“—state secrets. Almost as dangerous are their persons, for they are armed and desperate. While capture alive is desirable for purposes of interrogation, killing them on sight is preferable to any risk of allowing them to continue their rampage—”
Targovi heard the announcement out before he switched off the audio transceiver he had brought from the hospice. It was a natural thing to put in Axor’s carrier, along with food, after they had voiced their decision to go on a long tramp through the hills, for the benefit of any electronic eavesdroppers. While the Wodenite recorded a message apologizing for thus cancelling his next appointment with Isis, explaining that he wished to savor the landscape and this was his last chance, his comrade had surreptitiously added a hiking outfit for Diana to the baggage.
Being a Tigery, Targovi skipped banalities like, “Well, now they know.” He did murmur, “Interesting is how they phrase it, the scat about ‘state secrets’. I should think most Zacharians will realize at once what this means. The rest should cooperate without questions.”
“I s’pose the words’re for the benefit of whatever outsiders may catch the broadcast,” said Diana around a mouthful of sandwich. “F’r instance, on watercraft passin’ within range. Not that they’d investigate for themselves.”
The three rested in a hollow in the heights above Janua, well away from settlement. Its peacefulness was an ache in them. Birch stood around, leaves dancing to a breeze in the radiance of westbound Patricius. Prostrate juniper grew among the white trunks, itself dark blue-green and fragrant. A spring bubbled from a mossy bank. Somewhere a mockingbird trilled.
“The Zacharians will be out like a swarm of khrukai—swordwings,” Targovi said. “They’ll use aircraft and high-gain sensors. We’ll need all the woodcraft that is ours. And … we are not used to forest such as this.”
Diana smote fist on ground. “Be damned if we’ll die for naught, or skulk around useless till Magnusson’s slaughtered his way to the throne!” Her head and voice drooped. “Only what can we do?”
Axor cleared his throat. “I can do this much, beloved ones,” he said, almost matter-of-factly. “My size and lack of skill at concealment will betray us even before my bodily need has exhausted the rations. Let me angle off and divert pursuit while you two seek the mountains.” He lifted a hand against Diana’s anguished cry. “No, no, it is the sole sensible plan. I came along because, much though I abhor violence, as a Christian should, yet there seemed to be a chance to end the war before it devours lives by the millions. Also, while I cannot believe the Merseians are creatures of Satan, they would deprive many billions of whatever self-determination is left. It is a worthy cause. Afterward, if you live, pray that we be forgiven for the harm we have done our opponents, and for the repose of their souls, as I will pray.” His neck swayed upward from where he lay till light caught the crest of his head and made a crown of it. “Let me serve in the single way I am able. Lord, watch over my spirit, and the spirits of these my friends.”
This time the girl could not stem tears. “Oh, Axor—!”
“Quiet, you two blitherers,” Targovi grated. “What we want is less nobility and more thinking.”
He jumped and paced, not man-style but as a Tigery does, weaving in and out among the trees and around the bushes. His right hand stroked the blade of his great knife over the palm of the left, again and again. Teeth gleamed when he muttered on the track of his thought.
“I led us hither because I dared not suppose my deed at the command post would go undetected enough longer for us to rustle transportation and reach the mainland. In that I was right. My hope was that the Zacharians would show such confusion at the news, being inexperienced in affairs like this, that we could double back and find means of escape—mayhap forcing the owner of a vehicle to cover for us. After all, they had not been well organized at the post. The hope was thin just the same, and now is not a wisp. I think their … oneness … makes them able to react to the unforeseen as coolly as an individual, not with the babble and cross purposes of an ordinary human herd taken by surprise. You heard the broadcast. Every car and boat will stay in a group of three or more, under guard. Every movement from the island will be stopped for inspection. This will prevail until we are captured or slain.
“Shall we yield? They might be content to shoot me, and the imprisonment of you two might not be cruel.
“You signal a no.”
“My mother passed on an ancient sayin’ to me,” Diana told them. “Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.”
“Ah, the young do not truly understand they can die,” Axor sighed. “Yet if any possibility whatsoever is left us, what can we in conscience do other than try it?”
Still the Tigery prowled. “I am thinking, I am thinking—” Abruptly he halted. He drove the knife into a bole so that the metal sang. “Javak! Yes, it was on my horizon—a twisted path—But we must needs hurry, and not give the foe time to imagine we are crazy enough to take that way.”
The south side of the Mencius range dropped a short distance before the land resumed its climb. This was unpeopled country, heavily wooded save where the canyon of the Averroes River slashed toward the sea, and on the higher flanks of the mountains. Kukulkan had told Diana it was a game and recreational preserve. The location of the spaceport here dated from troubled early days, when it might have become a target, minor though it was. Perhaps its isolation had been a factor in the conceiving of the Merseian plot.
Despite everything, the girl caught her breath at the sight. Clear, apart from a slight golden fleece of clouds, the sky was pale below, deepening in indigo at the zenith; but still night cast a dusk over the reaches around her. Heights to north and south walled in the world. Only at the ends of the vale did the sun-ring shine, casting rays that made the bottom a lake of amber. Where trees allowed glimpses, the hills above were purple-black, the snow-caps in the distance moltenly aglow. Air was cool on her brow. Quietness towered.
Wonder ended as Targovi pointed ahead.
Beyond the last concealment the forest afforded was a hundred-meter stretch, kept open though overgrown with brush and weeds. A link fence, to hold off animals, enclosed a ferrocrete field. Her pulse athrob but her senses and judgment preternaturally sharp, she gauged its dimensions as five hundred by three hundred meters. Service buildings clustered and a radionic mast spired at the farther end. Of the several landing docks, two were occupied. One craft she identified as interplanetary, a new and shapely version of Moonjumper. The other was naval—rather small as interstellar ships went, darkly gleaming, gun turret and launcher tubes sleeked into her leanness—akin to the Comet class, but not identical, not designed or wrought by humans—What ghost in her head blew a bugle call?
Huge and vague in the shadows, Axor whispered hoarsely, “We take the Zacharian vessel, of course.”
“No, of course not,” Targovi hissed. His eyes caught what light there was and burned like coals. “I was right in guessing the islanders are as militarily slovenly here as at the centrum, and have armed no watch. The thought of us hijacking a spaceship is too warlike to have occurred to them. But the Merseians are bound to have a guard aboard theirs. I know not whether that’s a singleton or more, but belike whoever it is knows how to dispatch a seeker missile, or actually lift in chase.” Decision. “However, we may well dupe them into supposing we are after the easier prey, and thus catch them off balance. The dim light will help—”
When he burst from concealment, Axor carried Diana in the crook of an arm, she would otherwise have toiled far behind him and Targovi. The pounding of his gallop resounded through her. She leaned into his flexing hardness, cradled her rifle, peered after a mark.