Piers Anthony - Var the Stick

At first Soli had hidden whenever human beings were encountered, for she was officially dead. Then they realized that she could masquerade as a boy, and even carry the sticks, and no one would know. So they traveled openly together, an ugly man and a fair boy, and no one challenged them.

They went west, for the Master's empire was east and Soil had heard that ocean lay to the south. Extensive desert badlands forced them north. They avoided trouble, but when it came at them relentlessly, they fought. Once a foul mouthed sworder challenged Var, calling him a pederast. Var didn't understand the word, but he got the gist and realized that it was supposed to be an insult. He met the sworder in the circle and flattened his nose and cracked his head with the sticks, and it was not pretty. Another time a small tribe sought to deny them access to a hostel; Var bloodied one, Soil a second, and the rest fled. The warriors beyond the empire were inept fighters.

In the second month they encountered so extensive a desert that they had to turn back. Fearing the Master, they took to the wilderness, avoiding the established trails.

But foraging while traveling these bleak hills was difficult. There was not time to set snares or to wait patiently for game. Soli had to turn girl child again to enter occupied hostels for supplies, while Var skulked alone. She returned with word that the Weaponless had passed this area two or three days behind them. He was outside his empire now, but no one could mistake the whitehaired brute of a man. He spoke only to describe Var and verify his transit, and did not enter the circle. He did not seem to be concerned about Var's boy companion.

So it was true. The Master was on his trail, leaving everything else behind. Var felt fear and regret. He had hoped that this murderous passion would fade, that the needs of the mountain campaign would summon the Nameless One back before very long. A minion might be dispatched to finish the chore, of course; but Var would have no compunction about destroying such a man in the circle. It was only the Master himself be could not bring himself to oppose not from fear, though he knew the Master would kill him but because this was, or had been, his only true friend.

Now he knew it was not to be. The Master would never give up the pursuit..

They veered north, moving rapidly and sleeping in the forest, the open plain, the tundra. Soil fetched supplies from the hostels, sometimes as girl, sometimes as boy.

Yet the word spread ahead of them. When they encountered strangers accidentally they drew stares of semirecognition. "You with the mottled skin aren't you the one the juggernaut is after?" But such acquaintances usually did not interfere, for Var was said to be devastating with the sticks. And, in this region of haphazardly trained warriors, this was a true description. The few who chose to challenge him in the circle soon became limping testimony to this.

And few suspected that his boy companion was even better at such fighting, possessing both sophisticated stick technique and weaponless ability. Only when they had to fight as a pair, against aggressive doubles, did this become evident. Soli, adept at avoiding blows, fenced around and behind Var, and the opposition was soon demolished.

In two more months of circuitous traveling they came to the end of the crazy demesnes. The hostels stopped, and the easy trails made by the crazy tractors terminated, and the wilderness became total. And it was winter.

Undaunted, they plunged into the snowbound unknown. It was an unkempt jungle of bareboned trees, fraught with gullies and stumbling stones hidden under the even blanket of white. At dusk the snow began to fall again, gently at first, then solidly. Soli became grim and silent, for she was unused to this. Never before had she dealt with snow; she had never emerged from the mountain above the snowline. To her it had been something white but not necessarily cold or uncomfortable. Var knew the reality exasperated her and frightened her, catching at her feet and flying in her face.

Var excavated a pit, baring the unfrozen turf and making a circular wall of packed snow. He spread a groundsheet and pegged a low sturdy tent, letting the snow accumulate on top. He sealed it in except for a breathing tunnel and brought her Inside, where he took off her boots, poured out the accumulated water, and slapped at her feet until they began to warm. She no longer cried as freely as she had at their first meeting, and he rather wished she would, for now her misery just sat upon her and would not depart.

That night, after they had eaten, he held her closely and tried to comfort her, and gradually she relaxed and slept.

In the morning she would not awaken. Nervously he stripped her despite the cold, and dried her, and found the puncture mark: on the blue ankle just above the level of her unbooted foot. Something like a badlands moth had stung her, unobserved. They must have camped near a radiation fringe zone, far enough out so that his skin did not detect it, near enough for some of the typical fauna to appear. He might have recognized the area by sight, had it not been snowing. Probably there were hibernating grubs, and one had been warmed into activity by her body, and crawled and bit when disturbed.. . she was in coma.

There was no herb he knew, in this region, in this season, that would ease her condition. She was small; if she had taken in too much of the venom, she would sleep until she died. If she had a small dose, she would recover if kept warm and dry.

The snowstorm had abated, but he knew it would return. At night it would be really cold again. This was no suitable place for illness, regardless. He had to get her to a heated hostel.

He struck tent, packed up everything hastily, and carried her dangling over his shoulder, swathed in bag and canvas. He stumbled through the knee deep snow, the hip deep drifts, never pawing for a rest, though his arms grew numb with the weight and his legs leaden.

After an hour he stepped into a snow camouflaged burrow hole, stumbled, caught himself, caught Soil as she slid oil his shoulder and almost collapsed as the pain shot up his thigh. Then be went on as before, ignoring it. Until the slower pain of his swelling ankle forced him to stop and remove his boot and rub snow on it. Then, barefooted, he continued.

After a time he had to stop again, to dispose of all superfluous weight. He hoisted Soil again and walked because he had to, no other reason. And before day was done he laid her limp body in the warm hostel, the last they had passed.

Soil's breathing was shallow, but she had neither the fever nor the chill of a serious illness. Var began to hope that he had acted in time, and that the siege was light.

He rested beside her, the sensation in his leg coming through with appalling intensity. The wrench would not have been serious, had he not continued to aggravate it, walking loaded. Now he heard something.

A man was coming up the walk to the hostel, treading the frozen path the crazies had cleared. Obviously intending to night inside.

Var had had perhaps half an hour hardly enough for strength to creep back into his limbs, more than enough to make his ankle a torment. But he dragged himself up, hastily winding a section of crazy sheet around his leg so that he could stand on it more firmly. He and Soli had remained hidden until this time, but he knew their secrecy would be gone if anyone saw her now. They had lost a day of travel, and the Master would be very close; any exposure could bring him here within hours.

The approaching steps were not those of the Weaponless. They were too light, too. quick. But Var could tolerate no man inside this hostel not while Soil lay ill, not while they both were vulnerable.

He scrambled into his heavy winter coat, pulled its hood tight around his face to conceal the discoloration above his beard, lifted his sticks, fought off the agony that threatened to collapse his leg, and pushed through the spinning door to meet the stranger outside.