This brought him back to present circumstances. His spies had chosen well. The column was of the correct length, an even dozen freighters laden with what must be valuable cargo. As the final elements—three more weapons carriers, a heavy complement, indeed—skim-floated onto the straight, the first were still within sight. No further signal among the waiting resistance fighters was required. A dull, muffled thud communicated itself to the commander through the ground. After a pause which, even after all his experience with such operations, stirred the beginnings of doubt within him, half the hillside above the road began to slip, like baker's flour piled too high, onto the three rear escort vehicles. Blocked by the column ahead, they could not accelerate from the path of the slide, however slow its journey downhill. Nor had they room or time to turn about.
Permeated by armoring fields insufficient to resist the titanic forces involved, the mesh from which the vehicles were fashioned flashed and sparkled, penetrated by falling stones, battered into shapes their fashioners would never have recognized. Doomed occupants bellowing in uncontrolled terror, the machines were pushed, almost gently, off the roadway by a smoke-crested wave of moving earth into the dry creekbed, where they were buried. Once crushed, they exploded, lifting the earth a final time before it settled with a dread finality upon their broken forms. The roadway was cut off
At the same instant, a similar blast and earthslide destroyed the leading vehicles of the column, leaving the freighters stranded but untouched upon the now-isolated
214 HENRY MARTYN
section of roadway. It appeared that the Hanoverians could not accustom themselves to this ancient method of chemenergic warfare, although the idea had been borrowed from assassins hired to destroy the Islay sons' draywherry, what now seemed years ago to the commander. If the scouts upon their §-riders exercised their usual foolishness, instead of running ahead to summon help—just one of three precious flying machines Morven had imported recently could reverse these so-far happy results—they would turn about to see what was wrong and be cut down by sharp-thrusters waiting for them.
Rising where they lay or thrusting from sparse cover, the woodsrunners launched their assault. Steam arose in trailing wisps where the energy they spent was absorbed by wet soil, mist-dampened clothing, and human tissue which was, for the most part, liquid itself. Where beam struck §-field, iridescent interference rings fled outward like ripples upon the surface of a pond. At the closest ranges—some fighters had been lying among the tumbled boulders of the creekbed —the less-attenuated power of their weapons was converted into even greater heat and their targets into expanding plasma. Smoke billowed. Flames danced and crackled. Trapped conscriptees screamed as their heated weapons burned their hands or their clothing and flesh began to crisp.
The surviving Hanoverians were desperate now, aware that their opponents could afford to take no prisoners. Blind thrusting began to plow the dirt all round the guerilla commander, scattering gravel and broken vegetation. A waist-thick tree beside him absorbed a direct thrust—its trunk shivered—spewing outraged bark in every direction and dropping leaves in a wide circle. The phenomenon was nothing new, and he allotted it scarce notice.
His own first thrust was a long one. It split the skull of a uniformed youth climbing from his vehicle to take refuge behind it. Pink haze above a stump of neck drifted and mingled with the mist. His second thrust caught another , Hanoverian squarely in his soft-armored chest, slamming him against his machine where he dropped to the ground, legs straight, arms splayed at his sides. Among other travesties to which the commander grew accustomed of late, he was now a
L. NEILSMITH 215
skilled slaughterer, capable of accomplishing the deaths of children in a casual mood, without hate, and at astounding ranges.
As moaning from the wounded filled the valley and a hundred thrustibles flash-canceled one another upon the ruined road, Robret "the" Islay, guerilla commander and legitimate heir to the Drectorhood of Skye, rose to a prudent crouch and started forward to see what Morven's suppliers had brought him. In his mind's eye, he was already witnessing—and to his disgust enjoying—the spectacle of the plundered vehicles being set afire and tipped over to join their buried escorts in the creekbed. He was aware that it was odd—how his enjoyment did not grow from hatred of the enemy. Months of fighting had stripped him of such feelings, if he had ever had them. It seemed he had never been motivated by any emotion—but had, from the beginning, regarded the Black Usurper as an unfortunate circumstance, like bad weather. If he hated anything, it was Alysabeth Morven Islay, for betraying his father's trust. Often, in the twilight between waking and sleep, he caught himself imagining her death at his own hands. When his mind was in control of his being, he believed she would receive her due through Donol.
The bloody work proceeded well enough without a seasoning of hatred. When spring floods arrived in a few months (unless Morven acted at once, incurring risk of further interference), these slides should act as dams, assuring that the roadway remained washed out and useless without additional effort upon the part of—
To his utter horror, a different spectacle unfolded as a deep thrumming, a great subsonic pounding, filled the canyon from one end to the other. The Usurper's "sky force," three §-suspended fliers, were skimming upon long kinergic legs up the creekbed from the direction of the Holdings. As they came, they showered destruction upon the woodsrunners who, with the collapse of resistance from the freighters, had hurried forward, all unheeding, to claim the fruits of easy victory.
The machines themselves were nothing more, in principle, than §-field vehicles written large. Their rarity and cost arose
216 HENRY MARTYN
from a profligate consumption of power and the subtle ulsic circuitry necessary to keep them stable over varying terrain upon what amounted to a continuous thrust, often several klommes in length. If the enemy had not releamed the use of obsolete explosives, he wielded this newer, more hideous weapon to terrifying effect. Where they strode, the fliers each put down a "footprint," its width and depth dependent upon their size, weight, and altitude. At a klomme's height, it merely rippled the grass. Yet it was capable, when the machine was just overhead, of stamping turf, foliage, men, and machinery into smashed caricatures of what they had been, or of driving them into soft ground like nails under the descending face of a gigantic, invisible hammer.
A shadow passed over Robret. He threw himself to one side, out of the deadly track, only to watch a comrade beside him trampled—he felt a limb-weakening wash of gratitude it had not been Fionaleigh—and converted into pulp before his eyes. He raised his thrustible, discharging it into the §-armored underbelly of the passing machine, producing no effect aside from expanding interference rings and sparks. Everywhere it was his own men screaming now, fleeing as the fliers ran them down. Troopers at thrustible ports rained volleys upon them, widening the trail of death. Holding his ground and taking careful aim, Robret picked off several of these, forcing others to retreat inside the safety of the mesh where they could do no harm, even tumbling one through his port and over the edge. He fell to the ground and was crushed by the next machine to pass.
Seasoned warriors streaked for the nearest cover, the forest, or the comparative security afforded by proximity to the long embattled column, knowing their enemy would be reluctant to destroy the freighters and their contents. Robret and Fionaleigh were among these latter, thrusting as they climbed, side by side, hand over hand, up to the roadway. Scarcely had they made their painful way to the level, plowed strip of ground when the sides of the freighters opened outward, vomiting dozens—hundreds—of Oplytes.
The tables had been turned. The ambushers had become the ambushed.
Chapter XXV: The Magic Lantern
Lia had kept her guilt, along with the pain it caused her, to herself.
Even now, perhaps especially now, the burden was more than she could bear. She knew she had made another mistake, climbing the long spiral flight of stairs to th
e tower room which had been Arran's in what had turned out (although, like people of every century everywhere, none living through them had realized it) to be happier times. Yet, just as her mind required respite from the calculations of survival, her heart required refuge, some fragment of the warm familiarity of a lifetime and a way of living, which, whatever happened now, was shattered and its pieces lost beyond recovery.
It was peculiar, she thought, and dismaying, how small a series of personal catastrophes it took to change everything beyond recognizability, to alter the appearance of everyday places and things—rather, her perception of them—until it was as if she had never seen them before. By any objective standard, this small room was much as it had always been, neither cramped nor grand, constructed from translucent plastic blocks which, not undertaking the load borne by identical blocks far below in the Holdings' foundations, displayed surfaces which were a bit concave. It had been a good room. The thinnest imaginable patina of dust, softening angles and edges all about her, was still almost invisible. Even so, the knowledge that the room's former occupant was missing, and presumed dead—in the field, even when instructed otherwise, Oplytes were unlikely to leave identifiable remnants of their victims—like the man who had helped keep it, permeated everything, from the shapes and textures of common objects to the color of the sunlight streaming now
218 HENRY MARTYN
through the high-arched windows of stained glass and the ringlight which sifted through them every night.
Nevertheless, she had come here for a purpose. This chamber had been searched by tireless inhumans, like every cubic siemme of the Holdings, when the Black Usurper had seized power. Amidst more compelling preoccupations, it had been forgotten with a similar efficiency. No better sanctuary existed within these walls where she could do, in privacy and in safety—which these days amounted to the same thing—what she was about to do.
Lia wiped her eyes. They had, without her realizing it, become tear-filled and unfocusable. She took from the pocket of her skirt the slim, finger-length cylinder which had been handed her this morning by one of the groundskeepers, an elderly Skyan who, despite the fact that he had been with the family Islay for as long as they had been upon Skye, had somehow been passed over, just as she had been in Morven's grim series of housecleanings.
Acting as housekeeper—Morven had not brought a seneschal, and Old Henry, who had always seemed in charge of everything, was gone—Lia thus far enjoyed free run of the Holdings. She appeared (in this way, if in no other, the tower room suited her) almost to have been forgotten by the Usurper's minions, perhaps because she had been an employee rather than a retainer. In an age which euphemized chattel slavery away, the diflferences between the two were subtle, but real. Upon the other hand, it v/as her wedding to the eldest of the Islay sons which had been chosen for dramatic interruption. As a consequence, her precise legal status remained nebulous, although her intimate association with the family could not be so to any observer.
In the end, Lia could not have told why she was left to herself. It was among her greatest, most continuous fears that her freedom—not to consider her life—might come to an arbitrary end at any second. Never for a moment did it occur to her that she was innocent of any offense meriting such a state of apprehension. As an educated observer of history, she was too well aware that a common feature of all civilizations—anytime, anyplace, any protest to the contrary notwithstanding—is that an individual's innocence or
guilt has nothing to do with the fate to which authority consigns him.
Finding Arran's reader, a child's model they had often used while she instructed him—she wondered what had become of Waenzi, the triskel who had been his shadow, and was afraid she knew—upon a cluttered shelf, she inserted the thille. The likeness of the man she loved, the face which filled her thoughts from her awakening each morning until she succumbed to trouble-tossed exhaustion every night, sprang into being above the reader.
"My dearestLia . . ." She had been prepared for Robret to be strained and tired, not for the fact that he looked years older. How like his father he was. "This enthiller was appropriated in one of our raids, so I thought I might finally undertake to send word to you. I can safely convey not much by way of facts, fearing this may be intercepted. I shudder at the risk it represents to what it is my fervent wish is your continued well-being."
Behind the man who may or may not have been her lawful husband, she could make out something of his background, for the image was virtual, allowing her to focus where she would, rather than wherever some lens decided. Not that much existed to see. He sat upon the ground, legs folded beneath him, under an expanse of mottled brown-green kefflar, further camouflaged with leaves and branches whose shadows fell upon the fabric. Beyond the opening of this makeshift shelter, propped with a crooked stick not altogether stripped of smaller twigs, lay a woodland clearing which might have told a botanist Robret's latitude and altitude. It told Lia nothing. Skye was a world covered with trees, all of which looked alike to her.
"Nonetheless, it is possible that not hearing from me may be as trying an experience for you as not hearing from you has been for me. I would do what I can to ease that trial. In return, you must promise to erase or destroy this thille as soon as you have read it. Do not permit sentiment to compound the risk to which, in my emotional weakness, I subject you."
Between the nearby woods and the rough tent, Lia discerned half a dozen figures reclining round a smokeless fire, toasting something unidentifiable upon sharpened branches thrust at an angle into the ground. Now and again, someone
220 HENRY MARTYN •
leaned forward to turn what he—or she; it had not occurred to Lia that females might be rebels—was cooking and sit back again.
"It will not give anything away to say I am among friends and well as can be expected. I have found allies, and, by now, ■ you will have heard something of our activities. You are in a better position to judge their effectiveness than I, which, I am given to understand, is usually the case in war." I
A portion of the entrance flap was dragged aside. A ' woman—hardly more than a girl, but very beautiful, with j glossy black hair and eyes as dark—bent to push her head j and shoulders into the tent. Robret gave her a brief glance, I nodded without a word having passed between them, and returned his attention, now divided, back to the enthiller. "For war it is, in the event they have not seen fit to tell you. Let no doubt remain. We are waging it upon the Black Usurper as often and as ardently as we are able. We destroy his transports, bum his crops, sack his encampments and fortifications, harry and murder his minions. We do this not in any hope of destroying him, for he could, if he were so determined, reduce the planet to a cinder, but against the possibility that we can make Skye too expensive for him to hold without reaching some accommodation with us."
Robret took a deep breath, again glancing aside at the black-eyed girl. Making unnecessary adjustments to the straps of the unadorned, businesslike thrustible she wore upon one slim forearm, she waited for him with an impatient, proprietary manner which set Lia's lonely and uncertain heart to aching with an unaccustomed variety of pain. "Lia, dearest, Fionaleigh is telling me, in her subtle manner, that I am wanted elsewhere and must go. Among my fondest hopes is that you two will someday meet under more fortuitous circumstances. By the time you receive this, it will no longer matter whether I have told you that we are about to accomplish something they will not be able to keep you, or anybody else upon the planet, from hearing of. I know you are holding up bravely back home, and, if we ask your help, you will respond in a manner to make me proud. In the meantime, I remain your Robret, 'the' Islay, Drector-Hereditary-in-Exile of Skye."
The image vanished. Had it been a trifle distant? Feeling
an unsortable disappointment grow within her, Lia struggled against a temptation to play the thille again. Or to jerk it from the reader and dash it to the floor. Where she had expected a love letter, it seemed, she had been subjected to a
political lecture intended to augment her morale. Was anything of genuine affection to be discerned in it? Deeply in love with Robret, as she had found herself almost the moment she set eyes upon him, now that this incredible disaster had befallen them, now that little Arran (among many, many others) was dead, Robret had become her entire life. All she had left of him was the memory of their parting—and now this impersonal military correspondence. She sniffied back tears, caught herself at it, and, transferring the bitterness she felt to herself, shook her head in sudden anger.
No! This was her imagination playing petty tricks, colored by the well-deserved weight of her guilt, the pain of separation, the uncertainty of her status, her cowardly fear of... whatever she was afraid of. She was Robret Islay's woman. He was her man. Whatever she feared, he confronted every bit of that, and, she believed, worse every day. He was depending upon her. Had he not told her so just now—or whenever his message had been enthilled?
She would stifle these feminine flutterings and do whatever he needed of her. In absence of instruction, she could at least force her behavior into something resembling rational channels. Unless she learned to act as wisely and nobly as the man she loved, the family she had aspired to marry into, she was indeed no more than the social climbing snippet attempting to rise above her station, which, in her blackest moods, she accused herself of being.
Still, her guilt remained to be dealt with, omissions upon her part which had brought them to this unenviable estate, which had likeliest found direct result in the deaths, and worse, of those upon Skye whom she loved.
It was so simple. Morven, younger son of the Drector-Hereditary of Shandish and a personal favorite of Leupould IX, was not a name unknown upon Hanover, where she had been bom and brought up. It seemed to Lia that she had heard it whispered, along with certain terrifying accusations, all her life, in particular after (being without family of
Coordinated Arm 01: Henry Martyn Page 24