The man left the floor with both feet, spinning, and came down with spear at the ready.
"Who are you?" The German words came robotically and ill pronounced-drawn undrilled from the hive mind. Macurdy answered slowly, distinctly. "I am Lieutenant Montag. I do not know how I came here."
The Voitu stared, slowly relaxing, and after a moment raised the spear to a casual port arms. "You not expected."
"I did not expect to be here. Where am I?"
"You in Hithmearc. I take to corporal. He know what to do."
A corporal in charge? That meant only a handful of Voitar, half a dozen at most, plus human servants. Macurdy got to his feet and deliberately staggered, almost fell. "I feel sick," he said. "I have already puked."
The Voitu said nothing, and Macurdy straightened a bit. He looked at the possibility of jumping him then and there-this one would serve the general's needs as well as any-but the Voitu was armed and suspicious, and having him on the other side through an entire day? Kurgosz and his people would surely pick up his presence.
Scowling, the Voitu jabbed the air with the spear, a gesture with more than a hint of threat. "You come with me now," he said.
"Of course." Macurdy turned and stepped out the door. He twitched all the way to the hostel, remembering the wounds he'd received the last time he'd been herded from a gate by a man with a spear, fourteen years earlier. That, he told himself, had worked out well enough in the long run, but this had to work out in the short.
He'd been right about the number; there were a corporal and four privates. The domestic staff of five humans was enough to serve if a group came through from the other side. Macurdy hoped devoutly that it wouldn't happen.
The corporal's name was Trosza, and he spoke German much better than the spearman. Macurdy talked him into letting him spend the night and return the next day, meanwhile asking questions. At first about the Voitusotar, and what it was like to be a Voitik soldier. By supper they were on relaxed and congenial terms.
He slept till late morning, but that was no problem. He had till afternoon, sleeping had killed time, and he'd been hit by what in later years would be known as jet lag. After lunch he talked with the corporal again, until they felt the gate activate. "It is time," the corporal said.
"Yes, I suppose we should leave soon. Perhaps I could have one more cup of your tea. We have nothing like it where I come from. It is very good."
He lingered over the refill, talking, deliberately using up time. The gate always remained open for close to an hour, and he didn't want to be followed. While they finished their tea, Macurdy slipped an object from a thigh pocket and pressed it against the underside of the table, where it stuck. About midnight, if the device worked on this side, it would flash into dripping flame, and hopefully burn the place to the ground. Perhaps even killing any eye witnesses to his being there. At least it would fix their minds on something else.
Finally he and the corporal went to the gatehouse. By the time they reached its doorway, they felt the repulsion quite distinctly, the reverse of the attraction on the other side.
"I will stop here," said Trosza. "I wish you well."
I wish you welll Macurdy had a job to do, but the Voitu's words would trouble him afterward. He reached as if to shake Trosza's hand, a civility the Voitusotar shared with humans. When they clasped, Macurdy pivoted abruptly away, pulling sharply on the hand, bending, kicking backward and upward, all in a fraction of a second. The pull half turned the startled Voitu, the kick striking him below the right ribs, compressing the abdomen, and though Macurdy didn't know it, tearing the liver. In someone shorter, it would have broken ribs, collapsed a lung, perhaps resulted in heart spasm.
Trosza blacked out instantly, and Macurdy, hoping no one had seen, dragged him by the ankles into the gatehouse. If he was pursued, his.45 would be operable on the other side, but Macurdy wanted to avoid attention on either side.
As before, he had to lean and push against the gate's repulsion, but within half a minute experienced the utter blackness, the utter silence, the sense of absolute nothingness of the return transit. Then, knees buckling, he dropped on the crest of the Witches' Ridge, the unconscious Trosza behind him.
After handcuffing his captive and tying his ankles, Macurdy struggled the ungainly burden across his shoulders and started down the road. The Voitu was slender, but at nearly seven feet, he weighed at least two hundred pounds. Still it was downhill, and Trosza remained unconscious, which so far as Macurdy knew, meant that any wakeful Voitu in the schloss wouldn't pick up via the hive mind that he'd been captured. If necessary he could kill him; judging by his aura, he was badly hurt already. A Voitik corpse would establish their reality for Donovan, but the general wanted him questioned. A live Trosza could verify from the hive mind what the threat was.
A live Trosza. But if Voitar could die of seasickness, might they also die of airsickness?
He could make out the plane in the deep shadow of lakeside forest, and lay the unconscious Trosza on the shore nearby. From the Voitu's aura, it was clear now that he had serious internal damage. Silently, Macurdy cursed the force of his kick. After getting the raft and inflating it, he loaded his captive, then paddled the dozen or so yards to the plane, where a curious MacNab helped him fold the Voitu inside. The pilot had worn his kilt this time.
"Long skinny son of a bitch," he commented. "Got a flashlight?"
"Sure." MacNab took one from a compartment and turned it on the Voitu's face. "Jesus Christ! Look at those goddamn ears! They all look like that?"
"Yep. Really tall, really slim, red-headed, and ears like a goat."
"How'd you get him?"
"Trickery and a close-combat move."
"Huh! Did he carry a gun?"
"A spear and a sword. I left them there."
MacNab put the flashlight away, shaking his head. Macurdy's replies had posed more questions than they'd answered. "We've got a complication," he said, as if in passing.
"What's that?"
"Fuel. Some flak batteries fired at me when I crossed the coast near Venice. Took a hole in one of the wing tanks. Lost the gas it still had in it, and it won't hold any now. And the other one won't hold enough to get us to Naples."
Hell, Macurdy thought, I didn't need that. "How is this crate for crash landing on dry ground?"
"Good, if we could stay in the air long enough to reach allied territory. But I can guarantee we won't."
"Can't we land on the water when we run low, and refuel the other tank with what's left in the cans?"
"Maybe; I've got my fingers crossed. But it's windy down there, and the forecast's for more of it. The chop will make it tricky at best."
MacNab climbed atop the wing, Macurdy handing the cans up to him, and refilled the other tank, then taxied to midlake and took off. Well, Macurdy thought, at least I've got a pilot who knows how to navigate. Meanwhile he hoped earnestly that the weather down south would ease off.
After take-off, Macurdy spent about half an hour working on the energy threads in Trosza's aura. They responded, but the results held only briefly. Within seconds they "unraveled," so to speak, la sing into chaos. He hoed that bit by bit he'd get them to hold-that gradually the effects of even such brief normalization would bring improvement. But after 30 minutes they seemed more chaotic than when he'd started, and reluctantly he gave up. It was, he told himself, up to God now, and he wasn't at all sure that God intervened in things like this, especially to lighten the killer's conscience.
Crossing the coast brought no flak this time. "How's the wind?" Macurdy asked.