Tsalka was nodding, but Esshk was thoughtful. Halik represented much more to him than just another general. He might be their only hope.
“Very well. You will go there by the safest route. Do not allow yourself to be slain! That is a command! You still have much to do.” Esshk’s eyes turned to Niwa. “You have worked closely with General Halik. Perhaps you should accompany him. Together you will learn not only the… ‘tactics’ of the prey-” He caught himself. “I mean, the ‘enemy,’ but you may better learn how we might counter them during this… transitional period. General Niwa, you will learn about the Grik alongside the Grik. General Halik, you will learn more about the enemy from one who knows them better.”
“But General Esshk!” Kurokawa and Niwa protested at once. Niwa realized what he’d done and clamped his mouth shut. Kurokawa, on the other hand, continued. “You would deprive me of my own best counselor?”
Esshk peered at him. “I deprive myself of Halik, but then, I still have you. I have been given to understand you need no counsel.”
“Not at sea!” Kurokawa sputtered. “But I am no land general! I have never claimed to be. I do understand land strategy, and how it must be combined with that of the sea, but to fully appreciate that combination, I need my best land tactician.” Kurokawa paused and blinked, realizing Esshk had goaded him into admitting, for the first time, that he didn’t know everything. Damn him! Esshk might only now be learning the subtleties of modern war, but he had long been a chess master of debate and intrigue. Kurokawa had almost forgotten that. He had also forgotten, or finally learned, how important it was to have someone near him he could trust-somewhat-and even speak candidly with on occasion. Niwa, subservient and cowed as he was, was the closest thing to a “friend” Kurokawa had on this world. Now Esshk would deprive him of even that.
“Exactly,” said Esshk, and he drove the final nail. “General Niwa will be more valuable to us both after this experience. He will be General Halik’s Vice Commander, and the two of them will learn from each other and the enemy at the same time. At least one should survive to return with the tactical observations we desire.”
“Thank you, Noble First,” Halik said humbly, and it suddenly became clear to Kurokawa that Halik had requested this! Why? He looked at Niwa and saw his nervous expression. How can I use This? he thought. I stood up for Niwa and he will remember That. Niwa has an opportunity To gain Halik’s and even Esshk’s trust more fully Than I ever could. I will… miss… Niwa, but perhaps This might work To my advantage.
Kurokawa gave Niwa a small but significant nod. “Oh, very well,” he said. “It does make sense, I suppose. You may have him so long as I have your word he will not be required to ‘destroy himself ’ or any such nonsense if he and General Halik cannot save Ceylon.”
Esshk seemed surprised. “General of the Sea Kurokawa,” he exclaimed, “have I just seen you display concern for a member of your pack? How uncharacteristic!”
Kurokawa inwardly smoldered. He knew Esshk would take it that way and it exposed a vulnerability, but it was worth it to gain Niwa’s ultimate trust.
“I am concerned for both General Niwa and General Halik, as well as our cause. We cannot spare either of them.”
“There we are agreed,” Esshk said. “Fear not, the destruction of Uul warriors and their leaders is at an end. You were right regarding how wasteful it is. Even in defeat, not all are ‘made prey,’ and even those who are… provide a valuable service.”
Kurokawa wondered about that last comment, but shuddered slightly at what he thought it probably meant.
Esshk appeared satisfied with the proceedings thus far. He lapped at a bowl of… something, then looked expectantly at Kurokawa.
“Mmm,” Kurokawa said, looking at Niwa. “General Niwa, I believe you know General Halik?”
Niwa controlled an impulse to gulp. “Yes, Cap-General of the Sea.”
“Good. I will therefore accept your enthusiastic offer to participate in this important and glorious mission!” Kurokawa affected a false, grotesque smile.
“Uh… thank you, sir.” Niwa looked at Halik, who was staring back at him now.
“That’s the spirit!” Kurokawa beamed genuinely. “General Esshk?”
Esshk looked at Halik, then Niwa. “You will leave almost immediately with a significant escort of ships,” he said. “It is a dangerous sea. The escort will be loaded with supplies, but they well might be the last we send. Try to defend Ceylon as long as you can, and fill every homebound ship as full of ‘steel’ as possible. Those ships will likely not return to you.”
“Yes, First General,” Halik said.
“The two of you must defer to Vice Regent N’galsh, of course, but in reality you will command Ceylon and all of India. Every Hij and Uul there will obey you. Use them, but try not to waste them. Send me more like yourselves if you discover any.” Esshk stood. “Now, we all have much more to do than lounge about, enjoying the view.” Niwa almost coughed. “I suggest,” Esshk continued, “that Generals Halik and Niwa remain here a short while.” He looked at them. “Get to know one another better. Decide if you have any special requirements.”
The meeting broke up then. Even Kurokawa disappeared into the swirling dust that seemed to be growing worse, leaving Niwa and Halik alone under the increasingly dubious shelter.
“Why?” Niwa asked without preamble.
“You interest me, General Niwa,” Halik said. “I think I might learn much from you.”
“Like what?”
“Like how to survive when you are surrounded by enemies. I have learned to do that in the arena, but to do so every day… that is different.”
“What do you mean?”
Halik rasped a chuckle. “I think you know.” He paused, catching occasional glimpses of the horror in the dust. “We are warriors, you and I, accustomed to holding the sword in our hands. Our masters have never done that; they are not allowed, so they fight with their minds and words and barely know the feel of a sword. We are important to them because they think we can fight with our swords and minds.” Halik looked at Niwa, and Niwa would have sworn the Grik was excited! “We will leave this place! That cannot disappoint you. Then we will see if they are right!”
CHAPTER 3
Yap Island (Shikarrak)
Chief Gunner’s Mate Dennis Silva savagely hacked at the indifferent army of spiny, bamboo-like shoots standing before him like a shield wall of personal foes. The swath of “ bamboo” couldn’t be more than a mile wide at most-judging by the crummy “chart” Silva had, the whole island wasn’t much wider than that across this point-but it seemed endless, and the party’s progress through it had been excruciatingly slow. Even the mighty Dennis Silva was beginning to tire. Sweat glistened on his skin, collecting grime and fragments of the shredded flora, and the patch covering his ruined left eye was soggy and blotched with salt. He stopped for a moment to catch his breath and untwisted the canteen from the rope belt around his waist. Sloshing it experimentally, he unscrewed the cap and took a shallow swig.
“Now I know what a ant feels like,” he pronounced a little breathlessly. “ ’Cept I don’t guess ants have to gnaw their way through everything to get anywhere.”
The rest of the small party accompanying him was at least as tired as he was after swinging their decidedly inferior cutlasses to widen the path behind him. Silva was doing the lion’s share of the work, but the steel in his pattern of 1917 Navy cutlass was of infinitely better quality. In response to his statement, his companions could manage only a few gasping grunts. The heat was hellish and the humidity oppressive, but the sun didn’t bother Silva anymore. He was tanned so dark, his various smudged tattoos had become merely darker, unrecognizable discolorations on his skin. In contrast, his now longish hair, matted beard, and the light, curly hair that generally covered him from neck to feet had turned almost pure white. For clothing, he wore only his battered “chief ’s” hat the Bosun had given him, a pair of cut-off Lemurian-made dungarees, and “go-f
orwards” he’d fashioned for himself.
He was otherwise equipped with a large shooting pouch, slung over his shoulder, made from the almost indestructible hide of a rhino pig. It contained all the implements, components, and accessories necessary to keep the “Doom Whomper,” the. 100-caliber rifled musket he’d made from a Japanese anti-aircraft gun, fed, maintained, and happy. He’d given his pistol belt to Sandra Tucker-she knew how to handle a 1911 Colt-and there wasn’t much ammo for it anyway. She could use it if she needed it, but it was his job to keep that from happening. Instead of the 1911, Silva still carried his cutlass, and a long-barreled flintlock pistol he’d taken from the Company assassin Linus Truelove. Silva expected, with some satisfaction, that Truelove had been reduced to a few floating ashen specks, when Silva had contrived to blow up Ajax, but the pistol was a dandy. It would shoot only once before reloading of course, but they had plenty of ammo for it.
He took the opportunity to fish a whetstone from his pouch and run a few swipes down each side of his cutlass blade. He then offered the precious whetstone to the others, and when they took it, he watched keenly while it made its rounds before being returned. Dropping the stone back in his pouch, he carefully secured the flap. He took a deep breath and resumed his attack on the shoots. They continued moving slowly under the sweltering sun, through the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon. Eventually, finally, it appeared that the stalks were beginning to thin. After a little longer, Silva was sure of it, and he slew the final shoots like the helpless stragglers of a routed army.
Before him now stretched a virtual savanna, filled with long grasses of various types. Some looked like “normal” grass, like coastal Bermuda, but there were large, almost islandlike clumps of taller stuff that reminded him of kudzu, complete with blue and purplish foxtail blossoms congregated near the edges. Strange birds (real birds, it seemed) flitted and swarmed around the clearing on strange wings, almost like dragonflies. There were a few of the now ubiquitous lizard birds, which occasionally streaked in to snatch one of the inoffensive-looking things, but even the birds nearest the victims didn’t appear to give them any heed. Perhaps from within the apparent security of their multitudes, the weird little birds just didn’t notice.
“Every time I turn a corner on this goofed-up world, I see somethin’ even more goofed up,” Silva mumbled. He surveyed the expanse of the savanna for several moments, trying to divine if it represented a threat of any kind. There were few large animals on the island, and most of those behaved aggressively only within the bounds of their apparently single-minded desire to be left alone. They were retiring and extremely heavily armored in the manner of giant land tortoises, even if any physical resemblance was remote. The smaller ones could be killed, with the Doom Whomper at least, and their flesh was fat and wholesome, but they’d learned that killing anything on this island came with a dose of risk. They’d met an interesting variety of smaller predators and scavengers that were far more capable and dangerous than they appeared. All were smaller than a man and most were fairly skittish. Some were not, and those were usually more than happy to contest them for the meat.
So far, they’d encountered only one type of really large, dangerous animal during their brief, limited forays-and those didn’t exactly live there. Silva now knew from experience that they had to be particularly watchful for the occasional, early-arriving “shiksak.” He called them “shit-sacks”; of course, “shiksak” was a Tagranesi word and he tended to prefer his own names for things. No matter what anybody called them, the damn things gave him the creeps.
Once, if anybody had ever told him he’d run across anything scarier than a “super lizard” on land, he’d have called them a liar. Now he knew better. Shiksaks were almost as big as super lizards, and although generally slower moving, they were actually quicker in a sprint. Maybe “lunge” or “leap” was a better term. They struck him as kind of a twisted cross of a crocodile, an eel, and a frog. They had big, fat bodies with long swimming tails with a ridge or finlike arrangement beginning behind their heads that ran the length of their backs, all the way to the ends of their tails. Their forelegs were little more than stumpy, clawed “flippers,” but they had long, powerful hind legs with heavily webbed “feet” like those of a frog or toad. Add long, broad heads full of lots of teeth to the mix, and they even looked sort of comical in a way, like a giant pollywog that had swallowed most of an alligator. The young, towheaded Abel Cook, who’d once been fascinated with the dinosaurs of their “old” world, believed they were a type of mososaur that had evolved an amphibious capability to lay their eggs on shore, away from this world’s more treacherous seas. Maybe so. “Mosey-saurs” they may once have been, but Silva was only concerned with what they’d become.
Individually, they weren’t really that bad, he admitted to himself. A single shiksak wasn’t as scary as a single super lizard. Unlike super lizards, which seemed to possess a kind of creepy cunning, shiksaks apparently weren’t any smarter than pollywogs. Also, even if their thick, croclike skins made them practically bulletproof to the Imperial muskets, nothing was immune to his treasured Doom Whomper. No, so far the most pressing menace represented by the usually lethargic “early bird” shiksaks was that the sneaky bastards could change goddamn colors! That just wasn’t fair. They crept ashore, made a nest, and plopped down to lay their eggs. Sprawling there, in the dense Yap, or “Shikarrak ” Island jungle, they were difficult to see-and they would gulp down anything that came wandering by. Fair or not, even that wasn’t an insurmountable problem: be careful, watch where you’re going, and stay in pairs. Simple enough. The really big, scary problem-according to what they’d squeezed out of Lawrence (“Larry the Lizard”)-was that within a month the whole island would be working with the damn things like maggots in meat, and nothing that wasn’t armored like a tank, couldn’t climb a really big tree or squirm down a tiny hole, would survive.
No human or ’Cat would fit down a hole small enough that the shiksaks couldn’t dig it out, and the trees… would be full of other dangerous things. Larry had been here before when things got like that, during his “trial,” and he’d survived. That was the point of the trial-to test his wits. But he’d been all alone, with only himself to look after. Dennis Silva had to make sure nothing happened to Princess Rebecca, Lieutenant Tucker (the Skipper’s dame), the Lemurian Captain Lelaa, Sister Audry, and the gawky but gutsy Abel Cook. Maybe he would concern himself a little with a few of their Imperial companions who didn’t like him very much-or maybe not. As he saw it, his plate of responsibility was pretty damn full.
Larry hadn’t been willing to “blow” about the danger at first, even though he blamed himself for their presence there in the first place. He’d sworn an oath. He finally agreed to tell Rebecca and Miss Tucker, since no female was ever expected to undergo the trial. Even that might have been stretching things, but he just couldn’t bear to let his precious Rebecca face the dangers unprepared. Silva was still a little put out that Larry hadn’t just told him. He had to know the girls would blow. Oh, well, at least this way Silva got the word without Larry having to technically break his. One way or another, he’d learned what he was up against, as far as looking after the girls was concerned, and ultimately that was all that really mattered. Larry could look out for himself.
Dennis examined the tall grass a little longer, then shrugged. He couldn’t see anything dangerous, but that didn’t mean much. He thrust his cutlass into the scabbard tied to his belt and unslung the Doom Whomper. The big, heavy thing had been strapped diagonally across his back to keep it out of the way. “All right, fellas, come on out, I guess,” he said. “If there’s any boogers out there, I can’t see ’em. Just keep your eyes peeled.”
Abel Cook emerged first from the bamboo forest. He’d also secured his cutlass and was awkwardly carrying an Imperial musket in what he seemed to consider a proficient and vigilant manner. He managed a relieved, tired smile as he joined Silva. Midshipman Brassey of the Imperial Navy ap
peared next. The dark-haired boy was no older than Cook, and even if he was more accustomed to his cumbersome musket, he seemed just as relieved to escape the oppressive, confining thicket.
Captain Rajendra was close on the boy’s heels. He was the only one of the marooned survivors with skin darker than Silva’s, and whereas all the color had been bleached from Silva’s, Rajendra’s hair, bushy mustaches, and short, thick beard remained jet-black. In Rajendra’s case, it was probably racial, but Silva had never asked and didn’t care. Courtney Bradford might have been fascinated to learn more about Rajendra’s genealogy, but God knew where Bradford was now. He might be in Baalkpan or points west. He might even be ironically near, with the Skipper, searching for the castaways. It was ironic because even if that were true, they would never find them. The Skipper had no way of knowing that the survivors of Ajax had become castaways and Ajax herself had literally ceased to exist. Silva usually enjoyed irony to a certain degree, even if he’d only recently learned the word. He even managed to glean a small measure of amusement from it in the current situation. He recognized irony for the bitch she could be and tended to be philosophical about it when she turned around and bit him on the ass.
Rajendra didn’t appreciate irony at all, as far as Silva could tell. Apparently he didn’t appreciate much of anything. Even after all these weeks, he seemed able to summon only a scowl when his eyes fell upon Dennis. Silva was philosophical about that too. He’d saved the man’s life. He’d saved all their lives. But the way he’d gone about it
… He supposed it was inevitable there’d be a touch of resentment. Like the others, Rajendra went armed with a musket, but he also carried a brace of pistols and a sword. Occasionally, absently, Silva wondered if the man’s desire to use the weapons on him had waned at all. He didn’t lose sleep over it, but it could be distracting to know he really needed to watch his back as well as his front.
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