Dimension Of Dreams

«Yes. You and the other Dreamers should not get the idea that there is only a little more to be done before Pura is free again. If I know Krog, he is going to attack you with every fighter from his own gang and as many other gangs as he can persuade to join him. I think he will be able to persuade a good many. They see you getting stronger each day, and they must realize that soon you will be strong enough to attack and destroy them. They will try to destroy you before you become too strong, and that will mean the biggest battle Pura has ever seen.»

Yekran nodded again. Then he was silent for quite a long time. As they were turning north again toward the Great East Bridge, which led toward the enclave by the most direct route, be gri

«The lights?»

«The lights, yes, and other things also.»

«What kind of other things?»

«We found a scholar named Malud-«

«I thought all the scholars were dead.»

«Most of them are, but not all. Malud certainly is not. He was one of the scholars who was working on how to fight the Wakers when he decided to retreat to his vault. He has a great many ideas on new weapons. We have already built some, in fact. You will see them when we reach the enclave.»

All the streets leading into the enclave were blocked off by walls of piled rubble ten feet high, reinforced with tree trunks and metal bars. Only in two places were there gates, massively built of wood and rubble, but with heavy steel doors, which had been taken from vaults and hung on new hinges. The amount of work that had gone into fortifying the enclave was incredible. The job would have been completely impossible if it were not for the peculiar architecture of Puran buildings-they had no windows on the first five or six floors except on sides facing enclosed courtyards. Thus it had not been necessary to block off all the lower windows as well as the streets.

Inside the enclave many of the buildings had been cleaned up. They served as living quarters, storage for food, firewood, and weapons, observation posts, and workshops where the marconite lights and the «other things» Yekran had mentioned were being made. There was a continuous bustle of activity with many of the people Blade saw seemingly moving at a dead run. Even after a century of Dreams, Purans could apparently work like demons when necessary.

But not all of the people Blade saw were moving at a run, nor was all the activity warlike. As he explored the enclave, he surprised couples-young and some not so young-sitting in the shadow of the wall or the recess of a window, arms around each other. The Dreamers were discovering some of the interesting things about real life again.

In the workshops, however, all was furious activity. It was there that Blade found the promised surprises, and there were quite a few of them. Bows, for one thing-both crossbows and longbows. The longbows were made of wood from the forests, small and crude. But they would not be ineffective with their bowstrings of woven hair and their arrows fitted with metal vanes and tips. The crossbows, on the other hand, were all metal. Some of their parts Blade recognized as parts of the life-support systems from the vaults. He asked Malud, the scholar and chief weapons designer, about this.

Malud was surprised at the question. «Why should we not use the metal from the vaults for our weapons?» he asked. «If we are no longer going to spend all our time in the Dream vaults, we do not need so many of them.»

He said it as though he were explaining to a child why the sun rose or the rain fell. But Blade had to turn away to keep from bursting out a great roar of triumphant laughter in the scholar's face. So the Dream vaults were being ca

There were the bows. There were the drawings of battering rams. These looked much like the one the Green Towers had used in their attack. There were scaling ladders three and four stories high. And there were siege engines-not just drawings, but catapults and large ballistae that could throw two hundred pound stones several blocks. These machines squatted on the roofs of half the buildings on the outer edges of the enclave. Their crews slept just below, and tons of rock had been laboriously hauled up the stairs and piled ready for use as ammunition.

There was more than stones for them to throw. Malud, Yekran, and Erlik almost glowed with pride as they showed Blade the fireballs. These were large masses of dried thistle stalks woven or tied together and then dipped in a solution of marconite dissolved in one of the chemicals from the life-support systems. A pinch of marconite added to the chemical would make it easy to ignite and almost impossible to approach or put out, so fiercely did it burn. «We have not tried these out either,» said Yekran with a savage grin. «But we shall be happy to do so when the right time comes.»

Only a week later the right time came. Krog attacked.

Chapter Eighteen

The attack came by night, but it was no surprise to Blade or the Dreamers. Blade had done his best to make sure that it wouldn't be. There were watchers on top of every building on the outer edges of the enclave and patrols roaming through the streets that led to the Waker towers. The patrols spotted the advance guard of the Wakers when they were still miles away and sent messengers dashing up nearby towers with marconite lights to signal the news to the enclave.

Blade was asleep when Yekran pounded on the door of his chamber. But he awoke almost instantly when the man burst in with a savage grin on his face. «They are coming, Blade, they are coming. The word just came from the sentinels.»

Blade stood up, drew a blanket over the half-asleep Narlena, and began pulling on his clothes. «How many?»

«Many hundreds, perhaps a thousand.» Yekran almost licked his lips. «They are all coming at us together. Krog must have done what you said he would do-form an alliance with all the gangs against us.»

«Yes,» said Blade shortly. «And if he has, we are in more danger than you seem to think. They will outnumber us four or five to one in fighters. And most of the gangs do not care about Krog's plan for rebuilding Pura. They only want to kill and enslave Dreamers and loot vaults. If they break into the enclave, it will be a bloody mess!»

«Then we shall make sure that they do not break in,» replied Yekran calmly. «Shall we go up to the roof?»

Blade nodded, kissed Narlena, and then followed Yekran out of the chamber. He shook his head irritably. He wished that Krog had attacked at some other time. The Dreamers in the enclave were so over-confident of their new fighting skills and weapons that they might become careless. And when fighting Krog, you could not afford to be careless. Up on the roof they searched the city spread out below them in the darkness. There was only a quarter moon, and it often slipped behind wandering clouds. Faint blue lights from other towers to the north flickered in the blackness-the Dreamer sentinels on distant roofs were signaling the advance of the Waker army. Blade leaned over the heavy metal railing and stared north along the dark streets looking for any sign of the Wakers.