Return To Kaldak rb-36

by Джеффри Лорд

  Baliza had no answer to that question, then decided there wasn’t any. «Very well. You’re right. But-the Laws abandon me if I’m just going to sit on my bottom in Kaldak while this is happening! You will have to put me under arrest to make me do it, I warn you!»

  «I don’t expect you to do anything of the sort!» said the High Commander. «In fact, we’ve got work for you every bit as important as the raid. You’re going to enter Doimar and bring out Feragga.»

  Baliza must have looked as confused as she felt, because Sidas explained himself very carefully. Baliza was to enter Doimar, find out where Feragga lived, go there, and bring her to Kaldak. Since Feragga was crippled, this would mean stealing a lifter as well.

  «You should be ready to take her by force if you have to. But as the Sky Master’s daughter, you’re the one person in Kaldak who might not have to. That’s why you’re going alone. If we sent in a squad, she’d probably kill herself rather than move an inch.»

  «Assuming she comes to Kaldak of her own free will, what then?»

  «A lot of Detcharn’s enemies will rally around her if she’s alive after the raid. She won’t be if we don’t get her out of Doimar. Detcharn will kill her if he survives the raid, and his friends will try if he doesn’t. With luck, Feragga will be ruler of Doimar again.»

  «It will take more than luck,» said Baliza. «It will take the consent of the Council of Nine.»

  For the first time, Geyrna spoke. «I think that will not be such a problem as you might think.» Something in her voice. .

  «You two worked this out between you,» Baliza exclaimed. «You-you’ve been playing with me all this time!»

  Sidas tried to look ashamed. He wasn’t very successful. As angry as she was, Baliza wanted to laugh. Finally she said, «All right. Feragga will make a good rallying point. Even if she doesn’t, she shouldn’t die at the hands of Detcharn’s hired killers. I’ll go, on one condition.»

  «Yes?» said the other two, almost in unison.

  «If I don’t come back, if Voros returns, go to him and speak plainly about his secret. If he is-my father-ask him to forgive me for-what I tried to do. Tell him I honored and loved him as best I could, although not as much as he deserved.»

  «And if he doesn’t come back?» said Sidas quietly. Baliza remembered how many people her stepfather had sent out who hadn’t come back. For the first time she saw clearly that he was growing old under that burden.

  «Then let him be remembered as a warrior of Kaldak. He was that, whatever else he was.» They could all drink to that.

  The lifter came to a stop a man’s height above the ground. Baliza swung herself out the door and dropped into the long grass. She carried a heavy pack, but the grass and the damp earth made for a soft landing. She stepped out from under the lifter and waved to the two pilots. They waved back, then the lifter whined away across the field. It stayed low, and quickly vanished behind the trees dimly visible on the edge of the field.

  The long grass and soft earth now made walking difficult. After a while Baliza gave up trying to avoid leaving a trail and simply plowed straight on. By the time she reached the edge of the field it was noticeably lighter. She was soaked to the skin from the waist down, and she also discovered that the grass was full of insects. She took her trousers off and picked the insects out while studying her map.

  She was about two days’ walk from Doimar by the shortest route, which she could not use. It brought her too close to the biggest training camp of the army of Doimar. The countryside there would be crawling with soldiers and the sky filled with lifters. So she would have to take a longer route. Call it four days’ traveling. That should still get her to Doimar with plenty of time to find out where Feragga was and how to get her out of the city, before the raiders struck the rocket base. After the raid, the Doimari would be very much on the alert, not to mention quick on the trigger. Also, Feragga might be dead.

  Things might go faster if she got help from the agents Kaldakan Intelligence already had in Doimar. Certainly they would have orders to do their best for her-Sidas had made that very clear.

  «If they don’t, I’ll be asking why. And if they don’t have some very good answers, they’ll be envying Tribesman slaves before I get through with them.» From Sidas’s expression, Baliza was glad she hadn’t tried to lie to him. He wasn’t cruel, but he was ruthlessly just in handing out both rewards and punishments.

  «The Intelligence people owe us a big debt for their clowning around. If they’d done their work properly, we’d have learned about Detcharn’s fever rockets a long time ago. We wouldn’t have to be throwing good men into a fangjaw’s mouth to do their work for them!»

  However, the fact remained that the Intelligence people certainly hadn’t lived up to their name. Would they be more trouble than help, when it came to snatching Feragga?

  Right now, though, she had to get to Doimar, before she even needed to worry about anything else. When she’d finished getting the insects out of her pants, Baliza pulled a set of farm woman’s clothing out of her pack. Turned inside out, her pack looked just like a Doimari carrying sack. To complete her disguise, she unfolded a broad-brimmed hat. It shielded her face from the sun and prying eyes. A concealed pocket in the brim also held a miniature laser pistol, where she could easily draw it with a gesture nobody would suspect.

  An hour after sunrise, two things happened at once. Baliza reached the bank of the Pesto River, and three lifters flew overhead. One of them was towing a balloon-load of troops. Before they were out of sight, Baliza saw the lifters start to circle, while the balloon began to descend.

  It might be just a training exercise. But it looked to Baliza a lot too much like a search party. For the moment they were a long way behind her, but that might change. She had to get out of the area as fast as she could-not easy, with a river half a mile wide in front of her.

  However, there were boats on rivers. Baliza started prowling along the bank, looking for an untended boat. Half an hour later she found a fisherman sitting on the bank, beside a beached canoe. He was sitting facing the river, all his attention on the dip net in his lap. He was mending its broken handle as Baliza crept up through the bushes behind him.

  When she knew she hadn’t been detected, she pulled out a slingshot and a handful of clay balls. Being the Sky Master’s daughter gave her the chance to learn all sorts of unusual fighting skills from equally unusual teachers. She still didn’t think she knew as much as her father-the tales of his bare-handed duel against the arrogant Hota still thrilled her. But she felt she’d learned enough to be a worthy daughter to the Sky Master-and would she ever have a chance to ask him if he thought so, too?

  Baliza aimed the slingshot, pulled the cord back, and let fly. The clay ball took the fisherman in the temple and he toppled over sideways without even a groan. Baliza hurried out of cover and examined him. The clay ball had disintegrated on impact, as it was supposed to. The fisherman himself was senseless but breathing steadily. In a few hours he would awake with a crashing headache, a blue bruise on his temple, and no memory of what happened to him. The captured Tribesmen who’d taught her to use the slingshot in return for his freedom would have been proud of her.

  She dropped her pack and hat into the canoe and pushed it into the water, then climbed in. A few paddle strokes took her out into the current. Within moments she was on her way downstream toward Doimar, faster than she could have walked and with much less effort.

  The morning sun blazed on the water and made the ripples sparkle like jewels. She put her hat back on but took off her shirt. She knew that a soldier who sees a good-looking woman going about bare to the waist will seldom bother to ask questions-or at least not questions about whether she’s a spy.

  Chapter 23

  It was late afternoon, with the shadows growing long and the heat of the day beginning to die. Shangbari stretched, then rose to his feet and started walking restlessly up and down. If this had been a common hunt or raid, the men would by now have been
picking up their weapons; cleansing themselves before the Grandfathers, and gathering ready to leave the camp.

  Not this time, with Voros the Wise leading them against the wizards of Doimar. The sixty warriors would go aboard the skymachines at night, fly to the wizards’ home in the darkness, and attack it at dawn.

  «They won’t find it easy to see us on the way in,» Voros had said. «By the time we’ve finished wrecking the place, they’ll be too busy to bother us on the way out.» Although Voros had also said that victory would be worth the life of every one of the raiders, he seemed determined to bring home as many men as he could.

  So the raiders were facing a sleepless night and a long day. Most were sleeping or resting now. Some were with their women, including Voros himself.

  Shangbari had no fit woman for this time. His first wife had died trying to give him a son. He’d been courting a second woman when the Doimari struck and she died under the fire-beams. He would shout her name as his war cry while he fought the wizards.

  Still restless, he walked through the village and around on old sow asleep in her accustomed place in the middle of the path. A hundred paces farther on, he came to the three skymachines. They lay in the shadow of the trees, covered with branches to make them hard to see from the sky. The Doimari war colors showed faintly through the green leaves.

  Shangbari was not entirely happy about going into such a great and important battle in disguise. Yet perhaps this was necessary, if you were fighting wizards. If they did not know who you were until your weapons struck them down, they could not work their magic against you.

  Certainly Voros had said so, to those who not only had doubts but spoke them out loud. He’d also said that anyone who argued further would have to fight either him or his battle-brother, the Sergeant Ezarn.

  No one wanted to raise a hand against Voros the Wise. The battle spirits might punish them for fighting in disguise, but they would be punished far worse for defying the spirit-blessed Voros. As for fighting Brother Ezarn-he could fight any two warriors of the Red Cats without even working up a heavy sweat. He had done so with fifty men looking on, and without breaking any law or custom of the Red Cats while doing it. No, fighting Ezarn might not be cursed, but it would certainly be very foolish.

  As he got closer to the skymachines, Shangbari saw Ezarn himself in front of one of them. He had one of their little doors open and was doing something to what lay inside with City man’s tools.

  «Hullo, Shangbari.»

  «Greetings, Ezarn. May I watch?»

  «Can’t sleep, hunh?»

  «No.»

  «Neither can I. Sit yourself down, by all means.»

  «I thank you.»

  Shangbari sat down cross-legged as Ezarn used both hands to pull a length of metal tube out of the door. The hunter thought that if he watched Ezarn long enough, he might learn something about the skymachines of the Cities. The more he learned, the better. Voros, Sparra, and Ezarn did not seem to care about Tribesmen gaining such knowledge. If there was war again between the Red Cats and the Cities, everything the Red Cats learned would give them new strength.

  The towers of Doimar were silhouetted against a sunset sky as Baliza turned into the Street of the Winesellers. Torches and lamps glowed all up and down the street, as the wineshops began their evening’s business. Baliza’s eyes turned upward, to lights on the roof of a five-story building halfway down the street. That was Feragga’s city home. As long as the lights went on every night, she was living there.

  A hand touched her shoulder softly and a voice murmured in her ear, «Tombs and cigars.»

  «Hello, Kandro,» Baliza replied. She turned to see the little Intelligence agent standing behind her, munching a sausage. «Any changes?»

  He shook his head. «Only two guards, and both of them half asleep already.»

  With only two guards, Feragga either didn’t fear danger or didn’t care about her life. It would be easy to get past two guards, then hold the stairs to Feragga’s quarters for more than long enough. Provided, of course, that the other two Intelligence men did their job of stealing a lifter ….

  «What if she won’t come with you?» said Kandro softly.

  «She probably will,» said Baliza. «But if she won’t, she won’t.»

  «We could kill her,» said Kandro hopefully.

  «No,» said Baliza sharply. They’d been over the question before. If this was the way Intelligence people thought, no wonder they hadn’t discovered Detcharn’s plans!

  «If we kill her, we’ll turn all her friends into friends of Detcharn. They’ll want vengeance on Kaldak. If we leave her alive, on the other hand, it will prove again that Kaldak doesn’t want war to the death.»

  «Perhaps.» Kandro’s face brightened. «Also, we will prove that we can slip into the heart of Doimar at will. They’ll be sleeping lightly and looking over their shoulders for years after that.»

  «Right,» said Baliza. She punched him in the shoulder. Kandro would see reason if you hit him over the head often enough.

  The sight of the sausage in the other’s hand reminded Baliza that she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. Her stomach rumbled.

  «Where did you get that sausage?»

  The man pointed down the street to a shop with an open window in front. A line was forming at the window, to buy sausages, loaves of hot bread, and mugs of beer and wine.

  It would not be as good as a regular meal at a table, but Baliza wanted to stay out of taverns and eating houses. In a room with only one or two doors, it was too easy to be trapped. In the streets she could run, or fight, with less risk of slaughtering half a dozen innocent Doimari.

  That was something else she’d learned from her father’s example and her mother’s teachings-although the Lords of the Law knew Kareena had no reason to call any Doimari «innocent.» Still, she’d been strict in what she demanded of herself and the fighters under her, as well as what she taught her daughter.

  When you must kill, kill swiftly. But do not kill at all, if there is any other way of winning.

  Detcharn watched the lamps coming on all over the rocket base. He went on watching until the last light was gone from the sky. He didn’t need either the sun or the lamps to know where everything was. The base was his creation-a creation devoted wholly to the destruction of Kaldak and every other enemy of Doimar.

  The Day of that destruction was coming fast. Most of the rockets for the first attack were ready in their launching tubes. All they needed was their fuel and their load of fever germs. The last rockets would be in place tomorrow. The reserve rockets were all finished and waiting in the storehouse.

  The pressurized cylinders of liquid germ culture had been moved to the main guardhouse. That way there were armed men around them every minute of the day and night. The huge fuel tanks were full, ready to feed the rockets through carefully tested pipelines.

  In short, everything had been done or was going to be done in time without much trouble. Detcharn could breathe easy-and also amuse himself. He rang for his servant and told the man to have the guards bring up Arsha. She was the assistant to the scientist who’d mistreated Voros’s pet Cheeky. A pity Voros hadn’t shot her, in addition to the scientist, although then Detcharn wouldn’t be having this opportunity to punish her himself.

  When the guards brought Arsha in, she had a black eye and a bleeding lip, and one shoulder of her gown was torn. Detcharn raised his eyebrows, and the guards turned pale.

  «I presume she struggled?» His voice was a smooth purr.

  One of the guards gave a jerky nod. «Yes. Du-Shro. She gave one of us a knee in the belly. A little lower, and he’d ‘ave really been ‘urtin. So we gave her something to remind her, not to be doin’ it again.»

  «Very well,» said Detcharn. «You were within your rights. You will hear no more of this.» He looked at Arsha. «She will, however.» He was glad to see her shudder in spite of the men holding her. «Now leave us.»

  Once he was alone with Arsha, Detc
harn threw off his robe. He stood naked while the woman slowly undressed. He noted that the bruises and cuts from her last visit were healing nicely; she would have her strength back.

  When she was naked, Detcharn pointed at the floor in front of him. «Kneel,» he said. She did not dare disobey or even be slow, but her face was twisted in shame and disgust.

  Good. Serving him like this was still unpleasant for her. If she ever came to enjoy it, he would have to find some other method of continuing her punishment. Arsha hadn’t yet paid in full for her stupidity over Voros and Cheeky.

  As the woman’s lips closed on him, Detcharn once again regretted that Voros had been killed in that lifter crash. He’d deserved a chance to help punish Arsha, too. And if Moshra hadn’t died, too, maybe they’d have learned a little more about telepathy from Voros and Cheeky. Oh, well, one Kaldakan deserter more or less could hardly make that much difference.

  Then Detcharn gave himself up entirely to pleasure.

  Blade saw the last campfires of the Red Cats fade into the darkness behind the lifter. He saw that the other pilot had the controls, got up, and went aft. He moved cautiously, so as not to affect the machine’s balance. With twenty men and all their weapons and equipment aboard, the lifter was loaded to capacity.

  The cabin was dark, but the air was thick with the smells of gun oil and unwashed Tribesmen. Near the open rear hatch, the air was fresher. Blade stuck his head out briefly, saw the other two lifters were following steadily a hundred yards behind, and relaxed. It was a clear night, and if it stayed that way there would be no problem with the lifters losing each other. In fact, there wasn’t a bloody thing for him to do for about the next four hours! He might as well try to get some sleep.

  Normally Blade would have found it easy to do this. Once a military operation passed the point of no-return, he usually found it easy to relax. Not this time. Was it the stakes being so much higher than usual-life or death for a whole Dimensiona Dimension that he himself had shaped? Was it the Dimension X secret being at stake? Or what?