Piers Anthony - Neq the Sword

There were outlaw tribesmen w this region. Some Neq and Dick had encountered before; no one had known of Var or Sosa. Of course there was considerable turnover here, for the outlaws warred constantly with one another in this land of no honor, and few lived long.

The locals were not eager to answer more questions. Neq's uncovered sword convinced them. Still he learned nothing.

He moved out, making great circles around Helicon, searching out men and tribes he had not met before. Many balked--but as the blood dripped from his sword, his questions were answered. Negatively. Only six years had passed, but many of these men did not know what he meant by "Helicon."

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.