“Don’t be a fool, Hansen,” squeaked the fieldmouse. “Swear yourself to my service. You’ll never survive here without my help.”
Hansen rubbed the trunk of one of the pines. The outer surface of the bark rasped as it ground away beneath the ball of his thumb, exposing the russet layer within.
“Mice talk here, then?” Hansen said conversationally. So long as he squeezed the treetrunk, he could keep himself from slamming his fist into it in frustration at this further madness from which he was now sure he would never escape. . . .
“Faugh!” the mouse said. “Such a form is useful when I visit the Open Lands. You might not even think me alive in your terms, Hansen.”
The little creature tossed the cone aside. Half the scales had been nibbled into fibrous sprays. They looked like the blades of a turbine whose epoxy matrix had disintegrated under stress.
“I’m a machine,” said the mouse, cleaning its whiskers with its paws. “You can call me Walker. On my plane of Northworld the sun is red, and even the shoals of horseshoe crabs which used to couple on gravel beaches have died. There is no life besides me and my fellows—if we live.”
Another horn blew; a second group of horsemen rode into sight among the trees below. Several crossbows fired. The flat snap! of the bows’ discharge sounded like treelimbs cracking under the weight of ice.
Men shouted. Hansen didn’t see anyone fall, but the conifers hid most of the details.
He was shivering; perhaps it was the cold. “You’re a time traveler, then?” he said to the fieldmouse. The beast’s left eye was as dull as the ruby which had powdered like chalk as Hansen removed his ring.
“You still think in terms of duration, Hansen,” Walker said. “Don’t. This is Northworld.”
He paused for a moment to lick the creamy fur of his belly in firm, even strokes of his tongue. “I’m from a different plane of the Matrix. There are—” the mouse voice took on a didactic singsong “—eight worldplanes of the Matrix, and the Matrix which is a world. But those who live in the Matrix are mad.”
The riders on both sides were falling back. A riderless pony rushed to and fro among the trees, neighing and shaking cascades of snow from the branches.
Men on foot, stepping heavily with the weight of the full armor they wore, moved through the forest in a ragged array. They didn’t appear to be armed, but whenever one brushed a low treelimb, wood and snow spluttered away in a blue crackle.
Similar pops of electronic lightning suggested that more armored footmen were approaching from the other direction, but the line of contact would be at some distance to the right of Hansen’s present vantage point. He began walking in that direction, keeping a grip on saplings because he was paying less attention than he ought to the bluff’s edge.
Walker hopped along beside him. “Swear yourself to my service, Hansen,” piped the fieldmouse voice. “You’re nothing and nobody without my guidance. But be warned: oaths have power on Northworld.”
Scores of fur-clad horsemen like those who’d acted as skirmishers followed a few meters behind the ragged line of footmen. The latter’s armor was painted in brilliant colors, no two patterns alike. Hansen estimated that there were about 150 men in the force advancing from his left, with only a third of them in armor; but the trees made certain counting impossible.
Several horns called. Fifty or sixty equally garish armored men came into sight from the trees to the right.
A small gray bird, crested like a titmouse, landed on a branch beside Hansen. It rapped the seed in its beak three times to break it open. The bird’s head flicked as it swallowed the kernel, letting the husk flutter over the edge of the bluff.
“That’s the army of Golsingh the Peacegiver,” the bird said, twitching its beak in the direction of the newcomers. “Those others there—” it bobbed in the direction of the force to Hansen’s left “—they’re Count Lopez’ men, though he’s bedridden and can’t lead them.”
Hansen looked at the bird. One of its eyes was bright; the other had the yellow, frosted look of weathered marble.