"The Rus From? The Rus From who created the two-cycle pump system? The secondary aortal injector? The Rus From who designed the God's Lake runoff entrapment system? That was a thing of beauty! I used a modification of it in our Number Nine shaft trap."
"Um," the momentarily nonplused cleric said. Then, "Yes, I suppose that was I."
"So you came up from the south?" Starg asked. "What happened to the Boman?"
"Wespar, actually," Rastar said, and clapped hands in a shrug. "We killed them."
"That's a somewhat simplistic explanation," From noted reprovingly.
"Accurate, nonetheless," Rastar argued. "They don't have enough left to burn their dead."
"They don't burn them, anyway," Starg said distastefully. "They bury them."
"True," From said. "A terrible use of land. Can you imagine what would happen if everyone buried their dead? Before long, all the dry land would be overrun with dead bodies!"
"Could we debate social customs at some other time?" the maybe-not-basik asked with a grimace which, allowing for the differences in shape and form, was remarkably like the one Rastar had been making, and Starg finally remembered where he'd seen it before. It was the exact expression a basik made when you had it cornered and were just about to club it. Like it was trying to talk you out of it or something.
"Indeed," Rus From said. "We brought a caravan through with us. It includes some of the items you ordered from the merchants of Diaspra before the Boman closed the roads."
"We appreciated that last shipment of pig iron, by the way," the maybe-not-basik said. "It would have been tough to do everything we had to without it."
"Yeah, well, normally we do most of our trading with K'Vaern's Cove," Starg said. "But they were cut off by then. We just had to hope a caravan would make it back from Diaspra, instead."
"And indeed it did," From said. "I'm afraid that few of the mining implements you ordered are included, however. Most of the ones that were complete were converted into weapons. We do have a goodly load of food and wines, spices, and so forth, though."
"That's all well and good," Starg protested. "But we're going to need those tools soon."
"And they'll be completed in time," From said dryly. "With all the weapons we recovered from the Wespar, there's much more than sufficient iron to replace the material we commandeered."
"And with any luck, we'll be able to get the Boman's attention so centered on us that they won't be a problem between here and K'Vaern's Cove much longer, either," Rastar added. "There were none on the south side of the hills. Where are they?"
"Mostly still gorging on the corpse of Sindi," Starg said. "But there are many bands just wandering around, some of them quite large. You'll find it difficult to pass through to the Cove, if that's your target."
"Oh, I don't know about that," said the maybe-not-basik. "I think we might just give them pause."
"You see," Rastar said, "we're not exactly a caravan."
The forces from Diaspra sprawled everywhere around the mines. Most of them were inside the hasty walls the miners had thrown up against the Boman under Starg's direction. Those of them who were not, lightly armored figures carrying incredibly long spears or lances, were busy erecting another camp adjacent to the mining area. They dug with incredible energy and precision, as if they'd been doing it their entire lives.
"What, by all the gods, is this?" Starg asked, rubbing a horn furiously.
"Well," the maybe-not-basik, Pahner, said, "I'm afraid we weren't quite sure who held the mines, so we took the liberty of securing your guards until we were sure. They're unharmed," the not-basik added hastily.
"So you just snuck in and took over?" the mine manager demanded, wondering whether he was angrier at the newcomers or at the guards who were supposed to have prevented such things from happening.
"It's ... something of a specialty of ours," the not-basik said with another of those strange grimaces.
"They did it to us once," Rastar confirmed with a weird move of both shoulder sets.
"So now what?" Starg asked. "You can't do any good here; the Boman just avoid us."
"We may leave a few groups of our soldiers with you," Rus From replied. "Some of our Diasprans haven't taken as well to conditions on the march as they thought they might. That doesn't make them poor soldiers, though, and they can be helpful training and supporting your miners. The rest of us are going to K'Vaern's Cove."
"You'll never make it," the mine manager warned. "You might have made it on a straight shot from the south, but it's different between here and the Cove."
"Yes, it is," the not-basik agreed with one of those weird grimaces. Suddenly, he looked much less like a basik than an atul. A hungry atul. "There's a road."
"We'll be moving very fast," Rastar added. "You might have noticed that we have a large number of turom and civan along with the pagee. The humans have shown us that an infantry force can move much faster than we ever believed possible if the spear-carriers take occasional rests by holding onto the packs of the turom and civan. Also, many of them, and all our wounded, ride on the pagee. I wouldn't have believed it before they proved it, but we can travel nearly as fast as civan cavalry."
"We should get through without problems as long as we can avoid their main force," the "human" noted. "You said that they're in and around Sindi. I've seen that on a map, and it's well out of the way of the direct route to K'Vaern's Cove. How sure are you of their location, and where do you get your information?"
"Some woodsmen still move among the Boman," Starg replied. "Charcoal burners and the like who simply give them whatever they want and survive as best they can. We help them out with whatever we can spare, and in return they keep us fairly well informed on where the barbs are and what they're up to. Also, Sindi is the largest and richest city they've conquered. They aren't done looting it even yet."
The humans shared a look with the Northern prince, but Rastar seemed to agree.
"They would know, Armand," the Northerner said. "The woods are filled with half-wild workers, and I doubt that they'd care much for the Boman. Their lives are never easy, but they must be truly impossible in the midst of this invasion."
"Then we need to factor them into our next move," said the not-basik, Pahner. "Intelligence cuts two ways."
"What?" Starg asked. "They're not particularly smart-"
"He means that they could talk to the Boman as well as to you," Rastar translated. "It's a human term meaning all that you know about your enemy."
"We don't want our axis of advance communicated to the Boman," Pahner added.
"I doubt that they'll be talking to the Boman," Rastar demurred. "They're insular even under normal conditions, and I'm sure they're staying as far away from the invaders as they can."
"That's truth," Starg said. "We've traded tools and weapons to them for food and other supplies. Otherwise, they'd have nothing to do with us, either."
"Tools," Pahner said. "That we're not in need of. But how much refined iron do you have on-site?"
"Why?" Starg asked suspiciously.
"Because we're taking it all with us to K'Vaern," Pahner said, looking out over the building Diaspran camp. "K'Vaern's Cove will need it if they're going to survive, and we need them happy with us. It's why we came this way, really."
"Oh, you are, are you?" Starg said angrily. "Just how are you going to pay for it? It's not like you even brought all that was already owed!"
The not-basik's head turned towards Starg like a machine. The human was scarcely half the miner's size, and Starg had been in more fights as a youngster than his old bones cared to remember. But at that moment, he was as sure as the gods had made him that he did not want to test the human commander.
"Worry not," Rus From said calmly. "I'll guarantee payment for the material from the temple."