

### Horse Catcher

Louis Shalako

This Smashwords Edition copyright Louis Shalako and Long Cool One Books

Design: J. Thornton

ISBN 978-0-9916716-4-9

The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places or events is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters and incidents are the product of the author's imagination.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The author is deeply indebted to Edward Gibbon, author of _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ for the religion of the Kirtele Nation as well as more ancient sources in Greek, Latin, Syriac and Hebrew. Any errors of the text are the author's sole responsibility.

Chapter One

Dooley wakes up...

One by one the crew were awakened from stasis _,_ headspace, as their duties were required aboard ship. In some cases, decades had been spent in cold storage, with only their dreams for company. As the starship got closer and closer to the home world, the video, radio and laser-casts became ever more recent in date of origin, and ever more current.

The data was ever more relevant to the actual situation as it existed on Earth. Down there, the present day was circa 14,059 _anno domini._ Their faster-than-light outward journey lasted three generations. Twelve thousand years of history had passed. Avid study of the signal spectrum was crucial to the survival of the passengers and crew of _Ark One._ They had the dubious honour of sitting in review, objective observers in accelerated time, as the future unfolded in reverse from out of the past.

At the time of departure, radio had been in existence for a century and a half. The outer edge of Earth's bubble of electromagnetic radiation dated back to a time when signals were faint, sparse, and sporadic. Under deceleration, there was plenty of time to listen in and catch up on the news. Analysts were fascinated by the evolution of the languages over the centuries. The officers in charge of the ship determined that society had crashed shortly after departure, from chaotic environmental degradation and a worldwide economic collapse. This led to revolution, war, famine, disease, with a sudden consequent die-off of humanity and many higher animals. The closer to home they got, the more worrying and darker in tone the news became. Then they slowly began to wink out and fade from the airwaves, and one day there just wasn't anyone out there anymore. The world had re-entered a darker age of human experience. It was even possible that human life had gone extinct.

***

"Jesus Christ, I'm only twelve thousand years old. Why am I so tired all the time?" Dooley Peeters had a kind of never-ending internal monologue.

His top-priority briefing ended. Nothing he hadn't already guessed. Now it was all out in the open. The corridor was as cold as a witch's tit as soon as he opened up the door of the compartment. He scuttled along on wooden-stiff legs, shivering and cursing aloud. The room wouldn't let you out until you were briefed. You never got used to it. Thankfully, his quarters were only fifty metres along. As soon as he got in, the room lit up and the heaters kicked on. Feeling the quivery belly tension that comes from near-hypothermia, he bolted for the shower stall, grateful to strip out of the rubber suit, with its itchy and sometimes painful plug-ins, inserted into veins in wrists, ankles, groin and neck. You wanted to be careful not to accidentally yank one of the little stoppers out, and leak to death. It was quite difficult, and his patience was tried by the urgent need to get warm, but he had to be careful pulling the tubes out of the suit's reinforced circular openings.

The rush of negative emotions was intense, and some training in biofeedback and mood control was essential. You had to become objective about yourself, and learn to control your passions. Everybody felt the same way when they came out of the suit.

"The one common element in all of human experience is suffering." The briefings always ended the same way.

We suffer for the common good.

Complete with feet, mitts and a hood, like a baby's sleeper, the suit protected against ice-up. His skin was pink, wrinkled and moist as he clambered out of it and disposed of it in the chute. The first lukewarm drops of the shower spray stung like a sandblaster on a sunburn. He gritted his teeth and thought about what came next. An unwelcome glimpse in the steam-fogged mirror revealed the deep-set lines from where the face-rig clipped on with elastic straps. The sphincter-like ring in the hood left a solid blue line, crinkled around his forehead, under the chin, and along both cheeks. He looked like death warmed over, but then they all did after wake-up. There was never any provision made for psychological or physical recovery. You were expected to be on the job a half hour later. Why the machine couldn't wake you up the day before was a mystery. The drain on life support wasn't all that great. In a ship of this size, there had to be so much air in the system just to fill the vessel up to the proper pressure. Whether or not anyone was there to breathe it was quite secondary.

He wanted a shave and a hot meal. Men complained about the way they felt, when talking about the experience. Women complained about the way they looked. Or was that just bullshit, from the secret little book that women passed around amongst themselves, never letting a mere man get a look at it? He wondered what the operating manual for a woman's mind looked like.

Based on past experience, it would be two or three days before he could take a dump.

He needed some clean pants, a shirt, a cup of coffee and a smoke. Dooley Peeters had his priorities in the proper perspective. The damned plug-ins still itched, especially with the sting of hot water and soap on the red-rimmed _Fluid Entry Points._ The fluid was based on the paw-pad antifreeze of Siberian husky dogs, distilled from tissues grown in an industrial-scale in-vitro process. This was mixed with a blood-plasma replacement rich in oxygen, due to the low temperatures and therefore the slow pace of chemical reactions under hibernation.

He wanted to remove the Fluid Entry Points as soon as humanly possible. He lived for that day, when he was feeling a little down. For a moment he reveled in being grumpy, as he began lathering up his hair.

The scary part was when you had to put the mask on, knowing full well that a few seconds later a sickly-sweet, pungent smell would come through, and you would be knocked out. Certain thoughts never left. They showed up in your dreams. Dooley's heart began to race at the thought. He carefully cleared his mind of animal fear. Good posture and long, slow breaths were the key.

It took real guts to suit up, after a while. The first few times were all right. But that was before he had all that time to think, and to calculate the odds.

Statistically speaking, sooner or later you wouldn't wake up.

You could only tempt the odds so many times, and he accepted that part. What scared him was the possibility that your number might come up on the very first roll of the dice. It might not be an entirely rational fear, but it was his, and his alone, and he just had to live with it. It felt very reassuring to button up a clean white cotton shirt, and to feel the rug under the soles of his bare feet. With luck, he would never have to put the mask on again.

The key thing was to make no mistakes. It was all he could do, to pray for luck, and prepare for the worst. Dooley liked living, and the notion that the universe could just as well do without him was a distinctly unwelcome one. At last, he could have a smoke and a half-decent cup of coffee.

Dooley feared that random hit of bad luck.

Chapter Two

" _By all and thunder..."_

"By all and thunder." Kjarl cursed as the black sky was split apart by cracks of lightning.

Sheets of rain came pummeling down to lash their mount's eyes, the horses' heads now whipping from side to side in a vain attempt to evade the painful impact of numerous pea-sized hailstones. They were tucking their heads under, having stopped dead in their tracks. Kjarl stood on the stirrups and waved his right arm around in a circle, if in fact any of the boys could see him.

"Ho-lay." He bellowed into the face of the storm. "Ho-lay!"

The man close at his left reigned in his mount under the wide-spreading branches of a hickory tree.

"One place is as good as another." Akim grimaced. "I'm already soaked!"

Kjarl rounded his horse and put it in under the tree as well. Her hoof-beats were soft, dull thuds on the decomposing twigs and leaf litter. The thunder rang out all around them, rumbling on and on forever. It had been going on like this for three days now.

"Damn this weather." A trickle of cold rainwater began to slide its inexorable way down the back of Kjarl's collar.

He must quell this rising impatience. The white stallion was a passion of his, but real horses in the corral are what brought profits. Akim sat silently beside him, watching the rain come down, waiting to see if anyone would heed the signal to halt the drive. A couple of riders came into view. They stopped where they were until visibility returned.

The sound of a faint cry came from the land to the west, where the gully ran up against the biggest hill. The thing to do was to shelter the horse's eyes and hold steady when caught in the open in a hailstorm.

"They got the signal." Kjarl noted the faint trace of pride in Akim's voice.

Kjarl was building a team of men that he could work with.

While he didn't expect to be the biggest horse-trader in the Kirtele Nation, it didn't pay to think too small. One or two men could only catch so many mounts, no matter how skilled.

With the proper crew, he could catch a hundred times as many. So far, Kjarl was successful enough at catching horses, that quite a number of men had clamoured to go with him. They expected a share of any success, which was never certain. If he failed, some of them wouldn't be willing to try again. If he had only limited success, the payouts to the men would take most if not all of his profits, taking into account meat-offerings to the Horse-catcher's Guild, and token fees and sacrifices at some of the other guilds and temples.

The rain was letting up. The pressure to perform was heavy, and so he had gambled on a new place, not far from the village of Kuub. Here at least he knew the lay of the land, although he wasn't too sure of how many mounts there might be in this particular valley. The reason for choosing this one was that he knew at least one horse had been seen here very recently. An early success, especially after the last few days, would help to bond the crew to his leadership. And if by some great good fortune they should sight the white stallion, then they would believe. Faith had the power to move men. Kjarl planned on building up a breeding herd of his own over time.

Akim gave him a look, but he wasn't ready to move yet. At twenty-two summers, Akim was second in command. He was studious, taciturn but not always tactful, son of a bow-maker. He was the most professional of Kjarl's men. Akim had been test firing his father's weapons for customers since he was about five summers old. None of this really mattered, but the fact that he was the oldest helped, and the fact that he could read, write and do arithmetic was absolutely vital. The fact that the dark, skinny Akim might be able to fight in a pinch was a plus.

"Let's move them out." The younger man nodded.

The worst of the squall was over. Akim cantered out from cover, and Kjarl followed. Akim stood up and waved. There were whoops and hollers from the half-dozen riders who shared this part of the drive. He had two riders on the other side, the left bank of the river, riding a little ahead of his own position and two riders up on the ridge of the hills to the west. With the bank so steep, and the hillside almost a cliff, a pair of riders would be enough to dismay most of any herd caught in here.

There was a tumbling side creek. It came in from the right side, a half hour's ride up ahead. Ten days previously, Akim and a trio of other men had gone up there, cut down some pitch pine, and barred the side creek between a pair of buttressed cliff-faces. There was no way horses could get out of that. Just past that creek, a barren cliff of pure white clay came down almost vertically right into the river, which had carved the place. The key thing was to get the herd into that small gully before they panicked. The plan was Kjarl's. The feat of explaining, and persuading the men had been partly his, and partly Akim's. He couldn't escape the gift of speaking that the young man had. In a small way, Kjarl was even jealous of it.

Any horses that tried to escape would have to swim the river, and the bank on the far side was steep and covered in trees and brush. In Kjarl's estimation, it would be too difficult for a horse to climb up out of the water there, although probably not impossible.

Even to a panic-stricken animal, it wasn't an attractive prospect. While a stallion might fight, the rest of the herd tended to remain passive, and accept a situation as long as they weren't being outright eaten alive by wolves or bears or cats. He wanted to catch horses, not drown them. He hoped they would be smart enough to return to the west bank, or he could try roping them as they went past in the water. That was a hard thing to do, very chancy at best. It wasn't worth losing a man over. The bank was too steep and the current too strong. The important thing was not to let the horses get past their line.

Kjarl was relying on the old adage, 'Where there's one, there's bound to be two,' and the fact that foals and yearlings would follow the mares. It was vital to keep them from becoming separated. The studs could try to climb out, or swim out, but Kjarl would be extremely pleased to catch a few pregnant mares, and a shy yearling colt or two.

It would be a start, and if this was to be a successful business venture, they had better start catching something soon. The valley narrowed in a little further ahead. They were picking up tracks, if the distinctive whistle he heard from Arnis over to the right was any indication. Arnis looked over significantly and held up four fingers. Four!

Kjarl spurred gently and his mount, a dappled grey mare called Acorn, took the bit firmly between her teeth and lunged forward, responding eagerly to the stimulus of the chase.

***

"I swear by the Red Wanderer, that looks like Brother Raffin." Akim pointed as the pair of riders entered a fringe of the dark forest, the thud of hoofs swallowed up by the moist turf of the bottomlands. "Hey!"

Brother Raffin was wending his way on the thin wisp of a game-trail along the lip of the steep bank. A waist-high screen of wild flowers and grasses obscured the obligatory sandals, but the monks in their cowls and their cloaks were a familiar sight to most of the Kirtele. They had one of their network of world-wide fastnesses up in the northeastern hills of the Kirtele holdings.

They held tenure on the land by the consent of the Council of the Kirtele nation. The brother must have come down the trail that led up from the gulley to the village of Kuub, perhaps a kyle and a half further up the river. The trail was too steep and too narrow for horses, in fact the game-trail was barely discernable as Kjarl knew, but it was there if you were determined, and agile enough.

Brother Raffin strode towards them, swinging his staff in a hearty fashion, with a cheerful look on his face. Kjarl and Akim waited to meet the man, who might have invaluable information regarding horses, wolves, or even bandits ahead. Kjarl wondered how the fellow could stand the heat of summer or even the chill of winter in the dank woolen cloak, with its heavy hood. The long staff, sign of his ministry, with its silver crook, might be helpful in walking, but it was no substitute for proper transportation. The staff was said to be useful in beating off assailants. As yet, no thief had found the skill or sheer audacity to relieve the man of it. Raffin looked to be about ten stone and six, stones of fourteen pounds each.

The brother was about thirty-five summers old, with a bald crown surrounded by long, wild blonde locks under the cowl which he rarely pulled down in even the hottest summer weather. He was a familiar sight in the village of Kuub, and half a dozen places within a radius of twenty or thirty kyles. His sky-blue eyes were accentuated rather than obscured by the thick, hand ground spectacles he wore. The monks were not all single, unmarried men, although Raffin was. Those destined for the priestly orders were forbidden to marry. They swore an oath of honour, sacrifice, chastity and service to all men. The lower orders of monks were teachers, warriors, healers, scribes, lawyers, whatever service was needed. The Brethren were nothing if not political, so their favours were dispensed according to the exigencies of the moment, as Akim would have said. His political acumen wasn't why Kjarl had hired him. The monks preserved what ancient knowledge they could, in their hide-bound books and those chip things and the machines that could speak. How much they actually understood of it was any man's guess.

"I'm sorry if we disturbed your meditations." Kjarl began with courtesy.

Akim offered Raffin a snort from his wineskin, which he gratefully accepted. He politely waved off a plug of tobacco.

"To work is to pray, especially in this business." Akim had a sense of humour.

"The Gods appreciate honest toil and labour." Raffin winked.

"Perhaps the Gods will buy you a horse someday." Kjarl never knew what to say to Raffin.

He didn't quite understand why, but sparks always flew between him and Raffin whenever they met. It wasn't that they didn't like each other exactly. Somehow they were rivals, like two brothers hoeing the same row, or two leaders, competing for the same group of men.

"I don't mind walking." Brother Raffin regarded the tall, brown-haired horse-catcher with his glittering hazel eyes and the slim, dark-eyed Akim, with his shaven head and a blue-dyed scalplock hanging boyishly over his left eye.

"Have you seen any horses? Any tracks?" Akim had duty rather than gossip in mind.

There was also the knowledge that he had persuaded his father to let him join up with Kjarl as opposed to being articled to the Forester's Guild, and spending the rest of his life stirring maple syrup, burning potash, or making soap or charcoal for months at a time.

"Yes, you may be in luck, although not so lucky for your victims!"

This brought a flush of pink to Kjarl's sun-hardened features, dark and aquiline at the best of times. His green-brown eyes glittered with a kind of repressed humour, jaw twitching.

"How many horses did you see?" Kjarl asked in a reasonable tone of voice. "Any wolves?"

"I didn't see any horses or wolves." Seeing Kjarl's visage darken further, he hastened to clarify. "But I did hear hoof-beats, and there are a number of horsey-footprints. You might be able to catch a couple of sway-backed old mares, pregnant with twins."

Raffin bit back a remark about a stray cow, or a wolf. No sense in it. A wolf was worth a few shillings for the bounty. With a laugh he turned away, but Kjarl wasn't ready to just let him go.

He dismounted from Acorn, and began walking. The horse stood there, then began to

follow Kjarl. When Raffin glanced back for one more parting shot, he was bemused to

see Kjarl on foot, a kerchief over his head like a monk's habit, swinging his bow like a big walking-stick, with the confused horse following him around like a lost puppy dog. Akim convulsed in silent stitches upon his mount, trying not to be rude.

"So your horse loves you. Big deal." Raffin was at a loss as to whether or not to try again.

His momentary silliness had unaccountably gone. Kjarl wasn't a bad man, he was just misunderstood. He was the most single-minded young buck the Brother knew. He really did have a way with horses. Everyone has their little gifts, the brothers taught. The trouble with Kjarl was that sociability wasn't one of them. That was unfair. The man was just trying to make a living. In that sense, Brother Raffin was lucky. The brotherhood paid him a monthly stipend, and the occasional small fee for a wedding or a funeral was supplemented by begging or simply scrounging around in people's gardens. Brother Raffin wasn't under the same pressures that Kjarl faced. People killed a chicken for dinner when Raffin came. The story would be repeated endlessly around the fire tonight in Kjarl's camp. The man simply had to do something, rather than be diminished in the eyes of his troop of young men.

Teasing him wasn't very kind. Teasing a man with no sense of humour wasn't very smart either. The fact that Kjarl could actually attempt to make fun of him, was food for thought. He wouldn't have thought him capable of it.

***

The valley was closing in, but the trees were also growing taller and closer together, crowded into a smaller space by the steep walls and the rampaging white water of the Litt'ossabow River.

Akim and Kjarl waited as the men dressed their line. They were only separated by a hundred or so feet now. Kjarl kept the flank for himself, not trusting any of these fellows to handle a rope or make any kind of quick decision. It was easier for him to watch in only one direction.

There was Arnis, then Akidorn, then Alpirt, the three brothers who had signed on right from the start, but beyond the forest swallowed everything up. Alpirt was relaying hand signals from someone further on. A quick mental review of the deployment told Akim that it would be Skorpdal, a fellow from the village of Kuub and the newest member of their crew. Kjarl had good reason to put him in the middle, where he could do little harm if he lagged or out-rode the rest.

Kjarl waited patiently, but then gave a quick forward wave of his right hand, and it was repeated up the line. As one man, they set forwards, converging as the valley narrowed and as trees permitted. The biggest drawback was that no one really had the stomach to force their horses through the great heaping mounds of berry-canes, with their multiplicity of viciously sharp thorns. The noise of horses thrashing in the underbrush should be enough to drive any wild herd before it. As yet, no challenge had been heard from a rival stallion. He would be sure to defend his harem.

As if called up on cue by the puppet-master who haunted the marketplace in any town or village, the ragged whinnying cry of a wild horse rent the unnatural silence of the woods and the suspense of the moment. Along the river, white stones were scattered along in a pale, sloping beach. Kjarl caught Akim's eye.

"There's the last fording-place." Kjarl whispered. "Now we drive them!"

On their left, a hedge of dead trees obscured their view of the river, although the roar of the white water was strong.

Kjarl's eyes locked onto Akim's in triumph, and the younger man suddenly understood why the other did this. The feeling was shared but a second, and then Kjarl's voice rang out like a clarion call, his savage ululation of glee and vindication the result of emotions and stresses too long pent-up in the breast of a civilized man.

Akim almost fell backwards off of his horse as it leapt forward. He started to curse the boss aloud, but then thought better of it.

"Yah! Yah! Yah!" Akim shouted, feeling the blood course through his veins, and knowing that from now on, he was to be a horse-catcher. "Yee-hah!"

***

As the monk rambled along the riverbank, his mind was going both ways at once.

One moment it was a pearl of deep introspective wisdom, next he sang some silly little lullaby from his youth. For one so used to solitude, to entertain oneself in such a way was no great stretch. He had composed great ballads in his mind along this pathway of life. He had never taken the trouble to write them down.

He should, someday, before it was too late. Raffin quickly shook off that morbid thought. With a six-hour walk in front of him, it was best to remain cheerful.

The village of T'seela was his destination. He'd grown up in T'seela, although it had changed so much that he no longer recognized but a handful of its residents. His parents, even most of his aunts and uncles, had long since passed on. He was aware of one or two cousins. They must still be out there somewhere, but he hadn't looked them up in years. The village had about a thousand souls in it, or so they claimed.

His sister Benefritha still lived there, a widow with two small daughters, Zithloe and Teela.

As a boy, he and some friends had gone from street to street and from house to house, trying to see if they could count all the people. With so many closed doors, and so many empty yards, the task quickly proved an impossible one. The boys had found better fortune simply by closing their eyes, and counting up in their heads every person they knew. The four of them soon came up with the names of three 'tens of tens' of folks, and that was just the people they knew. They were satisfied with their answer, and they quickly lost interest. That was his first big burst of youthful self-awareness. He had no real memories before that.

It was only when he got older, when he learned that they could have gone to any village council member with their question. Small boys care nothing for politics. Every thought brought a fresh mystery to a boy's eye, but adults had to keep track of numbers of households, numbers of people, and the number of heads of tribute due to the Council.

It was the price of manhood to understand this. You had to give up a little of your innocence. It was that very conflict, and a kind of natural turning away, that led him to join the Brethren.

Chapter Three

The observatory was a musical place...

The Observatory was a musical place, as a gnat brushed up against his cheek three or four times. Norakis couldn't take his hands off the dials, or the locking knob just yet.

He sensed the presence of Tsernalik, with his hookah burbling and bubbling behind and off to his left in the traditional relationship between master and student. A softly glowing ember reflected in the black pits of his teacher's eyes was the only hint of his patient tuition. No one really knew why the teacher had to sit there, they just did. Like the stool he sat upon, the teacher's was bolted to the ring of gleaming steel that dominated the centre of the room, rotating on bearings. The circular platform was driven at a set pace by clockwork gears, powered by the water from the River Halissarnok, twenty-five _pasangs_ away up in the hills. This system enabled scholars to follow the heavenly body of most interest to him or her. With his man Naion treading the cyclic for the fan over his head, he carefully reached up and brushed at his face with a quickly grasped handkerchief. The down-rushing air cooled the observer.

"Ugh."

"Patience, lad." His mentor Tsernalik spoke quietly. "He'll get here...he'll get here."

The pair of them had been waiting quite a long time for a servant to bring some chilled wine. While the night was cooler now, sweat trickling down into the eyepieces would spoil his observation, and it would also entail painstaking and time-consuming cleaning.

To leave a dirty eyepiece for the next student was considered the utmost in discourtesy.

Star of Dogs was predictable enough to set the Observatory's clocks by, but other objects were also fascinating because of their very unpredictability. Perhaps different-ness was a better word. Red Wanderer, for example, was among them, with its apparent retrograde motion, which was visible, predictable, and measurable. The five brightest stars in the sky exhibited similar motions. Tsernalik said it was because they were in a bigger orbit around the sun than the Earth. He'd barely even heard the word before. Their orbit was bigger than Earth's, but how could Tsernalik prove it?

When is a star not a star?

A thousand scholars had debated for over a hundred years on the significance of that.

The glowing blood-red orb of the astral wanderer was always a good test of the arithmetic skills of a student. He shivered, but not from any chill in the humid night air. He shivered in a kind of ecstasy, unaware that this brought a small smile of approval from his teacher, intent more upon the student's face, and body-talk than by any routine examination of the heavens. The young man had fought long and hard to get here, going up before examination council after examination council. The hardest ones to convince had been his own parents.

With the tubular ring of the sighting bore pressing up against his left eye, his best, the young fellow contemplated the good fortune that had allowed his victory. His victory over his father, who had wanted him standing ready to take over the family's holdings some day, just in case.

The mentor saw all this reflected in his visage and his posture, and approved the sentiment.

Better to live than to reign.

The cluster of observatory buildings included a number like this one, although there was a great disparity in size between them. He was fortunate to have bagged the biggest one tonight, due to the influence of the teacher. It was a tall, drum-like building, open to the full night sky overhead, but also ringed with three rows of precisely constructed windows. These were geometrically accurate in their placement around the circumference of the space they sat in. The northern star, the only 'fixed' one in the sky, sat some few degrees above a notch on the north side. The star _Vigga_ bobbed up and down over the course of the year. Some theorists said that even _it_ moved, albeit slowly. The slender, wire-thin cruciform frames mounted in each window were used for making the most accurate measurements of the astral display ever attempted. Beads strung on them could be moved accurately by slaves on a catwalk just under each ring of portals. The next morning, when full light returned, the position could be accurately measured, and then the accuracy of their star maps, and the prophecies made from them, would be assured. It was very scientific. The slaves who wound up the frames, placing the cross-lines in exact position in accordance with whispered commands—silence was another ancient tradition in the observatory—were chosen for patience and docility. In ancient times their tongues had been removed, but this was no longer the practice. Now they were carefully selected for good hearing and acuity of vision in dim light. Overhead, a crisscross grid of wires were stretched taut, so higher angle shots could be taken of stars in the night sky, with beads affixed to relevant cables and then winched into position. This type of measurement, made by stepladder, was notoriously inaccurate.

That's why his seat couldn't be moved, or raised or lowered, and that was why the lower end of the sighting-bore was fixed, in the sense that the bottom end was mounted on a fantastically expensive but precision-crafted ball joint. It was a legend, in that it was said to be taken from the drive-mechanism of an old land-cruiser, ten thousand years old.

It was irreplaceable. For theoretical purposes, the exact centre of the ball was considered to be the centre of the universe, although everyone agreed it was but a mean and arbitrary convention. It was the highly polished mirror mounted a few fingers ahead of it, and what it would reveal that had inspired, driven and motivated the young astronomer. Mirrors looking into mirrors, it was both a riddle and a dream.

In order to look at something, you had to move the other end of the tube, and the turning-table it was all mounted on was equipped with system of gears, pulleys, cranks, counterweights, and slaves to power it all. The water-powered turntable followed the arc of the stars in the heavens, and the telescope could select an individual star. It was elegant in its simplicity and thoroughness, and adjustable with different sets of cogs. It had a valve to control water flow through the turntable. It was useful for all kinds of cosmic observations.

It was an impressive piece of equipment, and they had it to themselves. He held his breath for a moment, listening to the lyrical sounds of the ever-present life of the school. When a priest and an acolyte in another part of the observatory complex struck a gong, the note told of the hour, or the minute, or a ten or a five. By pre-arrangement between various schools of philosophy, timers could be induced to chime the one-minutes and even the seconds, using their musical system of notes in order to measure or check certain observations with mathematical precision.

The observatory was also a teaching facility, thrumming with activity, for astronomical observations of solar eclipses were made during daylight. It was also used in lunar studies, and predicting the seasons and weather. In the fresh, drier breezes of the evening, darkening quickly in this locale, the university was a place of music, and the tune it beat out was the song of the cosmos. His new home was a long ways away from his boyhood land of Mittainagor. He wondered for a brief, smiling minute what the old folks were doing back at home. A strange new object caught his attention, just above and to the left of the tip of the sighting-bore. It was just an amorphous, pale little blob. His heart stumbled at the notion that it was bird-poo on the upper lens. He irrationally thought that it hadn't been there when he arrived. But, it wasn't in the mirror, it was outside of the view of the tube...if he hadn't looked up just then, he might never have noticed it.

"What's that, Master?"

It looked like nothing more than a piece of cotton lint, hanging in the black velvet of the heavens between a pair of familiar stars of _The Heron_ constellation.

Chapter Four

The herd was cornered and they knew it...

The herd was cornered. Turning on the noises that had prodded them in this direction, the stallion's wild call rang out again and again, hoping to challenge some rival male. The situation was not of his understanding, and the big chestnut turned away from the line of tall, strange, yet half-familiar on-comers.

The lead mare pushed hard with her shoulders and turned away, the whole line of them slamming out of the trees and wheeling across a small clearing for a brief second, as the stallion picked and pranced, uncertain which alleyway through the trees might lead to safety. His first instinctive urge was to fight, but in the face of his own confusion, the confrontation with organization and tactics he could never conceive on his own, his only option was retreat. Kjarl's carefully plotted teamwork was too much to contend with.

The gulley was blocked. The forest was thick and full, heavy with vines hanging in thick ropes from above, with plenty of cane thickets, impenetrable clumps of hawthorns and small potholes of green, greasy swamp. It was the small, sun-kissed meadows of spring grasses that had attracted them in here, and which now had become their undoing. The maple buds were only just cracking out of their skins. The sight of the herd curling back around in front of them awed Akim in its simple rawness. The horses had no way of knowing that the men meant them no harm. Their determination to avoid capture was balanced by a kind of resignation, a defeat written in the clearly visible whites of their eyes and the tongues now hanging out on some of the weaker members of the herd. Thin white foam streaked its way down withers and flanks of the animals. The scene was terrible, barbaric in its beauty. The sound of all those crushing hooves was unforgettable. It could be felt deep in the guts, right up from the ground and through the legs of his mount. An azure hole in the sky mocked reality, in its distant inscrutability.

"Zoh-Soh." Akim called off to the right.

Kjarl studied the hindmost horses as they attempted to batter an escape through the underbrush. The signal came back, an indeterminate number of voices, excitedly acknowledging Akim's call.

"Aoh-soh!"

"Help them." On Kjarl's order, Akim promptly rode back behind his employer to snag and pull into position the first of the fir trees stacked and piled up under the forest canopy for just these purposes.

The singing cry of a blue-jack, perched on a branch, followed his passing. All was quiet a hundred feet away with little but an arc of flattened grass and newly bent saplings to show the animals had ever been there.

"Well, they're in there." Kjarl rode out of a gap in the barrier before he got closed in with the wild ones.

"Any idea how many?" The younger man's chest was taut with nerves, making it hard to get a good breath.

"No. Maybe half a dozen." It was sheer speculation.

The impression Kjarl got from the quick encounter with the herd was at least a half a dozen really healthy-looking animals, maybe a couple of old ones. He thought there were three or four young animals, easily spotted by their tendency to stick very close to their dams. As for the stallion, if they could actually get it to a marketplace, or one of the bigger fairs in the more settled southern tier of Kirtele counties, they could make all the costs back for the trip on the sale of one animal. A creature like that would go a long way towards cementing Kjarl's reputation as a horse-catcher when enough of the right sort of buyers beheld it.

"Here comes the rain again." Akim groaned in disbelief.

"Well, that may help them to settle down in there. Ride down and tell the men to keep quiet, and if they want to talk, get fifty or a hundred paces back from the fence."

"And no fires." His employer regarded him with a brief smile, the first Akim had seen in at least three days. "Yes, sir."

With a gesture, he rode off at a measured pace, meaning to speak to every man on the line. With some of them so new, their training was very much as-it-happened. He had better make sure to check for thin spots in the fence as well.

Kjarl stood up on his stirrups and waved, making himself as tall and visible as possible. He hallooed at the men on the far side of the river. The herd hadn't tried it in the heavy rain. He couldn't see anyone over there. Perhaps they were anticipating him. Suddenly it was very quiet.

Notbala came cantering up on his mount, a strong and youthful brown mare that was his own property, and not supplied by Kjarl. This earned him double pay as compared to a man without a horse. Notbala carried a capable-looking black bow slung over his shoulders, although Kjarl had never seen him shoot. That side of the family had some small reputation as fiercely independent smallholders up in the hills where the Litt'ossaba had its source.

"Can I get you to ride back and look for the muck-wagon?"

"Yes, sir." Kjarl grinned as the fellow rubbed his belly in an exaggerated manner.

Notbala was a good lad, and on this trip he seemed to have settled down, in full confidence that he could do what was asked of him. He seemed to be having the time of his life. He wheeled and spurred away.

Notbala's mother was Belletha, Kjarl recalled. He never hired a man he didn't know, or a boy he hadn't studied a little. It only made sense. The stakes were too high. Belletha was an accomplished potter, and his mother's second cousin. This distant blood relationship didn't necessarily buy Notbala any special consideration, but the boy was working out very well.

Lek and the dogs must be back there somewhere.

***

The Kirtele are a nation of traders, farmers, hunters, trappers, and fishermen. Horse-catching was an old and time-honoured tradition. They were also great storytellers. Ages ago, under pressure from larger and stronger tribes from the southeast, the thirty villages had migrated a thousand kyles to the northwest to a hilly, mostly wooded country with fertile, open plains. It was cut by meandering rivers that sprang up in a range of small mountains that rimmed their northern borders with the lake tribes. Settling down, the villages began spreading out.

A part of their territory straddled the Great River, and the access to the trade that navigated the watery highway across the continent had helped them to a pleasant prosperity in their new home. To the south, the once-dominant Kulatawas were driven further north before the victorious Tczlinacoque Confederation. This was a kingdom in everything but name, dominated by the Five Cities, or Pentapolis.

Worshippers of the sky and the rain-god, they excised men's hearts at the point of a knife made of crystalline volcanic glass and offered them up to the demonic underworld gods that they adored or perhaps feared most. They were an agricultural people, who had built and maintained vast irrigation projects to the south. Word of their rapidly expanding empire had come up with trade along the Great River. Their wealth sustained a large, well-equipped standing army.

Every spring, the river flooded its dikes and inundated the land. Some said thirty, some said a hundred kyles wide in places, it deposited a thick layer of rich and fertile silt on the farmlands of the Tczlinacoque, who spoke a northern dialect of Espanlisshke.

The nomadic Kulatawas herded animals on the grassy plains through the cold of winter and the heat of summer, returning season after season to hereditary garden plots along small rivers in the northern part of their range. They lived in houses of mud-brick, with flat roofs, and small, square-shuttered windows, with oiled paper or thin-scraped skin to admit a little light, but that kind of building was only common in their larger, semi-permanent towns. For the most part the Kulatawas were not politically organized into larger units. The majority of them lived in nomadic tent villages. Their tents were framed up from light timbers which they carried with them in heavy wagons. They moved around a lot in different seasons, camping on lands held by the villagers in common.

It was little wonder they couldn't stand up to the military machine being built by their immediate neighbours to the southwest.

***

Kjarl was exultant when the noise and excitement died down. An initial count was made by olive skinned Akidorn. Seventeen-summers old, the lad was rotund yet solid, and considered himself capable of great feats of strength. He described roughly seven animals. By his story they were fairly large, although he wasn't the most reliable witness, having little experience. His enthusiasm was apparent, with dark eyes flashing and arms waving. He told the story in vehement tone and rapid gestures.

When Akidorn volunteered to go into the corral, others nearby grinned. A brisk little trade in bets and side-bets immediately sprang up, with everyone guessing at the outcome. Some were betting on the number of horses inside, others were placing bets on whether Akidorn would get caught. Angry horses can give a man a serious beating. After a half an hour of almost unbearable stillness, Akidorn's return impressed Kjarl due to the stealthy way he materialized a few steps from the other side of their hastily prepared gate. This was made up of nothing more than a trio of poles jammed into the sides of the brush barrier. For such a big boy to make it in and out, with no major eruptions from the trapped animals was quite an achievement.

"Seven!" Akim was tying the gate poles. "That's good news."

"There might be more, there might be less." Kjarl didn't want to be disappointed. "I'm pleased the trap worked. Once we have a crew trained properly, we can use this tactic somewhere else."

He could even send men off to do it on their own...but that lay far in the future. Kjarl gave the two of them a nod and turned away to look for the gut-wagon and the campsite that Lek, their cook, had chosen for the night.

Kjarl was always coming up with new tricks, Akim knew. He left Akidorn on the gate, and rode off to locate everybody, and to figure out who was staying out for the first shift. With luck, he could have everyone fed within an hour or so.

With dusk not too far off, he had to consider the difficulties of relieving the men, getting them fed, getting them back on station, and then supervising them in ever-deepening gloom.

First thing in the morning, they would begin taking the mounts. His nostrils caught a hint of wood-smoke on the breeze. Good, the camp was up and running then. Gennak and Kormis came riding up to him.

"Go on back and get dinner." Akim gave his orders in a firm, but friendly tone. "You two will be on the early shift tonight."

They wheeled and walked their horses north along the bank, tired enough after a full day in the saddle. They had spent the whole afternoon on the far side of the river, just trying to keep proper station, hearing little, and seeing nothing. It was tough and exhausting work, with not much glory to show for it. It did bring with it an impressive number of cuts, scratches, and gashes across arms and legs. With wet horses after crossing at the ford, it involved extra care with your mount as well. When you accepted a horse from Kjarl, you signed a piece of paper for it. If you were lucky, you might earn it and own it. This was a major incentive.

Even in this weather, a warmish day in early spring, both men had foolishly worn only their breechclouts, with tall moccasins and hunting shirts. That was their problem.

They knew the night before that they were going to be over there. The cook would see to their wounds, if necessary. People tended to heal quickly under the hairy old bugger's rough ministrations. An extended program of care was beyond most men's patience.

It was a testament to Kjarl's trust in the cook, that he didn't let him near the horses with his ointments, salves, liniments and herbal remedies. Kjarl doctored the horses himself. The cook good enough at doctoring for the men, thought Akim with a smile.

***

The Kirtele village came in sight as Brother Raffin rounded a turn of the road. T'seela was typical in that the houses, shaped for all the world like loaves of bread, were scattered along the road. Villages literally went on for kyles, with each house having a vast plot of garden and pasture and woodlot behind it. Every Kirtele seemed to have a craft, and most had a hobby or sideline to make additional money.

People kept bees, chickens, pigs, ducks, geese, goats, everything behind their homes. The Kirtele grew herbs, gourds, and flowers by the thousand. The people who lived by farming grew squash, maize, beans, sunflowers, sweet potatoes, onions, all kinds of vegetables. Some Kirtele had vast holdings of land planted in wheat, barley, oats and flax. Virtually everyone grew tobacco or smoke-weed. There were Kirtele who had herds of animals, but they tended to be small herds kept on private landholdings, as opposed to the Kulutawas, with their common-tenure, open range system. The Kulutawas raised beef, the Kirtele did a mixed and rather intensive type of dairy farming.

His eyes were greeted by the friendly organic shapes of the houses. When three or four clustered together at a cross-trail, there were more people about, at the very least a few small children in a yard or doorway. The sky overhead was as blue as a robin's egg, with a thin scattering of high, soft clouds hanging there, not going anywhere in a hurry. Bees and birds chirped and hummed and buzzed in the sun-dappled glades.

The footbridge creaked underfoot and the clear, stony brook underneath gurgled in passing. While the tall stone keeps of the Brethren were certainly impressive, the simple mud, straw and stone homes of the Kirtele always cheered him up. They were his people. This was his Ministry. The bridge was wide enough for two to pass, or one man on a horse. It washed out every winter, but it was always rebuilt.

At low water, a horse and wagon could use the ford, or herds of cattle, or sheep, or horses. If there was a big spring flood on the river, at a pinch, the herdsmen who passed down these roads could get a herd over on the narrow bridge, but wagons would be floated across. Otherwise they simply had to wait.

The most interesting Kirtele houses were the ones with two stories, with a wide first floor and a narrow upper story with balconies on all four sides. The roof of the upper floor had huge overhangs to keep water off the balconies. Everything the Kirtele made had a pragmatic feel to it, yet the effect was cheerful and decorative in its simplicity.

It usually took him about two weeks to walk his circuit, but this time around, there had been three deaths, four births, and a wedding in the village of Woollitt, located at the extreme southern end of his route.

Chapter Five

Nodrakis found himself in the front row...

Prince Nodrakis was in the front row, an unaccustomed position for the shy scholar. The incessant murmur of a thousand voices rumbled back from the tall stone walls of the Imperial Theatre, the largest lecture hall on campus. Tsernalik came to the fore of the proscenium, and waved at the crowd. The noise tapered off. Reluctantly the house came to order. He stood with a tolerant smile on his open, bearded face, the grey wisps of his eyebrows shadowing his eyes from the insistent light from five hundred blazing torches. Tsernalik changed his posture, and the silence reigned supreme. His mentor's voice shot out, filling the room and as always impressing the young protégé with its confidence, its strength, and its stark brevity. The man lectured in easily remembered clichés, armoured with the ring of truth. It was good rhetoric. He idly noted a pair of slaves, who began to snuff some of the turches in the front of the room. He grinned. It was all part of the show.

"Those who have the farthest to fall hit the hardest." The voice of Tsernalik held the assembled scholars, teachers, governors, foreign dignitaries, and senior students. "Our discovery of the body recently dubbed the Chariot of God by bazaar gossip has placed this institution on the horns of a dilemma."

The quiet in the room was impressive, but of course the news had been out for days now, and they had all had an opportunity to think about the implications. There was plenty of time for discussion beforehand. The age-old argument, with all of its social and theological impact, was about to be resurrected, with fateful but unknown consequences.

"The world is a ball. That is why it has a horizon for the clouds, or the sails of a ship to arise from. If you look closely at the diagrams provided, you will see that if indeed the world was flat, a ship must simply get smaller and smaller the further away it gets. The notion that it would disappear, bottom first, and then more and more of the ship would sink below the horizon, is of course ludicrous."

The hum in the room increased considerably, while the speaker held up a hand palm outwards. They knew what he was talking about, that was for certain. Everyone stared at an apparition, conjured up by the old philosopher with a quick nod at an aculyte. A white globe hung suspended over the stage, dramatically lit from one side and slightly below. A slave circled under it, moving the lantern to show the model of the moon in crescent, as far as stage lighting would permit. As the import of the shadows of the craters and dark splotches on the model sank in to the collective consciousness of the audience, the room became very silent. This was the benefit and the purpose of the Observatory's long-running programs. The model was as real as their maps could make it, stunning from farther back, although Nodrakis could see one or two small imperfections from the front row. It was sobering to realize that he was an expert compared to most of the audience. That knowledge was won through effort. He had to give himself credit for that much.

"The real problem is not the question of whether there are gods or no gods, heavens or hells, or if the world is round, or if it as flat as a pan-cake. The real problem which has been created, and it is a fundamental one, is the fact, the notion, that arithmetic, that simple geometry, can be used to reveal certain deep and fundamental truths. The real problem is that we no longer need to rely on divinely revealed allegories from written yet contradictory sources, nor accept the literal interpretation of those documents by a priestly monopoly, or by some Imperial decree. What we have discovered, it is far more important than the threat posed by this body, or alternatively, by this god in his chariot."

The room was alternately silent as a crypt, when Tsernalik whipped his voice like that, but then the place responded with a thrumming noise that raised the hairs on Nodrakis' arms and neck. Goose bumps went up and down his body in waves.

"The world must be a sphere. Otherwise, you could see a candle at night from a hundred pasangs, or a watch fire from the other side of the Earth. You cannot do it, even if you stood on the tallest mountain. Our own experience tells us that to stand on a mountain is to see the curve of the horizon."

Nodrakis nodded in fond recollection. This was one of the first field trips a person was taken on as a first-year student.

"It has been speculated that everything is relative to your perspective." Tsernalik was in his element. "Looking at the diagram, it is proven that if the world was flat, only the size of the object can change. Our point of perspective can only change in the most miniscule fashion."

Tsernalik's sibilant hiss, yet strong enough to fill all the corners of the room, held the audience spellbound.

"That would be due to the height of your point of view, nothing more. Theoretically, if the world was flat you should be able to see right across to the other side, although it is immediately obvious that there are too many things in the way."

Tsernalik gave a sardonic grin. A quick glance around and Nodrakis saw comprehension on some faces and ignorance or confusion, rejection, or even _disgust,_ on others.

"The sun is a ball. The moon is a ball. We can see eleven percent of the other side of it because it circles our planet, and at the same time our planet rotates. Our point of view must change. Some believe that the newcomer to our cosmos is the chariot bearing some powerful new deity seeking supremacy and hegemony. To speculate on the motivations of a god are generally unprofitable."

Here a small smattering of chuckles broke out behind him. Nodrakis' own feeble attempts to pick up on some of his tutoring duties, his public speaking always left him tongue-tied, and even fumble-fingered. Also, he only half-believed what he was saying.

"I say it is an object. Moreover, if it were a god, then surely we must be safe enough, at least for the time being. If we are not slated for immediate destruction for some slight, real or imagined. For the gods are nothing if not capricious."

Again came the hum of voices in the vast hall. The chamber echoed and stilled, then echoed again. Certain voices from certain quarters were to be expected.

"A god could come down, and stand among us, and make the divine pleasure known to the worshipper. In fact such things are not unheard of, in prophecy, and even in history."

Nodrakis was awed by friend and confessor's raw and unadulterated intellectual courage. This was what brought him here, _but._ He gulped, his heart beating strongly in his chest. It was a feeling he wasn't very familiar with, as his life was sedentary, even cloistered. Nodrakis feared criticism. He wanted everyone to like him. But _this!_

"And I say this is an object. It is a real thing. It is coming this way, a simple conclusion drawn from its increase in apparent size and brightness. This is based on observation, facts, and not opinions of a metaphysical nature."

The roar of voices was quite strong now, but speakers in the main were able to handle all sorts of distractions, or they didn't last long in this day and age.

"I have no idea what would happen if the Red Wanderer should collide with the Morning Sentinel, or the Blue Giant, or the Horned One. But if that object is a ball, and if it should collide with our own object or body, then surely catastrophe would ensue."

The chamber was in uproar, with hoots, catcalls, jeers, with people hurling epithets and invectives at the scholar on the stage, and others clapping and applauding in approbation. He held up a hand, nodding to the crowd. Shouts and hisses finally brought a semblance of quiet. The scholar's scheduled time was almost up anyway, and this one was known to be accurate and courteous to other speakers in that regard.

"With so little information to go on, we have no idea of what to expect, or how to plan or prepare, for whatever unknown eventualities may arise." Tsernalik concluded his talk, looking down for a quick moment to catch Nodrakis' eye.

There was a trickle of sweat just beginning to ooze out from the headband of his cap, just above his right eye. He _winked!_ Over the hubbub of voices, some shouting, some whispering, all of them going at once, one strong voice in particular right beside him in the front row stood out loud and clear. Question period was about to begin with a vengeance. The young orator seated there was tough, ruthless, and very ambitious.

It was the Emperor Helios' uncle Knaius.

Chapter Six

The ship's rumour mill was going full blast...

The ship's rumour mill was going full blast. The most chilling was the one Dooley heard in the engine department. Dooley had the run of the ship, and his first few days out of head-space were spent in equipment and motor inspections. Only then did he and the computer get down to figuring out their deceleration and orbital sequences.

Their basic plan was to approach Earth using planetary masses to aid in braking. They wanted to use as many of the major bodies in the system as possible. This would save ever-precious reaction mass. Reaction mass was life itself on a starship. From the point of view of the builders, life support ranked a distant second place. They were low on mass. Jill Bentein said they weren't going to awaken the passengers. That was one wild rumour. Dooley didn't believe it. Four thousand light years, and then finding there wasn't any planet to colonize, it was just a big fuck up. Yeah, just an anomalous configuration of the heuristic logarithms. And what were they supposed to do with twenty-thousand colonists? The Captain of _Ark One_ had made an agonizing decision, when confronted by a planet whose axis of rotation was parallel to the plane of orbit. The southern pole pointed at the sun all the time. Half the planet was a frozen hell, and the other half a baked crust of rocks and fine, talcum-like dust in which nothing could live. They had been prepared to create their own atmosphere if they must.

Analysis from Earth indicated that all the elements needed were present in abundance—but there was nothing to be done about that rotation. The continuously heated southern hemisphere would just vent that air out into space, the molecules overexcited by all that energy. Ship-borne instruments were unable to locate another suitable system nearby. Bentein was just nuts, everybody said so. So Dooley just kept running his own independent program, and then, when he had a nice-looking set of constant, diminishing-radius French curves, taking in the massive outer planets and even a couple of the smaller, inner ones, he spent lavish time matching French curves with the computer. Dooley was looking for deviations, querying the computer, studying its chain of variables, factors and functions, to see if he or the computer had left one out, or put one in that the other didn't have. If so, who was right or wrong? It was all so time-consuming, and as they got closer, some of the data would change. It would become more accurate as different sensors came into effective range. Dooley would do them all over again...all those calculations. That's why they paid him the big bucks, although there was no longer anywhere to spend it.

The notion that they wouldn't wake up the colonists was just nuts, everyone knew that the die-off rate went up exponentially over time. At some point, the rate of unsuccessful re-activation would be so high that you didn't dare awaken the survivors. With a fifty percent die-off rate, you were potentially waking up your own jury, or your own lynch mob.

They had, at last count, four thousand three hundred and two families of various shapes, sizes and configurations, and two thousand individuals. The theory was that the single people would be the first ones to be awakened. Children would be awakened with the parents. There were no old people in the cargo, in fact, no one over thirty-five. Rumour had it the officer-classes were trying to figure out how to get the machines to wake them one at a time, rather than by the hundreds, as according to the original pre-loaded program. The passengers had all been selected for skills and by actuarial analysis of mortality and projected genetic disposition to various illnesses.

With such a small crew to handle the traffic, someone had better come up with a plan that worked. When twenty thousand people, _minus up to ten_ _percent_ woke up and found they had no planet to colonize, there would surely be hell to pay. The Captain had been forced to make a harsh decision—to turn around and come straight home, putting the crew into emergency cold storage, using a low-energy, but high time-factor trajectory. The reason was simple. The trip home hadn't envisaged twenty thousand colonists, with all their supplies and equipment. They had tooo much mass and not enough fuel, a simple, yet chilling equation. The ship ran itself on autopilot. From time to time an occasional crew member was aroused from hyper-sleep to do routine maintenance. A quick look at the navigation programs, and then if all was well, back to sleep. Dooley had been called once or twice in the last hundred years. The most troubling question of all remained unanswered. What would the world look like when they got home? The trip home was centuries of the same routine.

Dooley wasn't a lonely person so much as a loner, a quiet, introspective guy who could survive a couple of days working alone on the huge ship. Dooley could be trusted to do his job, not panic or go off the deep end, and when the work was done, put himself back to bed again.

At present, there was only a handful of crew available. This was to conserve life-support including food. It was only after the biological domes were up and running for ten or eleven weeks that sufficient food for the crew would be available. Never would the domes and tanks be able to feed the entire complement, passengers and crew. According to Bentein, the worst-case scenario involved using the colonists as reaction mass for one last thrust _somewhere._ The only problem with that plan was that so far, no one had any suggestions of where they might go. If some of the shuttle landing craft were sacrificed, the fuel they contained, and the mass they were composed of, could be used to augment the mass of the passengers. He sensed she was pulling his leg, but he treated it seriously enough in his calculations.

Sooner or later, someone was bound to ask for the data. Proxima Centauri wasn't out of the question, maybe a half dozen other places at best.

Their re-entry into the solar system was tricky, considering the tiny reserve of reaction mass available. It was simpler if they could do it that way, with less to go wrong. The fuel in the tanks was hard to measure accurately in the bottom tenth, and it was just as likely to run out at a very inopportune time. The less mass to work with, the higher velocity that had to be imparted to it in order to get the course changes required. The ejectors had certain physical limitations. You could get a maximum of 'x-thrust' per kilogram of mass. Sooner or later, they would be banging on the tanks with hammers, in order to get it all out.

Pluto, their first planet-fall, presented special challenges. Pluto orbited at seventeen degrees out of alignment with the plane of the ecliptic, which all the other planets followed. What they had to do was to pass closely to the right of the planet, and allow it to bend their trajectory. Three-dimensional French curves are only slightly more complex than the two-dimensional. They had to duck under it, which would bend their vector in the vertical plane, having the effect of 'pulling up the nose' of the starship. Then they would go on to intersect with the orbit of Neptune. If they killed _almost_ but _not quite enough_ momentum, they wouldn't have enough energy to escape the system even if they wanted to. They would simply fall back and forth around the sun in a yo-yo action of an elliptical nature, with a cycle rate of half a million years, like the mother of all comets.

The sooner he made the set-up, the less mass it consumed. Also the more accurate it had to be, thus the never-ending calculations.

The more massive outer planets that could be worked into the gravitational braking sequence, the better off they would be. If they did it just right, they could maneuver all the way home. If they failed, they could lock down into suspended animation for a few millennia, until their orbit decayed so much they had no choice but to use the boats, and make for Earth. Either that, or hit the self-destruct button after one last big party.

At some point the passengers were expendable. With all fuel drained into one shuttle, wearing external strap-on tanks, about half the crew could make Earth orbit from where they were right now. That was strictly last-resort, emergency thinking. It would be a lottery...

The problem was they didn't have enough reaction mass to simply put on the brakes and settle into a nice, safe, Earth orbit. They would need help. By braking just before intersection with each additional planet, the gravity worked on slowing them down _longer_ than the gravity could work pulling them in and speeding them up. By using the planets to turn them, reaction mass was used solely for braking. He had to get close in order for it to work. It was long odds that they would make it at all. Dooley's cursor found the g-warning icon and clicked on it. A siren-call could be vaguely discerned behind his closed door, reverberating throughout the ship. All his programs were pre-loaded, but it needed a human command.

As they came up from behind Pluto, their arc tightened, and Dooley watched it all on his display. The gravity well of the planet aided in turning them, as he fired a short but finely calculated burst of mass angled precisely from the forward thrusters, calculations which had been checked by ten different officers at least a thousand different times. As their trajectory merged ahead of Pluto's, their speed dropped, their orbit of the sun tightened up considerably, and Dooley compared their arc with the maps. Grid lines, decelerations, vectors changing over time. The computer would re-estimate their mass, as well as the masses of all the relevant bodies based on closely observed radii and speeds of orbit. After one more short squirt of reaction mass, and a quick re-calculation, Dooley sat back to watch and wait for the computer's search and acquisition program to pick up Neptune, on the other side of the sun. Three little chimes went off.

_There we go_ ...

Neptune's predicted position when they arrived there was now in the cross-hairs. All his numbers looked good. While it would be a couple of days yet, he'd just had a fifteen-year nap, so he wasn't particularly tired.

Chapter Seven

Benefritha was squatting in the bean-field...

Benefritha was squatting in the bean-field when Raffin came around the corner of the lane, ground covered in fallen maple buds. He paused a moment by the three-tier split rail fence which looked to have been recently repaired, and very professionally, too. The brother had a twinge of guilt at not being there to help. It smelled like home. She was pulling weeds. Benefritha grunted bad-temperedly, shifting heavily on bent knees to a position further up the row. Benefritha wouldn't have appreciated his noticing her rather wide hips, rounded shoulders and heavier form. No two ways about it, they were all getting older. The characteristic streaks of grey in her long, straight brown hair were perhaps a little whiter, or was that just his own perceptions talking? Raffin had a few aches and pains upon waking lately, and she was four years older. He felt new sympathy, although he suspected some of his troubles came from sleeping on the ground so much.

He made a suckling noise between his cheek and molars, and she glanced up with an absent look on her face. This cleared in an instant and a wide grin lit her demeanor.

"Raffie!"She straightened up after one last poke at a recalcitrant weed. "I was wondering when you'd turn up."

She stepped carefully over the rows to make her way to the stile.

"Oh." She'd stepped on a stone.

She was barefoot, a real Earth-mother type. Typically for her, she had a basket with a dozen eggs in it, and another little package made up of a bundled cloth, cheerfully patterned in blue flowers on a pale yellow background. Herbs for the stew-pot, he reckoned.

"T'seela still looks the same." Nothing in the village ever changed, even when they moved the houses, or eventhe entire village, its familiarity and homeliness sprang up right out of the ground with it.

Only the faces changed, over time. He helped her get down from the top of the fence, holding her produce while she clambered down the five narrow wooden steps. Then she led him into the house.

"I'll put some tea on." She gave him a quick squeeze.

He put his rucksack down by the door, which looked out onto the lane and the road beyond. It was left open in this weather, at least in daytime. The Kirtele love nothing better than fresh air. A pert rooster's eye examined him closely from under the table.

The house followed a typical Kirtele floorplan. A long hallway led off from the right side of the door, which took them straight back to the kitchen. Tall, narrow doors on the left led to bedrooms, three in this house, similar to one he had grown up in all those decades ago. The front room was rather small in a Kirtele house, but big enough for a horse or a cow. A pair of oval skylights let in a soft, warm light that Raffin had always appreciated about this kitchen. His brother-in-law, a good fellow, had built the place with his own two hands. Brother Raffin felt a moment of regret. He missed his cheerful talk and company sometimes. Frell had been gone six years. What must it be like for her? He grabbed a reluctant hen and gently chucked her out of the side door.

"Where are the girls? In school?"

She nodded as she stoked the fire in the black iron box that combined as a stove, an oven, and a frying surface. She used tongs to pull out a round plate, and flames came out of the hole. She put the water-pot on there and then puttered with things from the cupboard, and took some cream out of the cloth-covered urn beside the wash-tub.

While the air outside was warm enough in the heat of day, especially with the exertion of hiking, the air in these houses was always a little dank in spring, so the heat from the stove was welcome. He had walked a long ways, and after this another two days and a half of walking. He pulled the cowl down.

"They'll be home in another hour." She glanced at the skylight, noting the shadows in the corner of the room. "They'll scream when they see you!"

"Have they been giving you a hard time?" He chuckled, watching her put water into cups, measure out cream and honey, then stir it up well.

"Ah." She dropped into a seat across the table from Raffin. "Ah, brother, you just don't know."

She sighed.

While his sister was obviously worn to a frazzle by the ten and eleven-summer olds, he sensed it was a happy kind of tired, and that was good.

Brother Raffin and Benefritha spent a pleasant hour catching up on local news, gossip and plans for the future. She needed to clean out the pond this year, and they decided to try to hire some men. They would wait for fall when it was drier down at the bottom of the hill, and easier to dig. A series of thumps came from the front hallway, and a moment later his nieces burst into the room.

Quick gasps of recognition, and then they were all over him, as their mother gave an indulgent grin and rose to rinse things out and to put their cups in the stand to use later.

Raffin and the girls spent some time playing a favourite Kirtele game, which had letters painted upon dried flat beans, and you tried to guess the word before all the letters had been revealed.

***

The morning dawned bright and clear. Kjarl seemed to have made some special arrangements with the cook, who feasted them with such a breakfast as many hadn't seen in years. There were slices of bacon, eggs, sausages, strips of fresh steak, fried potatoes, and fried onions. There was apple juice, and cheese, and biscuits. There was bread, butter and milk, there was jam and honey, tea, water, everything anyone could ask.

There was some discussion among the men as to what it was all about. One or two thought it meant bad news. They would have to wait for an announcement from Kjarl. As for Akim, he was learning that the boss had his mysterious ways, and a reason for everything he did. Kjarl stood by the back end of the gut-wagon, helping to ladle out the tea for the men. He tipped Akim a wink. He accepted the cup and kept moving.

After breakfast, their plan was set in motion, as quickly explained by Kjarl, who scratched a simple, clear diagram of what he wanted in the sandy soil already worn clear around the fire-pit.

Then he handed over operations to Akim, who set the men to cutting down yet more trees, sometimes aggravating work with nothing but their small hand-axes, while Kjarl mounted up and walked his horse up the riverbank towards the trap and the guards still up there. Kjarl had selected his best, a big black stallion, quite old, yet still with a good heart and beautiful looks, named Smasher. It was a symbolic choice. Kjarl must be pleased with things today.

"Who's going to relieve the guards?"

Akim shook his head at Akidorn.

"He'll send someone back. He's just going to do his own count, and try to get a better look at them. If they were really bad horses, for instance, he might just let them go, rather than feed them or waste time on them."

"Oh, really? All that work for nothing?" Alpirt's coal-black eyes bulged.

"No effort is truly wasted, Alpirt." Akim nodded at them. "Besides, most of them looked pretty good. Anyway, the point is the boss knows what he's doing, whereas most of you fellows don't."

He left it at that. Akim also had a reason for everything he did. The men were entitled to clear instructions, but long explanations and justifications were forbidden, by company policy. Akim was forced to agree with Kjral's assessment on that score. Once you got to know human nature a little, it made sense. Kjarl was paying their wages, it wasn't a democracy.

It was exhausting, back-breaking labour, and the fast-risen sun soon brought the sweat popping out on the men's brows. It was just as bad for Akim, working right alongside of them as they built an outer corral. This was right up against the brush and pine-bough wall of the first one. Their second one was only fifty paces long and about twenty wide, but it still required a lot of tree cutting. It wasn't until the sun stood centred up in the milky spring sky that he could call it quits and send them back for lunch. Kjarl was talking with Lek when Akim arrived back at the campsite. Akim hurried over, anxious to get the news.

Kjarl's eyes lit up when he caught sight of him.

"Don't worry, everything is going to be great."Apparently that would have to do until the men got fed again.

The young assistant sensed his employer's highly pleased state of mind.

"Good job on the corral, by the way."

Akim watched Lek fill his bowl, basking in the glow of reflected praise.

***

Much to everyone's amazement, it all worked out according to plan.

"We got one! We got one!" Arnis hooted as Akim grabbed his shoulder and shoved him forward.

With a startled glance over his shoulder, Arnis nodded when Akim shouted.

"Close that gap!"

A look of disappointment came over him when he realized, hastily stuffing pine-boughs into the escape-hole, that it was just a colt, albeit a pretty black one with a white face.

Arnis shook his head in frustration, but then ducked in sudden fear as a big appaloosa mare came sailing in over his head. He hastily jammed the last ones in and ran for it. As he bolted through the other small hole, Akim and Kjarl stood there with big grins on their faces. His brothers dragged more brush, and three or four small trees tied with twine into place. Whinnying cries came from a little too close behind as he scampered through the gap. He could imagine, but not quite feel, hot breath on his neck.

"Look at that fella go." It was his older brother Alpirt, and then they were all laughing.

Akim blew on his horn, a short blast, and two, then three horsemen come out of the main gate, with a party of men pulling and shoving at the gate-poles to close it down again. Men with nothing to do were clearing still more brush.

"That's amazing." Arnis nodded in approval at Kjarl.

He was still gasping for breath.

"You haven't seen anything, yet." Akim grinned and Kjarl stood there looking as modest as a two-yard-tall young horse-catcher possibly could.

Kjarl exuded a confidence few of the others could match. There were times when it was good to be humble, his silence seemed to imply.

Chapter Eight

### The prisoner had been out there since dawn...

The prisoner had been out there since dawn. Talmotek listened with half a mind on the ravings and moaning of the man formerly known as Lord Veebik. The man had been carefully disemboweled, and with great skill, to avoid killing the penitent. The lower end of his entrails was nailed to a man-high stake that stood in the centre of the killing-ground. Whoever held _The Chair_ was expected to make an appearance at state executions, especially with a prisoner of high status, and right here in the capital. This was one he couldn't delegate.

As his digestive tract dried out in the hot sun, the man crawled around in ever-diminishing circles, bawling and begging for them to let him live. He apologized, abjectly, humbly, disgustingly. But it was already too late. There was simply no way to re-connect his insides, even if Talmotek should order it. The man's crime was to be insolent. Under the new order which was being built, the smallest crimes often brought the harshest punishments. Even if Lord Veebik had murdered another Lord, a blood-fine of ten thousand or fifty thousand pounds of gold wouldn't deter or punish him. It simply wouldn't work, either to stop him from doing it again, or satisfy the victim's family. It was a lesson in fear. Lord Veebik should have known better, and now he was dying, if not already quiet. Veebik was crying for water.

It didn't pay to be too rich, sometimes. His chamberlain caught his eye.

"I'm sorry, Light of the Sun and Master of the Earth, the Wind and the Stars, but just a little longer." Bolishko was always ingratiating, also always right—at least so far.

Bonglishko was a useful man, an agreeable man, a man of many acquaintances and few friends, a man with many colours of coat. Bonglishko was his man, and that was important.

"Give him some water, it will delight the throng."

Bonglishko approved.

"It will be more merciful, in the end."

Nothing beats good old word-of-mouth.

"The quality of justice grinds exceedingly slowly, but the quality of mercy is beyond measure." Talmotek uttered the words majestically in a voice that would carry beyond his immediate retinue. "And it's not like he wouldn't have done the same for us."

There were chuckles from the Guards.

He tipped his head at the chamberlain. A smiling Bonglishko handed him another scroll.

"This one is very interesting." He was gently persuasive with his master. "Strange reports of a new god in the heavens."

Talmotek looked sharply up at him.

"I've already heard about this." His piercing but normally warm blue eyes had gone cold and impatient.

"This is from the Imperial Observatory in Kitchi-lao." Bonglishko had reverence written in every pore, every aspect of his tone and posture, and yet without human facial expression.

"Oh? Really?"

He looked into Bonglishko's eyes.

"This could be a wonderful opportunity."

It was exactly the right stimulus. Talmotek's eyes were drawn back to the paper. Cruelty for its own sake was not one of his pleasures, and the whole thing was pretty boring. Once you've seen one execution, you've seen them all.

Talmotek was an insatiable reader. What could be easier? His master looked up with an obscure frown on his forehead.

"It will upset the balance of power in their domestic policies. We should give it another fifteen minutes, Sacred Flesh, Holder of the Chair."

Bonglishko stepped forward with a bright smile, waving, as expected from time to time, to the crowd in a random and haphazard manner.

"What kind of an opportunity?" But he _was_ reading it, and for that Bonglishko was humbly grateful.

"The opportunity of a lifetime." If that didn't do it, nothing would.

Talmotek sighed deeply, winked at the guards, rolled forward the scroll and began to read.

"I just love this guy, he never quits." This sort of remark always delighted attendants.

Bonglishko watched in his peripheral vision. Talmotek's government had become parasitic on the produce of the meanest citizens, while a good war would focus attentions elsewhere, and perhaps even weld them together as a nation. One voice, one heart, one people. He could see it in his mind's eye. With the powerful Lord Veebik's death, there was one less powerful noble to oppose their plans. And there was no time like the present.

The Kitchi-lao Empire was in a state of internal dissension between traditionalists and avant-garde free thinkers. The Imperial Army was at a nadir of preparedness. After decades in barracks, or stationed in garrison towns rich in wine, women and song, and lots of good food, they were spoiled rotten. Many of them engaged in free enterprise, and officers sometimes absconded with their rations and pay. Corruption and peculation were rife. Political intrigues were common among the higher officers, and the amourous intrigues of the troops kept them unpopular with the citizenry upon whom they were quartered.

Their training was neglected, officers were often absent—down at their villas on the south coast. The Imperial Auxiliaries, provincial or colonial troops who were ostensibly professional soldiers, pure mercenaries really, were discontented, their pay in arrears, and they were constitutionally unable to obtain land to farm. Unable to retire so far from home, dependent on their officers for food and lodging, essentially they had become military slaves, put to work for their officer's benefit. The Empire's greatest strength was its navy, and to a certain extent the fact that their forces were dispersed. They could not all be brought to battle at once. All of this came from trusted sources very close to the throne.

The Tzclinacoquean standing army was more centralized, a much more coherent fighting force. The notion to provoke Veebik had been Bonglishko's, but the right to vy for the chair was Talmotek's. It was his right as a nobleman. He wasn't merely a rich commoner like Bonglishko. Whoever held the chair had the right to govern the Tzclinacoque. He rubbed his chin. When shaving this morning he'd missed a spot.

It seemed an unlikely alliance, the tall, balding middle-aged would-be Emperor, the first of a new dynasty, and the swarthy, short and long haired Bonglishko.

"We must preserve the mask civility among councilors." Talmotek rose to take his leave.

The heat of the midday sun was steadily climbing with each passing minute, as scribes hurried to get every word down for the morrow's posting in the central squares of the cities of the Tzclinacoque Confederacy. Bonglishko stepped forward to the rostrum, prominent white teeth flashing in a smile. Holding his hands up high for all to see, he shouted out over the din and hum of the multitude, the vast, unimproved and underemployed populace.

"Justice has been served." He made a universal gesture.

An attendant of the arena staff came out of a niche in the wall below and cut Veebik's throat, which brought a deep sigh of some kind of animal emotion from the crowd. The applause swelled, spontaneously exploding out of the mob. The show was over, time for the next attraction. They were anticipating a full playbill today, Bonglishko recalled.

"You have a lunch appointment with Jainnetti." He reminded the Sacred Flesh of the Holder of the Chair, as they milled around the pavilion's exit.

Talmotek must go first, and he was looking for his cape.

_The Man in the Chair_ lurched and limped a little, stiff from an old injury. These little human touches were important to a great leader, and the man's bodyguard worshipped the man. All in all, Talmotek was a good choice, although they'd been lucky so far.

***

The Kitchi-lao really knew how to throw a party. Nodrakis turned to beckon for service. While Knaius's staff was large and well trained, there were so many guests, he had to practically shout and wave your arms to get a drink.

The pale, blonde-headed young student was unaccountably thirsty, wondering just how far it would be reasonable to let one's hair down and be one of the people.

"We live in a new era, of twenty-four to forty-eight hour north coast to south coast communication." The bold orator had them cornered. "We have to retain control of this new science, for it is our best defense against stagnation."

The two were of course aware of the system of signal fires, post riders, heliography stations, passenger pigeons, and the experimental hot-air balloons, which would extend heliography to over-the-horizon capability. Their host's patrician face looked blandly amused, blue eyes twinkling in unforced humour and friendliness.

"Yes, I suppose you're right."The scholar Tsernalik politely if not effusively agreed.

The reclusive older man, widower and life-long bookworm, was just a little curious now that he had seen the crowd. Exactly why had he been invited? He had no illusions about his status or his desirability as a dinner guest. Savvy hostesses everywhere had been neglecting him for many years. His perpetual good humour took the edge off of it. After all, it fit in nicely with his own desires. He had been quite happy to retire from the more political and public duties of the observatory some years ago. Yet you couldn't just ignore an invitation from someone like Knaius. The wine tugged the corners of his mouth into a smile.

"I see the spy guild is out in full force tonight." Knaius was surely joking, but a serious glint in his eye gave Nodrakis pause for thought.

Tsernalik was good enough not to look around, having heard the joke before.

Nodrakis was having a pretty good time. The canapés were good, the wine excellent, when you could get some, and the women were stunning at this level of society. It was a bit overwhelming to the young student. Mittainagor's nobility was never this grand. Perhaps it was just foolishness on his part, a desire to impress this important young man, not much older than he, really. And the slaves! The most attractive money could buy.

"If the gods did not exist, then surely we would have to invent some." Nodrakis had a serious, intent look on his face.

The lubrication of the wine might have helped, but it came out perfectly, and the orator and politician Knaius laughed, staring into Nodrakis's eyes for a moment. Little lines crinkled up around his eyes, and Nodrakis revised his age estimate upwards. Tsernalik seemed distracted, of little help socially or in making small talk.

"Yes, that's very good." Knaius chuckled. "I can see we're going to have to keep an eye on your young friend here."

Tsernalik nodded approvingly, and Nodrakis felt some relief.

But he couldn't find any more tid-bits right then.

"The men we look up to often have feet of clay." Knaius was taking the pair of them into his confidence, at least that was the impression.

Creanna joined them with a bright smile. Her long pendant earrings flashed and glittered in the light of a thousand guttering candles. Her copper tresses had the sheen that only hours of combing and brushing by attentive slaves can achieve.

"I was just telling them about the speed of modern communications." Knaius spoke in a different tone to Creanna, and Nodrakis felt very sophisticated, realizing that this was in fact a kind of code between husband and wife.

Knaius was of excellent birth, but he owed his wealth and very real worldly success to his skills as a lawyer, a mediator and an orator. Certain topics would not come up. She had been notified of their status. Politically, they were civilians, under cultivation. Some of his education had been pretty stultifying, but he thanked his lucky stars for it now.

"I was walking along this morning, and the pavement was wet." Nodrakis looked around at the small ring of those chatting with them. "I saw steam rising from the ground. It occurred to me that the sun is very hot. And if the sun is a body, hanging in the ether like we are, here upon our own body, then maybe the milky haze surrounding this new body, this 'chariot of a god,' if I may be so bold, well, I was thinking it might be steam."

"Go on." His mentor noted the quick interest of the group.

"It occurs to me that the sun is hot, and perhaps this body may be very cold." The young astronomer was quite impressed with the way he was holding them.

He had never been able to achieve this in the small classes he had attempted. Maybe he had the wrong audience. Or maybe a few drinks helped! These were sophisticated people, not snot-faced schoolboys.

"I'm wondering if the very bright part is also hard, or, or, if the bright bit is solid, whether it is cold, or wet, or frozen." He had their rapt attention. "No, it's a pretty good bet that the diaphanous halo around the body may very well be steam."

Even Tsernalik was impressed. This was the first time Nodrakis had mentioned it. He brightened up considerably on hearing it. Knaius's wife squeezed Nodrakis' arm as her highly-political and recently quite popular husband beamed on. The young astronomer-prince from Mittainagor was a hit.

As the talk rumbled and swelled around them, the thirty-six piece orchestra finished tuning up, and a short hush came over the room. The major domo was waving for quiet.

Just behind him someone was saying, "...with Talmotek in the chair, he is emperor in everything but name, while our own Emperor amuses himself breeding poultry..."

As the first poignant strains of Dibuujlige's _'Water faeries'_ began to solemnly climb out and up and around the room, a symphony for lute and kettledrum and horns, Nodrakis reflected that war clouds indeed lurked on the horizon. Talmotek was the barbarian leader of the southern city-states known as the Pentapolis. Ignorance is bliss, he thought. It's also very dangerous.

'Look after your feet and your feet will look after you.' His uncle always said that, and rather mysteriously at the time.

Whatever it meant. Perhaps that was the price of diplomacy: sore feet.

Chapter Nine

They were building up to the big one...

They were building up to the big one, and learning quite a lot about horses in the process. Akim studied the mare and her colt, as the head of the alert mother came up to regard him with nervous eye, rolled back to keep him in sight as he checked on the others. One was an old workhorse, a gelded male, who may have just wandered off his pasture one day. The old duffer came up to him, nuzzling at his neck contentedly. Akim gave the animal the best of the apples for his efforts. This one, a big chestnut with sturdy legs and huge hocks of hair around his ankles, followed him around the pen. Next was an aging mare, her soft-looking, long grey mane falling around her eyes. She was bony all over the back and hips. She stood listlessly chewing hay. Two larger colts, wild and undisciplined, chased each other around the paddock, but always keeping an eye on whoever was in there. One was chestnut again, and the other was black, with a white blaze on the forehead. The big appaloosa mare kept her distance, still wary of the humans.

Kjarl said it was going to take too long to train them, so they would have to be taken back to his farm. While he was sure Kjarl knew what he was doing, and how he was going to do it, Akim worried about how they were going to get them there. He took more apples from the bag slung over his shoulder, and chucked them along like bowls where the colts could get at them, seeing with pleasure that they had been watching for this routine event. It was all part of Kjarl's training regimen.

There were three small, scruffy-looking cattle, clear profit all, and docile. They got their apples. Maybe it would work. Three of their own horses were also in the pen. They knew him well, so they waited for Akim to come to them! Still, they were having their calming effect. The other horses, the truly _wild_ ones, still awaited them in the main trap. Days of hot labour had gone into the fence outside of the other pen.

Kjarl's voice called out over the muttering of men and nickering of horses. Akim pricked up his own ears and listened in awe-filled fascination to the horse-catcher's calm, yet strong and reassuring voice.

"You've been running wild." Kjarl was ten or twenty yards away on the other side of the dark, woody barrier. "You've had everything all your own way, for far too long,"

Akim grinned at the tone in the man's voice, especially at a particularly quarrelsome nicker from the horse, whichever one it might be.

Kjarl was talking to someone nearby.

"That horse has been broken and ridden. He's probably just jumped a pen or a stall. Otherwise why no bridle?"

Akim knew that it was not entirely impossible for a determined horse to remove its bridle. As Akim exited the smaller pen, Arnis closed it behind him. Fifty paces towards the river bank, the two men there were dragging and pulling at the poles and he wondered what was up. Then Zimo, one of their best horsemen, came out mounted on a huge dappled white and many-coloured mare. Riding effortlessly, relaxed in his posture, Zimo gently held on to her mane, looking pleased as punch. Catching sight of Akim through the intervening screen of low branches and small tree-trunks, the rider waved and gently tried to turn the animal, leaning in close and murmuring sweet nothings in her ear. Finally, uncertainly, she began to respond, as Akim stood there watching with his heart in his mouth. They had certainly been lucky so far. She had escaped from somewhere as well. This one looked to be a cousin, or sister or daughter perhaps to the other appaloosa. The colts whinnied in the corral behind. They must have caught her scent.

He beckoned for Arnis and Alpirt to open up the hole, guardedly, but she went in with no trouble, Zimo riding high all the way, and none of the others bolted for it. Sure enough, the two colts made a beeline for her, nuzzling at her sides, but she batted them away with swats of her tail, and butts of her head and neck. She treated them less favourably than she had Zimo. She looked to be about seven or eight years old, he thought.

As for Kjarl, he stood on the other side of the brush barrier, and Akim heard him gently and calmly talking over there, less than ten paces away. Akim made his way over to the gate, to see if he could get a glimpse of what was going on inside. There couldn't be too many more. The boys on the gate stepped close, and he leaned in and over, peering off to the right, but he couldn't make anything out. Kjarl was there, all right.

He just couldn't see him.

"Which one's he after now?" The two men, Notbala and Akidorn, shook their heads.

They looked highly pleased with their role in the game.

Out of the line of sight of the main gate, tucked away in a small grassy clearing, behind a clump of black spruce, Kjarl, with his helper of the moment Tolby, were attempting to approach the stallion, proud and fierce. The animal was in a frightened and yet aggressive mood with the capture and decimation of his harem and herd. The thing reared up, pawing at the air with his fore-hooves. Whenever his feet hit the ground, he lunged left or right, and then popped back up again. Whinny after whinny, screeching call after screeching call came, as the thing made short charges at them, always pulling back at the last second. The terror in its eyes was evident.

"Off to the right."

Tolby scrambled through the dry, brittle underbrush and dead, ground level branches to comply. Kjarl had his rope looped and ready to go.

"He's got a mark on the flank. On his right side. He's some nobleman's mount, and a real runner. Look at the length of the body, that fine head."

Tolby stood warily, waiting for his chance to distract the animal, so that Kjarl could get a loop on him. Until then, it was all up in the air. Kjarl made a quick gesture, and Tolby started forward, towards the big horse, cornered with its hindquarters right up against the brush of the corral. The stallion reared up, and then lunged forward, head down low and white teeth gnashing as if to bite Tolby. The helper scurried to his left, nearer to Kjarl, who flicked a twist of rope and then all the seven hells broke loose.

The horse, dark and thunderous in the small space, pulled sideways with all the force his neck and legs could bring to bear, and Kjarl's heels started sliding across the soft green turf, leaving deep black grooves as they went.

"Argh! Argh!" Kjarl's gasps and the horse's loud rasping attempts to get a breath made Tolby's skin crawl in a kind of sympathy.

To the uninitiated, it was terrifying, and Tolby stood flat-footed. The horse fell over, taking Kjarl with it, but just as quickly it scrambled up against the slack rope and made to Tolby's right, or straight into a wall of scrubby, half-dead conifers. Kjarl scuttled along on his knees, trying to regain his footing, but unable to let go of the rope, grunting and gasping... _then._

"Get another line on him!"

As the knotted rope finally came to the end of its tether, being securely tied to the base of a sturdy young maple, the big stallion went down again, smashing through dead branches, small saplings, and weeds. It went over sideways and half-backwards with a thud that was deadly to hear, accompanied by snapping twigs and shattering branches.

Kjarl flung the line aside, and leapt on it like a panther, seeking to pin its neck to the ground by sheer body weight. He flung his legs out to brace himself flat on the grass. Tolby ran and cut the rope free from the maple trunk, then grabbed from the ground a second coil laying there for just this purpose, furiously shoving a hand up to check his face for blood after a particularly vicious snap of a tree-limb, which hit him above the cheekbone. He grappled with a hind leg, avoiding its dangerous kick. As Kjarl and the horse wrestled around in the bushes, Tolby saw bloody flecks on the weeds and grass from the horse's fall.

Broken twigs and fallen leaves thrashed around, moving under the struggling horse and man, and then Tolby was up, and so was the horse, dragging Kjarl up by sheer force of will. Kjarl hung in close on its left side, arms wrapped around its neck in a death grip, his face and expression a rictus of extreme physical effort and pure mental focus. Tolby realized Kjarl had no breath left in him, he was rasping and gagging, practically dry heaving with the exertion.

"Men! Men!" Tolby shouted, pulling on the hind leg for all he was worth, and not having much of an effect, if Kjarl's contorted features and grimacing mouth were any indication.

The panicked horse lurched straight into the brush again, as running footsteps and voices came from off to the left. Help was on the way, and not a moment too soon.

Chapter Ten

" _By the Goddess of the Lakes, professor..."_

"By the Goddess of the Lakes, professor." Nodrakis stood up so suddenly that he banged his head with a ringing noise when he hit an overhead brace of cold, black iron.

He pulled the scholar from his seat and shoved him forward to the control position, even while trying to hold his head with one hand.

"Ouch! Professor! Look, professor!" The flare of the object was stunning in its suddenness and intensity.

He kept his eyes on it.

"Oh, dear, gracious me." The old man blathered in gratitude and a kind of worship.

His harsh, laboured breathing was a patent reminder that this was a very old man, not used to such excitement. Nodrakis's mind raced, tracing through the ancient almanacs. It was true that they often reported comets breaking up into two or more, and falling to earth. But they were so certain that this was no comet or meteor. He danced from side to side on the balls of his feet. He was so upset, so shocked by the flare. The elder peered through the eyepiece, his breathing stertorous in the eerie, pre-dawn quiet of the building.

"What's happening?"

Tsernalik shook his head in awe.

"We're very fortunate to have seen this. It would be hard to give proper credit, or weight to an eyewitness. We could never accept a second hand account."

While babbling himself, Nodrakis wanted to shake him, to demand an answer. But the old man wouldn't say anything, not for a long minute. Tsernalik's raised hand commanded silence.

"This is unbelievable." The professor stared, fixated by his thoughts.

As the thing in the sky dimmed down again, it was almost a relief to Nodrakis.

"It seems to have slowed, which is clearly impossible given our hypothesis."

He beckoned Nodrakis over to the seat again.

"Here, you had better take some measurements. Look how my hands are shaking."

The old professor muttered in shock.

"Maybe it is going slower. But why? Why?" The ghost-pale beard shook as the professor wagged his head at the sky. "Why?"

"Wait, wait. The Red Wanderer slows, and even goes backwards." Nodrakis was thinking out loud. "Is it going to stop and go backwards?"

"What we just saw implies to a certain extent that it is not a comet. That rate of change of luminousity..." Tsernalik's words trailed off, with Nodrakis peering through the sighting-tube as the turntable and slaved gears kept the tip of the tube climbing slowly yet relentlessly along with the altitude of the object.

All the comets they had ever seen, and all the reports they had been reading, indicated that a comet got brighter over a longer period of time, days, weeks, months...not in a half-second, and not a thousand or more times brighter. A proper comet's arc and speed change _gradually._

"Damn it! It has slowed." The profanity was uncharacteristic of the young prince. "The gear-ratios will have to be readjusted. The object is dropping out of my view...shit!"

"Are you sure? This is unbelievable." The professor had a lost, faraway look on his face, while Nodrakis confronted the age-old fear of the unknown.

"Yes, we're very fortunate, very fortunate indeed." The old fellow went on, dreamily.

Nodrakis was having a hard time with one or two irrational fears, churning around inside, putting his guts into a turmoil. Whether we like it or not, we can't escape our upbringing. He thought that he had left the superstition and ignorance of Mittainagor behind him long ago, but the truth was he'd brought some of it along with him.

"We'll have to book every minute of time we can get." The professor was excited by the prospect. "And there's a pretty good chance it'll be granted!"

Nodrakis took a long, deep breath and tried to calm his pounding heart. His head swam. He had nothing to offer but confusion. He hadn't bargained for this.

Chapter Eleven

The puppet-master was a fixture in the marketplace...

The puppet-master was a fixture in the marketplace, just as there were puppet-masters, or jugglers, or illusionists, or street musicians in any marketplace in any large village. It was an old and time-honoured profession. He drew no special attention from Kjarl and his men as they drove their small herd the length of the main street. Kjarl's dog Ruta and Akim's animal Kyla were leading, scampering along and showing the way. The village of Kjarl's birth was Kiffaloetti. With a population of about four hundred souls, it straggled along the great north-south road that bisected the county called Sulatawia. He needed to get the horses, especially the wilder ones, into his paddock at home, but as they approached the tavern, faces turned in his direction made their desire known. Akim looked over and raised an eyebrow.

"I suppose we could let 'em have couple of beers." Kjarl grunted, privately resenting this waste of time and effort.

Once the men got stopped, it would be hard to get them going again. They drove the horses and their bonus-prize of stray cows through a big wooden gate on the far side of the inn, and then he sent a rider to check that the field had no outlets or gates, or holes in the hedgerow.

"All right boys, I need two volunteers to stay out here, and I don't mean Akim and me, either."

The men chuckled at that, but were slow to speak up.

The puppet-master, a man named Yllinkotep, was a member of the spy guild, and in the pay of the Tzclinacoque. While the number of horses available to the Kirtele was of some interest to his masters, Yllinkotep's main purpose was primarily to observe the comings and goings of the Sheriff of Sulatawia and his men. These included about a hundred and fifty men-at-arms in the immediate vicinity. They kept the peace and enforced the county's ordinances and the national laws of the Kirtele in a radius that took in half a dozen major villages, and countless smaller hamlets. All the major municipal buildings were located on the village square. The Sherriff's establishment was a kyle out of the village in a strong keep with curtain walls and stone towers at the corners. It guarded the crossroads with a major east-west 'line,' which was a Kirtele term for a road.

Since he had just finished a show, the puppet-master had plenty of time to observe the numbers of men and horses, the cattle, the look of them and their personal weapons.

Although he had watched some of the younger ones grow up, he wasn't from around here and so he took a hard look, an objective look at Kjarl's crew. As he prepared for his next show, he reckoned up numbers in his head. He thought of the ripe fields of grain he'd seen last autumn, and remembered the gossip in the taverns about the bumper crop.

He watched the horse-catchers as they chivvied and monitored the mixed herd passing through the gate into the innkeeper's paddock. This morning's bird had not gone out yet, for some reason a little writer's block interfering. But now he had a fresh perspective to look at. Taken along with the sheriff's men, and the militia units that existed in every Kirtele town and place, the small but fiercely independent nation would be some kind of a factor in what was brewing. Any man could see that, but since he had no idea what the Tzclinacoque were planning—it could only be the Empire, but you never knew—he didn't know what role they might play, and hence his scrabbling for words.

In this next missive, he wanted to describe their capabilities.

The show he was planning to present next was the tale of the destruction of the world.

The children always loved the part when all the puppets fell down dead, and then one stuck its head up and peeked out at the audience.

Then it rolled its eyes around and said its line.

"Tha-tha-that-at's all, folks!"

As he saw the Sheriff himself ride up to the tavern with a squadron of troops, he figured that making a living could wait. Even a puppet-master got thirsty once in a while.

Considering what the Tzlinacoque were paying, he could take a quick break.

***

Dooley and the Captain had an understanding. He didn't try to set policy or tell people how to do their jobs, and she deferred to him in the navigation department.

"Otherwise one of us would quickly become useless." She agreed with a certain tolerant grace and aplomb.

His buzzer sounded. It was with some surprise that he glimpsed her through the entrance view-screen, the Captain, a certain Sandra Jensen, coming to pay him a rather unwelcome visit. It wasn't that he didn't like her exactly. Far from it. They called her 'the Ice Queen.' She was the only woman on the ship who actually frightened him in a purely emotional, and admittedly sexual way. It's just that normally, she would have summoned him to her office, or the bridge, or even the medical office, in the most extreme circumstances he could imagine.

"Open." The door slid back and she stepped over the threshold.

"Good evening, Mister Dooley. I hope you will forgive me." She had every right to be there, and what in the hell was he supposed to say?

Her ice-blue eyes were what gave her the name, the flaxen hair a perfect match.

"Come in, come in, please sit down." He rose to clear a briefcase from the co-seat to his right.

Dooley slipped open one of the lock-down bins, and stuck it in there for a moment, reviewing mentally, but there was nothing he'd need for the next while. He always made some allowance for the fact that all responsibility rested on her slender shoulders. How could it be any other way? It would be a grave error for a lady in her position to fraternize with the help. Yet he couldn't help but notice that she smelled absolutely wonderful.

The Captain wore white patent-leather high-heel shoes with a seven-centimetre stiletto heel, and white nylons in some kind of subdued lacy pattern, and a midi-length skirt. It was all very professional, yet there was something feminine about the way she quickly tucked it under when he pulled out her seat. Under the statutory white blazer with the multi-hued crest of the Space Service on the breast, she wore a dark indigo blue silk blouse, with the neck open to reveal a string of shining pearls to match her simple earrings. He would have preferred multi-pocketed khakis or a grimy boiler suit with this one.

"You've always impressed me, Mister Dooley." She gave a quick and disarming grin.

As what?

He wondered, but kept silent.

"Your work has always been very good, and you're not in any trouble." She strapped herself in.

Apparently she was staying for the burn. He plopped down again into his own seat.

"It's just that it's part of my job to audit the crew during the performance of their duties. I've been going through the roster when I get the opportunity."

"Oh, hey, that's great."

How little did she know. He had gotten a crush on her at the recruiting fair, when he applied for this job. If it wasn't for her, he probably wouldn't have signed on to what was clearly a pretty desperate venture. So what if the sky is falling and the world is ending? I just want to be happy. Let somebody else go, and let me enjoy these last few days of pleasure. That had pretty much been his attitude at the time, right up until the minute he saw her standing there. She turned and their eyes met...poor old Dooley was sunk, without a single torpedo being fired. He just couldn't help himself.

Love at first sight will do that to a man. What a hell of a lesson that was. And of course it had to be the _captain_ of the starship.

He called it _Dooley's Luck._ She had been speaking for some time, he realized.

"We sat and discussed it for hours." She reported matter-of-factly to Dooley. "So the first passenger we thawed out was a politician."

Dooley gave an appreciative chuckle.

"We're giving him a thorough briefing, and hopefully he can help us figure out what to do with the rest of them. Sorry, that sounds callous. But it's an outside opinion, and sort of gives us the cachet of consultation." Her eyes were cast across the boards, where multiple vectors glowed in green, red and amber.

Dotted lines and solid lines provided some reassurance. A small gong chimed and he pressed a switch.

"High gravity alert." He spoke into the microphone, clearly and succinctly, aware from past experience how hard it was to make proper words out of the mish-mash that echoed and distorted inside the machinery-spaces and engineering rooms. "High gravity alert. Please strap in and stow all loose items. Burn begins in three minutes, over."

"Can I put your name on the list for the landing party, Mister Dooley?" There was a hint of trepidation.

Had someone actually turned her down? Something in the way she said it...a whiff of shyness? Was it just his overactive imagination, reading some hidden message into every little thing she did? You could only learn so much staring at her out of the corner of your eye...a landing party! That was weeks away yet.

"Sure. Ah, the starship was built in microgravity." He'd read once that you never really knew what you were going to say until you heard it come out, that speaking was a totally sub-conscious exercise. "While stressed for the accelerations of leaving low planetary orbit, and the solar system, that was a linear thrust from the ring of engines deployed axially around the back end of the ship."

He stopped for a moment. On impulse, he reached over and patted her on the back of her left hand, aware that she was fixedly staring at this activity, yet unable to decide what to do about it.

"Relax, Captain. I know what I'm doing." She blushed beet red, and one way or another, Dooley figured he had put his foot in his mouth big time.

It was a classic remark. She sat in silence, staring at the side of his head. Many of the officers were concerned about the torsional forces—the tendency of the ship to bend under lateral accelerations, i.e. 'cornering,' just like in a car going around a turn. Dooley had explained in meeting after meeting that he had chosen to use a 'pin-ball approach,' so that they didn't overload the old girl. But talks which should have inspired confidence only seemed to frustrate efforts to build a consensus. At one meeting, the Captain turned to him.

"Just do it, Dooley!"

On that account, her visit wasn't so unexpected after all, with all of their lives riding on a throw of the dice, from their point of view.

"On our approach to Neptune, braking imparts a linear thrust, we're built for that. On our partial orbit of the planet, we won't go over point seven-eight gravities, and that's still within the design safety limit."

Dooley hoped she didn't see that he was sweating just a little. That little pat was a big mistake. Now he was all shaken up and it was time to begin the firing sequence.

He had full confidence in the calculations, done days ago. And women being women, with all that feminine intuition, she must know...right? She must know...there was terror at the thought. He gulped and tried again. That damned impulsiveness had gotten him in trouble before.

"From now on, each planetary approach will take longer and longer as our speed drops off. Patience is the key here, and not to go all freaking out."

***

Raffin was looking forward to his room, his bed, and a good night's sleep. First thing in the morning, he would set to writing up his weekly and monthly reports. The brother had been getting a little behind lately, with a lot of paperwork to catch up on.

It was with some dismay that he noticed the busy comings and goings of plenty of people. It seemed most of the brothers were in, and it looked like there were a few newcomers, strangers putting up for the weekend. The abbey's stone towers and tall gables roofed in slick black panels loomed over him. Thumping across the drawbridge and in through the portcullis, he saw that the stables were overflowing. A half a dozen wagons and coaches were dispersed around the yard, never quite large enough at the best of times. Several had horses still in the traces. Maybe they weren't staying the night.

Brother Raffin wasn't in the mood for feasting and entertaining guests. As he walked in through the gaping front hall doors, the pair of them thrown back to let smoke and steam out and a little light in, there were drivers and footmen, drovers and merchants, all sorts of people seated upon the long, hard wooden benches. He was in no hurry to inquire as to their business. All he wanted was to check into the kitchen and put in a claim on some leftovers, and then early to bed. A bath now, that would be priceless. His feet were killing him.

He didn't have a shred of curiousity. Footsteps sounded, coming from the workroom to the right of the entrance hall. A middle-aged man came out and regarded him in a blinking fashion. Brother Wik was too old for fieldwork. He was shortsighted and hard of hearing, with bad knees as well. He was stuck on administrative duties.

"Oh, yes, Brother Raffin." He said his name as if he had just remembered it. "The Abbott wishes to see you as soon as you get in. I don't know what it's about."

"Can I take my bag up to my room?"

Damnation! Brother Wik regarded him suspiciously, but it seemed reasonable.

All he wanted to do was catch up on a little paperwork and get off his feet for a couple of days. If the Abbott wanted to speak to him, then surely it must be bad news. With an unusual stubbornness, Brother Raffin stalked up the stairs and down the hallway to his room. Unlocking the thick oaken door, he bad-temperedly slung his pack on a peg up on the wall. Then he kicked off his heavy, damp sandals, which by this point in time should have been burnt. Predictably, there was no water in the pitcher, so foot washing would have to wait. After throwing on a fresh, brown woolen habit, itchy as usual but that was the rule they lived by, he strode off to find the Abbot and see what he wanted. While the head of the priory might be found almost anywhere at this time of day, the implication was that he was impatiently awaiting Raffin in his office. His knock was rewarded by the sight of Wik, looking worried and bored by the delay, short as it was. His eyes lit up and he waved Raffin forward.

"Come on, come on, he hasn't got all day."

The conversation began mystifyingly enough, Raffin uncomfortably aware of the bare feet poking out of his robe. They looked blue and puffy, pale and unhealthy, with a thin yeasty smell coming up to his nostrils from all the way down there.

"We've been very pleased with your work, Brother Raffin." The Abbot's warm voice belied the power behind the words. "Your written reports reveal a man deeply concerned with the human condition and the plight of the common people."

The flattery was downright embarrassing. Ye Gods, if he'd known this was how they were going to take it. Raffin grinned stupidly as the speech sank in a little deeper.

"Heh-heh." It had to be a joke of some kind.

"Congratulations, Raffin. We're promoting you." The Abbot's metallic blue eyes glinted with sardonic humour.

***

Kjarl and the Sheriff eye-balled each other down the length of the bar, which in typical Kirtele fashion was made of a single plank from the trunk of a fifty-foot hickory tree. Akim was in the process of paying for ten half-crocks of the innkeeper's best ale, licking his lips at the sight and smell of all that foam coming up and over the sides. The boys jostled for position and the privilege of carrying them to a table. The publican whipped out tall glass after tall glass, arranging them on a platter for the girl who waited patiently. With only two or three customers when they arrived, and now two big parties walking in the door, business had picked up considerably. The Sheriff grabbed his tankard and came over.

"How goes the day?" Sheriff Ryngger inquired politely. "You've got yourself a thirsty crew, there."

"Well, they'd better not be too thirsty. But it's good that we ran into each other."

"Oh, really?" The Sheriff lapped foam off the top of his own tankard.

"We picked up a few strays, horses and cattle. I know one of the horses for sure, Wickahammer's over on the third by-road. And some of the cows might have been reported missing."

The stallion's brand was a big 'w' with three vertical bars to the right of it.

"Wickahammer owes back taxes." The Sheriff thought it through. "And a couple of unpaid fines."

Kjarl's eyebrow twitched as he sucked up some beer, the cool liquid feel bringing blessed relief to the dry and dusty throat he had nursed for the last few kyles. The Sheriff was thinking. Kjarl didn't want to hold the thing for two months, only to have it claimed for the cost of room and board.

"The horse is big and strong, and not too old for an archer. Maybe for a lance. It's hard to say. I don't owe any fines."

"What about the cattle?"

"One that looks like a pretty good milker. Someone will be wanting that back. Two or three beeves. Maybe a couple of small ones, you could feed your men for a week or two..." If someone claimed the cow, Kjarl could claim a small reward.

The Sheriff nodded. They would work something out. Kjarl was the sort who paid his taxes, but was reluctant to part with cash money. This often worked out to the benefit of the county, as things like hay and oats and firewood could be obtained at a discount. You always had to be thinking, to stay on top of things in his job.

No, the problem was that Kjarl seemed to be sniffing around for gold, and if the horse was any good, the Sheriff would be forced to part with some of the hoard entrusted to him. To his recollection Kjarl's taxes were all paid up and he had no outstanding arrears of wood-silver, or field-dues, or anything else that might offer leverage. Sheriff Knolos sighed deeply. But if he was to retain this appointment, he had to keep his men mounted and armed in some credible or at least plausible manner. In the law enforcement industry, the costs just kept going up and up all the time. Of course Kjarl always delivered. That saved a little manpower.

"All right then, I'll have the bailey pay out twenty for the horse and ten each for two small beeves." The Sheriff thought the suggestion was a reasonable one, but he sighed again because Kjarl was just starting the bidding process.

In the absence of other potential buyers, he would have to do some good talking. In the end, Kjarl pried sixty gold pieces out of him for three small cows and two re-mounts. The Sheriff took the stallion off of him for future consideration. Assuming he could pry some money out of Wickahammer, Kjarl would get paid. Not a bad day's work, and by this time the stop and delay in his self-imposed schedule didn't seem so bad. A couple of tall, cool ones helped. After a while, the Sheriff and his crew departed, their mostly liquid lunch over.

"The roads will be a lot safer now." The serving wench slapped an ample thigh, and they all laughed.

Chapter Twelve

" _A little of the political background..."_

"A little of the political background might help." Knaius focused on Nodrakis, ignoring the elder scholar for a moment.

Nodrakis should have known all these parties had a more serious, underlying purpose. Knaius was being a little too persistent. With all the wine, and the unaccustomed rich food, the old fellow had become slightly ill, perhaps just a little woozy. He asked to be allowed to lay down in an anteroom for a short rest. Their host was the heart and soul of solicitude. Knaius was investing the time in them. He wanted to convince both men, but the scholar could simply be ordered. The foreign prince would need to be persuaded. The white-bearded Tsernalik snored lightly, slumbering on a couch just outside the door of this inner chamber, with one of the ubiquitous servants standing over him in silence.

"Twenty-four years ago, Helios the First rose to power through the use of military force, and by the skilful exercise of a cold and calculating mind." He collected his thoughts. "Unfortunately, his sons have shown no such vigor, and little enough intellectual capacity."

Nodrakis sat listening intently in the warm glow of the orator's private study, a well-lit, comfortable room full of books, sculptures and deep, heavily upholstered couches and chairs. The din and hum of the party still came in through the panels of the anteroom door, but the ornate, thickly embroidered tapestries kept it to a dull roar.

"Ruthlessness is not a good basis for lasting power. He found that he could force men, but he could not win their hearts." Knaius chose his words very carefully as they could come back to haunt him in the suspicion-filled world of the Imperial Court.

Ostensibly, Nodrakis was honoured by this sign of favour. It was nothing more than an open acknowledgement of his status. However, attempts had already been made to cut off or re-direct their funding, so the political savvy and support of Knaius might be crucial to continuing their studies of the cosmos. Under these circumstances, anyone could be useful, and even neutrality in the debate was welcome. Perhaps he would just stay out of it, and express no strong opinions.

"At the present time, his eldest son, my nephew, sits on the throne, and the official position is that the Empire of Kitchi-lao is governed by principles of moderation, equity, peace, and constitutional conduct and behaviour. The other two immediate heirs are both younger than I. As you know, Kvetchen is a general of cavalry, and Uttaris is still in a state of extended adolescence of mind, if not of body."

While Nodrakis appreciated the attention and favour of the orator, whose populist demagoguery made him a revered figure among the rabble, Nodrakis wondered what kind of plot he was being dragged into. The idea that the man would tell him everything in his head was a bit far-fetched.

"As you know, the Empire is divided into provinces. A few years after the dissolution of the old Republic, Helios Primus moved deliberately towards formal recognition of his Constitution, which finally did away with the Republic, and established the monarchy. Upon the death of an Emperor, all the constitutional powers, federal and provincial, by which he has the right to govern, revert to the people, so that true hereditary succession is theoretically impossible."

"Yes, I've been wondering about that. It seems a weakness from the point of view of stability." Now they were getting down to issues.

"Human nature being what it is, there is little doubt one of the brothers would succeed in the event of Helios the Second's untimely, er, passage."

What was Knaius proposing? Nodrakis stood fourteenth in line to the Throne of Mittainagor, but never honestly expected to be seated on it, and was quite grateful to be left alone in monkish obscurity. Because of his birth, he knew about the intrigues of courts, some petty, and some capital treason.

His own father would have undoubtedly considered exactly these kinds of factors. The astronomer could only speculate as to what his father had thought or might be thinking at any one time. The old pederast was a distant and unapproachable figure. In fact, his nurses had taken some pains to keep Nodrakis out of his way. For that he was grateful.

"At the time, the people accepted the Emperor and peace, after the civil wars of the thirties and forties." He seemed unable to come to the point.

"So what are you saying? Are you saying you would be a better Emperor than Helios the Second?"

"That's not what I'm saying." Knaius was becoming defensive, his brow taut with the concentration of searching for the right hook.

"Then what _are_ you saying?"

All this hemming and hawing was about _something..._

Nodrakis waited patiently while the other made up his mind.

"I want to bring the Republic back."

"Oh, by the Gods...are you serious? You're really serious?" Nodrakis gasped. "I dearly wish you hadn't told me about it."

This was a worst-case scenario. All they wanted was to be left alone with their telescopes and astrolabes, quadrants and abacuses.

"You are in no danger." Knaius was undoubtedly sincere. "All my servants are eminently trustworthy."

"I'm sure they are. No one can be trusted to keep a secret when his own head is threatened. Few men can face the mutilation of eyes, ears and nose, or castration, without considering the benefits of cooperation. Why are you telling me all of this?"

"Because I want to go to Mittainagor, and it would be helpful if you went with me. Think about it. The Empire has occasionally behaved aggressively towards Mittainagor, yet the Republic always maintained peaceful diplomatic relations with you."

They were still strong trading partners, semi-dependent on each other's manufactures and certain luxury goods unique to the country of origin. Kitchi-lao wines, in exchange for Mittaini wool, accounted for a significant portion of his country's economy. Without external trade, surplus wool was essentially worthless. With trade, production had increased significantly and it was reasonably profitable for both citizen and state.

"Yes, I suppose that's true." Nodrakis nodded in comprehension.

"I have spoken to no one about this. I had hoped to get an answer from you before going ahead with any arrangements. However, I have been assigned to a mission to Mittainagor, a simple trade negotiation, and it would appear I'm going there one way or another."

"But why do you need me?"

"Your presence would lend credibility to our goals. You could act as a go-between, and to lend credence to our claims. We would be foolish to attempt political changes at this time, without securing our borders with our neighbours."

Well, that made some sense anyway, although Nodrakis was certain that the man wasn't being entirely forthcoming. He knew very well that Mittainagor was no threat to the Empire, although as Knaius said, relations hadn't always been warm.

"Your neighbours to the south are going to be a problem." Everyone was saying the same thing. "They have a grudge, and an agenda, and they really don't care what form of government the Empire has."

"What looks like a problem, is often an opportunity in disguise." Knaius was all too confident. "When the Tzclinacoque are pounding on the door, and the Emperor is busy feeding his poultry, and breeding his lap-dogs, then there will be such a public outcry for leadership, and I will be poised to strike."

He thought he could see the way this was going, but if nothing more, the Kingdom of Mitttainagor would be interested in its outcome. If for no other reason, he was grateful for the warning.

"Of course, I can make no answer at this time."

Knaius gave a curt nod.

"Just promise you'll think on it."

"What about the professor?" Nodrakis wondered about that. "Why drag him into it?"

"For the time being, this is strictly between us."

That was no answer.

Upon decease, Helios Primus had been deified by the Senate. Nodrakis was wondering if the brother of a god had different thought-processes than other men, or if he would be any more trustworthy.

As the former Emperor's brother, Knaius was well up there in the line of succession. While the health of the present Emperor was not good, Helios the Second's two younger brothers were waiting in the wings. Conceivably, they could have long and successful reigns in their own right, although their characters were by some accounts soft and immature. Raised in a belief in their own greatness, they could quickly become cruel and jealous tyrants, especially under the threat of conquest by the Tzclinacoque. In spite of repeated efforts, pretty common knowledge as Court gossip, and spoken of in the market and baths, was the fact that Helios the Second and the Empress Tiona had been unsuccessful in begetting a male heir of their own. At the age of about forty-eight years, the Emperor had designated no preference for the succession. Gossip had concluded the oldest brother would inherit. Knaius had a son of his own, and two daughters. Nodrakis wondered what gossip said about that.

Gossip was no reliable guide. Conceivably, if Helios the Second died, the Empress might have ambitions of her own—you never knew what might happen. Did Knaius know something about Helios' health that no one else did? What about a poison-plot?

Yes, he could keep his word to Knaius. He would certainly think about it. He had no choice but to keep his mouth shut, and he was sure the elder Tsernalik would agree later. Both of their lives had just been endangered by Knaius's revelation, and you couldn't ignore something like that.

As his host adroitly steered the talk into other matters, the theatre, the games, the latest goings-on in the senate house, Nodrakis sipped his wine, said little, and kept his thoughts to himself.

It occurred to him that as soon as he left, Knaius would be dropping his name, and trying to use it as social levearage to get others involved in the scheme. He wondered what his father would say about all this. The simple answer came to him right away.

"You shouldn't have gotten involved." That's what his father would say.

What in the name of the seven hells could he have done any differently? It was a set-up from the word go. The professor was going to kill him for allowing himself to be led off on his own like this.

His father would have a lot to say.

" _I told you all this astronomy would lead to no good..."_

***

The Pentapolis of the Tzclinacoque looked peaceful enough on the surface, but they had been preparing for war for years. He stood, arms raised to the sky, resplendent in robes of state. A veritable peacock of a man, but it was expected of him.

The cloak of iridescent feathers merely accentuated the fact that he was barefoot and wearing naught but a loincloth. Weighty on his head, was the sunburst of massy gold, carved in curious figures of a highly symbolic nature. It was a secret script only the priests understood. The corona's heavy curving cheek pieces and nose-guard did more to stabilize the heavy thing on his head, than to serve any utility in battle, real or symbolic.

The heavy iron chains of authority hung around his neck, clanking under his cape, cold and clammy as they met the warm sweat of his armpits.

Talmotek was dedicating a new pyramid. It was the ceremony of the laying of the cornerstone, with its hieroglyphs and picture-words, in memory of his father Tibroka, a tribal chieftain who would be remembered as the begetter of a demi-god and founder of a dynasty. As _Holder of the Chair,_ it was Talmotek's privilege to wield the trowel, to mix up a ceremonial bucket of mortar, to add the cup of blood, even though the building system employed didn't really use any mortar. It was a symbolic and holy act. The actual block was monolithic, and dramatically winched into place from behind a curtain with the bugling of a hundred horns to mark its arrival. The line of greased rollers were carefully hidden behind a raised skirting board, gaily painted with municipal crests and related slogans. Ninety-nine firecrackers banged, like thunderclaps, the flashes lighting up the clouds and temporarily dazzling those looking directly at them. The demons would be frightened away now.

Talmotek kissed the ground, sprinkled wet mortar ahead of the stone, and rising, stepped back to admire his handiwork. The multitudes roared in adulation of the young hero. It was surprising at how quickly one got used to it. Everybody loves a parade, and it was his job to provide them. The faith of the people was a simple and uncritical one. This would be a mystical experience. The thought sobered him but a little. While he could submerge his own pragmatism for a moment, out of respect for the masses, he couldn't help but enjoy this ebullient mood.

Dignitaries of a dozen nations clustered around as he spoke his incantation. Magic was in the air, and in the light of ten thousand blazing cast-iron braziers, state and foreign representatives watched, rapt with the spectacle. Some of them would be looking forward to the banquet later this evening. Already the main body of the crowd was streaming away, a humming throng that lifted his heart at the sight of it. Civilians and state-owned slaves mingled and huddled in talkative groups. It was all part of the plan. To build a pyramid that rivaled the legendary or perhaps mythical piles that were said to exist on the other side of the world. Legend had it they were twenty thousand years old. It would require a hundred thousand men, and a bureaucratic machine, and a food production system to feed them. The pyramid was an excuse for having large numbers of young, physically-fit, well-fed and disciplined men, trained men, in and about the capital.

If a man can build a scaffold, he can build a bridge, a boat or a camp. He can build a siege-engine. Talmotek had built a food-production machine to feed them.

The foreign visitors were witnesses to their peaceful intentions. Tours had been arranged of the quarries, the stockpiles of stones and sand and gravel, and the stacks of huge wooden beams for the scaffolding. Everyone was very complimentary and very impressed with it all. Lines of elephants all arranged and laid out for inspection by the unbelievers. Strangely enough, it was the workmen's barracks that had been the clincher, the most convincing bit of contrived evidence of all. It blurred the line between genius and stupidity, but his enemies would double-think themselves into a state of inaction. Talmotek wasn't afraid to dedicate all the resources at his disposal to preparing a war of conquest. It was necessary to cement his hold on _The Chair._ The Kitchi-lao had humbled the sacred Pentapolis in the past, just twenty years ago, and the time seemed ripe. No operation of war is truly moral, and once you had your mind made up, anything was possible. It was to be a carefully contrived excuse for war—a response to Imperial aggression. Public opinion was everything. Bonglishko would think of something. If the Empire could be provoked to attack one of its smaller neighbours, then he could rush to their defense.

He just didn't know how he got away with it sometimes. He nodded as he climbed into his closed litter, after one last wave to the adoring crowd of commoners held gently but a little impatiently back by soldiers of the Guard.

His secretary and his chamberlain had provided him with several files and dossiers to read as the trip to the city-centre would take a half an hour or so. He nodded to the figure in the front seat of the ornately gilded sedan chair with its eighteen liveried footmen. He held on, waiting, until the front end began to rise and a long lurch of the vehicle told him they were starting up. His personal slave arose and began to light more lanterns, snug in the bolted sconces in the four upper corners.

"Open up the curtains, and wave at them for me once in a while, please." He was always very courteous to his slaves.

She complied with graceful movements of her long, lithe black limbs. The throngs of people walking along would be able to catch a glimpse of their humble sovereign, always working, working, and Vlamissa was a truly beautiful girl.

The first file was on the state of the Imperial forces. He read it with interest, occasionally reaching up at Vlamissa's prompting to wave at a half-remembered face in the crowd, yet still able to focus on the work, while the sheer noise outside, once acknowledged, was unbelievable bedlam, a constant racket of shouts, calls, jokes, jeers, hand-claps, whistles and even the odd scream. He shook his head with a grin and kept at it.

The enemy's forces consisted of long-term volunteers, organized in hundreds. They enlisted for eighteen years. Auxiliaries signed articles of service for ten years at a stretch. With less prestige than the Imperial Army, they were often lower-class people, including some women. Unusual, he thought. The sailors enlisted for twenty-five years. The hundreds or _cohorts_ of citizens were the backbone of the infantry. The auxiliary units, paid professionals, comprised the cavalry, archers and slingers, pike-and-swordsmen, and other lighter-armed troops. Some of these rather defied description, as the terms 'incendiaries' and 'miners' were a little obscure to the man reading. It might have something to do with siege warfare perhaps. He had no intention of letting the Kitchi-Lao make a siege of anything.

His readings of the previous half-century's campaigns had concentrated upon battles of mobility, for to become trapped in a siege, either in offence or defense, was to quickly become bogged down. This had huge risks, which he preferred to avoid. One of the things that struck him was that the enemy's troops were incredibly well paid, but perhaps he had misunderstood something. It could have been mistranslated. Troops rapidly melted away when confined to trenches and tents. Disease and sickness, especially the bowel-flux, tended to take tens of thousands of men in a matter of weeks.

There was no official rate of exchange between Kitchi-lao and the Pentapolis. That had to be it. No one could afford to pay troops like that.

The Five Cities of the Pentapolis and their vassal states, kingdoms and colonies mustered amongst them, at least on paper, a breathtaking three and a half million men. Not all of them were up to standards in training, equipment and readiness. Not all of them could be brought to bear without sacrificing stability at home. He admitted to himself in perfect honesty that some of the levies would be savages, plain and simple, with little more than stone-tipped spears for weaponry. They weren't even suitable for garrison work. He had to find some duty to keep them out of trouble, perhaps a diversionary border incursion or something on the left flank.

In opposition, the Kitchi-lao had standing professional forces of four hundred fifty thousand. This included a navy of about one hundred thousand total complement. The navy was probably the most professional of the Kitchi-lao forces, which had a long tradition of deepwater seafaring even before the rise of the Helian Dynasty. The army was, just like the Confederacy, divided up into cavalry, infantry and lightly armed militia.

With their strong fortifications, it only made sense to have large garrisons. This would limit forces available for field duty. The Kitchi-lao poured vast sums of money into advanced and unusual weapons, were familiar with siege warfare, and in the past had been successful upon occasion using combined-arms attacks where cooperation between army and navy was essential. The Kitchi-lao cities were invariably walled, while the Tzclinacoque were proud of the fact that all their city walls had been razed to the ground with the establishment of _The Chair,_ which had outlawed war among the Pentapolis.

The Kitchi-lao used the _pasanga_ system of measurement, while the Tzlinacoque used the decimal-based kylo-secondo-metrio system of measurement. A pasang was about five thousand feet, and the kylo about four thousand feet. He would have to transport food, supplies, and forage, for his troops and the elephants, the cavalry mounts, at least a thousand kyles, or at least he must be _prepared_ to do so. The key was to bring the enemy out to do combat, in a battle of maneuver. To sit in front of fortress after fortress would quickly waste away the magnificent fighting machine he and Bonglishko had laboured so long to create. Lure the Kitchi-lao out onto the open plain, where a line of two thousand elephants could be put to use. It was a ticklish problem. The elephants were not a big secret. Everyone knew about them, although it was decades since they had been used in battle. No one in living memory had seen them in action.

The assessment of the Kulutawas was that they would melt away, retreating to the northwest and eastward, throwing the enemy road network into an unusable condition, especially if he chose to campaign with the largest possible army. It made for some interesting reading.

A decision on the salient points wasn't crucial right now.

***

Kjarl was gentling horses, which wasn't easy to do. After the success of his twelve-day trip into the wilderness, with its catch of fourteen horses, almost all of them ride-able or worth money, suddenly his luck had turned sour.

This one had been on the farm, awaiting his return. That was the problem, sometimes, the animal had been worked a fair bit, but the layoff meant that it would have to be retrained. Kjarl had his doubts about this one, although some illiterate peasant farmer might buy it for ten pieces and consider himself lucky to have him. Kjarl hated to see any horse find a fate like that. Some of the ploughmen weren't shy about laying on the lash in the case of a reluctant draft animal, and often worked the things to death in a couple or maybe three short years. Cash money was very hard to come by, and they thought Kjarl was rich because he wasn't out there in the hot sun, plowing behind a team of oxen. They wanted to get their money's worth. They didn't like to think a horse-trader had gotten the better of them in a deal, which meant they might take any resentment out on the animal they had purchased. It didn't make sense sometimes.

Kjarl spoke softly, letting the bridle hang in his hand. The plopping of hooves came up the laneway, three or four riders by the sound of it. He liked trees, and the corral he was currently working in didn't a have a clear sight past the side of the barns. The rangy black-maned sorrel snorted and swayed, unsure of the man yet. It had patiently avoided allowing Kjarl to get any closer than twenty cloth-yards from him, and showed no signs of acceptance or even tiring of the game. To Kjarl it was a game, one he hoped he could win. He controlled the food, the water, and the straw for the horse's bedding. He heard men's voices as they unsaddled by the big front barn. The head-high fences just led into other enclosures, so escape was unlikely if the mount tried to jump for it.

Kjarl reckoned that if he could just get the horse to like him, it would begin to cooperate in the game. The animal knew Kjarl was boss, he saw him interacting with all the other animals and men in the vicinity. The creature stood staring out of his right eye, listening very, very carefully to everything the man had to say.

"Aye, you know it's just a game." Kjarl slumped his shoulders and let his arms hang all slack and non-threatening.

Kjarl hated using force with animals.

"I'm tired of this, aren't you?" He cooed at the animal, putting his hands on his hips and leaning forward, a sour smile on his otherwise honest and open countenance.

He shook his head in disgust and pretended to consider the situation, a picture of resignation.

"I'll tell you what. We could be partners." He had a special gleam in his eye.

The horse backed away, snorting and snuffling at this news.

"Want an apple?" Kjarl spoke in a bright yet gentle tone. "I got lots of apples."

The animal's head came up and it looked at him.

"Kjarl!" Akim's voice came from the vicinity of the gate.

He turned and walked over to see how business in the village had fared.

"How did it go?"

Akim and a trio of riders had delivered the Sheriff's order.

"He paid up, every coin, no arguments." His young business manager was doing well, by the sounds of it. "He's asking for more beeves. I didn't make any statements or promises."

Kjarl nodded. While the Sheriff could ride by and take a look in the field for himself, and see a small herd of cattle available in a pinch for sale, naturally Kjarl wanted to fatten them up as much as possible before letting them go. It cost money to buy small steers, and it took time to catch strays. By letting them bulk up on his grass, essentially free for the eating, he could make a lot more money. Something nudged at his right shoulder.

"Well, I'll be crucified!" Kjarl was delighted. "He wants that apple."

"He likes you." Akim spat in disgust. "He tried to bite my ear off the other day."

"You have to watch this randy son of a witch." Kjarl chuckled good-naturedly. "But it's that very spirit that makes me keep working with him. He'll make some noble son a fine mount, if I can just get him to enjoy the work."

Standing there, he craned his head around to look the young stallion square in the eye.

Its tongue hung out in satisfaction.

"It's better than dragging a plow around all day, or a honey-wagon." He informed it of the facts of life in a firm tone. "Even you have to admit, it's better than gelding."

He dug into his shoulder bag, slung over the gatepost to keep it handy but safe from pilfering, and rewarded the creature with a big shiny red one, for this rare sign of equine favour.

"You're a good boy." Now the horse had a gleam in its eye.

Akim tried not to laugh and startle the thing, and undo all Kjarl's good work of the morning.

"I'll have the halter on him by the end of the day. Then I'll show you. That's when the real fun starts."

Kjarl would eventually teach him everything he knew. An intersting thought.

Chapter Thirteen

Brother Raffin's head reeled...

Brother Raffin's head reeled at the news of his promotion. He sat on the side of his bed in his small, monastic cell, wringing his hands and wondering what he had done to deserve this awful fate. To be assigned to diplomatic relations, of all the absurdities. It was a fate worse than death, and his worst nightmare come true. Raffin hated formality, ritual, ceremoniousness of any ilk, although the austere services of the Brethren were intensely moving to the people who partook. A mirror image on the wall mocked him. He looked so pale and so ordinary. He _loved_ those services.

"You can never contradict yourself if you preach what you practice." The bizarre advice of the Abbot tumbled round and round in his head.

What the seven hells did the old fool mean by that? He could see himself in his minds eye, galloping along on some unknown trail. It was a horrible feeling to have everything taken away, uprooted.

Raffin contemplated armfuls of books, training manuals, not all secret, some of it could safely fall into the hands of the enemy. They had probably seen something like it before, according to Wik. There were fifty pages of written orders, which he was supposed to memorize, and then burn. The enemy! Who in the seven hells was the enemy?

"By the prophets and the saints." He cussed half under his breath. "In the names of the Gods."

The orders were signed by the Holy Father himself, far away, across the ocean in Zwiegerslundt. He would miss the Meerschuck wedding, he would miss teaching in the school on worship-morn, he would miss the midnight mass on midsummer's eve. He would miss the naming-days, and the funerals, and the school visits, which had become so much of his life, his routine, his reason for being. Brother Raffin was going to much-be-damned Mittainagor. The sick and the poor, and the old folks could do without him.

He hadn't even thrown the shutters back yet. His sweat smelled strongly of garlic, as it ran down his sides.

Of all the rotten luck. Brother Raffin's guts flipped over as he contemplated the pile of reading material he was expected to wade through. An item caught his eye. It was the warrant authorizing him to use the Brethren's system of post-horses. He was advised that he could make a hundred kyles a day in good weather, where these were available at Keeps and Fastnesses. He was also expected to try to communicate 'by any means possible' with his home base, presumably that meant this particular Abbey. The Abbot was unable or unwilling to answer questions.

"You will be instructed in the capital city upon your arrival by one who knows more about your duties." That was about all he knew.

Brother Raffin had never thought of leaving the Brethren before in his life, but for this one brief moment of time, he seriously considered it. The whole thing was impossible. And yet there was the Oath—the Oath of Service. His heart thumped deep in his chest when he realized he could not go back on his Oath, and that he was afraid.

But what was he afraid of? He was afraid of the unknown. He was afraid of going off into some strange land and being alone. He was afraid of making a fool of himself.

Sighing deeply, he knew the decision once put off, had already been made. His duty was clear. Like it or not, he was going to Mittainagor on so-called diplomatic duties.

Brother Raffin knelt by the bed and began to pray, not so much for guidance, as for luck. He had a sneaking suspicion he might need it. The Order, and the Brethren, and their mountain fastnesses were modeled after institutions of similar purpose going back millennia. One had to assume somebody somewhere knew what they were doing. He wished he knew why. Brother Raffin came to his feet and stood there, in front of the mirror, regarding his six-foot tall frame, his soft, sad and dreamy blue eyes. They stared right back at him in query.

The chunk taken out of his left ear by a ferocious yard-dog years ago struck his eye, also the long, pale scar running diagonally across his left cheek. Why had he been chosen? Surely there were more qualified men? He thought inconsequentially of something an old priest had told him once long ago about celibacy.

"When I go to bed at night, I feel kind of sad. But when I wake up in the morning, I'm always pretty glad." It was good advice if you could take it.

Things always looked better after a meal and a sleep. With a good night's sleep, he might be able to look at it through the eyes of total objectivity. His training had already begun to take over.

He had a horrible, sinking sensation that 'diplomatic duties' might be a euphemism for something much, much worse.

***

Nodrakis and the professor were having a row.

"This couldn't have come at a worse time." The elder man was fuming mad.

"I know, I know." Nodrakis groaned.

"If I had known he was going to do that, I never would have gone to that party." An exasperated Tsernalik had no real ideas.

"If I had known you were going to feel ill, I wouldn't have taken you." Nodrakis' patient reminder didn't help the situation.

"We have our observations to make." The old astronomer could think of nothing else.

"Damn that man. If either of our names should be mentioned, under torture, or in front of an informer, then we're in chin-deep shit..."

The old man goggled.

"They would simply execute you. As for me, it doesn't bear thinking about..."

He would be returned in ignominy to his father's house. He would be cloistered in the _hareem,_ like a drone or a stuffed ventriloquist's dummy, for the rest of his natural life. A living museum piece, condemned to a life on the shelf. Those unfortunates were always the first ones to be strangled with a bowstring upon the succession of a new monarch.

"I never thought of that!" Tsernalik gasped, then went completely silent for a blessed moment while Nodrakis thought furiously, for all the good it was doing. "I had an awful dream. I dreamed the object flared again, and we were not there to see it."

"It could have flared in daylight." The young prince was feverishly thinking, thinking. "One of us must remain here. I can convince Knaius not to ask for you or invite you to take part."

He pursed his lips, chewing on the bottom one as he thought it out. He had to save something from the shambles. The old fellow could supervise another student for a while, and keep his focus on the object of interest.

"It is absolutely vital that we get good measurements. And I'm the only member of the Mittaini Royal Family in town."

The old man looked heartbroken. If it hadn't been for Nodrakis, and his insistence on studying the cosmos, the old teacher might have been put out to pasture long ago. While he had loathed the idea of retirement for many years, and the young royal scholar from Mittainagor had redeemed him from obscurity and irrelevance, the truth was that he was fond of the young man. In the spontaneous way of the elderly, a tear came to his eye as he pondered a bleak and lonely future.

"I'll miss you, lad." There was a catch in his breath.

A decision had been made.

"I can't help being who I am." The younger man was resigned to his fate. "I have little choice but to go with Knaius, if only to keep an eye on him."

"Yes, but, what do you mean?"

"It occurs to me that Knaius is going to Mittainagor to assess the state of our defenses." Nodrakis wondered how much revelation he ought to share with the professor.

The first casualty of war is truth, he thought. The second is trust among friends, insanely imagining someone with an ear up to the door. He repressed a shudder.

"We have only his word for all of this, and unreliable gossip that the Tzclinacoque are preparing for war." His conclusions seemed reasonable enough, yet what were they based upon?

That was the trouble with being a scientist. You learned to think just a little more clearly than was comfortable sometimes.

***

"My father, who was not a god, gave me some sage and heartfelt advice as he lay upon his deathbed, enduring the last days of his reign." Helios the Second's strong and even-timbred voice was the perfect instrument, revealing the clarity of his mind. "He said not to engage in fruitless foreign adventures or seek excuses for conquest."

Helios regarded the assembly. The amicii were all members of his semi-official consigliatorium, 'the chamber of friends,' old friends and trusted advisers, as well as his brother Uttaris, and his uncle Knaius.

"Father believed that the Empire, which he and I had forged together, in many a glorious and exacting campaign, had essentially found its natural borders. We had many such talks, my father and I." The Emperor's face had a distant look for a moment, as a trace of grief flickered across his thin, ascetic features and then passed just as quickly. "As you know, his end was a lingering one. It was a chance to get to know one another again, after the sheltered happiness of youth, and then years of conflict."

This was a nice way of expressing civil war, which is what had really happened. They fought to a draw, and then the old man became terminally ill.

"It was an end that left him in full possession of his faculties." This was a gentle reminder of his own political legitimacy. "His mental powers were intact right up to the very end. Father advised me to seek a balance of powers, not just within the state, but without as well. To seek an equilibrium."

He spoke into the deep silence of this private inner chamber, buried in the heart of the seraglio. These were the most private and personal apartments in the entire palace complex, which sprawled across a dozen square pasangas of the Imperial City's waterfront, snug behind forty-foot walls.

"We have pursued that policy. Yet I fear the future, especially the Pentapolis. Their new Chair is young, vigourous, ambitious and ruthless by all reports. They have built up vast reserves of agriculture and populousness." The ring of educated, wise and experienced generals, politicians, lawyers, sages, philosophers, and admirals listened well, with only an occasional cough or sigh to break into the somber mood of the briefing.

Only Kvetchen, away with the troops, was absent.

"Our prosperity comes from trade, and the Tzclinacoque covet that wealth, which they feel infringes upon their areas of direct influence." The council members nodded or murmured at this.

It was a well-known fact that Kitchi-lao holdings in the southern seas were a particularly raw thorn in the side of the Pentapolis.

"Our southern islands tempt the Tzclinacoque. This Talmotek is looking for an excuse. That is our assessment." Admiral Zak interjected during a pause in the sovereign's talk.

The Emperor nodded. These meetings were very informal, where all could speak their minds without fear.

"He should know this is a battle he cannot win, and so he ought to seek elsewhere." Helios explained the future prospects of this particular scenario. "We have evidence that he prepares for a naval conflict. He is not entirely a fool."

There was a brief pause.

"Even with my amicii to guide and advise me, with the benefits of science and learning, and more than anything, because of the great distances, we are still not in any position to conduct a pre-emptive campaign. We have no way of breaking the strength of the Pentapolis, or substituting another regime, one we can tolerate on friendlier terms."

Helios summed it up for their consideration. Hopefully, they would come up with some new ideas.

"We have become soft, and fond of easy living. We are unprepared. But let us not be ruled by the mushy thinking of the past twenty years. Wishful thinking will be of no use in the time ahead." The flat tones were absorbed by the soft wall hangings, and finally they dissipated and faded.

He had put the problem very nicely.

"Talmotek's spies are everywhere." Knaius had some observations. "But that's nothing new. They probably know about, or are attempting to survey, every ship, every man, every horse, castle or fortification. It is quite possible that they have more accurate maps of the road systems than we do, especially in adjacent kingdoms and other states."

"We must force them to underestimate us and then come to us under circumstances of our own choosing, on ground of our own choosing." Uttaris was the youngest brother of the Emperor.

Those assembled nodded at this advice, some smiling at the youthful enthusiasm.

The tactics were easy enough. The problem was how to arrange it.

***

Yllinkotep was writing a dispatch for his handler back in the city of Nollinsay, located on the upper reaches of the delta of the Great River. He had acquired some skill at writing with the fine-pointed pen provided, and the miniature script he used was not cramped, or hasty, or crowded together in any way. He wrote it in one line along the edge of a four-foot piece of a clean scroll.

He used a ruler and a razor-sharp knife blade to cut the paper into strips, no more than a quarter the width of the tip of his little finger. He wound them around and around a small stick, not much larger than a toothpick, tightening it as carefully as he could, and then shoved the roll into a tiny bottle with a miniature screw-on cap. The long message required cutting into three, but they all fit in the bottle. Yllinkotep was grateful for this technical help from his masters. The mail must go through. The unique Tzclinacoque grammar ensured that it could be re-assembled easily, so that nothing was lost by cutting it up.

He greased it up with a little vegetable oil from another medicine flask kept for just this purpose, and then he gently pried open the beak of a big black pigeon tethered by one leg on his desk top. The sound of crows came outside his wagon, which did multiple duties as storage, his puppet-theatre, by letting down a panel on the side, as well as an office and kitchen, and he sighed to think on it, but the spy's secret lair. The bird would have to fly fifteen hundred kyles. He could only dispatch one a week, or less often if there was not much to report. He had a limited supply of homing birds, the dull, slate-dark colour highly symbolic of the black arts, the black sciences, the black operations that were indulged in by every state and country he had ever known of.

The nations of the world seemed to behave in a completely amoral manner, and the common folk just had to live with it. The beak was held closed, forcing the bird to gag it down, looking as resentful as the expressionless face of a bird can look.

It cocked its head over on an angle and peered at him with one little eye.

' _What was that all about?'_

The government was in no position to provide moral guidance, no matter how much some might demand it.

Yllinkotep listened carefully. He peeled back the edge of the curtain and had a good look around on the left side, and then he checked the right side. There were voices in the vicinity. Looking through the glass porthole behind the driver's seat, up high and exposed, there were some cows and sheep in the small pasture beside, but no people.

He opened up the back door and had a look around. No one there to his mind, opening up his awareness to its fullest extent, and blanking out inner thoughts. He went back in and un-tethered his bird. With some nervousness, he cracked open the rear door and checked first before exposing the animal to any prying eyes. Raising it up and relaxing the tension on the fingers pinning its legs, the bird stepped off right smartly. Its strong wings beat in a determined bid for freedom that would ultimately be frustrated by its own homing instincts. He would fly straight home to Nollinsay, the easternmost bastion of the Pentapolis. The bird was doomed. Yllinkotep treated them well while he had them. The message would stay in its crop until someone cut it out. It was too large for the animal to pass.

In the unlikely event that it should fall into the wrong hands, the cypher would be unreadable to anyone ignorant of the key phrase and its relationship to the most ancient and most noble of all board games, _chist._ The game was popular in many lands, and was not a unique characteristic of the Pentapolis. The most dangerous time was in releasing a bird, or worse, when he went to rendezvous with another agent in order to pick up a fresh supply of the creatures. The code was memorized.

He smiled when he thought of what he had written, but he had been specifically asked for a character study of the Kirtele, not so much numbers of men and horses. The puppet-master, for one who had been in this business so long, considered it an unusually good question, and indicative of the firmness and clarity of mind of this new young _Chair,_ Talmotek. If nothing else, he was employing good people to think his thoughts for him, and some employers weren't even capable of that.

"The Kirtele believe in the grand design of the universe, and the eternity of matter, energy, time and space. They will tell you that nothing happens by accident and that there is a reason for everything. They believe that nothing in the universe can exist without its opposite. The Kirtele believe that the universe is moving towards a grand conflagration, where all will be annihilated before a renewal, and a time of rebirth. According to the Kirtele, time is of the essence, for without time nothing else could exist. One thing I do not understand of their religion, is that in their creed, time is the most precious of all the fundamental elements in the universe. Yet time is also infinite. I find this paradoxical. This may be cultural, for the Kirtele surely understand it. According to them, life could not exist without water and arable land. The atmosphere appears to be a secondary deity in their world-view, although some of the finer points of their theology are relatively obscure to the average Kirtele in the street. They believe that a man defines himself by his actions, which in their opinion speak louder than words. According to them, what comes around goes around."

Yllinkotep had to grin at that, let them make of it what they would.

"The Kirtele go to ridiculous lengths to repay a debt, and a debt of honour is considered to be their highest obligation. They would belly-crawl through an inferno to return something that they have borrowed from a neighbour. The Kirtele believe that men are the custodians and stewards of this Earth. The Kirtele speak truth above all else. I would like to tell you about one Kirtele with whom I have made acquaintance. His name is Kjarl and he is a horse-catcher and smallholder in a farming community named in previous reports. Kjarl is aware of certain shortcomings, not the least of which is a lack of objectivity when his own skin is threatened. Kjarl is aware of his own strength, and prefers to avoid confrontation. Kjarl is a good judge of character, and a mighty fine poet even though there is no market for that sort of thing these days. Admittedly the author of this missive is not an expert."

"I engaged him in conversation after a successful horse-catching expedition, and since he was a little drunk, it was easy to get him to talk, for he appears quite lonely at times, in spite of having many friends and the respect of his neighbours..."

"This gentleman is remarkable for his wry sense of humour, and while perhaps still suffering from a kind of boyish shyness, is aware of his effect upon women, which makes him feel kind of funny inside. His wonderful voice should have been trained for the magic-singing of the well-known Kirtele religious choir."

"Standing at six-and-a-half-feet, and weighing in at sixteen stone, Kjarl can be intimidating if circumstances call for it. He tries not to abuse this power but has the same temptations as the rest for us."

"Kjarl said riding a horse is not a God-given right, but a privilege not extended to some less fortunate individuals. He feels honoured to fight for those who cannot stand up or articulate for themselves, and has accepted responsibility from time to time."

"He has some talent, as a horse-catcher and a farmer as well. These skills require long-term development, in which regard he will receive little help, for his father is elderly. His fighting-dog tenacity will serve him well in this endeavour."

"Kjarl cares deeply about his good name and reputation, and has experienced some personal growth lately, especially in the sense of gossip, and keeping his own counsel."

"A strongly intuitive person, Kjarl has no one to share with when he discovers some deep and fundamental truth. There is some speculation that Kjarl would have made a pretty good father. According to Kjarl, he has never seen his father angry, or lose his temper in his entire life. In this writer's opinion, like father like son. Kjarl is less disciplined, but he also lives in a much different world than his father grew up in. His father grew up during the great Kirtele migration, a para-military affair by all accounts."

"Kjarl tilts at windmills in a symbolic fashion. He believes it necessary for the good of society. Kjarl would be thrilled if he knew someone had prayed for him, for if nothing else it shows a good heart."

"Kjarl occasionally goes outside normal, socially-accepted means of communication for it saves a lot of time and time can be of crucial importance in some situations. He feels this is justified by results. For example, he wrote a letter to the National Council in which he was quite blunt and even a little abusive. A few weeks later, a program of road-building and repair was announced for the County of Sulatawia. He probably should have run for election, but simply does not have the money. It is the opinion of this writer that he might have won handily..."

"A self-reliant individual, he gets lonely sometimes, but then so do we all."

"Kjarl has made huge progress even though he still wonders what it really means to be a man. His question being, 'How do I know when I am all grown up?' Kjarl just doesn't seem to get it that growth is life-long, and the job is never truly done."

"When confronted by an individual wielding an axe and intent on murder, Kjarl successfully evaded the use of lethal force so as not to hurt anyone, including the rather agitated assailant, who is apparently suffering some form of mental disturbance. Kjarl's compassion was gratefully received by the person's parents, who understood and accepted the situation."

"Kjarl has thanked his parents for his upbringing, a simple little thing which many of us have failed to do. He is grateful for his life, and understands that we all die a little bit every day."

"For a while, he kept waking up in the middle of the night with a gut-wrenching burst of adrenalin, but he got over it in about a month. He cried when he tried to tell his sister about his fears. She is a good person and not pushy at all, but she will be there for him if needed. I don't like to think of what would have happened if his sister had witnessed this incident. She once grabbed Kjarl by the collar and slammed him up against the wall, and said, 'I want to punch your head in.' She is about half his size. Kjarl was so proud of his sister, to see that she could take care of herself, and the situation rapidly cooled. He tries not to anger her unnecessarily."

"It is probably a good thing she did not witness the incident described above. With her strong nurturing skills, she would have gone to the defense of her brother. It is my opinion that this would have had unfortunate results for the disturbed individual."

"Kjarl recently told his father that he loves him. This is not deviant behaviour. If further information becomes available, it will of course be made available to relevant authorities. I will continue to impartially, objectively, neutrally and fairly observe this individual, and the Kirtele in general."

"This is in stark contrast to some other individuals, who need to take a good look in the mirror once in a while. I hope this information is of some assistance to you, but this is the sort of men who make up the Kirtele nation."

Chapter Fourteen

Peeters and the Captain...

Dooley Peeters and the Captain seemed to strike sparks off each other every time they met. They were meeting with depressing frequency lately. Had she figured it out? She was there in the laundry room, the gym, the cafeteria. It was tough.

Oh, Jesus. Had Captain Jensen figured out that poor old Dooley Peeters had some insanely illogical crush on her, one that wouldn't let him sleep at night, one that caused the most immature fantasies, one that haunted virtually very waking moment?

If so, she wasn't making life any easier on him. He was trying to set up for the next big burn and here she was at the Plotting Room door again.

"Um, um, we're all set for a quick circuit of Uranus."

She took off her blazer and latched it into the coat-rack.

"I believe that's pronounced, 'urine-us.'"

Dooley flushed beet red, right up into the roots of his lanky brown hair. He felt so inept. She was looking the other way. The Captain locked down a briefcase and then placed a piece of paper or two in his hand.

"It's the old good-news, bad-news thing, I'm afraid." His heart thumped a little heavier as he glanced at the papers and tried to lower himself into the seat at the same time.

His face still felt hot.

"The good news is they've rediscovered fire." She said it with a trace of warmth and humour, as she routinely belted herself in, although they were not going to pull a lot of gravities.

He discovered a complete absence of humour inside himself.

"What am I looking at?"

The heat-signatures were obviously artificial, man made. He was looking down, right down the chimneys of a thousand glowing forges, red-hot, although they seemed fairly small if the scale on the bottom of the printout was any indication.

"Hearths. Someone down there is making steel, and quite a lot of it. Other than that, it doesn't seem safe to draw too many conclusions. This type of site seems to be a fairly rare occurrence on the planet."

She was reluctant to use the word 'Earth.' It really was an emotional trauma for them all, and he wondered if there was something somehow wrong with him, in that his focus seemed dulled, or even absent. He had his job to do and her to think about. Dooley might be the happiest guy on the ship. He'd never really thought of it that way. She showed him another one, all glowing dots, red, green, white.

"These are residuals, from ancient nuclear technology, just about where you'd expect them to be. There are a few odd ones in places like the South Pole and Greenland, but that could be accounted for by the apocalyptic-collapse theory of what happened to the world after we left..." The captain's voice trailed off in a dismal, low tone.

With a breath of resignation, she turned to look at him. He tore his eyes off her nylon-clad knees, where he had been staring at an angry red weal, with black and purple bruising around the edges. Sandra Jensen was human. She had whacked her left knee on something. Her eyes, icy blue in their depths, fascinating in their clarity, were locked on his. Like a damned, stupid, miserable fool, he blurted out the first thing that entered his mind.

"What's an awful place like that doing on a nice girl like you?"

With an unexpected smile, she kept staring into his eyes. Something deep in him let loose. Call it a devil, call it a mischievous spirit, Dooley Peeters resolved not to be the first to break off eye contact. The moment went on forever—and thank God, but she finally blushed a little, and the thing in her eyes changed somehow, and then he was handing the paper back and it was over.

"I banged my knee pretty badly on the edge of the end table." He tried to keep her in view out of the corner of his right eye and do the last few checks at the same time.

A hint of pink crept up her cheekbones and she turned away abruptly. She tapped virtual keys, and a holo-screen popped up in front of her.

"If we didn't need reaction mass, I'd suggest dumping loose articles and even baggage. We could do it on our next fly-past, but the colonists will need every aid they can get, so we have to hang on to the cryo-frozen livestock embryos, the seeds, the farming implements." He was thinking of ejecting one or two of the biological pods, using the explosive bolts provided for emergencies.

It would mean operating with fewer crewmembers. Keep 'em frozen. They had to think of the cargo as a valuable biological resource. Lighter objects, the bio-pods would have less momentum, and be easily captured by planetary gravity, thus pulling them away from the ship. No one cared where they went. The key thing was to avoid collision.

"Do you still think of them, and us? We have some kind of future, or fate awaiting us on the surface, Dooley."

It was the first time in his life he had ever heard the Captain call someone by their first name. She must have done it somewhere, with someone...but. _But._ He took a quick swallow of coffee, and then jammed the cup into its holder.

Dooley activated the public-address microphone and announced the upcoming burn, as she patiently waited for their reverse drafting of Uranus. As Dooley had described, it was like beating another Nascar driver down the straightaway, passing on the outside into the apex of the turn, and then using the other guy's brakes to slow you down.

She considered his idea of dumping more mass, which would lower their net momentum, and save on reaction mass. Dooley had some thoughts of re-orienting the ship and firing the bio-pods forwards as 'retro-mass,' again reducing net momentum...he decided it could wait for the time being.

"I'd like to see your figures again."

It was Dooley who came up with the concept of gravitational braking, way back when they were first presented with such a total disaster. Although she had only experienced a few days or weeks of consciousness, millennia had passed while she slept. That thought always shook up the guts. But this was their only salvation. She was firmly convinced.

"Gravity varies inversely with the square of the distance." His calm voice had broken through the deadlock at a meeting that had otherwise been much shouting and red-faced arm waving.

"Gravity is a wave, not a particle." He said it so patiently, with such total confidence, that her doubts were subdued.

How could any woman resist such confidence? When Dooley presented figures that showed they could indeed go home, without having to abandon anyone, or jettison anyone out into space, they, no, _she_ —had grabbed at it.

***

Talmotek was never burdened by second thoughts, which was why this present set of feelings and apprehensions was so disturbing, even as he sat and listened with patient grace to Bonglishko's and the other leaders' comments.

Yet he couldn't help thinking that he was about to engage in predatory economic war. Most statesmen never foresaw that their neighbours would fall on them as soon as they saw them engaged in conflicts and disputes with former friends and allies. Too many leaders forgot that allies attacked former friends as soon as the time came to divide the spoils. Hopefully his and Bonglishko's foresight had taken care of all that...but if not, so be it.

Talmotek was accompanied by his son, Malko. At fifteen summers old, he was almost as tall as his father, albeit at about half the weight. Malko was a fine-looking young man, with flashing dark eyes, unusually large for their race. Bonglishko was reviewing preparations, which included a naval feint at the southern end of the Kitchi-lao Empire, followed by a rapid overland strike right at the heart and capital city of Kitchi-lao, located on the east coast of the northern part of the continent.

"The key thing is, once we have made a plan, we must stick to it." Bonglishko was adamant. "We must keep moving forward with all possible speed, as enemy forces deployed to the south will take quite some time to be transported back to the north. We must avoid setbacks and especially unnecessary delays."

This meeting was their final summit.

Delay was a campaign-killer. How many times had they seen it? Not just in history books, but in their own personal experience? It was best not to spend too much time on second thoughts and sensible suggestions. Talmotek stared at the wall map dominating the nerve centre in the Tzclina capital. On the west, the ocean without end. To the north, the frozen hell of the Mala-jeebies. He saw the narrow seas that separated the Confederacy from the long peninsula of the T'broka, to the south the neck of land that separated the northern from the southern continent, and to the east another vast ocean. It was a known fact that on the other side of the world, civilized people lived, speaking a barbaric, unintelligible tongue. From time to time unfortunate sailors in strange boats made of marsh-reeds, men with brown eyes and long, straight black hair and hawk-like noses arrived on the eastern shores of the Confederacy, and the Empire as well, no doubt. What a fate. To be cast ashore, and marooned in a strange land. He had plenty of problems of his own to deal with without daydreaming. The long purple smear of the Kitchi-lao beckoned and mocked him from the map. With the colours for other nations and countries, other tribes and lands, it was a fascinating look at the whole potential theatre of war.

"Now we come to the problem of how we pay for all of this." Bonglishko's briefing concluded.

Tuolimnos beside him nodded vigourously, with his coal-black, glittering eyes turning from side to side to take in the rest of them. The most muscular of the group, his shaven head, nose ring of massy gold, and skin completely covered in tattoos set him apart in some degree from the others. Kuelpatokis beside him, was short, dark, pig-tailed, with glassy green eyes, rounded head and a pug nose, thick lips which he constantly licked in a sly and nervous manner as if suffering permanent dry mouth, but at least he affected to look civilized.

"On behalf of T'noka, I hereby propose raising customs taxes from two and a half percent up to three and half." Alnashak, Prince of that city, spoke in a dignified manner.

Talmotek and the others nodded. It was at least neutral in its impact—no one city was being asked to shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden, and the item quickly passed.

"We propose raising inheritance taxes from five to six percent, raising the tax on the manumission of slaves, from four to six percent. This cost is usually borne by the freedman's labour, once freed. We don't anticipate much of a backlash here." The tall, youthful, red-bearded Alnashak, who was _Chair of the Taxation Committee,_ awaited their response.

"A tax on inheritance? Argh!" Malko baulked in feigned indignation.

The circle of men about the shiny black marble table laughed, delight written on their features, at this youthful jibe at the old man. All of them had sons and daughters, mostly about the same age, although Kuelpatokis of the Nollinsays had a very young infant daughter. His eastern counterpart also had children by previous marriages. They were much older, in their mid-thirties, Talmotek recalled.

"Don't you worry." Talmotek smiled. "I promise not to die too soon. I might live to be a hundred and ninety."

The assembly chuckled while Malko impudently stuck out his tongue at his father. It was good to see such spirit in the youngster, obviously showing off for company. He winked at the boy, happy in their relationship. Parenthood had its compensations. Who would have thought? As a small boy, at a family reunion, he had vowed quite seriously, much to the humour of assembled clan members, that he would never marry. He had held out until he was of age, and then married the girl provided for him by the foresight of their parents. To his surprise, he had learned to love his family. His wife's many pregnancies had taught him some empathy. His eyes were still on the map. Besides Malko, he had seven daughters to give away.

Nutchaleesis of Cragfur looked over the table, thinking silent thoughts deep behind those shadowed, recessed eye-sockets, long, lank black hair cut straight across in bangs.

Nutchaleesis had lost a few stone in body weight over the last few months. He was the weakest link in the chain in his and Bonglishko's assessment. The man's slight shoulders, adequate for the role of government, were not up to the burdens and toils of war. Or perhaps he was simply ill, and was trying to keep it a secret in case he should recover. They couldn't rule it out. There was always someone of ambition waiting in the wings for a moment of weakness.

Always, there was some policy in a politician's behaviour.

"We also propose measures perhaps not so much to the general liking." Alnashak had his own concerns. "These will have an impact. We propose increases of four percent on the sale of slaves, one percent on all auction sales, increased tolls on all bridges and canals, and increases in the tax-rates and prices of grain, oil, vinegar, salt, certain spices, and essentially, all foods sold in the public markets."

Talmotek grunted. This wouldn't win them any popularity contests. None would be put in place until they had sufficient provocation from the Kitchi-lao to declare war. Raising his hand, he nodded at the assembled men of the war council.

"Seconded."

Between he and Bonglishko and the other thinkers involved, they still hadn't been able to get around that one yet, and the season was fast approaching when they would have to go with whatever justification and provocation they could find.

The motions entitled, 'A Series of Proposals for Certain Unusual Tax Measures,' quickly passed, one by one.

Chapter Fifteen

The white stallion haunted his dreams...

The white stallion had haunted his dreams for years. The memory, the vision of that horse, standing on a cliff, trumpeting his call of defiance over the valley, was seared into his memory. That horse was meant for him. He didn't care what anyone thought. So it was with only half a mind that he listened to Akim's cheerful prattle as they rode home from the monthly auction sale in the county town of Gl'wellnittisonop, trailed by the four other riders working with them.

"The Tzclinacoque are moving divisions of troops around, and that means war." Akim rode next to him. "That's what the Sheriff's men said."

While Kjarl attended each and every auction, he let the younger hands wander off by themselves in turns. The auction was an exciting place, with owners and riders from all over the county. It was a chance to catch up on gossip, local news and rumours, and to get reacquainted with friends not seen in a while. He couldn't leave the decision of whether to pull a reserve bid, or take the animal home, to an employee with no stake in the outcome. Kjarl suffered the risks but he also accepted the rewards, and responsibility.

If he went home kicking himself in the arse, he had only himself to blame.

When he reviewed the results, he had sold seven horses and eighteen small cattle in a little over an hour and a half. Most of the time involved in this sort of operation was the actual trail ride. It involved waiting to show in the ring, and for that, either the owner or the animal's familiar trainer was best.

The big milker went for a price that was disappointing, but she was a little past her prime, especially since he couldn't attest to a history of milk production. It was best not to lie about such things. He was glad to be rid of her. Kjarl didn't actually drink that much milk and he already had a cow of his own.

The small beeves included two or three slightly bigger and fatter than usual for this time of year and this place. They were snapped up for good prices, offsetting what he might have lost on the cow. If someone pleaded honest poverty, he probably would have given the cow back to them, in exchange for a promise of dinner when he was in the neighbourhood, or a dozen bushels of oats, some small token payment. But no one had claimed this particular animal, and he didn't need it. She had a couple of more years of production in her, and at that price, the new owners would be glad to have her. He didn't have time to be milking the thing daily, and then hustling around the neighbourhood trying to give the milk away for free.

Why pay one of his men to do it?

Kjarl reckoned some people are full of a stupid, stubborn pride, and someone somewhere was missing a pretty good cow. Why hadn't they come asking for it? It was one of the unexplainable mysteries of life.

Akim and Kjarl each had a sack full of gold pieces girded on their broad leather belts, close up under their cloaks, for while spring was advancing, the day was a wet and cool one. The auctions were held at dawn, on the last day of the month. They drove the herd down the day before, putting up for the night at a small inn near the stockyards. In the evening, talk centred around the fire, the ale lubricating tongues, with many strangers, travelers, and locals involved in the trade. The rumour mongers had been busy. War clouds on the horizon, but what was the source of that information? Someone was just trying to stir up trouble, or cause a sensation.

The stream was broad but not deep. The shadows of newly budding leaves dappled the sun-lit ground and the bottom of the river under their hooves. They were just streaming across the deepest part of the ford when shouts came from both the left and right on the far side.

Hoof-beats rattled on stones and knocked on tree-roots as a crew of rough-looking, dark-clad brigands rushed them, brandishing long, iron-tipped lances held at the ready.

Kjarl and his riders froze in shock. The bandits made the mistake of believing Kjarl and his men would yield. Foolishly, they reigned up, and began shouting in insulting and demanding tones. Kjarl had his hand on his hilt.

"Give us all your gold! Give us all your gold!" The foremost one was obviously their leader, and not a Kirtele by the look of him.

Another one spat in their direction.

"Farmers!"

On some mad berserker impulse, Kjarl went for the man in front of him, spurring his horse right into the middle of what looked like a dozen riders.

The ringing note of a short, sharp Kirtele sword being drawn from its metal-stiffened scabbard was the only warning he gave. His men followed suit, digging in their own spurs and charging up the bank. They began laying about them with their own swords, although Arnis rode back to the other side, un-slinging his bow off of his back. He had it strung and an arrow knocked in a jiffy. The robbers, their lances cast aside as useless, were now hard-pressed by the enraged horse-catchers. One already lay lifeless under Kjarl's mount, his left arm separated from the shoulder but still clutching the lance. His pale, dying features stared up from the shadows as shouts and the clanging of weapons shattered the morning peace. A shrill, keening scream cut through the grunts and curses in the otherwise ringing air as steel struck steel.

***

Yllinkotep had been ordered south. He was happy enough to move on, as any village eventually tired of his repertoire of plays, sketches and stories. After a time, everybody in town knew all of his songs. These were specially written in a popular trade jargon common to several neighbouring nations. Simple, and easily remembered lullabies and folk melodies, it was a bit humbling to come back to a village and hear your own music being hummed, whistled or sung by people who had forgotten the original performer. It was an interesting slant on human nature.

This village of the Kulutawas was similar to any other, with a wide main street and big, open squares suitable for the driving of herds of sheep and cattle. Dusty in summer, muddy in the rain, and hard-packed in the depths of winter, the wind moaned through and in between the irregular rows of semi-permanent buildings that made up downtown. These edifices were backed up by the multi-hued tent tops visible over at the end of the long square, and through the alleys, and over the tops of the smaller buildings. What passed for an actual building as opposed to a tent were the materials from which it was constructed. Some were little better than hovels, yet they did business as a hotel or a shop.

The Kulutawas had no maps of their country. The only information he was able to obtain, was entirely word of mouth. He believed that he had aroused no real suspicion. It was common enough to ask directions from this mobile and impermanent population, although it was extremely difficult to assign any weight to distances, or the existence of each town or village. But perhaps accuracy was not essential. Again, he had been asked to provide a national character study, and he was finding it no easier than the one for the Kirtele. The Kirtele at least did a census once in a while, the Kulutawas found this beyond their abilities. The Kirtele marked a road with a sign once in a while.

He sat on top of the wagon, his aging pair of mules standing passively in the traces. Quiet munching and mumbling noises indicated there was still a handful of oats in their feedbags, which Yllinkotep gave them as a reward.

For one so accustomed to loneliness, they were old friends, companions on the trail, partners in his business ventures. How many times had children, with little free time to play, or too little surplus food in family farm production to have pets, stopped to pet the mules? Two white mules, with clean red ribbons in their manes, the matching livery-blankets thrown over them. The patient mules, who would rather be the centre of attention to a bunch of children, than be sweating it out dragging the bulk of the wagon up some endless hill in the high heat of summer—or the cold, frozen perdition of winter. Even now, the strong southwest winds of this season, warm winds as they rocked and tugged the cart. His sleeves lifted in a puff of wind, and the distinct chill on the back of his neck reminded him that summer was still some ways off.

The Kulutawas were just as indulgent to their children as any other race, and it was often a quick dash home for a copper coin, to watch a puppet show, and help the nice man buy oats for his lovely mules. It was all part of the game. Lonely old puppet-masters were the definition of innocence. They had to be.

This particular town was quite large, with perhaps as many as two or three thousand people. There were several other showmen in the market today, which tended to create more business for everyone. Large towns on market day had a kind of excitement in the air. People enjoyed buying and selling things.

It was a lot more pleasant than standing in the hot sun watching a bunch of sheep eating grass and nursing their kids, with the occasional randy billygoat to break up the monotony.

***

Tsernalik found it hard to accept. His young protégé was gone, and now he felt like he was just going through the motions. True, he had a student to help him with the work. He had a hard time even remembering the lad's name, which seemed a little unfair, but after the strong mind and well-considered opinions of Prince Nodrakis, the shy and diffident blatherings of a more inexperienced assistant held little interest. The simplest things had to be explained, and he asked the silliest questions, when it should have been obvious. Classroom work with total neophytes was decades behind him. Perhaps Tsernalik had run out of patience, but where Nodrakis saw the significance, the nice young gentleman selected to replace him was still wallowing in the basic theories. His arithmetic was accurate, but he was uninspired in problem solving.

He was always looking fearfully over his shoulder for approval, a concept which bored Tsernalik. In no position to agree with anything Tsernalik said, the fellow had no ideas of his own, and he lacked the courage to contradict when Tsernalik tested him with some not-too-subtle trick questions.

Tsernalik had to force him to pay attention, to try to make accurate measurements, and to transcribe them. To even think about their significance seemed more than he could manage. Nodrakis would have pushed him. He was grateful to have some method of communication with Nodrakis. His written notes were quickly forwarded to Mittainagor using the official Imperial Diplomatic Service's postal system, which went out once a week.

Between Mittainagor and the Empire, a lot of commerce passed across the borders, and balance-of-payments had to be kept up. Receipts had to be compared and exchanged, questions and concerns had to be answered at the state level. The weekly pouches were a matter of essential routine. The bandits that seemed to haunt every agrarian-herding society didn't mess with the Imperial Mail. It was easier to prey on defenseless farmers, travelers or merchants, and avoid the risk of soldiers being quartered in the neighbourhood. This often made the bandits so unpopular with the locals that they were forced to find greener pastures elsewhere. Bandits and soldiers were seen as equally pernicious, and perhaps equally necessary to the social equilibrium. The difference was, that bandits left the poor alone, seeing no profit in them. The soldiers had a bad habit of expecting gratitude to be shown in tangible ways, although the term 'protection money' would have been offensive to their ears. If a bandit or robber raped a woman or girl of innocent repute, his own comrades often wrought their own rough justice. The soldiers made no such distinctions. Their seductions were not always willing or non-violent, to put it politely. The age of consent meant nothing to soldiers stationed far from home on garrison duty. Resentment at their isolation from the centres of culture and power and entertainment, had something to do with it. Simple boredom might have had something to do with it.

Nodrakis' answers would come back the next week. Since he was a Prince of the Blood of the Mittaini Royal Family, cooperation on that end wasn't a problem.

A gong sounded far off in the distance, the long, drawn-out tone fading away, yet leaving a suggestion of music on the damp evening air. The note of it stayed in his ears for a while.

"Nedos." He placed a palm on the boy's shoulder—funny how he'd never really thought of the Prince as a boy—and bade him stand up. "I'll take over for a while. You can take notes. My hands are stiff and sore as usual. Just try to write neatly, lad, that's really the only requirement."

Nedos nodded dumbly, still too overawed by the name and reputation of the man to loosen up and display some personality. Tsernalik sighed inwardly and grinned at the fellow.

"Are you hungry?"

Little to his surprise, the fellow denied it with a quick shake of his head, and picked up their scroll and studied it in the dimness to see where the professor's handwriting left off.

"Don't worry, we'll take a break in another half-hour or so."

It might take a few sessions, but the young man was at least semi-intelligent. Tsernalik had a sudden thought. What if the student was simply taking too seriously the code of silence imposed on assistants?

"Tell me a little about yourself. Where are you from? When did you get interested in astronomy?"

"Because it gave me a chance to dream."

Tsernalik's eyes widened slightly in what passed for excitement in a scholar. While it wasn't exactly a dam bursting, Nedos cautiously began talking to the old man in the night.

***

Nodrakis and Knaius met by pre-arrangement at an inn on the edge of the Imperial city, one frequented by the better class of travelers. It was a feat of organization when a great lord moved household or traveled for any reason.

Acting on the assumption that he would be returning to Kitchi-lao, Nodrakis had dispatched his own small household several days beforehand. He and Knaius had about a hundred persons in their combined entourage. This wasn't excessive, considering Knaius was the Emperor's uncle, Nodrakis a Prince, and the party was carrying a considerable amount of money. Gentlemen had to provide for their comfort both on the road and in distant lands.

Knaius had residences scattered the length of Kitchi-lao. Nodrakis' servants were given directions and instructions to meet the party at a place Knauis owned a few miles out the north road. Any idea of rapid progress was gone.

"I miss campaigning." Knaius' confession came as the two men conferred over lunch. "I've taken the liberty of ordering for you."

That explained the hasty and whispered consultation with the manager and a serving wench. The clamour of kitchen-sounds, dishes being racked, platters rattling, came from somewhere just a little too near. The dirty, half-timbered four-story building gave the impression of a hundred small, dim, smoky, and cramped rooms, although the main dining hall with its curtained alcoves was adequate.

"Don't worry." Knaius was reassuring. "After tonight, it will just be a small group of us, and we'll make better time."

"I'm rather worried about a snow-storm in the mountains." Nodrakis' expression said it all. "When I came to Kitchi-lao, we got snowed in for a week, and it was somewhat later in the season."

Knaius nodded, sharp blue eyes taking in the younger man's sensible brown traveling cloak, with a hood, green linen breeches, high boots, and sword-hilt dangling under the hand.

"You know, if you and I really went for it, we could be there in three days." Nodrakis found the whole thing a waste of his precious time.

"I see no real reason to hurry." Knaius dug into a piping-hot bowl of a hearty chicken stew, with dumplings.

Knaius was going to Mittainagor indefinitely. Nodrakis wanted nothing more than to escort the man there, introduce him to the family, and then ride back to Kitchi-lao. He resigned himself to a longer term of wasted time. He idly reached for some hot bread, and spread butter and honey on it. Dipping it in a mug of cold milk, he knew that upset as he was, it would be a good idea to keep it in check. He must force himself to eat, and show patience, and not to let it show. Nodrakis was champing at the bit. Knaius smiled, as if reading his thoughts.

"I've sent ahead a dozen pairs of my finest hawks. You and I might get a chance to do some bear hunting, or maybe one of those horses with the trees on their heads."

He was only half joking. The Kitchi-lao didn't have a proper word for the moose, which was not common except in their northern islands. The inn's main dining room was jammed full of midday patrons. The noise penetrated the walls of their private booth and made it hard to focus on any sort of contingency planning. Knaius was following form and traveling with much of his furniture, his plate, and the trappings from his personal chapel, as well as a pack train of provisions. Messengers were ahead of Knaius to secure lodgings on the way, and in order to get a house ready in Mittainagor for him. Other than going hunting, Nodrakis found the whole enterprise a useless waste of time. The sighting of the strange object in the heavens had solidified and underlined his obsession with the cosmos.

This trip forced him to confront the issues. Theoretically, there was more to life than stars and telescopes. There was a certain girl, back in the capital city of his homeland, certain unfinished business, and certain thoughts that needed examination as far as she was concerned.

He had to admit he was obsessed with the heavens, to the extent that he had given her up for them. What had he been thinking? But of course he remembered exactly what he had been thinking. He was thinking that it was temporary, and that he would eventually return.

In some fateful and solemn counterpoint to this thought, a rather buxom woman, more suitable to being a fishwife as opposed to waiting upon royalty, brought the fish course of what Knaius had proposed as a light snack.

With a flourish, she whipped back the gleaming domed cover of the dish to reveal baked orange roughy. Not coincidentally, she also revealed a vast and heaving décolletage. A quote from an ancient author went through Nodrakis' mind.

"In winter, naught but the freshest and most exotic fruits; but when near the sea, nothing but the finest mutton, from the fattest, juiciest mountain sheep will do. When far from the sea, nothing but the freshest shellfish and fishes from the deep blue sea will grace their tables, and ostrich eggs and sea-cucumber soup, and fruits from far to the south..."

Knaius might enjoy reminiscing about the campaigns of his youth, but the reality would appear to be far different.

Chapter Sixteen

To see Helios II with the birds...

To see Helios with the birds was to see him in a completely different light.

It was possible, when he sat on the throne in his robes of state, to see him as an Emperor. It was possible, when astride his charger, armoured and helmeted, and holding his lance high, to see him as a warrior. At table, in intimate company, it was possible to see him as a father, a husband, a family man. At times, it was possible to see him as a businessman, a planner, a leader.

But to see him with the birds was to see him come alive, to see an enthusiast. His eyes, his whole face lit up with the pleasure he felt at seeing his little menagerie of avian friends.

The Empire's disinformation program had been a little too successful. While the whole point of the exercise was to hide capabilities and keep secret the military's newest tactics and weapons, the effect was to cause the Tzclinacoque to underestimate them. It encouraged them to plan on invasion. He had presented them with an opportunity.

The birds were among a handful of secret weapons carefully concealed behind a web of deceit, like the companies of aerostats, hot air balloons, to make in-depth observations of enemy troop dispositions, perhaps avoiding surprise by the proverbial corps hidden in a ravine. The mobility of the balloons was the secret. This new system had been devised so that they could keep up with the rapid movements of the army.

They had new field kitchens, and a streamlined supply organization. Magazines of grain, wine and oil were established near the frontiers of the Empire. He nodded in reflection, seemingly intent to all purposes on the bird perched upon his wrist.

The new watchtowers would serve to slow, and distract an invading enemy, and draw him into wasting time, that most precious element of modern warfare. Retreating garrisons would have valuable intelligence regarding the whereabouts of the invaders, hot on their heels at it were.

The Imperial Birds were crisp white, with bands of royal purple, and buff edges on the tips of their feathers. This livery was the result of centuries of selective breeding.

They could fly at forty or fifty pasangs an hour, for days at a time. All of this had been foreseen, and the maxim, 'make haste slowly' had been applied to a deliberate policy of deployment and development of the armed forces. To a certain extent, the foe's timetable was predictable. The Emperor sat with the birds, his gaze showing the sphinx-like calm of a never-ending vision. Talmotek would come upon the impulse of some divine spirit, and the Empire was as ready as Helios could make it. It was all in the lap of the Gods. Would it be enough? The season of warmaking was proverbially short. Would Talmotek come? Would he come? Spring was in the air, the time for war. He had to come. All of his forces had been building up to this endpoint. The notion that the Tzlinacoque could keep a secret for another year was ludicrous, and all of those soldiers had to be fed and housed, clothed and paid.

His attendants noted the Emperor sitting there, head raised, mouth open in some breathless emotion like the statue of some god or goddess on display in the Imperial Square and wondered what was up. If they had known, they would have been only slightly reassured.

***

Brother Raffin paused on the brink of the hill, looking down into the valley of the Mittaini capital.

It was a scene of breathtaking beauty, and awe clutched at his throat when he saw the pointed end of a vast inland sea. It was the largest body of water he had seen in his entire life.

The huge bowl of the lake stretched off to the northeast and southeast, with the edges of the shore fading off into the horizon. The northern edge was more solid, curving back in on itself in a distinct headland. As he rounded the brow and started down, he saw a causeway connecting the two shores at this end, leaving a small, triangular lake enclosed behind it.

Twin cities were linked by the early Mittaini monarchs, at the west end of Lake Tayreio. The view did little to make him any happier at his present lot in life, but his heart lifted at the spectacular scenery. If nothing else, travel broadens a man's mind, and perhaps even lifts his spirits.

Brother Raffin's backside hurt from the unaccustomed riding, six hundred kyles in a little over a week. He would be damned glad to get off of bloody horses for a while. After a lifetime of walking, he wondered why the Kirtele never complained of saddlesores, not on the horse, but on the man.

Raffin was heartily sick of rainy evenings spent in damp inns, everyone in the place inquiring as to his business and destination. He was tired of the attempts at small talk, and subjects he didn't care about, and stories about people he had never met and never expected to meet. He was sick of bad food, bad beds, bad replacement mounts, and bad weather, bad water and bad beer. He had learned there is no place like home.

As the trail sloped down and over the side of the hill, he saw ships in the bay, and vessels coming in to port. From this vantage point, they looked like toys, but he realized they must be bigger than any boat in his experience, including the biggest river ferries. Again his heart lightened, ever so slightly. Bad as his present assignment was, it must have some compensations—it must.

If only someone would tell him what it was about, maybe things wouldn't be so bad. If only he had even the faintest bit of training or experience, or even just a simple desire to do this kind of work, it might have helped a lot. Raffin reflected that one must be careful what one wishes for, and perhaps ignorance truly is bliss.

Again, he briefly considered leaving the Brethren. The trail became too slippery, too steep and too rocky. He focused on handling the horse. Pains came up his spine when the horse lurched under him, half-stumbling over a boulder sticking out of the trail.

"Damn." Raffin was trying not to be too hard on the poor old animal.

The creature had seen better days. His patience had limits. Dark pines closed in on them, and the royal city below, with all its white turrets and high curtain walls, was lost to view. If only he wasn't alone in all this. For the first time in his life, Raffin wondered why he worked alone all the time. What worked just fine in the familiar landscape of his youth, might be a bit of a limitation here and now. If only he had someone to talk to besides the horse.

***

The Kulutawas knew what was coming, and were trying to anticipate, and to do what was best for them. How they might know this, was anyone's guess. The signs were there to see, even for a stranger like Yllinkotep. There were the tents that disappeared in the night, leaving only a ring of stones around the perimeter, and a blackened fire-hole.

Where twenty or thirty tents had once stood, now only a dozen, the short, tough grass flattened and trampled by a season of footprints. Within days it would spring up tall and strong and green again, and show little reminder of human presence. For now the signs were obvious. In the few days he had been in town, it had shrunk in size and even gotten a little quieter.

True, the Kulutawas might break up into smaller groups as the season advanced, taking their herds out in search of greener grass and fresher water. But something seemed different to Yllinkotep, and the spy and puppet-master had learned to trust his instincts.

The Kulutawas didn't affect many permanent buildings in any town for government, or any kind of infrastructure. Meetings were very public in the village. No one paid any attention to the dark figure of Yllinkotep, hovering on the fringes of the crowd, and keeping to himself. Since the villages of the Kulutawas were temporary, and their location a matter of simple convenience, strangers were not remarkable. His presence seemed to be accepted by members of the audience who made eye contact.

The speakers all seemed to talk in a kind of symbolic code, one that was understood by the initiates, and only dimly by outsiders. The words meant one thing, and were obvious enough, but the symbolism meant something else. Someone jostled up against him, arousing all his senses. Not being a fool, Yllinkotep assumed a pickpocket, and stepped sharply away, hand on hidden knife hilt. Not that he had much property to lose. He looked sharply at the individual. The short, non-descript character nodded and apologized succinctly.

"Sorry stranger, there's a hole just there." Then he moved off.

His leather purse was still there, yet there was something new in his pocket. Putting his hand carefully inside, the feel of soft, yet crinkling paper greeted his fingertips. A message. He had been wondering. Here in the flat, mostly treeless plains of the Kulutawas his pigeon-coop would have been too conspicuous, too suspicious.

What the Kirtele accepted as natural, would have stuck out like a sore toe in the Kulutawa lands. Worse, the few trails were wide-open and exposed to view on all sides. From any distance, it would have looked odd for two wagons to meet, stop, exchange cargo, then for him to turn around and return to town.

He pressed his palm over the paper, and withdrew to an alley lit by lamplight spilling out of a window. Sure enough, it was a note. He wished he had gotten a better look at his contact. While he expected little to go wrong with this aspect of his mission, it would have been nice to know who his ally was.

This type of contact had its risks, and to behave out of character might be fatal. He had to go somewhere safe to read it.

The spy had learnt quite a lot in only a short time. The village elders in many of the Kulutawa villages had heard all the rumours. They were seeking to renew friendships and alliances with neighbouring tribes such as the Kirtele, the lake tribes, the plains tribes, the Kitchi-lao and Mittaini. While they had certain resentments against the Kitchi-lao, they had more recent provocation from the Tzclinacoque, representing the imminent threat.

Interestingly enough, the Kulutawas believed the Tzclinacoque would strike at the heart of the Kitchi-lao's southern colonial trading empire. The puppet-master wondered if that was true. The concise note told him where and when to go to meet with a control agent in a bordello. Hiding in plain sight, who would have thought of it?

He hoped it was a woman, and an attractive one. There were ways to have a private conversation, and then there were ways.

Good. He had been wondering about how he was supposed to make his next report.

***

The Sheriff counted out gold pieces, watching Kjarl's face across the table. He wanted to bring up a ticklish subject, and didn't quite know how or where to begin. Kjarl was a reluctant hero, downright embarrassed by all the attention.

"That's ten for the red-haired one, and five each for the other two. Are you going to split that with your men?"

The Sheriff's hairy hand still clutched the last gold piece.

"I suppose so." Kjarl was still tense and upset at the attack. "Of course."

While he and the men had escaped uninjured, they'd killed a couple of the bandits, and captured two others. The rest were driven off. Three of the highwaymen had a price on their heads and the Sheriff quickly recognized the bodies from descriptions he himself had written.

"You're not exactly hurting for cash lately." The Sheriff had wry sense of humour. "If we can't find the previous owners, you've won yourselves some horses. A couple of them aren't bad."

After a brief pause for thought, he went on.

"I could buy a few saddles from you. We're always short of good tack around here. Some of it walks off on its own." While Kjarl appeared to be thinking this over, pure businessman that he was, the Sheriff decided to spring it on him. "How many men could you raise for a big drive?"

"Hah? How many? I don't know." Kjarl was still thinking about the saddles.

It's not like he couldn't eventually use them himself, and as the man said, he wasn't hurting for money. Anything that smacked of an investment was carefully considered. Kjarl was anything but impulsive when dealing. Cash always talks.

"You could probably get twenty riders together, couldn't you?" The Sheriff didn't want to lead him too hard, but he was also unwilling to let him get away.

He watched in fascination. A shooting star had gone off in Kjarl's head.

"You have to pass muster with three hundred well-armed men. The Eyrie's coming here in a few days."

The _Eyries_ were the popular name for the combination courts, tax collectors, and reporting-agents of the National Council. They were responsible for the allocation of county taxes, which were supported in part by national tax funds granted by the Council.

They tended to be stingy with the monies entrusted to them. In a cash economy, this literally meant a strongbox full of gold, with all eyes upon you. While Eyrie was the popular name for the eagle-eyed agents of the Council, they were anything but popular when they arrived in town to check tax assessments, or on the progress of road building projects, dealing with malefactors held for trial, or collecting arrears of tribute.

They were also responsible for security and recruitment to the national forces of the Kirtele Nation.

You shouldn't have left it so late.

He thought it, but he didn't say it.

Kjarl didn't like the way this was going. While he didn't want to sound patronizing, the Sheriff needed to know the basic facts of life.

"Honestly, you probably can't pay me enough to be a soldier." He didn't want to embarrass the Sheriff. "It's nothing personal, but there is the farm, and my parents are getting awfully old."

He couldn't expect his forty-something summers old father to look after his herds of horses, cattle, a few sheep and goats. The old fellow was barely looking after the chickens and other poultry these days. Kjarl needed his help even for that. Kjarl was happy as hell when his old man went fishing and came back with a ten-pound catfish once in a while. It helped to keep them all fed.

There was just no way he could leave those two alone on the farm and go off somewhere to play at soldiers, although it was tempting. Kjarl thought it might be fun, to watch all them idiots making fools of themselves. It's not like he ever got a day off, to do just whatever the hell he wanted.

"Your boys seem to think you're pretty good with that sword."

"I was better than the other guy." He had a funny idea the Sheriff was bound, bent and determined to get him signed up.

He wouldn't resent it if he could possibly avoid it.

"We'll pay your men-at-arms five shillings a day, plus two for feed, and one more goes to you for training them. As a master at arms, you'll get five gold pieces a week, allowance for three mounts, and four days off a month..."

"You're barking up the wrong tree." Kjarl shoulders slumped, and he had a cross look on his face.

The Sheriff was still hanging on to that last gold piece, and Kjarl was waiting for him to let it drop on the table so he could bolt.

Son-of-a-witch!

Chapter Seventeen

Captain Jensen was feeling the stress...

There was no denying it. Captain Jensen was feeling the stress of the last ten thousand years. With the huge weight on her shoulders, the responsibility for all of those lives, as well as the ship, this level of strain would soon become intolerable. It had to be properly acknowledged. It had to be brought into the open, and somehow dealt with.

Slapping the button beside the door, she kicked off her shoes and flipped them into the back corner of the built-in coat rack. She clamped her coat in place firmly. It had taken to falling out, and so far no one could be found with enough free time, or the skills, to fix it. It was just one more source of irritation.

She stared at the place for a moment, the plain beige couch, and the thick white rug showing signs of murkiness in traffic areas. There was an arch into the dim alcove that served as a kitchen, bar and storage space, to the left of that, the door to her bedroom, and behind was the door to her private bathroom. The holo-vision set, the music, lighting and wall decoration system, her computer console, all beckoned in mute despair. The reclining armchair was bolted at a comfortable angle beside the rack of lights on her pole lamp, also bolted, floor and ceiling. Everything in the place was bolted to the floor or the walls or the ceiling. Was that the story of her life?

The girl who was bolted down?

Another night alone, with nothing but old virtual-realities and microwave popcorn to look forward to. Another night, with nothing but a romance novel for company. A box of tissues, pulpy from being cried over once too often. Another night alone, with nothing but her thoughts for entertainment. Sandra had to get the work, and the duty, out of her mind for a while, or she would start screwing up on the job. Another night alone, rationing out a bar of precious chocolate so as not to gain weight...to what purpose?

Sighing, she moved into the room, deadly quiet, with not even the bubbling of an aquarium, or the ticking of a clock. Why hadn't she thought to bring a good, old-fashioned wind-up clock, or a God-damned gold-fish or something? She frowned at the thought of a goldfish, clearly an impossible notion.

The air smelled musty, breathless. That was the trouble with a cabin on a ship. The air was machine-made. Air came out of bottles, and then was pumped through kilometres of plastic tubing and metal ductwork. Captain Jensen moved into her bedroom and began stripping off, considering whether or not to just put on stretch pants, and an old sweater. A bittersweet memory, as a small child, she'd had an imaginary friend, Mister Snuggles. Oh, God...blinking, the faintest trace of wet tears came.

Why bother to dress up again? The bitter question revolved through her mind. At the very least, she could stop being a Captain and an officer for a while. She began to feel a little better, realizing that the time would pass, and that she had waded through interminable nights uncountable in the past. She could always do some house cleaning.

Her nerves were just too jangled to feel tired. It would be hours yet, she thought with renewed dread, hours before she could sleep. First things first. She needed a shower, and then a cup of tea. Later, she might break down and have a drink—no, she would have at least three drinks. Struck by an inspiration, Jensen decided to make it a bath. A steamy, long bath. She hadn't been looking after herself lately. She needed to pamper herself and to do something nice for ehrself. She wondered if the door was locked. She went out to check, after sticking in the plug and starting up the water to pre-heat the tub a little. She'd unplug it and drain it, and then start again, with a handful of blue bath beads chucked in. She had a few candles. She ought to make an _occasion_ of it, or something.

Having ascertained that the door was blocked to anything but an emergency override by the computer, Sandra unbuttoned her blouse and undid the belt of her skirt.

She stripped, standing in the small living room in her pantyhose and bra for a moment. Her image in the mirror looked far away, like somebody else's life. It was her house, and homey enough in an improvised way. It had the bare minimum of personal photos, a figurine or two, some original oil paintings on the walls. A thin layer of dust reminded her of just how little personal time she had taken lately.

The water was running in the bathroom as she stood alone with her thoughts for a moment. The rug under her toes was slightly gritty. She hadn't vacuumed in a while. It was a duty she preferred to do herself. Any person needs some private, personal space, she thought, dimming the lights with a command to the ship's patient, ever-listening ear. Tossing the clothes into her bedroom on the way past, she shut off the water and drained it, then started again. It was nice and hot, with a half a dozen pungent bath beads colouring the water blue as they dissolved.

Sandra went into the bedroom and sat on her boudoir chair and peeled off her hosiery, and then took off her bra. She threw them into the hamper with the skirt and blouse and then went back into the living room. Digging for matches, she found one and lit a pair of white votive candles in their pale, golden glass cups.

"Music, in the bathroom." She took the warm, shimmering orbs of fire in and set them down on the ends of the vanity.

The mirror reflected them up and out, sending suggestive, sensuous shadows onto the wall behind her as she watched the forms move. The clinging opiate of jasmine wafted its way around, in the dim white tendrils of smoke. One more thing, she decided, moving out to the living room again. A wall speaker crackled. About time, she thought, hitting the light switch manually. The floor was warm under her bare toes.

"What selection?" The query came in the flat, impersonal monotone of a machine.

"Vivaldi. The Four Seasons."

Sandra Jensen had a twinge of something deep in her abdomen. She openly acknowledged the significance of these acts. Going into the kitchen, she poured a cold glass of a dry white wine.

A shot of adrenalin came when she decided that she was going to masturbate.

Soft musical notes came out of the bathroom. She stood in the dim lights of the living room. Feeling the air on her skin, from the small draft of her passing, she gyrated slowly with her eyes closed.

Going in brought a slight but pleasant trembling in her belly. She stood in front of the mirror, looking herself comfortably in the eye. Her nakedness confronted her, in some almost humourous self-doubt. Who was she? Who was Sandra Jensen when she wasn't busy being _Captain_ Sandra Jensen?

_Just a bag of water,_ as someone once said.

Was it true? Hadn't she had a completely different life, once, before? She took a sip of wine, and swished it around for a while in her mouth, enjoying the cool, dry, biting feel of it. Swallowing, she savoured the aroma in the back of her nostrils.

She saw her long, straight, pale blonde hair, and her blue eyes looking back at her. She could, on some objective level, understand why men would find her attractive. All the numbers looked right: height, weight, nothing too large and nothing too small. She just didn't get it. Only she knew what was inside of herself, all the doubts, all the self-pity, all the little failings that no one else could see—because she could never share.

She could never trust anyone enough to share. Maybe that's why she was a captain.

Her self-inspection could be heartless sometimes.

When a man looked at her, they didn't see any of that, did they? It was almost purely physical with men, all based on personal appearance. She thought of Dooley Peeters just then, no particular reason, it just seemed more reasonable than that pudgy Brent Smith in Crew and Accounting, or the mostly-bald John Ryers in the Biological Department. He was always blinking owlishly and stammering in confusion. Ryers wasn't bad-looking, but hardly masterful.

It said something for her state of mind that no other reasonable characters for sexual fantasizing immediately came to mind. It vaguely occurred to Sandra that she could try thinking mad, lustful thoughts about some of the women crewmembers.

Sandra stood grinning at herself in the mirror for a second. This wasn't a bad idea, she thought, licking her lips and feeling the beginnings of a swivel in her hips. She reached up, cupping her breasts like Dooley would do...if he had the chance. He probably would, wouldn't he? Dooley seemed to like her. At least he treated her like a friend rather than an opponent. He wasn't like some of the other officers, male and female. Dooley treated her like a buddy, but what did she know about that kind of relationship?

Did Dooley like her? She considered that thought. Did it matter? Did it matter to the fantasy? It probably did, she decided. It would be impossible to imagine having sex with someone who was disgusted by you. And just as hard to imagine it with someone that you really didn't like. It might not have to be _purely_ physical, even for men. A woman would have to have more than physical beauty to interest the proper type of man. What would Dooley actually want? The Vivaldi piece was building up and out.

She imagined that it was Dooley's long, strong, hard fingers stroking and gently pinching her nipples. She bit her lip in a kind of vexation, a wanton expression of her frustration. Closing her eyes, she imagined it was Dooley fingering her. Yes, yes, this could definitely work. She stepped into the tub, feeling the heat bite into her toes, the hot ring around her ankles. With her eyes closed, she stood there with bath water around her calves, trying to imagine a naked Dooley Peeters, in all his glorious detail, sighing deeply, heaving in breath after breath. Something deep within her hungered, and she recognized it shamelessly, realizing that it was healthy and normal...necessary...and somehow _hopeful._ Grinning a little at the corniness of the thought, she realized it was an affirmation of her humanity, her womanhood. She needed to be held, by someone, anyone, anyone strong and reassuring. She had a strong and urgent desire to have babies, in the plainest sense. It was a luxury a captain couldn't afford to think about, and yet ultimately she could not deny it in purely biological terms. It was the language of her glands.

A particular moment had passed, but it could wait. The key to good sex was of course foreplay—even when you're alone. Bending down to settle in, even the touch of hot water and big, bubbly suds on her bottom caused a delicious sense of anticipation.

She lowered herself into the water, noting the dull bite of pain from her left knee. Breaking off the daydream for a while, Captain Sandra Jensen began to soap herself, and to scrub herself clean with the washcloth. No sense rushing matters. She had a long night ahead of her. Thanks to the frankly physical picture she had in her mind's eye of a horny and very aggressive Dooley Peeters, those long hours alone didn't seem so impossibly unbearable right now. Dooley would have nice, hard, hairy balls, she thought deliciously, with a nice hard cock. Sandra tried desperately to recall exactly what a man's penis tasted like, but although it was so close, she just couldn't quite get it.

If she played him right, he might rape her.

Heart beating strongly in her chest, she tried to imagine it in all of its fine and coarse detail, what it would be like to suck on Dooley's cock...to look up and meet his eyes, wide with shock and desire...her white hands clutching at his hairy tummy... _oh, God! Help me to remember..._

The steaming, foamy blue water rolled back and forth in gentle waves between her knees, kissing her nipples in hot liquid caresses. The close, hot ring of water closed in around her neck in a kind of sweet pain. Something spontaneously snapped inside her.

"Oh, Dooley." She gasped, then stopped, startled by how loud it was, as the middle finger suddenly plunged into her vagina.

What if a crew member should be walking down the hall? A moment of fear, her heart beating in contemplation of the awful thought, but according to specs, the cabin walls and doors were totally soundproof. Her left hand stroked and pinched her right nipple. She was licking her lips over and over again.

"Fuck me, Dooley, fuck me." Her finger went plunging in and out as waves of sudsy blue water rocked and splashed back and forth, from end to end, the music of springtime in soft counterpoint to her fervent moaning.

***

Dooley and Jill Bentein were smashing balls around the squash court, with Jill sweating and gasping and Dooley just teasing her and having fun.

"You son of a bitch." She cursed in unfeigned heat as another one skipped past, just under her racket and with her body all painfully stretched out in fruitless desperation.

"Damn you, Dooley, you're no fucking fun anymore." Her blue eyes flashed a sure warning signal.

With an angry shake of her head, she refused another game, and grabbing up her racket-cover, she opened the door to the court and headed for the showers with a backward glare. He giggled briefly, but then relented. She was a pretty good sport, and he didn't know what had come over him. Normally she was a good player. It had never been that easy to win a game against her. It was a pretty rough way to treat a good friend, he realized.

"I'm sorry, Jill." No response.

He was just turning to head for the men's showers when the door popped open and she came back again, a strange glint in her eye, long black hair stuck over her brow, with a streak of sweat gluing it down.

"A boy is all God has to work with, in order to make a man." Poor Jill stood hand on hip, her long, lanky arms and legs all akimbo.

Her jaw jutted out at him in sheer stubbornness, her brow dark with blood-heat, small but pointy breasts heaving under the cut-off white tee shirt.

"Wha—what?" He half laughed and half gasped.

"What kind of a nasty little boy were you?" Spinning on one heel, she strode back to the women's changing room again.

Holy crap, he thought, I wonder what's gotten into her?

After a stinking hot shower, as his old man would have said, he thoroughly toweled himself off and then headed back to his room, preparatory to going to the Plotting Room.

Saturn was coming up at ten p.m. or shortly thereafter, and he wanted to run through the program. Dooley thought this fly-by should be done manually, for the slightly better control it would have. The ship's controls had feedback built into them. If clouds of gas or dust should begin tugging it from side to side, he would fly it using the stick-and-rudder techniques of a bygone age. It was more for his own comfort, than any rational reason. The planet had an average mean distance from the sun of about eight-hundred- eighty-six million miles, and they were coming up from behind pretty fast. Data from the sensors would be coming in hotter and hotter, in the sense that he would have less and less time to evaluate its accuracy and importance. The closer and closer they got, the more critical each datum became, and the more time-limited it would be.

At this speed, a certain amount of dust and gas could help slow them, if only it didn't abrade them down to a nubbin or throw them off course. He needed to be able to make a quick decision in order to take advantage of any opportunities, or deal with any emergencies. The trouble was, they still couldn't _see_ very well.

The planet and its rings blocked out much of the relevant view. Theoretically, Dooley Peeters should have been nervous right about now. They were less than a billion miles from home, in his imagination it was like a sign beside a superhighway, looming up with glowing amber letters in the headlights on a dark and quiet night. Like a dark and lonely road in the hills of his youth. Home. What did that mean anymore? Home is where the heart is.

For Dooley Peeters, for the foreseeable future, that meant right here on this ship.

It was only when he contemplated safe Earth orbit, and what came after, that he felt a tremble of something deep in his guts. Were others on the ship confronting this?

Of course they were. They had to be.

Chapter Eighteen

An army marches on its stomach...

An army marches on its stomach. The beauty lies in the details.

Talmotek stood on the prow of his personal galley, gazing at the lands of the Kulutawas to the right and left of their flotilla. Flat meadowlands came down in gentle steps to the water's edge, but trees and hills loomed a half a kyle behind.

A party of horsemen galloped to the bank, where a small, red-painted skiff with a dozen men, oars at the ready, sat waiting. One flung himself off his horse, and leapt from the bank into the boat in dramatic fashion, long black cloak flaring behind. The rowers dropped the tips of the blades into the water, and the small boat set out on an interception course, the steersman taking it into the current, but angling to the west. He lowered the looking-glass, and watched with the naked eye for a moment. Talmotek savoured the unbelievable, sublime scene laid out like a feast fit for the eyes of a king.

It was a miracle of organization.

Turning, he took in the column of barges, all of them under sail, although it wasn't helping much as the breeze usually died off at this time of day. Ten kyles long, the train of water-borne supplies were alternately rowed, poled, towed, or sailed when the wind was right. Sometimes men got out and pulled with ropes along the bank, but the fleet progressed one way or another about thirty kyles a day. Almost two weeks ago, they had set off from their forward bastion of Nollinsay. All indications were that the veil of secrecy had been perfectly preserved. It was a day to remember. Everyone was singing and shouting. There were plenty of friendly taunts and curses exchanged between crews and captains, laughter and excitement all around. Fresh sea breezes had helped to belly out the cheerful red sails, and make the trip seem like a jaunt at a seaside resort city.

Now, the fleet was quieter, as the reality of climbing the current of this wide highway into the interior of the continent sank into wearied minds and bodies.

The logistics of moving a huge army, with all the engines of war and conquest, the animals, and a surprising number of women and children, peddlers of various types, were staggering. The miracle had been achieved. He had three hundred thousand men, but only on paper. Some had undoubtedly already deserted—the daily figures were reported every evening after dinner—and there was a vast number of camp followers and contractors, prostitutes, and even some political supplicants who were unwilling to break off the lobbying for the duration. Wars did not run to tight schedules, and who knew when it would be over?

Those people simply wouldn't quit. The clacking of the timekeeper was the only sound for a moment, that and the swish-swish of oars in water. Thank the Rain God for the honour, the privilege of leading such an armada.

One last breath of fresh air.

Talmotek made his way back to the day-cabin where he kept his office, to await the rendezvous with the courier from the right bank. He was reading reports and comparing them with the map, when he heard a shout. The oarsmen stopped for a moment, and soon came the thump of the boat against the galley.

Footsteps thudded down the narrow ladder, and a man burst into the room in youthful enthusiasm. This kind of spirit bode well for their efforts. Certain kinds of familiarity were being tacitly encouraged between officers and men. He was accessible.

The caped figure pulled open a dispatch case and produced several pages of notes.

"Thank you." The young man, Tuli, came from an affluent and noble Tzclina family.

Confidence oozed out of him. He stood while Talmotek read. It was mostly routine reports. To the young _'plume,'_ a rank which would normally grant him leadership of thirty men, it was the most important news in the whole theatre of war.

Tamlotek smiled as he read it.

"Still, no sign of the enemy." He delivered the good news to waiting attendants and generals, as well as Nuhili, the admiral of the fleet.

They stood stiffly by for his comments and instructions, with sweat pouring down the brows of several. He knew from personal experience what a pain in the ass it was to work with the boss in the room. He felt a moment of sympathy, and nodded in a reassuring fashion as he spoke.

"Foraging parties have penetrated as much as thirty, fifty, or in one case, eighty kyles. The only resistance is purely local, and amateurish."

The cavalry was scouting far ahead in large detachments for signs of a major host, but as yet had found no trace of the enemy. Infantry fighting patrols two-thousand strong ranged ahead and on the flanks ten or twelve kyles out, so surprise was unlikely. The gathered supplies were being forwarded to a confluence twenty-five kyles upstream on the right bank, and strongly guarded.

_Good, good,_ he thought.

Herds of animals, formerly the property of the Kulutawas, would supply his army from someone else's bounty along the way, thus keeping a reserve of food on the boats. All was going according to plan. Every day, smoke on the horizon attested to Talmotek's policy.

"A country laid waste cannot support the enemy's movements." An axiom of war.

With the newly-strengthened fortress of Nollinsay to guard the rear, he had little fear of a flank attack and encirclement.

"I have no orders." He dismissed the young man.

Talmotek returned to the upper deck to gaze over the river, watching young Tuli being rowed across to the bank and his companions again. Then the boat raced ahead to look for more couriers as Tuli and the other martial youths rode off into the hills.

It took a man's breath away.

It was a grand spectacle, to stand on the prow and look out at a fleet of barges, flatboats, skiffs, long canoes, small sailing ketches and sloops, with the armed galleys for defense being his peculiar pride and joy. The Kitchi-lao prided themselves on their navy, but they had no navy on the Great River. The southern attack would keep them busy.

It was the achievement of a lifetime, row upon row of river-craft, banks of oars flashing, wet in the glare of the late afternoon sun. Every ship and boat had its own colourful pennant proudly streaming out from the top of a mast or improvised pole.

The silent forest came down close and lined the banks of the river, running cold and deep, green and glassy between the hulls. It whispered as he stood in awe. He had never seen so many trees, or a land so alive and lush.

Talmotek went to the stern of the galley, where the helmsman stood tall. He was the most important man on the boat, as Talmotek said. The ruler clutched the steersman's shoulder for support as he balanced there. The warrior chieftain waved at a man on the barge behind them.

With an acknowledging nod, the man turned to the band and indicated they were to being playing again. The sounds of martial music swelled and floated upon the calm, still, humid air.

What an evening it promised to be. Another hour or so, and then they would camp in a pre-prepared set of earthworks, built by engineers sent on ahead. He had to hand it to Bolishko and the other planners. They really had thought of everything.

***

The power to govern was a heady wine. Bonglishko was deputy _Holder of the_ _Chair_ in Talmotek's absence. Justification for war had been surprisingly easy to find, both at home and abroad. All the waters of the Great River were the gift of the Rain God to his worshippers. Since the Pentapolis and the Tzclinacoque Confederacy were the only nations to worship the deity, the river and all its adjacent lands belonged to them by divine decree. For once, religion and politics were a good mix.

This sufficed at home, and sufficient provocation was found by requesting discussions with the Empire of Kitchi-lao regarding certain provisions of a trade and customs pact between the two nations. The demands made were so extreme that they couldn't possibly be granted. When they were refused as expected, a note of protest was presented at the Imperial Court. It was as simple as that. The responsibility for war rested with the Kitchi-lao. If trade could not be normalized, the Pentapolis 'would seek redress elsewhere.' How this was to be accomplished was left unstated.

Since the watershed of the Great River didn't impinge upon Kitchi-lao territory, the invasion of the land of the Kulutawas should not cause conflict between Kitchi-lao and the Pentapolis. But it was right in their backyard. They had treaties and agreements in place with the Kulutawas, and they were sure to intervene.

The Kirtele, the lakes tribes, the plains peoples, weren't even mentioned in the diplomatic notes subsequently exchanged. The pretext for war against the Kulutawas was stated to be the fact that the Pentapolis was esablishing a protectorate.

The Kitchi-lao would be bound to intervene in the conflict, as their direct interests were threatened, hence the occupation of the great islands of the Cabania, including the largest island of Buca. Its enclosed harbours and great citadels commanded the southern trade routes of the Kitchi-lao, and comprised a wealthy empire in its own right.

With the invasion of Buca and other large island possessions of the Kitchi-lao, the Pentapolis controlled the Great Southern Seas and the littoral areas. If they could hold it, they would soon dominate the Kitchi-lao, who would go into a state of decline, no longer competing for resources, influence and glory. Bonglishko was extremely pleased with the progress of his plan. If the Empire focused on regaining their southern holdings, as they would be sure to do, it left the Pentapolis in possession of the vast hinterland watered by the Great River. The Empire couldn't possibly fight a long war on two fronts. It was common knowledge that they were nearly bankrupt.

On a more personal level, Bonglishko discovered that while governing wasn't easy, it was at least an understandable process. If Talmotek should be killed in battle, or succumb to sickness or disease, then he would be able to take over quite legitimately, or temporarily put Malko in his seat and rule as Regent and _Protector of the Chair._ The experiences of the last few weeks had convinced him that he could do it. It was a real confidence-builder, as if he had ever had any doubts. He had always stood behind the chair, in the past. Now he sat in it, and he had the power to make things happen.

Talmotek must have dealt with his own doubts at some point.

It was a heady wine to know that one had the _ability_ to govern—if the opportunity should arise. Bonglishko was musing on the twists and turns of fate, one that had brought a poor little farm boy to study accounting and business administration, and to seek the corridors of power. With a shake of his head, he lowered his gaze back to the pages in front of him, servants, aides-de-camp and functionaries standing in the stillness around him as he worked.

When he considered all the manpower hovering by, it was surprising that it was almost impossible to get a glass of cold water or a decent cup of tea around this place.

All systems, all institutions have their weaknesses, he believed, and no plan is truly perfect. The key was to bring the Pentapolis' strengths up against the Kitchi-lao's weaknesses.

***

Knaius and Nodrakis huddled in the well of the doorway into the main cabin. The ship was at sail upon one of the freshwater seas that surrounded the ancient Kingdom of Mittainagor. Anything was better than the dark and airless cabin, where the smell of creosote, with strong overtones of rotten fish and stagnant bilges, brought dizziness and the urge to vomit. It was a choppy, blustery day, with a low, overcast sky.

"I know how you feel." Knaius was sympathetic, for all the good that did.

How could anyone know how he felt? It was better left unsaid. Nodrakis had only vaguely heard of seasickness, and hadn't taken it too seriously. He had always accepted the statements of Mittainagor's Royal Naval Doctors that it was mere malingering.

"You have to try and keep it in perspective." The older man spoke as gusty winds lifted the topknot of his hair, habitually brushed rather ineffectually across the bald crown of his head. "This object. To an outsider it is a mere curiousity, and of little consequence."

Nodrakis considered the words carefully, this in spite of his dislike of the water. If he had known they were going by boat, at any part of the journey, he would have baulked. Was it merely a tempest in a teacup, as Knaius said? Was it a fart in a windstorm, as the other man so inelegantly put it? In his mind, it supported a theory, a very important theory, one that might eventually overthrow every notion about the cosmos, about the creation of the universe, that they held dear. But how much did such arcane metaphysics mean to the average _kuli_ in the street? What did it mean to the man and woman of the house, as the proponents of direct sales techniques called their fellow taxpayers?

"When an apple falls, that is a wonderful thing. To you." Knaius went on, not nearly so deranged by the unfamiliar motions, the pitching and yawing of the bow in response to wretchedly unfamiliar forces of waves, current, and wind.

Nopdrakis had noticed in spite of his nausea that the more the sail was tightened, the more the boat leaned, and the quicker the resultant effects made themselves known. He saw a vague set of variables in his head. His trip to Kitchi-lao was almost entirely by horse and carriage, and sledding across the ice before it broke up. He would never take a boat again. Not if he could help it.

"But if an apple should be released from the branch and accelerate up into the heavens, then that would be almost unheard of."

Nodrakis was completely mystified as to where this was going.

"The apple must follow the rules." Knaius grinned at this conclusion. "So please don't think that I wasn't listening to all those lectures."

Nodrakis nodded into the bright blue eyes, intelligent and filled with humour, a kind of empathy.

The dagger-board schooner, ninety feet long, but low and lean in the water, heeling at what Nodrakis considered to be a dangerous angle, was taking them across Lake Tayreio to his home. He should have felt some pleasure at seeing the family again, but he wasn't. A trim craft, he had to allow, with a dark blue hull, and brass-encrusted upper-works, and the masts, the long spar or boom, as it was called, agleam with fresh amber varnish.

The short glass of heavy red wine provided by Knaius was doing some good. A scientist should always retain his objectivity. The ropes and lines looked to be freshly tarred and snug. If only it wasn't so cold and windy in the middle of the lake.

Creamy foam, peeling back from the bow, left a v-shaped trail as waves broke left and right. There was a trail where the boat had been. What caused that? Why did bubbles form in the water?

Knaius was right. He might be the first, and the last, person to ever ask that question. No one else cared. They just used the boat as a tool, a device, and took it for granted that if you followed the rules, _so would the boat._ Everyone just assumed the boat would not levitate straight up out of the water and accelerate into the sky.

It wasn't faith alone that kept the boat glued to the Earth. If everyone stopped believing in this mysterious force, would it cease to exist? Would the laws of nature still be in force? There really _was_ something different about him. It was a revelation, something that he had felt once or twice before. It was a very lonely feeling.

One of his irrational fears, and an occasional nightmare, was the fear of drowning. Nodrakis stared into the mysterious blue depths and shuddered. To be cast alone, into the water. Miles from shore, unable to touch anything solid, how long would it take? Sooner or later he would get tired. He would just be a tiny dot, a head down in amongst the waves. He could imagine the cold. He could imagine the pain, when due to exhaustion, he could no longer hold his head up. He could feel the first shock and terror of that first breath of water...

Spare me this.

"How about another shot of that wine?" He ground his teeth and resolved to make as little fuss as possible.

Sooner or later, it had to end. The far shore with its cluster of pale towers seemed to have gotten a little closer. It was darker, perhaps a little more defined now.

***

Raffin heard the music from several corridors away as he made his unfamiliar way through the castle. Dark and gloomy as the plain stone interior hallways were, he had only been there three days, and didn't know his way around yet. The wall sconces with their guttering yellow oil lamps threw everything into a pallid and flickering light that obscured the corners rather than lit the way and turned everything into bizarre shapes and shadows. Was it really that hard, or was it sheer timidity? What was he afraid of? Why was this so difficult?

Raffin was way out of his depth. He was floundering and he knew it. He floundered with the names of streets, places, buildings, titles, departments, and personal names. There were new names for things, new things to be named. With his half-remembered smidgeon of school-book Mittaini, his head ached with the urgent need to comprehend, to interpret and to understand everything around him. He accepted that he had been spoiled, in the rustic simplicity of his life before. How he yearned for a muddy Kirtele street. A humble mug of tea beside a smoking iron stove. A wooden bench, a familiar face.

He turned a corner amid a flurry of other late comers-and-goers such as can be found in the front lobby of any major social event. He was confronted by a kind of sensory overload. While a keen observer of human kind, this was just too much, too much noise, too much colour, too much whirling movement, all seemingly random but with a deeper, unmistakable pattern.

The mating rituals of peacocks.

As the swirling gowns and petticoats ebbed and flowed, he saw himself as an anachronism, stodgy and vaguely disapproving in his smock and sandals. He must seem a dark, austere and forbidding figure to anyone who should glance this way. Standing in the middle of the entrance for a moment, he shrugged off the hood, blinking in the glare of massive overhead chandeliers.

The gaiety continued as music crashed and swelled like breakers on a seashore and dancers circled and spiraled like gulls over the village garbage tip, or flies on shit, he figured. To say he was tired and grumpy would have been an understatement.

With a lurch in his guts from simple shock, he realized that someone had just brushed past his backside in no uncertain terms. A wave of air washed over him, bringing with it a miasma of effeminate scents. His nostrils were assaulted as well as his sensibilities, as he regarded the hollow-eyed apparition that was Mackel. The King's lackey, Mackel was the most dissolute and decadent of the people he had met so far on this far from idyllic trek. Clad in sky-blue leotards and a matching doublet, reeking of perfume, the man regarded him with what appeared to be his interpretation of an elfin or impish look. If it was meant to be seductive, it failed miserably as far as Raffin was concerned.

Raffin had taken him for a fool, or a jester, or something to do with the entertainment at first, but the man was a distant cousin of the King. Mackel simpered roguishly, and batted his eyelashes at Raffin, who tried to suppress his instant shudder.

Mackel seemed to attend at Court on a permanent basis, albeit mostly for decorative purposes. Raffin had been shocked to discover that he was a high-ranking field officer in the Royal Mittaini Army when not attending balls and soirees.

Brother Raffin was philosophical. It takes all kinds to make an army. In order to make his escape, he bolted into the crowd, searching for the buffet.

Chapter Nineteen

The room was panelled in a dark, glossy oak...

The room was panelled in dark, glossy oak. Cool and airy, it was restful to the eyes after a long day in the hot sun, inspecting troops and weapons, horses, and wagons, and the engines of war.

Helios, attended by a pair of his personal eunuchs, entered the salon where Tiona reclined upon a heavily padded bench-like couch with a raised bolster on one end. Surrounded by a handful of maidens, her ladies in waiting, his raven-haired and black-eyed consort was engaged in her habitual pastime of embroidery. She murmured something he couldn't catch, and most of them got up and left unhurriedly, eyes downcast in demure virginality. Only her favourite dwarf, a droll and jolly little girl named Alfrinia, remained at her feet, in charge of the Empress's lapdog. Freddo was never out of the Empress's sight for very long.

She lifted a pale and languid hand for his kiss, arching her eyebrows and making mock puckers in the air with her lips. Her shiny dark eyes flicked past his.

"Darling. Did you have a rough day?" All the signs were there, the little crease between the eyebrows, on an otherwise smooth and unruffled brow, creases at the corners of the nose and mouth, the firm, set line of his thick and rather sensual lips, the tense and determined set of his shoulders.

"Just the usual things, dear." He cast an eye around the familiar gathering.

Uttaris was expected to make an appearance for drinks presently, a tradition that facilitated communication between family members, and kept rivalries and social intercourse friendly. Tiona's sister, Maggellia was reading as always, her aunt Loara, also embroidering in her corner by the window. Several of her cousins were there, all female and all resplendent in their day-gowns, all with long, well-brushed tresses and wearing lots of jewels. One of the attendants arrived back at his side, proffering a short, cone-shaped glass with a long stem, frosted around the edges. A green olive loomed unnaturally large, with crystalline bubbles clinging to it in the bottom of the liquor.

"The drier the better." The Emperor made his usual remark, sipped, then screwed up his face in reaction to the bite of alcohol.

He grinned.

"That always helps, doesn't it?" With a nod, he dismissed them.

Eunuchs were damned depressing people. A shameful condition, disgusting, really, but their role was traditional. The theory was that by surrounding himself with emasculates, he somehow appeared more powerful, more dominant. It made him look more potent.

The Emperor didn't see much in it, but it was impossible to legislate enlightenment, when well over ninety per cent of the citizens of his country were functionally illiterate, and that included some of the senators and councilors. Three thousand or so young men, and women too, graduated from the grammar schools each year, and that was the best he could do for right now. It was supported by his personal patrimonium, and so added nothing to the tax burden. Oppostion had been feeble, based solely on its radical newness, and although hard feelings died hard, the program was clearly a success. It was worthwhile at whatever the political price. Time would prove him right.

That was the difference between a statesman and a politician.

Three fountains added their tinkling waters to the mix of soft, subtle and relaxing sounds. The predictable aviary in the far end of the room held a collection of budgerigars and songbirds of exotic lands. Their songs, colours, and quick, cheerful movements always raised his spirits at the end of a long day.

Sibilant scratches and hisses came from the corner where the band was setting up, a five-piece chamber ensemble trained for such a personal, family atmosphere. Regret tugged at him. Tiona came up with the idea before her first and only pregnancy terminated in such heartbreak. What would it have been like to have a handful of children tumbling about his feet in old age?

It was a feeling of impotence, in that for all his power, he could no more change his fate than a eunuch. The doctors said the damage was irreversible, aye. The mental anguish was also irreversible. His wife had learned to hide it well.

There were some things you didn't tell a doctor.

They already had too much power, and the temptation to gossip might have been overwhelming. There was always ready money to be made for someone with a secret, if it involved the Family. There were publishers of scurrilous rags who lived and died by the nonsense that they put on their front pages.

Blue sky cast light around the room through a series of skylights, cleverly angled to catch the sun in winter, but keep it out in summer. The breeze coming in the end windows, all latched back to keep them from flapping, foretold another brilliant sunset, which lasted for glorious hours in this locale.

Helios lowered himself with a sigh into his favourite armchair. It said a lot about the monarch that the chair was sagging in the seat, patched on the armrests and ripped up on the corners where one of the many palace cats had sharpened its claws.

Helios wouldn't have traded that chair for all the tea in Mittainagor, although he might have let it go for a dozen well-trained divisions of cavalry. Sipping his cocktail, he tried very hard to think good, positive thoughts. A bird dispatched from a town far to the south had arrived, bringing with it some very bad news. It still hadn't been confirmed, but it had a ring of truth about it. At this point there was no sense alarming everyone, and so he kept it to himself. Three ships had come in, and they all said the same thing. A numerous fleet had invested the island of Buca. They also said the enemy was right behind them, but you had to discount something for hysteria.

Intelligence was right, and now the Pentapolis' strategy could be deduced, but only to a certain limited extent. They had made their opening moves. They needed an accurate count of enemy ships, and that was unlikely to happen for some time.

One of the cats, a black, golden-eyed animal with an unusually large head, leapt into his lap. He idly scratched it behind the ears as he awaited Uttaris and a few others.

***

Kjarl and Akim and the others were lined up for inspection. With two men left to help his parents look after the farm, Kjarl had managed to recruit twenty-two men for what the Sheriff promised as a week or ten days of soldiering. Every year in the late spring or early summer, after the crops were safely planted, the numerous local units of the Kirtele national militia went on maneuvers.

These exercises took place under the watchful and critical eyes of men representing the Eyrie. This year it seemed they were to be blessed by the presence of The Right Honourable Yphonius Cornelis, titular Eagle's Head of the County, reporting back to the National Council. With all the rumours of war going around, the usual air of levity that attended these martial gatherings was in abeyance. The Honourable Yphonius was a deadly serious person, with his piggy eyes staring coldly into your own, even at the best of times.

Yphonius was a corpulent, sweating man, stiff in his ceremonial robes of office, which apparently he never took off, not even to bathe. A surly and argumentative man, his glowering visage was quick to reflect displeasure at less-than-perfect performance or presentation. Kjarl and some of the others had already felt the bite of his tongue and a rather barbed wit. Kjarl's stomach grumbled loudly, and he hoped the men next to him wouldn't giggle. To draw the man's attention was to draw his ire, they had quickly discovered.

It was a foretaste of the social graces he would no doubt exhibit at the first opportunity, for example lunch. This seemed to be seriously delayed by the lengthy proceedings. The gentle slapping of a cold rain did nothing to raise their spirits or to even drive down the flies, who were also in attendance at this review of troops, squadron after squadron and man by man. All with the most horrid noises coming from what he assumed would be a band someday, if only they could learn to play their instruments. Combined with the rawness and inexperience of many of the troops, his own brave-looking little contingent included, it was a morning that could only be described as a comedy of errors, with some of their precision evolutions going horribly wrong. Sheriff Knolos had a lot riding on this inspection, for the concession was up for renewal in the autumn sessions of the National Council.

The stranger on his right was cursing, barely audibly, and Kjarl was cold, wet and hungry. An aide-de-camp brought out a dark leather pouch and proffered it up to Yphonius, mounted upon a creamy white charger that Kjarl frankly envied. Taking out a document, the man's voice was loud and clear, so that all the men could hear and understand his words.

"By an act of the National Council of the Kirtele Nation, we hereby appoint Yphonius Cornelis District Commander for the County of Sulatawia, and do hereby and forthwith authorize him to raise troops, impress horses and wagons, and to purchase fodder, grain and other foodstuffs at fixed rates as set out in documents attached hereunder."

As the gentleman paused for breath a long sigh went through the assembled squadrons of troops. There was a single snort from a horse, perhaps more sensitive than most to the qualms and sudden mood swings of men.

"We hereby authorize The Honourable aforesaid Yphonius to appoint officers, to disburse monies, make payments to contractors, and dispense Military Justice...."

Another deep soughing murmur went through the troops, most of whom were full-time soldiers with the Sheriff's troop, and who perhaps better understood the significance of the words spoken.

"These articles of war are sworn this day at this Assembly, and shall be deemed to be in effect for the duration of any subsequent hostilities, which shall arise from definitions and instructions attached hereunder." On and on it went, with Kjarl mystified.

He'd never been on maneuvers before. With all the others sitting there impassively resigned to whatever happened next, he had no idea of what to think.

"Well, that's fewkin' torn it." A trooper behind him spat in disgust.

A long drum roll and a flourish of horns rang out as Yphonius' personal bodyguard raised their lances in salute, all lined up on the other side of the square. Yphonius raised a hand in acknowledgement, as he spurred his horse and trotted smartly out the gate.

Kjarl sat stone-faced in contemplation, with the hot eyes of his men on his neck, looking across to where Sheriff Knolos Ryngger sat watching the Eyrie's men file past on their way out of the parade-square.

As the last of them rode by, the gathering of men and horses and local dignitaries let out their breath with a collective gasp. The mutterings of three hundred and fifty men gathered into an ominous-sounding dull roar. Everyone was cursing and complaining at once. Kjarl spurred his horse, off to see Knolos and find out what in the names of the seven hells had just happened. There were a few minutes of waiting for the hubbub to subside. Then he sat in the Sheriff's large back room beside the plotting table, complete with a map of the county painted on the surface in the centre of it.

There were a dozen other sergeants and junior officers seated around the table, listening intently to the Sheriff.

"We must be prepared to move out at a half-hour's notice." Knolos' orders seemed terribly optimistic to Kjarl, even with his limited experience. "We'll leave a security force of experienced troopers here to maintain law and order. When I know more, I'll tell you."

He nodded and they rose with alacrity to attend to their duties and preparations.

"Stay for a minute, Kjarl." The Sheriff held up a raised palm as the others shuffled out of the room without a backward glance of curiousity.

"Sheriff." The other man stepped in quickly with his explanation.

"I'm sorry, Kjarl, I really am. I swear by my mother's grave that I had no idea. Luckily we don't have anything on paper. You could take your boys and just ride off if you wanted to. But I sure hope you don't."

"No. I suppose I couldn't do that." Kjarl ground his teeth in dismay.

He was strongly tempted, though.

"Look, Kjarl, the whole thing has to do with the Tzclinacoque. They're coming up the River, and there's a huge army. Thousands of boats, animals, elephants—"

"So what's an elephant?"

Sherrif Ryngger's patience was being sorely tested.

"They're really big, they put little castles on their backs."

Kjarl shook his head in disbelief.

"Look, Kjarl. There's some possibility that we may go to war, if they come this way. The likelihood is that it will all blow over in a few weeks." Knolos scratched his chin. "You have to admit, the money's good."

"If we get called out, can my men take over patrolling the county?"

"I'm afraid not." The Sheriff sounded regretful. "It's a matter of procedures, writs, protocols have to be observed so as not to violate the natural rights of a citizen..."

Kjarl nodded. His men didn't have that kind of training, or any training at all, for that matter. But the idea of taking them to war was patently ludicrous. If he walked away and war came, he'd look like a coward and feel like a skunk, and drag his men's names in the mud. If he stayed, and war came, some of the boys might get killed. The others, feeling as tricked into this situation as he did, would blame him and everyone would treat him like a skunk. He was damned if he did, and damned if he didn't. They'd hate his guts either way.

"All right." He looked Knolos squarely in the eye. "But one, you can't split up my men. Two, we'd better find them some place better than the stable to sleep, and I have a few more demands after that."

The Sheriff nodded with a sense of relief. It would have been bad for the morale of the rest of his troops if a large party went home at the first sign of trouble or even mere hardship, which he knew it to be. They were back to horse-trading again.

"I'll tell you what, Kjarl. There's three gold pieces for every man who signs these articles, and an extra one for you as well."

"Oh, I don't know. I guess some of them will sign, but for how long?"

"We always try to give the men time off for the harvest."

Sure they did. He kept that thought to himself, along with some others.

***

Brent couldn't help but notice that Jill Bentein seemed really down lately.

"Hey, kiddo." He greeted her in a cheerful tone, sliding his tray onto the tabletop across from hers and squeezing into the bolted and bracketed chair beside the table.

They were alone in the cafeteria for the time being, although others would begin to drift in soon, as it was getting close to four-thirty p.m.

"Hi, Brent." She poked at her food, which was indeterminate to begin with.

Right now the tanks were producing pretty basic stuff, and no one was a Cordon Bleu chef around here. Stew and toast was _imaginative_ for some of the cooks.

"Dooley?" Sooner or later she always brought up the subject of Dooley Peeters.

Brent had diagnosed a strong case of some kind of puppy love or high-school crush syndrome. He had always found the highly tanned Jill attractive in a long, lean and athletic way, but he had always assumed it was not to be. He was pretty sure he just didn't appeal to her, for no real reason other than some kind of inadvertent invisibility.

"No."

She seemed lost. Maybe it was a little bit of Dooley and a little bit of something else. There was a lot on her mind.

"No, it's everything, really." She was very quiet. "We have no idea what happened to Ark Two and Three, although it seems likely they were launched."

Both ships had been in the Low Earth Orbit stocks and in advanced-build status at the time of their own departure. June 11, 2059. It seemed like yesterday. They had no way of knowing how many were built after that, or where they might have been dispatched. _Ark Two_ was supposedly going to Proxima, but what if the mission had been changed? There was no communications traffic, but then there was no one on Earth for the Proxima party to speak to anymore. Twelve thousand years was enough for them to descend into savagery as well. They just didn't know. Same thing with _Ark Three_ , its keel laid down, yet their destination had been anything but finalized according to his recollection or briefing notes.

"The idea that people somehow survived the big climate change. It must have been kings and queens and politicians, and industrialists, only the wealthy."

Jill was doing some thinking, all right.

"Ark One was launched with a big freaking fanfare. So why was there no news about the others?"

Brent nodded. They had been through the whole analytical think-tank process, trying to figure out what to do, and what to expect if they did. Analyzing just what happened to the people of Earth was rather pointless.

"And now they've reverted back to barbarism." He sat in contemplation. "That's disturbing, sure. How in the hell can we survive? We're all specialists, among the crew. As soon as we get down there we're the least skilled."

Unemployable, as it were. The colonists would be prepared to build homes, clear land. They knew something about agriculture, or carpentry, or could teach, or be a hog-farmer, a pharmacist, a doctor, something useful. They were selected for their fitness. It had never been conceived that the crew might have to become colonists as well. Not back on their home planet, twelve thousand years in the future.

The Earth had been re-peopled.

The colonist's agricultural techniques would be light years ahead of those on the ground. That knowledge might be traded with the people of Earth below. But how would they communicate? Communicating with natives had never been part of the program, so no provision had been made for it. It was just that simple. It would take months, or even years, to develop language skills relevant to the natives.

"It's just that there's rarely a place, an empty place, where no one lives." Jill's point was a good one.

Brent had never really thought of it that way.

"And in spite of everything, I think Dooley's feeling it as much as anyone. He was an utter beast the other day, teasing me mercilessly, laughing the whole time." She had never seen a streak of cruelty in Dooley before, and it was disturbing.

What would happen to them on the surface? Stuck for the rest of their lives, would it be one long, awful, miserable, unremitting hell? Would they all have to become _vicious_ in order to survive?

"Oh, God, Brent. I'm just so scared, and I think a lot of us are."

"It is a tough situation. Once we put the colonists down, they're stuck there. Are we sure we even have enough fuel to get everyone and all the supplies down?" He hadn't touched his meal yet, and it was going cold on him. "Damn. I'd give my left nut to thaw out one of those cow embryos."

He was rewarded for his efforts as a small smile stole over Jill's serious mien.

"Theoretically, using up all the reserves, we can get everyone down, and much of the equipment. That's what Dooley and the others are saying."

"What I can't get around is the possibility, or the probability, that some people are literally in a cave-man state, and others more advanced. They say there is evidence of steel-making, and some major cities of what they call Cyclopean masonry, and yeah, I think we're all just scared shitless, Jill."

He reached across and gave her wrist a squeeze.

_That's right,_ _little child, big, fat, pudgy Brent will look_ _after you._

There was a terrible a wrench in his guts. Was that adrenalin? Strange, how it felt exactly the same as sheer terror. His armpits were rank and wet.

"So what are you saying?" Her big, doe-like eyes were riveted on his spectacled grey orbs, serious and intent.

They were all in denial—all of them in denial, right up until the very last minute.

"That there's a big difference between Neanderthals, and I don't know, like Neolithic, where they live in houses, and herd animals, and grow crops and stuff. If they can make steel, they can make doors and windows, and even a bed you can sleep in."

She smiled a little sadly.

"They'll have pottery, and fabrics, and shoes. Maybe they'll have olive trees, and make a lot of wine and stuff. They'll have books and stuff."

"I guess the one would be better than the other."

Brent took a deep breath.

"Knives and forks and spoons."

"Will they have a decent bathroom?" He didn't answer for a moment.

There was a long minute of silence while they stared at each other. He blurted it out unthinkingly, something stupid.

"I won't let anyone drag you off by the hair." A blush rose up his neck, and face.

Her jaw dropped open a little as she regarded him, then the big quantum-engine mechanic lowered her eyes demurely.

"Aw, Brent! That's so sweet." An odd look came over her.

"Well, at least I got you smiling again."

Yes, he thought. We're all scared shitless, and we're all in a kind of denial. He sat up straighter on a revelation. One of the benefits of working in Crew and Accounting is access to all personnel files.

"Dooley's an orphan."

That explained a lot, and it was time to change the subject.

"What? An orphan?" She didn't get the significance at first.

"I had hoped to return to Earth and at least meet my brother's and sister's children and grandchildren. Dooley doesn't have anyone like that to worry about. He's totally disconnected, compared to the rest of us, although it seems like a kind of self-absorption."

It was a kind of ignorance, but ignorance is just a lack of knowledge, he reckoned. Dooley simply didn't get it on some emotional level, whereas Jill was really hurting. One of the reasons for the crew being single, unmarried types, was the very long planned duration of the original voyage. You wouldn't want to come home and find yourself a thirty-five year-old person with a hundred and ten year-old spouse, anxiously awaiting your return in some old-age home.

"I guess the Captain asked Dooley to be on the first landing party. As soon as we get parked in a safe orbit, he's suddenly expendable." Brent took a quick glance around to ensure no one overheard him.

Jill gave a small sob at her next thought.

"Has she asked you yet?" There was no trace of sarcasm.

He shook his head. She might soon, he was thinking. Voices sounded outside the doorway. It was a good time to get off the subject.

"She asked me a couple of weeks ago." Jill had a sad and faraway look in her eyes.

Once they got the ship in orbit and the colonists were thawing out, preparatory to going down to the planet's surface, the need for quantum-engine mechanics would be over. Brent reached across and grabbed her hand, and held on tight.

"I'll tell you what. I'll do it if you will." He chuckled as best he could.

_What in the_ _fuck is the matter with your head?_

Jill had a rueful grin on her face. She wasn't pulling her hand away, he noted with gratitude.

"Ah, what the hell." She nodded, and then they were both laughing.

It sounded a little forced, but it was laughter nevertheless. Brent felt very protective towards Jill. It was an interesting feeling, and one he liked very much, as it somehow made things a little better.

"I guess we're all orphans, now." She said it while looking deeply in assessment into Brent's eyes.

He wondered what she saw in there, like maybe some kind of a cave-man.

***

She was an old and familiar friend when she came calling again. Predictably it was just before the beginning of the Jupiter burn sequence. The Captain latched the cabin door firmly and stowed her things. He was waiting to see if she would take off her shoes or something.

Oh, Lord, send me a sign.

That kind of thinking.

"Hey, Captain." Dooley greeted her in a friendly fashion, as relaxed and as calm as could be.

The Saturn burn had gone well enough, although they hadn't gotten much drag off of its atmospheric gases or dust clouds. They didn't want to get too close to its massive gravitic well.

"Hello, Mister Peeters." She strapped herself in.

"I've been thinking. It's too bad there's not as much interplanetary dust as we'd hoped. And every time I fire the thrusters, I have this feeling of absolute certainty that the damned things are going to go kaput, right in the middle of it. All our calculations would go out the window."

"So what are you saying, Dooley?"

"I don't want to get into a scenario where it's all riding on one last throw of the dice. If our fuel runs out on the very last burn, then essentially we lose. We lose, and I'm not prepared to let that happen. I would much prefer to arrive safely, and discover there's plenty of fuel left in the tanks."

What plenty meant was irrelevant. Once they were safely parked in orbit, five hundred or a thousand kilos might be enough.

"Okay." Her screen popped up and she began manipulating virtual icons with her virtual mouse.

"We can sustain one and a half gravities of lateral acceleration, and I'm convinced the ship at least can handle fifteen g's of linear deceleration, although we might not like it much."

She listened to his plan. They would be hanging bug-eyed in the straps, but they could live through a short one.

"So what do you want to do, Mister Peeters?"

"Aerobraking. I want to do Mars, then Earth, then Venus, and then return to Earth."

She stared in breathless doubt, holding on to the arms of her seat.

"You have to admit, it solves some of our problems."

She nodded dumbly. The Captain looked at him for a long moment, with a strange look in her eyes, thinking, thinking...

"You've known about this all along, haven't you? How come you never said anything before?"

"Because, I wanted to prevent a mutiny. You're damned right I kept it a secret."

"You kept it a secret." She gasped. "Why?"

"Because I don't have time to argue with all you guys." He said it seriously enough that she knew he wasn't kidding.

"But why?" She was practically wringing her hands now.

"Because the rules apply. Because I don't want to leave it all on one last throw of the dice."

Jesus, it was such simple, textbook stuff. Leave yourself some options. It was because so few of the others could do the math, and so they would be going on sheer gut reactions. Why bother trying to persuade them, when you could just lie, and avoid lengthy and frustrating discussions? Really, he was only thinking of them. The art and science of astrogation was mysterious for a reason. It kept tourists out of your office, and people in the hallway outside your door spoke in hushed whispers.

"We always agreed that we could siphon some fuel off of the shuttles." She wasn't happy about being surprised.

"If we need to siphon off fuel to make orbit, that's fine by me, but I plan on having ninety-five percent of it left. There was always a planned reserve. If and when we get down to twenty percent of shuttle fuel remaining, then we've only got enough reaction mass for ten round trips to the surface, with rather limited options for maneuvering into various places. After that, we become glider-bombs, with no room for error, and a snow-ball's chance in hell if we don't like the field at the last minute." He let her think about it for a second. "The way I've got it set up, we just drift along at seventeen thousand and re-acquire Earth's gravity well. The moon gives us a little tug into position, and there you have it."

His plan required was a little patience on the part of the others. That and faith in his and the computer's abilities.

"And you're certain the ship won't break up under all these lateral accelerations? Would we have enough shuttle fuel to bring up reaction mass from the surface and re-fuel the ship?" New options rose at the thought.

"Yep. Then we can take a vote, or something."

She sighed.

"All right Mister, the con is yours. God help us all if you're wrong."

Dooley hit the public address system's siren for a moment.

"Maneuvering alert. Maneuvering alert." He paused before initiating. "In the next few days, I want to start transferring shuttle fuel, so I know the damned thing's not going to run out on me in the middle of a squirt."

"All right, Dooley. You're the man, Mister Peeters." There was only a slight trace of bitterness. He was so proud of her.

Chapter Twenty

The army proceeded up the Great River...

The army proceeded up the Great River, burning, looting, raping and pillaging as it went.

The flames of burning villages and the reek of scorched hair and charred flesh hung over the battlefield. Talmotek was mounted in his gilded war chariot, with its four superbly matched white horses, followed by a half a dozen other courtiers and generals in their own chariots, inspecting the scene of recent combat.

His short, dense line of two hundred elephants had been enough to disperse the poorly organized and commanded Kulutawas, who made a stand in the worst possible terrain for their unsupported infantry. It was hard to believe they could be so foolish.

"Never make the mistake of believing there is respect between enemies." Malko had joined him, as he often did when his duties with the cavalry permitted, and the son of _The Chair_ had few urgent duties except to gain experience and confidence in commanding men.

His son stood beside him as he reigned in, regarding the line of men staked out in death. All had been scalped, and some had been mutilated in other, unspeakable ways. There looked to be about forty of them.

"We must remember to publicize this." Talmotek was aware of the value of propaganda at home in wartime.

He didn't care what the enemy thought of him. The worse the better, as he saw it. Let the Kitchi-lao believe he drank human blood or ate babies for breakfast if they wanted to.

The men were of the tribe of the T'Noka. The detachment got caught out in the open plain without cavalry support or heavy weapons. Their small number made them an easy target for the Kulutawas, who were impetuous in the rush, although an attack once repulsed, often couldn't be reorganized. A Kulutawa withdrawal soon became a rout, resulting in a massacre of epic proportions on more than one occasion.

Someone in the chariot behind vomited loudly. Talmotek raised his hand and the small procession moved on again.

The entire northern horizon was a mass of smoke plumes, as village after village was fired by the troops, and whatever grain and fodder couldn't be brought away was put to the torch. The Kulutawas were driving their herds to places inaccessible, but failing that, they had begun to massacre their own animals a few days before the arrival of the Tczlina army. The bodies were put in every well, every stream, every riverbank was lined with dead and rotting animals. The smell of putrefaction was ever-present, and inescapable. The idea was to poison the water supply, obviously. Where were the Kulutawas planning to go? Did they not expect to return? That wasn't his problem. Soldiers escorted a line of dusky-skinned prisoners to the rear. They would be well treated, and given mugs of wine. They would be interrogated, and returned to the group. They would compare experiences, and talk it over amongst themselves.

When nothing bad happened, the next to be interrogated would be more inclined to divulge information. When everything they knew had been revealed to the questioners, the group would be executed and given a mass grave in an anonymous gully or ravine somewhere. While the prisoners must know this, must have heard stories or rumours, and news travels fast, hope springs eternal in the human breast. The prisoners were kept cooperative right up until the last moment by the hopes that they might be mistaken, that the rumours were just rumours, and that they might be spared. War is the applied study of human nature, Talmotek believed, and his son was learning much from the experience.

After fording a small stream, innocent and pure, as the early summer sunlight peeked through the cottony-soft clouds, they came to the battlefield proper. There were scattered clumps of men and horses, all dead now, a day later. From his perch, it gave the impression of going on forever. Clump after huddled clump. The buzzing of flies was terrific, even as men still moved through the piles. Some were junior officers counting casualties and trying to account for the enemy's losses, or their own, and others simply robbing the dead. No one was shocked. The lure of plunder had drawn many men to join the expedition. There was no sense letting the enemy recover resources like gold, silver, money, jewelry, expensive weapons and good equipment, and then use it again against them somewhere up the road.

"We only lost a hundred and eighty men." Malko was exultant. "And look at this slaughter!"

All of it achieved by the presence of the elephants, Talmotek thought, and those animals were sickening and dying in small numbers on a daily basis. A father's job is never done.

"Yes, Malko." Talmotek was more subdued. "But we have a thousand wounded, who must be cared for, especially this early in the campaign. While our real enemy sits and waits behind his walls and his redoubts, his towers and his engines."

"If they don't come out to fight, then we cut their Empire in half." His son spoke with a boundless confidence.

"That is the plan." Although things were going as well as could be expected, they were at least a week behind schedule now, and while not serious, they must avoid further delays.

The season was fast advancing, and it waited for no man.

***

Bonglishko's stubby brown fingers flipped through the dispatches. The southern campaign appeared to be going well. Appearances could be deceptive. With couriers coming and going daily and at all hours, it seemed possible to build a fairly accurate picture of progress so far. The occasional bird arrived bearing the more sensitive intelligence, but having more than one channel of communication only made sense. Birds couldn't be captured or interrogated.

Accurate the information might be, it was already several days out of date, and he knew it was by no means complete. The picture so far was fairly reassuring, but there were undercurrents he didn't understand. The Kitchi-lao generals weren't sending him dispatches. Any statements as to their state of mind, or intentions, or the forces remaining at their disposal required extreme caution and skepticism. Reports of garrisons still holding out in some citadels might be accurate, as far at that went, but how long would it go on? A siege could last months, and they had other uses for their forces when they became available. That was preferably sooner rather than later.

Other Kitchi-lao forces had withdrawn into the interiors of the islands according to reports, and some appeared to have simply vanished. To believe the southern campaign was over was delusional. He privately wondered if surprise had been as total as he and the other planners had promised. There would always be doubts, wouldn't there?

Politically the situation was stable in the Pentapolis. With news of victory after victory rolling in, the war was quite popular. The fact that the Kulutawas were a primitive culture and the vast spaces conquered mostly empty bore little importance in the popular imagination. The original plan had been to drive eastwards, and overland, to cut off the Kitchi-lao's southern peninsula. Strategically, it would have been meaningless, nothing but an inconvenience to the Kitchi-lao. Their trading ships could sail past a mile offshore and be perfectly safe. The decision to build a navy, one capable of contending with the Kitchi-lao on even terms was clearly the correct one. It was also clearly impossible, not so much in material terms, but in terms of skills and experience. A ship was essentially useless without skilled men to sail it.

However, once the troops had been delivered to the islands, the new ships were free to roam, and engage the Kitchi-lao navy as they presented themselves. It was a method of gaining experience. The navy could begin building a few traditions of their own. All of the captains were young, ambitious, and were drawn from members of the equestrian class, who held family status but not truly nobles. If they drew the favourable attention of the ruler, their names would be inscribed upon the Family Register, and the new nobility would be passed on to their posterity. This reward brought extreme efforts from all concerned, for prestige and status were not unfamiliar things to the Tzclinacoque mind-set, nor was it unknown to their partners and allies.

The capture of several ships in harbour was a victory, and a blessing, but it also revealed their technical superiority. There was much food for thought here.

Once Bnglishko was done with his thorough reading of the day's intelligence and progress reports, the documents were separated into two piles. The smaller pile of reports was not so crucial, and the larger pile would be forwarded to Talmotek. Anything really vital and time-limited was encoded, and sent by carrier pigeon from Tzlinacoque City to Nollinsay, and then the post-galleys, complete with crates of replacement birds, would take it up the river. Talmotek's replies would be sent back by birds carried with the army for the purpose.

Silver pins with coloured streamers attached to them stuck out of his wall map, attesting to the progress of the Great Army. He had only certain fragmentary or relatively minor accounts of the whereabouts of the Kitchi-lao navy.

It was anticipated that they would attempt to raise the siege of Buca and other places. There was also a possibility that the Kitchi-lao would take a page out of the Tzclinacoque book and use the navy to threaten Nollinsay. While the city was defended by a large force fully equal to the army Talmotek was leading into the interior, so far there were no signs of such activity or preparations. Admittedly, the war was still only weeks old. It was estimated that Nollinsay could sustain a siege of two years, if the poor, the sick, and the elderly were driven out of the city. There was some talk that the Kitchi-lao might attempt a heavy raid or even to invade the central Tzclinacoque homeland, perhaps even attempt to take the capital itself. If so there were sufficient forces to repel them, and Bonglishko would be happy to demonstrate the folly of such tactics.

He had no doubts about his ability to defeat them on his home ground, with which he was intimately familiar. If only the Kitchi-lao could be induced to come out onto the open plain and attack Talmotek's army. His army, now in the field, would have only a limited effective life. There was a certain time limit, after that, he would have to retreat in the face of ever-worsening winter weather and with decimated formations due to battle and disease. Were the Kitchi-lao simply _waiting?_ To go into winter quarters in a hostile country would be the end of Talmotek's army. They all agreed that this was true. Any large army had a daily routine attrition rate. In winter it went twenty or thirty times higher. His heart beat a little faster when he thought about the consequences of failure.

***

Yllinkotep watched in fascination as someone in a balloon sent heliographic flashes to someone he couldn't see on the ground, off to the east behind a line of low peaks.

The bright flashes of sunlight varied. They seemed to be in different lengths. Also the gaps in between the flashes varied in length. While he spoke Kitchi-lao, he couldn't read or write in the language. The flashes meant nothing to him, other than the indisputable fact that a message was being sent.

Yet he could observe and report on this phenomenon. In fact, he could even take it down, and he momentarily scratched out dots and dashes of various lengths. He wrote it right on the seat beside him. It was less obvious than dragging out a sheet of paper, white and flapping in the wind. His employers might be able to make something of it.

The roads were clogged with refugees. He was finding travel difficult. The balloon had to be Kitchi-lao. It was the first time he had ever heard of such a thing, that is to say the military use of such sensational objects. What the common man might think of as magic, he understood to be based on physical concepts—they trapped hot smoke inside it so it would rise—but it was an unusual and therefore impressive sight. He instantly saw the potential. Maybe that was the significance of what he was seeing. Up in the air, in a balloon, you could certainly see a long ways away. Ballooning was a circus act, a stunt, the serious military use of it was a new and dramatic development in the art of war. What were they looking at? What _could_ they be looking at, that would result in such frenzied activity? They were visible to all and sundry on the land below and the flashes would give them away in a heartbeat.

Who were they signaling to? What were they telling them? What they were seeing, obviously. So what were they seeing? It struck him that the Great Army or at least detachments of it must be operating nearby. Fom his limited perspective, down in amongst he trees and hills, he couldn't even see smoke on the horizon. He was closed in by forest and essentially blind—unlike the people in the balloon. What a sight.

His heart beat a little faster. This was always a dangerous time for a spy, or even a humble puppet-master. Hostile troops would be unlikely to ask a lot of questions before rummaging through his possessions, stealing what they could carry, and wrecking the rest. They might simply kill him and take the wagon. Any army in the field could use a good pair of mules. The very thought hurt inside of him.

The road ahead was clogged, and the rumour going around was that the rope across the river, the one called Nioshoa, had broken, and it might take a couple of hours to repair it. Without the rope, the ferry was nigh impossible to operate in the fast current of the river, which separated the lands of the Kulutawas from the nation of the Kirtele. Here the ground was more broken, with lots of hills, and much more forested.

Yllinkotep felt the strong urge to defecate. It came on quite suddenly, and he realized it was fear, a kind of stark, unreasoning terror. The Great Army was right behind him. He was convinced of it. They were massacring prisoners at a rate that bespoke a primitive savagery he found it hard to believe human beings capable of. Didn't they know war was just a game, one that no one could win, and there were no winners, only survivors? That the end never justified the means, and that the cost always outweighed the benefits? Ahead of him, a wagon lurched forward, and he felt a kind of relief, then instant raging frustration as it came to a halt after thirty yards.

He had to get out of there. He just had to get out of there. Before it was too late.

***

The professor and Nedos were writing a missive to Nodrakis.

The most recent letter from the Prince indicated his safe arrival in Mittainagor and the fact that the young man was deeply unhappy there, although he didn't go into details.

"What a man believes to be true about himself, that is what's important." Tsernalik dictated to the young student Nedos. "If necessary, you could hop on a boat and just get out of there."

He went on as Nedos' pen scratched away at the clean parchment.

"Or, you could stay and let your mother and father ruin your life for you. As for other matters, the war has thrown things all into a tizzy here, and we expect our funding to be cut off any day. Although at this point in time they haven't begun drafting students into the armed forces, the situation seems grave indeed."

He paused for a moment's thought.

The pair of them were working in Tsernalik's capacious and luxurious flat, in which his study held a prominent place and took up at least as much space as the living quarters.

"You've never met the Prince, have you?" He asked in another tone, one that Nedos recognized as an aside, and not to be included in the text.

"No." Nedos had gathered over the last few weeks that the absent Prince Nodrakis was quite a character.

"The news that you may be asked to take command of Mittaini forces in the field, or even take over as Captain of the Guard is dismaying indeed..." The old scholar paused for thought.

He seemed lost for a moment, but Nedos was patient.

"The navy is preparing for some campaign somewhere, which is being kept secret." He went on. "Uttaris and Helios are busy with preparations, in expectation of the arrival of the Great Army's invasion, which seems to be the most likely scenario. The Pentapolis cannot seriously expect to hold sway over the entire inner continent without challenge."

He paused. A speaker must be able to extemporize, but a writer had the opportunity to compose his thoughts. The Pentapolis had outflanked the Empire. It could only be invasion—maybe.

"No one seems to know where Kvetchen is. As for more scientific matters, our observations continue apace. The object has appeared to rendezvous, and flared again near several other bodies, including the Horned One, and the Pantheon, and its velocity and trajectory changed consequently. It's still too early to draw a conclusion."

The Pantheon was a big blue object in the night sky, with lots of what he believed to be moons surrounding it. Nedos scratched away, fascinated by what he was hearing, if not exactly learning.

When the professor tried to brief him on everything that had happened so far, he found his head swimming and some of the terms unknown. The normally patient old scholar would get all excited, and spittle would fly out of his mouth, and a glazed, far-off look would come over his face, especially the eyes. He was quite the fanatic on this one subject, and all other things seemed quite meaningless to him. For the most part Tsernalik was a calm, sensitive and urbane man, well educated, well-read and well-spoken, and anything but excitable. The scholar's glass was empty, Nedos' untouched. If the old scholar said the blue object was surrounded by moons, which were smaller, dependent 'bodies,' then Nedos was willing to accept it.

"My gut feeling is that it will intercept the Red Wanderer, and yet it is merely intuition. I have no idea why it would do that, or why it should do that. And all of its motions and behaviors, if I may misuse the term, seem quite incomprehensible."

Tsernalik poured himself a deep draught of wine from the frosted decanter on the sideboard, a dark and heavy piece richly decorated with inlaid shells, stones and bits of glass in a pattern of swirling movements, and in the shapes of the creatures of the night.

***

Nodrakis had no good options. Caught between an immovable rock that was his father, and the unstoppable force that was his mother, Knaius understood why the young Prince had been so eager to leave home the first time. The Mittaini royal couple were difficult people in the best sense of the word. Having stopped by the Prince's apartments to see if he was coming down for drinks before dinner, he found him despondent with his fate, which equated with forever in his mind.

"By the Goddess of Fertility, what am I supposed to do? I'll never escape these people." The young Prince had his head in his hands, slumped over in the chair and staring at the floor in dismay.

"Well, you've got some tough choices." Knaius could see his problem. "It's a good thing you have me here."

Nodrakis stared at the floor, groaning as if he had a major headache.

"For the time being, you can't go back to Kitchi-lao." Knaius outlined the options, which were obvious to him. "Your father would demand your return, or something humiliating like that. He seems to be a choleric character, no disrespect to your father intended, or you can take over from your elder brother as the Captain of the Guard. You simply don't have the experience or the inclination to take on other high military commands or duties. You admit that you are not an administrator? Or that logistics, or engines of war, or siege tactics hold any great charm for you?"

Nodrakis nodded dumbly. Knaius was just being silly. He had thought all of these things out himself, many times. Over and over, in fact.

"And I'll be damned through all seven hells if I'm going to do anything that involves a boat!"

What a dread thought. His father had two or three dozen ships of various sizes, cruising the vast inland seas surrounding Mittainagor.

"But I have a plan." Knaius was seated beside the young fellow on the lounge divan.

He patted him on the back.

"The key thing is to use a little psychology. All your father really wants is to be proud of you. I know a little bit about these things, and what you really need is to get out of his hair. Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes."

"What are you suggesting?" Nodrakis was mystified, yet hopeful that his highly experienced friend had a realistic plan.

One thing he couldn't deny, Knaius commanded the total respect of his parents. The word of the uncle of the Emperor carried a lot of weight.

"It is apparent to us, that our interests are all in common, the defeat of the Pentapolis." Knaius studied the younger man. "You could volunteer for certain dangerous and difficult affairs, such as forging an alliance with other nations. Your father and I are presently negotiating directly on matters of mutual interest to our two states."

"You're saying to get out of this house, I need to be doing something that's clearly important to the war effort, and not just running off to do astronomy. At the very least, I can still escape them."

"We'll find something that will suffice. At the very least I can request your presence as an escort, or even ask for you to be returned with me as a hostage, although it would seem mean-spirited and counterproductive of trust." Knaius had some ideas already. "No, think on this for a time, and I will put my thoughts to work, and we will come up with something you and your parents can live with."

He gave the prince a frank and reassuring look.

"No boats." Nodrakis had no major qualms about it, other than that.

Knaius grinned.

"No boats. My word on it." He wasn't all that fond of them himself.

Chapter Twenty-One

Brother Raffin followed Mackel...

Brother Raffin followed Mackel into one of the furthest recesses of the Keep's capacious dungeon with more than a little trepidation. They were allegedly in search of some putative bottle of a musty old wine of some indifferent vintage, at least to his recollection. Mackel had loudly promised him that he simply must try it. This Keep was four or five kyles outside the walls of the fortified northern part of the city, high in the hills overlooking Tayreio Bay. It was very late, and all around them the building was still.

Since the dissolute Mackel had given the correct recognition signal, one that could only be known to another member of the Brethren, he had little choice but to follow him and hope there were no unpleasant surprises. Who came up with the idea of using a pat on the backside to recognize one another? They should have been stoned to death. Still, very few observers were going to ask questions. It had that much going for it.

They came to a blank, wide door of iron-reinforced planks, dark and sweaty-looking in the dim light of Mackel's lamp. With a jingling of keys, as Raffin held the lamp, although there was a small shelf right there for just such a purpose, he wondered what awaited within. Mackel glanced around, ears seeming to twitch, then he reached in and did something, and a dim light came out of the doorway. Raffin followed him in, gazing around in astonishment.

"What the?" The place was flooded with a soft white light.

Mackel closely barred the door, and taking the lamp from Raffin blew it out. It went up on a corresponding shelf inside the door, the inner and outer pair of them bolted through the wall.

"Let's see if there's any mail." Mackel kept his voice down, with just a hint of a guilty conscience. "They didn't show you anything like this, back at your home Keep?"

Raffin shook his head dumbly. What were these things?

"Are...are these machines?" He gaped at the bizarre oddities he saw all around.

Mackel stood grinning in triumph.

"Welcome to the inner circle." The glint in his eye belied the humour.

Raffin suspected there was more than a grain of truth in it.

"What is all this? I've heard wild tales, the whispers of drunken fools, crazy stories of machines that talk..."

Mackel pointed up at a glowing ceiling.

Raffin stood there blinking for a moment. Long strips of the ceiling emitted a fine, pure and solid white light... _how in the heavens did they do that?_ He stared into the other's bloodshot dark eyes, and then looked around in a kind of horror.

Mackel smiled and nodded.

"We started those rumours ourselves." He went along snapping little things on the sides of the slab-like objects sitting in a row on a bench along the wall.

Raffin was in awe.

"Ye Gods!" Raffin yelped involuntarily as some of them beeped, clicked, and whirred, lights came from inside them, and the fronts began to flicker and light up.

"Sooner or later, someone always talks anyway." As if that explained just everything. "We made sure it was fools and idiots and no-accounts doing the talking."

Raffin's jaw hung as he looked at the display, then again at the ceiling. Mackel stood in front of one of the things and his fingers began to fly over a flat panel with rows of raised squares on it, all labeled with characters that were, on closer inspection, familiar. Raffin was horrified at this revelation, this _strangeness._

"Here we go. We'll see if there are any instructions for you, or any updates on the intelligence situation."

Raffin edged in close, in spite, or possibly because of, his fears.

Then Raffin was looking into another room, one that he assumed must be much like this one. With a sense of dull shock, he saw Brother Wik, staring back with a wicked grin. His voice seemed to come out of nowhere, but it was clear and crisp, as if the Brother was right there in the room with them. His guts jolted in wondrous fear.

"Gotcha!" Wik's tongue stuck out through the side of his teeth in an insanely satirical grin, his clear brown eyes crinkled up in humour.

"You son of a witch!" Raffin cursed Wik in no uncertain terms.

They might have warned him. Or even just given him a quick glimpse of all this. He stood blinking, wondering what in the seven hells he had gotten himself into.

"It's all wire-less." Mackel spoke as if that piece of information actually explained anything. "It's powered by the heat of the sun."

"Just get a grip on yourself, Raffin, or perhaps I should say, 'The Phoenix.'" Wik's rapid-fire laugh sent fresh waves of resentment through Raffin.

There was a pause.

They had assured him that code names were drawn by lot, and everyone had to put up with one.

"Look." Wik glowered at him from the front of the box. "The equipment is pretty simple to operate, and Mackel can train you in about a week."

He went on, oblivious to Raffin's ire and displeasure.

"Now, do you have anything to report? Or are you gentlemen merely wasting my time?"

"Um, um, Prince Nodrakis has returned. He was accompanied by Emperor Helios the Second's uncle Knaius." Lucid thoughts were returning.

Presented with a fait accompli of magic or machinery, demons or mechanisms, he had little choice but to try and accept it and to live with it.

This was his new job?

He was screaming inwardly.

"The Prince wouldn't have returned unless it was important, even with a war on. And Knaius is with him? It must be a treaty of mutual defense."

Wik was lost in thought for a moment.

"Is Mackel going somewhere?"

Were they really going to give him a week to learn all this stuff, and then he was going to be left on his own?

"No. You are, most likely." Wik had a speculative look. "Yes...see if you can get attached to Knaius and Nodrakis and their party. They're conniving at something now."

"Attached? What do you mean, attached? Any idea why? Or even how? What do you mean, they're conniving at something?"

"You're not our only source." Mackel gave him a reassuring nod.

"Talk about astronomy or something." Wik had some advice, and Mackel nodded beside him. "The Prince is nuts about it."

Raffin didn't know anything about astronomy, and didn't have time to read a lot of books on the subject. Faking it would be extremely difficult, when dealing with a real enthusiast.

"Go at it from the metaphysical point of view. Find a line he's never heard."

"This just keeps getting better and better, all the fewkin' time." He ignored Mackel's obvious dismay and Wik's certain expectations.

"That's the spirit, laddie." Wik disappeared, and the flat thing went dark blue, with naught but a series of static symbols and characters to be seen.

"I'll just jot this down for you." Mackel did so, as Raffin stood fuming and wondering how in the seven hells he was going to cope with it all.

"I think it's time you and I had a little talk." Raffin was sorely tempted to strangle the fellow, but it was Wik he really wanted.

***

With the onset of war, Helios the Second was busy from dawn until far into the night.

He never got a moment, let alone an hour to himself. The fact that he was also having trouble sleeping merely compounded the problem. Sometimes the urge to yawn was so overwhelming, he had to pinch himself or bite his lip quite painfully to stifle it. At times he got so tired he couldn't even think straight, and he found the loud music almost unbearable.

"What do you think of my new command?" Uttaris was beside him on his steed Whirlwind, a dappled grey stallion of eighteen hands.

Like his own mount, a white charger named The Doctor, the horse was richly caparisoned in the familiar Imperial livery of garnet and gold with accents in black and silver stitching.

Regiment by regiment, battalion by battalion, with the thumping of drums and the blaring of trumpets, the pike-men, slingers, mounted men-at-arms and bowmen filed past, rank upon rank, each new moving rectangle of soldiers led by a line of flags indicating past battle honours, and with marching-time kept by a man with a baton.

"It is a brave sight, brother. They're the finest soldiers that money can buy." Helios replied somewhat morosely.

The old Republic had commanded such loyalty that volunteer, citizen armies had always been quickly raised in times of threat. The trouble with their Empire was that everyone saw it as a cash-cow to be milked, and soldiers had to be paid well to suffer the risks and toils of war. He wondered if this unfamiliar mood presaged the onset of old age. Helios had discovered a number of new aches and pains in the last three or four years. He could no longer read a page of text, he needed eye-glasses to look through.

"I'm sorry, but you have to admit that you're getting a little old for active campaigning. And someone has to stay home and coordinate our operations." His younger sibling reminded him of the painfully obvious.

With his blue eyes, high colour and soft, fine, reddish-blonde hair, Uttaris most resembled their dearest mother Madraiga, gone these fifteen years.

"I find myself becoming increasingly impatient of military parades and reviews." Helios was saddened by the thought of another long war. "Even as we speak, the Kirtele National Council is debating..."

"And we'll know all their thoughts, within twelve hours of the close of the meeting. If there's nothing you can do to change a situation, then it's time to stop worrying about it."

_My job is to worry, thought Helios_.

"It's the waiting. That's what's killing me...the waiting."

"Yes. The Pentapolis is also waiting." Uttaris held a long salute for a veteran unit of colourful repute, iron-cobbled boots ringing on the pavement. "They're waiting to see what we do."

The problem was, the Kirtele were a fiercely independent people. They lived far from the borders of the Empire, and didn't have a lot of dealings with it. They traded through middlemen. Only rarely did a Kirtele merchant caravan visit the Empire, in search of the foreign luxuries, spices or liquors, such as the average householder might find indispensable.

His intelligence sources estimated that the Kirtele could scrape up as many as six to ten thousand mounted warriors. They were literally born to the saddle, as compared to many of his own levies. The Kirtele lance, wielded by a strong man, was a fearsome weapon. Their bowmen were notoriously accurate, as some youthful experience in the field had taught. Tzclina forces were heavy with infantry. Tzclina infantry were not known for discipline. The Kirtele were not directly threatened by the advancing Pentapolis forces, which were driving the Kulutawas before them. It was a matter of them figuring out their own true interests. This wasn't always easy in a republic. The trouble with foreign subsidies is that the barbarians who received them often saw them as tribute, or a sign of weakness and vulnerability. In terms of personal honour, the Kirtele were exemplary individuals much of the time. The problem was that the Kirtele _state_ was fairly sophisticated in political terms, and would know exactly what he was asking and why. The interests of a republic were very different from a constitutional, and hereditary, monarchy.

***

Kvetchen watched the bow heel over. The compass needle swung through a quarter of the circle, finally winding up on a westerly heading.

Ahead lay the Strait of Flowers, and after that, the great shallow bowl that was the Inner Sea. Seventy pasangs to the left lay the island of Buca, and a few pasangs to the north, the long low shore, with its scattered chain of islands, that was the southern peninsula. He had spent months, years even, preparing for this moment. It was the culmination of a lifetime of thought, of study and of application.

The sight of a thousand ships, beating into the wind, hulls rising and falling with white foam cresting over the bowsprits was sublime. All those sails, white against the green of the sea behind and the hazy, milky blue of the sky above, was a sight to be reckoned with. It was too bad, only peasants, townsmen, and a few troops would see it. The Tzlinacoque capital lay far inland, and would be relying on word-of-mouth reports. Stories grow in the telling, and fear defies logic in its effects.

The plan was to undertake an expedition, a massive armed reconnaissance known by the archaic name of _chevauchee,_ a word so lost in time that no etymology could be found for it. The sole purpose was to punish, to lay waste, to destroy, to make life miserable for the Tzclinacoque, not so much the lords and governors, not so much the powerful, the high and the mighty, but for the meanest and most humble citizens.

Kvetchen planned to take the twenty thousand cavalry he had embarked upon this greatest of all Imperial fleets, and advance to within a pasang of Tzclinacoque City, if it could possibly be managed. He had twenty thousand of the finest cavalry in the known world, supplies for months, and sufficient infantry to provide security for their landing at Vena Crocii. They would make war on the livelihoods of the people.

If the enemy was prudent, he would sit out in front of his city in some pre-prepared earthworks—Kvetchen knew it could be done in a few days, if they were not already emplaced—and await his attack, with fortune favouring the defense and with time on their side.

If they were smart, they would sit back and watch him waste the countryside, and do nothing, knowing that sooner or later he had to withdraw. Kvetchen was praying to all the gods of his nation that they would be stupid. Another three hundred ships would be setting sail in ten days time, and another two hundred after that, in another ten days time. His troops would land, and his ships would withdraw to cruise the Inner Seas, looking for a fight. He would be resupplied on schedule. He had full confidence.

Their orders were to sweep the seas clean of the enemy. A campaign the enemy might expect to last a few days, a week, or even a month, might be kept going indefinitely. With all those ships cruising offshore, the Tzclinacoque forces tied down in the island campaign were cut off from succour. The threat to the Tzclinacoque capital would almost certainly ensure the collapse of those forces. At least that was the assessment he and his planners had come to. In war you just never know. The average Tzclina citizen would be terrorized.

This might have unpredictable political consequences for the Tzclina leadership. The mouth of the Great River was now subject to a strong blockade, news of which would soon travel up the river to the advancing forces there. It would not be welcome news.

Kvetchen and the Empire had a few other surprises for them. This Talmotek had built the greatest army in sheer size the world had ever seen. The Empire had three smaller armies, well-trained professionals, and had been preparing for years. He couldn't find it in his heart to hate the Tzclina people, but he would teach their great lords a lesson.

***

The barking of Ruta and Kyla was the first indication that Kjarl was home, their yaps and whines carrying far on the soft summer breezes. In a minute all of his sheep were bawling, a horse neighed, and other mutts joined in. Even the ducks and geese set to. The big barnyard rooster joined in with his raucous crowing. Reeta craned her neck to look out of the kitchen window into the sunny yard outside. Horses were coming up the lane, a lot of them by the sound of it.

Kjarl's parents were used to their son being gone for a few days at a time. Kjarl usually told them his plans beforehand, but when his mother Reeta saw him returning a few days after the review, in the company of a small column of troopers, she leapt to the conclusion that her son was in trouble.

Not that her Kjarl was a rowdy or a troublemaker, far from it, but he was known not to suffer fools gladly, and resented too-close intrusions upon his personal space. Being such a large man, he estimated this at a circumference of about two and a half yards. Drunken fools were his least favourite. One could say that she worried about him. Poor Kjarl! It's just that he had a way of cutting through the horse-puckey and a sardonic way with the words. He was so big, he had little fear of other men, but a mother knows better. She flew out of the door and into the side-yard at the end of their laneway, leaving half a bowl of shelled peas spilling off the tabletop.

He was barely dismounted before his old mom clung to him, embarrassing him in front of his men, not that they hadn't all witnessed other, similar scenes when they called upon some of their households on the way. He was in command of these raw young bucks, and he had to think of his dignity.

"It's all right, mother, they made me a sergeant." He tried, in some forlorn attempt, to calm her fears.

Ruta curled around and around their legs, almost tripping them up in an effort to gain Kjarl's attention. Akim almost got bowled over by Kyla. The big dog's paws were up on Akim's chest as he laughingly greeted it. After a few days away, the dogs missed the pair badly, and showed it with wagging tails and madly licking tongues.

"A sergeant! What do you know about war?" Tears sprung to her eyes, and he could make no answer.

"Men look up to me."

She stared out of tear-filled eyes.

"Hah!" She was filled with motherly pride in spite of herself.

She had never gotten used to his tall form towering over her, which became noticeable at about the age of fourteen.

"Look, here's Notbala." He tried to change the subject.

His mother went rushing over to smother his young cousin with hugs and kisses, much to his discomfort.

The troopers by this time were lounging around under the central shade tree, as a small group clustered by the well, enjoying a cold drink from a dipper in the mossy old bucket that perpetually hung there. Akim, somewhat amused and somewhat discomfited by Kjarl's mother hugging Kjarl and Notbala, half-fearing that he might be next, turned away to keep an eye on the men. They were just grateful for a chance to get out of the saddle and do nothing for a while. Several reclined on the grass in in an attempt to sleep. He took stock of the scene, and saw that the junior fellows were checking on the horses, one by one, as was their duty. Lek stood by the mules of the gut-wagon patiently.

"Would you boys like some pie?" Reeta's raised voice got their attention.

Almost as one, they sat up. His breath caught in Kjarl's throat when he realized what a good person she was.

"I guess they would." Her characteristic good humour quickly returned to the forefront. "Your father's down fishing."

She headed for the door, from within which the most tantalizing smells were making themselves known. Bustling around in the kitchen was her way of finding solace.

"Mothers!" Akim rubbed his belly. "When in doubt, cook."

Kjarl grinned at that one, and then meandered down to the river, which stood at the base of their northern acreage. At the outlet of a small bend in the river, where it fell clean and crystalline over a rounded ledge, there was a pool, studded with boulders but dark and cold under the leaning black pines.

That was where he found Marsko, intent on catching a wily old brook trout.

"I'm proud of you, son." He gave Kjarl a quick and impulsive hug upon hearing the news of his induction into the Sheriff's unit.

"Your mother and I can take care of the place, and maybe those other two fellows." Marsko was never any good at names. "They're handy enough I suppose."

His old man studied him, and then grinned.

"I can work with the horses, and keep them from going too stale. I taught you how, as you may recall. Is Lek staying?"

Kjarl shook his head.

"The county's going to buy most of them." Kjarl was both pleased by the prospect of hard money, and afraid of the inevitable fate many of them faced. "We're taking the best re-mounts with us. I'll leave some money for you and mother."

His father wound up his line and gathered his things as they talked. As the pair of them walked up through the fields towards the house, they solemnly discussed other concerns, taking some of the heavy burden of worry from Kjarl's shoulders. His mind had been frankly spinning lately with all of the details.

When they got back to the yard, his sister Elfidria was flirting with Akim, much to his red-faced embarrassment, with the other men letting out the occasional low whistle.

These stopped as soon as Kjarl made his appearance. By all accounts his sister was a beautiful and healthy girl of seventeen, and she could make up her own mind about such things. She had taken a real shine to Akim on his first visit, all those years ago. He was about fourteen summers old and she a precocious child of nine summers, or maybe ten, all blue eyes and red hair put up in braids and ribbons.

"Just remember son, you were brought up to ride well, to shoot well, and to tell the truth—always."

A stirring among the men indicated that one or two of them had pretty good ears.

His father seemed to have quite a high level of confidence in him. Funny how he'd never mentioned it before. Kjarl had always been a little uneasy about the dominant role he had somehow acquired in his father's home, even though there were times the old fellow seemed incapable of the smallest decision. My father really is getting old, he realized with a twinge of guilt.

"Your mother and I are very proud of you, and I want you to promise that you'll bring these fellows home as well." Kjarl grunted, rendered speechless by these revelations. "You're the best man in the county. Free yourself, Kjarl, and others will be freed."

As the old man stomped off to the barn to put away his fishing tackle, Kjarl wondered what he meant by that. Turning, he went by himself for a while into the back fields to say goodbye to the horses. It was a moment he preferred not to share with anyone else. He stood for a long quiet time, with his mouth up to the old grey mare's attentive ear, as she nodded and snuffled and pawed the ground in loving acknowledgement, with Ruta patiently nudging at his legs.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Aerobraking was not a revolutionary concept...

Aerobraking was not a revolutionary concept, but to attempt it with something as large as _Ark One_ was definitely pushing the envelope, and the bounds of credulity. At some point Murphy's Law would enter the equation. There were too many unknowns, at least in Sandra's opinion, to be very comfortable with it.

At their current speed of seventy thousand kilometres per hour, the best they could hope for was to hit the thin Martian atmosphere at such an angle that the ship would cleanly punch a hole, rather than skip off like a stone on a pond. The even worse alternative was keyholing, like a bullet through flesh, and tumbling end over end. That must be avoided at all costs. Internal stresses would tear the ship apart at almost any imaginable speed, right down to a few hundred kilometres per hour. But they wouldn't have enough _delta-v_ or escape velocity left anyway. They would be doomed, plummeting ever-downwards in some erratic spiral, and powerless to do anything about it. The Martian gravity would pull them down with about thirty-eight per cent of the force of Earth's gravity. Due to the thin air the ship would remain in relatively large _chunks,_ as he put it. He felt they probably wouldn't burn, and since the keyhole effect was awfully hard to predict, he had no idea how long that might take, or even if they would be able to release the shuttles...she shuddered slightly.

Considering that the thin Martian atmosphere had about one one-thousandth the density of Earth's, its thickness could be reasonably estimated at a given altitude, bearing in mind the known gravitational field of the planet, and the physical properties of those gases that made up the Martian air. They still didn't know exactly what would happen, taking into account Dooley's rather rusty stick-and-rudder skills. The so-called air was mostly CO2, but there were other gases in known quantities. The planet was getting perceptibly bigger in her view-screens.

Captain Jensen was rigid at his side, her innermost thoughts and feelings visible in the set of her head, neck and shoulders.

"I've got 'er all lined up, Captain." Dooley gripped the twin stalks, which normally were kept retracted.

"Everything looks functional." There was a hint of tightness in her throat.

She caused a white triangle of light to show him where to look out the port side screens. It was with sadness that the crew observed on all of their scans of the planet, that some efforts at colonization had been made. They had also clearly failed.

The evidence was there to see in a forlorn huddle of domes. Other proof was there as well, features that looked like various excavations, surface vehicle tracks, and even some remarkable images of trails beaten white by foot traffic between the smaller and more isolated domes. In a number of locations, there were single sets of footprints visible, evocative of some random errand or some soul, bored stiff by isolation, taking a short walk in the dust.

Otherwise, there was nothing, no heat, no radiation, no water vapour, no radio traffic. There were no satellites in orbit, nor ships, or shuttles on the pad. What the last days down there might have been like flitted through his mind just as he was sure it had Captain Jensen's. They must have closely paralleled what the last days of _Ark One_ might be like.

"I'm tempted to have a couple of stiff drinks first."

"You're not the only one."

"There's still time." There was a humourous edge to his voice.

He was feeling it as well.

"I'll tell you what, Mister Peeters. You get us through this, and I'll buy you a drink."

"That's the best offer I've had all millennium."

A partial hemisphere of the red planet hung in the left side of the screen, looming over them like an unpolished and un-dyed Florida orange. They couldn't see the northern ice-cap from this vantage point, and there was none on the southern pole for reasons he vaguely recalled. He glanced at her to be certain she was looking, and then rolled ninety degrees until the planet hung over them like a sagging roof of canvas, full of water and bulging after a rainfall. Mars had quite an eccentric orbit, which meant that the southern pole's CO2 snowcap often dried up, and disappeared completely. In the northern hemisphere, summertime occurs when the planet was the furthest from the sun, so average summer temperatures were cooler.

"I love my job sometimes." Stars hung in the inky blackness that surrounded the planet, now grown visibly bigger, mocking his momentary loss of humility.

The planet was rushing towards her head now. Dooley was planning to pass within twenty k's of the surface. Her sphincter tightened up at the thought.

"Kind of makes you feel small, doesn't it? Small and helpless." She felt she had to say something.

He wanted to say any number of things.

No, but you do.

He couldn't find the courage. It wasn't exactly the right words. The Captain let out a long exhalation. Making an effort to relax, he saw.

"I'm better now."

"It's the waiting, what kills you." She gave him a quick look.

Numbers began spewing out in a stream across their screens. They felt a strong pull to the bottom of the seats for a half a minute. They were also hanging forward in the straps...there was some jouncing around...and then they steadied up on a new heading. An audio tone came and Dooley fired a couple of short blasts of reaction mass to centre it up, putting a glowing ring neatly around the cross hairs in the scope. She couldn't help but notice what marvelous hands Dooley had.

"Fifty-eight thousand. That's it? Is that it?"

"That's what all the fuss was about. Oh, yeah. The stuff's run out."

"Really?" She put a hand up to her face. "I didn't feel a thing."

"We'd better start pumping some of the shuttle fuel."

Her hand made a motion and the intercom flooded the ship with her voice.

"Initiate Emergency Plan Two. Begin fuel transfer." She repeated it carefully in case there should be any doubts among the crew detailed and standing by for just this eventuality.

Now at least, they would know to the litre just how much fuel was in the system.

"What was Plan One?"

"Abandon Ship." She stood up, and looked through him, but not at him, not into his eyes properly.

"That makes sense."

"About that drink, Mister Peeters." She turned to pull her jacket from the rack.

"Wild horses couldn't drag me away. As long as you promise to call me Dooley and not all that Mister Peeters stuff."

"I was going to ask for a rain check, as I'm still on duty." She was flushed in the face for some reason.

Finally she looked him in the eye and he tried to look confident but not lecherous—just a friend.

"It's okay, Captain. I understand."

Might as well be a gentleman about it. There was no point in giving her a hard time. She looked like she'd had a long day, not that you would ever say that to a woman.

"Thank you Dooley." With a swish of her skirt, she was gone, leaving nothing but an aroma to remind that she had ever actually been there.

Saints preserve us.

The colonization of Mars had been announced in the popular media, but the end of the Mars program, or even the space program, had not been announced. Detailed studies using key-word searches of the sources recorded while inbound had revealed nothing.

The Captain had confirmed that there was no evidence of widespread nuclear war. And Dooley had volunteered to be on the landing party.

For richer and for poorer, for better and for worse, and in sickness and in health, until death did them part.

What the hell. She's worth it.

***

Malko was aware that his father wasn't sleeping well lately, although their colourful tents were fully furnished and stocked with the comforts of home. With all the activity of long days of campaigning, with briefing after briefing, planning sessions, map-exercises, reading reports, you would think his father would be tired enough to fall asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. It must be the stress.

His father presided over a meeting that had gone on for fully half of this fine summer morning. Malko regretted his childish insistence at attending. While wanting to be treated like a grown-up, and in some small ways his opinion had been asked, even valued for its unique and fresh perspective, the tedium of interminable briefings seemed like a harsh price to pay for one so young. Through the open door beckoned the sun-dappled farm fields where their temporary headquarters was located. He longed to be free of all this talk, as men's voices rose loudly in anger.

Some of the arguments focused on the hunt for awards, glory, and honours, rather than any tactical or strategic gain. He sensed his father's impatience with the two officers vehemently debating as to which one of them would go where, and which was to do what. They looked upon it as an opportunity to perform, or perhaps merely to plunder, rather than advancing the campaign. Talmotek made notations on a pad, as he listened to the debate. It was as if each wanted to prevent the other from succeeding.

These very same officers would deny responsibility, if yesterday's operations were a failure. He had seen that very thing several days previously, with these same two men. Finally they petered out and his father made some equitable ruling, and Malko noted the careful division of duties, risks, and potential glory.

One of their spies was reporting that a hundred thousand Kulutawas were at the Kitchi-lao border, demanding admission, alms, and the protection of the Emperor. Refugees by the tens of thousands were bunching up at a number of Imperial customs points, as well as at the Kirtele border, all of which were river-crossings. The Kitchi-lao's own armies could not use those roads for some time.

The northernmost region of the Kulutawa homeland was full of refugees. Their plan was backfiring to a certain extent, although his father and the other generals weren't worried about it. It was just that they had anticipated the free movement of the Kulutawas. The Kirtele were turning out to be a stubborn people, although the Kitchi-lao had opened their borders and were providing the Kulutawas with relief. They were also attempting to disperse them, to re-settle them in small colonies scattered around the Empire, but the Kulutawas were a nomadic herding people not well suited to subsistence farming. Much of the Empire was mountainous, or settled.

Also according to their spy, 'aerostats,' a kind of flying machine, were stalking the Great Army's movements from a distance, sending signals with their heliographs. Yet there were no sizable Imperial forces in the vicinity. Most curious, but without further information, the statement was almost useless. Their own scouts hadn't sighted anything like this, but they tended to stay within accessible distance of the Army, not being equipped with carrier-pigeons. The spy reported that his supply of birds was limited and that he hadn't made rendezvous with his expected contact. After several attempts, his contact was assumed to be dead or captured. Malko, conscious that he was fidgeting, tried sitting on his hands for a while.

The spy also reported the presence of mounted warriors, white-skinned and tall, and said that these could only be units of the Kirtele National Militia. He would try to confirm this. The Nioshoa River would take them right to the Empire's back door, as the clogging of the roads with refugees had been anticipated in the original planning. It was but a few miles ahead, according to their free-roaming cavalry. The whole purpose of the galleys, the long-canoes, all the rowing boats, was to ascend this river in the shortest possible time. The elephants had a big role to play when it came time to haul the ships upstream on lines, or even drag them overland if necessary. Once over the mountains, a naval force descending on the capital would be a total surprise to the Kitchi-Lao.

Malko wondered why his father was so strong and decisive, while other men seemed weak and argumentative. Did they go home and complain to their wives and children?

What did their sons think of them? Did they admire and look up to them? Did they seem ineffectual and vacuous in the eyes of their own children?

His unique point of view allowed him to see his father as no one else could, a loving father, a good husband, a strong leader with a depth of insight apparently no one else had. His father loved his dogs, Malko thought. He should tell that one to the Kulutawas. They hated his father with a fine passion, right about now. Who was to say that they were wrong? They were caught up in the forces of history, and his father couldn't allow them to stand in the way of the final showdown with the Kitchi-lao. The continent wasn't big enough for two Empires. His father often said that, even with a smile sometimes. That was how he thought of his father, laughing and joking, an affectionate man compared to some fathers. Some of his friends absolutely hated their fathers. In some sense he was a very lucky young man.

" _And I want one for my son."_ He had an engaging grin that they had all come to know and love so well.

An empire for his son...

Well, if he was to govern it someday, he had best pay attention and learn something. His father had a saying, or rather many sayings.

" _The greatest glory of a sovereign lies in the health and happiness of the people."_

It was his chance to see that policy applied.

His father leaned in close as yet another officer began to read a report.

"Don't worry, it's almost over." He patted his son on the forearm.

Malko noted the curly black hairs of his father's hand and all up the wrist until it disappeared into the short, forearm-length sleeve of his father's embroidered tunic.

"What's for lunch?" His father just grinned at his whisper, and then went back to paying attention to the report.

His father was like a bear, with hair on his back, his shoulders, and even sticking up around his neck like a ruff. Malko wondered at his own pale and limpid arm-hairs, the seventeen hairs on his chest, pale and fine as compared to his father's. At least they were darker and longer now.

Would he ever be as hairy as his father?

Would he ever be as strong, and brave, and as wise?

Only time would tell, but he really didn't think so. No, while Malko could see the theory of what his father had attempted, and hoped to achieve, he would never be as driven as his father. On that there could be no question.

That dominance over other men was a thing best left to those who truly needed it, or who couldn't do without it. At some point, you're strong enough for your own safety, and conflict was mostly about status, he realized. All the arguments were about status. Every man in this room was already rich, and had rank or nobility, or some high office. Were they all just afraid to turn their backs on one another, he asked himself with a shock? What they were actually fighting about remained a mystery to Malko.

It was with a sudden pang of homesickness that he thought of his mother and sisters.

Malko studied his forearm, as the talk buzzed on and on around him, only a half-mind listening. Bending his arm at right angles at the elbow, he flexed his forearm and studied the shape of the muscles under the skin. Was he getting bigger? Everyone said he would.

He had grown an amazing amount in the last year, shooting up like a bad weed, or so they said. He remained as thin as a rake. When would he be able to call himself a man? Without stammering and blushing, and knowing it wasn't true?

The room had gone silent.

"A tremendous allegory!" His father's face lit up in admiration.

"What is?" Malko had forgotten where he was for a moment.

"It is a message from the Kirtele National Council." A fellow Malko knew to be involved in the diplomatic and consular relations service answered the question.

"But what?"

The box, wide and flat, and open on the table in front of them father held some curious objects, revealed on a bed of fine white fabric.

"A mouse, a bird, a frog and five arrows." Talmotek loved it. "I'd like to meet the men who sent that."

The Consul sighed deeply.

"You will, my Lord, you will." His eyes met Malko's in a curious look that disturbed him, without really knowing why.

Talmotek brought the briefing to a close.

"I have a few things I would like you to take to Bonglishko." His father stood and addressed the assembled officers of the army and naval forces. "We will continue with the plan as written, and fortify this place. I anticipate a three to seven day stay, and then we will move on upriver again."

With a murmur of voices in the background, he and his father left the tent for the clean sunshine and fresh air of the outdoors. All around the ring of axes on timber and the joyous sound of men with shovels shouting at each other over the hubbub attested to the fact that the Pentapolis was here to stay.

***

Bonglishko had a certain amount of time to reflect in spite of every other distraction, as he moved through rounds of mere ceremonial duties. He had new sympathy for Talmotek. The man's mind must be a phenomenal thing. Other leaders must confront this issue. Bonglishko had a set speech he gave on short notice, to anyone from a fleet admiral in need of a pep talk, or a local service club, or to the graduating class from one of their local Institutes of Education. He could half-listen, and think about other matters in a kind of waking dream. The siege of Buca's citadel involved water-borne operations of a kind not before attempted by the Pentapolis.

A quote from the most recent letter from the commander of that operation went around in his head.

"The reduction of the city and fortress appears to be hopeless unless a double attack can be made from the harbour and the land..."

Wasn't this exactly what the idiot had planned to do right from the very first page of his written proposal? He was chosen for the boldness of his plan. Had he never had any intention, any inkling, that he might actually have to carry it out? A chain across the harbour mouth was stoutly defended by a dozen galleys and sloops. It was in the man's original intelligence papers, why was he bringing it up now? Did he just arrive at the place, and then open his eyes for the very first time? For the first time Bonglishko felt a kind of hopelessness. How stupid was the admiral? Was he just incompetent? Was this treachery or betrayal? Was he attempting to double cross the Pentapolis? While you were busy writing a report, why not mention what steps you had actually taken towards reducing the citadel? That's why they had communications in the first place.

There was no mention of any movements. The whole pace of operations was lackadaisical.

Now Kvetchen had landed with a great body of cavalry, if reports were to be believed, and he was raiding up and down the coast for hundreds of kyles. The Emperor's brother was the only truly _military_ member of the family, and he was _here._ What Bonglishko had to confront him with were large bodies of partly trained infantry and a few professional support units, who were specialists in field weapons, the 'wild asses,' which threw large stones and were so named due to their bucking motion when discharged. He had that and the _big_ catapults, and of some large crossbows on wagons.

He had animal handlers, training units, and some really good musicians. All of this would be very handy against cavalry. The band could play as they charged the enemy. The special weapons would be useful but not decisive against the enemy's highly mobile cavalry units. As soon as the weapon found the range, they would inevitably move on.

Kvetchen had no infantry. None! This was disturbing, for no one had foreseen it.

According to reports, which seemed credible, a strong reconnaissance-in-force had been made along the high road to the capital. Bonglishko was convinced this was a feint meant to keep him bottled up.

While the force of Kvetchen's army was estimated variously, and it was no doubt considerable, he couldn't possibly be equipped or supplied for a long campaign overland, with a major siege waiting at the end of it. He would be surprised if it amounted to more than five or ten thousand men, and arguably short of horses from the outset. Bonglishko had doubled the guard, and ordered certain points strengthened, but without walls, the city was essentially open. Windows on the outside of the city's perimeter were bricked up. All the alleys and most of the side streets were barricaded with bales, casks and large stones. The presence of so many masons in the city for the pyramid-building project was fortunate. The labour had been expensive. To hold back payment would have risked civil disobedience, possibly even rioting. It was known to happen.

Baulks of timber left over from the ship-building program and some wagons held in reserve for the army had been used to build low palisades across main streets, with heavy gates so as not to disrupt the traffic of the city too much.

These were overlooked by tall, skeletal watch-towers. Other than that, the city was indefensible to any serious _infantry_ attack, or a prolonged siege by a superior force.

Kvetchen would approach from the east, and Bonglishko was counting on eighty thousand infantry and two hundred elephants to deter any attack. In _defense,_ the engines were useful. Yet it was a humbling experience not to know what to do, not for certain _._ All he could do was to wait and see. The enemy had the initiative. His problems were starkly underlined by the fact that communications were suddenly breaking down, which had not been entirely unexpected. The actual scope of the problem once it arose had definitely been unforeseen. The effect was to put him on his own. The commander of the forces in Nollinsay had a similar problem. They were cut off too. If only he could speak to Talmotek. He would know what to do. In the meantime, they kept sending out birds.

***

Knaius, Nodrakis and King Wendeslacht thrashed it all out and came to an agreement. Knaius, in the interest of his young friend's happiness and especially his safety, had agreed rather reluctantly to go along in the avuncular role of adviser, and representative of the Empire. Knauis was expendable, and a pretty good actor as well.

Now that his main task was accomplished, the treaty with Mittainagor, he could hardly refuse. Privately Nodrakis hoped to head for Kitchi-lao as soon as possible, but Knaius had his doubts about that actually happening. In war, the plan goes out the window as soon as it is put into effect.

Nodrakis had fought long and hard for the duty of an embassy to the Kirtele National Council, in order to propose an alliance of mutual defense. At first the old King was against it, on the grounds that the Pentapolis' attack wasn't actually directed at Mittainagor, and they were no threat to the Pentapolis. A little objective examination of the facts put a different face upon it. To lather Mittainagor with alliances might do more to drag them into it.

Unfortunately, there was no guarantee that Mittainagor wasn't the target. If not now, then surely in a few years, if the Pentapolis was successful in dispatching the Helian dynasty of the Kitchi-lao Empire. Mittainagor was the only other modern, politically and militarily stable country on the continent. With its long tradition of hereditary nobility, surely the Pentapolis would see it as the only legitimate challenge in the political and economic sense. Mittainagor would represent a kind of moral challenge to the Pentapolis. The wealth of Mittainagor would make it an attractive prospect, compared to the surrounding peoples.

Nomadic tribes, hill peoples and the Lakes Tribes could simply be bribed, turned against one another or even just absorbed over time by limited military operations using small numbers of professional troops. Knaius found himself in the awkward position of pointing out the possibilities and pooh-poohing them at the same time. He argued both points from both sides, while the young Nodrakis nodded sagely.

When Nodrakis had the rather inspired suggestion that he should be accompanied by a large force of Mittaini troops, entering the territory of the Kirtele under flags of truce, and accompanied by the uncle of Emperor Helios the Second, the old fellow had seen the possibilities, and perhaps even his son in a new light. He would be bearing dispatches from the King himself. Knaius had provided the script, and Nodrakis did at least some of the talking.

"And a Prince is always better than a mere diplomat or ambassador." Knaius had done his best.

The old King agreed, in light of his own recent experience negotiating with Knauis. It _was_ different negotiating with a principal rather than a lackey.

"Their word is so much more convincing. They don't have to consult so much with their superiors." Knaius said this with a smile at the old King Wendeslacht.

It was the proper province of a Prince, rather than running off to gaze at stars. King Wendeslacht, as Knaius had foreseen, was more concerned that his son wasn't perceived as a coward or an idiot. A day later the pair found themselves riding down a road on a hot summer's morn, at the head of a column of troops that Kvetchen himself would have been proud to ride with. They had a thousand lancers, a thousand re-mounts, two hundred herd-boys, twenty wagons loaded with provisions, and quite a lot of gold to defray the expenses of their journey. They could make good time without half-trying, and even more so if they chose to abandon the wagons and use the re-mounts as packhorses.

The idea was to create a certain impression in the minds of the Kirtele.

Knaius suspected that Nodrakis must have briefed his old man on his own dream of Republic, and no doubt, the possibilities this engendered played a role in the King's thoughts. The Mittaini livery of dark green and gold, with cloaks of bottle green, lined in black silk, and the highly-polished knee-length boots, the sound of eight thousand thudding hooves, the buzz of a cicada in the trees nearby, all made an impression he would no doubt remember with fond recollection in his old age. He smiled at the younger man.

"What?" Nodrakis was puzzled at the long silence and the odd grin on Knaius' face.

"It's a thing to behold." A heat haze hung over the road ahead of them.

"What is?" It was a nice warm day, with the fresh air and sunshine such a relief after the long argument with his father and the short boat trip across the Daytwaw River.

"This, all of this. Gods! I wish I was your age again. I'd kick this nasty Talmotek's ass."

Nodrakis' eyebrows rose at this unaccustomed crudeness on the part of Knaius, a man not known for lack of subtlety in communication. Was he letting his hair down, now that they were out on the open road? Were they to go completely native?

Nodrakis twisted around in his saddle, taking in the long line of troopers coming over the crest of the hill behind, snaking along the curves of the road, and looking very prideful, serene in the knowledge that their sovereign's son led them, into a strange and foreign land. To them, it was an adventure. They had signed up for this.

"Why do these men follow me?" He was startled at the thought.

"That, is a very good question." Knaius, with a glint of maddening humour in his intelligent blue eyes, looked him over carefully. "I suggest you think on that long and well."

Nodrakis grinned and shook his head.

"It really is the question of the ages, isn't it?"

"They follow you because they love you, Prince Nodrakis." Knaius had this strange gleam in his eye. "I cannot begin to describe what pleasure that gives me, nor can I tell you what memories it brings back. You don't even know any of their names, do you?"

"I blush to think on it, but no, I don't. I know the Captain."

Knaius nodded.

"And that's about it." He grinned. "This would probably be a good time to learn to listen to your men."

"Well, they really haven't said anything yet."

"They will, my young friend, they will."

Nodrakis was sure he was right, and wondered what it would be, and when.

"These men are prepared to die for you, my Prince, and that is one hell of a revelation, sometimes."

He glanced behind. The soldiers looked so proud. Some of them seemed awfully young.

There really wasn't much he could say to that, could he? He went cold inside. What a horrible responsibility, and one that he had always been unwilling to confront. This was what it meant to be the son of a King.

"What makes me fit, or worthy of this?" Nodrakis sounded very shaky. "Nothing!"

"Now you're catching on." It might be time to change the subject. "It can be quite a humbling experience, when you realize that."

Nodrakis took another long look over his shoulder, and with a shudder in his guts, wondered afresh.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Every time they turned around...

Every time they turned around, Raffin felt the cold thrill of fear coursing through his midriff. Were they discussing him? Brother Raffin had been given no choice but to tell any lie to be attached to this group, knowing full well that those lies would catch him out sooner or later. It was scary the way they latched onto him.

Going to the audience hall, in order to find the King and broach the subject, it had gone distinctly not as planned. Finding the door and opening it, not sure if it was normal practice to close it during meetings—it was the first time he'd been to that room since the night he arrived—and then turning to find King Wendeslacht, his son Nodrakis and Knaius the Emperor's uncle in the room gazing at him in faint astonishment was bad enough.

He hadn't had a chance to open his mouth when Nodrakis moved towards him with outstretched arm.

"Brother Raffin! Why, it's the very fellow." Prince Nodrakis grabbed him by the arm.

"I'm sorry, lost again." Like a fool, he said the first thing that came into his head.

That was the trouble with a guilty conscience, he was always conscious of weaving a web, no matter how fine and delicate or how strong and coarse. It would always be full of holes.

As things stood, he kept to himself, made no statements and told no lies that he didn't have to. He prayed they would forget about him. While there was some relief in the fact that he didn't have to fake an interest in astronomy, now he was to interpret Kirtele customs and protocols to the two noble personages. He agreed once he had the gist of what they were up to. Mission accomplished. How in the hell had that happened?

As they rode along, Prince Nodrakis raised a hand vertically, turned around and looked at the column, then pointed through a gateway and into an open green pasture surrounded by woodlands.

The Prince and Knaius reined up to one side as the column of troopers rode smartly into the gate in parade formation. The captain gave the Princes, if that term was appropriate to Knaius, a quick salute as he went past. Raffin was about ten or twelve back in the line of horsemen, or as far as he could drop back in the column and still make it look natural. It was one more element that required deep analysis and judgment, when an innocent man wouldn't give a damn how it looked. Raffin figured that he would soon get tired of the spy game. He wasn't made for all the duplicity and second-guessing, where nothing and no one was what they or it seemed to be, including himself.

Knaius was beckoning. Damnation. He had little choice but to be gracious and to continue pleasing these men. He hated to play the fool all the time.

"I'm sorry my lords, it's just that after a lifetime of walking, and then the saddle-sores, and then getting back on the thing again..."

He trailed off as if it was all self-evident. Nodrakis looked on and Knaius smiled his knowing little grin.

For the first time ever, Raffin regretted his oath of non-violence, wondering what it would be like to smash the man in the mouth with one good backhand. Was that how they did it? They smiled their supercilious smile, and the rabble jumped in line to obey?

Was that the key to royalty? Or even authority?

Act superior and you probably are superior, in the minds of the unsophisticated. The power of positive thinking, he thought with a kind of contempt, not so much for the powerful as for the powerless. That was a new thing for Raffin. What had happened to him in such a very short time? This cynicism was unbecoming. If you made Raffin uncomfortable, a little insecure, he got all cranky and irritable? He had thought better of himself.

He must minister to them...their spiritual needs.

Raffin envied the troopers their boots, although for the sake of propriety he had donned a pair of knitted hose provided by a thoughtful Mackel. Their white colour made him feel girlish and out of place. The jacket was heavy enough for the morning chill, yet once the sun came up in the sky, the temperature shot up alarmingly.

His feet were cold and wet in the sandals, and his balls were cold and draughty below the jacket, and his backside hurt with renewed fury. A few days of healing at the Mittaini court was just enough to make the contrast between comfort in a softly padded chair and the pain of a hard leather and wooden saddle a strong one indeed.

Raffin was miserable, ever since being promoted. His sword, another unforeseen complication, kept poking him in the ribs with its cold, hard butt. Every little thing bothered him today...everything.

The black box with buttons, and a short, rubbery little rod sticking out of the top, and the holes where sounds came out, the one that resided in an inner pocket of his shirt was small comfort in a time and place like this. It required complete privacy before it was safe to use. As to whether he could make it work properly, that remained to be seen. He had everything written down on a slip of paper. The trouble was he kept losing it in one obscure secret pocket or another.

In their several tests, all there was time for, Raffin contacted Mackel successfully about half the time. When it didn't work, he had absolutely no idea what he had done, or what went wrong.

Every little thing seemed to bother him inordinately. There were times when his hand curled in and around as if in search of his trusty walking stick. Faithful friend for all these years, it was leaning up against the wall, behind the door, back in his cell. It was the only home he'd had for as long as he could remember. A stick was useless on a horse.

Thank the gods he was used to sleeping outdoors on the ground.

***

Kvetchen's attack was brilliantly conceived, and executed. For three days, he perched just on the horizon, beyond the reasonable marching distance of the infantry in their fortified camp. If Bonglishko attacked by day, water alone would be a problem, and controlling large bodies of troops at night, almost impossible without noise, while water would still be a problem. His soldiers inside the city were forced into march after counter-march, taking in all points of the circumference of the city. Kvetchen's light probing attacks seemed almost random, or even perfunctory. It kept everyone awake at night. No doubt that was the purpose.

The generals were forced to dispatch troops all over the city's perimeter to keep watch and await attacks that never came. Every man, woman and child in town was exhausted with the suspense and terror of Kvetchen's arms hanging over their heads.

Supplies were cut off, for Kvetchen's troops held major crossroads at all points of the compass. Bonglishko wasn't worried about provisions. The city's granaries were well-provided.

Today seemed no different at first. At dawn, approximately eight thousand horsemen drew elements of the Tzclinacoque infantry to the south walls of the largest army camp, which straddled the great eastern road leading to the seaport of Vena Crocii.

Once the infantry took up their defensive positions along the wall facing into the hot sun of early morning, about another two thousand cavalry rode off and began circling around the northern side of the city, if the tell-tale dust clouds off in that direction were real and not a ruse of war. Psychologically it seemed ripe, in Bonglishko's mind, for Kvetchen could only sit out there so long in the hot sun himself.

That was when the main body, estimated at nine or ten thousand troops, again trailing huge dust tails, attempted to ride around the army's vast and sprawling camp and enter Tzclinacoque City by its large eastern gate. This thoroughfare was a hundred paces wide, although barricaded and stoutly defended by archers.

It was with some shock when Bonglishko, seated atop a smaller pyramid, chosen for its proximity to the eastern roadstead, heard that large detachments of the Kitchi-lao had been re-armed with small, light, but very potent crossbows. They were combined with squadrons of lancers, as he saw through his field glass. They weren't attempting to overcome the defense, so much as to cause casualties. He watched the latest flurry of horsemen subside and ride back out of range. The earthen and stone battlements of the army fort were lined with infantry, looking on in impotence. The horsemen simply rode over or even through the hovels that lined the road between the garrison in their hasty citadel and the city. He saw now that he should have burned the shanty towns that ringed the city and straggled out along every roadstead. The soldiers in the camp could do naught but look on in frustrated rage, and discharge futile missile weapons at the few horsemen who were foolish enough to venture into range. The brush was dry and caught fire easily, lending palls of black smoke to the pall of dust. Even so, his strategy was not entirely misguided. The Kitchi-lao would not seriously attempt the city with a strong garrison, still intact, right outside the front gate.

Perhaps their turn would be next, but he had ordered that all troops remain in defensive postures. Normally, a triple line of pike-men, backed up by archers and slingers, was enough to deter a charge by cavalry. The difficulty that Kvetchen had presented, was in finding a target for his own infantry. Pike-men were useless in a charge, he could see that easily enough.

Also, pike-men were very exposed to a sudden concentration of archers. Pikes, once embedded in the bodies of enemy troops or their mounts, were rendered useless. Even if it was merely dropped, or wrenched away by the shock of the charge, it was still useless and it left the infantry very vulnerable in the meantime.

While the pike-men had their individual short swords for defense, the combined weight of all their personal weapons meant that inevitably the swords were small.

This was especially true as compared to the Kitchi-lao cavalry's curved saber, quite heavy and rather long. It was meant to fight from atop a horse. But they had a horse to help carry the weight. Elephants couldn't meet enemy cavalry. They were meant to attack enemy infantry lines and scatter their formations. He now saw them as over-rated as weapons of war, although their archers could do real damage under certain favourable circumstances.

Tzclinacoque chariots were not evenly matched against the Kitchi-lao mounted knights. They could only be deployed in small numbers, and they would be quickly outmaneuvered by the enemy cavalry, and then overwhelmed by superior numbers of bolts and quarrels. Kvetchen had taught him a lot in a very short time. Kvetchen had presented Bonglishko with a perfect stalemate. It was quite a message, one easily understood by the wily eminence behind _The Chair._

A message was thrust into his hand, and a servant pulled him to look around to the southwest at the city centre. He saw with shock that smoke was rising from a neighbourhood right in the centre of town. Brilliant!

"Men must have been introduced into the town early, before we even knew Kvetchen was there!"

People were shouting hoarsely behind him. According to the report, key posts had been attacked by large, well-armed bands of men who were not in any discernable uniform. They had attacked the treasury, and scattered coins all through the city on their escape to the north. _The north!_

"To the north?"

"That column must be to cover their withdrawal." A general spat in disgust. "It's already too late!"

The man's face was white with shame and shock.

"The fire is at the pigeon lofts!" Bonglishko gasped as he read the words.

He crumpled up the paper, and let the wadded-up ball fall to the ground.

"Yes, Kvetchen is sending us a message, all right."

Sprinkling gold and silver coins amongst the populace as they went, and ultimately, that money was meant to pay the troops...and the labourers. Slaves still required feeding.

"Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant."

Never mind how a body of men, possibly native traitors, might have eluded detection. It seemed that Kvetchen would leave when he was ready. Bonglishko still doubted that taking the city was a serious option to the Kitchi-lao.

"All right, gentlemen, the show's over for the day."

On the horizon, the southern body of enemy cavalry was now withdrawing back in the direction of Kvetchen's encampment.

"Maybe we should try to attack them." This was suggested by a senior general in some desperation.

"No. Remain on the defensive." Bonglishko had no other orders. "You're not going to anger me that easily, Kvetchen. Although I do admire your persistence."

He said it loud enough so that others could hear and repeat the remarks later. More than anything, he must try to project confidence. He could almost see that line being written in a history book.

***

Nedos and Tsernalik were reading a letter from the Prince Nodrakis. The prince's reply had come back within a week of theirs being dispatched. It sounded like some, if not all of his problems were resolved, although Tsernalik was concerned to hear that a treaty of mutual defense had been signed between Kitchi-lao and Mittainagor. They had to accept the inevitability of that. He was also concerned to learn that Nodrakis had taken on diplomatic duties for the King.

The thought of his young friend being entrusted with such a project caused Tsernalik some pride. Nodrakis had arrived as a callow youth, away from home for the very first time. He had watched him grow and develop into a more mature young man with some confidence in his own abilities. This was one of the joys of teaching, he reflected a bit morosely. He missed Nodrakis sometimes, and that was interesting, as he had adult sons and daughters of his own. But they were taught by other teachers, and they weren't particularly interested in their father's passion for the heavens.

"...and now we come to the interesting part." Nedos paused. "This is where it gets good..."

Tsernalik nodded at him to go on, as his eyes were tired and he was letting the young man do more and more things for him lately.

"One of the things you said, was to learn to contradict myself, you said to challenge all of my assumptions, and you advised your students to accept nothing at face value."

"I do say that, don't I? Well, it's good to know he was listening."

Nedos grinned at the response.

"He says the fact that this object can change its arc and velocity, would seem to imply that it can defy the known or theorized physical laws of the universe, laws that control every other thing. If it is a god, so be it. But, if it is not a god, what is it? Should we consider the possibility that it could be controlled in some way, perhaps by a god, and perhaps not? If it is a god, then surely that would be a wonderful thing."

Nedos needed to take a breath once in a while, and the scholar Tsernalik needed to digest information a little piece at a time, nodding as required.

"He goes on to say, perhaps its destination is the Morning Sentinel, or the Solar Companion, or the Red Wanderer, or even the Moon, so near and yet so far. What if it comes this way, to visit us upon this green Earth? I have many questions for this god.

I'm sure you must as well, although some of mine border on blasphemy..."

"He's going to soil himself when he reads our next letter." Nedos smiled in anticipation.

They were watching through their largest telescope when the thing, the _object,_ as Professor Tsernalik insisted upon calling it, transited across the face of The Red Wanderer. The pair of them had gotten a good, if distant, look at the object proper for the very first time, noting a glint of light reflection, areas of darkness, and a thin white glow surrounding it when it passed in front of Red Wanderer.

Nedos had always thought Wanderer to be a star, although the Professor believed it to be a _body,_ much like the one they inhabited. The Prince was entirely correct. This was blasphemy, thought Nedos. It was strange, but as an eyewitness, he already doubted his own senses—to see what clearly looked like a shadow on the surface of The Red Wanderer, for example, how his heart had pounded when he realized what it was, what it must be or had to be. It could only be interpreted one way. Once you put aside your beliefs and analyzed it logically, and objectively, it only had one interpretation, and everything else was nonsense. It was an _object._

Nedos put his mind to the task of interpreting the old scholar's thoughts into meaningful words that matched his own recollection. The object was long and thin, but that didn't prove that it was a cylinder or a flat bar. He must be careful not to over-interpret his own and the professor's observations.

There was no way of knowing how long it would take for the letter to catch up to Nodrakis, who was on the road, heading for Kirtele-land.

"What if it's coming here?"

The professor found himself at a loss to answer that one. That was one of the joys of working with young people. You never knew what they might come up with, and you learned just as much from them as they learned from you. Young Nedos had him stumped, and it was such a simple question.

It was quite the stunning revelation when Tsernalik realized that he had never once even given it a thought.

"Then, even I might soil myself." Nedos broke up in when he heard it.

***

Yllinkotep shuddered involuntarily when a hard hand gripped him tightly by the collar. With a start, he thought of bolting for it, but in a lightning flash of insight he knew his legs, trembling in fright at this exact moment, wouldn't carry his aging body far enough or fast enough to elude pursuit. With a shock, he saw another warrior reach down to disconnect the traces linking the pair of mules, resplendent in their ribbons, from the whiffletree. He had nothing to say. He gulped air, as the tall, bronzed warriors hustled him along and away from his beloved wagon. It was the only home he had known for years. His stomach rolled over and over inside. Thankfully, he had gotten rid of all the pigeons and the cages were hidden in a rented barn thirty pasangs away.

"What...what's this all about?" His voice was high and cracked in his own ears, heart pounding as he contemplated his guilt.

And his possible fate—

"We've had our eye on you for some time, Boyo." The soldiers weren't taking no for an answer.

The whole world had taken on an air of unreality, the dryness in his throat making it hard to swallow. There was nausea in his belly, and his head was beginning to spin. He lurched and stumbled to the side of the road, almost paradoxically breaking the man's grip as he did so. Yet his spasms of vomiting prevented any hope of escape into the underbrush, as wracking heave after wracking heave emptied his innards onto the grassy verge.

"It takes them like that, sometimes." The squad patiently waited for their leader to finish some paperwork on a slate board handed to him by a subordinate.

"All right fellows, get him up out of there." Yllinkotep shook as a hand got a hold of his arm up by the shoulder again.

He struggled to get air into his lungs. His head was spinning.

"One minute. Just one minute...please, sirs..."

"We'll carry you if we have to." The voice was right up beside his ear, as Yllinkotep struggled to his feet, almost grateful for the hard support in his armpit.

At least they weren't kicking and beating him, he thought with some dread, but that could come sooner rather than later. He simply didn't know.

"My friends, my family, my employers, will pay a handsome ransom." The soldiers were Kirtele by the look of them.

"Did you hear that? The man's a poet." Someone giggled girlishly, and then the whole crew laughed.

It sounded cruel in Yllinkotep's ears, and his bowels felt loose and ready to let go.

"I'll ransom my mules. I have some silver, and I can get more." The spy was a much-chastened and extremely frightened man.

The trail led up and around a small rise, and then they came upon a huddle of horsemen, mostly dismounted. There were a few wagons, perhaps six or seven. They pushed and pulled him to a halt, spinning him to the right, and made him stand there for a moment. One of them took a set of keys from his fringed waist pouch, as four big dark horses patiently waited in the harness, tails flicking flies off.

This wagon had a pitched wooden-shingled roof to ward off the rain, but the sides were entirely open, consisting of iron gratings, securely blacksmith-riveted together. There was a sense of relief, upon seeing the prison-wagon. It was some indication that he wouldn't be killed right away. They lifted him almost bodily, a pair of strong men, one on each side of him, lifted by the armpits, his legs of their own accord scrabbling to find the step at the back end.

Oh, ye Gods, help me now...his heart was almost leaping out of his chest...

Tears sprang to his eyes as his spirit rebelled at this, but there was nothing to say and nothing to be done. The key was to suffer in silence. Offer no resistance.

"In you go, lad, and trouble earns a hard blow. Dinner's in about an hour. Use the bucket if you have to go." The guard had a bored, disinterested manner.

He scuttled in on his knees, then Yllinkotep settled down between a pair of other men to await his fate, as far away from the stinking, be-fouled bucket as he could get. He remembered his instructions.

" _Make no statements you don't have to."_

"See, I'm a poet and I'm not even aware of it." The guard had a soldier standing right there in case there was any resistance on the part of their newest catch.

"Haw, haw, fewkin' haw." The trooper stood looking up at the sky to see if the rain would hold off for a while.

It was their post, and a boring one. The rest of the troops drifted away, a smattering of conversation hanging in the wind.

"Sir? Sirs?" Yllinkotep fell into the part of an innocent but badly-frightened victim easily enough.

It wasn't a difficult act.

"Yes?"

"What about my mules?"

"Relax, fellow, they'll be boarded until after your hearing." The fellow obviously didn't care much either way. "Them's right pretty animals."

It wasn't his job to do the judging, thank the good lords in the sky, and their heavenly partners for that.

"So, what are you in for?" A gravelly voice came from a surprisingly small, curly-haired man beside him.

The overall impression was of olive-dark skin, and roils and tufts of long, raven-black hairs on exposed forearms and the backs of his hands, with a v-shaped clump extending out of the top of his laced leather jerkin. A Kirtele.

"They haven't told me yet." There were two men in there.

The man on his right was big, and blue-black. From the characteristic stitching of his homespun cotton trews, calf-length to leave lower legs bare, he was probably an eastern Kulatawa. The westerners wouldn't have had the white cotton, highly-bleached shirt with the elbow-length sleeves. They were more inclined to buckskin.

"Probably just a suspicious-person warrant," said Yllinkotep. "I recall hearing something about those."

The other men settled back in their corners, thinking up new conversational gambits. It looked like being a long day.

"They have to prove some kind of case against you." The smaller of the two men looked hopefully at Yllinkotep. "They can't punish you otherwise. Mostly, they're rounding up anyone who can't account for himself, or better yet, be accounted for by someone else...you know?"

Yllinkotep didn't, but decided to let them talk, and he wondered just exactly what _did_ they have against him? With a little luck, he might be able to talk his way out of there. There was a comradely silence in the cage as they digested all this.

"They think Tiny here is a deserter, but they can't find anyone to swear for, or against him. And they're accusing me of theft, but I can explain that—" He swallowed.

Yllinkotep nodded in silence. The situation might not be that bad after all. He wondered insanely if it was better to be locked up in a cage, where it was nice and safe, in a battle zone. Nothing beats freedom of action, he decided. Nothing beats _freedom,_ he realized, with a shock of recognition at the irony.

The Kirtele were, on some theoretical level, fighting for what they perceived to be their freedom. The Pentapolis proposed to take that precious freedom away. Yllinkotep was on the wrong side, impersonal and objective though he was. Now the Kirtele had him locked up in a cage.

It served him right, really. More power to them. His guts quaked inside to think on the consequences.

***

Uttaris presided over the traditional battlefield sacrifices. There was a momentary swelling of pride as he contemplated the soaring vault of the temporary plank temple.

Fully fifty paces on a side, the octagonal building was pre-fabricated. It was carried in sections on wagons and could be erected in half a day with enough engineers. The interior was lit from above by a ring of clerestory windows, coloured in the hues of the rainbow from their composition of stained glass, simple stories told in pictures of old revelations, of angels, saints, sinners and prophets.

Uttaris believed that people, and soldiers are nothing if not people, respected the prudent humanity of their prince. Uttaris was cautious of his own fame. Religion protected the public peace and the rights of mankind, hence the careful attention to the spiritual needs of his troops. Among many honours extended by a grateful and ever-attentive senate was the office of Supreme Priest. The Temple of Peace was his chief bailiwick.

A thin column of men came in the right-hand door behind him, circling around the octagonal chamber and filing out again in a familiar and reverent silence. Men before a battle always went through these moments of deep, personal introspection, these private thoughts. He was having a few of his own as he conducted the sacrifice. The line shuffled along at its own pace. Each man sprinkled a little incense or made a libation of the thick, dewy nectar that was a portion of the men's wine ration onto the altar as they went by.

That morning they were issued white wine, in keeping with the occasion, a ritual of purification by blood. Normally it had to be mixed in with their water to protect the troops from the flux. White and red were traditional colours for a ceremony of purification.

The white-robed acolytes were busy with their charges, a small flock of fleecy sheep, the ewes and the lambs together as taken from the field. One of them came forward, with a lamb in his arms, and he gently laid it on the altar, as the others struggled with its mother. This was the most powerful of all sacrifices, a mother and a daughter together. The temple was erected in the midst of a battlefield, still smoking with the devastation of several villages and charred, with the grass in blackened circles where nothing moved. Outside the sun was setting, the dim glow of the interior was much-subdued since the ritual had begun. Novices moved about, lighting the numerous votive candles on side altars.

The other, more reluctant victim was dragged to the foot of the altar, but the heart abhorred the religious act of the hand. The men's spirits were hardened and exasperated by the sights and smells of the aftermath of a visit of the Great Army of the Pentapolis. Uttaris was like a philosopher, who might smile at religion, and a judge, who saw its usefulness in civil society. He was objective about it. If the men liked it, that was good enough for him. Right from his eighteenth birthday, when he achieved the age of majority, he had assumed, according to custom, the role of High Priest. It was a most majestic and honourable title of Imperial greatness, but he also saw it as a sacred and important office, the duties of which he was sworn to uphold with honour and sincerity. He tried to do it well. He paid attention and kept a solemnity about himself, and when he saw too much levity exhibited by other priests during the services, they might be gently but firmly disciplined. It was a matter of pride, in that he rarely had to punish a man twice.

The expense of religious worship took up a large portion of the state's revenues. It required a constant supply of the scarcest and most beautiful birds, transported from distant climes, to bleed on the altars of the Empire. A hundred heifers were sometimes sacrificed upon the same day. There was a joke going around the capital that if by some fortuitous chance Uttaris should return victorious from the field, the breed of small, dark brown and white-bibbed cattle must go up in price three-fold.

Softly in the background, one of the chantry priests bespoke a story from a holy book. Each soldier could only hear so much of the story as they partook of the ceremony, but they knew much of the lore by heart, and could seek within their hearts and their memories for the wisdom of old.

Uncharacteristically, he found himself sickened by all of this, as the lamb looked up at him with trusting eyes and bleated for its mother. This in spite of the fact that sheep were food anyway, even at the best of times, and the pair of animals would provide a feast for the Goddess of Peace's joyous votaries later this evening. He gripped the thing by the throat, surprisingly cruelly, angry for one brief moment, and then he passed the tip of the knife into its neck. He quickly found the carotid artery, and the thing died quietly in his arms, never quite losing the look of trust on its face. Its blood spilled onto the stone top of the altar, where its life-force would go to feed the goddess.

He listened intently, heightening the drama of the moment, as the body went limp in his hands.

The soldiers filed past, the hundreds of feet, clad in their sandals, and boots heavy with nails, making a curiously attenuated, scraping, music-like background sound of their own. He couldn't look at the dam as he cut her throat, and the younger priests had to hold her firmly...warm blood splashed on his toes.

One of the novices cautiously approached on bended knees.

"We have only a few more sheep, Majesty, and then a dozen egrets, and several swans, and then quite a few white rabbits." He reported in a sibilant whisper, drawing some attention from the troops.

"Thank you." The young fellow bowed.

As the acolyte backed away obsequiously, his arm was getting tired, and the right wrist beginning to bother him from the necessity of twisting the knife. It was someone else's turn. The younger novitiates could make up the numbers with creatures of lesser importance during the long hours of the night at the Altar of Glory.

Within days, they would make contact with the main body of the Pentapolis troops, with all of their engines of war, massed infantry columns, and hundreds of elephants.

The men deserved what comfort they could take from all of this.

He hoped it was worth it, as he prayed to the Goddess for victory, and for peace.

***

Helios sat upon the throne, lost in thought, all but oblivious to the quiet mutterings and dull foot-falls of the eunuchs as they pulled the linen dust covers from the multi-fold panels of his free-standing map display.

Sometimes the place was empty and lifeless, with everyone away, and Helios the only one without a job to do. It was so quiet, in the still midnight hours. The wife and the hangers-on had gone to bed. The dull gleam of the oil on the eunuchs' torsos stood out in staid contrast to the matte finishes of the realistic hand-coloured maps, in all their intricate detail. Blue for rivers and lakes, brown and greys for the mountains, a pallid yellow for the grasslands, and green for the ocean of forest that rolled off to the northwest, in wave after wave of hill and dale. Garbed in their silk slippers, harem pants and silken vests, many thought the arrival of eunuchs foretold the decline of the Empire, but these men were devoted to his, and would cheerfully go to their death for him. The reason was very simple. They had been castrated by the enemy years before. That was another enemy, another war. The Helian Empire had ransomed them back for some quite hefty sums. It was a symbolic gesture.

Knaius was a wild card, with his notion of bringing in the Mittaini. He was about the same age as Kvetchen although he was his uncle. Helios the First was the eldest of eight children. Knaius was the youngest of his brothers, and a minor at the time of the succession. Helios the First was long dead, while his youngest brother Knaius was alive and kicking at about forty years of age. Kvetchen was thirty seven? No, thirty-eight. He was grateful that they had cheerfully accepted his position. They kept the peace amongst themselves. Knauis was the wild card...and he was bringing in the Mittaini and their troops. It had to be accepted at face value until events proved otherwise.

Helios the Second grimaced as he shifted slightly in his gilded and heavily padded chair. He held all the cards in his hand. With a picture of the overall strategic situation few could have guessed at, and with all the channels of communication available to him, the pot had been set to boil. Everything was coming to a head. Things were about to bubble over, yet the outcome, long planned-for, was unpredictable by the very nature of war.

There were always going to be unforeseen circumstances, the most frightening of which was the notion that the enemy might just be a wee bit smarter than you were.

The Tzclinacoque lines of communication had been cut, and Kvetchen's _chevauchee_ into the heart of the Pentapolis was a success, according to the heavily detailed reports sent back. The fact that Kvetchen had time to write them spoke volumes about his confidence. Nollinsay was invested by land and sea, and by all reports, it looked to be a long, drawn-out affair. The siege would be conducted with great skill and care, and the defenders would be thoroughly convinced of their intentions.

After a time, the defenders would get start to get hungry. The little luxury items that made life worth living would be among the first to go.

The Tzclinacoque forces on the islands sat in their newly won fortresses and citadels.

Unable to break out of their own defensive positions, due to the scattered but intact garrisons on the islands, they were lost to the Pentapolis and couldn't even safely evacuate at this point. The enemy fleet, whether by plan or by accident, had scattered to the winds. He wondered what they were making of the fact that the defensive granaries were mostly empty, and the armories barren, the few carts on hand, broken-down and unusable, the remaining animals spavined and sickly.

The troops bottled up in those castles would be unavailable to affect the outcome. The Tzclina's allies were wavering. The plains tribes were being placated by huge mounds of Imperial gifts, mostly luxury trade goods unheard of in those environs, and they had chosen to remain neutral in the face of Tzclina threats and blandishments to enter the war on the side of the Pentapolis.

Now it was all up to Uttaris, and Knaius. If only Knaius played his part as expected.

Uttaris would present Talmotek with the main body of the Kitchi-lao infantry, and a supporting force of cavalry would attempt to provoke him.

With luck, Knaius and the Prince Nodrakis might bring a large body of Mittaini cavalry into the field against the Pentapolis. Helios had some concerns about their effectiveness. He had never seen them in action. Psychologically it could be a bold and solid stroke. It was a matter of timing.

The forces at his disposal would never match the Tzclinacoque in terms of sheer numbers, and the high-technology weapons at hand would rarely be decisive, no matter what claims were made by the builders. Against such numbers as Talmotek had, they would need some luck to prevail on the day of battle. With disciplined forces, a defeat in battle might not be decisive. He only prayed his men were better than theirs. Helios sat in the silence, chewing on his lip, with the entire western hemisphere open to his gaze. His moves were made.

It was Talmotek's turn. Talmotek only had about three moves available now, and by any reckoning all three were serious blunders. The difficulty lay in anticipating exactly which blunder Talmotek would make, and reacting quickly enough with sufficient forces to inflict a major defeat and get a decisive outcome.

Talmotek could try to retreat down the river, only to meet Kvetchen head-on in the second phase of his plan. He could try to reach the Kitchi-lao capital in a furious overland march of at least two, possibly three weeks, leaving his men emaciated and exhausted at the end of it. Or, he could accept battle with the Kitchi-lao forces at hand, kept purposely dispersed and in small units, and who had relied on speed of march to avoid heavy engagements...so far.

That was Talmotek's best option, but it also carried the most risks. It could be decisive in a way the other options were unlikely to be.

The clink of a spoon and the rattle of a tray broke into his reverie. A servant handed him a cup, and he nodded thanks. Hopefully, all this would be over soon, and they could get back to some kind of a normal life.

Helios sighed deeply.

What fools men were! What fools. He prayed that Talmotek would halt and give battle soon.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Kjarl and the light cavalry had been skirmishing for days...

Kjarl and the light cavalry had been skirmishing for days with large, heavily armed fighting patrols of Tzclinacoque in mixed formations of infantry and cavalry. It took some time to evolve tactics to deal with this situation. Normally cavalry would roam unencumbered by the slower foot soldiers. Kjarl knew the basic facts. Never use cavalry against an unbroken infantry square. He wasn't in charge all the time, and other commanders such as Sheriff Ryngger took a while to catch on to the game.

Some people just don't listen. He repeatedly told the men silence was imperative.

If it feels like an ambush, smells like an ambush, and tastes like an ambush, why wait for an arrow in the guts to decide if it was an ambush?

Turning to Akim, alongside on his black charger, he spoke in a soft, sibilant hiss.

"Drop back and tell them to shut up."

Akim nodded in grim agreement and complied, for the risk of surprise was high. The plain of Carhayagouha was savannah-like grass land, mostly flat, and giving the impression of wide-openness. It varied from true prairie to a light, park-like hardwood forest, cut by deep, slow and meandering rivers. These were interspersed with ox-bow lakes and ponds, once the bed of the creek or stream, but now cut off by erosion and shifting channels. Strips of heavier forest followed the watercourses. Dry, dusty clearings opened up to the true blue sky and lifting, serried rows of small clouds scudding past on the light breezes of summer.

He grinned when Akim's words came on the wind.

" _Shut your fewkin' cake-holes."_

The vast plain was grazed by the herds of the Kulutawas in summer. It was a hunting ground for them, as well as the Kirtele and lakes peoples in winter. The Great Army of the Pentapolis was forging up the Nioshoa River, and the Kirtele were shadowing them on the left bank, which was after all their territory. Word was that up ahead, the Pentapolis forces were building fortifications and a bridge of boats across the Mononghatilla River. It might even be true. It was high summer. The trees were fully in leaf, wild flowers abounded in the woods, and the grass was long by the side of the trail. They followed their prey with ease due to the softness of the turf after a dawn rain shower. The tracks skirted along the fringe of forest beside the Nioshoa.

Kjarl and the squadron under his command were patrolling the riverbank, and the Tzclina were going upstream, tending to the northeast generally. The river twisted back and forth. They rode through pasture, bottomlands with a thick screen of willows and cottonwoods making it difficult to see the ships on the river. This helped to screen their activities. They knew that the Kirtele were watching.

Kjarl assumed there would be enemy patrols behind as well, hence the cautious, silent ride, sticking carefully to the edges of the woods.

They were shadowing a Tzclina convoy of flat-bottomed rowing boats, about two dozen of them. Each had ten to twenty rowers and at least a half dozen soldiers aboard, in addition to the heaps of provisions under canvas covers lashed down to protect from rain and wind. The convoy was making its way up the Nioshoa, with the alternately cursing and singing oarsmen pulling hard to attain any distance against the strong current sweeping silently past. They were wise enough by now to have land-borne patrols on each flank. Kjarl was putting some thought into an attack. To destroy the supplies, burn the boats, and deal with the soldiers without being taken by surprise in the rear or an unprotected flank—this with the few men available—would be a tough and interesting challenge, and a strong blow to the Pentapolis. Perhaps no great strategic victory, but a chance for his men to earn some of all the glory that was going around these days. If he could pull it off with minimal risk, for he had some good archers along, then he might try something. Kjarl would have been surprised to learn that he had the makings of a pretty fine sergeant.

Perhaps a night attack, but that would require some thought, even agreement amongst the men.

To the southwest, the Tzclina had left ten or twelve thousand men, and mounds of tools and supplies. They were digging in and fortifying a level patch of ground at the confluence of the Nioshoa and the Great River. The fort was far bigger in size than the men on site would seem to need. Were they planning to go into winter quarters? That was sheer madness. It seemed more likely that the fort would be reinforced when the Pentapolis troops had achieved whatever goals they had in mind. The Tzclina were colonizing. They were here to stay. The bulk of the Tzclina army would eventually have to leave. The notion that they could actually take the capital of the Kitchi-lao Empire was just plain ludicrous. Stories told of how the walls were twenty-five or thirty kyles in circumference, which Kjarl quite frankly had trouble imagining with any clarity. With only forty or fifty troops at his back—the number varied considerably from day to day as men fell ill, were injured, or were assigned and re-assigned—there was only so much he could do to discourage Tzclina foraging or hunting parties on Kirtele land. The footprints and horse-tracks led out into an open area, and the river looped off to the right, so he followed the tracks.

He winced when he heard a sharp whistle from behind, and he turned to see half a dozen unfamiliar riders pulling up alongside the column at a fast canter. With a raised hand, he brought his forward squadron to a halt, about eighty yards from the brush lines in any direction to avoid being taken flatfooted. The senior man, presumably, started to talk to Kjarl.

"They want you up at Nine-Mile Creek." He half-yelled it, reining up in a flurry of clods, and sawing at the reins to get the animal stopped. "You boys are supposed to head on up there, and cross the Nioshoa, and link up with Ryngger and the rest of the Sulatawias."

He just nodded, sitting his horse and waiting for more details.

"How are we supposed to cross?"

"They've got the ferry working again." The other man was familiar to Kjarl, although he couldn't fit a name to the face. "Otherwise they're rowing across on them flat-decked barges, but they got pissed off because no one returned them when they were done, or I suppose you could try swimming 'em across."

Swimming the troopers across would be a plan of last resort. They had the kitchen wagons and other supplies to consider.

"There's an enemy patrol right up ahead." Kjarl pointed out across the grassland. "Where are all your men?"

"I've got them back a half a kyle. No sense tiring out all the horses."

"Just yours, eh?" The man was a fool.

"Yeah! Just ours." One of his companions grunted and spat.

That's when Kjarl and the other sergeants heard a gasp and a curse, and then a steady and solid stream of swearing broke out among the Kirtele around them. Twisting in the saddle, Kjarl saw that they had indeed been heading into a well-laid ambush.

Big, blunt heads with huge flopping ears and _ye Gods,_ were those teeth? Or horns?

Were these elephants? Pulling hard on the reins, Kjarl's heels dug into Acorn's sides and she lunged forward, towards the enemy lines as they crashed through the last of the screen of shrubs and brush and bushes ripe with early berries. He reached back with his right hand over his shoulder to pull out an arrow, his left hand, unbidden, already holding his stout black Kirtele bow. He hadn't even _thought_ about pulling it out of the wide, flat leather quiver slung over Acorn's left shoulder, where the recurve-type weapon rode already strung.

"Withdraw! Withdraw!" He stood up in the stirrups to get a better shot.

With a twang, the bowstring propelled a blue-white streak of ash, thick as a man's little finger. Enemy infantry, far more dangerous than two or three elephants, were racing towards them with upraised spears. The foremost had their swords drawn and ready. The leading elephant stumbled and then fell, rolling towards him as he pulled Acorn's head around to get the hell out of there. He heard a strange trumpet-like blaring in his ears. He noted in some compression of thought and time that they did indeed have little castles on their backs. Men with long, straight bows were spilling out from under the dying animal. Through all the shouting and neighing, he heard a few high, reedy screams.

Kjarl loosed another cloth-yard bolt as he rode after his men, pleased to see no Kirtele bodies on the ground, and even as the thought came, a small flurry of arrows landed around and in amongst them. The Tzclinacoque didn't understand the use of their weapons.

They should have opened up with them first. They might have had better luck.

***

Uttaris was feeling the adrenalin even though there wasn't much happening right now.

Talmotek's troops were variously estimated, at somewhere between sixty thousand and one hundred thousand effective troops. It was perfect. The enemy was transshipping, unloading the larger ships, and digging into temporary fieldworks. Talmotek was preparing a lightning strike up the Mononghatilla River. A number of their ships were being fitted with 'mules,' boxes filled with stones, then placed under the ship. The rocks were removed, and then the water was pumped out. This was preparatory to lifting them up over a weir, and then further upstream on that river, towing them up the rapids.

The Tzclina couldn't just break the dam. They needed water levels to remain high enough upstream to float their ships. Once they had broken through the passes in the mountains, the coastal plains would be wide open for their depredations. The capital city of Kitchi-lao would be invested, and presumably, Uttaris's own army would have been destroyed.

Kvetchen's forces were far away, and might have to make an amphibious landing against enemy defenses, in order to relieve the capital.

Having made it that far, the enemy would be sure to go into siege mode, and maintain a blockade over the winter. Elements of the Pentapolis navy would attempt to run any blockade, and at least some supplies would reach the besiegers. Although the forces inside the capital had options of attack or even breakout, the vicissitudes of fortune meant it was better to end the war this summer if possible. With the risks being what they were, conditions were nearly perfect, and the gamble had to be made.

If necessary, if he was defeated, it might be possible for Uttaris to gather another army in sufficient force over the next few months to continue the struggle in the spring. He would be in a position to circumvallate the enemy entrenchments engaged in the siege of the capital with those of his own.

He had few choices. All these thoughts went through his head as he tried to drop off, tossing and turning and praying for the least little bit of sleep. Even a couple of hours would be welcome. He would face the day with twenty-four hours of wakefulness behind him. To stay up all night and plan for the day was beyond him.

"My lord?"

It was his servant's voice, coming soft from the doorway.

"Um. Yes?" His mouth felt thick and gooey, his voice slurred with sleepiness.

Yet he could have sworn that his thoughts had been crystal-clear and full of life.

"The cock has crowed, my lord."

What?

He must have slept then, although he felt horrible with exhaustion. His guts lurched in revelation. Sure enough, he heard it again for himself, off in the distance. The roosters were indeed awake in the neighbourhood.

"I'll be right there."

"I know it must be hard to eat." Ylloris, of noble birth in his own right, was his intimate friend and confidant in better times. "But I have some fruit, and some wheaten bread. Cold milk."

"That will be sufficient." Uttaris swung his legs out of the blanket and over the side of his austere wooden and white canvas cot.

The smell of fresh kaffi reached his nostrils. For a brief moment of time, he regretted that he was not a swearing man, although the temptation was almost overwhelming.

The servants would have misunderstood or misinterpreted. They all looked up to him. Somehow, from somewhere, came a little burst of courage. Fortune favours the bold. The key to success is preparation. Talmotek, by all accounts, had little or no idea that they were even there. The fact that he had no choices or options was even comforting. Come what may, Uttaris had accepted his fate. Once you are dead they can ask nothing further of you...yet he felt strangely confident. Was this _courage?_

He thought of Kvetchen and their elder brother Helios, neither of whom was in any position to help, or even to offer advice.

It was all up to him now, and sometimes that was for the best. If he were to be killed, the Empire would not be headless. A man could see the wisdom in that.

"Thus it is written. So be it." Uttaris was ready.

***

Dooley and Captain Jensen were intent on the work, their sparsely clipped words impersonal, yet filled with professional confidence. It was what they had been created for. Silently, the hangar doors clam-shelled open underneath them. Their journey had taken them eleven hundred light years full circle. The chronometers indicated that they had spent the bulk of the last twelve millenia in cryogenic sleep. They had arrived, to a place most of them had never thought to see again. They were home.

While unable to see the Earth below, a soft, blue-white glare bathed the framing of the bulkhead ahead of them. They were just finishing the last checklist, when Jill and Brent came clambering in through the hatchway and down the ladder that came in from the back of the cabin. They slung their duffel bags into the luggage compartment and latched it down. One by one, screen by screen and instrument by instrument, _Shuttle One_ began to come to life. Dooley snapped on a fan to get some air flowing through the musty-smelling ship, mothballed through the centuries. He was reassured to see all the lights reading green, and the numeric values in their proper ranges. They had routinely warmed the thing up three times, prior to committing to this machine, but you never know. He had some irrational fear that the thing wouldn't go, and then they would have to begin the whole preparation process for _Shuttle Two_ while the techs ironed the bugs out.

"The hatch is battened manually." Brent appeared suddenly beside them. "Jill and I are strapping in right behind you."

"Give the buckles an extra pull, and make sure your helmets are snapped on and your inlets function properly." The captain waited while they tested the air supply, and glanced at the list from time to time as Dooley went through it.

"Okay, everything looks good." She was satisfied their suit-pumps wouldn't switch off unexpectedly.

Dooley had already entered all the figures for the mass of the crewmembers and their equipment. He sat watching the screens. The pre-heaters were bringing the quantum-engines up to the proper working temperature. All four seemed to be coming up together, with no great variations or unexpected cold spots in them. They had been thrust-tested during rendezvous with Earth.

"Cabin pressure is good, no leaks and no variations from bulkhead to bulkhead." That sort of thing was always good to know. "The computer's mass-estimate figure agrees with ours."

"We have a few minutes yet." The captain pulled up the door display and ensured that it was dogged down properly.

" _Shuttle bay is now open and clear."_

It was the auto-controller in the launch centre.

"Hatch one is locked and secure." She advised Dooley and the others. "Navigation one and two look bang-on. Computers three and four are on stand-by."

"Thank you." She took a good look at him for a moment, assessing the man.

She felt safe enough with Dooley's piloting skills, and if he should freeze up or something unlikely like that, she felt reasonably able to fly the ship. The key was to watch the monitors and instruments as if she _was_ flying it.

"Fuel looks good." Dooley studied the readouts. "We have forty thousand kilograms of reaction mass in tanks one, two and three. Header tanks are full and pressurized. Pumps look good."

"Confirmed." She craned her neck to check on the other two, just in time to see Brent proffer an open palm to Jill.

She was briefly fascinated as Jill's gloved hand stole over into Brent's big paw and curled up inside of it. Neither of them seemed aware of her existence. They were eye to eye and lost in each other. Satisfied with the moment, Captain Jensen went back to the checklist as Dooley patiently went through each item onscreen. The computers were all warmed-up and ready to go, all the cells in their multiple battery banks were live and kicking out the e-juice within parameters.

"All latches armed, explosive bolts are all functional." Dooley was cool and professional. "All systems are up and green. We have no red or amber lights. Any last words?"

"Drop window is three minutes out." The captain looked up again. "Check list is complete."

They sat patiently, alone with their thoughts. It was very quiet. Bright red digits counted down on the display panel. There was nothing left to do but wait. Each in their own way had to deal with whatever stomach-butterflies they had within. Dooley's and her suit looked good. They checked each other, yet one is never so alone as before a launch—or a re-entry. She wondered if Dooley believed in God. She offered up a small prayer of her own. Their eye-shields snapped shut automatically. Her breathing was very loud in her ears.

"One minute." Dooley looked over and gave a nod.

She could imagine him winking at her.

"About that drink." A sheepish grin tugged at the corners of his mouth, it was like she could hear it.

For the first time today, even with the faceplate down, he looked nervous, she saw wonderingly. The body language was unmistakable, the angle of the head and neck, the taut motions gave it away.

"I'll be off duty in a couple of hours." She reached over to give him a pat on the back of his big, bony hand.

She felt muscles work under the skin, and the warmth of it through the thin plastic gauntlets.

"I brought a bottle." It was Brent, and they all laughed slightly nervously.

"So did I." Dooley took a quick glance around at them.

He gave a wave of acknowledgement, their dark insect-eyes inscrutable in their return looks.

"All right. This is it, folks." Dooley gripped the control handles.

Sandra noted just the slightest trace of a shake in them, but then she had one of her own. She and the pilot had flown the simulator twenty times each, but this was real.

"Bingo! Fire the bolts." The tension in her voice was under control.

She waited breathlessly.

Dooley clicked the red button on the top of the left hand stick. There was a light shudder through the seats. Slowly the shuttle began to drop out of the bay, as the straps tugged gently, ever so gently at their shoulders and across the upper thighs. Their field was on the other side of the planet as they came in over the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific. The checkpoints were logged into the rolling terrain display. There was gentle turbulence. She saw his legs begin to take up tension on the rudder pedals, and his hands rested lightly and confidently on the control-stalks.

"Cut autopilot." She snapped it off for him.

"Thank you." He had a note of relief in his tone.

She had a moment of strange revelation. Didn't Dooley trust the computer?

You learn something new every day.

"We've picked out a flat, open prairie in southern Ohio." The captain spoke for the benefit of Jill and Brent, her serene voice crisp in their ears. "It's located on the alluvial till plains."

"Firing retros. We are in the atmosphere, ladies and gentlemen." Dooley stared, fixated by his displays. "Re-entry was at designated point."

Everything looked good, with a hazy wash of colour in the windows. It was with a shock when they realized it was ionized gases from the heat of the atmospheric friction.

"Wow." Brent shut up again just as quickly.

The machine was designed for unprepared fields. As long as they didn't run directly into a hillside, or drop off of a cliff, the ship could take a lot of punishment on landing, and still make it off again. Dooley and she had mapped a series of S-turns, and they had half a dozen alternate landing sites scattered all over Indiana, Pennsylvania, and in southern Ontario, in case they came in too high or too low, too hot or too cold.

"Thrust-vectoring is online."

He shook his head.

"A waste of fuel." Speaking over the aerodynamic noises from the lifting body, he kept them all informed. "I'll try to hit our patch. Everything looks good so far. All of our predictions are verified as accurate to the nth degree."

The ship dropped through a layer of cumulus clouds, and the ground was coming up from below. Sandra sphincter began to tighten when she saw just how much of it was forest cover, and the shining snake-like threads of rivers and streams reflecting the mid-morning sun.

***

They sat on a long, windswept ridge, with the Mittaini lancers lined up in two thin rows behind them. Nodrakis, Knaius, and Brother Raffin sat looking over the wide and dusty plain below, shimmering in the haze as the day warmed up. The sun was in their eyes, and it was clear Uttaris was waiting for the sun to rise higher before launching any attack.

Knaius's reunion with his nephew Uttaris had been strangely poignant in Nodrakis' eyes, considering Knaius's pet project of bringing back the Republic. To be fair to Knaius, the man hadn't been speaking of it quite so much lately.

"First we have to defeat the Pentapolis." That was one way of putting it.

Brother Raffin turned out to be a kind of a queer duck, with his sneaky, furtive manner, always heading off at all hours of the night on what he insisted were long walks.

While Nodrakis had little doubt the man was suffering from all the hundreds of kyles of unaccustomed riding, he found it hard to accept that long walks in the cold and dark were any source of relief.

The Prince Nodrakis and his contingent were on the left flank of the main body of Kitchi-lao infantry. Uttaris had deployed about twenty-five thousand foot soldiers, although his cavalry, of which he had heard much, were nowhere to be seen. He resented somewhat that he had not been entirely taken into the plan. Those troops had to be somewhere, and he could only hope and assume that Uttaris knew what he was doing.

Knaius handed back his gleaming brass telescope.

"There's Raffin's Kirtele." He was pointing off at the right flank, almost lost in the shifting heat mirages on the horizon.

He took the telescope and put it up to his eye, and Raffin peered off in the same direction. The two princes were amused to note the Brother's rather obvious pride in the men of his land. For a man of peace, war should be an abomination, yet he was captivated by the sight of them.

It might have been a kind of homesickness, or the fierce pride often exhibited by the men of that independent little nation. Knaius politely handed over his own smaller telescope so the monk could have a look.

"Yes!" The word was almost torn from his throat.

Nodrakis studied them carefully. While lacking in consistent arms, and they surely had no recognizable uniform, they seemed tall, well-formed men who rode their mounts with an insouciant confidence. The numbers seemed exceedingly small, and he wondered what contribution they could possibly make in the contest of great powers.

As if sensing his thoughts, Raffin gave the two of them a triumphant look.

'There— _now_ we'll show you how it's done!'

Nodrakis had nothing to say. Knaius steered his elbow gently, and indicated that something was happening in the centre. He took a quick look to see where he was pointing and then focused the still-warm instrument on the small, moving dust cloud that was visible to the naked eye. One of the elephants, with a fighting-castle on its back, was ponderously, and somehow majestically moving out into the middle of the plain.

"Another challenge to single combat?" Nodrakis didn't quite trust his eyes. "Who would take them on?"

They had already witnessed several such engagements that morning, and while men had fought and died out in front of the armies, the results were pretty evenly divided, and were never expected to be decisive. It was a part of the entertainment.

Raffin was peering through Knaius' device. Suddenly he stood up in the stirrups, gasping in dismay. He flung Knaius' expensive telescope aside.

"No! No! Damn you, Kjarl." He sat down abruptly, kicked his heels into his mount's sides and was gone without so much as a by-your-leave.

He galloped down the hillside and out onto the flats as if trying to intercept the man. Knaius's manservant dismounted, picked up the telescope from the dust, blew it off, and began polishing the lens again. Then he handed it up to Knaius.

Nodrakis studied the lone figure trotting out as if on parade, sitting still and very erect in the saddle, the tip of his lance high in the air. It had a tiny pennant in blue and white on the end of it, visible even at this distance of approximately three-quarters of a kyle.

"He has no armour. They have no armour." It was astonishing.

"Must be a friend of his." The other prince had a dry tone. "They draw lots, for the honour of it."

There was a marvelous note of vicarious fear apparent in his usually urbane and almost decadent voice. Nodrakis hated him, or what he represented, at that moment, but it just as quickly passed.

In the centre of the vast open space between the two opposing forces, the elephant and its complement of soldiers turned to meet the tall figure, still alone, and riding at a fast trot. Breathless, the prince, and those assembled trembled deep in the guts, holding on to their interrupted thoughts, and waited to see what would happen next. Raffin had dropped something besides the telescope. The servant picked it up and brushed it off, and with widened eyes and open mouth handed it up to an incurious Knauis.

"May I see that?" Prince Nodrakis asked with a tremor of urgency.

It was a most curious object. With a grunt, Knaius handed it over, and went back to watching the scene unfold below. The initial maneuverings were often long and drawn-out affairs. The most amusing fights involved more talk than battle. One found themselves straining to hear all the comments, and laughing out loud. The enemy lines were only a few bow-shots away, so you could occasionally catch a brief bit of talk from over there. Their shouted insults were easy enough to hear, if you could get past the accent.

Nodrakis sat looking at the dark grey oblong thing in his hand. One of the surfaces was cut into little squares, slightly raised up from the surface and all smooth looking.

There was a flat shiny panel. All over it were greasy smudges to show where someone's fingers had been.

Suddenly the thing cheeped at him like a songbird, and a deep shocking jolt of fear went through him when the thing lit up in his hand. He almost flung it off into the bushes in surprise, but retained just enough control to hang onto it, wonder raging in his mind.

Whatever it was, whatever purpose it may have had, Raffin must have had the thing along with him the whole time. He saw that much in an instant.

Nodrakis began touching the lozenge-shaped imprints and saw in a kind of awe that symbols and pictures and a weird alien script appeared as if by magic.

Knaius regarded him in surprise.

"What in the hell is it?"

"It—it—it's a machine." Nodrakis goggled in disbelief.

***

"Dooley!" Captain Jensen's voice was urgent, and at the same moment he became aware of the urgently flashing red light, down low on the centre console.

There was also a new, rather insistent tone in the earphones.

"It's a radio signal!" So little said, so much was implied.

"Huh?" He didn't grasp the significance of it for a half a moment.

"Confirmed! It's a radio signal, Dooley!" The captain's voice rose half an octave. "Power, power."

Dooley finally pulled the nose up. He pushed a little throttle into it, and began to roll left even as Sandra reported the bearing of the signal.

"It's a course of zero-seven degrees, actual." She watched as the numbers settled down on the compass readout.

His mind reeled with half-determined questions.

"Hold your altitude. It's only thirty-two kilometres, at this speed, another seventeen seconds..."

"Right." Obscure mumbling came through his ear pieces, and he realized Jill and Brent must be talking to each other on a backup circuit.

"It's very low-powered." The captain paused for more analysis, "Micro-wave, no data is being transmitted...it's just a carrier-wave, with digital ID-encoding..."

"Position remains the same. It's stationary, and it's out in the plains. I suggest we prepare for vectored-thrust and to hell with fuel reserves."

A very tightly focused Dooley Peeters went mentally blank for a second.

"Acknowledged."

"But are you going to do it, Dooley?"

He glanced at her.

"Yes, ma'am." He grinned and went back to concentrating on the steering-points as they came up on the heads-up flying display.

"We're at twenty thousand feet, five hundred knots." She was second pilot, hands hovering over her own controls. "Reduce your speed."

"Pick your spot, we're coming up on it."

She touched a brightly displayed red dot on a navigation display beside her seat, and a small orange triangular icon popped up in front of Dooley's eyes, with a ring of four vector-icons to indicate which direction he should put thrust in, upon entering the landing mode.

When the ring blinked green, he reduced thrust, when it flashed red, he added it.

"Forward speed, one hundred." Her voice was right there. "Safe enough for the landing gear, I'm thinking."

The nose was high, and they were in thrust-augmented high-alpha flying mode.

The terrain display showed a level spot just in front of them...the nose cameras confirmed it...

"Ladies and gentlemen." He started to make an anouncement, more for the black boxes than anything, but stopped, dumbfounded by the sight ahead.

Thousands of people were running away in all directions. He thought he saw a man on horseback attacking an elephant, but it was all happening so fast. It was too strange, too unreal to take it in as factual information.

There was the initial shock of landing, and then the ship took on a mind of its own, as a distinct bounding and jarring motion began, and then it was over, as she came to a halt , nose down four degrees, and leaning to the left about seven degrees. Head down, the captain busied herself with enabling the self-leveling feature of the landing gear. Dooley was already un-strapping. There were gasps and comments from the back-seaters, but as he pulled off the helmet, he was almost alone in the silent cockpit. He felt drained, and cold sweat pooled in his armpits, now that he had time to notice.

"I'm sorry we interrupted your party." Tiny voices chattered inside the empty helmet.

The captain's face shield came up.

"What?"

"There's all kinds of people out there!" Brent's excited voice blasted from behind them, with Jill joining in to help make it almost unintelligible.

The captain couldn't un-strap fast enough, and she was forced to push and poke and elbow for a chance at one of the ship's pair of periscopes. Dooley and Jill contented themselves with looking out of the side windows, and trying to use the ship's cameras' limited pan and tilt capability to get a better look around and behind them. The cameras were really meant for checking the ship, or the docking bay, and not so much for ground surveillance, as their limited lens and poor depth-of-field consigned them to short-range viewing.

"The signal is nearby, off to the left." Brent stuck an arm past their ears.

The pair of optical eyepieces swung to try and get a look.

"It can't be less than a kilometre away." Dooley checked the instruments.

"There's someone right outside the door." Brent spoke in a low, flat tone. "He's got a friend, a wounded man."

***

Raffin sheltered Kjarl from the blast, which sent dust, dirt and debris flying in such a way that the sand stung the backs of his hands as well as his neck where exposed.

"By the Gods!" He looked around in a sudden, frustrated fury to see what was causing this storm of dust.

He cradled the big man's upper torso, trying vainly to keep dirt out of the gaping wound in the left shoulder where shards and splinters of the big Kirtele lance stuck out. He craned his head around to freeze in shock. His jaw dropped as he tried to comprehend the unthinkable.

Something was there. Was this the sky chariot that Nodrakis said was coming here?

Had the gods come down to Earth? He turned back to the white, uplifted face of Kjarl, blinking in the sun's glare.

"Water." Kjarl's lips were parched and cracked, and for some reason Raffin's eyes began streaming the precious fluid of their own accord.

He had no water to give, and he was alone out on the naked plain. What had once been a battlefield crawling with men and arms, mounts and engines, had become quickly deserted and now, after the shocking noise that had almost overwhelmed him, unbelievably quiet.

"Who's there?" Kjarl, blinded by the sun, was unable to see the man's face against the glare of the sky, and Raffin put a hand on his brow.

"It is I—Brother Raffin."

Even if Kjarl could survive such horrific wounds, even if shock and loss of blood didn't kill him, surely the infection, the fever that always accompanied it would. He broke out in fresh fits of weeping, unable to even look over his shoulder at the apparition that hulked uncomfortably close.

"You should have stayed home. Thank you." The big horse-catcher's head fell back.

"Damn you Kjarl! You had to go and show off, always trying to play the hero."

Raffin scolded him gently, wondering how long until the end. If only he had some water.

"It was my turn. I won the toss." Kjarl had a stronger tone. "Maybe we'd better start pulling out some of these slivers."

He bent an arm to weakly pluck at them where they stuck out of his chest.

"No! Don't." Raffin cried in confusion.

The splinters from Kjarl's shivered lance were all that was keeping him from bleeding to death on the spot.

"Where's Acorn?"

"She ran away. She got clean away." Kjarl's eyes closed in gratitude. "The poor elephant is dead...one or two of the riders...the rest ran off somewheres..."

"If someone catches her, take off her bridle and tack. Please...let her go free."

"I promise. I promise." Raffin snuffled, nasal passages filled up with snot, gasping for breath through his mouth.

"Tell my mom and dad...and my sister..."

"I will, I will." Raffin wept, and raged.

It was all he could do not to get up and run away from this horrible thing, this horrible burden. Raffin had seen plenty of people die before—old people, sick people, drowned people, but for some reason this was the worst. Kjarl was so young, and strong, and healthy, and now reduced to this pale glimmer, a shadow of what was once a magnificent human being. Kjarl tried to speak some more, but Raffin put a hand over his lips.

"I know. I know." Raffin knelt there, waiting, cradling big Kjarl the horse-catcher like a little child.

When he spoke next, Kjarl's voice had regained some of its youthful vigour, its confidence, even its humour.

"Relax, Raffin. We all have to die sometime." Kjarl stared deep into his eyes in some unspoken message.

Kjarl began to cough up blood, stark and wet looking in the warm summer sun. It ran down his chin and onto his chest, and Raffin could do naught but rage at his own helplessness. This was wrong—so wrong. On impulse, he lowered Kjarl's head to the sandy turf. He stood and confronted the looming silver beast that sat there, quietly, in its own steamy heat, waves of liquid air floating above it, ticking like a stove that had gone out in the night.

"This is wrong!" He bellowed at the thing, whatever or whoever it was. "How can you let this happen?"

He screamed in fury, a mad impotent rage.

"You call yourself Gods? Damn you all through the seven hells! I defy you! No! I deny you! How can this be?"

He raged and shouted, and kicked at the ground. He shook his fists at the thing. Raffin picked up a stone, it was right by his foot. He threw it as hard as he could at the sky-chariot. It hit with a resounding clunk, and rattled and bounced, and bounded off the back end of it.

"I will never serve you again! From now on, I am against you!" He shouted in pure white-hot rage, hardly knowing what he was saying...seeing another rock, he picked that one up and threw it too.

He wanted so badly to put an eye out of the monster, or whatever it was. In the back of his mind, he could hear himself saying some awful things, and sometimes just mouthing incoherent noises...Raffin had gone temporarily insane, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew it, and he just didn't care anymore.

Nothing will ever be the same again.

The truth hurt deep inside. Life would never be the same again.

***

Dooley and Brent opened the hatch and stood for a brief moment, as the glare outside darkened their face shields automatically.

"To hell with this." Dooley's face shield popped open. "Come on, the air is fine."

He stumped his way down the landing stairs, his legs stiff. Brent felt the same way. It was the culmination of all their hopes and dreams. It was nothing like he had expected it to be, and he was scared...so scared. He gulped a couple of times, and then the decision was made.

With a flourish of defiance, he tapped the button to open his visor, and followed Dooley down the stairs. The two of them stood at the bottom for another long minute.

Dooley met Brent's eyes, and then he shrugged.

"Let's go talk to the man."

The pair shuffled towards the wounded man and his friend. The figure bent over the wounded one seemed oblivious to their presence, after his hysterical outburst earlier, which they had witnessed in some dismay from inside the ship.

"Sir...sir." Brent touched him on the shoulder, and the man spun around to stare at them in fear and wonder.

"Let us help your friend." He stared at Dooley.

As the man stood suddenly, Dooley dropped to his knees beside the bloodied figure recumbent upon the dry, dusty-looking grass of the prairie. Brent stood there, trying to look non-threatening, aware of just how outlandish a figure he must look to these half-savage people.

"He looks pretty bad." Brent watched over Dooley, as the other fellow stared at them in disbelief.

The man was patting his chest. At first, they took it for a greeting, but he made no sounds, so he wasn't trying to introduce himself. He stared at the pocket. He seemed to be looking for something in his shirt. Finding nothing, he let his arms fall limp to his sides. The man stood there with wet tears coursing down his face.

"Get the stretcher." Brent thouhgt about it for a few seconds, as the unwounded one looked on in sadness.

Brent opened his mouth as if to say something, but then just as quickly shut it, and turning, scampered back to the ship, all questions forgotten for the time being.

"We'll try to help your friend." Dooley spoke to the man as gently but as firmly as possible, wondering what might set the fellow off again—he appeared completely oblivious of the sword hanging at his hip, but considering the circumstances, almost anyone or anything could be dangerous, and it would take a couple of minutes for Brent to retrieve the collapsible rig.

Dooley was very aware that he was finally standing on the surface of Earth—and that it was twelve thousand years in the future.

The captain's voice crackled in his ears.

"What's going on, Dooley?" She seemed very subdued.

"The gentleman needs medical attention."

"It's none of our business." As a child, wounded birds and stray cats had held their attraction for her, and there were times when she had hated the truth, the harsh reality that she couldn't save them all.

"It has suddenly occurred to me that these gentlemen might be useful. They could teach us at least one of the local languages." Hopefully, she would see beyond the excuse to the practical utility of it.

There was a very long silence as she digested the thought.

"And what about our soil samples, the air and water samples? What about some kind of a site survey?"

"When I get a minute." He found the internal reserves to make a joke of it.

The casualty was still breathing, the man's impressive chest rising and falling almost imperceptibly. His eyes were closed, which Dooley thought a good thing. The other man dropped to his knees and held the man's hand, and wept all the while, without ever taking his eyes off of Dooley's face.

"It is my carefully studied opinion that the air, the water and the soil are just fine." He just didn't care anymore. "These people seem to get by. And twelve thousand years really isn't enough time for them to diverge biologically from ourselves...or not much, anyway."

"Okay Dooley...we'll do it your way...just this once."

He reached over and patted the other stranger on the shoulder. The fellow stared at him, his hand, and he seemed to breathe a little faster.

"We're going to need your cooperation." Dooley knew the man couldn't understand the words, but the tone of those words might be helpful.

The wounded man made some sounds, and then the other fellow spoke. The wounded man opened his eyes wide, and stared up at Dooley. Dooley put his hand over the man's forehead, grabbed his hand, and squeezed it.

The hand squeezed back. The man's mouth opened and he said something. There was fear in his eyes.

Dooley Peeters suddenly got it, that this was real life, a life that was ebbing out into the warm sands of the Ohio River valley. Tears welled up in his own eyes.

"Brent!" It was very hard to think clearly.

"Coming...right behind you." The sound came in his earphones, and through the air in the normal fashion.

The Barbarian gentleman stared in wonder.

***

Nodrakis recovered himself in a gully with a couple of other men, Kirtele by the look of them.

His horse had thrown him and then ran off in wild panic. The other two men were on foot as well. He motioned to be quiet.

"Shh."

The men nodded. He crawled up the grassy bank to get oriented, although he was sure that way was south. The Kirtele warriors were the only people about, and Nodrakis was the only one showing any leadership. With a look at each other, they dropped down on all fours and began following Nodrakis through the grass.

As he crested the slope of the hill, he slithered in through the low, stunted brush and weeds like a serpent. About the same time that he regained his wits, he found a large number of hoof-prints, and realized that he hadn't gotten too far. Riding quickly downhill was not his best skill on horseback, although he could jump well. A gleam in the dusty shade ahead, below another bush, caught his attention. The telescope! Aware of the other two men behind, he crawled on, not quite sure why. But sheer, raw, virtually uncontrollable curiousity did have a role in it, and perhaps Nodrakis had something of a stubborn streak in him as well. Funny the little things you figured out about yourself while crawling on your belly in the long grass, he thought. The instrument was within his grasp, and he made the decision to try to get a look at that _thing._

Looking back over his shoulder, he saw blank looks regarding him in return. He motioned that he was going forward. They both nodded, their focus and attention riveted.

He nodded, and slowly began to work his way through the grasses, trying to seek out each and every little declivity that he could find. It sounded like he was floundering around, thrashing like a speared fish, but the Kirtele were virtually silent in their travel.

There was blue sky ahead of him as he paused. One of the Kirtele came up beside him. The man pointed straight ahead, and whispered.

" _Kjarl—"_

Nodrakis understood why they were here now—Raffin's friend or acquaintance was obviously a friend or a kinsman of these fellows.

They wouldn't lightly abandon a friend, or a relative, he realized with half a sob in his throat. His breathing felt very tight just then, but then after what he had seen...of course, they would want to recover the body. He laid the telescope across between his elbows and scuttled forward cautiously until he had a clear view of the valley floor laid out below, perhaps a hundred feet beneath the level of the bluff. He felt a cold, hard rush in his guts when he realized that this was not a dream or a hallucination. Something big and shiny squatted in the centre of the valley.

" _There--"_

The Kirtele peered out through the tops of the grass.

Nodrakis cleaned the lenses patiently, his heart in his throat. Then he took a look. It would have been out of character for him to look at anything other than the sky-bird first.

He had a flash of insight about himself.

What a selfish little prick.

He studied it for a moment. He drank it in, more as if to reassure himself that it was real, that it was actually there...but it was.

Then he swung the tip over to the left a little. Again, his belly jolted in adrenalin and he fought back a sudden sense of panic. There were two beings, or creatures, or gods, or something out there in the open prairie in front of the thing. He watched open-mouthed as they moved about. With a shock, he saw that Brother Raffin was there. Raffin was sticking close by the side of the wounded man, kneeling there in the grass. The other two figures were all white, with big round heads.

The prince watched breathlessly as the figures in white gently lifted the wounded Kjarl into a long, flat basket, and used some kind of straps to restrain him.

They lifted him up in what was clearly a purpose-built stretcher, and then patiently and carefully walked him over to the stairs coming down the side of the thing. As Raffin plodded along behind, head down and hands clasped in prayer, the two creatures inched their way up the steps, and Nodrakis caught a glimpse of the face of Kjarl, white and pallid-looking as they went up the incline. Raffin hesitated at the bottom, and then began to climb slowly, left hand on the rail to steady himself. Nodrakis' heart thudded in his chest. By the seven hells, this defied description or analysis.

What in the fewkin' hells was going on?

The Kirtele men beside him were almost beside themselves in repressed tension and emotion. He put a hand on the nearest one's shoulder to hold them back from doing anything stupid...what was there to be done? He could think of nothing. There was nothing to be done about it.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Dooley reached out and pushed the buzzer...

Dooley reached out and pushed the buzzer, feeling slightly foolish, with a bouquet of fresh-cut flowers in the one hand, and a chilled bottle of pseudo-wine in the other.

The flowers were provided by a friend in the botany department, and the bottle made up in a hurry by a judicious admixture of white grape juice and industrial-grade ethanol, by someone Jill knew. The label was a quick reproduction printed on sticky-backed plastic.

The door slid open with no fanfare of blaring trumpets, and there she stood.

"Come in, Dooley." Her eyes lit up at the sight of the flowers.

She took them and carefully placed them in a vase, all ready and waiting there with water in it and everything. She was the Captain, after all, and she was entitled to an intelligence network too. Dooley followed her into the room, and she came and took the wine from him while he waited, sort of wondering where to sit. He had no idea of what to say. She saw that clearly.

"Well. You were right all along, Dooley. Thank you."

She turned towards the kitchen, and Dooley couldn't help but note her clingy, knitted red dress, with the upper back and shoulders bare. She had dimples at the hipline. The thing certainly clung in all the right places, and invited peeking in other places. He hastily averted his eyes when she turned around again.

"The flowers are lovely." She gazed into his eyes when they came back again, with a glint of mischievous humour in their mysterious and unreadable depths.

She turned and put the wine on the countertop, unscrewing the cap.

"What's that wonderful smell?" Dooley made an attempt to recover from his ongoing bout of mental paralysis.

Something amazing was wafting its way out of the kitchenette. He watched her through an arched doorway. She came back into the room again, and he tried not to stare, and he also tried not to be intimidated. He was finding it tough going, with all the emotions and instincts working against the kind of calm, cool demeanor the situation called for.

" _Submission for Men,_ by Fifi Beauderriere." The sudden reddening of Dooley's face and neck was quite amusing.

The poor man gulped a couple of times and looked around wildly as if looking for much-needed moral support.

"Oh, you mean the food. That's just fried chicken, Dooley, although I have to admit it's been a long time for me too—"

Sandra herself came up a little short, at the Freudian revelation of these words. She held her hands palm-up in invitation, and Dooley impulsively put his hands in hers.

"...since I had fresh meat." She concluded lamely, and again the unintentional double-entendre.

Poor Dooley must think he was being teased shamelessly...but why not? Why not?

Suddenly he smiled, flushing beet-red all the while. She had the impression his jaw was clamped shut.

"Please sit beside me on the couch." He needed coaching, and she firmly installed him right on the end of it, so he couldn't get away.

When she sat down, she made sure her hip was practically on top of his thigh, and she slid down onto the cushions, gazing deeply into his eyes from about six inches away.

Captain Sandra Jensen reached out and put her right hand on his left upper chest, feeling the muscle, but keeping her other hand up on the back of the couch. She had this all planned out. She would need it to balance and shift her weight around...

"I just wanted to thank you for all the wonderful work you've done, getting us here, and everything." She leaned over and gave him a little kiss, right on the lips.

Dooley's glazed eye stared at her, and then she pulled away just as he reached quickly to grab her and pull her in closer. With a hand in the centre of his chest, she pushed him down into the couch again. His grasping hands subsided, although she noted in excitement that he had grazed her right breast, and had seemed to be going for a close grip on her hip at the time.

Dooley sat there, utterly speechless, staring up into her eyes in wonder, and even terror. She grinned at the sight of his innocence, his confusion.

"Always have to be in control, eh, Dooley? Always the one to make the tough decisions, eh, Dooley?" She wondered what it was that attracted her to such a stubborn individual. "Why don't you maybe try and let go, and trust someone or something else, just this once, Dooley? Please?"

With a smirk, she got up and made for the kitchen as Dooley sat, thoughts racing, otherwise speechless, and watching her as she worked. Things began clanking and rattling around in there. The man saw her lacy white stockings, the golden ankle bracelet, the black pendant earrings, the ruby-red lips, the taste and imprint of which were still on his, and he marveled deep in his heart. Sandra came out with a pair of glasses. Handing him one, she set the other down on the end table.

"Supper will be in about five minutes." Then she got in close, and dropped to her knees. "Let me help you with your shoes, Dooley."

She began unlacing them, as strong impulses of adrenalin pounded away in her abdomen. She looked up to see a very serious and intent Dooley Peeters regarding her in a kind of awe above the rim of his glass. He made no attempt to resist or even speak. They both seemed to be sucking a lot of oxygen as they stared at each other for a minute.

Sandra was very conscious of the fact that the lacy edge of her bra was visible under the neckline of her dress, and that her breasts were hanging freely inside it, as his eyes were inevitably drawn down there. When he looked up in guilt again, her eyes were there to meet his, with a nod of encourageement. Dooley was on the verge of hyperventilating.

"Drink, Dooley."

He obediently lifted the glass and swallowed, never tearing his eyes from her.

"Captain."

"Call me Sandra. I'm in charge here tonight, Dooley—and I was hoping that you could find it within yourself to relax and have a good time."

"Yes, ma'am." She pulled off his shoes, and reached up and gave his crotch a little rub before rising and heading back into the kitchen.

His heart pounded in his chest and he was having a hard time figuring out if all of this was for real. His heart was pounding so fast it felt like it was going to rip right out of his chest. Dooley sucked back the rest of the wine, feeling it hit bottom with a resounding thud.

He had loved her since the very second he'd laid eyes on her, and yet he had known he would never find the courage. But the notion that all of his dreams were about to come true was frightening as hell. He didn't want to hurt her, or disappoint her, or let her down in any way...

On that thought, he lurched up off the couch and headed for the kitchen, where she was pulling a hot pan off the tiny cooker.

"Another drink, Dooley?" She looked innocently up at him, placing the pan down on a convenient pad on the counter.

Wordlessly, he put the glass in the sink and then grabbed her, pulling her in close, and then he kissed her as long and as hard and as deep as he possibly could. Her arms came around him, and she didn't struggle too much.

Finally they came up for air.

"Dinner's ready." She snapped off all the hot circuits.

"Yes it is." Dooley Peeters trembled inside.

Then he scooped her up into his arms, and without another word, he carried her into the bedroom, with her arms around his neck, and her glistening eyes looking into his in a kind of hopeful submission.

### The End

Louis Shalako began writing for community newspapers and industrial magazines. His stories appear in publications including Perihelion Science Fiction, Bewildering Stories, Aurora Wolf, Ennea, Wonderwaan, Algernon, Nova Fantasia, and Danse Macabre. He lives in southern Ontario and writes full time.

http://shalakopublishing.blogspot.com

