“You think?” Morrez didn’t laugh this time, but he smiled – and where the laugh was forced, the smile looked like it was meant. “The Peacemaker heard about your firethrower, and your bolt gun, and your cutter, and how you been holding them back from him. He won’t rest until they come into his hand, where they belong. You of Mythen Rood will reap what you sowed.”
“How can our tech be his?” I asked.
“All tech in Ingland is his.”
“That don’t make a blind bit of sense though.”
Morrez Ten-Taken set his shoulders square and lowered his head like he was a bull about to charge, but he didn’t move from where he was. Jarter’s arm was still barring his way like a gate.
“There’s hundreds of souls in Mythen Rood, Morrez,” I said. “Without the bolt gun and the firethrower there wouldn’t be a single one. Chokers would have whelmed us, or wild beasts wolfed us down ages since. We got to keep our tech, else we’ll die.”
“You’ll die then,” Morrez said.
I told Jarter and Shirew to take him back down to his cell.
“You think that was fair, what you did to him?” Jon asked me as soon as they went out.
“I think the questions was fair,” I said.
“But you put him in a terror, Spin. He come close to pissing his pants.”
I rounded on my husband, somewhat out of patience. “Your aunt Fer would have had me putting hot pokers to his flesh, and you’d have me mind his hurt feelings. I got to plough my own furrow, Jon, and you got to let me. You think I wasn’t fair? You watch me when this thing gets going. In a fair fight, the bigger one wins. I’ll lie and cheat and betray like Stannabanna his own self to keep that from happening.”
For a moment, Jon only looked at me. Then he shook his head. I guess he didn’t altogether like what he was seeing. But when he spoke, it was mild words he said. “We know a lot more than we did anyway. But you didn’t ask him about the guns, after all that.”
“He wasn’t going to answer if I did. But that might change. Let’s put the boy to work. I think we got a better chance with him than we do with Sil Hawk. He’s younger and not so fixed in his thoughts. He coughs up a great deal of the lies and nonsense he’s been fed, but now he’s here among us he might be open to changing his mind. It’s only a question of making him see things different.”
Jon thought on it, scratching the back of his neck. “Mercy Frostfend needs some people to help with the planting. It’s all hands that can haul, from what she said.”
“That’s a good thought.” I kissed him on the lips. “And you’re a good man, Haijon Vennastin. I hope our baby takes after you when she comes.”
It was a way of changing the subject and the mood. Jon took it gratefully. “It’s going to be a girl, then? You decided?”
“I did. One boy in the house is enough.”
“My ma wants a grandson though. The two of you better argue it out.”
“Your ma will have to take what she gets,” I said. I said it lightly, keeping up the joke, but thinking the while that I would love to have that argument. Right then Dam Catrin couldn’t lift her head off her pillow, for all the medicines the first day kit could offer, and had not yet spoke a word. She was our strongest, and our wisest, and we needed her more than we ever needed her before. But we could do nothing but wait.
12
You might think from what I’ve told you that we were pinning all our hopes on the Half-Ax guns, but we were not. We had Challenger and Elaine, who I’ll speak of in their place, and besides that we had tech of our own hid away under Rampart Hold in a strongroom that was only ever opened once in a year. None of it had showed any sign of waking in my lifetime, or the time of anyone living, but now we had some hope it would serve. The next day showing fair, we went down into the Underhold as soon as the tocsin bell rang and brought up all the tech that was there.
The fight at Calder had taught us a great lesson, which was that tech that had been broke could sometimes mend itself. The firethrower had been rent open in that battle, but the database bid it make itself whole again and it did. This was called auto-repair. But for auto-repair to happen, the tech had first to be waked. I asked the database what might have the power to wake it. You will never believe what the answer was.
It was the sun.
Perhaps I should have known it. The sun wakes the trees, after all, and gives them strength to move. Maybe there’s a power in sunlight to wake anything. Maybe our dead only stay dead because we put them in the ground instead of laying them on a hillside and waiting for Spring to come.
So now we were seeing what could be done with our store of sleeping tech. If even one or two would wake out of the hundreds that were there, it would be a blessing. Perhaps they would all wake, some people said, and instead of Half-Ax marching on Mythen Rood we would march on Half-Ax. I didn’t say a word when such foolishness was cast about. People find hope where they can.
We set tables on the gather-ground and laid out all the tech in rows, with no piece touching another piece or casting a shadow on it. Guards were set over the tech, two to a table so that as well as keeping the curious at a distance the guards could watch each other too. Nobody was like to forget Koli Faceless, who had stolen tech from the Underhold and tried to use it to buy himself a place in Rampart Hold.
“How long before they wake?” I asked the database.
“A precise estimate is problematic given the high degree of statistical uncertainty as to—”
“Speak as if I’m a child.”
“They may not wake at all. If they do, it could take anything from a few hours to several days. The devices have lain in the dark for a long time, in damp, cold conditions – the very opposite of the way they were meant to be stored. They were made with the potential to keep themselves in good repair, but the people who made them didn’t imagine they would be treated so badly, or lie idle for so long.”
Our miracle might not come then, or might come too late to help us. But still we had got to try.
As Rampart Fire, I was allowed to come among the tech whenever I liked, and I did so often. I could have seen it before and even picked it up and handled it when I lived in the Hold and knew where the keys were kept. Tech being such a great mystery to me in that time, I had been too shy or too much afraid to do it. But after meeting Challenger, all such fears seemed foolish. I went and looked often, trying to guess what these strange engines might do if they ever stirred to do anything at all.
I asked the database, but even though it explained things to me as if I were a child, it could not make me understand more than a few of them. This one snatched words and pictures out of the empty air, from places so far away you couldn’t even see them from the top of a lookout. That one told you how hot or cold something was on its inside. That other made bubbles of nothing in the middle of things that were solid and heavy, so they would be light enough to carry.
“Are they weapons? I know some of them are. These are cutters, like my Jon used to use. And this is a bolt gun.”
“Yes, some of them are weapons. Others could be used as weapons, even if that wasn’t their original purpose. And almost all of them have power sources that could be put to destructive use with very little reassembly.”