“None, Your Magnificence.”
“A barbarian from far away, without an army. But perhaps a threat.” The high brown brows drew down in thought. “Send a demon to watch for this man and destroy him. If it cannot, then we will take further interest.”
Tenzin Geshe walked back to the gomba, the imperial monastery known as the House of Power, thinking about what the emperor had said. He had not read his lord’s thoughts; they’d been screened. But he had sensed a growing interest, or perhaps curiosity was the better word.
Send a demon? His Magnificence was sensitive to the field, but his experience was limited to reading men’s thoughts. He didn’t know demons, and beyond that was given to looseness in terminology and even concept. Demons were unreliable and capricious, and their power was primarily over the suggestible. Anyone aware enough
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to sense the Circle so calmly and at a distance, would likely ignore a demon or send it packing. Nor were demons suitable for scouting or spying. They were disinterested in activities with so little involvement.
No, he told himself, I will gather an elemental. They are somewhat unintelligent, but it can probably hunt the barbarian down. And if it finds him, it will be powerful enough to do something about him.
NINE
Naken stod han, svääd i handen,
onar lunn, å vass som pilar,
stood ä vjennte vad som hände.
Såg en rorelse i porten.
Uti dagjus kom en ojur,
kom en katt som kails lejonen.
Stor som björn å mera våldsam,
kattkvick han, mä tänn som kniver,
inte född i fyra dagar.
Vänt mot Ynglingen å mörrde
skräckli mer än boms i vrede. …
[Naked stood he, sword held tightly,
calm eyes sharp and quick as arrows,
stood and waited what was coming.
Saw a movement in the portal.
Came a beast into the sunlight,
came a cat they call the lion.
Bear-big he, and much more savage,
cat-quick he, with teeth like daggers,
hunger gnawing, four days fasting.
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Turned toward the youth and snarled then,
dreadful more than raging he-bear. . . .]
From—The Ja’rnhann Saga,
Kumalo translation
The day after they saw the pinnace, a cold rain fell without a break, blown at times by gusty winds. They sat it out in the woods along another stream. Nils had brought only a small piece of his leather tipi, enough for a lean-to that was too small for three. So they made a crude and leaky shelter of saplings, bundles of grass, and bark stripped from poplar trees. The leather shelter they used to protect their fire, and finished smoking the veal jerky to ensure it wouldn’t spoil.
Baver was glad not to travel. Despite the injections they’d gotten on the Phaeada, and the booster received on schedule from Matthew, he’d come down with diarrhea the night before, and a runny nose. (The diarrhea would recur occasionally for weeks, but not so intensely.) The worst thing about it was squatting repeatedly in the chill rain, his hands blue with cold and his jumpsuit round his ankles.
More memorable, a bear came that day. They heard him snuff, and came out into the rain to stand him off. Big and hump-shouldered, attracted by the smell of meat, he was only twenty meters off, and reared up tall on his hind feet to see more clearly. Baver held his pistol in a frozen grip. Hans’s long fingers gripped two arrows with his bow hand, and had another nocked.
Nils didn’t even draw his sword. Instead he spoke to the bear, calmly, reassuringly, and after a long minute or so it dropped to all fours, turned and ambled off.
The next morning the three of them went on, and over the next week traveled north and east over hundreds of kilometers of not-quite sameness, mostly riding, but walking periodically to rest the horses. Twice they en-
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countered the remains of ancient towns, recognizable by the change in vegetation. Patches of woods occupied the long-since broken pavements. Brush and scrub trees had overgrown the mounds of broken concrete that were ancient buildings, mounds some of which had been mined for the reinforcing rods, and more or less buried by windblown dirt. Clearly, during some recent century, there’d been a prolonged drought period with dust storms.