by Peter Nealen
[Come, Friend of Hunters,] he signed. [We are moving you to a different place.]
[Where?] Gaumarus signed back as he stood up. Fresh worries and fears flooded his mind, every nightmarish possibility he’d thought of over the last few days coming flooding back.
[To somewhat better accommodations,] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff replied. [I will explain on the way. There is much to discuss.]
“What is he saying, Corporal?” Colonel Piett demanded, probably before Morav Dun could say anything.
“He says that we are to be moved to better accommodations, sir,” Gaumarus replied. “I don’t know more than that; he says he will explain on the way.”
“Of course he will explain on the way,” Morav Dun said, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed. “The Provenians must quickly do the abos’s bidding, after all.”
Colonel Piett flushed, but aside from his mouth working furiously, he said nothing. Capitan Maes stood up, but when Yev Kol pushed off the wall, he subsided.
“Come then, friend Gaumarus,” Kan Tur said abruptly. “Let us see what our hosts have in store.” He stepped forward, shouldering his powergun. His gaze swept across Provenian and Order Knight alike, his eyes smoldering. “If others are too afraid of the native Provenians, or perhaps of having to leave this safe haven to fight the M’tait again, let them stay. Or try to.” He nodded toward the door, where more armed mountain tribesmen were visible behind Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff.
Gaumarus, flanked by Verheyen and Raesh, nodded to Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff, who didn’t appear to need a translation. The former scout simply turned and led the way out of the room.
Gaumarus, Kan Tur, Xanar Dak, and Verheyen followed him. Several of the junior Provenian soldiers and noncoms began to join them. One of the Knights started to step forward, but stopped at a glare from Morav Dun.
[They will come with us, willingly or unwillingly,] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff signed. [Better if they come willingly.]
[Would your people fight them?] Gaumarus signed as he walked alongside him, coming out of the building and onto the main thoroughfare. It was about midday, and the sun was blazing off the orange rock wall across from the cave city.
[Of course we would,] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff signed. [There is too much at stake.]
Glancing back, Gaumarus saw that the indig had not wasted time; they were prodding the Provenians out at gunpoint. The Knights walked on their own, their powerguns held in their hands and their helmets on, but it was clear that they weren’t happy about it.
[They’ll remember this,] he signed to Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff.
[I am sure that they will,] the indig warrior replied. [But time is pressing. We must get to the southern camp quickly, and there is little time for human pride.]
Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff led the way toward the train platform, walking quickly. Even standing over a head taller than the indig, Gaumarus had to hurry to keep up.
[You said that you would explain on the way,] he signed.
[Yes, I did,] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff signed back. [And I will.]
Gaumarus subsided. He didn’t know just what was going on, but clearly time was of the essence, and with the bickering humans behind them, perhaps once they were on the train would be a better time.
Strangely, despite his doubts, now that they were in the open again, he found that he still trusted Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff. The warrior had stood up to his over-chief for their sakes. Not every part of their friendship might have been a lie.
The train waiting for them was only two cars, with one already sealed. Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff paused at the open hatch and pointed inside.
Gaumarus paused next to him, then glanced at the unhappy knot of human soldiers behind him. Verheyen and the others who had come from the Monoyan Plain were watching him. Kan Tur and Xanar Dak stood nearby, having donned their helmets again.
“I take it this is to be our transportation?” Kan Tur asked.
“Yes, sir,” Gaumarus replied. “He wants us to board.”
“Then let’s not keep him waiting, shall we?” Xanar Dak put in as he stepped up to the hatch and entered the car.
“Come, friend Gaumarus,” Kan Tur said, his translator pitched to a low murmur. “Shall we show the more pompous of our number how to act like men?”
Gaumarus looked up at the other’s faceless helm, took a deep breath, and gave a lopsided smile that he really didn’t feel. But a glance back at Colonel Piett and Capitan Maes decided him. He nodded curtly and stepped up into the car next to Kan Tur and Xanar Dak. Sergeant Verheyen followed closely.
Most of the Provenian officers were glaring at them, and he could only imagine what kind of looks Kan Tur and Xanar Dak were getting from the Knight Subcommander and several of their comrades. But they all boarded, however reluctantly.
Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff and four of his own comrades boarded last, closing the hatch. One of them pulled a tube down from the ceiling and spoke into it. A moment later, the train began to accelerate, moving back down into the tunnels they’d first come through.
Wherever they were going, they were on their way.
16
There was little conversation as the train rattled and hissed deep underground. The Provenians and the Knights were eyeing each other with hardly less dislike than they saved for the indig, who stood immobile and unreadable, their repeaters held loosely but ready.
For a while, Gaumarus just sat against the wall of the car, rocking with the slight movement of the train, watching Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff. Kan Tur sat to his left, Verheyen to his right. The Sergeant seemed embarrassed by the posturing and status games of his superiors, and had attached himself, regardless of rank, to Gaumarus and the two Knights who seemed less arrogant than their comrades.
After a time, Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff joined them, apparently satisfied that they were going where they were supposed to, and that a fight wasn’t about to break out. [Your people are weak in their minds,] he signed to Gaumarus. [They fight amongst each other when surrounded by enemies and not-friends.] The last concept had been a difficult one to work into the sign language, but it was a vital one to the indig. Gaumarus had never really understood until recently exactly why.
[They are frightened,] Gaumarus signed back. [They cannot fight you, not right now. So they try to salvage their pride any way they can.] It was an insight he hadn’t quite realized he’d reached until he said it.
Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff made a gesture that was halfway between incomprehension and disgust, and looked around the car again. He didn’t seem to have much more to say.
[You said we would talk later,] Gaumarus signed, when the indig warrior looked back at him. [It is later.]
[Of course,] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff signed in reply. If he had been human, he might have sighed. [The Flatland tribes were always fat and lazy,] he signed. [They were soon content to share the planet with you, even do some of your menial jobs for the little trinkets you handed out. We were not.]
He looked Gaumarus in the eyes. [At first, the preparations, and the contacts that you will meet soon, were made to try to drive you off the planet. Then we would rule our world once more, and punish the Flatland people for cooperating with you.]
[But over time,] he continued, [the elders realized that we could never drive you away. Not entirely. So, a different plan was hatched. And it was nearly ready when the raiders from the sky came.]
[What was this plan?] Gaumarus asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
[You see these tunnels?] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff asked. [They lead to supply caches and attack points all over the continent. There are trains and tunnelers that go everywhere. We have camps ready near every base, every powerplant, and every spaceport you have.]
Gaumarus thought he was beginning to understand, and he didn’t like it. [You would have killed us all?]
[No,] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff replied. [We are
not monsters. Though there were those who spoke for such a course of action. Raider of the Enemy’s Stronghold was one, for a while. But, no. The plan was merely to cripple your defenses and infrastructure.]
[Why?] Gaumarus asked, though he quickly mentally kicked himself. He knew why.
[Defenseless, you would have no other choice than to surrender,] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff said. [You have not yet seen all the weapons we have built, or the ones we have purchased from off-world. You have, fortunately, been occupied with the Latecomer rebels, who have done us a great favor, even as they think they are fighting to take power for themselves.]
[You supported the rebels?] Gaumarus asked, feeling a little sick to his stomach.
[Not directly. You will see what I mean when we get where we are going.]
[What would you do after you won?] Gaumarus asked. Because he suddenly was entirely certain that the indig would have won. Everything he’d seen over the last week suggested a level of preparation and sophistication that the Provenian PDF would never have been ready for.
[Humans would have been restricted to a smaller territory, and not allowed to settle beyond it,] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff signed. [There would, after a time, possibly be trade, but we would control it. Soon enough, with the help of some of our off-world friends, we would have spaceships of our own. Then we could decide about allowing humans to act as equals on our world.]
Gaumarus shook his head. From what he knew of the PDF, he had no doubt that they would have succeeded. But whether they would have accomplished the sweeping victory and domination that they imagined, he doubted. There were still enough of the older members of the Families like his grandfather. Provenia would have been wracked by a guerrilla war that would make the Latecomer rebels faint.
And then the M’tait might have come, right in the middle of it.
[It would not have been quite so simple,] he signed. [If you could hide all of this from us, there are things that we could hide from you.]
[That is true,] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff signed back. [But you have always underestimated the Mountain People. You think we are like the Flatland People. By the time you adjusted your thinking, it would have been too late.]
[And now?] Gaumarus asked. [Now that the raiders from the sky have come, and threaten human, Flatland People, and Mountain People alike? What will become of your plan now?]
[It will have to change,] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff said. There might have been an overtone of sadness to some of his gestures, but then again, that might just have been Gaumarus’s imagination, still hoping that the alien warrior was still, somehow, the friend he thought he had grown to know over the last few years. [But I do not think that it will be abandoned. This is still our world. And it will be ours in more than name, someday.]
Gaumarus looked down at the floor of the car. He’d been afraid of that. Worse, he was afraid of what that meant for him and his companions.
If they want to keep this plan intact, they can’t afford to let us go. At best, we’d be captives in the Badlands for the rest of our lives. At worst, they’ll just do what Raider of the Enemy’s Stronghold wanted to do, and kill us all, once the M’tait have left. Presuming that that’s what they’re keeping us alive for, anyway.
He looked up. Kan Tur and Xanar Dak were watching him closely, and Verheyen’s gaze was moving quickly back and forth between him and Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff. They didn’t know what was being discussed, but they had certainly picked up on its importance. Still, none of them interrupted, and Morav Dun and Colonel Piett both seemed to be too absorbed in their own quarrel to take notice of a corporal talking to a mere indig scout.
And as he looked around, at the petty status games still being played wordlessly, he realized that all of this might end up being a moot point.
They had received no news during their captivity so far, but he felt sure that Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff would have said something if the M’tait had left. Which meant that they were still on Provenia, and therefore there was no telling how much damage would ultimately be done. He thought of the horror stories from Gdan, still devastated and nearly unlivable decades after the M’tait had left. The aliens had seeded that world with horrors, where they had not destroyed and irradiated cropland and water sources, apparently out of spite. From the stories, they didn’t always do that, but who knew what their strange, insane minds would decide to do whenever they left Provenia?
The indig could launch their offensive after they left, only to rule over a world slowly becoming a graveyard.
He decided to change the subject; there was little that could be gained arguing with Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff, and he realized that maintaining the mountain warrior’s friendship might be his only hope of eventual escape or release. I can’t stay here among them, not while my family’s fate is still in the balance. I have to know.
[Where are we going?] he asked.
[To one of the southern staging camps,] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff replied. [Things have gotten worse in the last few days. Raider of the Enemy’s Stronghold has agreed that you should be offered an opportunity to prove your goodwill to the Mountain People.]
Gaumarus wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, but there didn’t seem to be much more to say, so he subsided. Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff touched his shoulder, a strangely human gesture, then moved back toward the front car, where another indig warrior was chirping and clicking at him.
“Learn anything?” Verheyen asked. Gaumarus glanced at him. The sergeant might outrank him, but he looked terribly young. It was an illusion, he knew. At most, Gaumarus might be a year older than Verheyen, maybe less. He vaguely remembered that the Verheyens were closely linked with the Devos Family, so, coupled with the cushy assignment to a colonel’s personal security detachment, that could have bought Verheyen quick promotion.
But the man didn’t seem like a typical lickspittle ladder-climber. Given a different assignment, he might have turned out more like Yuusen or Corporal Kassen. He felt a pang. He had no idea what had happened to Kassen, but he had to assume the man was dead. Kassen had been a good man and a good friend.
“A little,” he said, realizing that this was hardly the time to let the word about the indig’s plans circulate among the handful of fractious survivors. Verheyen had visibly matured just since the fight with the M’tait in the box canyon. He’d been blooded and survived, and it showed. He deferred to Gaumarus most of the time, but he was harder, more sure of himself. He could probably tell Verheyen; the young sergeant wouldn’t be the catalyst. But others could overhear. And the M’tait were the greater threat at the moment.
He was slipping back into the crisis-fueled focus he’d found before. Earlier, overwhelmed by doubts and fears, he never would have dared to make such a decision, one that would affect all of them. But he’d seen Piett and Maes act like petulant children, and watched the Knights treat their allies with utter disdain. He could trust Verheyen, Raesh, Chauwens, Kan Tur, and Xanar Dak. Those were the only ones.
Kan Tur was watching him too. Xanar Dak seemed to have focused on the other Knights and the Provenians, almost as if he was keeping watch, making sure that they weren’t interrupted.
“He said that we’re going to a staging base,” he explained. “Apparently, a lot has happened, and we’re going to be afforded the opportunity to help them out. Hopefully, against the M’tait.”
“Is there another enemy they might want us to fight?” Kan Tur asked quietly. Even through the translation, his thought was clear.
“I’m sure that Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff would have told me if there was,” Gaumarus temporized.
Kan Tur was studying him closely, and Gaumarus could feel his scrutiny even through the blankness of his faceplate. But he did not press, and Gaumarus got the feeling that the Knight understood far more than had been said. Kan Tur seemed to be that kind of man; he was experienced and he had the wisdom that came with it. Considerably more than some of h
is compatriots, it seemed, even those who outranked him. He had to understand the implications. Had to understand what it meant that the indig were showing them so much.
As his fears began to close in on him again, Gaumarus put his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, trying to simply breathe. His brow must have furrowed, because he felt a hand on his shoulder. He opened his eyes to see Kan Tur’s gauntlet. He looked up into the Knight’s visor.
“Sufficient to each day are the troubles therein,” Kan Tur said. It sounded like it might be a quote. “Clear your mind, be ready for action, and know that there are men, and abos, who will stand with you. Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff, I think, is still your friend, despite what you have learned about him lately. Did he not vouch for us with his leader?”
Gaumarus nodded wordlessly. Kan Tur nodded back. “Then all is still not lost. While there is life, there is hope. Remember that.”
Gaumarus nodded again, wishing he had the Knight’s courage. But he breathed a little bit easier as he rocked with the motion of the train, waiting to arrive at their destination, and whatever awaited them there.
They continued on, plunging through the planet’s crust, the steady movement and repetitive sounds lulling even the most alert into a sort of half-wakeful stupor. It was then that Gaumarus realized that he had no idea, given the lack of light the first time, just how long they had ridden the train from the box canyon to the City of the Twenty Tribes. He had no idea where they were, or where they might be going.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, during which they were fed twice, the train began to slow, the faint pressure of deceleration being the only indication that they weren’t still speeding along the tracks. After a long few minutes, it finally stuttered to a halt, and Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff moved to the hatch, which slowly opened. Unlike the tunneler, the train car’s hatch was clearly well-oiled, and swung open silently. A vague, grayish light poured in; it looked like sunlight, but filtered, as if through thick clouds.