Chapter Fourteen

RIDING WAS BETTER THAN WALKING, SLANT DECIDED, BUT neither was really a good way to pass the day. His feet stopped hurting, for the most part, though the stirrups banged against his arches, but other parts of his anatomy now took a beating. He had never been an expert rider, or even merely a good one; his training had been based on the assumption that he would only visit civilized planets, where most travel was mechanized. He bad been taught the rudiments one afternoon, just in case, but that one day more than fourteen years ago and his brief jaunt with Silner had scarcely been adequate preparation for anything but the gentlest of rides.

Fortunately, the bandits' horses were fairly placid and perfectly willing to plod along at a slow walk, which he could handle. With the passage of time and distance he began to get the hang of coordinating his own movement with that of the horse, minimizing the bruises he had been getting every time his mount stepped over a rock or otherwise deviated from a slow dead-level course. The little he had been taught began to come back—it had been taught consciously, rather than through hypnotic conditioning, since it was considered unimportant—and he picked up a few points from the bandit, who had been riding since infancy.

The bandit's name was Thurrel, Slant learned, and he was eager to talk; he seemed to be very lonely, or perhaps it was a reaction to the deaths of his two comrades. Slant let him talk, and occasionally asked questions, as it seemed a good way to pick up more information about the world he-found himself in.

Thurrel Had grown up the third son of a blacksmith in a village called Duar, which lay to the northwest of the road they were currently traveling; Duar had become an outpost of the growing nation of Praunce when he was fifteen, and he had run away from home as the result of an argument with his father about whether the new government was a good thing. His father had maintained that it was a very fine thing indeed, as it meant the village would be safe from the raids by bandits and wars with other villages that had plagued it. Trade would flourish and there would be peace and plenty.

Thurrel had disagreed; he didn't like Prauncers because one had cheated him at dice, and he considered them to be thieves and scoundrels who would tax the village into poverty. When he had loudly proclaimed his opinion it led to shouting and eventually to blows, and he had left the village and become a bandit. He had no prospects anyway, being the third son, and thievery seemed as good a life as any other he was likely to find.

Slant asked, out of idle curiosity, who had been right about the rule of Praunce. Thurrel admitted that his father had been closer to the truth—but neither was fully correct. No heavy taxes had been levied nor other great burdens, and trade had improved considerably—which was one reason Thurrel had been able to survive as a bandit—but peace was still a long way off. The towns and villages that had not yet joined Praunce continued to launch raids against those that had, and Praunce's small army could not be everywhere at once. The border was gradually being pushed back, and fewer raids penetrated as far as Duar now.

It sounded to Slant rather as if Praunce, with its empire building, was putting an end to the era of city-states on this planet, much as Rome had on Old Earth three thousand years earlier. If that was the case, the city of Praunce itself would probably be a major center economically as well as politically, and would attract people from all over the continent. Those people would include wizards, probably the best wizards around; there might be some who were capable of removing the bomb and override from his skull.

He asked Thurrel how far it was to Praunce, and how far it was to Teyzha.

Thurrel replied that Praunce was three days' ride to the east, and he had never heard of Teyzha.

That implied that Teyzha was still a very long way off, and Praunce a good deal closer. It might be wise to visit Praunce. Even if he couldn't find a wizard there who could remove the thermite, he could at least replenish his supplies, learn more about the local culture, and perhaps obtain directions to Teyzha. If he simply headed east indefinitely he would eventually find someplace where it was known, but he might be several hundred kilometers out of his way by then. Praunce, as a center of trade— Thurrel assured him it was a center of trade—would be a likely place to find maps and route information.

"Tell me about Praunce," he said.

"I've never been there, actually. I've heard about it, of course. It was built on the ruins of a great city, and began as a city-state like any other, but now its borders cannot be seen from atop its highest tower—and it has the highest towers on Dest."

"Are there many wizards there?"

"Not that I know of, but I told you, I've never been there."

A thought occurred to Slant. "Are there any wizards in Arbauru?"

"No. I've never seen a wizard. I've heard stories about them, of course."

Slant dismissed that and returned to his former subject. "Is there anything special about Praunce? I heard it mentioned in Teyzha, yet here you have never heard of Teyzha, which is a good-sized city itself."

"Praunce is very large, and rules more lands than any other city, as I have said. It's built on ruins, so of course there are a lot of freaks and monsters and stillbirths. There are even said to be dragons about; perhaps that's why it's never been attacked."

"Dragons?"

"So they say."

That interested Slant; were dragons a revived myth, or was there some sort of large indigenous beast that had been given the name?

"What does a dragon look like?"

"I've never seen one."

"What are they said to look like, then?"

"Descriptions vary—and there aren't all that many descriptions, since most people who encounter a dragon up close don't live to describe it. They all agree that they're big and dangerous and they kill people."

"How big are they?"

"The smallest claim I ever heard was twice the size of a horse. Of course, tale-tellers exaggerate."

Slant was well aware of that, and guessed that the described size was closer to an average than a minimum. He said nothing further on the subject, but asked more questions about Praunce instead.

By the time they arrived at the gates of Arbauru, he had detailed instructions for reaching the city and was fairly certain that Thurrel could provide no further useful information about it.

The village was located at the confluence of two good-sized streams, which provided water, transport, and defense on two sides of a triangle. The third side was blocked off by a sturdy wooden palisade.

Slant wondered where the village got its food, since there were no surrounding farms and the rivers didn't appear large enough to provide sufficient trade, but then he noticed nets strung across the water. The fishing must be very good indeed, he decided.

The gate was open; a bored guard rhetorically asked their business, and Thurrel replied they sought food and shelter. The guard waved them through, and they rode on into the village.

Slant immediately noticed another source of food; small gardens were everywhere. The streets were narrow paths leading from building to building through a maze of vegetables and fruit trees. Such an arrangement certainly simplified withstanding a siege, he decided, but it was very inconvenient in other regards. What would happen when the population of the village began to crowd out the gardens? The wall had been built across a narrow point between the two streams, just before they diverged widely; it could not easily be moved or extended.

Perhaps they had some method of controlling the size of the population. It was no concern of his, in any case.

Thurrel spotted an inn, where they bought themselves a good and filling meal of fish and fruit. Slant had relented of his original intention of leaving Thurrel penniless, and had instead swapped three of his gold Imperials for the contents of the bandit's purse, a collection of three dozen coins of a dozen different kinds, mostly copper, a few silver. Either gold had more value here than in Awlmei or he had been cheated much worse than he had realized before, because-a single gold coin paid for a lavish meal for the both of them and brought a few bits of silver in change. He remarked to Thurrel that the locals seemed to have no objection to foreign currency.

Thurrel shrugged. "Why should they? Money is money. Gold is good anywhere."

"That doesn't seem to be the attitude in Awlmei."

"Then they're fools in Awlmei."

"It must be a nuisance converting the different currencies, though."

"What converting?"

"They don't use the same units everywhere, do they?"

"No, but the weights don't change. They just weigh the coin—or raw metal, if you prefer to pay that way.

The problem with raw metal is that you can't be sure it's pure."

"Are all the coins pure?"

"Certainly. See there?" He held out a copper coin, and Slant looked closely at the writing on it. There was an emblem resembling a coronet around a tower, surrounded by the legend "Certified in Praunce to be pure copper." There was no mention of any number of units, no government motto. The other side of the coin was blank except for a single letter P.

He looked through other coins and found the names and seals of various cities and towns, but all simply announced the coins to be pure metal. He discovered that with a little effort he could bend any of them.

His Imperials, of course, were not absolutely pure; he wondered if he should mention that fact but decided against it, and went on eating his meal without further comment When he had finished he sat back for a moment, gazing out the window of the inn at the fruit trees that shaded it. He felt good, contented and relaxed; it was an unfamiliar sensation. He relished it for a moment, then reminded himself that he still had a long way to travel, even if he was only going to Praunce instead of Teyzha, and that there was no sense in wasting the few remaining hours of daylight. He had no intention of staying the night at the inn in Arbauru; that would cost money. He would find somewhere to camp again. He felt himself quite capable of dealing with anything he might run across, be it bad weather, more bandits, or even a dragon—whatever dragons were.

"I'll be going now, Thurrel." He noticed the bandage on the man's shoulder and remarked, "You should have that wound looked at by someone who knows about such things; it's not a very serious injury, but it could get infected."

Thurrel glanced at his shoulder and replied, "I will. Thank you for treating me with such kindness; it's more than I could have expected."

"Will you be staying here, or do you still think you may go back to your old occupation?"

"I don't know. This looks like a pleasant enough place, I have to admit; I'll give it a try."

"Good." Slant rose and left the inn, feeling pleased that he had not had to kill Thurrel and that he had apparently convinced the. man to give up banditry, perhaps saving other lives. He mounted his chosen horse, the largest of the three, and rode out the gate, leading the other two.

Before he had gone half a dozen kilometers he found himself wishing Thurrel were still with him. The bandit was the first human being he had been able to hold a casual conversation with since he left Mars, and he had enjoyed it far more than he had realized; for the first time in years he was aware how lonely his life was, since he finally had something to compare it to.

There were supposed to be things that prevented him from feeling lonely, he reminded himself; his body chemistry was carefully regulated, his mind controlled by hypnotic suggestion. He was not supposed to need or want human companionship.

Assuring himself of that seemed to relieve a little of the sadness he felt, and he told himself that he had only thought he felt lonely, that he had only remembered what loneliness was like rather than actually experiencing it.

It occurred to him that perhaps the mechanisms that controlled his emotions were beginning to break dowp; he knew they were not designed to last forever. He had been able to remember his name any number of times, and there had been that suspicious failure of his training while attempting to evade pursuit in the Teyzhan palace— though that might have had something to do with wizardry, one way or another.

It didn't really matter, anyway; after all, with the computer down, he no longer needed to be lonely. He could make friends if he chose, live among ordinary people.

Of course, that assumed he couldn't get the starship back into usable shape. Or did it? Perhaps he could take others with him if and when he left this planet It might be difficult finding people who wanted to go, though, and he was unsure how many people the ship could support. It could certainly handle two, as he knew it was equipped for taking and escorting a prisoner if necessary.

He tried to imagine what it would be like to be back aboard ship, with himself setting the course instead of the computer, with someone else aboard.

He was still trying to imagine it, and failing, as he made camp and settled down for the night two hours later.