“You see, the process of mind displacement and transference is not a pleasant experience. Generally, it requires hours to days of suffering to accomplish, so naturally we don’t look forward to repeating it any more often than is absolutely necessary.”
“You’re lying, Gold,” snapped Milo. “I saw Titus Backstrom effect a transfer within minutes! And God knows how many times Lillian Landor switched back and forth from King Zastros’s body to her own. If you’re going to start trying to get cute, buster, I might be smart to drug your next meal… and keep you semiconscious until I get you back to Kehnooryos Atheenahs.”
The fetters jangled as the prisoner raised his hands conciliatorily. “Wait just wait a minute, Moray, you don’t fully comprehend.”
Milo, on the point of arising, settled back against the door. “Okay, so tell me, Reverend Father.”
Gold held out his arms, painfully working back the wide iron cuffs to expose the raw, bleeding flesh beneath. “First of all, Moray, why don’t you take these things off me. Can’t you see what they’re doing to this body? Tetanus can kill just as surely as a sword, and I could tell you damned little if I contract lockjaw. I’ll not try to escape, you have my word on it. Besides, you have my pistol.”
Milo’s shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “As it happens, I can’t. The castellan has the keys and he’s on the walls. But even if I could, I wouldn’t. You see, I’ve had sufficient experience with your kind to recognize just how slippery you are. As for your word, I’d not trust you any farther than I could throw my warhorse!”
The prisoner grinned ruefully. “Well, I did try. But it doesn’t really matter. I’ll be free soon enough. Do you think your fellow mutants would trade Manny-assuming that he is still alive-for you?”
“Anything is possible, Gold,” Milo chuckled. “But aren’t you counting your chickens before they’re hatched? I’ve seen weaker fortifications than these, manned by less well armed and less experienced fighters, stand off forces far superior to that ragtag horde of cannonfodder you and the Vahrohnos Myros have scraped up for your little Djeehahd. Til be charitable and say only that they are not firstclass troops … or second-, or even third-. Their only assault so far was smashed a full fifty yards from the walls, and nothing the officers and priests could do or say persuaded them to mount another, so they’ve gone into camp.
“Saddled with amateur officers and without you to harangue them into a religious frenzy, your troops are impotent against this stout little garrison. No, your peasant crusaders will be good for no more than one more full-scale assault. Then the bulk of the survivors will desert and the diehards will hole up in Morguhnpolis or, possibly, Deskati. Whichever city they choose, the Confederation siege train will have its gates down and its walls breached in short order.”
Gold threw back his head and chortled merrily. “Not quite, my good Moray, not quite! Now it is you who are counting chickens. The walls of this pitiful dungheap will be flat to the ground and its gates blown to smithereens before noon tomorrow, and there’s not a damned thing you can do to prevent it either! And don’t hold your breath until your precious Confederation Army gets here, for we’ve not been letting a living soul out of this Duchy for weeks, so you couldn’t have gotten any message to them… not without a radio, anyway.”
Milo replaced the pistol under his brigandine, stood erect, and locked his saber into the frog of his baldric. “You obviously know far less than you think you do about me and my people, Gold. When I get you back to Kehnooryos Atheenahs, we’ll resume our little chat, unless a streak of stubbornness arises, in which case I’ll see that you make the acquaintance of the artisans who cured the mulishness of your friend Manny.”
He jerked the torch from the bracket and left the dank cell, slamming the heavy door and securing the thick bar in place, leaving Gold alone in the unrelieved darkness.
Under the travel-stained canvas of an officer—model campaign tent, on a narrow folding cot, lay a woman. She was strikingly lovely, with the red-gold flame of the watchlantern casting highlights throughout the glossy mane of blue black hair which framed her fine-boned face. Her lips were full and dark red, and although her long, sooty lashes lay upon her light olive cheeks and the proud swell of her firm breasts rose and fell rhythmically, she was not sleeping.
On the farspeak level of her infinitely complex and highly trained mind, she asked, “Where have you been? I knew not but that you’d drowned or smothered. If the men and cats and horses hadn’t been so done in, we’d have marched on tonight. I thought you said you’d contact me at least once each day.”
“Sorry, Aldora, but it couldn’t be helped,” beamed Milo’s thought. “You know my farspeak won’t range more than ten or twelve miles, even under optimum conditions. So without the use of Major Ahndros’s fine mind…”
The woman’s thought then became halting and tinged with pain. “Ahndee? He … he’s dead, then? So … so young and vital and… and sweet.”
“No, Aldora, not dead, not yet, but according to Master Ahlee, it’s still touch-and-go. There was a nasty little skirmish the evening I last spoke with you. He wasn’t really hurt too badly, but he went into shock before Ahlee got to him and the good doctor is now afraid to let him stay conscious for very long at one time.”
“Whom are we speaking through then?” she inquired.
“The handsome, young heir to old Hwahruhn you mentioned? He truly does have farspeak, then?”
“Bili is now Thoheeks, my dear. Hwahruhn is gone to Wind. And I feel sure he has much, much more than just farspeak. Even without training, he may well be a very valuable man, though I’ve had no chance to make certain. You see,” he went on, “a great deal has happened here in a very short time; things are moving much faster than we’d anticipated, much faster than they’d been planned to go, unless that bastard, Kornblau, misled us … and there’s always that possibility. Actually, I’m contacting you through the mind of one of the Sanderz Sept Prairie Cats, Whitetip.”
“Thank Sun and Wind!” Aldora mindspoke vociferously. “There’s been too much inbreeding in recent years and more and more kittens are being born dead or retarded or crippled. And breeding in Treecats just isn’t the answer. Oh, sweet Sun be praised, not only new blood, but farspeak blood at that!”
Mile’s exasperation was transmitted with his thought. “That’s all very well, Aldora, but it will wait, there are other matters which will not! First of all, I managed to take one of the witchmen alive. Tell Mara that he says his name is William Gold and that he was working under the name of Kooreeos Skiros. I want her to learn as much as she can about him from Kornblau, especially whether or not he customarily works with a partner. I need that information quickly too.
“Second, Gold appears to have some deviltry up his sleeve. I took a pistol-you know what that is, remember I described it to you once-away from him and who knows what else he has in circulation around here. In fact, I think that he was hinting that this hall was going to be reduced with explosives tomorrow!”
Beneath her warm blankets, Aldora’s shapely body shuddered. “Sun grant not, Milo! What you have told me of those ancient terrors sounds horrible beyond imagining… and what the Song of Prophecy tells of that long-ago time, the gods’ monstrous death arrows, which obliterated whole, huge cities in fire and invisible death …”
“Now don’t panic, girl!” Milo reproved. “I hardly think the whoresons would go so far as to use nuclear weapons, not with one or more of their own well within range and unprotected. But as I’ve often said before, I don’t want to see the ancient technology reintroduced. I want this new world to develop its own.