Short Fiction · Warrior of Two Worlds (2/6) (1/2)

II

They rose, but stood off respectfully. The officer spoke first. “I am Rohbar, field commander of this defense position,” he said with crisp respect. “Sporr is a mystic doctor, full of godly wisdom. Doriza, a junior officer and chief of the guard. And you⁠—how could you know?⁠—are sent by the First Comers to save us from our enemies.”

“Enemies?” I repeated.

“The Newcomers,” supplemented Doriza. “They have taken the ‘Other Side’ of Dondromogon, and would take our side as well. We defend ourselves at the poles. Now,” and her voice rang joyously, “you will lead us to defeat and crush them utterly!”

“Not naked like this,” I said, and laughed. I must have sounded foolish, but it had its effect.

“Follow me, deign to follow me,” Sporr said. “Your clothing, your quarters, your destiny, all await you.”

We went out by the door at the rear, and Sporr respectfully gestured me upon a metal-plated platform. Standing beside me, he tinkered with a lever. We dropped smoothly away into a dark corridor, past level after level of light and sound.

“Our cities are below ground,” he quavered. “Whipped by winds above, we must scrabble in the depths for life’s necessities⁠—chemicals to transmute into food, to weave into clothing, to weld into tools and weapons⁠—”

The mention of food brought to me the thought that I was hungry. I said as much, even as our elevator platform came to the lowest level and stopped.

“I have arranged for that,” Sporr began, then fell silent, fingers combing his beard in embarrassment.

“Arranged food for me?” I prompted sharply. “As if you know I had come? What⁠—”

“Pardon, great Yandro,” babbled Sporr. “I was saying that I arranged food, as always, for whatever guest should come. Please follow.”

We entered a new small chamber, where a table was set with dishes of porcelain-like plastic. Sporr held a chair for me, and waited on me with the utmost gingerly respect. The food was a pungent and filling jelly, a little bundle of transparent leaves or scraps like cellophane and tasting of spice, and a tumbler of pink juice. I felt refreshed and satisfied, and thanked Sporr, who led me on to the next room.

“Behold!” he said, with a dramatic gesture. “Your garments, even as they have been preserved against your coming!”

It was a sleeping chamber, with a cot made fast to the wall, a metal locker or cupboard, with a glass door through which showed the garments of which Sporr spoke.

The door closed softly behind me⁠—I was left alone.

Knowing that it was expected of me, I went to the locker and opened the door. The garments inside were old, I could see, but well kept and serviceable. I studied their type, and my hands, if not my mind, seemed familiar with them.

There was a kiltlike item, belted at the waist and falling to mid-thigh. A resilient band at the top, with a series of belt-holes, made it adaptable to my own body or to any other. Then came an upper garment, a long strip of soft, close-woven fabric that spiralled around the torso from hip to armpit, the end looping over the left shoulder and giving full play to the arms. A gold-worked fillet bound the brows and swept back my longish hair, knotting at the nape of the neck. The only fitted articles were a pair of shoes, metal-soled and soft-uppered, that went on well enough and ran cross-garters up to below the knee, like buskins. The case also held a platinum chain for the neck, a belt-bag, and a handsome sword, with clips to fasten them in place. These things, too, I donned, and closed the glass door.

The light struck it at such an angle as to make it serve for a full-length mirror. With some curiosity I gazed at my image.

The close-fitting costume was rich and dark, with bright colors only for edgings and minor accessories. I myself⁠—and it was as if I saw my body for the first time⁠—towered rather bluffly, with great breadth of chest and shoulder, and legs robust enough to carry such bulk. The face was square but haggard, as if from some toil or pain which was now wiped from my recollection. That nose had been even bigger than it was now, but a fracture had shortened it somewhat. The eyes were deep set and dark and moody⁠—small wonder!⁠—the chin heavy, the mouth made grim by a scar at one corner. Black, shaggy hair hung down like brackets. All told, I looked like a proper person for physical labor, or even fierce fighting⁠—but surely no inspirational leader or savior of a distressed people.

I took the military cloak which Doriza had lent me and slung it over my shoulders. Turning, I clanked out on my metal-soled shoes.

Sporr was waiting in the room where I had eaten. His eyes widened at sight of me, something like a grin of triumph flashed through his beard. Then he bowed, supple and humble, his palms together.

“It is indeed Yandro, our great chief,” he mumbled. Then he turned and crossed the room. A sort of mouthpiece sprouted from the wall.

“I announce,” he intoned into it. “I announce, I, Sporr, the reader and fore-teller of wisdom. Yandro is with us, he awaits his partners and friends. Let them meet him in the audience hall.”

Facing me again, he motioned most respectfully toward the door to the hall. I moved to open it, and he followed, muttering.

Outside stood Doriza. Her blue eyes met mine, and her lips moved to frame a word. Then, suddenly, she was on her knee, catching my hand and kissing it.

“I serve Yandro,” she vowed tremulously. “Now and forever⁠—and happy that I was fated to live when he returned for the rescue of all Dondromogon.”

“Please get up,” I bade her, trying not to sound as embarrassed as I felt. “Come with me. There is still much that I do not understand.”

“I am Yandro’s orderly and helper,” she said. Rising, she ranged herself at my left hand. “Will Yandro come this way? He will be awaited in the audience hall.”

It seemed to me then that the corridors were vast and mixed as a labyrinth, but Doriza guided me without the slightest hesitation past one tangled crossway after another. My questions she answered with a mixture of awe and brightness.

“It is necessary that we live like this,” she explained. “The hot air of Dondromogon’s sunlit face is ever rising, and the cold air from the dark side comes rushing under to fill the vacuum. Naturally, our strip of twilight country is never free of winds too high and fierce to fight. No crops can grow outside, no domestic animals flourish. We must pen ourselves away from the sky and soil, with stout walls and heavy sunken parapets. Our deep mines afford every element for necessities of life.”

I looked at my garments, and hers. There were various kinds of fabric, which I now saw plainly to be synthetic. “The other side, where those you call the Newcomers dwell and fight,” I reminded. “Is it also windswept? Why can two people not join forces and face toil and nature together? They should fight, not each other, but the elements.”

Doriza had no answer that time, but Sporr spoke up behind us: “Great Yandro is wise as well as powerful. But the Newcomers do not want to help, not even to conquer. They want to obliterate us. There is nothing to do⁠—not for lifetimes⁠—but to fight them back at the two poles.”

We came to a main corridor. It had a line of armed guards, but no pedestrians or vehicles, though I thought I caught a murmur of far-off traffic. Doriza paused before a great portal, closed by a curtainlike sheet of dull metal. She spoke into a mouthpiece:

“Doriza, gentlewoman of the guard, conducts Yandro, the Conquering Stranger, to greet his lieutenants!”

I have said that the portal was closed by a curtainlike metal sheet; and like a curtain it lifted, letting us through into the auditorium.

That spacious chamber had rows of benches, with galleries above, that might have seated a thousand. However, only a dozen or so were present, on metal chairs ranged across the stage upon which we entered. They were all men but two, and wore robes of black, plum-purple or red. At sight of me, they rose together, most respectfully. They looked at me, and I looked at them.

My first thought was, that if these were people of authority and trust in the nation I seemed destined to save, my work was cut out for me.

Not that they really seemed stupid⁠—none had the look, or the subsequent action, of stupidity. But they were not pleasant. Their dozen pairs of eyes fixed me with some steadiness, but with no frankness anywhere. One man had a round, greedy-seeming face. Another was too narrow and cunning to look it. Of the women, one was nearly as tall as I and nobly proportioned, with hair of a red that would be inspiring were it not so blatantly dyed. The other was a little wisp of a brunette, with teeth too big for her scarlet mouth and bright eyes like some sort of a rodent. They all wore jewelry. Too much jewelry.

My mind flew back to the two scrubby, venial guardsmen who had first welcomed me; to stuffy Rohbar, the commander; to Sporr, spry and clever enough, but somehow unwholesome; Doriza⁠—no, she was not like these others, who may have lived too long in their earth-buried shelters. And Doriza now spoke to the gathering:

“Yandro, folk of the Council! He deigns to give you audience.”

“Yandro!”

They all spoke the name in chorus, and bowed toward me.

Silence then, a silence which evidently I must break. I broke it: “Friends, I am among you with no more memory or knowledge than an infant. I hear wonderful things, of which I seem to be the center. Are they true?”

“The tenth part of the wonders which concern mighty Yandro have not been told,” intoned Sporr, ducking his bearded head in a bow, but fixing me with his wise old eyes.

One of the group, called Council by Doriza, now moved a pace forward. He was the greedy-faced man, short but plump, and very conscious of the dignified folds of his purple robe. One carefully-tended hand brushed back his ginger-brown hair, then toyed with a little moustache.

“I am Gederr, senior of this Council,” he purred. “If Yandro permits, I will speak simply. Our hopes have been raised by Yandro’s return⁠—the return presaged of old by those who could see the future, and more recently by the death in battle of the Newcomer champion, called Barak.”

“Barak!” I repeated. “I⁠—I⁠—” And I paused. When I had to learn my own name, how could it be that I sensed memory of another’s name?

“Barak was a brute⁠—mighty, but a brute.” Thus Gederr continued. “Weapons in his hands were the instruments of fate. His hands alone caused fear and ruin. But it pleased our fortune-bringing stars to encompass his destruction.” He grinned, and licked his full lips. “Now, even as they are without their battle-leader, so we have ours.”

“You honor me,” I told him. “Yet I still know little. It seems that I am expected to aid and lead and save the people of this world called Dondromogon. But I must know them before I can help.”

Gederr turned his eyes upon the woman with the red hair, and gestured to her “Tell him, Elonie.” Then he faced me. “Have we Yandro’s permission to sit?”

“By all means,” I granted, a little impatiently, and sat down myself. The others followed suit⁠—the Council on their range of chairs, Doriza on a bench near me, Sporr somewhere behind. The woman called Elonie remained upon her sandalled feet, great eyes the color of deep green water fixed upon me.

Elonie was taller than any of her fellow Council members, taller than Sporr, almost as tall as I. Her figure was mature, generous, but fine, and set off by a snugly-draped robe as red as her dyed cascade of hair. Red-dyed, too, were the tips of her fingers, and her lips were made vivid and curvy beyond nature by artificial crimson. She made a bow toward me, smiled a little, showing most perfect white teeth. She began:

“Dondromogon began with the First Comers. Many ages they ruled here, the Fifteen of them. Forever they were fifteen, for when one died, another was bred; when one was born, the oldest or least useful was eliminated. It was they who planned and began this shelter-city, found the elements that support life and give comfort.

“Others came, from far worlds. The Fifteen changed their policy of a fixed number, and became rulers of the new colonists. But after some study, it was decided to set a new limit. Seven hundred was decided upon, and seven hundred we still remain.”

“Wait,” I interrupted. “You mean that, when new children are born among you, someone must die?”

She nodded. “Exactly as with the Fifteen. We eliminate the least useful. Sometimes we eliminate the child itself. More often, an older and worn-out individual.”

I thought that I sensed an uncomfortable wriggle in Sporr, behind me. “Why is this?” I demanded.

“Because, Yandro, there cannot be room and supplies enough for a greater number.”

I scowled to myself. So far I had seen luxury enough in Dondromogon’s chambers and tunnels. But there remained so much to learn. “Go on,” I bade her.

She nodded again, and obeyed: “Thus we on Dondromogon live and have lived. This world is ours, its good and evil. But,” and her voice, from a soft, shy murmur, turned hard, “there are those who do not wish it so. The Newcomers⁠—the invaders!”

“Ill be their fate,” growled Gederr beside her, as if rehearsed.

“They came to us, not long ago in years⁠ ⁠… but I forget, Yandro does not know as yet the length of Dondromogon’s year, or Dondromogon’s day. They came, then, no longer ago than the time needed for a baby to become a child.”

Three years of my own reckoning I decided, and wished she had not mentioned babies and children. I still disliked that arbitrary survival-of-the-fittest custom. “Where did they come from?” I asked.

“Who can tell? Perhaps from the forgotten world where came our ancestors. Somehow they had learned of our conquest here, our advances and wealth-gathering in spite of natural obstacles. That is what they hope to plunder from us, these conquering Newcomers!”

“Ill be their fate,” repeated Gederr, and two or three of the Council with him.

“But the winds are too high for a final battle to happen quickly. After some fighting, they seized upon the other strip of habitable land, on Dondromogon’s other side. We fight them at the two poles⁠—mostly underground. Do you understand?”

“I seem to,” I replied. “But now what about me? The story of Yandro?”

“Did not Sporr tell everything?” broke in Gederr. “He should have done so. Sporr, the Council is not pleased.”

“I had to go slowly,” apologized the old man, and Elonie took up the tale:

“It is known to all on Dondromogon. The days of the First Comers held great minds that could see the future. Then it was foreseen that, in Dondromogon’s hour of peril and need, a time set by the destruction of an enemy great and mighty⁠—”

“Barak,” I said aloud, still puzzling over that strangely familiar name.

“At that time,” finished Elonie, “a leader to be called Yandro, the Conquering Stranger, would come. Even clothing was supplied⁠—clothing not like that we wear today.”

She gestured toward me. Indeed, the garments I wore were different from those of my companions. I shook my head slowly, and tried to digest what I had heard once again. But one bit of it still clamored for rejection.

“About these eliminations,” I harked back. “Who decides on which person must die to keep the number down to seven hundred?”

“We do,” replied Gederr, almost bleakly.

“And the Newcomers, have they a similar custom?”

“Not they, the greedy interlopers.” Gederr looked very greedy himself. “They delve and destroy in Dondromogon, feeding ever new spates of arrivals.”

“It seems,” I offered, “that you would be well advised to grow in number, and so win this war.”

But Gederr shook his head. “We checkmate them at the two poles, where the way into our territory is narrow. And more than seven hundred would be hard to make comfortable.”

“Friends, I do not like it,” I stated flatly. “There seems to be ruthlessness, and waste.”