Iron master, p.11
Iron Master, page 11
Keeping to the western flank of the mountain – still shaded from the sun – Steve headed in the direction of the highway. It lay at the bottom of a man-made gorge whose smooth sloping sides were now covered by a tangled carpet of vegetation. At some time in the past, a wide band on either side of the highway had been cleared of trees, but the forest above was slowly reclaiming the lost ground. Several generations of saplings had sprung up amid the bushes and the long grass, and the strongest were beginning to elbow the weaklings out of the way in the race to grab the biggest chunk of sky.
Before Steve could select a proper hiding place, a motley group of horsemen burst out of the trees on the far side of the highway and zigzagged down through the belt of saplings. Caught on the wrong foot, Steve froze awkwardly, unsure whether to duck or run. His surprise turned rapidly to panic as the riders clattered across the road and came thundering up the slope towards him, their slung weapons bouncing off their backs. The fact they kept looking over their shoulders suggested that they, and not he, were the quarry but Steve was not about to hang around for confirmation. It was time to get the hell out. MOVE it, Brickman!
Powered by a surge of adrenalin, Steve turned and sprinted back up through the trees, pausing to check the scene behind him as he reached the crest. The rising steepness of the slope had obliged the riders to cut back and forth across its face, slowing their mad gallop to a laboured canter. The wild bunch had become a strung-out line and now the home team – approximately double in number, and decked out with banners and matching armour – were streaming out of the woods, firing volleys of arrows across the gorge as they galloped down towards the highway.
And scoring hits. Ouch! A horse reared up and fell backwards on top of its rider. Steve accelerated rapidly. There was no point in getting caught in the crossfire. His frantic dash through the trees reminded him of the afternoon he had been chased through another forest by a posse of Mutes. He had given them the slip by diving into a rock pool and hiding close to the bank among the reeds. Given the chance he’d have done the same thing now but he was too high up. Every stream he came across was no more than ankle-deep. The only thing he could do was keep going. He settled down into the loping stride he’d picked up from running with the M’Call Bears. The accumulated aches and pains of the past weeks merged, becoming an exquisite burning sensation that enveloped him from head to foot as he pushed his body to the limits. It went past the point of being unbearable and induced a strange kind of euphoria that damped down all physical sensation. He could barely feel his feet thudding against the ground, or his pain-wracked lungs that, only moments before, had felt as if they were about to explode inside his chest. He was conscious of being outside himself. It was as if his brain had parted company with his body and was floating just above and behind him, saying, ‘You go right ahead and do what you have to do, fella. Don’t worry about me. I can’t feel a thing.’
Steve had been there before and knew from experience that he could maintain the same relentless pace for several hours. But he could not outrun a galloping horse – and that was fast becoming his most pressing problem. He had changed direction several times but whichever way he turned, the fugitive riders – who were obviously as confused as he was – always seemed to end up heading in the same direction!
The only solution was to take to the trees and stay there till the excitement died down. But what would he do if the home team spotted him and took him for one of the opposition? He would be trapped, out on a limb – like a treed mountain-cat. But then, if they caught him it wouldn’t matter who they thought he was. The jig would be up. It was a chance he’d have to take. He shinned up the leafiest tree he could find, pulling his legs up out of sight as the ground shook under the hooves of the front runners.
The gaps in the leaves provided Steve with a few brief snapshots of the riders as they sped by, crouched low over their horses. Their faces and arms were smeared with dirt, and their dress was as varied as the ragtag uniforms worn by Malone’s renegades. Some wore armour, but nobody seemed to own a full set. Two or three had small square shields fixed to their shoulders. Most had helmets of one sort or another, some with wide sweeping brims and what looked like metal horns or crescent moons attached to the front. A few had a tangled mess of shoulder-length hair streaming out from under headbands of cloth. All the riders Steve caught a glimpse of wore curving swords – the mark of samurai – plus a variety of other weapons: spears, halberds, two-bladed axes and bows and arrows. Were these outlaws? Did the Iron Masters have their own brand of breakers?
Moving to a higher branch, Steve saw another sizeable bunch gallop through the small clearing, followed a short while later by a handful of stragglers. The last one had turned round in his saddle and was shouting hoarsely in the Iron Masters’ nonsense language. From his gestures it was clear he was urging on someone who had fallen behind. He paused briefly, his sweating horse pawing the ground nervously, then rode on. A few seconds later Steve caught sight of another rider. But this guy was in trouble. His horse had slowed to a trot and he was hunched up in the saddle with two arrowshafts sticking out of his back. Now that, thought Steve, must hurt. He lost sight of the rider as he crossed the clearing, then heard a sharp crack and a dull thud rolled into one.
Peering down the line of the trunk, Steve saw that the guy had fallen off and now lay at the foot of the tree. His wide-brimmed helmet and the shanks of long hair that went with it had rolled to one side, revealing a head that was completely bald. The riderless horse moved restlessly back and forth near by, snatching hurried mouthfuls of grass. Steve was filled with a strange feeling. This has to be fate, he thought. It was totally mad. Insane. But a voice that was not his own urged him on. Quickly! Before it’s too late! His mind resisted. But I don’t know how to ride these things! Never mind, said the voice. Just do it!
He dropped out of the tree and took a quick look at the fallen Iron Master. He had landed on his back, flattening the lacquered wooden arrowshafts beneath him. The impact had driven the bladed points out through his chest. He wasn’t dead, but he soon would be. Steve relieved him of his sword, then scooped up the long-haired helmet and put it on his head. Pulling the plaited strap firmly under his chin, he gathered up the reins of the horse, took a deep breath and hauled himself aboard.
Okay, sweet Sky-Mother, let’s go!
The horse took off with Steve bobbling around in the saddle like a ping-pong ball in a shooting gallery. But Mo-Town – or some other benign deity – kept him in his seat until his feet found the stirrups and some innate sense of rhythm brought his undulating backside into partial phase with the rise and fall of the horse beneath him. What Steve wanted to do most of all was stop and get off, but he didn’t know which buttons to press. The alternative was to throw himself off, but he was too scared to try. The horse was going too fast and he was too high off the ground. If he failed to get clear and fell under its hooves…
Steve drove the thought from his mind. It was clear he had made a serious tactical error. He had shinned up the tree to get out of the way of the wild bunch – and here he was hard on their heels! In fairness, it had to be said it was not of his own volition. His entire energies were concentrated on staying upright in the saddle and avoiding getting his brains knocked loose by low-hanging branches. There was no way he could steer at the same time – even if he had known how. Steve had, in fact, lost the reins and was hanging on, white-knuckled, to the front edge of the saddle. His feet kept springing out of the stirrups and every time they banged against the horse’s ribs, it tensed up and made another wild surge forward. Christo! What on earth had persuaded the Iron Masters to use such a capricious means of transportation? No wonder they had no hair. They must have torn it all out trying to figure out how to stay on top of the goddamned things.
Steve could see that a horse offered certain advantages: if you had a lot of ground to cover it was the animal that did most of the work in getting you there. But jeeezzz – the pain! The sinews in his thighs were zinging like overstretched rigging wires, and every time his ass collided with the horse it felt as if a red-hot knife had been driven into the base of his spine. The discomfort was something he could cope with. What worried him most was the fact he was now the meat in the sandwich: if he tried to slow the horse down the home team might catch up with him; if it went too fast, he could land himself in the arms of the wild bunch.
Unaware of the problems it was causing its rider, the horse galloped on, weaving its way through the trees without the slightest hesitation. Since there was no trail beneath its feet, it must have been following an internal route map. Which indicated the animal was not as stupid as it looked – even if the route did not always contain sufficient headroom for the person on its back. Within a short time, Steve’s face and limbs were striped, bruised and bleeding from the searing whiplashes delivered by bush and branch along the way. The headlong dash for freedom was also taking its toll of the horse. Its breathing was harsh and laboured, and its quivering flanks were covered with a soapy lather, but somehow the animal found the stamina to keep going mile after mile, driven on by the same herd instinct Steve had seen demonstrated by fast-foot and buffalo. Rider and mount were possessed by the same urgent need to reach some place of safety. But where might that be? It was the kind of situation he always did his utmost to avoid.
So what’s happening here, Brickman? I mean, aren’t you the guy that likes to plan ahead? Y’know – figure out all the angles…?
Yeah, right, but-
Never mind the ‘buts’! Come on! ’S about time you got a handle on this situation. Let’s see some positive action here!
Easier said than done. Steve was still the guy who liked to figure out all the angles, but he had noticed that ever since Clearwater had crossed his path he had become prey to sudden, dangerous impulses. The off-the-cuff decision to stow away on board one of Yama-Shita’s wheelboats without asking even the most elementary questions about what he might find when he got to wherever they were going was a prime example. Leaping astride this animal was another. It was just not like him. Or was it?
From the very beginning, entering the blue sky-world was like coming home. What he had experienced ran counter to everything he had been taught. It was like being torn in two. He had become impatient and increasingly rebellious, had discovered feelings he could not put into words and was now driven by the need to find his rightful place in the whole great scheme of things. This inner conflict had given birth to the sure and certain feeling that it was the overground that held the key to the questions which plagued him. It was here that he would discover not only the truth about himself but also the dark secrets so jealously guarded by the First Family. Perhaps, in allowing the horse to carry him wherever it had a mind to, he was being given a sign. A gentle warning to stop trying to manipulate people, to always be in control. Perhaps he was being asked to put his life in someone else’s hands – to allow them to manipulate him. It was an interesting proposition, and one he would definitely give some serious thought to. But not right now.
The shouts and trumpet calls of his pursuers slowly died away, and there was no sign of the wild bunch up front. The fear that had turned Steve’s balls into frozen walnuts slowly melted away. After a while, the forest began to thin. Soon there were more bushes than there were trees, more sky than leaves, and the only thing smacking him in the face was fresh air. Ahead of him was a rise in the ground. Steve gathered up the reins and managed to get the horse to stop short of the crest so that, by standing up in the stirrups, he could take a peek at what lay on the other side.
The ground fell away unevenly into a rock-strewn river valley. On the far side there was more broken ground rising up to meet a heavily forested slope which ringed a mountainous, flat-topped chunk of bare rock. Its deeply fissured sides were only a few degrees off the vertical and, from a distance, it looked like the stump of a giant stone tree rooted in a mound of red moss; a fossilized relic of some bygone age.
Anxious to reach its chosen destination, the horse moved forward, straining at the bit. At the same instant, the wild bunch – or at least some of them – made their second appearance of the day. This time, however, they were not heading towards him – at least not yet. They came out between the trees on the far side of the river, angling down from left to right across his front. Once again they were closely pursued by flag-carrying comrades, although now the numbers looked roughly equal.
Steve hauled back savagely on the reins, pulling the horse’s head round to the left. The animal circled, stamping its hooves nervously and tossing its head in an effort to tear the reins from his grasp. Steve fought back, cursing the wretched beast for making him divide his attention at such a crucial moment.
Twisting from side to side in his saddle, he caught brief glimpses of the wild bunch as they raced along the river bank to where the broad, placid current rippled over a pebble bed. He felt a sudden pang of anxiety as they crossed over towards him in a cloud of spray, but they promptly veered off to his right, fanning out in three different directions – presumably in an effort to throw off or divide their pursuers.
The ruse didn’t work because the home team also had a few tricks up their sleeve. With a dramatic suddenness which took Steve totally by surprise, a second group of beflagged samurai burst out of the forest from which he himself had just emerged. Fortunately, they were way over to his right and, by some miracle, had failed to spot him. Even so, the unexpected chorus of blood-curdling yells was a real heart-stopper. Co-lumbus! To think he had just been sitting there – right out in the open!
Having now discovered how the reins worked, Steve urged the horse towards the river, going down to his left, away from the action. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that the samurai’s pincer movement had cut off the wild bunch’s escape route, causing them to wheel about in confusion, swords waving in the air. A fold in the ground blocked Steve’s view of the ensuing clash of arms, and by the time he had managed to get safely across the river the sight and sounds of battle had faded.
Yeah, well, you win some, you lose some…
Whichever side carried the day was immaterial to Steve. He had no reason to believe that renegade Iron Masters treated Mutes any better than their law-abiding kin. Only one thing mattered: he, Steven Roosevelt Brickman, was still up and running.
And so was the horse. Once they were clear of the fire-fight, Steve had allowed it free rein and it now moved forward purposefully along the steepening forest trail towards the forbidding ramparts of the rock tower which Steve had mentally christened ‘Big D’ in affectionate memory of Buck McDonnell, the crewcut, granite-jawed Trail Boss on the wagon-train known as The Lady.
The great stretch of landscape that now lay below and beyond the trees reminded him of the view from the cockpit of his Skyhawk. His thoughts drifted back to the moments of danger he had shared with McDonnell and the rest of the crew during the Battle of the Now and Then River. Jodi Kazan, his Flight Leader, swept overboard, wrapped in a white-hot ball of fire while attempting to land her Skyhawk during the height of the storm. Gus White, fellow-graduate wingman, who had flown away leaving him to die in a blazing cropfield. And the rest of the flight section who had all perished on the same fateful day. Booker and Yates, consumed like moths in a flame when their aircraft were hit by lightning. Webber, killed in the take-off ramp. Caulfield, his head transfixed by a crossbow bolt, hauled from the cockpit with his eyeballs hanging out of their sockets. Ryan plunging to earth, incinerated on impact by his own planeload of napalm. Lou Fazetti and Naylor who, seized by a sudden, inexplicable madness, shot each other down.
By a combination of luck and circumstance, Jodi, her face and neck now disfigured by scar tissue, had survived with the help of a band of Tracker renegades. But her luck had run out at the same time as theirs. She was now in the hands of the Iron Masters and on her way to Heron Pool. Prior to her capture and trade-in by the clan M’Call, she had saved Steve’s life, and he had made up his mind to rescue her along with Cadillac and Clearwater – just as he had vowed to get even with Gus White. And the others. The people who had conspired to deny him the graduation honours that were rightfully his. The memory of past injustices, and the cynical way he had been pressured by the threats against his kin-sister Roz, put the iron back in his soul.
So many scores to settle. So much still to do…
As the horse emerged above the tree line, Steve looked down towards the valley. Most of it was obscured by the forested slope he had just climbed, but he could see, almost directly below him, the stretch of broken water where the wild bunch had crossed over the river. From his previous flight experience he judged himself to be some 800 feet above it. The horse moved on, picking its way along an increasingly precipitous trail through the scrub that clung like a red foam to frozen cascades of fallen rock.
Trees and rockfaces held no terrors for Steve. He had a good head for heights and flying like a bird was the greatest thrill of all. But this was something different. He was not standing on his own two feet and his hands were not firmly on the controls. He was balanced precariously on top of a strange beast that might stumble and lose its balance at any minute. That unsettling thought, plus the constant swaying back and forth, was making him feel distinctly queasy. More than once he felt compelled to get off and bring up his snake-meat breakfast but, by the power of positive thinking, he succeeded in holding down the bile that kept rising in his throat and stayed on board.
