Master Of The Hashomi

Chapter 10

Blade was halfway across the valley when he realized that he was being followed. The Hashomi were competent woodsmen, good enough to track a man across country at night. They were not quite good enough to track Blade without being detected. Very few people in any Dimension were.

Blade kept moving without changing his pace, while he considered how to deal with the men on his trail. How many of them were there? Did they want to kill him outright, or capture him and bring him before the Master?

There was a half-moon above, but clouds kept drifting across it. A mile farther on, the moon came out briefly, and Blade was finally able to get a good look at his pursuers. There were four of them, one carrying the staff of a Treas. Blade made up his mind to turn on them as soon as he found a good ambush site. He knew he could handle four Hashomi, probably without any of them getting away to give the alarm.

Blade and the Hashomi who thought they were hunting him kept moving steadily north for another two miles. By now the last village was behind them, the farms were fewer, and the land was becoming more thickly forested. When the moon shone, it showed the cliffs of the northern wall of the valley looming steadily higher. Blade knew the route he'd be using to climb it, if he survived the coming fight. He'd studied the route carefully by daylight, and was confident that he could climb it even by night, as long as no one was shooting at him.

It was about time to make sure nobody would be.

Blade kept moving until he came to a large tree with thick, spreading branches that would support a man and heavy foliage that would hide one. The open ground around it was narrow enough so that anyone leaping down from the tree would be within easy striking distance of anyone there.

Blade scrambled up into the tree, found a well-hidden place where he could brace himself securely, and waited. Insects whined in his ears and the rough bark of the tree gouged his skin, while the sap left sticky messes in his hair and down his neck. He took his mind off the discomforts by checking his sword, knife, dagger, and other weapons. The Hashomi normally went about fully armed, so no one had ever considered it suspicious that Blade was a walking arsenal.

Blade waited in his perch so long that he began to wonder if perhaps the Hashomi had given up the chase. Or perhaps they'd realized he was laying an ambush for them, and had sent back for help? That was an unpleasant thought, but not likely. No Treas and few ordinary Hashomi cared to admit that they needed help in any battle.

Then suddenly the four Hashomi were moving out into the open ground around Blade's tree. They moved as cautiously as if they expected to tread on poisonous snakes any minute. The Treas carried his staff and a knife, two had their swords drawn and ready, and the fourth held a crossbow. In their desire not to lose Blade's trail they'd spread out into a wide line. Too wide. They were beyond mutual supporting distance of each other.

Blade continued to wait as the men moved toward the tree. The moon was shining so brightly now that Blade recognized the Treas. He was one of the five who'd acted as judges at Blade's testing. In another minute he'd have a second chance to judge Blade's skill, although he might not live long enough to benefit from this opportunity.

The archer was drifting to the left, on a course that would bring him almost directly under Blade. Blade waited until the last possible second, then three breaths longer. His hand darted inside his tunic, and jerked out a twenty-foot length of tough cord. On the end was tied a small metal tube. Blade pressed the free end of the tube against the branch, and four spring-loaded hooks popped into sight. He let the cord run out a few feet, then whipped it toward the archer.

The hooks caught the crossbow. Blade jerked hard, and the bow flew out of the man's hands and thudded to the ground. It went off, driving its bolt into the tree. As it did, Blade landed beside it. The archer's eyes widened and he reached for the knife in his belt.

He wasn't fast enough. Blade closed in, the side of his right hand chopping the man across the throat. At the same time his left drove the dagger up under the man's ribs. Blade didn't even wait for the dying archer to fall before he whirled, drawing his sword with his right hand and raising the dagger.

Blade took care to learn what he could do with every weapon that came into his hands. He knew that he could throw the dagger and hit a vital spot on an unarmored man up to about twenty feet away. The next Hashom was about that far. The man had time for only one step before Blade's dagger was in the air, and one more before it was in his stomach.

That wouldn't kill a man outright, but it would slow and distract even one of the Hashomi. The man hesitated before taking his next step, and his sword froze in midair. Blade's sword hummed in a wide slash with all the strength of both massive arms behind it. The Hashom's body toppled as his head flew high in the air, clipped off as neatly as the head of a dandelion.

By this time the Treas had clearly realized what was happening. He decided to throw pride to the winds and send his last man for help while he himself delayed Blade as long as possible. It was a courageous decision, but made too late. Blade closed with the Treas before the man could abandon staff and knife and draw his sword. He beat the knife out of the other's hand with a swordcut that sent it flying high into the branches of the tree. Then he whirled on one foot and drove the other in over the staff against the Treas' jaw. The man went over backward, landed full length, and lay there without moving or making a sound.

Blade didn't have time to see if the Treas was dead. The last Hashom was obeying his leader's orders and running for dear life. Blade knew he had to catch up with the man and kill him before he reached the cover of the trees. Otherwise the man would get away, to bring the whole valley and all the Hashomi in it after Blade.

Blade's legs were longer, but duty and perhaps fear drove the Hashomi onward like an Olympic sprinter. Blade finally caught the man at the very edge of the trees that would have swallowed him for good, and forced him to turn.

This Hashom was the best swordsman Blade had met in the valley. For a few minutes he had to use all his own strength and skill simply to avoid being struck down. He couldn't afford even a light wound that would slow him down or make it impossible for him to climb the cliffs.

The hiss and clang of swords and the deadly dance of two skilled swordsmen seemed to go on for an hour. In fact, within a few more minutes Blade was able to get through his opponent's guard and wound him in the arm. It wasn't enough to disable the arm, but it was enough to slow the man's sword work. A Hashom's willpower, training, and drugs could make him ignore pain, but not stop flowing blood or knit together severed muscles and tendons.

The next time the two swords crashed together, Blade drove down the Hashom's guard and opened his scalp. Now there was blood flowing down into the man's eyes as well as along his arm. He shook his head, glaring at Blade out of his one clear eye. Before he'd finished shaking his head, Blade's sword came down again, cutting off his right hand. He tried to draw his knife with the remaining hand, but hadn't completed the movement when Blade's sword split his skull from the crown down to the upper jaw.

Blade pulled his sword free of the dead man and used it to cut a branch. Then he laid the branch over the man's bloody face. This was the first opponent he'd met in the Valley of the Hashomi he could really respect-a man who'd turned and fought, and showed real skill as well as the half-demented courage of the Hashomi. He slung his sword and hurried back to where he'd left the fallen Treas.

The man was still unconscious, and a mouth from which most of the teeth were missing was still bleeding. But he was very much alive. His breathing was regular, and his pulse was steady.

Blade felt like cheering. This could mean a better ending to the night's work than simply slipping out of the valley like a thief. The man at his feet was a senior Treas, high among the Hashomi, quite possibly in the confidence of the Master. A good dose of the ken drug from his own staff would still make him a passive, obedient creature, without a will of his own. Then he would be ready to answer any question Blade might ask him. Blade intended to ask a good many.

Blade bound his prisoner's hands and feet with cord from the man's belt pouch. He carried the Treas and his staff deep into the trees, where no one could come at them quickly or unexpectedly. Then he settled down to the strangest interrogation that his long and varied career had ever brought him.

It was not only the strangest interrogation, it was one of the longest. The Treas seemed to sense what Blade was doing, and there was a savage battle between the strength of the ken and the strength of his will. At last the ken won. But by that time Blade had injected so much that the man was rambling and barely coherent. Blade had to ask the same question four or five times before he got an answer that made sense. He began to wonder if dawn or even daylight would come before he'd finished. His best chance of escaping lay in vanishing from the valley in the darkness, so that no man could say when he'd gone, how, or which way. That might throw off pursuit long enough for him to get clear of the mountains.

Blade's luck held. It was still dark when he rose from behind the sleeping Treas and began pulling on his gear. He knew the heart of the plans of the Master of the Hashomi, and as many details as the Treas himself knew.

It was the Master's dream to provoke a rebellion among the Fighters of Junah against the ruling Baran of Dahaura. He had already helped them with gold, weapons, and Hashomi acting as spies and assassins. They thought he would help them even more, when they rose in open warfare against the Baran. Indeed, they were planning that open warfare largely because they thought they could rely on the aid of the Master and his Hashomi.

They were wrong. The Master had no love for the Baran and the Children of Junah, but he had no love for the Fighters of Junah either. What he did love was his dream-a dream of setting the two sides against each other. There was enough hatred built up between the two to keep them fighting until the Baranate of Dahaura fell into chaos. The cities would be plague-stricken, the farms turned back to desert, the rivers choked with the corpses of the dead. Political power would no longer be in the firm and just hands of the Baran, but in the hands of a score of local warlords, ambitious warlords, who might be willing to do anything or ally themselves with anyone in order to grasp more power.

What would happen if the Hashomi came out of their mountains and offered their support to such a warlord?

What the Master hoped to see happen was the steady rise of the Hashomi to more and more power, until in the end they-and he-were the real rulers of this Dimension. . or its ruins. It was an ambitious plan, particularly against the present Baran, who seemed to be a gifted, just, and popular ruler. He would be a formidable opponent even for the Master of the Hashomi. Still, the Master's plan offered the best hope that five thousand men could have for seizing an empire.

There was also no doubt that the Master's plan doomed many hundred thousands of people to death or misery, and for no reason except the satisfaction of his ambitions to rule. There was even less doubt in Blade's mind now than there had been-the Hashomi were his enemies, even if the Baran of Dahaura might not be his friend.

Blade looked at the man lying at his feet. This man was one of the Master's trusted counselors and advisers. For that he deserved death several times over. Yet Blade had never found it possible to cut the throat of a sleeping man in cold blood, unless his own life or mission was at stake. That wasn't the case here. The amount of ken injected into the Treas would keep him asleep for several hours, and give him total amnesia for several days. By the time anybody could get anything sensible from him, Blade would be long gone. Blade arranged the man as comfortably as possible, tied him up again, and started north.

There were hints of dawn in the sky when Blade reached the foot of the cliffs. He'd deliberately chosen a route up them as difficult as he could manage. The Hashomi were at home among their mountains, but not on them. They preferred to revere their sacred White Mountain from a distance, without scaling its twenty thousand feet of ice, snow, and rock. They had only limited skill in rock-climbing, and no idea what Blade could do.

That was a weakness, and Blade was going to take full advantage of it. The Hashomi could doubtless trail him as far as the base of the cliff. There his trail would end, and nothing would face them except the rock towering five hundred feet before it became a reasonable slope. They would look at it, and for some time they would be wondering if Blade had developed wings and flown off into the sky.

The Hashomi were not so stupid that they would go on wondering forever. Someone-probably the Master-would realize that since Blade could not have done anything else, he had climbed the cliff. Search parties would climb the easier routes along the north side of the valley and plunge into the mountains on Blade's trail. But it would be a cold trail. Blade would have gained many hours on the Hashomi, perhaps a whole day.

With that kind of a lead, he knew he could stay ahead of nearly anyone, in any Dimension.

He tied the climbing rope and the axe to his belt, and pulled on the boots with the heavy nailed soles. He carefully stowed the rest of his gear, and adjusted the pack so that it rode snug and comfortable, pulling him neither forward nor backward. He didn't want to find himself being pulled off balance while he was hanging by his fingers and toes over hundreds of feet of empty air.

He took a final swig from his water bottle, then stepped forward, raising both hands and one foot. He felt the rock solid under his curving fingers, felt his spikes gripping the foothold. Peace flowed through him. This was no longer the weird battle against the Hashomi. This was the familiar battle against the strength of the rock and the weaknesses of his own body. Blade relaxed, and began to climb.