Neq the Sword Read online

  unbound her hair to wear it loose and long in nomad

  fashion, and she had the one-piece wraparound of the

  available. Gone was the crisp office manner: she spoke

  only when addressed, knowing her place in the presence

  of a warrior. Had Neq not known her origin, he would

  have been fooled. Of course his close experience with

  women was meager.

  She, however, had to drive the truck. Neq had seen the

  crazy vehicles on occasion, but had never actually been

  inside one before. The handling of such machinery was

  not his forte, obviously. So he rode beside her in the cab,

  sword clasped between his knees, and clung to the seat as

  the wheels bumped over the ruts. The velocity of the

  thing was appalling. He kept expecting it to start panting

  and slow to a walk, for no one could run indefinitely! He

  had been told a truck could cover in one hour a distance

  equivalent to a full day's march, if it had a good track,

  and now he believed it.

  The road was no pleasure. What suited for foot travel-

  ing became hazardous for wheels, particularly at this

  speed, and he was privately terrified. Now he understood

  why the crazies had always been so fussy about the main-

  tenance of their trails, cutting back the brush and remov-

  ing boulders. Such natural obstacles were like swinging

  clubs to the zooming vehicle. Neq refused to show it, of

  course, but his hands were clammy on the sword and his

  muscles stiff from tension.

  But in time he became acclimatized, and watched Miss

  Smith's motions. She controlled the truck by turning a

  wheel around: when she pushed the top of it north, the

  truck swung north. When she wanted to stop -she pushed

  a metal pedal into the floor. Driving was not so difficult

  after all!

  All day they drove, stopping only to let Neq be sick

  from the unaccustomed motion, and to refuel. The first

  was mortifying, but Miss Smith pretended not to notice

  and in time his gut became resigned. The second was just

  a matter of pouring funny smelling liquid she called gaso-

  line into the motortank from one of the large metal drums

  carried in the back. "Why don't you just pipe it in from

  the drums?" he asked, and she admitted she didn't know.

  "These trucks were designed and probably built by the

  Ancients," she said. "They did a number of inexplicable

  things—like making a gas tank far too small for a day's

  driving. Maybe they liked pouring gas from cans."

  Neq laughed. "That's something! To the crazies, the

  Ancients are crazy!"

  She smiled, not taking offense. "Sanity seems to be in-

  versely proportional to civilization."

  Inverse proportion: he knew what that meant, for he

  had been drilled like the others in the empire training

  camp. They had used numbers to assess combat ranking:

  the smaller the number, the higher the warrior stood.

  They drove on, until they had to stop to do patchwork

  on the road. A gully had formed, the result of some cloud-

  burst, and made a tumble of boulders of the roadbed.

  Here Neq felt useful, for Miss Smith could not have

  budged all those rocks or shoveled enough sand into place

  to make the passage.

  Despite these delays, Neq estimated that they had come

  a good five days march by dusk.

  "How much do you normally march?" she inquired in

  response to his remark.

  "Thirty miles, alone. More if I'm in a hurry. Twenty,

  with a tribe."

  "So you make it a hundred and fifty miles today."

  He worked it out, counting off fingers. He knew how to

  count and calculate, but this was a different problem than

  the type he normally encountered. "Yes."

  "Speedometer says ninety-four," she said. "It must have

  seemed faster than it was. On a paved road it would have

  been double that."

  "The truck keeps track of its own travels?" he asked,

  amazed. "Maybe it forgot to count the section between

  the tank-filling and the roadwork."

  She laughed again. "Maybe! Machines aren't bright."

  He had neither worked with nor talked with a woman

  this way before, and was surprised to realize that it wasn't

  difficult. "How far is this supplier?"

  "About a thousand miles from the school, direct. Some-

  what farther by these backwoods trails."

  He figured again. "So we have about ten days of travel."

  "Less than that. Some areas are better than others. Let

  me show you our route on the map. I think we've been

  through the worst already."

  "No."

  "No?" She paused with the map in her hand.

  "The worst is what stopped your other trucks from

  returning."

  "Oh." She was prettily pensive. "Well, we'll find out.

  The others didn't have an armed guard along."

  She opened the map and pointed out lines and patches

  of color to him, but it was largely meaningless to Neq,

  who could not relate to the continental scope of it. "I can

  find the way back, once I've been there," he said.

  "That's good enough." She studied the map a bit more,

  then put it away with a small sigh.

  There were canned and even frozen goods. Miss Smith

  lit a little gas stove and heated beans and turnip greens

  and bacon, and she opened the little refrigerator and

  poured out milk. Neq had never had a woman do for him

  on a regular basis, and this was an intriguing experience.

  But of course she only looked like a woman; she was a

  crazy.

  They slept in the truck—he in the back beside the gas

  drums, she curled in the cab. She seemed to feel there

  would be something wrqng if they both slept in the back,

  though there was far more room there and she had to

  know that no honorable nomad would disturb her slum-

  ber without prior transfer of the bracelet. She could not

  know, of course, that Neq had never had relations with

  any woman. The only girl he had been close to was his

  sister. In fact, had Miss Smith not been a crazy, he would

  have been extremely nervous. As it was, he was only

  moderately nervous, and relieved to sleep alone.

  But in his dreams women were ubiquitous, and he was

  not bashful. In his dreams.

  The second day of travel was uneventful, and they

  made almost two hundred miles. The novelty of riding in

  the truck palled, and he stared moodily into the rushing

  brush and covertly at Miss Smith's right breast, shaped

  under the cloth as she steered. She seemed less like a

  crazy, now.

  He began to hum to his sword, and when she did not

  object he sang to it: the folk songs he had picked up

  from happy warriors like Sav the Staff, in the glad days

  of the empire's nascence.

  Oh, the sons of the Prophet were hardy and bold

  And quite unaccustomed to fear.

  But the bravest of all was a man so I'm told

  Named Abdullah Bulbul Ameer.

  The references were meaningless, as were the names,

  b
ut the melody always brought pleasure to him and he

  responded to the warrior mood of such songs. From time

  to time he was tempted to change the words a bit, adapt-

  ing to the things he knew, but that forfeited authenticity.

  "Oh, the warriors of empire were hardy and bold . . ."

  No—songs were inviolate, lest they lose their magic.

  After a time he realized with a shock that she was

  singing with him, in feminine harmony, the way Nemi

  used to do. That jolted him back into silence. Miss Smith

  made no comment.

  The third day they encountered a barricade. A tree had

  fallen across the road.

  "That isn't natural." Neq said, alert for trouble. "See—

  it has been felled, not blown. No nomad cuts a tree and

  leaves it."

  She stopped the truck. In a moment men appeared—

  unkempt outlaws of the type he had encountered before.

  "All right, you crazies—out!" the leader bawled.

  "You stay here," Neq said. "This will be unpleasant for

  you. Maybe you'd better duck down so you can't see." He

  got out in one bound and lifted his weapon. "I am Neq

  the Sword," he announced.

  This time no one recognized the name. "You think

  you're pretty smart, dressing like a man," a big clubber

  said. "But we know you're crazies. What's in your truck?"

  Miss Smith had not followed his suggestion. Her pale

  face showed in the cab window. "Hey!" the leader cried.

  "This one's a lady-crazy!"

  Neq advanced on his man. "You will not touch this

  truck. It is under my protection."

  The man laughed harshly and swung his club.

  He died laughing.

  Neq let him drop and moved to the next, a scarred

  dagger. At the same time he watched for bows, for out-

  laws were capable of anything. He would have to per-

  form some deft maneuvers if arrows came at him. "Run,"

  he suggested softly.

  The dagger looked at the bleeding clubber corpse and

  ran. That was the thing about outlaws: they were easily

  frightened.

  Neq charged the leader, another dagger. This man, at

  least, had some courage. He brought up his knives and

  sliced clumsily.

  It was axiomatic that a good dagger would lose to a

  good sworder when the combat was serious. This man was

  not good, and Neq cut him down immediately.

  No one else remained. "Scream if you see anything," he

  told Miss Smith. "I'm scouting the area." He had to be

  sure that all the teeth of the ambush had been drawn

  before he tackled the fallen tree.

  She just sat there, her features stiff. He had known she

  would not like it. Crazies and women were similar in that

  respect, and she was both.

  He located the outlaw camp. It was empty. The cowardly

  dagger had lost no time spreading the word. From the

  traces there had been at least two women and four men.

  Well, now it was two women and two men—and he

  doubted they'd attack any more trucks.

  He went back. "It's clear," he told Miss Smith. "Let's

  haul this trunk out of our way."

  She seemed to wake, then. He surveyed the tree and

  decided it was too much for him to move without cutting

  in half. He made ready to hack at it with his sword, but

  Miss Smith called to him. "There is an easier way."

  She brought out a rope and hitched it to the base of

  the tree trunk. Then she looped the other end into the

  front bumper of the truck. Then she started the motor

  and backed the vehicle away slowly until the tree was

  dragged out lengthwise along the road. Neq gaped with

  a certain confused respect.

  She brought a peavy from the back. He limbed the tree

  and used the tool to roll the main mass clear of their

  path. This was still heavy work, but far more efficient

  than his original notion.

  He wound the rope and put the peavy away. They got

  back into the cab. "Let's move," he said gruffly.

  She drove mechanically, not looking at him.

  "You surprised me," he said after a while. "I never

  thought of using the truck like that."

  She didn't answer. He glanced at her, and saw her lips

  thin and almost white, her eyes squinting though the

  light was not strong.

  "I know you crazies don't like violence," he said defen-

  sively. "But I warned you not to look. They would have

  killed us if I hadn't wiped them out first. They didn't set

  that ambush just to say hello."

  "It isn't that."

  "If we hit any more bands like that, it'll be the same.

  That's why your trucks aren't coming back. You crazies

  don't fight. You think if you're nice to everyone, no one

  will hurt you. Maybe once that was true. But these out-

  laws just laugh."

  "I know."

  "Well, that's the way it is. I'm just doing the job I

  promised. Getting the truck through." Still he felt awk-

  ward. "I was sick myself, the first time I fought a man

  and wounded him. But you get used to it. Better than

  getting hit yourself."

  She drove for a while in silence. Then she braked the

  truck. "I want to show you something," she said, her face

  softening.

  They got out under the shade of spreading oak trees.

  She stood before him, breathing rapidly, her yellow hair

  highlighted momentarily by a stray beam of sunshine.

  She was as pretty a girl as he had seen, in that pose.

  "Come at me."

  Neq was abruptly nervous. "I meant no offense to you.

  I only tried to explain. I have never attacked a woman."

  "Pretend you're an outlaw about to ravish me. What

  would you do?"

  "I would never—"

  "You're shy, aren't you," she said.

  It was like a blade sliding wickedly through his de-

  fense. Neq stood stricken.

  Miss Smith shook her hand—and there was a knife in

  it. No lady's vegetable parer—this was a full-length war-

  rior's dagger, and her grip on it was neither diffident nor

  clumsily tight. There was a way of holding that was a

  sure signal of circle readiness, and this was her way.

  Instantly Neq's sword was in his hand, his eye on the

  other weapon, his weight balanced. One never ignored a

  blade held like that!

  But Miss Smith did not attack. She unwrapped her

  wraparound, revealing one firm fresh breast, and tucked

  the knife into a flat holster under her arm. "I just wanted

  you to understand," she said.

  "I would never have struck you," he said, numbed by

  both her weapon-readiness and the glimpse of her torso.

  But it sounded ridiculous, for there he stood with sword

  ready. He sheathed it quickly.

  "Of course not. I checked your file, once I got your

  name straight. You were a tribal chieftain, but you never

  took a woman. What I meant was: understand about me.

  That I was wild once. I'm not really a crazy. Not when it

  counts."

  "You—used the dagger?"

  "When I saw you fighting those brutes—the blood—it

  was a
s though a dozen years had peeled away, and I was

  the gamin again. I found the knife in my hand, there in

  the cab."

  "Twelve years! You fought as a small child?"

  Her mouth quirked. "How old do you think I am?"

  "Nineteen." It was an unfortunate fact that most mar-

  ried women lost their beauty early. At fifteen they were

  highly desirable; ten years later they were faded. The

  unmarried lacked even that initial freshness. Miss Smith

  was obviously not in the first bloom, but still pretty

  enough.

  "I am twenty-eight, according to Dr. Jones' best esti-

  mate. No one knows for sure, since I had no family."

  Three years older than Neq himself? That was incred-

  ible. "Your breast says nineteen."

  "When I was nineteen—" she said, mulling it over.

  "When I was nineteen, I met a warrior. A strong, dark

  man. Maybe you know of him. Sos—Sos the Rope?"

  Neq shook his head. "I knew a Sos once, but he had no

  weapon. I don't know what happened to him."

  "I would have gone nomad with him—if he had asked

  me." She thought for a moment, still breathing quickly. "I

  would have gone nomad with anyone."

  This was all awkward, and Neq's hands were Clammy,

  and he didn't know what to say.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "It was the blood, the action—it

  made me react in an uncivilized way. I shouldn't have

  shown you."