Ice Dragon

Chapter 6

The first conclusion Blade's foggy mind reached after he again became aware of his surroundings was that if he was aware of his surroundings he was presumably not dead. The second was that since he appeared to be sitting or lying on a vibrating metal floor he was presumably no longer in the water. That was as much as his mind was up to recognizing for a considerable time, until the ache in his head and the pain in his scalp faded somewhat.

He was propped up in a sitting position with his back against the blue-painted metal wall of a semi-cylindrical chamber about six feet high and twenty feet long. The metal behind and under him was vibrating continuously, and from this and the unmistakable distant roar of jet engines he realized he was aboard one of the Graduk fliers. Presumably a prisoner, as he was chained to the wall by two long chains hooked to a leather belt around his waist, and his hands and feet were bound painfully tightly together by black tape. Otherwise he was naked.

Looking around the compartment, he saw Nilando, Rena, two other men and another woman from among the Irdnans, all of them likewise stripped, bound, and chained, several of them also roughly bandaged. Lifting his own bound hands to the sore area of his own scalp, he discovered that his entire head had been shaved and a large bandage covered the entire side of his scalp where the heatbeam blast had struck. His opinion of the Graduki went up about two-tenths of a percent in response to this indication of some mild concern for the health of those Treduki not used for target practice in the water. But he would still have cheerfully dismembered any or all of the four blue-uniformed figures that sat clutching their beamers in seats facing the prisoners. Beyond those four, others sat facing forward. Blade forced himself to full alertness and began a careful study of his surroundings for a clue as to how to escape.

Escape was definitely the first thing to think of, if all his fellow prisoners were able to travel, and if the plane did not land so far inside Graduk territory that there would be no hope of reaching friendly territory on foot. It had to be a high priority, because so far the Graduki-or at least those he had met-did not look of much use for any of the projects he might want to undertake in this dimension. Nilando had said they would do nothing against the Ice Dragons, either in cooperation with the Treduki or on their own. This rather ruled out getting their help in finding out more about what was going on up in the glacier-covered portions of the world. Nor would they be likely to set him and Nilando and the others free, so that they might return to the Treduk towns and teach their people what had been learned about Dragon Masters and their vulnerable points. Blade realized they would not even be likely to release him alone, assuming he wished to abandon his companions-he had been captured in the company of the barbarous Treduki and therefore would be one in the eyes of his captors.

In fact, he could not even be sure that the Graduki were planning to leave him and the others alive for very long. There was a delight in slaughter that seemed fairly well-rooted in Graduk nature, judging from the way the soldiers had picked off the people in the boats. But whatever the prospects, there was the fact that no escape would be possible until the flier landed.

Another two hours went by before the floor tilted downward and the landing gear went down with a loud clanking. As the floor continued to tilt, Blade watched his companions closely. They were all conscious now, but the guards had growled ominously at his attempts to speak to them, so he and Nilando had watched each other in silence. As far as he could tell, none were seriously hurt. But two hours' flying plus however long they had been in the air while he was unconscious added up to an enormous distance. They would most likely be many, many hundreds of miles inside Graduk territory. It would be a long walk home.

Unless perhaps that rumored faction of pro-Treduk Graduki actually existed, and he could somehow make contact with them? But how? Such a faction would most likely be operating underground, hard to find, suspicious of strangers, and hardly likely to accept him or his companions at the drop of a hat. It was something to watch for, certainly, but not expect to find.

The engines were now definitely being throttled back, and the floor tilted even more steeply. Moments later he felt a shuddering and a roar as the hydro-skis slid down onto a watery surface and spray shot up to drum like hail on the belly of the flier. The flier skimmed along until it had lost enough speed for the hydro-skis to cease bearing it. Then there was an abrupt slowing, a series of jolts, a dying whistle as the engines were cut off, and the sound of waves sloshing against the outside of the fuselage as it settled down into the water.

Seconds later there was a whine from aft as an auxiliary propulsion system cut in. The flier began moving again, gently rocking and heaving-and sometimes not so gently-under the impact of the waves. It moved forward slowly, across water that, whatever it was, clearly was not as calm as the lake.

During the minutes of the rocking and heaving, the guards unbuckled their seat belts, checked their uniforms and gear in the manner of soldiers everywhere and in every age, then moved aft to deal with the prisoners. They unchained them, cut the tapes binding their feet with knives, then jerked them roughly to their feet. Nilando glared at the man who pulled Rena up by her hair, fondling her with his other hand as he did so-and was rewarded by a jackbooted foot slamming into his stomach. He crashed back against the wall, gasping, with a look of fury in his eyes hotter than the heatbeams. The guard backed off hastily, fingering his beamer.

A hatch clanged open, and the guards motioned to the prisoners. Blade took the lead and balancing as well as he could without the use of his bound hands, stepped out through the hatch onto the wing. A noticeable breeze was kicking up waves high enough to send water washing well over the wing. The water did not seem as cold to Blade's feet as the water of the river or the lake-here they seemed to be farther from the chilling influence of the glaciers.

The fliers appeared to have landed in a bay a good two miles wide, formed by two long wooded points jutting out at either end to largely shelter it from the open sea. The shore appeared largely composed of sheer cliffs; with forest cover extending from the edge of the cliffs back to the line of hills that formed the landward horizon. The only break in the rocks was a small beach barely a hundred yards long. From the beach a large powerboat was making its way toward the flier; half a dozen of the familiar blue-uniformed figures crouched in it.

Blade was surprised that the flier had landed in this apparently wild and remote bay, but before he could speculate further the boat had reached the flier. One of the men in it threw out a line which the guards aboard the flier hauled in. Under the muzzles of beamers aboard both flier and boat, the prisoners scrambled into the boat, several of them having to be fished out of the water in the process. Then the engine purred and the boat swung in a sharp turn away from the flier. Even before the prisoners had reached the beach, the flier had fired up its engines, raced across the bay, and leaped into the air, to vanish toward the south.

A few yards up from the beach, hidden in the trees, was a narrow road paved with a pebbled gray plastic. A large truck-like vehicle more than forty feet long stood in the shade, its slab sides coming so close to the ground that Blade could not make out whether it ran on wheels, tracks, or for all he knew, feet. The guards loaded the prisoners into the truck through the rear door, but none climbed inside after them.

Left alone for the first time after many hours of enforced silence, the prisoners burst out into a gabble of oaths, questions, lamentations, and complaints. Even Nilando cursed quietly. Only Blade was silent. When the others had run out of breath, he looked at Nilando and asked quietly, «Is this the usual Graduk method, or are we getting special treatment?»

«It is the first time I have ever heard of one of their slaving patrols raiding so far north. It must be very costly to send those great machines all that way to pick up a few prisoners.»

Blade nodded. «It would be. But I think they had more in mind than just a few prisoners for slavery. I think they were trying to frighten the people of Tengran. Have the Tengrans been doing anything the Graduki would consider particularly bad?»

Nilando frowned as he tried to think out an answer to this question. «Nothing that I know for certain. The Ice Dragons do not approach Tengran, so it has never asked for help. Nor have its people ever asked for refuge in the south. They are brave.»

«If the Ice Dragons cannot swim, the Tengrans are also quite safe,» Blade reminded him. «Do the Ice Dragons merely not attack Tengran, or do they avoid the whole area?» He had the feeling that something was beginning to take shape out of the fog of ignorance through which he had been groping for nearly a week, or might take shape if he kept prodding Nilando, trying to squeeze information out of the man.

«I have heard tales,» said Nilando slowly, «that the Ice Dragons do not come within a day's fast walking of the shores of the lake. But they are only tales. If they were true, I do not see why many thousands of our people have not settled by the lake in search of safety.»

«Unless,» said Blade, also speaking slowly, also trying to define his own thoughts, «Tengran had some reason for not wanting too many people to see what they are doing?»

«By the High Hills!» exploded Nilando. «Are you trying to say that they may be the creators of the Ice Dragons? Then we must escape, so we can lead all the Treduki against these monstrous people and throw them all into their own lake. They-«

«No, damn you!» exploded Blade, losing his temper. «I didn't mean that! I meant-«and there he stopped, because he was very far from sure he had a theory he could explain to Nilando. And he was very sure that if his theory was correct the worst thing he could do was explain it anywhere he might be overheard by Graduk soldiers. They might be silent and sadistic, but they probably were not stupid enough to entirely ignore what they overheard.

Fortunately, the van ended the exchange by starting up with a whine, a clatter, and a series of jolts that sent all the people inside bouncing about like corn in a popper. Nilando swore again.

The driver of the truck must have had frustrated ambitions to be the Graduk equivalent of a racing driver, because the truck swayed, jolted, and lurched wildly along. The prisoners inside kept bouncing about and picking up bruises and gouges from the bare metal interior for the better part of an hour. They were also getting hungry and thirsty. Blade managed to keep his mind off his present discomforts and his dubious prospects by turning his theory over and over in his mind, and also by trying to guess what sort of motor drove the truck. It gave off a continuous, unvarying, maddening whine, somewhat like an enormous mosquito trying to sing bass.

Without any warning or slowing, the brakes went on and the van slammed to a stop so sudden that all six prisoners flew like bowling balls the full length of the interior and crashed into the front wall. In the silence that followed the sudden cut-off of the motor, Blade heard a new sound coming from outside-the growl and murmur of an angry mob.

There was nothing for a moment that Blade could make out except a formless and incoherent roar. Then he began to make out single voices shouting specific words

«Kill the Treduki!»

«Treduki bring disease to our people!»

«The arena is for the rich. The money spent on slave raids is taken from the poor!»

«The Treduk animals feast while we starve!»

— and others more or less as ominous. It seemed the truck was surrounded by some group in opposition to the Graduk government. But it was a howling and perhaps armed mob, and its slogans seemed to have nothing to do with the Ice Dragons and much to do with murdering Treduki. Blade had seldom felt quite as helpless as he did now, sitting locked and bound in a truck surrounded by a mob that might be hostile to his guards but was likely to prove even more hostile to him.

A moment later the van began rocking back and forth, and the shouts from outside took on the rhythmic quality of a sailor's heaving chanty. Blade grimaced. The mob had decided to try overturning the truck. No doubt it weighed a good many tons, but several hundred determined people can push hard. And after they got it over, then what? Set it on fire? Yes. Blade heard a new shout: «Burn the animals in their cage! Burn out the disease from our cities!»

Blade saw Rena turn white, and Nilando put an arm around her to comfort her, although the Irdnan's own face was tight-drawn and pale itself. The rocking grew more violent; several times Blade felt one set of wheels rise completely clear of the ground and slam back. Once he heard a scream and a crunch as somebody didn't jump back fast enough from the descending truck.

Then the scream of a siren cut through the uproar outside, just as the truck heaved up more mightily than before, reached its point of balance, and went over. Whether anybody was under it when it hit Blade didn't notice; he was too busy bracing himself as well as he could to keep his brains from being bashed out against the walls. As it was he went head over heels and landed with a spine-jarring crash that momentarily made his head swim and added bruises to most of the places that hadn't already been bruised in the course of the trip.

As he lay there, battered and coldly determined that the next person who touched him or tried to make him do anything was going to be killed, the truck door crashed open. He twisted himself around until he faced the light and then lurched to his feet, his bound hands raised clublike. Two of the soldiers squatted in the opening, their beamers leveled at him.

«Outside!» one of them snapped. Blade moved slowly forward, hearing the others behind him groaning and staggering to their feet, until he was squarely between the two soldiers. One of them prodded him in the hip with the butt of his beamer.

Blade spun on his left foot and his right foot shot out like a stone flying from an explosion, smashing into the soldier's stomach and catapulting him through the open door. Before the other could bring his beamer up and aim it, Blade swung his bound hands against the man's head in a hammer-blow that slammed him against the edge of the door. Blade heard the soldier's skull crack. Then he leaped through the door into the sunlight, far too angry to be cautious but not too angry to notice what was around him.

The mob still surrounded the overturned truck at least a thousand strong, but they had backed away a little. From the overturned van to another similar one about thirty feet away a double line of men in blue uniforms made a clear alley. Blade at first thought these were more soldiers. Then he noticed the different cut of the uniforms, and that these men were armed with heavy barreled, green-painted pistol-like weapons with wide mouths, rather than the too-familiar black heatbeamers. He saw some of these turning toward him, staring and raising their weapons-then he suddenly had too much to do to look more.

Four soldiers came running around the end of the truck but made the fatal mistake of not blasting Blade on the spot. Like the men he had already taken out, they found him too close in before they could fire, and after that there was nothing they could do but flee or die. He butted the first one in the stomach, and the soldier screamed out all the breath in his body as he shot into the air and crashed against the man behind him. They went down together, and Blade leaped forward and crashed his bare foot down full force on the second man's chest. He saw a third soldier raise his beamer to firing position, threw himself backward under it, and swept the man off his feet and hard up against the sharp edge of the open truck door. The man fell forward tonelessly, but before he hit the ground Blade found himself suddenly staring into the muzzle of the fourth soldier's beamer.

There was no flashing of his life before his eyes, because the moment of staring at the beamer and knowing that it was about to chop him into charred pieces didn't last long enough. Then the soldier suddenly dropped his beamer into the dust, threw up his hands, and fell backward with a thud.

In the sudden silence that followed the soldier's collapse, Blade saw eyes in the mob turning from him to the double file of armed men, then on to the rest of the prisoners clustered behind him. Then one of the police-types snapped, «All right, you bastards! In the van! Now!» It was certainly a policeman's type of voice, and Blade could no more swallow that than he had swallowed the soldier's treatment. Not now. He lunged forward, and as he threw his arms to the left for a swinging blow at the nearest man's head, two more beyond that one had time to whip up their weapons and aim them at Blade. He felt a sudden fierce itching all over his body, as if every inch of it were covered with a blazing rash, then his knees would no longer hold him up. He knew he was falling forward, vaguely wondered if there was yet a part of his skin unbruised, felt himself hit and the gravel drive into his skin, then slipped on down into blackness.