64 Mountain pass: 3

Sitting around a campfire. But for the madness earlier Arthur could almost have believed himself exchanging exaggerations with the tourists he guided over thirty years earlier. Almost, but no tourist had been a two meter tall monster.

He smirked at the memories. So young then, guiding the rich and the famous, long before he became one himself. Some of them he remembered with vehemence, and the last few days had convinced him Gring ghara Khat, or that was as close as he came to pronounce her name, certainly didn't play the part of a monster the way some of the tourists had. He liked her company, liked her ways and how she taught him to relax when she wove the strands of magic around him allowing him to talk with the others. It wasn't the way he once thought of a woman but the way a man might grow fond of an acquaintance becoming a friend. There was of course something inhuman about her, but anything else would have been impossible for someone who was obviously born a predator.

He sat with a small box in his lap and a manual in his left hand, trying to read it in the flickering light from the flames. Soon he'd put the manual away and start cleaning his gun. The people who once equipped him with the weapon were adamant about that. Never, ever use the gun without cleaning it afterward. Not unless you were absolutely positive you had fingers to spare.

Sure requires more work than the mace Harbend bought me, but that one hasn't seen any work.

Once more he shuddered at the memories of what had passed nor even an hour earlier, and in an attempt to dispel those thoughts he bent over his manual. Reading the last passage to make sure he understood what he was supposed to do he picked the weapon up. It was warm in his hands, smooth and shiny except for the handle formed to give him a better grip. The handle also held the biochip grown from his own cells.

A mixed blessing. He couldn't lend the weapon to anyone else. It wouldn't function in the hands of another. There was still violence and theft of course, but mostly in the form of fistfights and outright piracy; two extremes surviving any change to human society, and the occasional small scale war. Humanity defined herself by wars, but at least the Federation never got involved with its disgusting capacity to destroy any opposition. Wars these days were confined to the petty states declining to be part of the Terran Federation.

Arthur dismantled the gun in silence. A silence he knew he would have to break. They were waiting for an explanation, and he had a question as well, but for now he was happy with the calm lasting since they set camp after the ambush. It took longer to clean the gun than he'd expected. He knew it could be done in a couple of minutes, but he hadn't handled one for decades.

Then he was finished and there was no longer an excuse for him to stay mute. He looked through the flames in search for a face he knew would be there, patiently waiting. One of the women from Ri Khi, a medic of sorts.

"How is she?"

"She will recover. She will be fine."

"You're certain?"

"I am a magehealer. I may not be as skilled as some, but she was not badly hurt. It looked worse than it was. Bruises mostly and a bad cut to her scalp. Bleeds a lot."

He gave the woman a stern look.

"And a broken arm," she admitted. "It will heal. Two days, no more, and you shall fail to see there has ever been any damage."

He shuddered. Chaijrild's arm hadn't been broken. It had been crushed between the teeth of a lizard before the female escort captain killed it. Two days was amazing though, almost... He suddenly laughed. Not almost. It was magic. Magic instead of science, or, if his suspicions were correct, mere science to those invested with the powers and magic to all the rest. In a way very much the same as home. Arthur shrugged the amusing thought away.

"If the soldiers hadn't reacted so fast we wouldn't be sitting here now," he said, remembering how close it had been, and the mirth left him.

Arthur looked at the magehealer again. She was the only one from Ri Khi who accepted his presence, or rather accepted Gring's presence, but as the Khraga seldom went far from his side it was effectively the same. All the others shunned him, some out of fear and a few seemingly out of a hatred he couldn't understand. He tried to ask Gring, but she avoided the question and he let the matter fall. She'd tell him at a time of her own choosing.

The sound of footsteps startled him and he looked left, over the towering shape of Gring beside him, and saw Harbend smiling as he walked closer. Captain Laiden followed in his steps and Arthur knew this time he would answer questions rather than ask them.

The men sat down on a log he'd dragged out of the forest earlier to make some extra seats in anticipation of the interrogation he suspected would follow later.

Trindai looked at the reassembled gun in Arthur's hand. That was a question clear as any.

"It's called a gun, or a pistol," Arthur started. "It's a weapon," he continued.

Trindai smirked and Arthur felt like an idiot. As if Trindai needed to be told that something causing the deaths of half a dozen attackers was a weapon. Arthur swore silently. Should he attempt to increase his reputation by explaining for the professional soldier that a mace was something you tried to bludgeon people with?

"I apologize," Arthur said.

The captain grinned, and after a while the grin turned into a smile.

"Let me try again." Arthur held up the gun to let the flames throw light on it. "This weapon is in a way similar to the crossbow you favor here. The main difference is that instead of quarrels this one uses something called stub needle micro grenades, and until they are launched they are very small." Arthur paused to see if they were following him.

"Go on, M'lord," Trindai said.

"On Earth we have something called high explosives. I don't know if you have anything like it here, but it's used both for propelling the projectile as well as expanding it when it enters a target."

"We don't, but the raiders do," the captain answered and scratched an unshaven cheek.

"They do?"

"Yes, we've experimented with compressed air to replace our current stone throwers, but we can't make the gases expand fast enough to make a working cannon."

Arthur had to reevaluate his view on the people in Keen. He glanced at Trindai. The captain had a peculiar way of lapsing into different modes of speech. The almost subservient way he used with Harbend was all but gone now. "How so?" Arthur asked.

"First thing first, M'lord," Trindai said. "The raiders use some system involving combustion, a little like throwing a bottle of strong brandy in the fire, but much more efficient. We believe it's done with magic."

Gunpowder? Arthur thought for himself. "Maybe, maybe not," he answered the unvoiced question.

"Anyway, we haven't found a way to create an explosion that'll throw an object far enough and fast enough without resorting to constructions too large and with too low a rate of fire to be of any practical use," Trindai said, in turn answering Arthur's second question. "Now you show up with a weapon that can be carried around by one man with a penetration power greater than our crossbows and a relaunch rate we can only dream about."

"So of course you're interested," Arthur finished Trindai's line of thought.

"Yes. I'd like to know the reach of that weapon."

A loud crack was followed by a hiss, and bouncing embers announced the fire was falling in on itself. Arthur added some branches to it after making sure he had caught nothing in his lap. Then he turned back to the captain. "Ah, let me think, less than a lamp, maybe sixty paces. This weapon is constructed for personal protection. It's not military issue."

Trindai's face showed clear disappointment. "That's less, a lot less, than a crossbow."

"It is," Arthur agreed. "We have portable weapons that could easily reach from one end of Verd to the other with pinpoint accuracy. I even believe there are some that could reach between two of your telegraphs, eh, far writers" That piece of information apparently stunned the captain. You don't need to know of guided missiles reaching all over this planet should the damn military ever place their deadly toys here.

"And it's portable?"

"Not exactly, but in a way. One man operates it and moves with it, but it's too heavy for a human to carry around, so we have to use a mechanical contraption to move both soldier and weapon." Arthur saw the magehealer frown disapprovingly. That was natural, he guessed. She healed people and here he was talking about equipment killing them.

Trindai brightened. "I've seen those moving armors of yours. Ten years ago, after you came here."

After we came here. Also a way of describing it. The captain must have been present during the invasion attempt. "That's not something we're very proud about," Arthur said.

"Why not? We're very happy you chose Keen. Of course the relations may be strained from time to time, but the exclusion of any other land is a great honor to us."

"What?"

"But of course. Please don't mistake our ways for anger. Protectionism and a certain amount of greed, yes I have to admit that, but we're grateful you haven't started to fly your sky ships from elsewhere."

A moment of shock followed by revelation. The captain didn't know about the Terran Federation's insane attack! Maybe most living here didn't, but how?

"Oh, I see. You're thinking of that unfortunate episode. It was a mistake trying to take your installation by force, and your weapons made us pay dearly," Trindai continued, apparently mistaking the reason for Arthur's silence.

Arthur didn't know what to say, and only returned Trindai's stare. They sat in silence around the flickering light of the fire until Arthur decided it was his time asking questions.

"The things that attacked us today, what were they?"

"Dragonlings," Gring answered. "They are quite common where I come from."

"They're very rare here," Trindai said. "I don't know about these mountains, but we don't see many of them west of Erkateren anyway, and I'd be surprised if there are that many there."

Harbend nodded his head in agreement with the captain. "He is probably right. From what I have heard they are hunted more or less to extinction. A different matter on the other side of the mountains though." Harbend looked at Gring.

"Very different," she agreed. "Hunting dragonlings is forbidden there. Defending yourself is allowed of course, but no hunting."

"Why?" Arthur asked.

"I don't know," Gring admitted. "You die if you try, so people just accept it's forbidden."

"Who kills the hunters?"

"To begin with there has been no hunters of dragonlings for a very long time. Well, not on the eastern side of the pass anyway. To answer your question, we don't know. Legend has it a hunter just dies. Accident, sickness, killed by animals, anything. Never takes long though."

Arthur wasn't getting anywhere and he tried a different approach. "Why is it forbidden to hunt them?" he asked. "And why only on the other side of the mountains."

"I can answer the second question," Trindai offered. "We've been given the land where we live, but we're not allowed to bring our own rules across the mountains," he continued.

Arthur digested the information for a few moments. "So, and my first question?" he asked.

"I thought the answer would be obvious," Gring said, and Arthur could see how all around him gave him looks of utter surprise.

"I'm afraid I'm the foreigner here," he explained.

"Dragonlings are the young of dragons. I thought everyone knew that."

Excitement stirred in Arthur. "Dragons? You have dragons here?"

"There hasn't been a sighting of a dragon in hundreds of years, but of course we do. Don't you?"

"No, we don't. No dragons where I come from."

"You are the strangest of people," Gring said. "You say you don't have dragons where you come from, and yet you seem familiar with the concept. No wonder we call you halfmen and oath breakers when you so obviously lie to yourself," she concluded.

Arthur could only listen in amazement as Gring was joined by a choir of murmured agreement.