Blade rose to his feet and brushed grass and dirt off his bare skin. He reached down and broke off one of the saplings, then stripped it of leaves and branches. It was hardly thicker or heavier than a walking stick and wouldn't be much of a weapon against any human or large animal. But he could at least jab it into the ground ahead of him, testing his way. It also made him feel better, which was even more important. The right frame of mind was always a good part of the job of survival.
Blade looked toward the ridge again. It certainly looked like the highest point anywhere close at hand. In the other three directions gently rolling grassland stretched away endlessly to a distant horizon. The grass grew thickly, in tangled masses. It was dark green, with pale yellowish brown stripes and spots on it that made it look diseased. Blade turned back toward the ridge and strode down toward the valley, the sapling over his shoulder like a rifle.
He moved forward with long, steady strides, occasionally prodding at the ground ahead of him with the sapling. Tangles of grass jerked at his ankles and an occasional thistlelike plant jabbed thorns into his calves. But these slowed him only slightly. The hope of seeing something more than miles and miles of grass from the top of the ridge pushed him on.
Beyond the ridge, the ground dropped away again, then swept out across more miles of grassland. But the horizon was no longer a featureless line where green plain met washed-out blue sky.
On it rose a city. It sprawled across nearly half the horizon, a mass of graceful white towers mixed with lower buildings, bridges, walls, amphitheaters-every sort of architectural shape. Everything had been conceived and built on a soaring, monumental scale. But even from many miles away everything showed the telltale signs of long abandonment. Windows gaped darkly, bridges sagged, here and there a wall had collapsed and grass had already overgrown the spilled rubble. It was a beautiful city, so beautiful that Blade involuntarily stopped to admire it. But it was also a dead city.
Blade swore and sat down. Had the computer finally hurled him into a dimension without human life? Men-or something intelligent-had built that city, no doubt about that. But he had equally little doubt that the builders of the city no longer lived and ruled in it.
Who did?
Perhaps no one did. Perhaps nothing moved in that city except grass waving in the wind. In any case, Blade knew that he was not going to find out anything standing there on top of the ridge.
Blade was striding down the far slope of the ridge toward the city when he heard the sound. Like the thunder of a distant storm, it rolled across the plains from the direction of the city. First a single sharp clap, then a long, slowly fading rumble. Blade felt bits of grit drive into his eyes and sting his skin. The bushes, trees, and grass danced for a long moment in something that wasn't the wind.
Somewhere not too far away, something had produced a violent shock wave. Blade doubted that it was natural. This land seemed to be as flat as a billiard table, and just about as unlikely to produce anything noisy and geological.
So whatever had made the shock wave was probably artificial. Blade crouched low behind a bush. Anything or anybody able to make an explosion this powerful might also be able to detect a man miles away.
Blade started to shift his position to where he could see out in all directions and no one could easily see him. Another crack-boom-rumble sounded from the direction of the city. Blade scanned the horizon and the buildings for some possible sign of where the blasts came from. No flash of flame, not even a rising and spreading cloud of smoke. What was making the explosions, and where?
For the third time the sounds blasted their way across the plain. Watching closely, Blade saw the blast wave kick up dust and debris in the streets of the city. There was a lot of power behind those blasts, whatever they were. No doubt his view of the blast site itself was cut off by the mass of thousand-foot buildings. But why no smoke clouds rising even higher into the sky? There was something increasingly odd about those explosions, if that was what they were.
Three more explosions came in rapid succession, then five minutes of silence and after that three more. Blade waited in concealment as the silence following the last three explosions grew longer and longer. Five minutes, ten, twenty. After half an hour, Blade crawled out from under the bush, stood up, and scanned the city again. It stood as before silent and grim. Nothing moved in its rubble-strewn streets or buildings with windows staring like the eye-sockets of bleached skulls.
Blade headed down the ridge toward the city. He couldn't help wishing he had something more than the sapling as a weapon. The explosions had been too powerful to think about with an easy mind. He would have felt a damned sight more comfortable walking toward the city with a couple of light antitank rockets or something like that slung on his back.
Oh well, they couldn't send through the computer everything he might need in a new dimension. Even if they could, they'd need to send six porters or a Land Rover to carry the whole lot! Blade smiled for a moment at the idea of seven stark-naked men tramping across some other-dimensional landscape, himself in the lead and six others following with heavy packs.
The grass rose a yard high as Blade descended the ridge. Once again he had to plow through it like a ship through pack ice, his massively muscled legs moving up and down tirelessly. His eyes continuously scanned the city, and from time to time looked to either side and behind him. He couldn't imagine what danger might come at him from the miles of empty, open plain. But a man in a new world seldom died from the dangers he expected.
Blade had covered about half the distance to the city when something in the grass ahead made him stop and look more closely. Something gleamed whitely there, reflecting the sun from among the greens and yellow-browns of the waving grass. Blade took two more steps forward and saw the unmistakable glint of sunlight off metal.
White, bleached bones lay scattered in the grass, the bones of human beings and horses all mixed together. The sunlight glinted from the unrusted portions of swords, spear heads, iron-studded belts, round helmets, the metalwork of harnesses.
Blade picked up the most intact of the belts and tied it around his waist. Then he thrust the least-rusted of the swords into it and stood up. That made him feel better. Now he might stay alive if he ran into more of the people whose bones littered the ground around him.
Blade crouched down again and examined the remains more closely. At once he noticed a few odd things about them. For one thing; there were clearly three different types of people among the dead. One type was short, almost bandy-legged, broad-framed and squat, with round skulls and wide faces. A second was taller, some of them six feet or over, thinner, long-limbed and graceful. A third-the most numerous-looked like the results of cross-breeding between the first two. What was even odder was that most of the tall skeletons seemed to be those of women! The lighter bones and the pelvic girdle were hard to mistake.
There was also something odd about the armor and weapons. There was quite a lot of metal there-good but crudely finished wrought iron, most of it. Efficient but primitive. Yet some of the helmets, many of the breastplates, and nearly all of the belts were made of some pale, tough, plastic-like material.
Blade picked up one of the belts and tried to snap it in his hands. He pulled at it until the muscles of his thick arms stood out like rocks and the sweat popped out on his forehead. But he might as well have been trying to snap a length of steel cable. He braced one of the breastplates-designed for a woman, he noticed-against a horse's ribcage and tried to drive the sword through it. He put all his strength into the thrust, but the armor only dimpled and sprang back into shape. It took several jabs before he was able to drive his sword through it.