But still there was the feeling—.
They suffered and grumbled all through the ghastly woods, wading through soft growths that concealed treacherous, ankle-trapping holes. Richard declared that the spores in the air were choking him. Martha drooped in anemic silence after pestering Madame one time too many with a report that something was prowling among the giant toadstools. Claude caught a fierce case of jock itch that crept all the way up to his armpits. Even Felice was ready to scream out loud at the endless trek; she was sure that something was growing in her ears.
When they finally broke free of the Fungus Forest, all of them, even Madame, shouted with relief. They came into a brilliantly sunny alpine meadow that stretched north and south along the slope of an undulating crest. One bald tor rose from a ridge on their left; to the right were two more barren gray domes. Ahead of them and farther east was the rounded height of the Feldberg.
“Blue sky!” cried Martha. “Green grass!” Heedless of her disability, she went bounding over the flower-dotted alp and scrambled to the top of the eastern ridge, leaving the others to follow more slowly. “There’s a little lake down there, not half a klom away!” she called. “And lovely normal trees! I’m going to soak and scrub myself and lie in the sun until I’m cooked to a frazzle. And I never want to see another mushroom again for as long as I live.”
“Say again, sweetie,” Richard agreed. “Not even a truffle.”
They descended to the beautiful little tarn, icy cold in its depths but sun-warmed in shallower little pools around its rocky perimeter, and gave themselves up to the luxury of becoming clean again. Their filthy buckskins were left to soak in a tiny brook that ran from the lake down into the eastern valley. Shrieking like children, they went splashing and diving and swimming and wallowing.
Never since he had entered the Pliocene had Richard been so happy. First he swam to the other side of the tarn and back again. (It was only about fifty meters across.) He found a shallow pothole with the water warmed to precisely the right temperature and floated with the sun glaring redly behind his shut eyelids. Dark sand, scintillating like mica, floored his little pool. He took handfuls of it and rubbed his entire body, even his scalp. Then one last dash across the lake and out onto a hot granite slab to dry.
“You should have tried out for the Polity Olympics,” Martha said.
He crept up a little higher on his rock and peered over the far edge. She was below him, lying flat on her stomach in a sheltered hollow and looking at him with one eye. Bright pink flowers grew in the crevices around her.
“How you feeling now?” Richard inquired. And he thought: Hey! She looked so different clean, relaxed, smiling with one corner of her mouth tilted higher than the other. “I’m much better,” she said. “Why don’t you come down?”
On the opposite shore of the lake, Claude and Madame Guderian lay side by side on decamole cots among the gentians and asters and harebells, baking the miseries out of their old bones and munching bilberries from the low-growing bushes that grew everywhere on the alpine meadow. A stone’s throw away. Felice’s pale-skinned form was bending in rhythmic exertions. There was a regular slapping sound as she beat their soiled clothing against the rocks of the little brook.
“Oh, to be young and energetic again,” said Madame, a lazy smile upon her lips, “She has such enthusiasm for this mad expedition of ours, that little one. And what strength and patience she has shown with poor Martha. It is hard for me to credit your ominous assessment of Felice’s character, mon vieux.”
Claude grunted. “Just a little angel of mercy… Angélique, I’ve been doing some calculating.”
“Sans blague?”
“This isn’t funny. It’s been fifteen days since we left Yeo-chee’s court at High Vrazel. We took eleven of those days just to travel the thirty kloms from the Rhine to the crest of the Schwarzwald. I don’t think we have a hope in hell of getting to the Ries inside of the four weeks’limit, even if we do contact Sugoll. There’s probably another forty or fifty kloms of land travel ahead of us before we even reach the Danube. Then near two hundred kloms down the river to the Ries.”
She sighed. “Probably you are right. But Martha is strong enough to keep up with the rest of us now, so we will press on nevertheless. If we are not back before the Truce begins, we will have to wait until another time to attack Finiah.”
“We can’t do it during the Truce?”
“Not if we hope for the assistance of the Firvulag. This Truce, which covers periods of a month prior to and following the Grand Combat week, is deeply sacred to both exotic races. Nothing will induce them to fight each other during Truce time. It is the time when an of their warriors and Great Ones go to and from the ritual battle, which is held on the WhiteSilver Plain near the Tanu capital. Of course, in olden tunes, when Firvulag sometimes triumphed in the yearly contest, the Little People might host the games on their own Field of Gold. It lies somewhere in the Paris Basin, near a large Firvulag city named Nionel. Since the Tanu expansion, the place has been virtually abandoned. It has not hosted the Combat in forty years.”
“I should think it would be good tactics to go after the mine when the Tanu are out of town. Do we really need the Firvulag?”
“We do,” she said starkly. “There are only a handful of us and the ruler of Finiah never leaves the mine completely undefended. There are always silvers and grays there, and some of the silvers can fly.
“…But the real reason for the matter of timing has to do with my grand design. Strategy, not tactics, must guide us. We do not aim simply to destroy the mine, but rather the entire human-Tanu coalition. There are three steps in the master plan: first, the Finiah action; second, an infiltration of the capital, Muriah, in which the torc factory itself would be destroyed; and third, the closing of the time-portal at Castle Gateway. Originally we had thought to instigate guerilla warfare against the Tanu after the threefold plan was accomplished. Now, with the iron, we will be in a position to demand a genuine armistice and the emancipation of all humans who do not serve the Tanu willingly.”
“When do you see the implementation of phases two and three? During the Truce?”
“Exactly. For these, we do not require Firvulag help. At Truce time the capital is filled with strangers, even Firvulag go there with impunity! A penetration of the torc factory would be greatly simplified then. As for the time-gate…”
Felice came running up as tightly as a mountain sprite. “I can see flashes ever to the east, on the flank of the Feldberg!”
The two old people sprang to their feet. Madame shaded her eyes and followed the girl’s pointing finger. A series of short double flashes came from a high wooded slope.
“It is the interrogation signal, as Fitharn warned us. Somehow, Sugoll has become aware of us entering his domain. Quickly, Felice. The mirror! “The athlete ran back to the brook where the packs lay and returned in a few seconds with a square of thin Mylar mounted on a folding frame. Madame sighted through its central aperture and flashed the response Fitharn had taught them: seven long slow flashes, then six, then five, then four-three-two-one.
They waited.
The reply came. One-two-three-four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight.
They relaxed. Claude said, “Well, they won’t come gunning for us now, at any rate.”