Sulhu smiled and inclined his head. His eyes were dark, simultaneously deep and depthless. “For me, too. I expect to invite you back one day, Commander.”
Outside, the wind from the Irsirrha howled through the empty wings of Hrissihr. The last fires in the wall-braziers crackled in the courtyard, and their distant cousin in the hearth hissed and stirred in response.
2
The interior of the Sakhran landchariot was dark and dirty, cramped even for Sakhrans. The seat barely extended halfway up Foord’s back, and was inadequate for even one of his buttocks. Because he was reluctant to put his feet on the opposite seat (though he could not have made it much dirtier) he spent most of the journey back from Hrissihr peering between his knees at Thahl, who peered back impassively.
Thahl’s face was thin and ophidian, flesh stretched taut over muscle. In fact his whole body was flesh stretched taut over muscle. His skin was purplish grey and made up of tiny diamond-shaped scales, which undulated from the movement of the strange musculature beneath them. The undulation pushed the scales into minutely different angles so they reflected light at different moments and intensities, like the play of light on water. There was nothing much, either in appearance or demeanour, to distinguish a younger Sakhran like Thahl from an older one like Sulhu.
Foord was already uncomfortable and cold, and the journey had barely started; and yet, when he recalled Swann’s annoyance, not just at Foord’s going to Hrissihr but going there in a landchariot, he thought it was worth it.
“How long will the journey back take, Thahl?”
“About as long as your journey here, Commander, since that was also by landchariot and covered exactly the same route.”
“Ah.”
“Of course, most of the return journey will be downhill, so it’s likely to be quicker. While on the other hand,” Thahl continued, relentlessly deadpan, “traffic towards Blentport will be much heavier than traffic towards Hrissihr….”
Foord sighed. They could be irritating, sometimes.
There was nothing much to see, yet. The road from Hrissihr was cut into rock, so one side showed only a sheer face hurtling past, and what might have been an impressive view on the other side was obscured by grey, clinging mist (they had made a very early start) and grimy windows.
Foord turned his attention to a web in the bottom corner of one of the windows. In it hung the dry hollow carcase of something like a fly, jerking with the movement of the landchariot. Foord scraped the window-pane so particles of paint and wood fell on to the web, to tempt its maker to emerge, and watched bemused as the web itself folded over at the points where the particles landed, a silver glistening of digestive juices dribbling down its strands.
The road wound backwards and forwards across the face of the Irsirrha. The landchariot clattered on, leather creaking and wood and metal rattling, the driver occasionally swearing at the chimaera, they occasionally swearing back. Foord yawned; he had not had a good night. They’d given him an apartment in one of the empty wings of Hrissihr, but their beds, like all their furniture, did not accommodate his bulk easily. He started to doze.
A spider perched on his shoulder. He jerked awake and tried to brush it off. It was Thahl’s hand, gently tugging.
“My apologies, Commander, but it’s time for you to check in.”
“Yes, of course. Thank you.” He snapped open his wristcom.
“Yes, what do you want?” Smithson’s voice answered.
“This is Foord.”
“This is me, on the Bridge. What do you want?”
“Checking in. We’re on our way back from Hrissihr.”
“Yes, we know that. Your wristcom tracker says where you are.”
Foord sighed. “We should be with you in,” he glanced at Thahl, thought better of it, sighed again and went on, “in about three hours.”
“No. There are delays. All the roads into Blentport and the cities are clogged. It seems everyone’s coming to the lowlands. Is it some local thing we don’t know?”
Foord shot an inquiring glance at Thahl, who shrugged; not the Sakhran gesture but the human one, with his shoulders. “What about the refit, Smithson? Is it proceeding well?”
“It is now. Swann agreed that we come before everything, and he’s told his people they have to work round the clock.”
“How did that happen? When I saw Swann, he said he’d never let our refit take priority over the defensive cordon. Outsiders can take their turn, he said. He practically prodded me in the chest.”
“Yes, well, he did all that with me too. But I encouraged him to see it differently.” Smithson deliberately paused; he was leaving a space for Foord to congratulate him, so he could receive the congratulation ungraciously and imply it was patronising, and that listening to it kept him from valuable sharp-end work. It was part of his ritual. Foord saw it coming and simply went on.
“What’s been completed?”
“All drives and weapons have been overhauled and tested. Scanners and minor systems have been overhauled and are due for testing presently. And right now I’m watching them load on board those two missiles you told them to build.”
“Did you make sure they were built exactly to my specification?”
“Yes.”
“Exactly?”
“Yes….Commander, what were you thinking of? Why take on a couple of primitive things like that?”
“Just a hunch. I have an idea they might be important.”
“I have an idea they might be a waste of space.”
Foord let that pass. “How are relations at Blentport?”
“How are relations at any port we put into?”
“I asked you about Blentport.”
“They started out badly, and got worse because of the refit. Swann’s people have been told to give me priority, and they are, but they really don’t like me.” Occasionally, as now, Smithson would lapse into theatrical self-pity. Foord had never known anyone for whom self-pity was less appropriate. “What about my feelings? What happened to common courtesy? I mean…..”
•
Like a piece of gently mocking Sakhran conversation, the road wound backwards and forwards across the face of the Irsirrha. It was a track of loose stones and mud, devoid of signs or distance markers.
One side of the landchariot still showed only a rock face rushing past, but on the other side, now the mist had cleared, there was a sheer drop filled with heavy forest: huge trees with green-grey foliage as dense as fur, casting green-black shadows. Because Foord was looking down on them, and because they grew so close together, it was difficult to see properly just how tall they were, or how far into the distance they reached, but both figures were big: about six hundred feet and hundreds of miles respectively.
Occasionally there would be a break in the forest and Foord would catch glimpses of dark torrential rivers and granite palisades; and other hillcastles, all smaller than Hrissihr and showing only one or two sullen plumes of smoke. Hrissihr was the only large hillcastle so close to Blentport and the lowlands; the others were much further away, high in the distant mountain ranges which dwarfed even the Irsirrha. Humans hardly ever went up there. There was a rumour in the lowland cities that somewhere, high in the heavily-forested mountains, was a thousand-foot tree.
There was no other traffic yet; there wouldn’t be until they got closer to the lowlands and started hitting Commonwealth towns. The driver—Foord knew him only as a surly expanse of diamond-scaled back and shoulders visible through the grimy front window—hissed and swore and whipped the team.
“Thahl,” Foord said, “you omitted to calculate that this landchariot has six chimaera pulling it, not four like the one which brought me.”