Джеффри Лорд - Wizard Of Rentoro

Blade plunged down the street and did not look back until he was well out into the countryside. More of the villagers were back out into the street and faint curses reached Blade's ears. He shrugged, turned, and ran on.

This time he did not stop running until the village was out of sight behind him. Then he picked out a pair of trousers and a vest that would fit him, pulled them on, tied the rest of his loot into a more manageable bundle, and moved on through the twilight that was settling down over the land.

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.