Now the damned carpet began spinning and tumbling. Earth, sky, windwhales swirled around us. In one glimpse, way up, I saw a windwhale’s side explode, saw the monster fold in the middle, raining gobbets of fire. Two more whales trailed smoke... But it was a picture there and gone in a moment. I could find none of it when the carpel again rolled to where I could see the sky.
We began our plunge from high enough that I had time to calm down. I fiddled with levers and pedals, got some of the wild spin off...
Then it did not matter. We were out of the null and it was the Lady’s craft again.
I looked back to see how the sergeant was. He gave me a dirty look, shook his head pityingly.
The look the Lady gave me was not encouraging either.
We climbed and moved westward. The Taken assembled, observed the results of their attack.
Only the one windwhale was destroyed. The other two managed to get under friends who doused them with ballast water. Even so, the survivors were demoralized. They had done the Taken no injury at all.
Still, they came on.
This time the Taken dropped to the surface and attacked from below, building speed from several miles away, then curving up through the null. I maneuvered between whales with a more delicate hand but still fell dangerously near the ground.
“What are we doing this for?” I yelled. We were not attacking; we were just following Whisper and Limper.
“For the hell of it. For the sheer hell of it. And so you can write about it.”
“I’ll fake it.”
She laughed.
We went high and circled.
Darling took the whales back down. That second pass slew two more. Down low the Taken could not throw themselves all the way through the null. None but Limper, that is. He played the daredevil. He backed off five miles and built a tremendous velocity before hitting the null.
He made that pass while the bigs were dropping the last of their pots.
I’ve never heard Darling called stupid. She did not do the stupid thing this time.
Despite all the flash and excitement, it was clear that she could, if she wanted, press on to Horse. The Taken had expended most of their munitions. Limper and the bigs were headed back to rearm. The others circled... Horse was Darling’s if she was willing to pay the price.
She decided it was too dear.
Wise choice. My guess is, it would have cost her half her force. And windwhales are too rare to give up for a prize so insignificant.
She turned back.
The Lady broke away and let her go, though she could have maintained the attacks almost indefinitely.
We touched down. I scrambled over the side even before the Lady and in a calculated, melodramatic gesture, kissed the ground. She laughed.
She had had a great time.
“You let them go.”
“I made my point.”
“She’ll shift tactics.”
“Of course she will. But for the moment the hammer is in my hand. By not using it I’ve told her something. She’ll have thought it over by the time we get there.”
“I suppose.”
“You didn’t do badly for a novice. Go get drunk or something. And stay out of Limper’s way.”
“Yeah.”
What I did was go to the quarters assigned me and try to stop shaking.
Forty-Two
Homecoming
The Lady and I entered the Plain of Fear twelve days after the aerial skirmish near Horse. We traveled on horseback, on second-grade nags, along the old trade trail the denizens of the Plain respect with free passage most of the time. Clad in castoffs, for the trail, the Lady was no longer a beauty. No kick-out-of-bed dog, but no eye-catcher.
We entered the Plain aware that by a pessimistic estimate, we had about three months before the Great Tragic River opened the Great Barrow.
The menhirs noted our presence immediately. I sensed them out there, observing. I had to point it out. For this venture the Lady had schooled herself to eschew anything but the most direct and raw sensory input. She would train herself to mortal ways during our ride so she would make no mistake once we reached the Hole.
The woman has guts.
I guess anyone willing to play heads-up power games with the Dominator has to have them.
I ignored the lurking menhirs and concentrated on explaining the ways of the Plain, revealing the thousand little traps that, at the least, might betray the Lady. It was what a man would do on bringing a newcomer to the land. It would not seem unusual.
Three days into the Plain we narrowly missed being caught in a change storm. She was awed. “What was that?” she asked.
I explained the best I could. Along with all the speculations. She, of course, had heard it all before. But seeing is believing, as they say.
Not long after that we came on the first of the coral reefs, which meant we were in the deep Plain, among the great strangenesses. “What name will you use?” I asked. “I better get used to it,”
“I think Ardath.” She grinned.
“You have a cruel sense of humor.”
“Perhaps.”
I do believe she was having fun at pretending to be ordinary. Like some great lord’s lady slumming. She even took her turns at the cook fire. To my stomach’s despair.
I wondered what the menhirs made of our relationship. No matter the pretense, there was a brittleness, a formality, that was hard to overcome. And the best we could fake was a partnership, which I am certain they found strange. When did man and woman travel together thus, without sharing bedroll and such?
The question of pursuing verisimilitude that far never arose. And just as well. My panic, my terror, at the suggestion would have been such that nothing else would have arisen.
Ten miles from the Hole we breasted a hill and encountered a menhir. It stood beside the way, twenty feet of weird stone, doing nothing. The Lady asked in touristy fashion, “Is that one of the talking stones?”
“Yep. Hi, rock. I’m home.”
Old rock didn’t have anything to say. We passed on. When I looked back it was gone.
Little had changed. As we crested the last ridge, though, we saw a forest of walking trees crowding the creek. A stand of menhirs both living and dead guarded the crossing. The backwards camel-centaurs gamboled among them. Old Father Tree stood by himself, tinkling, though there was not a breath of wind. Up high, a single buzzardlike avian soared against shattered clouds, watching. One or another of its kind had followed us for days. Of a human presence there was no sign. What did Darling do with her army? She could not pack those men into the Hole.
For a moment I was frightened that I had returned to an untenanted keep. Then, as we splashed across the creek, Elmo and Silent stepped out of the coral.
I dove off my animal and gathered them into a monster hug. They returned it, and in best Black Company tradition did not ask a single question.
“Goddamn,” I said. “Goddamn, it’s good to see you. I heard you guys was wiped out out west somewhere.”
Elmo looked at the Lady with just the slightest hint of curiosity.
“Oh. Elmo. Silent. This is Ardath.”
She smiled. “So pleased to meet you. Croaker has said so much about you.”
I had not said a word. But she had read the Annals. She dismounted and offered her hand. Each took it, baffled, for only Darling, in their experience, expected treatment as an equal.
“Well, let’s go down,” I said. “Let’s go down. I’ve got a thousand things to report.”
“Yeah?” Elmo said. And that said a lot, for he looked up our backtrail as he said it.
Some people who had gone away with me had not come back.
“I don’t know. We had half the Taken after us. We got separated. I couldn’t find them again. But I never heard anything about them being captured. Let’s go down. See Darling. I’ve got incredible news. And get me something to eat. We’ve been eating each other’s cooking forever, and she’s a worse cook than I am.”