Free The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge by Vernor Vinge Page B

control of his lands; he had not kept his precarious place as lord so long without good reason.
    Now his eyes flashed rare approval as Hanaban cried. “Trace, look
there!” and, as his brother turned, distracted, whacked him soundly on the chest.
    “Gotcha!” Hanaban shrieked delightedly. Trace grimaced with disgust.
    Their father chuckled, but his face changed suddenly as the sound of a commotion outside the chamber reached him. The heavy, windowed doors at the far end of the room burst open; the Flatlander courier shook off guards, crossed the high-ceilinged, echoing chamber and flung himself into a bow, his rifle clattering on the floor. “Your lordship!”
    Lord Buckry snapped his fingers; his gaping children silently fled the room. “Get up,” he said impatiently. “What in tarnation is this?”
    “Your lordship.” The courier raised a dusty face, wincing mentally at his lord’s Highland drawl. “There’s word the sea kingdoms have raised another army. They’re crossing the coast mountains, and—”
    “That ain’t possible. We cleaned them out not half a year since.”
    “They’ve a lot of folk along the coast, your lordship.” The horseman stood apologetically. “And Jayley Sharkstooth’s made a pact this time with the Southlands.”
    Lord Buckry stiffened. “They’ve been at each other’s throats long as I can remember.” He frowned, pulling at his earring. “Only thing they’ve got in common is—me. Damn!”
    He listened distractedly to the rider’s report, then stood abruptly, dismissing the man as an afterthought. As the heavy doors of the hall slid shut he was already striding toward the elevator, past the shaft of the ballistic vehicle exit, unused for more than thirty years. His soft-soled Highlander boots made no sound on the cold polished floor.
    From the parapet of his castle he could survey a wide stretch of his domain, the rich, utterly flat farmlands of the hundred-mile-wide valley—the lands the South and West were hungry for. The fields were dark now with turned earth, ready for the spring planting; it was no time to be calling up an army. He was sure his enemies were aware of that. The day was exceptionally clear, and at the eastern reaches of his sight he could make out the grayed purple wall of the mountains: the Highlands, that held his birthplace—and something more important to him now.
    The dry wind ruffled his hair as he looked back across thirty years; his sunburned hands tightened on the seamless, ancient green-blackness of the parapet. “Damn you, Mr. Jagged,” he said to the wind. “Where’s your magic when I need it?”
    THE PEDDLER CAME TO DARKWOOD CORNERS FROM THE EAST, ON WIM Buckry’s seventeenth birthday. It was early summer, and Wim could still see sun flashing on snow up on the pine-wooded hill that towered above the Corners; the snowpack in the higher hills was melting at last,
sluicing down gullies that stood dry through most of the year, changing Littlebig Creek into a cold, singing torrent tearing at the earth below the cabins on the north side of the road. Even a week ago the East Pass had lain under more than thirty feet of snow.
    Something like silence came over the townspeople as they saw the peddler dragging his cart down the east road toward the Corners. His wagon was nearly ten feet tall and fifteen long, with carved, brightpainted wooden sides that bent sharply out over the wheels to meet a gabled roof. Wim gaped in wonder as he saw those wheels, spindly as willow wood yet over five feet across. Under the cart’s weight they sank half a foot and more into the mud of the road, but cut through the mud without resistance, without leaving a rut.
    Even so, the peddler was bent nearly double with the effort of pulling his load. The fellow was short and heavy, with skin a good deal darker than Wim had ever seen. His pointed black beard jutted at a determined angle as he staggered along the rutted track, up to his ankles in mud. Above his calves