywhere near whole.
All too soon the formalities were over, and the Hunter was circling in on me. At first, I countercircled, trying to ignore the running comments
from the bystanders. I felt slippery under the mesh armor.
“See … the mongrel backs off.”
“Perhaps he is an imposter.”
I couldn’t help the slightest shudder at that. Imposters were dispatched beyond the veil on the spot—if discovered. Shuddering was a luxury, and almost my last one at that. Seeing the distraction, the Hunter came in quickly, light on his feet and perfectly balanced. His knife was like silver fire.
Somehow I avoided it and circled back, still holding onto my own knife.
“The young dog has speed. Most would have been gutted on the spot.”
“If he is so quick, why does he let the other control the circle?”
Tactics were becoming clearer as we circled. Given the bodymesh armor, slashing was virtually useless. Any successful use of the knife would have to involve a clean and incapacitating thrust, or slashes across the head and neck. I owed my unscathed condition partly to that.
Now critical jeers came from the crowd, and not all were aimed at me.
“Can’t you even finish a mongrel, proud Hunter?”
Sooner or later, he’d get careless with my lack of offense, I hoped.
Sooner it was. Perhaps enraged by the crowd, perhaps thinking me an imposter, he came in with his knife too wide. I threw my own blade at his neck, and half ducked, half slid, blurring almost into the undertime, right around his arm. I snapped his knife wrist with the moves Sammis had drilled into me so many times and virtually simultaneously crushed his throat with an elbow thrust.
For a moment, as he twitched before dying, I must have looked at the body stupidly.
“Have you ever seen a Hunter that fast?”
“So fast …”
“The knife was a decoy …”
The murmurs went around the circle. The bets were paid, and the bullyboy remaining, pale under his dark complexion, approached.
“Honored young Hunter, I apologize and regret any inconvenience that may have been caused.”
I nodded curtly, choking down the nausea that kept climbing back up my throat.
Under the customs, I got the dead Hunter’s weapons and his coin purse. The rest went to his clan or wife.
“I would be honored, Hunter of Honor,” I managed, after receiving the dead man’s knife, weapons belt, and purse, “if you would convey my
understanding of the honor and bravery of such an esteemed Hunter to those who would be most concerned.”
The ritual saved me. I wasn’t sure I could have said anything original. After that, I had to reclaim my own knife. No one had even touched it. The sanitary-disposal vehicle rolled on soundless tires up to the body, lying alone in the arena, even before I had taken a dozen steps down the yellow corridor pavement.
A few older Hunters were standing at a distance, speculating among themselves. I walked toward the nearest narrow side corridor and, the instant I was alone, slid undertime and straight for Baldur’s room.
I made it to the funny-looking hygiene facilities and thoroughly lost the contents of my stomach.
Two blows, delivered as taught, and a young man was dead on the glowing red stone glass. Everyone had smiled, especially the older merchant type who had bet on me. I recalled looking up from the crumpled body on the pavement to see him chuckling and collecting from a dour Hunter. Had that triggered the nausea?
Had it been the winning smile of the young lady after my glorious victory? Or the laughter? Or the realization that I had used techniques my opponent had no idea were possible? I’d cheated. Cheated him of his life, and no matter how I rationalized it, my own failure to avoid the confrontation played a big part in his death.
Baldur was standing at the door to the facilities as I washed up. I hadn’t had time to close it. He understood, all right.
He nodded at the weapons belt and purse I’d dropped in the middle of the floor. “Just like you, Loki. You had to snoop around and get in over your head.”
“How could they? How could I?” I hadn’t had that much choice, but still … “I kept thinking that you or Heimdall could have avoided it. But, no, I had to get into a situation where either everyone in Sinopol would be looking for me or I had to kill somebody.”
I sat down because I was shaking.
Baldur sat in one of the armless chairs and looked at me. “You know, Loki, you’re probably one of the few Guards in centuries, besides Sammis, who’s killed someone bare-handed. I assume you used hand-to-hand.”
I mumbled an affirmative, and he went on.
“Most of the Hunters of Faffnir retire after a single tour or die in some sort of combat. Don’t put too much guilt on yourself. But don’t push it all away. It would be helpful if you retained some appreciation of life.”
I was afraid Baldur might start preaching again. The feeling must have showed. He laughed.
“No, young killer, no sermons. One point. You killed one man, who possibly deserved it, and you feel the impact. Freyda, Eranas, Martel, and the others make decisions which kill, or leave unborn, millions. Odin Thor, for all his purported heroics, never killed anyone face-to-face with bare hands. He just sat back and roasted them. Think about it.”