It came closer. Then paused. Then came on. My heartbeat increased. Something thrust into the firelight.
“Toadkiller Dog! What the hell, hey? What’re you doing? Come on in out of the cold, boy.” The words tumbled out, bearing fear away. “Boy, will Tracker be glad to see you. What happened to you?”
He came forward cautiously, looking twice as mangy as ever. He dropped onto his belly, rested his chin on forepaws, closed one eye.
“I don’t have any food. I’m sort of lost myself. You’re damned lucky, know that? Making it this far. The plain is a bad place to be on your own.”
Right then that old mongrel looked like he agreed. Body language, if you will. He had survived, but it had not been easy.
I told him, “Sun comes up, we’ll head back. Goblin and One-Eye got lost; it’s their own tough luck.”
After Toadkiller Dog’s arrival I rested better. I guess the old alliance is imprinted on people, too. I was confident he would warn me if trouble beckoned.
Come morning we found the creek and headed for the Hole. I stopped, as I often do, to approach Old Father Tree for a little one-sided conversation about what he had seen during his long sentinelship. The dog would not come anywhere near. Weird. But so what? Weird is the order of the day on the Plain.
I found One-Eye and Goblin snoring, sleeping in. They had returned to the Hole only minutes after my departure in search of them. Bastards. I would redress the balance when the chance came.
I drove them crazy by not mentioning my night out.
“Did it work?” I demanded. Down the tunnel Tracker was having a noisy reunion with his mutt.
“Sort of,” Goblin said. He was not enthusiastic.
“Sort of? What’s sort of! Does it work or doesn’t it?”
“Well, what we got is a problem. Mainly, we can keep the Taken from locating you. From getting a fix on you, so to speak.”
Obfuscation is a sure sign of trouble with this guy. “But? Butt me the but, Goblin.”
“If you go outside the null, there’s no hiding the fact that you are out.”
“Great. Real great. What good are you guys, anyway?”
“It’s not that bad,” One-Eye said. “You wouldn’t attract any attention unless they find out you’re out from some other source. I mean, they wouldn’t be watching for you, would they? No reason to. So it’s just as good as if we got it to do everything we wanted.”
“Crap! You better start praying that next letter comes through. Because if I go out and get my ass killed, guess who’s going to haunt whom forever?”
“Darling wouldn’t send you out.”
“Bet? She’ll go through three or four days of soul-searching. But she’ll send me. Because that last letter will give us the key.”
Sudden fear. Had the Lady probed my mind?
“What’s the matter, Croaker?”
I was saved a lie by Tracker’s advent. He bounced in and pumped my hand like a mad fool. “Thank you, Croaker. Thanks for bringing him home.” Out he went.
“What the hell was that?” Goblin asked.
“I brought his dog home.”
“Weird.”
One-Eye chortled. “The pot calling the kettle black.”
“Yeah? Lizard snot. Want me to tell you about weird?”
“Stow it,” I said. “If I get sent out of here I want this stuff in perfect order. I just wish we had people who could read this junk.”
“Maybe I can help.” Tracker was back. The big dumb lout. A devil with a sword, but probably unable to write his own name.
“How?”
“I could read some of that stuff. I know some old language. My father taught me.” He grinned as if at a huge joke. He selected a piece written in TelleKurre. He read it aloud. The ancient language rolled off his tongue naturally, as I had heard it spoken among the old Taken. Then he translated. It was a memo to a castle kitchen about a meal to be prepared for visiting notables. I went over it painstakingly. His translation was faultless. Better than I could do. A third of the words evaded me.
“Well. Welcome to the team. I’ll tell Darling.” I slipped out, exchanging a puzzled glance with One-Eye behind Tracker’s back.
Stranger and stranger. What was this man? Besides weird. At first encounter he reminded me of Raven, and fit the role. When I came to think of him as big, slow, and clumsy, he fit that role. Was he a reflection of the image in his beholder?
A good fighter, though, bless him. Worth ten of anyone else we have.
Twenty-Three
The Plain of Fear
It was the time of the Monthly Meeting. The big confab during which nothing gets done. During which all heads yammer of pet projects on which action cannot be taken. After six or eight hours of which Darling closes debate by telling us what to do.
The usual charts were up. One showed where our agents believed the Taken to be. Another showed incursions reported by the menhirs. Both showed a lot of white, areas of Plain unknown to us. A third chart showed the month’s change storms, a pet project of the Lieutenant’s. He was looking for something. As always, most were along the periphery. But there was an unusually large number, and higher than normal percentage, in this chart’s interior. Seasonal? A genuine shift? Who knew? We had not been watching long enough. The menhirs will not bother explaining such trivia.
Darling took charge immediately. She signed, “The operation in Rust had the effect I hoped. Our agents have reported anti-imperial outbreaks almost everywhere. They have diverted some attention from us. But the armies of the Taken keep building. Whisper has become especially aggressive in her incursions.”
Imperial troops entered the Plain almost every day, probing for a response and preparing their men for the Plain’s perils. Whisper’s operations, as always, were very professional. Militarily, she is to be feared far more than the Limper.
Limper is a loser. That is not his fault, entirely, but the stigma has attached itself. Winner or loser, though, he is running the other side.
“Word came this morning that Whisper has established a garrison a day’s march inside the boundary. She is erecting fortifications, daring our response.”
Her strategy was apparent. Establish a network of mutually supporting fortresses; build it slowly until it is spread out over the Plain. She was dangerous, that woman. Especially if she sold the idea to the Limper and got all the armies into the act.
As a strategy it goes back to the dawn of time, having been used again and again where regular armies face partisans in wild country. It is a patient strategy that depends on the will of the conqueror to persevere. It works where that will exists and fails where it does not.
Here it will work. The enemy has twenty-some years to root us out. And feels no need to hold the Plain once done with us.
Us? Let us say, instead, Darling. The rest of us are nothing in the equation. If Darling falls, there is no Rebellion.
“They are taking away time,” Darling signed. “We need decades. We have to do something.”
Here it comes, I thought. She had on that look. She was going to announce the result of much soul-searching. So I was not struck down with astonishment when she signed, “I am sending Croaker to recover the rest of his correspondent’s story.” News of the letters had spread. Darling will gossip. “Goblin and One-Eye will accompany and support him.”
“What? There ain’t no way...”
“Croaker.”
“I won’t do it. Look at me. I’m a nothing guy. Who’s going to notice me? One old guy wandering around. The world is full of them. But three guys? One of them black? One of them a runt with...”
Goblin and One-Eye sped me milk-curdling looks.
I snickered. My outburst put them in a tight place. Though they wanted to go no more than I wanted them along, they now dared not agree with me publicly. Worse, they had to agree with each other. Ego!