The Secret City

by Brian K. Lowe

  “I think I know,” Gaz Bronn said.

  Maire nodded at him. “I’ll bet you do. Not long after the coup started, someone stole an airship. I assume that was you. The rebels tried to bring it down by throwing boulders at it. They’d been building illegal weapons and they planned to hold the entire city hostage by threatening to bring pieces of the roof down.”

  I had never seen a lizard’s eyes bug out before, but Gaz Bronn proved it could be done.

  “That’s insane!” he gasped. “That’s—that’s—I mean…I knew they had the weapons, because we were in that ship, but—they were going to threaten to use them on the city?”

  “Yeah,” Timash chimed in. “But apparently they underestimated your people. Instead of being scared, they threw their numbers in with the loyalists. These huge screaming mobs overran the compound, and anybody who tried to stand up for Fale Teevat was slaughtered. You should have seen it—klurath were fighting with klurath in the streets, there was blood everywhere…” his voice trailed off. “Well, maybe it was better you didn’t see it. But by the time it was over, there were loose weapons all over the place and nobody to tell us we couldn’t have them, so we took ‘em. Pretty soon other slaves came out of their houses looking for somebody to tell them what to do, and that’s when Maire took over.”

  “I managed to get enough slaves in the compound that when some of the klurath did come back, we were able to keep them outside. With Hargreen’s help, I was able to start negotiations with some of the high-ranking government officials who hadn’t thrown in with Fale Teevat, and convince them we weren’t planning to start a revolt.” She twitched her eyebrows mischievously. “Of course, it didn’t hurt that we still had all the catapults on our side of the wall. We weren’t about to use them, but the klurath didn’t know that. I convinced the klurath that we were all on the same side, at least for now. We did insist that one of ours be named acting inlama, if only for show. I thought it wouldn’t hurt.”

  “An excellent idea, although I can’t imagine how you managed to push it through,” Gaz Bronn said. “We are a lawful people, and rebellion is not in our nature. We wouldn’t be in the position we are now if the inlama were not behind it. I should have realized that a long time ago.”

  “It was not your fault, Gaz Bronn.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “You thought Fale Teevat was your friend.”

  Gaz Bronn looked at his own claw, fingers upraised. “Yes…I will have to ask him about that.” His voice chilled me, a reminder that while he was my friend, he was not a man. He glanced up at Maire. “Where is he?”

  “They’ve retreated to the airship base. We have people watching them. They’re reporting a lot of activity between there and the surface. We were afraid they’d come back here and try to attack us, but that hasn’t happened yet.”

  “By the time the riots came down here, they were already engaging the Nuum,” I said. “They cannot fight a war on two fronts, but since they know we are in no position to threaten them, they are concentrating on the outside. They probably think if they can offer the klurath a way out of the cave altogether, everything will be forgiven.”

  “That is what they believe,” Gaz Bronn said. “They’ve been preaching returning to the surface for years.” Suddenly he looked around with the air of a man who has remembered that he forgot something. “Where is Daela Pram?”

  “I’m sorry, my lord,” said Hargreen. “Daela Pram was killed covering your escape.” He hesitated. “He did not fall easily.”

  We were silent. Gaz Bronn bowed his head, and even I was sorry to hear it, although it was not unexpected. Daela Pram and I had not gotten along well, but I had respected his loyalty to his chief.

  After an interval, Maire asked me: “What are the Nuum doing? We haven’t got much of a navy; we haven’t had to fight anyone for two hundred years.”

  I thought back to a crowded plaza that had erupted into riot two decades ago during my first visit, and the merciless tactics the Nuum had used to put it down. As above, so below, I thought. Be it under Nuum or klurath, Thorans had lived as slaves for centuries. But this was not the right time to argue the point.

  “We met a ship from Crystalle after we escaped. The klurath challenged it but they retreated. They convened a special meeting of the Council of Nobles in Crystalle to discuss the crisis.”

  “The Council of Nobles?” Maire made a disgusted face. “Oh, that’ll help. We might as well fight the klurath navy ourselves.”

  “Actually,” I said off-handedly, “that is pretty much exactly what I had in mind.”

  Chapter 43

  I Assume Command

  As happens so often to me in these situations, I spoke before I thought. And, as is typical, I found my brain scrambling to catch up to my mouth as it frantically tried to ascertain why I had just said what I said. I know myself well enough by now to know that somewhere in the back niches of my mind, a strategy was forming, random thoughts bubbling in the melting pot of my imagination until they melted into a plan of action that with quick wit and sufficient forward momentum I could persuade people to follow, and which, with luck, would not lead them straight to their deaths. Experience had taught me that this was a very dangerous path to follow—made more dangerous by the fact that, up until now, it had always worked.

  Someday my luck was going to run out and a lot of my friends were going to die. It could very easily be today.

  Maire, Timash, Gaz Bronn, Sanja…they were all staring intently at me, awaiting my next pronouncement. Their faith was almost as encouraging as it was frightening, because I had absolutely nothing to say. So that’s what I said, because the secret of command is never to let your troops know when the battle is lost.

  “I’m going to need some time to iron out the details. Get me whatever reports you have on the rebels’ latest movements, the more recent the better. Also—” Work, brain, damn you! “Do we have an estimate of our numbers? I need to know how many slaves—Thorans, and how many klurath we can count on. And how many of them are armed. And our best estimate of the enemy’s strength and weaponry. Maire, where is the crew of The Dark Lady?”

  “Most of them actually out trying to find out the information you’re asking for. We needed people we could count on to work together to try to canvass the local compounds, rounding up any slaves who are willing to fight. We have klurath doing to same thing with their people, but neither one is having a lot of luck. Now that the excitement’s over, most people seem to want to stay home and wait for it all to be over.”

  I took a moment to appear to mull this over while I tried to order my plans. “That may be just as well. We have no use for conscripts; most the slaves would be useless in a fight.”

  “Not all of them,” Hargreen said.

  I was surprised to hear from him; I had almost forgotten he was there. Plus, I was unsure how I felt about him. While he was plainly now working on the side of Gaz Bronn, my earlier suspicions colored my opinion of him.

  “What do you mean?”

  He glanced at Gaz Bronn apologetically before answering. “There’s always been an underground of slaves advocating revolt. I was never one of them,” he hastened to add, “but I knew a few of them. That’s where you’re getting your recruits now. I don’t think they’re trained, but they’re willing.”

  “Don’t worry, Hargreen,” Gaz Bronn said. “We already knew. But as long as no one made any trouble, we didn’t bother to track them down.”

  I wondered if Gaz Bronn realized that they were going to make trouble now, and what he planned to do about it later. Whether he knew it or not, life in Jhal had changed forever. But that was another problem that could be shelved until tomorrow. If any of us lived that long.

  I assumed an air of command and looked about at my friends and allies. “All right, you have your orders. Gaz Bronn, I need you to speak to the klurath. They have to understand that they must be willing to work with the Thorans. If we cannot stop Fale Teevat, he will return eventually, and he has already shown
he will stop at nothing. Timash, I’m going to need a room where I can study those reports when they come in.”

  “You can have this room.” Timash spread his long arms and started ushering the others out the door. “You’re welcome to it. The sooner I abdicate, the better.” He had everyone outside and the door closed before most of them even knew what was happening. I have never known anyone who could clear a room like Timash.

  The comforting figure of the Librarian shimmered to life in front of me before I could even summon him.

  “So,” he said. “You’ve gone from Lieutenant Clee of the American Expeditionary Force to captain of The Dark Lady to commanding general of whatever you would call this mob. I take it you are seeking strategic advice?”

  “That is what I was hoping for. I cleared the room because you and I both know that I was talking through my hat. The problem is that, as Hargreen pointed out, most of our troops were green, eager but unseasoned. Even trained soldiers have been known to fail and retreat in the face of a determined enemy, and counting the crew of The Dark Lady and the Zilbiri, we have fewer than 75 experienced human fighters. I know the klurath can fight; Gaz Bronn is as fierce as any, and Fale Teevat’s personal guards were almost more than we could handle. If we were back in trenches, and I ordered Gaz Bronn over the top, he would go. But what about the rest of them? The last slave uprising was two hundred years ago! Fight? You heard what Maire said, most of them are hiding. Even among all the people in this room, I may be the only one who has fought in an actual war.”

  The Librarian assumed the pose of a teacher whose student is not responding well to the Socratic method.

  “Which is why it puzzles me that you think I could be of assistance. You know very well that, as a mere branch library intended for your temporary personal use, I was not programmed with any military history or strategy and that as a consequence, in all likelihood I would be of no use to you whatsoever. In other words, my friend, loathe as I am to disappoint you, all available evidence indicates that you are completely on your own.”

  Chapter 44

  The Battle to Stop a War

  Your enemies will always tell you the truth if that is the surest way to hurt you. On the other hand, you can count on your friends to lie to you if that is the surest way to cheer you up. The Librarian could not lie (so far as I knew), but he and I had spent years in verbal sparring, and he was perfectly capable of occluding the truth like the slickest lawyer.

  “Just because all of the available evidence indicates a conclusion, does not mean that all of the evidence has been adduced. You taught me that.”

  The Librarian smiled with more than a hint of self-satisfaction. “You have me there. While you were talking to the Council, I was downloading pertinent historical military files and strategic treatises. After correlating the data I have on the klurath, I have drawn some conclusions.

  “Tell me, Keryl, how many times have you fought klurath in combat?”

  “Let me see, we were lost in the dome, then the first attack on Gaz Bronn, the coup attempt, the patrol outside Gaz Bronn’s house, and the guards who ambushed us at the escape ship: Five. Unless you count the ones who shot at us on the surface a while ago.”

  “I do not. What did all of the other incidents have in common?”

  “Hmm. The first time we lost, the second we won, the third we ran, and the fourth and fifth times we won… I guess the only thing I can think of is that it was always ‘we.’ I was never alone. There were always at least two of us, sometimes three.”

  “Exactly. And how many klurath were there?”

  “Depends. But we were always outnumbered.” Then the light dawned and I started to see where he was trying to lead me. “We were always outnumbered… Are you saying the klurath only fight when they have the advantage?”

  “I am saying that the klurath, like the Nuum, have never been tested. You said it yourself: Until a few weeks ago, their only fighting experience was when one of them was challenged to a duel. And slaughtering Gaz Bronn’s slaves in the middle of dinner is hardly the same as what you went through.

  “You have experienced warriors. The Zilbiri defy death every day, and The Dark Lady’s crew is more than a match for its equal number in Nuum or klurath. If you use them as your wedge, with the others in support, there is every reason to believe that the klurath will break and run before a drop of blood is spilt.”

  “And if you underestimate them, we could all be killed.”

  “Keryl, I was created in order to keep that from happening. I may have grown beyond my programming, but I have not discarded it.”

  I have gone over the top with less assurance.

  As I surveyed the low-lying base from which Fale Teevat proposed to launch his invasion of the surface, I had to admit that the Librarian’s assessment of klurath military preparedness was right on target. With secrecy as their goal, they had built the base as far from Jhal as they could, taking care to leave the intervening territory virgin, meaning a floor covered with rocks and stalagmites that concealed our forces as well as they had previously concealed Fale Teevat’s plans. On the other hand, given their centuries of dominance, they had never given a thought to erecting a fence.

  From what I could see, the installation consisted on a series of rambling single-story buildings, with a very few boasting some type of superstructure or antenna that raised it above the rest. Even so, none of this had been visible until we had approached quite near, and it was quite undiscernable from anywhere near Jhal proper.

  “Are those gun emplacements?” I asked Maire, presuming that Gaz Bronn would not know a gun battery if he walked up to it and kicked it. “Just past that building with the dome.”

  “Hmm,” she murmured. “He’s ready in case the Nuum find their way in here. I guess he’s willing to risk bringing the entire roof down if he has to.”

  Beside me, Gaz Bronn’s thoughts were black with fury.

  Based on our scouts’ reports, I had taken the risk of bringing our entire force with me even as I performed my own initial surveillance. There was some sense to this, as the presence of an armed group of Thorans in the middle of Jhal could not be kept secret for very long. At the same time, it meant my men were standing in idleness while I pondered the best way for us to assault our target.

  We were two hundred strong, with the Zilbiri as my shock troops, and a hundred klurath following Gaz Bronn. The final company was composed of The Dark Lady’s crew, including Timash, and Skull, my one-time foe and now Maire’s trusted first officer, and a score of slaves—former slaves, I promised myself—selected from a hundred volunteers. I had been pleased to find Bryal among them, less so when Hargreen insisted on standing up to be counted.

  Although it would have eliminated the risk of alerting the base by avoiding the perimeter guards, adopting the same strategem as had dropped us into the inlama’s compound was too dangerous. In the city, ingrained superstition, as well as sheer practicality, made the chances of anyone looking up and seeing us as we descended manageable. Here, with airships taking off and landing at unpredictable intervals, the odds of discovery were dramatically higher, and one such sighting would have doomed us all.

  We had brought the gravity sleds with us, and I had considered using them on the approach. Klurath eyesight was poorer than ours, but their ability to detect ground vibrations, such as from marching men, was far more highly developed. Upon seeing the terrain, however, I concluded our progress would be too slow unless we flew at a height which would make us obvious to the merest glance. Too, bringing the sleds too close to the action would confine many men to a small space; although I had no reason to believe Fale Teevat’s men had weapons effective at any distance, I should not like to be proven wrong when all of my resources were clumped and vulnerable. Fortunately, neither the Zilbiri, who formed my vanguard, nor my volunteer slaves, knew aught of marching, so there were no vibrations stemming from the uniform steps of many men.

  “I count four,” I muttered to Gaz Bronn
. “They do not appear to be patrolling any set areas.”

  “I wouldn’t expect them to be,” he replied. “As you pointed our earlier, our only experience up until now has been in quelling slave uprisings, which usually involve unarmed mobs running around screaming until someone shows up with swords—and even at that, we haven’t had one in over two hundred years.”

  Knowing that the Librarian, hidden in my pocket, monitored everything around him, I predicted that he would lose no time in saying, “See? I told you so,” when the opportunity arose, even if he did not employ those exact words. Still, he had insisted that I take the credit for his observation when I presented it to my followers. Like me, the Librarian was a firm believer in the “seeing is believing” school of leadership, i.e., if your men see you exuding confidence, they will believe in your ability.

  “What are their orders, then?”

  Gaz Bronn took a moment to form his reply. “If they were my men, and I didn’t know there were two hundred enemy soldiers creeping up planning to take the base, my orders would be too keep an ear out for any movements. I would expect that the enemy would be coming straight from the city, and if I heard any strange vibrations, to raise the alarm. Then I could send up a few ships and the fight would be over.”

  “Just as I would,” I said, although again, that had been the Librarian’s opinion. Truthfully, my war experience, superior as it was to that of anyone else involved, was sadly lacking in aerial strategy, which had only been in its infancy in 1915. Left to my own devices, I might well have imitated my wartime superiors’ fatal error in underestimating the enemy’s technological advantage. They had ignored the machine gun, and I had nearly overlooked Fale Teevat’s flying gunships. Obviously, the pickets had to be removed without raising the alarm.