NO0 The length of the chain that dragged behind like all the lengths of that chain that bound the moving line of raggedly dressed men together, pulled at his ankle and rang on the rocky floor of the tunnel. But he no longer noticed its sound or its weight. As always, his mind was at work on other matters; and his body automatically followed the movements of the man one step in front of him... He was taller than most of the men on the chain; and during the first few weeks here in the mine where they lived and worked, he had taken several hard blows on the head before learning to respond to that warning immediately and without question. But now he knew when such bumps were coming, just as he - evidently alone among all the men on the chain - knew the route they were on and the destination in the mine to which they were headed. He knew these things because he had qualities of survival in him that his captors did not guess, nearly all of them the result of things learned either during his childhood years in the Indian camp or later from his father. Most of the captured men driven to work here died in a matter of months, if not mere weeks; but long before they died, they sank into an apathy in which they did not talk and hardly seemed to think at all. Seeing this, Bart had deliberately kept his brain busy every moment of his every waking hour, in the long months he estimated he had been imprisoned here . . . lso by Gordon R. Dickson in Sphere Books." THE DORSAl SERIES: DORSAl SOLDIER, ASK NOT TACTICS OF MISTAKE THE SPIRIT OF DORSAI LOST DORSAl THE FINAL ENCYCLOPAEDIA THE CHANTRY GUILD WAY OF THE PILGRIM THE FOREVER MAN TIME STORM NECROMANCER MASTERS OF EVERON ANCIENT, MY ENEMY AORDON R. DICKSON GThe Earth Lords SPHERE BOOKS LIMITED A SPHERE BOOK First published in the United States of America by The Berkley Publishing Group in 1989 Published by Sphere Books Ltd 1989 Copyright ?? Gordon R. Dickson 1989 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. ISBN 0 0747 40242 6 Reproduced, printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading Sphere Books Ltd A Division of Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ A member of Maxwell Pergamon Publishing Corporation plc TO PAT OANES, who appeared in our lives just in time to rescue both my mother and myself. Acknowledgments 1 want to express my appreciation in particular to David Wixon and Sandra Miesel, whose research and work in a large number of different areas helped make this book .possible; as well as to a number of other experts in various fields to whom I turned for help and was given it. one IT was EARLY spring yet, this high up, and the pony came gratefully to the top of the little hill. Bart Dybig stopped to let the beast catch its breath, while he looked over the tiny settlement in the river valley below before riding down into it. He was too heavy for the pony, that was the truth of it; though so compact was the bone and muscle of his solid body that most people would have guessed him thirty or more pounds less than his real weight. Now that he was here, he found himself of two minds about riding down into that place. The whole reason for his coming this long distance was to do so. At the same time the habit of being by himself had brought him almost to the point of avoiding society completely. He had a strange feeling of uneasiness about what riding down the hill into the settlement before him might lead him into. But there was nothing in what he saw to justify such a feeling. The settlement itself was ordinary-looking enough. Some eight buildings were strung out on either side of a single street, a small distance back from the thin blue line of the small river that had its home in this valley. All the buildings were of logs; and only one, in the center of the settlement on the far side of the street from Bart's point of view, had anything resembling an actual second story. It also had a couple of fairly good-sized windows fronting the street, and an open porch--accumulation of luxuries on this west Canadian frontier in 1879--that strongly suggested that the front part of the building, at least, was more store than living quarters. He rode the pony at a walk down the hill toward the settlement. The closer he got, the more the place rang a note of warning in a part of his mind that the time with Louis Riel had honed to constant awareness of possible danger. Since leaving Louis in his exile in the United States and returning to Canada, he had been passed on westward from group to group of m6tis--those people who re the result of the interbreeding of the early European Cordon R. Dickson furtrappers and the nati Indians. B's father had n Euroan n if or men, Indi, white d mixed-b alike, had combin in aiding himand B's mother had en a Ce Indi whose ne in English tslat to "Listens to Trees.'" Both of his p??n re dead nowB's mother by a ging fever when he six old, and his father, in Montana, in the United S, by a rifle bullet from a distant ssina bullet clely intended for Rid, the t men de side by side. Riei had ead low the er, after the mtis had risen for their righ d had their uprising put down by soldie from eastern Canada; d Bt's fatr, wi Bt, had gone with the m6tis leader. His fath had en a cio adviser to Riel, who alone sid Bm had come to understd the innate gentlene in the physically fful d brillit, but misshan little man. When his fath had di, afar only a ek of fever fm an inftion brought on by bullet, which had lged t dp in the older man's y to remove, Bm had considered himself relead of any fuaher duty to Rid. After working a few a to rai money that would t him f to tmel, Bt had returned to Canada in search of a lative he h never known he had until the delirium of his father's dying hour. All that Bm had n able to gath, putting together the fmgn of his father's brief, feved utterances, s that the iative a m and named, or call, "Didi," and that she to fnd somewhe in the Canadian Rky Mountains, mt probly somewhe on the western side of that range. The m6tis who had main in Cada had aid Ba d p him on fm gup to group. His clothing, the brown Indian es ich he had inherit fm his Ce mother, his we way of lking d riding, w his prt among them. He was m6tis himlf, and lk it. In their small ttlements he had felt, momentily at let, at home and for the moment safe, although the a pri, if a small one, on his head fm the days of the llion. But he did not feel at home or fe as he e down into this lement on t map in his ddlegs Moby. The blind but flys to listened to instinct wiin him was sounding a signal, Uniy, in his rifle in i dle abbd and ch e heavy 1 in the holster at his lt, hidden under his leat jact. For e fit time it struck him what efi him aut e gup of hous fo him. The no THE EARTHLORDS 3 children to be seen about, nor any dogs. True, there were no adults to be seen, either; but at this time of the spring afternoon they could be up and out, away from home, or inside the buildings, out of sight. He headed toward the large building that he had assumed to be a store, though this place was beyond the very end of the high western plains, in the beginnings of the Rocky Mountains. Any goods that came in here for store sale ,ould necessarily have come by pack horse. There was a hitching rail before the store building, but no horses at it. It was the more surprising, in light of the quietness of the place and his own feeling of inner warning, that just as he rode up to the hitching rail a man he recognized came out of the front door of the store--and the feeling of fate chimed loudly within him. "Arthur!" said Bart. The other turned and stared, still holding the bale of furs he had brought out. Slowly, he put the bale down on the floor of the porch, against the log wall, and stared at Bart, clearly without recognition. The lack of recognition, at least, was not so surprising. Now in his twenty-fifth year, Bart had changed from the barely adult young man Arthur Robeson had last seen in the town of Sainte Anne, far to the east on the central plains, where they had grown up together. For one thing, Bart had come into his full weight and strength--that strength he had inherited from his father, but in as far greater measure as his larger body had outstripped the older man's small one. With that development had come a squareness, a biocklike appearance that made other men walk around him unthinkingly. These things had come with the years of the 1870s. Now, in 1879, that growth had hardened on him. He stood five feet eleven inches in his stocking feet, which was tall compared to the average of the people around him; but there was no lack of men taller--and bigger--than he was. The difference that set him apart from everyone else was not in his height, but in the unusual development of his body. His shoulders, as his father's had been, we-e almost unnaturally square and wide, and his chest was massive; but the real difference in him was his legs, disproportionatdy thick though now hidden by the wide leather trousers. The power of those legs had even surprised him, at times. At eighteen he had lifted horse...
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