Bob Shaw: The Wooden Spaceships

Lord Toller Maraquine took the bright sword out of the presentation case and held it in such a way that the foreday sun flamed along the blade. As before, he was captivated by its lucent beauty. In contrast to the black weapons traditionally used by his people it seemed to have an ethereal quality, akin to sunlight striking through fine mist, but Toller knew there was nothing unearthly about its powers. Even in its simplest, unmodified form the sword would have been the best killing instrument in history—and he had taken its development a step further.

He pressed a catch which was concealed by the ornamentation of the haft and a curved section sprang open to reveal a tubular cavity. The space was filled by a thin-walled glass vial containing a yellowish fluid. He made sure the vial was intact, then clicked its cover back into place. Reluctant to put the sword away, he tested its feel and balance for a few seconds and impulsively swept it into the first readiness position. At that moment his black-haired solewife, using her uncanny ability to materialise at precisely the wrong time, opened the door and entered the room.

“I beg your pardon—I had presumed you were alone.” Gesalla gave him a smile of sweet insincerity and glanced all about her. “Where is your opponent, by the way? Have you cut him into pieces so small that they can’t be seen, or was he invisible to begin with?”

Toller sighed and lowered the sword. “Sarcasm doesn’t become you.”

“And playing warriors doesn’t become you.” Gesalla crossed the floor to him, moving lightly and silently, and put her arms around his neck. “What age are you now, Toller? Fifty-three! When are you going to put notions of fighting and killing behind you?”

“As soon as all men become saints—and that may not be for a year or two yet.”

“Who’s being sarcastic now?”

“It must be infectious,” Toller said, smiling down at Gesalla, deriving a pleasure from merely looking at her which had scarcely diminished in the long course of their marriage. Their twenty-three years on Overland, many of them hard years, had not materially altered her looks or thickened her gracile form. One of the few discernible changes in Gesalla’s appearance was the single strip of silver which might have been applied to her hair by a skilled beautician. She still adopted a long and flowing style of dress in subdued colours, although Overland’s burgeoning textiles industry was as yet unable to produce the gauzy materials she had favoured on the old world.

“At what time is your appointment with the King?” Gesalla said, stepping back and examining his clothing with a critical eye. It was sometimes a source of contention between them that, in spite of his elevation to the peerage, he insisted on dressing like a commoner, usually in an open-necked shirt and plain breeches.

“At the ninth hour,” he replied. “I should leave soon.”

“And you’re going in that garb?”

“Why not?”

“It is hardly appropriate for an audience with the King,” Gesalla said. “Chakkell may take it as a discourtesy.”

“Let him take it any way he pleases.” Toller scowled as he laid the sword in its leather case and fastened the lid. “Sometimes I think I’ve had my fill of royals and all their ways.”

He saw the fleeting expression of concern on Gesalla’s face and was immediately sorry he had made the remark. Tucking the presentation case under his arm, he smiled again to indicate that he was actually in a cheerful and reasonable mood. He took Gesalla’s slim hand in his own and walked with her to the front entrance of the house. It was a single-storey structure, as were most dwellings on Overland, and had few architectural adornments, but the fact that it was stone-built and boasted ten spacious rooms marked it as the home of a nobleman. Masons and carpenters were still at a premium twenty-three years after the Great Migration, and the majority of the population had to make do with comparatively flimsy shelter.

Toller’s personal sword was hanging in its belted scabbard in the entrance hall. He reached for the weapon and then, out of consideration for Gesalla, turned away from it with a dismissive gesture and opened the door. The precinct beyond glowed so fiercely in the sun that its walls and pavement seemed to be light sources in their own right.

“I haven’t seen Cassyll today,” Toller said as heat billowed in past him. “Where is he?”

“He rose early and went straight to the mine.”

Toller nodded his approval. “He works hard.”

“A trait inherited from me,” Gesalla said. “You’ll return before littlenight?”

“Yes—I have no wish to prolong my business with Chakkell.” Toller went to his bluehorn, which was waiting patiently by a spear-shaped ornamental shrub. He strapped the leather case across the beast’s broad haunches, got into the saddle and waved goodbye to Gesalla. She responded with a single slow nod, her face unexpectedly grave.

“Look, I’m merely going on an errand to the palace,” Toller said. “Why must you look so troubled?”

“I don’t know—perhaps I have a premonition.” Gesalla almost smiled. “Perhaps you have been too quiet for too long.”

“But that makes me sound like an overgrown child,” Toller protested.

Gesalla opened her mouth to reply, changed her mind and disappeared into the house. Slightly disconcerted, Toller urged the bluehorn forward. At the precinct’s wooden gate the well-trained animal nuzzled the lock actuating plate, a device Cassyll had designed, and in a few seconds they were out in the vivid grasslands of the countryside.

The road—a strip of gravel and pebbles confined by twin lines of rocks—ran due east to intersect the highway leading to Prad, Overland’s principal city. The full acreage of Toller’s estate was being cultivated by tenant farmers and therefore showed different shades of green in strips, but beyond his boundaries the hills had their natural uniformity of colour, a rich verdancy which flowed to the horizon. There were no clouds or haze to soften the sun’s rays. The sky was a dome of timeless purity, with only a sprinkling of the brightest stars and an occasional meteor showing up against the overall brilliance. And directly above, gravitationally fixed in place, was the huge disk of the Old World, looming but not threatening—a reminder of the most momentous episode in all of Kolcorron’s history.

It was the kind of foreday on which Toller would normally have felt at peace with himself and the rest of the universe, but the uneasiness caused by Gesalla’s sombre mood had not yet faded from his mind. Could it be that she had a genuine prescience, intimations of forthcoming upheavals in their lives? Or, as was more likely, did she know him better than he knew himself and was able to interpret signals he was not even aware of giving?

There was no denying that of late he had been in the grip of a strange restlessness. The work he had done for the King in exploring and claiming Overland’s single continent had brought him honours and possessions; he was married to the only woman he had ever loved and had a son of whom he was proud—and yet, incredibly, life had begun to seem flat. The prospect of continuing on this pleasant and undemanding course until he silted up with old age and died filled him with a sense of suffocation. Feeling like a betrayer, he had done his utmost to conceal his state of mind from Gesalla, but he had never yet managed to deceive her for long about anything…

Far ahead of him Toller saw a small group of soldiers moving north on the highway. He paid them little heed for several minutes until it came to him that their progress towards Prad was unusually slow for a mounted party. In the mood to welcome any distraction, he took his small telescope out of his pouch and trained it on the distant group. The reason for their tardiness was immediately obvious—four men on bluehorns were escorting a man on foot who was almost certainly their prisoner.