There was just enough sunlight percolating through the walls of the bed cubicle for Hansen to see his breath in a chill cloud.
Hansen straightened his arms; the heavy fur bedclothes resisted. He groaned and swung himself out of bed at once, because it wasn't going to get better—and if he didn't have the guts to face the morning, any morning, then he'd spent his life in a variety of the wrong businesses.
The parts of Hansen's body that didn't ache jabbed when he made them move. Twenty-nine was too old for this crap; he ought to leave it for the new crop of bright-eyed nineteen-year-olds who healed fast, who didn't know how badly they could get hurt—
Who hadn't seen enough other people die to realize that they would be among that number very soon themselves.
On the other hand, Taddeusz had been in the heart of the battle, and he was damned near old enough to be Hansen's father. Which probably proved that older didn't necessarily mean wiser . . . and that Hansen wouldn't be ready to hang it up at Taddeusz' age either.
Things had bitten him in the night. Hansen told himself he'd get used to that. He'd better. The jakes here were an open pit with a crossbar and a perfunctory windbreak—damned cold last night, and he'd get used to that too; though he figured either to find or invent a chamber pot before evening.
Hansen's battlesuit stared blankly at him from the foot of his bed.
Hansen opened the door of his cubicle to let in more light. The latch was a bar set in heavy staples, an unexpectedly sturdy arrangement given the flimsy construction of the bed chamber itself. Slaves, sweeping the night's debris into the hearth with straw brooms, dropped their voices when they saw one of the warriors was up—and chattered again when they saw it was Hansen.
Only Hansen. Well, he'd been a newbie before, in the Civic Patrol and later when he transferred to Special Units. If he survived the next few months, he'd have as much respect as he wanted.
Hansen examined his new battlesuit. It was a noticeably solider unit than the one from which he'd ejected Villiers' corpse. The difference was not so much in the weight of the metal—equating mass with sturdiness was an error out of which he'd trained himself long before—but in the fit of the various sections.
The lining was thick suede. It wouldn't keep his skin from chafing, but it was probably as good a material as could be found for the purpose here. Hansen found to his surprise that it wasn't slick with dry, clotted blood down the left side, because the arc that burned off the former owner's arm had also cauterized the blood vessels.
The severed piece lay on the floor in front of the rest of the suit. Hansen rotated it in his hands, looking at the line of bubbled metal and the core of integrated circuits, shattered and blackened by high-temperature cutting.
Repairing this wasn't a job for a smith on a feudal backwater. It would require technicians of exceptional competence—
And by watching the work done, Hansen might just find the path to North and the answers the Consensus had sent him to find.
The door of the cubicle next to Hansen's opened. "You look cheerful," said Malcolm, though the way he said it indicated that he'd noticed more than humor in Hansen's grin.
"What are you doing here?" Hansen asked in surprise. "I assumed you'd be . . ."
"Nancy, you mean?" Malcolm said with a smile of his own. His features were as perfect as his voice, and his tawny complexion looked almost golden in the diffused sunlight. "I was on duty last night—we sleep night and night in the hall, here at Peace Rock. Taddeusz is very firm about that."
Hansen nodded. "Something we can agree on," he said.
Malcolm smiled more broadly. "It isn't considered good form to entertain your friends in your chamber here," he went on. "But it's been known to happen, particularly the night after a battle."
"You, ah . . . ," Hansen said. "I'm not sure . . . do you have formal ranks here? That is, what's your rank, for instance?"
"Where do I sit at table, do you mean?" said Malcolm with a puzzled expression. "But you saw—"
He grinned again. "Ah, you drank more than I thought. I've been on the lower end of the left side, but after yesterday's battle I'd decided to move to the middle—even before you put yourself in my train."
So that was why Malcolm had been so friendly. He was himself an ambitious outsider, trying to build status by increasing the number of warriors under his protection.
"Not everybody would say I was a desirable supporter," Hansen commented aloud.
"Not everyone would," Malcolm agreed, nodding. "What do you say, my bold laddie?"
Hansen met the veteran's eyes and said, very deliberately, "I say that in a year, you'll be sitting in Taddeusz' seat. If you want to."
Malcolm looked around sharply to see if any of the slaves were within earshot—a precaution Hansen had taken before he spoke.
"I think you've just convinced me that the others are the smart ones," Malcolm said.
He nodded toward the damaged armor. "Let's get your suit repaired," he added. "And let's you not talk about things that don't concern either of us."
"All right," said Hansen. He got a grip on the suit. "Where do we go with—"
Malcolm swatted his hands aside. "Where do you come from?" he said in amazement.
He turned to the cleaning crew. "Hey!" he called. "You lot! Get over here and carry Lord Hansen's armor to the smithy."
Good humored again—Hansen's stated plans had frightened Malcolm, but the notion of a warrior doing scut work had offended him—the veteran warrior smiled and said to Hansen, "There should be some furs in Alyn's chest—at the head of the bed."
He gestured into the bed cubicle. "Knock the lock off if there is one. Alyn won't mind where he is now, whether North took his soul or Hell did."
There were furs—and they smelled—but they were warm and the bright sunlight was cheering, although not particularly warm. Hansen wondered idly what season he'd arrived in. It wasn't a question he thought it'd be a good idea to ask.
The smithy turned out to be a long shed against the back of the palisade. Wicker baskets of rock—ore, presumably, but not smelted metals—were piled around the walls. There wasn't a hearth in front of the building as Hansen had expected, and the open fire within was no more than necessary for heat.
Four grunting slaves set the armor just inside the doorway. A fifth started to lay down the arm he carried, but Malcolm stopped him with a snap of his fingers. "Not yet," he said. "Vasque, we have a project for you."
There were already three men in the smithy: a bald old fellow with a wizened face, and two lads in their late 'teens. The old man was seated. One of the youths stood, looking uncertain, and the other lay on a couch, snoring stertorously, beside a table heaped with sand and gravel.
The old man glared. "Then it'll have to wait."
"Wrong, Vasque," said Malcolm. "The king directs that Lord Hansen here be outfitted properly. The king's honor is involved."
"Faugh," muttered Vasque. He stepped to the suit and ran his fingers over first the plastron, then the sheared metal along the cut. The sleeping youth was muttering to himself.
Hansen couldn't judge the status of the smith and his apprentices. Vasque wore a gorgeously-embroidered tunic—though there was a cracked leather apron over it. Even the youths were dressed rather better than many of the warriors.
"Not much of a suit," Vasque said. "Dilmun's work, I wouldn't be surprised, and he was never much."
"Dilmun's good enough to dress the Lord of Thrasey," said Malcolm. "And as for this suit, there were three arcs on it together before it failed."
"On a good day, I suppose Dilmun might be all right," Vasque admitted grudgingly. He took the severed arm from the slave and worked the elbow joint with his hands as he peered at the cut. "Well, we'll see."
The sleeping youth groaned loudly and threw out an arm. After a moment, his eyes opened. The other apprentice helped him sit up on the couch.
Vasque handed the arm back. "Go on, boy, go on," he said to the apprentice, making shooing motions with his hands. "There's king's work to be done."
He turned to the slaves. "Lay it down by the couch, you. I'll take care of it now."
As the slaves laid the damaged suit full-length on the floor, the two youths positioned the arm by it so that the cut ends joined. Vasque himself stepped outside. He came back with his leather apron laden with bits of ore.
"Might need more than this," the old man muttered, "but I think not, I think not. . . ." He arranged his chips and pebbles around the severed arm with as much care as a florist creating a wedding bouquet.
As the master smith worked, the apprentices poked into rubble piled on the table. The youth who'd been sleeping came up with the forearm of a battlesuit. The rock heaped over it was pebble-sized on top, but the portion around the piece itself was fine dust that made Hansen sneeze.
Vasque lay down on the couch the apprentice had vacated. One of the youths took a polished locket on a thong from around his neck.
"Keep back, boy . . . ," the smith murmured.
His eyes, focused on dustmotes dancing in the light, glazed and closed. The apprentices watched with critical interest, while the slaves gaped with amazement as great as that which Hansen tried to conceal.
Asking what in hell was going on would be just as bad an idea as trying to learn what the season of the year was. Besides, Diamond had come pretty close to Hansen's idea of what heaven would be—right down to the fact there'd been no room for him there.
That meant Hell wasn't a word he wanted to take in vain on Northworld either.
Vasque was shuddering in his sleep. Hansen gestured toward him. "Is he any good?" he asked Malcolm in an undertone.
"You won't wake him," said Malcolm in a normal voice, as though that were the only reason someone would want to discuss the matter in a whisper. "And yeah, he's very good."
The veteran smiled impishly. "Almost as good as Dilmun, I'd say. You'll have a suit to be proud of."
Malcolm took the piece of armor from the apprentices and looked at it critically. "Who's this for?" he demanded suddenly.
The youth who'd been on the couch said, "Well, it's for stock, milord."
"For practice," added his fellow.
On closer examination, Hansen saw that the portion of armor wasn't complete. It was shorter than most adult male forearms; and, while there was a raised border on the wrist end where the piece would join the gauntlet, there was no corresponding reinforcement toward the elbow. The core of circuitry in a ceramic matrix was white against the heavy metal of the exterior and the lighter cladding of the inner face.
Malcolm handed the piece back. "Keep practicing," he said coldly.
The ore shifted around Hansen's suit. The chunks on top of the pile slid as dust puffed away. As Hansen watched, a fist-sized lump he thought was magnetite crumbled as though in a hammermill. Bits of it drifted down through the interstices of the pebbles beneath it.
One of the apprentices bobbed his head in approval. "Look, he must be four centimeters away from the join," he said. "Great extension!"
Malcolm sniffed. "The important part," he said, ostensibly to Hansen, "isn't how far a smith can reach through the Matrix for material but how well he stitches the result together. That's the craftsmanship that keeps you and me alive, Lord Hansen."
"That and skill," Hansen remarked coolly.
He hadn't seen Walker since the duel the day before. That was someone whom he could question without worrying about raised eyebrows.
Of course, while Walker could be a machine from the end of time, as he claimed; or simply a series of talking birds and animals, as he appeared—the likelihood was that the little voice was an aspect of Hansen's psychosis, like everything else around him. Maybe Commissioner Nils Hansen had been shot in the head as he ran toward Solbarth's hideout. . . .
Half the gravel piled on the shoulder of the battlesuit powdered and slipped to a flatter angle of repose.
Vasque shuddered like a swimmer coming out of cold water. His apprentices stepped toward him, one of them with a skin of wine or mead, but the older man waved them away. "There!" he gasped. "There, Lord Malcolm. Tell me about Dilmun now."
"Although," he added as he got to his feet and only then accepted the container of drink, "I checked the whole suit while I was in the Matrix, and it's not so very bad after all. . . ."
"How do we test it?" Hansen asked.
Malcolm smiled. "I get my suit," he said, "we go out to the practice ground . . . and I see just how good you are, laddie."
It wasn't an especially nice smile; but then, neither was the grin that bared Hansen's teeth.