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to sit, resting long bony hands on long bony thighs.
Heim turned to the intently listening folk. I am Hern Heslin, hereditary
Domnor of Oras and the Cimpia Plain, a land on a world other than this. I ve
come to offer you a refuge from your enemies. As he paused, Serroi studied
the faces before them, some interested, some skeptical, some hostile, some
indifferent, all of them alert, following his words with an intensity that
startled her. Talk well, Dom, she thought, they re going to need a lot of
convinc-ing. I ve been watching you, Hern said. On my world there is a
being who calls himself sometimes Coyote, some-times Changer, with a Mirror
that looks into other worlds. To pay off an old debt, he in effect gave me my
choice of whatever I saw in his Mirror. I have watched you governing
yourselves and I like what I ve seen. I ve watched your fighters in action,
effective action with a minimum of force used and blood shed. He smiled. I
was much impressed. A blend of interest and alarm lit Georgia s faded blue
eyes. On my world we are engaged in a battle that is much like the one that
engages you here. From what I heard, your government has been taken over by a
group that is trying to control every aspect of your lives. So it is with my
land. I need you. I have no gold to pay you, but I can offer you a refuge from
those that pursue you and land to build a new country, raise your children,
govern yourselves as you please. Fight for me, help me throw out those who
want to tell my people how to act, what to think, who want to destroy an
ancient seat of learning and refuge. In return, I will take all of you back
through the Changer s Mirror, all of you, old and young, fit and sick,
fighters and non-combatants alike. I will cede to you a stretch of land north
of Oras, a territory empty of other folk and kept as a hunting preserve by my
father and grandfather. The soil is fertile, it has an extensive seacoast and
access to one of the major rivers of the land, a good part is forested, and
there is abundant game. He made a small deprecating gesture. Since I don t
find much pleasure in hunting, they ve been left undisturbed for a number of
years. The size .... um .. that s a difficulty. He rubbed a hand across his
chin. I would say the preserve is just about three times the area of that
city where the armory was. You understand, I can only promise you that land if
the Nearga Nor and Floarin s army are defeated, but no matter what happens
some of you will survive and there is much open land on my world. He turned,
made a slight bow to the council, then swung back to the others. I stand
ready to answer your questions.
A man got to his feet, scowling, a stocky dark man with long black hair
braided into a single plait and tied off with a thin leather thong. Havier
Ryan, he said. A lot of us don t think much of hereditary anythings. We got
em and we close to dying of em. In spite of his stolid appearance, he
radiated an immense anger tautly controlled, control that flattened his voice
to a harsh monotone. Fight for you, you say. All right, what s the chances?
We don t mind a fight if something comes of it, or why the hell we here? Lost
causes, that s something else. Might as well stay and tend to our own miseries
as jump off into the back end of nowhere. He crossed his arms over his chest
and stood waiting.
Your weapons are far more lethal than ours, with a much greater range. My
world fights with sword and bow, lance and sling. With those two-wheeled
machines you have mobility and ten times the speed of anything my people know.
You would be fighting beside several hun-dred meien, women trained to weapons
who will give the last ounce of their strength to defend the Biserica, not
least because they can look forward to a slow skinning over a hot fire if
they re defeated. Also a few hundred irregulars, men and boys driven off their
land, and some Stenda mountain folk who don t take well to being told what to
think. You d be fighting behind a great wall, defended from sorcerous attack
by the most powerful concentration of life-magic in our world. Your numbers
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are few, but as I said, your range, power and mobility will more than make up
for lack of numbers. There might be other allies joining us, but I ve been
away from the Biserica for some time and haven t seen the latest reports, As
for the other side I think we can count on having to face three or four
thou-sand. Not all of those will be trained fighters, but enough of them to
roll over my meien like a flood tide no matter how fiercely they fight. And
there is the council of sorcer-ers, the Nearga Nor. Since they are the ones
who started this mess, they re gathering in all the norits and norids they can
lay hands on. Norids you don t have to worry much about since they re barely
able to make a pebble hop. Norits are something else. Besides things like
longsight and flying demons sent as spies and saboteurs, they can compress the
air above you so that it falls on you like a stone, turn earth to bogs that
suck you down, or open wide cracks under your feet, burn anything flammable
you have on your body, including hair and nails, freeze the breath in your
lungs, or snatch it away, freeze the blood in your veins. But they can t work
their magic from a dis-tance greater than ten or a dozen bodylengths and there
are only a few hundred of them and as long as the Shawar are untroubled, they
can block everything the norits throw at us. The most powerful of the nor, the
norissim, are very few, one active, the others reduced to shadow extensions of
his will. But he ll be concentrating on the Shawar shield so won t be a direct
threat as long as we can keep the army from breaking through the wall. With
you there, we can stop them. A tough fight, but far from a lost cause.
And what happens if we don t choose to come?
I go back through the mirror and look for another force to fight for me. He
looked round at them. And you pack up and start running.
3
Julia ran from the pain, ran into memory, fading from scene to scene,
indirectly taking leave of the struggle that had brought her here, preparing
herself for the final yielding.
A hand reached out and caught hers, a strong arm hoisted her into the back of
the truck. As she stumbled into the darkness, the dim light from the overhead
bulb touched momentarily the flat spare planes of a familiar face, Michael,
dressed again in the skirt and blouse she d given him. She settled herself
beside him, her back braced against the steel side of the box. Making this
permanent?
This side of the line.
They still looking?
When they feel like it.
The truck began filling up, people packing in around them, so they stopped
talking and sat in growing discom-fort until the smuggler had his load and the
back doors were slammed shut and latched. Julia heard the rumble of the motor,
grimaced as she caught a whiff of exhaust smoke; the truck started forward
with a lurch that pushed her into the dim figure on her left.
The truck crept forward, waddled into the street, hesi-tated, then picked up
speed along an empty street.
The hours passed too slowly. There was no talking, a grunt or two now and
then, a cough, a sigh, scrapes as one of the fugitives shifted cramped limbs.
There was a stink of fear and sweat, of hot metal and exhaust fumes. The
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