Weldletter had placed the explosive canisters in masterfully chosen locations. When the cloud settled, Abel saw that the pathway was sealed. What had been an escape path was now boulder-filled and impassable. It would take them at least a day, and leagues and leagues of travel, to backtrack and go around.
From below came the sound of gunfire and shouting men. The surviving Blaskoye were enraged. And completely ineffective. They could not come up. They would have to ride around.
“I veel find you, Dashiaaaaaaan,” came the loudest call. “I veel come for you. Dashiaaan! Dashiaaan!”
Abel realized Maday was telling him more, nattering on in the usual good-natured Scout’s litany of complaints. “Worked, thank the Lady. And us two days at it. I can’t say the men much liked sitting around taking mortar to the stuff. And then I had to tell them to unwrap their cartridges, too, that we needed it all, and that they’d be going home with only their bows to depend on. We’re plumb out of powder, Lieutenant.”
“Understood,” Abel said. He turned wearily back to his dont. “We also need to ride to water.”
“Weldletter says Ruddy Seep’s three leagues from here, but that’s what they’d expect.”
“Yes, you’re right.”
“A half day is that little sunken spring we passed on our way out, the one on the plain with the single tree.”
“We’ll go there.”
“Can you make it another half day?”
Abel shook his head to clear it. Good question, could he? Yes, but could the donts?
I guess we’ll find out how good Scout dont stock really is on this trip, he thought.
“We head for the single-tree spring,” he said. “Pass the word.”
He tried to climb back onto his dont, found he could not muster the strength the first time or the second.
But when he tried the third time, a hand reached down to help. The girl, Loreilei, held to the saddle with one hand, grabbed him by the sleeve with the other and pulled. Her strength was not great, but it was the little extra he needed. He slung his leg over and was on.
“Thank you,” he said to her, but she did not reply.
“Mount up!” he called out to all. “No rest for you sorry layabouts. I’ll get a day’s work out of you yet.” He nodded at his weary, but smiling, men.
His sergeants rode up beside him.
“On your command,” said Maday. “We’re ready.”
A good reconnaissance. There will be much to report to your father, said Center. I have almost reached my conclusions, as well. We have a chance now.
Good? said Raj. The boy circled the Blaskoye like J.E.B. Stuart for Lee, and you’re calling it good. I’d call it spectacular. I’m proud of the lad!
Abel grinned wearily in the saddle.
I also have reached a few conclusions, he thought.
And what are those, lad?
I know what I want now, Abel thought.
Rockets, Abel thought. I liked that. I want them. And those guns that load from behind you have been telling me about. No more of this awkward reloading when men are trying to kill us.
Yes, Center replied. With an invasion timeline now in place, variable cascade analysis indicates your conclusions are correct. It is time for tiered innovation if we are to survive beyond the next year. This must be done carefully. There will be setbacks. They will have to be dealt with appropriately, perhaps ruthlessly.
Abel was barely listening.
One more thing, he thought. There is one more thing I want. I don’t know if you would call it an innovation, but I want it nonetheless, and I’ll have it.
And what is that? Did he detect a trace of worry in Center’s normal utter neutrality of speech?
Mahaut, he said. I want her. I want the woman. If she’ll have me.
Center’s silence and Raj’s good-hearted, throaty laughter accompanied him all the way to the distant watering hole.
7
It was when they were a day out from the Valley’s edge that Center reported his conclusion: an invasion of Treville would come on the night of the next new three-moon evening.
The expedition has been a success. I have factored observed numbers, states of preparedness, known Blaskoye tactics, and psychodynamic modeling using our encounter with the clan leadership. They are coming at what they will view as the first opportunity. This will be the first night when all three moons are below the horizon. There are only three nights a year when this is the case in Duisberg’s northern hemisphere.
So you won’t have to kill me and start all over because I went for the child, Abel thought. It was not a question, but a factual statement. Meeting Rostov face-to-face was essential to your calculations.
That proved to be correct, Center replied, a little too quickly and coldly for Abel’s liking. Your gamble was effective.
Don’t fight it, lad, laughed Raj. It’s good to be careful, but if you can’t be careful, it’s even better to be lucky.
The next day they encountered the first outlying Scout picket. They had been stationed in position for two eight-days, and apart from operational wigwag had no news to report. For the past days, it had slowly dawned on Abel that they were no longer being pursued. Kruso and a half squad had doubled back to check, and this had proved true. Nevertheless, he ordered the outpost corporal to send out long pickets with good mirrors and be watchful.
Abel and the Scouts rode on.
Another day, and they were at the Escarpment’s edge. Another half day and they rode into Hestinga. It was midday.
He’d thought about bringing the girl to her relatives, delivering her in triumph on a washed and festooned dont, but he’d known at the time it was merely a fantasy. Lilleheim was too far out of the way. Who would take the Remlap boy was more problematic, and Abel was on the verge of ordering a man to feed and clothe him, and to give him a bunk among the cadets, when Weldletter stepped up and volunteered to take the boy in at his officer’s billet. The mapmaker had taken a liking to the child, and, using Kruso for a translator, had spoken gently in his dry, exacting voice to the Remlap boy about the time he’d spent with the boy’s father. These talks seemed to calm the boy on nights when he could be heard crying softly in his meager bedroll-an extra saddle blanket they had converted for the purpose-or at least got the crying to stop.
So it was the girl who proved more of an immediate problem after all.
She did not want to physically let go of Abel, much less leave him, when they arrived in the headquarters yard.
“You have to let me go to the commander,” he told her. “It’s my duty. It’s why I was sent. To bring back a report.”
She looked up at him wordlessly-she had probably spoken no more than five or six words in the six days they had travelled together-and held tightly to his tunic lapel.
As if to say: “I am the report,” he thought to himself.
“I cannot bring you inside,” he said. He looked around, but his men were busy taking care of their donts. He’d handed his own over to Maday to feed, water, and groom.