in battle, and if such things could happen to the rulers of armies, Param could only imagine what happened to the ordinary soldiers.
But when all but Umbo joined hands and suddenly dropped into the past, Param was almost overwhelmed by the noise of it. She could hear yelling: fierce cries of warriors, shouted commands from officers, screams of wounded men. And there was a smell of burning meat that almost gagged her, mixed as it was with the other stinks of the battlefield.
Her reflex was to sliver time so she could disappear. She relied on this ability to retreat from anything that frightened her. But she caught herself, realizing that Rigg had not been wrong after all when he worried about her disappearing in the past.
She knelt up and saw that Rigg, who was more used to sudden shifts of time, was already standing up and striding toward three adult women who were watching the battle. Rigg would speak to them; Param had no desire to. The women looked careworn and grief-stricken. They stood near a stockade that surrounded the city and sheltered their party from the view of the soldiers where the battle was being waged.
The stockade looked as if it had been hastily thrown up in a day, braced from behind here and there. She wondered how well it would hold up against a determined enemy. It had been clumsily built; through gaps between the poles it was possible to see the battle.
But Param did not want to see the battle. She had thought that was what she was coming to see, but now that she was here, it was the city that fascinated her, because it was only half built. Only the lower buildings existed, and instead of the uniform black of the towers in Param’s own time, these had been brightly painted, though many were faded and weathered. Yet the colors seemed vivid on this sunny day; it was as if the city had been decorated for a festival.
From the top of one of the towers, a beam of pure heat shimmered the air. Param followed the beam and then strode the five steps to the stockade and peered through. Where the beam landed, the grass was erupting in flame, and men were fleeing from it.
At first Param noticed little distinction between the two armies—they were masses of human shapes brandishing weapons. The numbers seemed evenly matched. But soon, from looking at those nearest her, she realized that all the defenders were better armed—swords and bows against clubs and crude spears.
Yet instead of cutting through the attackers, the swords of the defenders seemed rarely to slice flesh. The attackers always dodged away, avoiding the cuts and blows. However, the clubs and spears of the attackers landed all the time; if it had not been for the armor of the defenders, many would have fallen.
Why were the attackers so much better at fighting?
Then Param realized that the attackers all had large, strangely shaped heads; a moment later she saw that their heads were deformed because they had facemasks almost entirely covering their heads. Many of them seemed to have weirdly misplaced eyes, as if the parasite, having covered the face of a man, grew him a new eye out of its own rough flesh. Param found them repulsive and fascinating. The men with facemasks fought savagely and skillfully. They were quick, dancing to dodge incoming arrows from the defenders, darting forward to strike blows which rarely missed, though the defenders’ armor usually turned away the blade.
Another beam came from the tower. It should have been a devastating advantage for the defenders, to have that beam of fire. But instead of striking into one of the masses of the attacking army, it struck an area that was mostly empty of living men of either side. Again flames gouted upward, and men of both sides ran from the area of flame. The battlefield was dotted with patches of flame or cinders or ash, so that neither army could maintain good order.
“Those bastards in the tower ought to be hanged,” muttered Loaf. He was standing at the stockade beside her.
“They don’t seem to aim their rod of fire very well,” she said.
“They’re hitting nobody,” said Loaf. “Useless.”
Olivenko, from the other side of her, said, “What makes the attackers so nimble? I’ve never seen soldiers who dodge so well.”
“The defenders are good soldiers,” said Loaf. “Trained, disciplined. But they hardly land a blow.”
Olivenko agreed. “It takes two of them attacking the same man at once to bring him down.”
“Maybe it’s because they don’t have any armor,” said Loaf. “Keeps them lighter on their feet.”
It’s the facemask, Param wanted to say. The facemasks help them to react more quickly. But she said nothing. Loaf and Olivenko were soldiers; they knew what they were seeing, and she didn’t.
With both of the soldiers watching the battle, it occurred to Param that neither of them was protecting Rigg. What if the women took him for some kind of enemy? What if they were armed? Param could at least take Rigg out of harm’s way, if danger threatened.
The women were speaking a language that Param had never heard before, yet she understood them. She realized that she was not mentally translating their speech into any tongue that she actually knew. Rather she simply understood them at a level below language. The Wall really did give languages to those who passed through it.
The women were angry and frightened, and like Loaf they were condemning the wielder of the firebeam. But the women did not speak of “them” who aimed; rather it was “him.”
“He won’t use it to kill them,” said the tallest of the women. “And he won’t let any of us use it—we’d have no qualms about burning them.”
“They aren’t human anymore,” said the eldest woman—the mother? “Killing them should be like killing grass, but he won’t do it.”
“He’s no friend of ours,” said the youngest.
“He has no choice but to be our friend,” said the tall one. “It’s in the way he was made.”
“He does what he wants,” said the young one.
Rigg was merely listening to them, letting them talk to him; Param understood why. He was learning vital information with everything they said. If he probed, he might not learn as much, because they would become more aware of him. Param wished she knew how he had explained who they were, these four who had suddenly appeared inside the stockade. But maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe it was enough for these women that the strangers wore no facemasks.
“We can’t build the city without him,” complained the old woman. “But he won’t let us make a wall of fieldsteel—this miserable stockade is all we can make without him. We’ve depended too much on him! We haven’t any skills in our own hands.”
Param guessed who “he” was; who but Vadesh himself? No one else could build with fieldsteel; no one else could create a beam of pure heat, then bar the people of the city from using it themselves.
“He does us no good,” said the young one. “The city is eternal, but what good is that when we can’t defend it?”
“We can’t live anywhere else,” said the tall one. “Where would we get safe water? We’d become like
Finally the old woman took notice of Param. “Are you his sister?” she asked.
Param had forgotten how much Rigg resembled her. “I am,” she said.
“I wish I could offer help,” said Rigg.
The tall woman pointed at the stockade, where Loaf and Olivenko stood. “They look like stout soldiers, and well-armed.”
“But inexperienced against such a quick and clever enemy,” said Param. “They would be beaten almost at once.”
“Where are you from?” asked the old woman suspiciously. “You speak like feeble-minded children.”
“Your language is new to us,” said Rigg.
“Our language?” said the young woman incredulously. “Is there another?
“Beyond the Wall,” said Param.
“The future,” said Rigg.
Param found it interesting that while they had chosen different truths to tell, neither she nor Rigg had thought of lying.
