a comprehensive survival course. He had to teach him what to say and do in every circumstance: instruct him about automobiles—driving one, buying one, insuring one, renting one; instruct him about auto repairs, anti-freeze, oil, lubricants; instruct him about traffic lights, pedestrian walkways, drivers’ licences; instruct him about IDs and credit cards; about tall buildings and elevators; about airplanes, trains, busses, and taxis; about fast food, motels, and self-service gas stations; about money, tipping, shopping, and supermarket checkouts; about newspapers, radio and TV; about libraries, city directories, and telephones; about advertising, shopping malls, salesmen, sizes of clothing and shoes. The emissary would have to know the rudiments of investigation—how to track down one Johnson among the hundreds to be found in any major city—and he had to know how to survive while he did it, perhaps for months. Merely understanding money wouldn’t be enough. He had to be able to acquire money when he needed it. He had to know about law and the police. He would even need coaching in breaking and entering.
The task of teaching someone from a primitive society about the complex wonders of the Twentieth Century was so enormous that Egarn hesitated even to make a beginning. He was much too old and much too tired. He had waited too long.
But he was the only man alive who could do it, and so he had to try. He would work while there was any life in him, and do his best, and pray that for once in his life he would be lucky.
“No,” he muttered. “I will need a lot more than that. Luck wouldn’t be enough. It will take a miracle.”
CHAPTER 4
EGARN (3)
The Peerdom of Lant was at war, but its campaigns had been little more than organized pillage. The peer began her invasions with a tiny force. Opposing generals invariably reacted to this insolent gesture by flinging every available lasher into a massive counterattack in the hope of overwhelming the Lantiff and ending the war quickly.
Strokes of lightning tore that counterattack to shreds, and claps of thunder routed the terrified survivors. Formal resistance in a newly invaded peerdom ended before battle was joined. The defending forces had neither the bravery nor the fanaticism to stand and fight against a foe that could invoke the terror of the elements. The peer’s army, which had been waiting in concealment, then moved forward to rape and loot and vandalize at leisure.
The moment it became known that Egarn had escaped, the peer called off two of her wars to turn long ranks of Lantiff toward the western mountains. She had begun her southern invasion only recently, and she was reluctant to interfere with it; but she snatched entire armies from the north and east, leaving token forces to occupy the conquered peerdoms there. By the time Egarn’s fever abated, the opportunity for flight that had existed during the first days of his escape had vanished.
His conscience-stricken gesture of destroying his weapons may have come too late—as Bernal pointed out, Lant’s swollen armies no longer needed them for their conquests—but that fact did nothing to mitigate the peer’s rage. She reacted with mindless fury and threw every available force into her search for the traitor. Now the Lantiff had sealed off all approaches to the border and were diligently combing the forested mountain slopes.
“Never mind,” Bernal told Egarn. “We still have the advantage. If the dead Lantiff have been found, the peer knows you have horses, and she is lying awake nights wondering which way you went. North, south, east, west, you could have covered a lot of ground while the hunt was getting organized. No matter what oaths her border guards may swear, she will fear you slipped through one of the passes before word of your escape reached them. In that case, you are already in Easlon, and her massive hunt is a farce.”
“If one-name foresters found the dead Lantiff, the peer will never find out what happened to them,” Roszt said. “The foresters know from bitter experience that the nearest villages would be pillaged on principle if they left the bodies for the peer’s army to find.”
“Whether they were found or not, the peer won’t rest until she catches me,” Egarn said resignedly. “She will use torture to make me restore the weapons to her, and then she will have me killed in the most painful way she can think of. She will do the same with you three, of course.”
“She will have to catch us first,” Bernal said cheerfully.
“You know how to take care of yourselves. She wouldn’t be able to catch you if you didn’t have me to look after.”
“Nonsense. There is nothing wrong with your legs, and anyway, we have the horses. As soon as you get your strength back, we will run for it.”
Egarn stretched out languidly on his rough bed and remained silent for a time. Then he said, speaking slowly and hesitantly, “I wish I were able to tell you things—and show you things—just in case you escape and I don’t. If I die without telling anyone, my life has been wasted.”
Bernal waited silently.
“It is difficult to explain,” Egarn said. “Can you grind a Honsun Len?”
Bernal chuckled. “I wouldn’t know how to begin.”
Egarn’s voice took on a note of puzzlement. “I thought all one-name boys learned len grinding. They do in Lant, and med servers take the most talented as prentices. This civilization couldn’t survive without Honsun Len grinders. There is an oddity about the len I have never been able to figure out. Whether it is used or not, in time it loses its effectiveness. Medical lens have to be replaced every sike and sometimes oftener—which is why med servers must become expert len grinders. That is also why the peer believed me when I told her the weapons needed new lens. They didn’t, but eventually they would have. Lant’s med servers are always looking for prentices. Are things different in the Ten Peerdoms?”
“No different,” Bernal assured him. “My schooler taught len grinding to the younger boys, and a med server looked in on the classes and gave special lessons to those who had ability. He didn’t include me. Probably the talents that made me a successful scout also made it impossible for me to sit for long hours grinding meaningless ripples in glass.”
Egarn said regretfully, “Then you have never ground even one Honsun Len.”
“According to my schooler, the mutilated objects I produced didn’t bear the faintest resemblance to one. Those ripples required a precision that seemed inhuman to me. Only a few boys had both the patience and the ability, and they were sent to a special school. When we next saw them, they were wearing their prentice smocks and bragging about their futures as high servers of the peer. I wonder what they think of those futures now.”
“Don’t Easlon crafters have confidence in the future?”
“Perhaps len grinders do. We scouts know Lant will turn westward as soon as it conquers its other neighbors.”
“So it will,” Egarn agreed. There was a note of bitter sadness in his voice. He was silent for a moment, and then he returned to the subject of len grinding. “Did your schooler tell you anything about the Honsun Len?”
“That was for the students who became prentices.”
“He should have told you as much as he knew. It has shaped your entire life. It will shape the lives—and deaths—of your children. It made your civilization what it is, and it will also destroy it.”
“We scouts aren’t much given to deep thinking,” Bernal said cheerfully. “We have to be able to do the right thing quickly without thinking at all. But perhaps if you would explain what you mean—”
“I am sorry,” Egarn said. “I would like to, but I wouldn’t know how to begin if you don’t know anything about the Honsun Len. Perhaps Roszt or Kaynor—”
“They are as ignorant as I am, but don’t worry yourself about it. If we were expert len grinders, you might be able to make us understand, but we wouldn’t have the slightest notion of how to get you out of Lant. What you need right now are expert scouts, and you have them. When you are safely across the mountains, you will find plenty of len grinders to talk with.”
Egarn’s