“Like a pup knows his mama’s scent. They’ve been with us too many days for me to mistake them. A moment. _I want to check something.”
She reached back along the road, brushed across the blur. It wasn’t a blur any more. A band of men. Mounted. Getting closer. She teased out the different life fires. Ten… fifteen… twenty. Twenty! Gods! And moving up fast. We’ve got an hour. Maybe.
“Those men I told you about? They’ve stopped hovering and are coming at a trot. They’ll have pellet guns and cutters. Both of which outreach my stunner.” She glanced from Maorgan to Danor and saw they were waiting for her to tell them what to do. They were musicians, used to being welcome wherever they went. It was something she’d noted before; ordinarily there’d be a lot to admire about this Eolt and Ard managed peace. Right now, however…
She looked around. The pass had high steep walls. There was a lot of scree right here and some scrubby brush that grew in lines and patches wherever it could get a foothold. That gave her an idea.
“Maorgan,, unpack one of the tents, start putting it up. Danor, start yelling again, throw in a few loud groans, go quiet and repeat.”
“And you?”
“While you’re holding their attention, I’m going to try wiggling through those bits of brush till I’m in stunner range of the tower. I’ll try to take out those choreks so we can get in there alive. The walls will give us some protection from the cutters, especially if they have to stay back, and they’ll-make the pellet guns close to useless. I figure we can hole up there until Medon Vale wakes up and sends help. All right. Let’s get started.” She bent and began pulling off her boots.
Maorgan grimaced. “Your puppets hear and obey.” He began working on the ropes.
Danor gulped at the water in the cup, cleared his throat and yelled again, pain and anger and endless sorrow embedded in the ululating cry.
The sound sent shudders along Shadith’s spine as she shifted the stunner around to the middle of her back and crept away from the road, keeping larger boulders between her and the tower when she could, slipping along in the shadow of the brush.
A fold in the cliff occluded the tower. She got to her feet and moved as quickly and lightly as she could, stepping from boulder to boulder in the long slanting landfall. Pebbles and coarse sand slipped into new slides or bounced down the steep slope. She tried to ignore them since there was nothing she could do about them. When she reached the edge of the outthrust; she dropped to her stomach and eased her head around it. There was a patch of brush in a damp spot snuggled up against a vertical section of mother stone. She snaked round the fold, crouched in the shadow, and scowled at the tower.
The window slits told the tale all too clearly. Thick walls., A good four feet through. She closed her eyes. Two heat sources. No change there. Sense of impatience mixed with gloating. No puzzlement or alarm. Good. That meant they didn’t notice me leaving.
She chewed on her lip a moment, decided she wasn’t close enough. Dropping onto hands and knees, she began edging forward again, moving more carefully now because she had neither distance nor a fold of stone to protect her. Behind her, she could hear Danor creating his noise. He was enjoying himself, but dropping into too much of a pattern. She ground her teeth and tried to hurry. The choreks were bound to see through that any time now.
She set her foot carelessly, shoved against a stone sitting in precarious balance on a smaller stone and sent it rumbling and bouncing down the slope, knocking other stones loose. She swore under her breath and crawled on, hurrying hurrying knocking more stones loose hurrying to get close enough…
A spear of light flashed from a window slit, hit the heartrock just behind her, sending drops of melted granite flying. A drop landed on her leg, she shook it off and scrambled on. The brush behind her started smoking, she could hear flames crackle and pop.
The next try was closer, and the chorek had figured out that he didn’t need to take his finger off the sensor, just wave the rod back and forth. She stayed ahead of the sweep, but just barely, dived behind the largest boulder she could find and brought the stunner around.
She aimed it at the window slit where the cutter’s lance came from, touched the sensor, and smiled when the beam cut off. She swept the tower top to bottom, then reached out with the mindtouch.
One heat source on low, but the other was hopping about like a drop of water on a griddle. She swore and began crawling closer, keeping her attention divided from the ground under hand and knee and the tower. Stones rattled under her, knocked against the scrub sending the tops shivering though she was nowhere near them. The brush was taller and thicker here. The tower had obviously been built near a water source.
She felt the chorek’s flare of anger, rose swiftly to her knees to pin the location, then dropped flat as the beam lanced over her. She thumbed the sensor, played it across the tower, smiled again as the chorek dropped and the beam went out.
“Information,” she said aloud. “It all comes down to who has the data right.”
5
Aslan leaned from the flikit and looked down as Marrin Ola brought it round a half circle over Dumel Alsekum. The tractor and the trailer with their gear was crawling away along the road, Duncan Shears just visible inside the cab. She sighed and straightened. “As any kind of scholarly study, this is a disaster.” She wriggled in the chair until she was settled more comfortably. “Yes, yes, I know. It was set up to be. And we’ve done with admirable efficiency what we were brought in to do.”
In the distance two Eolt floated like golden glass bells, heading on one of their enigmatic errands. She watched them as Marrin flew above the road, following its twists and turns. “I wonder about them, you know. We look at them and enjoy their beauty and listen to their song speech, but what are their stories? What are their lives like?”
“Likely we’ll learn more in Chuta Meredel. You want me to keep on along this road? We know she was all right until they left Dumel Olterau. There’s this big bend coming up, if I cut across it we’ll save about an hour.”
“Go ahead. I’ve got a bad feeling about this so the sooner we catch up with her the better.”
Aslan watched the wide flat riverplain change to small rocky hills with lots of brush, the neat lush farms become ranches with grazing, browsing herds of cabhisha which from above looked like powder puffs with black heads, herds of bladlan, lean leathery beasts with short stubby antlers that were bony imitations of lichen webs.
As the river curved back toward them, she saw a riverbarge gliding with the current, only enough sail to provide steerage way. Bright crimson jib, emerald main reefed to a small triangle. She unclipped the Ridaar, flaked the image, dictated a description along with her own reactions to the colored sails, the broken glitter off the river, the more muted colors on land, then tucked the Ridaar away. “It’s a beautiful world, this.”
“I’ve never been to Picabral or had occasion to study it. Anything like this?”
He shrugged. “Could have been. Picabral is harsher world, colder, a little heavier, and almost as isolated. It was settled in the Fifth Wave by a band of game-players with illusions of bringing back royalty, nobility and a rigid caste structure to support them. And rich enough to set up the physical analog to their fantasy world. You could tell me the story, Scholar, it’s that common.”
“Isolated, hm. You broke away.”
“It was easy enough.” The air being steady enough for him to let the autopik handle the flight, he leaned back in the seat, hands laced behind his head, his eyes on the clouds hovering above the mountain peaks. “Enforced ignorance is a splendid way of controlling the peasants, but the rulers can’t afford an equal nescience.” A flicker of a smile on his lean face. “Those among the male heirs who show a certain aptitude are sent to University for their schooling. I simply stayed.” He was silent a moment. “They lose a certain number of us every generation, but I think that’s as calculated as the rest. They weed out the rebels that way, the ones who might cause trouble.”