Among hundreds of knolls, a slightly higher knoll rose from the blackpines, but shaved. Absurdly naked, it held the massive stone fortress above the dark sea.
The walls of the Priory were a barren, brown-beige color that matched the stone of the knoll — stripped of its topsoil after the trees had been rooted out. The age of the fortress and rock suggested that that rape had been eons ago. The walls had grown smooth in the seasons before the ancient monastery had fallen to more merciless hands, the winds polishing the stone. There were no graceful spiraling turrets nor arching palace gates. This place had been designed to hold the outer world at bay. The windows were small, angled slits; the doors deep set with double gates, and only the massive eastern entrance would allow a cavalry passage.
But the foreboding, austere front was not the cause of Diana’s fear. Her gaze scanned the ancient fortress as she dug into a hidden pocket of her belt. She prayed she was mistaken as she opened accordion-style binoculars to look through them.
At the base of the embankment loomed a massive metal box with a laser gun atop it, casing flashing silver in the morning sun. Diana felt her chest tighten. Fifty meters to either side of it stood another. Grimly she noted a trail of them across the face of the hill. Undoubtedly the system extended around the entire fortress.
Z’ki Sak, Diana! What had Garrison been doing here?
“What are you looking at?” Elana asked suddenly, realizing it was not the Priory itself that drew Di’nay’s attention.
“There,” Diana pointed, offering the glasses to Elana, “at the base of the hill.”
Elana’s brow wrinkled slightly with perplexed concentration as she looked through the glass and queried, “The metal boxes worry you?”
“They’re laser guns,” Diana explained, folding her gadget away. “They control a narrow finger of light that eats through anything it touches. It strikes as fast as any snake but with the reach of a long bow.”
“That does not sound promising,” Elana muttered. The eitteh rumbled something. “She is right, Di’nay. We should go below. We are too exposed here.”
† † †
The next sunrise found them cloaked in the river’s mists at the southern landing. Uneasily Diana walked across the dock and pulled the mallet off its hook. A dull clunk echoed out over the water as she struck the sounding tube.
“Three times,” Elana called softly from the mists.
Diana waited, feeling vulnerable on that bare deck. Again she hit the three beats. This time there was an answering from the north shore. Diana returned the mallet to its place and stepped back into the fog.
“He comes alone,” Elana muttered as Di’nay touched her shoulder.
“Good enough.” But her stomach was tight; she felt like they were walking into a trap. This man’s ferry was the nearest crossing to the Priory; he owed allegiance to the Maltar. They were, by necessity, using the Maltar’s own front door — and using it with a weak bluff. They hoped that in brazenly announcing that they were destined for the Priory, the man would not find their presence too questionable.
“Where is he?” Diana muttered with impatience.
“Near the half-way mark.” Elana’s voice was quite calm. Sarcasm laced Diana’s voice as she said, “You haven’t done this before?”
A flicker of a smile broke Elana’s unreadable expression, but she made no reply.
The pulley system creaked as the river current dragged against the ferry. Diana sighed deeply to settle her nerves, straightening her shoulders. There was a point of no return that always produced a cold control deep in her. As the dim outline of the boatman and barge became visible, Diana realized that point had been reached.
Grimly she pulled off her cloak and folded it into her pack. She would not wear a green cloak just as she did not ride red horses into Maltar’s backyard.
A few feet from the shore the man left his turn crank and sank his pole into the watery depths, guiding the ferry to the dock. “No heroics,” Diana reminded her friend sternly. Elana nodded and, lifting the edge of her brown skirt, stepped carefully onto the dock. Her feet were bare and suitably muddy, but the boatman had not missed the flash of white calf. Elana had his full attention as they approached. He was not a stupid man, however, and the black scabbard at Diana’s side had not gone unnoticed. But pretty wenches made much better pictures to contemplate.
“Good tidings to you, Sir,” Elana said to the boatman in his native tongue, smiling hesitantly. “My Lord bids me ask, is the road, beyond, the Priory’s way?”
“Your Lord?” The sidelong glance hovered between disrespect for a silent stranger and fear of a moody swordbearer.
This was more than a boatman, Elana suddenly understood. The scar along his right cheek had come from soldier’s combat. She prayed he had not done too much port duty or he might question if Di’nay truly came from the southern continent.
“He too good to speak to freemen?”
Diana’s dark eyes narrowed as she met the glowering challenge.
The packs landed with a heavy thunk on his barge and obediently Elana boarded.
“Priory you said?” He looked around quickly at Elana, then back to the grim swordbearer with a nod. “True, this road goes that way.” Sullenly Diana stepped onto the barge and moved to the far corner. Elana hurried to get the packs — the good servant — dropping them near Di’nay, before settling herself against the railing. Folding her arms and crossing her ankles, Diana deliberately turned to face the north shore. Her message was clear — tolerance was scarce.
“May you pardon my Lord,” Elana spoke hastily, as if unwilling to totally alienate their host quite yet. “It is a long journey from the lower continent that we have come. He is not accustomed to our climate — or our speech.”
“South of Ramains, you say?“
“Desert Peoples, Sir.”
“Then he’s best excused. Never taught them manners.”
He squared his shoulders, pleased to be showing the lass how much more civilized he could be in comparison. His practicalities reasserted themselves abruptly. “Can he pay?”
She produced the standard number of glass shells from her purse and he grunted. Laboriously he dropped each into his palm counting the fare, but he eyed the figure in the corner. Worn, but quality clothing — he noted the stranger had money.
The last shell dropped and his palm stayed open. “It’s not enough.”
Fully aware of his amarin — that he could not count beyond six — Elana gasped and put a hand to her throat. “Oh please, Sir, do count them again!”
“What? You accuse me of cheating?!”
“No, oh please,” she hushed him with a hurried look to Di’nay.
He grudgingly lowered his voice.“Do you accuse me then?”
“No, oh no.” She pushed her hand into her small belt purse, finding nothing. “But I couldn’t have lost any… oh please, do count it again, Sir. My Lord was quite specific when he counted out the pieces this morning — quite specific.”
Warily his narrow eyes slid to the silent figure.
“He will be so angry with me!” Appealingly she bit her lip, gesturing to the shells in his hand. “Please…? How much more? Oh, he will beat me for certain….”
“There now, girl.” He was not about to confront a swordbearing man who could count, and the chance to save face by sparing the girl a beating was almost a good deed. “I’ll say it’s the right price. There’ll be no harm done to you over a bitty piece of glass now. Not while I can have a say about it.”
“Oh but — oh, thank you. It’s so kind of you.”
“Not a word ’bout it.” He unwrapped the mooring line and picked up the pole.
“But surely? I know. I will tell my Lord you have been very helpful — about the way to the Priory.”
“Well that’s not being much,” he pointed out practically, enjoying her attention. With the pole in hand he guided the barge out into the river.
“And how you came out so quick and all
, crossing the river just for us.”
He grinned, flattered.
“I know my Lord will mention your kindness and service to those at the Priory.”
That seemed to startle him. He looked at her blankly, then stalked off to the turn crank as his color rose. She followed him quickly.
He frowned and cleared his throat. “Now where exactly did you say you’re going to? At the Priory, I mean?”
“In truth, I’m not certain.” She threw him a fluttering smile. “My Lord was summoned several monarcs ago. He is not even certain the Great One is still here — or if he has gone west for the winter by now?”
“Aye, well,” the boatman said, looking pale. “He’s still here all right. Lights flashing day and night around the place, burning trees.”
Elana did not miss the fear in his amarin. So the laser guns were not just decoration. She smiled demurely at him to distract him.
His face flushed darker. “Might you be staying in the cas’le proper then?”
“I would not know.” Elana understood by this question that he’d rather they were as far away from the Priory’s gossipy servants as possible, and that Maltar’s guard and he were not on the best of terms.
He said, “Well, there’s a couple of nice taverns on the road. Just inside the town wall there’s a boarding house — some of the best food servings in these parts. Very little gossip too, girl. Might be a place for you — if your business is to be quiet.”
“Oh yes, thank you.” Elana beamed in delight and pushed her advantage. “Do you not see what I mean about yourself? Being so helpful and such?”
“Now what did I say?”
“But surely?”
“Are you deaf!” he interrupted flatly. He suddenly felt downright callused. This girl was getting to be too much trouble no matter how pretty her hair might be, and she was going to be getting him too much notice. “It’s I who does the living around here. You keep your mouth shut. Understand? And I’ll do likewise. Hear me?”
She nodded, backing up a step.
“Now off with you. Your Lord will be wondering if your affections is straying. And I got no need for trouble over a scrawny maid. Get!”
Elana turned on her heel and hurried to Di’nay.
When Elana’s body was squarely between Diana and the boatman she broke into a broad grin. “I would love to have understood that exchange. You fluttered and danced like a tavern maid.”
Elana made a scoffing sound. “He’s shallow. I did not even have to tamper with his amarin.”
“Did he notice your eyes?”
“What about them?”
Diana nodded. In the mist and with the Sight’s guise, they looked quite gray. “So what did you learn? I gathered he was trying to demand a higher price from the crossing, but you lost me after that.”
“The Maltar and his court is still here. And consequently this fellow does not want his name mentioned up on the hill.”
“Friendly sort of place, isn’t it?”
Elana shrugged. “I suspect he wouldn’t be so cautious if they’d already moved west, but his beloved monarch is not one to seek favors from lightly.”
“Why would he want something from the Maltar?”
“He would not, but I suggested we could call his good work to the Maltar’s attention. From his amarin I gathered he’d rather go completely unnoticed.”
“I take it he’s not apt to say anything to anyone about us, even if they ask?”
“So we can hope. What he remembers will not help them in any case.”
Their caution seemed prudent as they reached the northern shore. The militia’s board carried a fresh poster. An exceptionally short man clad in a green cloak and traveling alone was being pursued. He spoke with a Ramainian accent and was to be considered a spy.
“I never particularly thought of myself as short,” Diana commented dryly as they started up the road.
“Neither have I,” Elana agreed as they exchanged smiles. As the mist swallowed the boatman’s cabin, Diana glanced over her shoulder uncertainly. The road ahead was rising, but the forest dimmed what little sunlight there was in this early morning.
“I can see through this,” Elana reassured her, sensing her concern. “And it will clear a little when we reach higher ground as it warms.”
“Warms? This is Aggar. Surely you jest?!”
But Elana surprised her by agreeing, “It is cold here. I only hope we leave before the snow sets in.”
Not such an odd wish considering her bare feet and browning skin, Diana realized. But it wasn’t safe to stop so close to the river. The creak of the barge ropes was still audible — a kind of haunting echo that urged them on.
“I refuse to suffer more than a league without boots,” Elana announced flatly. “Sooner if you see some place safe.”
The damp was seeping in through Diana’s tunic and fieldsuit, but she did not call a halt either; this was not a day for foolishness.
† † †
The rain had worsened when they made camp. Well hidden in the depths of the forest and away from the roads, they settled down to wait for darkfall and the sparse safety that the night would bring to their prowling.
With the descent of the first moon the icy drizzle lifted. Leaving the eitteh to guard their packs and camp, they started for the lasers. The forest felt cold and damp under their feet, a warning that before dawn there would be a thick frost and the pine needles of the forest’s floor would freeze in thin sheets of ice.
Uncomfortable, Diana thought the air smelled like snow. She was loath to admit how uninviting the darkness had become. It was monarc’s end, and the eighth single moon of the tenmoon season had long left the sky. Ten times a year, at regular intervals, one of the lunar sisters was absent from the sky. The difference was imposing, foreboding black. A darkness unusual for a planet which seldom had a full hour or two of moonlessness on any night. Usually there was enough light from the Twins to allow even the poorest artisan to work by moons’ light. Diana grew more and more uneasy in the blackness. The forest’s roof combined with the dense cloud cover to swallow whatever faint light the starry sky gave, and her flashlight was, by necessity, set on a very low, narrow beam.
That Elana moved confidently through the trees was only vaguely reassuring, and Diana had a brief image of herself as a child in that long, empty mine. She shook the picture aside and made herself focus on their task. Ahead — somewhere — stood the laser-guarded perimeter of the Priory’s hill. They were approaching it through the woods, a good league west of the road that eventually wound around the rocky base to the Priory’s eastern gates. The forest’s paths were risky given the night’s darkness; the Maltar might have assigned extra patrols in these woods.
Diana’s plans were fairly simple — basic reconnaissance and the disarming of one laser gun for future passage across the perimeter. The guns Diana had seen through her binoculars had been old and varied in make and model. She knew from Terran history that a number of sky cruisers had been lost in this corner of Aggar during the Empire’s initial invasions. Elana had added that the Maltar’s ancestors had hoarded much of the wreckage from those turbulent days. The Council had never seen much to worry about, considering the imperial reactors that had powered the machines had long been destroyed. The rulers had been too greedy of their catch to allow the metal-smiths to melt their treasures down for alloy. The Council had seen no threat from the rulers possessing such a supply of the alien metal.
The presence of Garrison changed everything. With the power supply from his ship, he had the expertise to make these relics of an earlier age actually work.
The variety of machines meant the laser guns had not necessarily come from the same design; therefore, if they were working, they had to be jury-rigged with an individual control circuit for each. This also meant that the range and sweep diameter of each gun would be a little different. To prevent the cross-firing that would trigger an eternal firing sequence from the electric eyes of neighboring m
achines, there would be some fairly predictable gaps in the sweep patterns of each gun. It would be, supposedly, only a matter of dashing through the holes, attaching the decoder to the power cable below a gun’s controlling circuit, and waiting until the proper command frequency was decoded. At that point, Diana could — independent of the other lasers — shut the gun down with a remote.
Although Diana had not come particularly prepared to disarm lasers, it was fairly simple to adapt the de-scrambler on her transmitter to suit her purposes. She was rather pleased with her ingenuity. What she was not pleased about was Elana’s role in their little venture.
“You worry overmuch.” Elana’s tone was teasing as it drifted back to Diana. She gave an ambiguous ‘humph’ and held her tongue.
Elana was perfectly justified in her insistence on being their runner. The woman had been the top sprinter amongst the trainees at the Keep — for several seasons. It made her the logical one to run the twenty or twenty-five meters across the perimeter. Diana had never been very good at the short race, but theoretically she should still be fast enough to slip through.
Theory alone was a rather weak argument, Elana had pointed out. Especially when one could strengthen the odds by adding a little speed.
Despite the simplicity of the plan, it seemed much less viable to Diana now that she wasn’t going to be the one taking the risks.
† † †
Elana blinked, suddenly feeling disoriented by the moonless sky. She shook her head, vaguely trying to rid herself of the blurred edges to her vision. The dense overcast above only worsened things. A heavy electrical charge seemed to hang in the air with the waiting storm clouds, and it distorted her Sight. She was fine for the first twenty meters or so, but beyond that, the individual boundaries of the trees blurred with sparkling, crackling shivers.
Shadows of Aggar (Amazons of Aggar) Page 33
