Grayson had accepted their conditions, and prayed that the girl would agree to work with him under such restrictions. There seemed to be no alternative, for any of them.
"You'll be watched, but at least you'll be out of this place. Do you owe some oath of fealty or service to the people who brought you here?" Many peoples in the near-feudal culture of the Successor States strictly observed fealty vows and oaths. In the shifting tangles of allegiances among the states, individual warriors needed a focus for their loyalty.
Lori Kalmar closed her eyes. "No. There's... nothing. A slave's vow to her master, perhaps, nothing more.”
“Will you agree?"
There was a long silence. When she spoke again, it was in a very small voice. "Yes. And... and thank you."
BOOK II
17
Harimandir Singh drew the collar of his cold weather jacket closer about his face and ears and leaned into the wind. The storms had ended, but the long dark of Firstnight continued. With the coming of the storms, temperatures had fallen. There were patches of snow across the ferrocrete apron of the spaceport, and the wind eddied small whirls of dry snow through the pools of light cast by vapor lamps on the poles overhead. At last report, it was snowing heavily in the mountains nearby. He thought what a dismal, brooding planet was this Trellwan, a place he would be glad to leave when the mission was complete. Perhaps... perhaps after this, he would see again the crystal skies and gleaming salt flats of his home deserts.
The guards at the door to one of the squat, sheet metal storage buildings lining the main port area came to attention with the slap-crack of a weapon salute. One of them took the paper Singh handed him, studied it, and unlocked the door. The air that poured from the dimly lit room beyond the door was sour with the stench of unwashed bodies, and the odors of vomit and human waste.
"How many do we have, now?" Singh asked his aide.
The soldier consulted his wristcomp. "One hundred eighty-two prisoners, Lord."
Singh nodded and tried to keep from covering his nose and mouth to block the stink. These prisoners, many of them skilled workers, were soon to be slaves, sold among labor-hungry worlds with crumbling technologies. For now, they were a source of sometimes useful information as well as a major problem in logistics. His expedition's food supplies were limited to what was left aboard the DropShip and what little had been raided from the agrodomes north of Sarghad. If they did not quickly find more food, their prisoners would have to be shot — and hang the waste. Singh believed the primary mission had to take priority over minor economic concerns.
The guard returned, leading a shambling, ragged man with a face bruised and caked with dirt and dried blood.
"Captain Tor! How are you? Have you decided to tell us what we want to know yet?"
"I can't tell you anything." He spoke carefully through swollen lips. The beatings had produced great, puffy bruises about his eyes and mouth.
"Oh, but you can tell us a great deal, like why you were snooping about the spaceport perimeter and what you know about mercenary activities in Sarghad. You'd be saving yourself somuch trouble by telling us what we want to know."
Tor was shivering, his arms folded tightly in front of his body, but he managed to snap, "Go to hell!" As he was wearing only the rags of his tunic and light trousers, the cold was doing the work of a torturer's knife.
Singh frowned. "I've offered you money. I've offered you your freedom. I'm afraid all I have to offer now is a quick death."
"You murdered my men."
"Ah... the three crewmen aboard the DropShip. That was a tragedy, I admit It's always a tragedy when skilled workers must be killed. But you made that necessary, my friend, by escaping in the first place."
"You were going to kill me anyway." Anger flashed for a moment over Tor's cold-numbed face. "You didn't have to kill them!"
"My dear Captain, you don't think I wanted to have them killed, do you? We prize men trained for starship work, especially a man like you, who is skilled in interstellar navigation. We are not barbarians!"
Tor's eyes closed, his lips trembling. "Whatever you say."
"But this mission is highly secret, Captain. So secret, I don't believe you appreciate its importance. If you did, I would have your throat slit now. When you escaped, we had to take steps to insure that no more of your people on Trellwan escaped. The rest of your crew aboard the freighter are still in good health, of course. At least, for now."
"More threats?"
"I don't threaten, Captain." He reached out and pulled Tor's head up by the hair, looking into the man's glazed eyes. "Now, let's begin again. You were in the city for a time."
Tor's voice was weak, barely audible.
"What was that? Come, come, Captain. I'm getting cold standing here talking to you."
"Yes... I was in S-Sarghad."
"And you are a military man?"
"I am a trader. I pilot a starship."
"Ah, but you know as well as I that the most important commerce between the stars today are the arms and armor of military units. You must have some grounding in the military arts."
Tor remained silent, and Singh continued. "What sign did you see in Sarghad of a mercenary cadre?"
"I d-d-don't understand."
"Outsiders, Captain... offworlders. A military unit... perhaps training the locals to fight."
"I didn't see anything like that... no."
Singh believed the man was telling the truth. He also knew this particular method of questioning could not go on for long. Tor would reveal no information after being frozen to death. Singh gestured to the guard, who swung Tor around and led him back into the warmer prisoner's quarters.
Though Tor might not know about it, Sarghad was definitely getting help from somewhere. Singh would have to learn the source of that help before it seriously compromised the Plan. Not only would he need to learn of it, but the mercenaries would have to be eliminated once and for all.
* * * *
The wind grew colder as the long dark of Firstnight dragged on. A cadre of experienced troops, including both Militia and Guards, had been gathered, trained, and drilled, and they, in turn, had been set to training and drilling the volunteers who would make up the main body of the unit King Jeverid himself attended the unit's first mustering ceremony, and it was he who bestowed upon them their name: First Trellwan Lancers.
Grayson could not help but compare his new unit with his old. The Lancers were raw and ungainly, with neither the precise snap and polish of a well-trained unit nor the easy professionalism and camaraderie of an experienced one. Carlyle's Commandos had had both the polish and the professionalism. As a boy, Grayson had admired the absolute precision of the unit's response to parade-ground orders, the snap-crack of two hundred boots clicking into place at the same instant He'd admired too that bond of absolute trust betwen each man and his squad mates, and each man and the officers and NCOs above him.
This lot was eager, Grayson decided, but that was almost all he could say for them. All were volunteers from either the Militia or the Guards, and many had years of experience, including combat experience. But they were not yet a unitin the sense of belonging and working well together.
The bitter rivalry between Guards and Militia continued within the ranks. In one of his first decisions, Grayson directed his sergeants not to separate the services into different companies, but to form squads and platoons without regard to the men's original affiliation. If the Lancers were to have any identity of their own or any of the pride that identity would encourage, they would have to start thinking of themselves as Lancers rather than as Guards or Militia. There were eighteen fistfights during the first standard week and three knifings. The fact that each man still wore his original green or brown uniform, with only a blue armband to distinguish him as a Lancer, didn't help.