Var the Stick Read online

  She slung the heavy sack over her shoulder and went to the exit.

  "Girl!" he called suddenly, and she jumped, afraid he had seen through her after all. Bob, the master of Helicon, was like that; he would toy with a person, seeming to agree, then take him down unexpectedly and savagely. "If you ever grow tired of wandering, seek me out again. I would take you for my daughter."

  She understood with relief that this was a fundamental compliment. And she liked this enormous, terrible man.

  "Thank you," she said. "Maybe some day you'll meet my real father. I think you would like each other."

  "You were not an orphan long, then," he murmured, chuckling again. He was horribly intelligent under that muscle. "Who is your father?"

  Suddenly she remembered that the two men had met for the Nameless One had taken the empire and her true mother from her father. She dared not give Sol's name now, for they had to be mortal enemies.

  "Thank you," she said quickly, pretending not to have heard him. "Good-bye, sir." And she ducked out of the tent.

  He let her go. No hue and cry followed, and no secret tracker either.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Var's body felt weak as he saw Soil come out of the thinning mist, alone. No one was following her; he let her pass him, and waited, just to be sure.

  Yet he had heard the outcry and seen the men rushing to the main tent. Its entrance was hidden from him in the fog, but he had thought he heard her voice, and the Master's. Something had happened, and he had been powerless to act or even to know. He had had to wait, clasping and unclasping his rough fingers about the two sticks his and hers nervously. If she were prisoner, what would happen next?

  She circled back silently, searching for him. Somehow she had talked her way out of it if he had not imagined the whole thing, converting other voices to those he knew. "Here," he whispered. She ran at him and shoved a heavy bag into his hands. Together they hurried away from the camp. He knew no one would trace them in this fog, and the terrain was too rough for their traces to show later.

  At the base of Muse they paused while he fished in the sack for the food he smelled. He found a wineskin and gulped greedily, squirting it into his mouth It was good, sturdy nomad beer the kind of beverage the crazies never provided. Then he got hold of a loaf of dark bread, and gnawed on it as they climbed.

  The edge of his hunger assuaged, Var worried about the fog. If it let up before they reached the top, their secret would be out. Then what would they do?

  But it held. With mutual relief they flopped on the mesa, panting. Then they emptied the bag on the ground and feasted.

  There was bread, of course. There was roasted meat. There were baked potatoes. There were apples and nuts and even some crazy chocolate. One wineskin held milk, the other the beer.

  "How," Var demanded around a mouthful, "did you get all this?"

  Soli, not really hungry because of the porridge she had already had, experimented again with the beer. She had never had any before today, and it intriged her by its very foulness. "I asked the Nameless One for it."

  Var choked, spewing potato crumbs out wastefully. "How why?"

  She gulped down another abrasive mouthful of beer repressing its determined urge to come up again, and she told him the story. "And I wish they weren't enemies," she finished. "Sol and the Nameless One-they would like each other, otherwise. Your Master is sort of nice, even though he's terrible."

  "Yes," Var murmured, thinking of his own intimate five year experience with the man. "But they aren't really enemies. The Master told me once. They were friends, but they had to fight for some reason. Sol gave the Weapon to his wife, with his bracelet and all. Because she didn't want to die, and she didn't love Sol anyway."

  She looked confused through most of that speech, having top out his inflections, but she reacted immediately to the last of it. "She did too love him!" she flared. "She was my mother!"

  Be backed away from that aspect, disturbed. "She's a good woman," he said after a moment. That seemed to mollify Soli, though he was thinking of the journey he had made with Sola. He could see the resemblance, now, between mother and daughter. But could Sola have loved anyone, to have done what she did? Jumping from man to man, and putting her body to secret service for Var him self? Surely the Master knew she had said he knew yet he allowed it. How could such a thing be explained?

  And once more he came up against the problem of his oath to Sola: to kill the man who harmed her child. What sort of a woman Sola was, or why she should be so concerned now for a child she deserted then these things had no mitigating relevance. He had sworn. How could he fight Soli now?

  "Friends," Soli said forlornly. "I could have told him."

  She gulped more beer and let out a nomhdlike belch. "Var, if we fight and I kill you then the Weaponless will go away, and she will never see him. Again." She began to cry once more.

  "We can't fight," Var said, relieved to make it official.

  The fog lifted.

  "They can see us!" Soli cried, jumping up. This was not true, for the ground remained shrouded, but the nether mists were thinning too. "They'll know. The sticks!" And she fell down again.

  "What's the matter?" Var asked, scrambling to help her.

  She rolled her head. "I feel funny." Then she vomited.

  "The beer!" Var said, angry with himself for not thinking what it would do to her. He had been sick himself, the first time he had been exposed to it. "You must have drunk a quart while we talked."

  But the bag was not down nearly that much. Soli just hung on him and heaved.

  Var grabbed a soft sugared roll and sponged off her face and front with it. "Soli, you can't be sick now. They're watching your people and mine. If we don't fight"

  "Where's my stick?" she cried hysterically. "I'll bash your humpy head in. Leave me alone!" She tried another heave, but nothing came up.

  Var held her erect, not knowing what else to do. He was afraid that if he let her go she would either collapse on the ground or stumble over the brink. Either way, it wouldn't be much of a show, and the watchers on either side would become suspicious.

  A show! To the distant spectators, it must appear that the two were in a terminal struggle, staggering about the mesa after an all night combat. This was the fight!

  "Wanna sleep," Soil mumbled. "Lie down. Sick. Keep the cold off me, Var, there's a good nomad...." Her knees folded.

  Var hooked his arms under her shoulders and held her up. "We can't sleep. Not while they're watching."

  "I don't care. Let me go." She lapsed into sobbing again.

  Var had to set her down.

  "It's that beer, isn't it?" she said, suddenly wide awake. "Im drunk. They never let me have any, Sol and Sosa. Awful stuff. Hold me, Var. I feel all weak. I'm frightened." Var decided that any further show of battle was hopeless. He lay down and put his arms about her, and she cried and cried.

  After a time she regained self-control. "What'll we do, Var?"

  He didn't know.

  "Could we both go home and say it didn't work?" she asked plaintively. Then, before he could answer, she did:

  "No. Bob would kill me as a traitor. And the war would go on."

  They sat side by side and looked out over the world.

  "Why don't we tell them somebody won?" she asked suddenly. "Then it'll be settled."

  Var was dubious, but as he considered it the proposal seemed sound. "Who wins?"

  "We'll have to choose. If I win, you nomads will go away. If you win, they'll take over the underworld. Which is better?"

  "There'll be a lot of killing if we go down there," he said. "Maybe your maybe Sol and Sosa."

  "No," she said. "Not if Helicon surrenders. And you said they were friends Sol and the Nameless One. They could be together again. And I could meet Sola, my true mother." Then, after a moment: "She couldn't be better than Sosa, though." He thought about that, and it seemed reasonable. "I win, then?" -

  "You win, Var." She gave him a wan smile
and reached for the bread.

  "But what about you?"

  "I'll hide. You tell them Im dead."

  "But Soli!"

  "After it's over, I'll find Sol and tell him I'm not dead. By then it won't make any difference."

  Var still felt uneasy, but Soli seemed so certain that he couldn't protest. "Go now," she urged. "Tell him it was a hard battle, and you fell down too, but you finally won."

  "But I'm unmarked!"

  She giggled. "Look at your arm."

  He looked at both arms. His right was clean, but his left, the weaponless one, was laced with bruises. She had been scoring, that serious part of the fight. Soil herself was almost without blemish.

  "I could bash you in the face a couple of times," she said mischievously. "To make it look better." She tried to suppress a titter and failed. "I think I said that wrong. The fight, I mean. It isn't that ugly. Your face, I mean."

  Var left her there and began his descent. She would play dead until dusk, then make her way down the safest route as well as she cOuld. He worried, but she told him that she knew the way and anyhow would have plenty of time to be careful Certainly he couldn't wait for her. "I'll start down before it's all the way dark," she said. "So i'll be past the killer slope before I can't see any more."

  He halted a few feet down and called up to her: "If anything happens where can I find you?" He could not get rid of his morbid concern.

  "Near the hostel, dummy," she called back. "hurry up. I mean down.

  He obliged, not avoiding abrasions since they would make his supposed fight to the death seem more authentic. He would be telling a lie but at least he was doing the right thing, and he had also preserved his oath. He had learned the final lesson the Master had taught him.

  "Var! Va-a-ar!" Soil was calling him, her dark head poked over the edge.

  "What?"

  "Your clothing!"

  He had forgotten! He was wearing the stolen clothing. If he returned in that, everything would be exposed; ironically.

  Embarrassed, he returned to the mesa and stripped to the skin. The material would help keep her warm, anyway.

  There was jubilation that night at the Master's base camp, and Var was feted in a manner he was wholly unaccustomed to. He had to eat prodigiously, not daring to admit he was not hungry for the first time the women of the neighbouring camp, suspiciously quick to appear afterword of the victory had spread, found him attractive. But all he could think of was little Soil, struggling down the treacherous cliffs in the dark, carrying her bundle of food and clothing. If she fell, their ruse would become real. Pity....

  The warriors assumed that he had fought a male sticker, and Var chose to avoid clarification of the matter. "I killed," he said, and stopped there. And fended off male congratulations and female attentions until finally Tyl saw the way of it and found him a private tent for the night.

  In the morning the Master went to the hostel to talk to the television set, taking Var along. The Master had not questioned him, and seemed apprehensive. "If Bob pulls a doublecross, this is when it will happen," he muttered. "He is not the type to yield readily, ever."

  Soli's own assessment of the underworld master seemed to concur. That must be a devil of a man, Var thought.

  They entered the elegant cylindrical building, with its racks of clothing and sanitary facilities and its several machineries, and the Master turned on the set. As it warmed up, Var realized that once again they had blundered safely past disaster for if that set had been on when Soli came, the underworld would have known what was happening.

  The picture that came on was not the random, vapid collection of costumed posturings Var had observed from time to time before. Nor was it silent. It was a room not like the hostel room, but certainly the work of crazy machines. It was square, with diagrams on the opposite wall, and airvents, and a ponderous metal desk in the center.

  In fact, it was rather like a room in a building such as he had prowled through in the badlands. But clean and new, not filthy and ancient.

  A man sat in a padded, bendable chair behind the desk. He was old, older than the Master, at least thirty and possibly more. Var did not know how long a man could live if he suffered no mishap in the circle. Perhaps even as long as forty years. This one had sparse gray-brown hair (actually, the picture was colorless, but that was the way it looked) and stern lines in his face.

  "Hello, Bob," the Master said grimly.

  "Hello again, Sos. What's the word?" The man's tones were brisk, assured, and he moved his tong thin arm as though directing subordinates. A leader of men: yes. Var did not like him.

  "Your champion did not return?"

  The man merely stared coldly at him.

  "This is Var the Stick our champion," the Master said. "He informs me that he killed your champion on the mesa of Muse yesterday."

  "Impossible. Surely you realize no lesser man than yourself could have defeated Sol of All Weapons in honest combat."

  The Master seemed stricken. "Sol! You sent Sol?

  "Ask your supposed champion," Bob said.

  The Master turned slowly to Var. "Sol would not have gone. But if he had"

  "No," Var said. "It wasn't Sol." He didn't understand why the underworld leader should play such a game.

  "Perhaps, then, his mate, if the term is not unkindly euphemistic," Bob said, his glance possessing a peculiar Intensity. "She of the deadly hands and barren womb."

  "No!" Var cried, knowing now that he was being baited, but reacting to it, anyway. The Master, astonishingly, was sweating. It was as though the real battle was taking place here, rather than on the mesa. A strange contest of deadly words and savage implications. And Bob was winning it.

  Bob looked at his fingernails during the pause. "Who, then?"

  "His-daughter. Soil. She had sticks."

  The Master opened his mouth but did not speak. He stared at Var as though pierced by a bullet.

  "I apologize," Bob said smoothly. "Var was there, after all. He did kill our designated champion. Her parents were too wary to cooperate, so are in our bad graces; but she was, shall we say, cooperatively naive. Of course she was only eight years old-eight and a half or better, technically and I think we'll have to delay further action on this matter in favor of a rematch...."

  Var realized that the man's over elaborate words signified his intent to renign. But the Master was not protesting. The Master conthued to stare dumbly at Var. There was another wait. "You killed Soli?" the Master said at last, so hoarsely as to be hardly comprehensible.

  Var did not dare tell the full truth, here before the underworld leader. "Yes."

  The Master's whole body shook as though he were cold. Var could not understand what was the matter. Soil was no relation to him; the Master had not even known her when She begged food from him. True, it was unkind to kill a girl but he had had to meet the mountain's chaimpion, in whatever guise. Had it been a mutant lizard, he still would have fought. Why was the Master so upset now, and why was Bob looking so smug? They were acting as though he had lost the battle.

  "So I was correct about her," Bob said. "Sol never let on. But obviously"

  "Var the Stick," the Master said formally, his voice quivering with emotion. "The friendship between us is ended. Where we meet next, there is the circle. No terms but death. In deference to your ignorance and to what is past, I give you one day and one night to flee. Tomorrow I come for you."

  Then he whirled and smote the television set with his massive fist. The glass on the face of it shattered and the box toppled over. "And after that, you!" he shouted at the dead machine. "Not one chamber will escape the flamethrower, and you shall roast on the pyre, alive!"

  Var had never seen such fury in any man. He understood none of it, except that the Master intended to kill both him and the underworld leader. His friend had lost his sanity.

  Var fled from the hostel, and kept on running, confused and ashamed and afraid.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  He whirle
d, grabbing for his new set of sticks. Then he relaxed. "Soil!"

  "I saw you run from the hostel So I came, too. Var, what happened?"

  "The Master" Var was stopped by an misery.

  "He Wasn't he happy that you won?"

  "The Bob reniged."

  "Oh." She took his hand solicitously. "So it was for nothing. No wonder the Weaponless is mad. But that isn't your fault, is it?"

  "He says he'll kill me."

  "Kill you? The Nameless One? Why?'

  "I don't know." It was as though she were the inquiring adult, he the child.

  "But he's nice. Underneath. He wouldn't do that. Not just because it didn't work."

  Var shrugged. He had seen the Master run amuck. He believed.

  "What are you going to do, Var?"

  "Leave. He's giving me a day and a night."

  "But what will I do? I can't go back to the mountain now. Bob would kill me and he'd kill Sol and Sosa too. For losing. He told me he'd kill them both if I didn't fight, and if he finds out"

  Var stood there having no answer.

  "We weren't very smart, I guess," Soil said, beginning to cry.

  He put his arm around her, feeling the same.

  "I don't know enough about the nomads," she said. "I don't like being alone."

  "Neither do I," Var said, realizing that it was exile he faced. Once he had been a loner and satisfied, but he had changed.

  "Let's go together," Soli said.

  Var though about that, and it seemed good.

  "Come on!" she cried, suddenly jubilant. "We can raid some other hostel for traveling gear, and and run right out of the country! Just you and me! And we can fight in the circle!"

  "I don't want to fight you any more," he said. "Silly! Not each other! Other people! And we can make a big tribe with all the ones we capture, and then come back and"

  "No! I won't fight the Master!"

  "But if he's chasing you"