“What about the men?”
“If they resist, kill them. If not, we can always use them somewhere. Try to save as many of the women as you can. I’ve never had a silver-haired wench-or one with fire-red hair.” Nessil offers a boyish grin and looks along the line of threescore mounted troopers. “Shall we make our appearance?Bring out the banners. After all, we do come in peace, one way or another.”
Hissl’s eyes glaze slightly, as if he is no longer quite within his body.
Then the horsemen ride toward the low rise, over which looms the ice-needle peak that dominates the Roof of the World. The banners flap in the brisk wind that blows out of the north and spins the windmill beyond the crest of the hill.
The starflowers left in the meadow on the far side of the ridge-those that have not been destroyed by the cultivation or wilted as their season has passed-bend in the wind.
X
ABOVE THE PLOT where Gerlich and several marines half toiled at ditch-digging, partly sheltered by a line of boulders, Nylan studied the laser, and the array of firin cells in the portable rack. He mumbled and made another adjustment to the powerhead on the laser.
“Why don’t you just try it, ser?” asked the stocky blond marine behind him.
“Because, Huldran, we can only replace a fraction of the power.”
“What about the emergency generator?” Huldran nodded her head toward the man-sized but flimsy-looking windmill set near the crest of the hill. Beneath it was a small array of solar cells. Both the cells and the generator fed through a convertor into a single firin cell.
Nylan laughed. “The laser uses more energy in a few units than the generator supplies in a day.” After another readjustment to the powerhead, he straightened and wiped his sweating forehead. “It gets hot here in the day.”
“Yes, ser.” Huldran wiped away the sweat from her fairskinned forehead.
“I heard that, Ser Engineer,” said Gerlich from the plot. “It’s frigging hot here. It would have been hard to try to live any lower. I’ll bet those lowlands are like the demons’ hell.” The shirtsleeved Gerlich blotted his brow and handed the makeshift spade to one of the marines. “Your turn.”
“Yes, ser.” The dark-haired marine took the shovel and continued digging the ditch that would divert stream water through the plot. Her eyes continued to scan the rise to the north as she slowly dug.
Three other marines grubbed at the ground with makeshift implements resembling hoes to clear away the mixture of what appeared to be grass and a high-altitude clover bearing occasional reddish blooms. Their eyes occasionally darted toward the top of the ridge or toward one of the rock formations. The shortest marine wiped her forehead, her hand unconsciously touching the slug-thrower at her belt.
“How long do we have to play at being innocent would-be peasants, anyway?” asked Gerlich.
“Until our visitors arrive,” responded Ryba from the end of the small plot. “In any case, you’ve proved you can toil with the best, Gerlich.” She motioned to the former weapons officer. “You can even bring in game with a bow-even dangerous game.” Her eyes flicked to the rack where another marine had stretched out the hide of what appeared to be a cougar and studied a small manual. “No one knows what to do with the hide. What do you know about making bows and arrows?”
“Not much. I use them. Others make them.”
“We’re all going to have to do some making here.”
Gerlich smiled lazily and shrugged.
Ryba’s hand flicked, and, as if by magic, the tip of one of the steel blades appeared at the brown-haired man’s throat. Her eyes met his, as they stood there, the captain almost equal in height to the husky weapons officer, and in breadth of shoulders.
Gerlich swallowed.
“In case you’ve forgotten, I’m not only captain, but I’mtougher than you are-and so are most of the marines, in case you get any ideas.” Ryba’s blade vanished back into the scabbard. “Now … do you want to try to figure out how to make something useful?”
“You’ve made it clear I have little choice.”
“None of us do, not if we’re going to survive. I intend to make sure that we all do.”
A light flashed across Ryba’s face, and she squinted, then turned toward the sentry up in the rocks. After a moment, she called, “Ready! Stand by for visitors.”
“Ready, Captain,” responded Fierral, squaring her broad shoulders.
To the north of the plot, but to the right of the rockier ground where Nylan’s crude stakes marked the tower that might never be built, Saryn sat in the shade of a boulder and used one of the three survival knives to pare down a fir limb into the shaft of what would be another shovel. At Ryba’s command, she eased her own slug-thrower out of the holster and onto the flat rock. She stopped peeling and carving, but still held the knife loosely.
Beyond her, still partly sheltered by a line of boulders, Nylan made yet another adjustment to the powerhead on the laser. He straightened, then frowned as he both heard Ryba’s command, and somehow felt the presence of horsemen beyond the ridge.
Was it just his imagination?
Ryba walked uphill toward the rocks until she was less than a dozen paces from where Saryn and Nylan worked. “Company’s about to arrive.”
“Wonderful …” mumbled Nylan. “We’re barely planetside an eight-day, and someone has decided to start a fight. Humans are such peaceful creatures.”
“We’re angels,” hissed the dark-haired Saryn.
“Same same,” muttered the engineer back.
“High Command would have your head for that,” pointed out the second pilot.
“We’ll never see High Command again.”
Saryn shivered.
“Keep your slug-throwers ready,” added Ryba. “Aim for the body.”
The ground vibrated slightly as the horsemen crossed the top of the ridge. In the van were two young men bearing purple banners, followed by a man in a purple cloak thrown back to reveal an iron breastplate and a large hand-and-a-half sword worn in a shoulder harness.
Ryba reached for the slug-thrower at her hip.
“That won’t do much,” observed Nylan. “They’ll just think it’s magic of some sort. I suspect that they only recognize blades and arrows as weapons.”
“I don’t care what they call it. We have to stop them.”
“Will it hurt to talk?” Nylan asked. “They look too like us not to be human.”
“I suppose not, but if they’re really human, they’re here to fight.” Ryba’s eyes flicked toward the ridge where the head marine stood. The snipers remained hidden. “Fierral has her troops ready to gun down the whole mass of them if I give the order.”
“All of them?”
“If necessary.” Ryba’s face was hard. “People don’t like facing the unknown. If they’re hostile, I’d rather have them all disappear. We could plead ignorance in the future. It’s hard to plead ignorance when there are witnesses.”
The three studied the riders as the horsemen rode down toward the angel encampment. Beside the purple-clad leader rode a man cloaked totally in white, and Nylan could even feel a sense of whiteness, tinged with red, emanating from the man, who was the only one not carrying visible weapons. That lack of weapons bothered the engineer.
“Watch out for the one in white,” he said quietly as his hand drifted to the standard-issue sidearm that he had never used against the demons of light or their mirror towers.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Ryba kept her broad shoulders square as she stepped forward and somewhat away from the rocks.
The horsemen drew up in a rough line, a sort of half-circle centered on the small plot being ditched. The marines in theplot had lowered their hoes, and their hands rested by the butts of their sidearms.
The man in the purple cloak reined up well short of Ryba, inclined his head, and declaimed something.
“Not good,” whispered Nylan. “They know she’s in charge.”
Ryba inclined her head slightly, then, without turning her head, asked, “What did he say?”