The coach turned through a wide gateway flanked by signs advertising the faire, bumped across loose gravel and ruts in the ground, then came to a halt in a packed-earth car park at one end of a small open field. A couple of big top circus tents dominated it, and a group of men with a truck and a stack of scaffolding were busy erecting a raised seating area. To an untrained eye it might easily be mistaken for a public open-air event, close by Concord: that was the whole idea. Real SCA members or habitual RenFaire goers weren't that common, and those that might notice this event would probably write it off as some kind of commercial rip-off, aimed at the paying public. Meanwhile, the general reaction of that public to a bunch of people in inaccurate historical costume was more likely to be one of amusement than fear. Which was exactly what Riordan had proposed and Angbard had accepted.
In fact, the strip mall on the far side of the open space was owned by a shell company that answered to a Clan council director-because it was doppelgangered, located on the identical spot occupied by a Clan property in the other world. And the supposed historical faire was one of several ClanSec contingency plans designed to cover the rapid deployment of military units up to battalion size into the Gruinmarkt.
"Let's move those kit bags out," Helmut barked over his shoulder as the driver scrambled to open the baggage doors on the side of the coach. "I'll have the guts of any man who opens his kit before he gets it inside the assembly tent." His troopers scrambled to drag their heavy sports bags towards the nearer big top: he'd checked that they'd been properly packed, and while any hypothetical witnesses would see plenty of swords and "historical shit" as Erik called it, they wouldn't get even a hint of the SAWs and Ml6s that were the real point of this masquerade- much less the M47 Dragon that Stefan's fire support platoon were bringing to the party.
The setup in the tent would have surprised anyone expecting a show. Half a dozen men and women-officers in Clan security, comptrollers of the postal service, and a willowy blonde in a business suit who Helmut was certain was one of the duke's harem of assassin-princesses- were gathered around a table covered with detailed floor plans: three more, armed with theodolites, laser range finders, and an elaborate GPS unit were carefully planting markers around the bare earth floor. At the far side, a work crew was unloading aluminum scaffolding and planks from the back of a truck, while another gang was frantically bolting them together at locations indicated by the survey team. Helmut left his soldiers scrambling to pull camouflage surcoats and helmets on over their armor, and headed straight for the group at the table, halting two meters short of it.
The duke glanced up from the map. As usual, he was impeccably tailored, dressed for the boardroom: a sixty-something executive, perhaps, or a mid-level politician. But there was a feral anger burning in his eyes that was normally kept carefully banked: Helmut suppressed a shudder. "Third platoon is dismounting and will be ready to go in the next ten minutes," he said as calmly as he could.
The duke stared at him for a moment. "Good enough," he rasped, then glanced sideways at his neighbor, whom Helmut recognized-with a surprised double-take-as Earl Oliver Hjorth, an unregenerate supporter of the backwoods conservative cabal and the last man he'd have expected to see in the duke's confidences. "I told you so."
The earl nodded, looking thoughtful.
"Is there any word from Earl Riordan?" The duke turned his attention towards a plump fellow at the far side of the table.
"Last contact was fifty-two minutes ago, sir," he said,
without even bothering to check the laptop in front of him. "Coming up in eight. I can expedite that if you want..."
"Not necessary." The duke shook his head, then looked back at Helmut. "Tell me what you know."
Helmut shrugged. Despite the full suit of armor, the gesture was virtually silent-there was neoprene in all the right places, another of the little improvements ClanSec had made to their equipment over the years. World-walkers were valuable enough to be worth the cost of custom-fitted armor, and they hadn't been idle in applying new ideas and materials to the classic patterns. "Stands to reason, he's hit the Hjalmar Palace, or you wouldn't have called us out. Is there any word from Wergatsfurt or Ostgat?"
The duke inclined his head. "Wergatsfurt is taken. Ostgat hasn't heard a whisper, as of-" He snapped his fingers.
"Thirty- seven minutes ago," said the ice blonde. She sounded almost bored.
"So we were strung out with a feint at Castle Hjorth and the Rurval estates, but instead he's concentrated eighty miles away and hit the Hjalmar Palace," summarized Helmut. He glanced around at the scaffolding that was going up. "It's fallen?"
"Within minutes," Angbard confirmed. He was visibly fuming, but keeping a tight rein on his anger.
"Treachery?"
"That's my concern," said the duke, with such icy restraint that Helmut backed off immediately. The blonde, however, showed no sign of surprise: she studied Helmut with such bland disinterest that he had to suppress a shudder.
So we've got a leak, he realized with a sinking feeling. It didn't stop with Matthias, did it? "Should I assume that the intruders know about doppelganger defenses?" He glanced round. "Should I assume they have world-walkers of their own?"
"Not the latter, Gray Witch be thanked." Angbard hesitated. "But it would be unwise to assume that they don't know how to defend against us, so every minute delayed increases the hazard." He reached a decision. "We can't afford to leave it in their hands, any more than we can afford to demolish it completely. Our options are therefore to go in immediately with everything we've got to hand, or to wait until we have more forces available and the enemy has had more time to prepare for us. My inclination is towards the immediate attack, but as you will be leading it, I will heed your advice."
Helmut grimaced. "Give me enough rope, eh? As it happens, I agree with you. Especially if they have an informant, we need to get in there as fast as possible. Do we know if they are aware of the treason room?"
"No, we don't." Angbard's expression was thunderous. "If you wish to use it, you will have to scout it out."
"Aye, well, there are worse prospects." Helmut turned on his heel and raised his voice. "Martyn! Ryk! To me. I've got a job for you!" Turning back to the duke, he added: "If the treason room is clear, we'll go in that way, with diversions in the north guard room and the grand hall. Otherwise, my thinking is to assault directly through the grand hall, in force. The higher we go in-"he glanced up at the scaffolding, then over to the hydraulic lift that two guards were bringing in through the front of the tent"-the better I'll like it."
Motion sickness was a new and unpleasant experience to Miriam, but she figured it was a side effect of spending days on end aboard a swaying express train. Certainly it was the most plausible explanation for her delicate stomach. She couldn't wait to get solid ground under her feet again. She'd plowed through about half the book by Burroughs, but it was heavy going; where some of the other Levcler tracts she'd read had been emotionally driven punch-in-the-gut diatribes against the hereditary dictators, Burroughs took a far drier, theoretical approach.
He'd taken up an ideological stance with roots Miriam half-recognized-full of respectful references to Voltaire, for example, and an early post-settlement legislator called Franklin, who had turned to the vexatious question of the rights of man in his later years-and had teased out a consistent strand of political thought that held the dictatorship of the hereditary aristocracy to be the true enemy of the people. Certainly she could see why Burroughs might have been exiled, and his books banned, by the Hanoverian government. But the idea that he might be relevant to the underground still struck her as peculiar. Do I really want to get involved in this? she asked herself. It was all very well tagging along with Erasmus until she could get her hands on her laptop again and zip back to the United States, but the idea of getting involved in politics made her itch. Especially the kind of politics they had here.