The forest expanded to normal width and depth—a narrow window on the world, but the best display for walking.
Fast walking, if he could manage it. He had a lot of time to make up.
He took a step, then another, and raised his pace into a clumsy jog. There was enough delay in the suit’s response to Hansen’s movements that he thought at first he was going to topple. The dynamic rigidity of the joints was just great enough to save him from that embarrassment.
All exposed points of his body began to chafe. The armor was lined with suede at some points, with hide at others, and for some of its area with cloth scarcely better than the rags in which the slaves were clothed.
Hansen could feel a finger of cold air below his left arm, where the arrow-hole marked the suit. He didn’t think he’d have to worry about arrows, though—
But that reminded him. As he clumped along, following the muddy, surprisingly narrow, track the mammoths squeezed into the bottom land, he thrust out his right arm, pointed his fingers, and said, “Cut!”
An arc—blacked-out on Hansen’s display—sizzled from his gauntlet. It licked a small pinetree into resinous flame.
Hansen fell on his face. When his suit shot out the arc, the legs didn’t have enough power remaining to drive him at the speed he expected.
The arc continued to lash the leaf mould into sluggish fire. How did he— “Stop!” Hansen shouted. “Quit!”
The weapon cut off.
Hansen didn’t see Walker as he got up again, but from the closeness of the voice, the crow must have been sitting on his shoulder as it said, “A better suit would not have done that. A royal suit, like that which I offer you as my servant, could strike with both hands and still run faster than an unarmored man.”
“I’ll manage,” Hansen said.
He began to jog again, then broke into a measured trot. He was flaying the skin from his knees, shoulders, and jutting hip bones.
He’d worn hard suits before, but rarely—and even less often in a gravity well. Motors in the armor’s joints carried the weight and drove it in response to Hansen’s muscles; but the muscles had to initiate the movements, and there was always a minuscule delay. He felt as if he were trying to run in a bath of soap bubbles—except that soap bubbles wouldn’t’ve galled him.
Hansen concentrated on each next stride. His display fogged with his gasping exhalations. He didn’t notice that the trail was rising until he broke out of the trees and saw, on ground that rose still higher across a swale, a palisaded village from which rose the smoke of scores of hearths.
The riders and mammoths of Golsingh’s train straggled across the low ground, halfway down and halfway up the other side. A freeman at the rear of the line blew his curved horn furiously, pointing toward Hansen with his free hand.
Three of the warriors around Golsingh and Taddeusz at the bottom of the swale began getting into their armor.
Hansen slowed cautiously. He visualized himself skidding on his faceplate toward the men he wanted to impress; the image diverted some of his tension into a laugh.
A thought occurred to him. He centered the arming warriors in his display and muttered, “Visor, plus ten.”
Hansen’s helmet immediately gave him the requested magnification. The images were fuzzy, but he could see that the warrior donning the red-silver-blue armor was an octoroon, and that all three were powerful fellows of about Hansen’s own twenty-nine years.
“Resume normal vision,” he said, sucking his lips between his front teeth as he considered the situation.
This armor was crudely built, but it had a surprising range of capacities. Hansen was fairly certain that the warriors who’d struggled so clumsily in battle didn’t know or didn’t care about most of the things their suits could do. That gave him an advantage.
God knew that he was going to need one.
“Lord Golsingh!” Hansen shouted as he strolled toward the waiting army. His armor quivered with the amplified sound of his voice. “I came here to serve you. If there’s no place in your service at the moment, then I’ll empty one for myself!”