Then Abel saw the landmark he was looking for, a great hill of rounded stone in the distance, and headed toward it. This was where they got to find out if Weldletter’s cartography was going to prove crucial or get them all killed. He had an accurate memory of every place the Scouts had passed, thanks to Center, but the remainder of the Scouts did not. And the ones he’d left behind in pursuit of Gaspar did not have him to guide them to the rendezvous point.
All they had was Weldletter’s map.
Because, of course, the map of the Redlands they’d allowed Gaspar to take was a forgery. Accurate enough in its broad outline, but completely misleading when you got down to the details.
As to the map of the Land itself that Gaspar had stolen-that one hadn’t been a misleading copy at all. It was an out-and-out fake. He and Weldletter had spent some enjoyable moments coming up with believable troop numbers and fortification figures that he’d then had Weldletter pen to the papyrus. Would the Blaskoye detect the ploy? In some ways, it didn’t matter. Both fake maps had served their immediate and most important purpose: bait for one who was bait himself, but hadn’t known it.
Maybe somewhere inside, Gaspar did, Abel thought, and yet couldn’t help himself.
To the left up ahead, said Center. Between those red sandstone structures lies the entrance to the canyon.
Soon the donts were off sand and onto the stones of a dry wash, their horn-coated feet clattering as the Scouts passed. The walls of the canyon quickly rose on either side of them and soon became cliffs a fieldmarch high. It was past noon, and the canyon was in shadow. This was at least relief from the unremitting sun.
The going became narrower and the donts were huffing and puffing at the steep upward climb. It was almost, but not quite, beyond them-especially with their Scouts urging them on with frenetic intensity. The animals were beginning to fail, however. Abel knew they must rest soon or most of the mounts, as desert-tough as they were, would die. He was quite willing to drive them until it killed them if he had to, but to do so would leave his men stranded here, only a quarter of the way back home.
Then he saw it. A mirror flash. Kruso immediately flashed back. An exchange of silent conversation followed.
They had made it. The rendezvous had succeeded. They rode onward. The path narrowed to the point that they must proceed single file. Sandstone scraped against his protruding legs and might have taken the skin and more had it not been for his leg wraps. Here was the reason they were part of the Scout uniform, the reason for all the snap uniform inspections he’d endured in his youth.
Steeper, and the donts were on two legs by necessity in order to climb the path. Then, to his right, he saw the side path, the trail up a rivulet that his own memory and the maps they’d made said was dont-passable. It was, nonetheless, very steep, and he bade the girl, who was only semi-conscious now, to wake up as best she could and hold on tight. To her credit, he felt her grip tighten around his waist.
And after what seemed an interminable scramble, they emerged on the rim. They were out.
There was Weldletter, and beside him were Abel’s sergeants, the leaders of the squads he’d left behind to pursue Gaspar. One of them, a crusty Ingresman named Maday, he’d left in charge; and it was Maday who reported. His accent was thick, but he did not choose to always speak in the patois as did Kruso.
“Charges are in place, sir,” Maday reported.
“Did you follow Weldletter’s instructions?”
“We did,” said Maday. “Packed every map case full of powder. Maps are going to be ruined, I’m afraid, sir.”
“Let’s get out of this first, then worry about the maps,” Abel replied.
“Aye, sir.”
Now the big question.
“And the corning? Did you do it?”
“We didn’t much like the idea, you know,” said the sergeant. “Thursday school and all that.”
“Did you do it?” Abel said.
“Corning gunpowder beyond priming grain strength is a Stasis violation,” Maday said, “but we did as you suggested and held a seance with the Lady.” Maday smiled broadly, revealing three missing teeth. His mouth looked like a portcullis. “And what do you know, we all had a vision of the Fifty Days and Fifty Nights, her suckling baby Zentrum, even though she was dead in body. And we took it as a sign that sometimes there were exceptions, you know. That she’d told us that corning gunpowder beyond priming grain is a Stasis violation only in the Land. She came to me, she did, and told me not only to go ahead, but to keep it a bit damp to make the process go easier, just like you said before. Irisobrian provides.”
“The Lady provides,” Abel answered back. “Alaha Zentrum.”
Observe:
A line of men on a rock slab. They were sitting in the sun under broad-brimmed hats and makeshift head scarves and spending a day, all of it, every sunlit hour, carefully tap, tap, tapping at gunpowder with a pestle made of minie balls pounded together. Stones were too coarse grained, and rifle metal wouldn’t do. The lead gave no spark. One problem: this required using every minie ball in the cartridge box to make a useful-sized pestle. No more bullets for the duration.
Watch upon watch of sifting the powder, winnowing it like grain through linen gauze. Tap, tap, tapping it again.
The Lady provides patience, I guess, Abel thought.
Beliefs are what men fight for, Raj said. Laugh at the beliefs, maybe, but not at the believers.
By the second day, the tapping had worn shallow tanajas into the slab upon which the Scouts worked.
Weldletter and the sergeants loaded the powder into the cases, and Weldletter had his team set them out. They’d completed the task not long before the first echoes traveling up the canyon had let them know Abel’s troop was on its way.
“Tham Redlanders up coming!” shouted one of the other sergeants, Moreau. Abel’s attention snapped back to the present.
He dismounted and strode to the rim’s edge. Sure enough, the Blaskoye had stayed on the trail, had relentlessly pursued them up the canyon, expecting, no doubt to lock them in a corner and slaughter them. Whether or not they knew of the exit path Abel and his Scouts had taken, it wasn’t going to matter soon.
“Fire in the hole,” shouted another voice from below.
“Fire in the hole,” shouted another, and another.
Then the men burst out into the open on the path, fleeing from the conflagration they’d prepared in the canyon below.
Rising behind them, up into the sky, a single trail of gunsmoke, like a line drawn straight up into the sky. A sizzling sound accompanied the sight, like wind through tiny leaves.
Then, as Abel watched the gunsmoke line write itself out, it began to spiral, twist in two, then three directions, as if a giant invisible hand were losing control of a pen tip, and scrawling all over a papyrus tablet.
Suddenly, the end of the line exploded.
Analysis indicates one of the explosive canisters under-loaded, Center reported. Insufficiently placed and weighted, as well. This canister burned from its end up and made itself into the rocket we just witnessed.
A rocket? Abel thought. Like the ships that travel the stars?
Not quite.
Well, whatever it is, I like it!
Then he was back in reality. In the same instant that the rocket exploded, so did the canyon below Abel. The explosions were muted, heard from this position above the absorbing canyon walls, but from the great blanketing cloud that arose below, Abel knew they’d been powerful. Then he saw that the cloud had not been caused by exploding gunpowder at all, but by the avalanches those explosions had set off.