by Roland Green
"Did you grow up in a forest like this?" she asked.
Ohlt laughed. "I was a city boy. All the wood for miles around, except in the parks, had been turned into buildings, , ships, carts, and so forth. Do you build anything out of wood, on the Rael worlds?"
"On my birth world, it was mostly dry, empty land. We heated water to take the salt out of it, and used that to drink and grow crops. Trees were rare where I lived, and where they did grow, they were protected."
"You had druids protecting them?"
"What is a druid?"
Ohlt frowned. "Well, if we had met Drenin Longstaff, you would understand. I hope, because druids are like cats—•"
"I know the word. A pet animal?"
Ohlt laughed. "Every cat in the world would be insulted by that. You will meet one if you are here long enough, and then you can decide for yourself. Anyway, druids tend to keep to themselves."
He explained as best he could, although between his limited knowledge, and the fact that he had to explain about every fifth word, it took time and breath. By the time he was done, Jazra realized that, compared to the humans and other folk of this world, the Rael were almost without any religion. They had the Guides of the Authority, but they had reduced healing minds and relieving stress to a science, with neither faith nor magic playing any part of it.
It was also a relief to Jazra to know that the humans had some reverence for nature. The idea of cutting down enough trees to build a whole city from their wood would have been repulsive, otherwise.
"If you want to learn more about druids, ask Hellandros. He was taught by them, even though he is not one. But be warned,
he will use even more words that you do not understand than I do, and he will not be able to explain them .. ."
Jazra was not listening. She was staring at something that had to be metal, jutting up from a clump of bushes. She ran forward, heedless of Ohlt's hand on her arm, and Zolaris's shout of warning.
She had been right. It was a circuit module from the gate. It was battered and scorched, but as long as it was intact, it was likely to be functional.
Jazra would have danced, if she'd had the energy. She tried to explain to them what recovering a part of the gate could mean. They were polite enough to smile, but she could see it was forced. Vorris slung the module on his carrying harness, and i hey resumed their march. Ohlt dropped back, and now Zolaris marched, with Jazra, in the lead.
"You look no happier than the humans," she said in the Rael tongue. "Why the cloudy face?"
"Well, Commander, we have two other modules at the camp. Gregis has tested both of them, and they do work. If this one is like the others, we have three. That's only seven to go before we have a working gate . . . assuming we could ever get the power and computers.. . .
"I think the humans took in your lecture a bit too well yesterday. They can't forget that a gate goes both ways, and we haven't even hinted at the danger to the homeworld."
He paused, forced a smile, and said, "Also, Commander, I'm beginning to get the nasty feeling that we're lost."
® s •
Asrienda led the way into the grove from the rear, along a path that not even the wood elves knew. She doubted the secret of the grove had been betrayed, but if the comet had brought mages who could turn men into ghouls, why could they not do the same with elves? And once so transformed, elves couldn't keep secrets any better than men.
She was also a smaller target than Drenin Longstaff. Even in human form, the druid was half again her size. As a bear, no-body could have missed him on the path. Indeed, he could barely squeeze between some of the close-set trees.
All was in order in the grove. Asrienda cooled her feet in the spring, then dried herself and pulled her gear back on.
"Where are you going, if I might inquire?" Drenin asked. His voice had taken on something of a bearlike gruffness in the years since she had met him, but he was too merry-faced under his thick beard for that to worry her.
"To warn the elven village."
"It can wait. They can wait," he said. "Your sleep cannot."
"The hobgoblins will not wait. Who knows how many more are out there now, looking for fire-wands? Even a handful of hobgoblins with fire-wands could kill more elves in a day than they have in the last century."
"If there are any hobgoblins left, and they live long enough to be a menace to anybody but themselves. How many in that band that we fought?"
"Five, and now one is dead."
Drenin held up his hands and frowned. "I am going to have to learn more discipline, even as a bear," he admitted. "But the other four have no fire-wands. We have the ones we did not destroy, and did they not say that other hobgoblins had ill luck with their search for fire-wands?"
"Yes. Four others, to be exact."
"One must always be exact," he said. "There are, to the best of my knowledge, twenty-two hobgoblins in these mountains. Nine of them, none of whom carry fire-wands, are not going to be any menace to the elves today."
"The word has to be going deeper into the mountains. More will come."
"To be sure. Those who survive the mountains, the ogres, and the dwarves, may, in time, be a problem. Again, not today. So today, you sleep. Oh, after you go down the front path to see if there are any offerings for us."
"Can't they wait too?" Asrienda was really as exhausted as Drenin feared, and sleep seemed pure bliss.
"Best not seem rude," Drenin said. "Frightened folk will be generous with the offerings, and expect us to at least accept them. If we cannot use them all, surely there are many in need who can."
Asrienda lurched to her feet. "I go, Master," she said, and they both laughed.
By noon, it was plain that the companions were lost.
Jazra tried to explain to Fedor Ohlt how this had come iliout. It seemed that she had a mapmaking device or spell with her, but had mapped only the area she had traveled herself. The Rael camp was not within that area.
The other Rael survivors were supposed to have a mapmaker, but either the device was broken, or the spell not working. So I hey had been relying on their knowledge of how to find one's way in wild country, and this country had been a little too wild for them.
Jazra then rambled on about how, on Rael worlds, no one with the right spells or devices could ever be lost. One could talk to magical beings in the sky, called "satellites," who would tell you where you were, and the best way to get to anywhere
else.
"So why do we have none of these satellites overhead?" Ohlt asked, with more sarcasm than he had intended.
"First, because we had no time to launch any. Second, because the Overseer's weapons would have destroyed them. Third, because if we talked to them, the Overseer has . . . spells for listening to us, and learning where we are."
"Oh." It still sounded very much like a sea story, but if the Overseer's host could not find the companions, it did not matter quite so much that the companions could not find themselves.
It was at this point that M'lenda came up.
"Fedor, are we lost?"
Ohlt thought he made a decent job of telling the truth, and would have done better if Jazra hadn't been trying to stifle laughter.
Finally, M'lenda asked, "Do any of the Rael from the camp have anything on them that grew there? Leaves, a stick, even a rock would do."
Jazra asked the other Rael, and it seemed to Ohlt that the two lower-ranking soldiers were trying not to meet Zolaris's eyes. Krykus pulled a handful of crumbled leaves out of one of his pouches.
Zolaris said something sharply to Krykus, who shook his head emphatically. Both M'lenda and Ohlt asked for a translation.
"Zolaris asked if Krykus was going to use the leaves—well, the way you seem to use wine or ale. He said no. He wanted to try them in his food."
M'lenda examined the leaves. "It looks like a kind of goblin's-1 ear. It wouldn't have tasted very good, but that doesn't matter." ? She sat on a stump with the leaves in one hand, the other laid over the
leaves, and the absorbed look on her face that Ohlt rec-ognized as prayer.
M'lenda was so long at her prayers and magic that it began to rain before she was done. What little visibility the mist had left them vanished, and Ohlt began to be concerned about slippery paths, and Hellandros's fading strength. The wizard had to be considerably older than he looked, but had been driving himself onward like a man of his apparent age. Ohlt did not want to have to carry him, or make camp in a monster-ridden wilderness with scanty gear until the wizard regained his strength.
At last M'lenda pushed herself to her feet, and pointed up the hill. "Over the ridge, and when we reach the top, we go right. When we reach the bottom of the valley, we follow a stream past a bed of yellow stones, to a stand of bluebark. On the other side of that, we come to a rock that is half red and half black. In front of the rock, we join the trail that the Rael
rook outward from their camp, and can follow it home."
Jazra had to stop gaping before she could translate. Zolaris's lace immediately brightened, so Ohlt knew that M'lenda had found the way even before the Rael captain told them.
"Speaks truth," Zolaris said, mustering his scanty Common to be polite. "She—truth. Here to camp—most downhill."
Ohlt's aching feet wished the Rael had said "all downhill."
Drenin Longstaff and Asrienda could not send their thoughts one to the other, but sometimes one could sense when the other was in danger, or had urgent news.
He found her standing, dagger drawn, over a young man on a litter, in the middle of the path that everyone knew went close to the druid's grove, but not to it. Drenin started to ask if the man—he looked like a soldier—had attacked her; then he looked closer.
The soldier was in no condition to attack, or march, or even defend himself if attacked. He had burned his chest and stomach, and broken an arm, a leg, and several ribs.
Drenin knelt and put his nose close to the soldier's chest. He sensed a spell intended to heal, but it was not any sort of healing spell known to the druid. It was more like some invocation of water. He also smelled healing salves he had never encountered before, and he knew most common mixtures by sight, taste, and smell.
Most curious of all were the dressings and splints. The dressings seemed to be made of cloth, but felt as slick as oiled wood, or even glass. The splints seemed to have grown around the broken limbs, and were as hard as wood, though they seemed to be as light as silk
Drenin Longstaff liked mysteries no more than most, but did not let one distract him from more urgent work. For now, that work was putting the soldier in the hands of his comrades, to finish his healing.
It was a mighty temptation to finish that healing himself. However, the druid knew that trying even his most cautious healing on a man already under several mysterious spells risked doing far more harm than good. Also, whatever its origins, the healing this young man had received came from someone who knew their work.
Drenin stood up and brushed dirt off his robes. "We need to take this lad to town."
Asrienda frowned. "Shouldn't we keep him here until he wakes? The spells on him might be the demons' work. If he is one of their minions...."
"His hurts are real enough," Drenin said. "They have put him past fighting for some days yet. Keeping him here, out of mere suspicion, when we do not dare heal him ourselves is true to none of our oaths concerning the sick and injured."
Asrienda pulled her lips back from her teeth, her gesture of yielding without agreeing. "How are we going to carry him?" she asked.
Drenin laid down his staff, and unpinned his cloak. "I'll turn into a bear and take him on my back, of course. You come along, and answer questions."
"And if somebody wants bear steak for supper?"
"Then persuade him that it won't go down well after he swallows one of your arrows.
"Use the cloaks to tie the litter to my back," Drenin concluded.
As his vision blurred with the transformation, he saw Asrienda give him the mock glare of one who knows her business perfectly well without being told it.
They made good time the rest of the way to the camp, although toward the end Jazra put the Rael ahead, except for Zolaris, who brought up the rear. None of the Rael kept their hands far from their weapons. The humans didn't fail to notice
this, or be displeased by it, but no harsh words were offered. With a sour look, Ohlt even returned the blaster Jazra had given him. He hadn't quite mastered the art of holding it butt-first, and managed to drop it.
"You have to reassure your people that you have not become careless about us," Hellandros told Jazra. "Otherwise they would not accept your leadership."
The other companions nodded, and Elda put in, "Just don't shoot one of us to show how alert you are."
Nobody was shot, but everyone, both within the camp and approaching it, was especially alert as the humans were led up. |azra reinforced Zolaris's authority by letting him brief the camp Rael on her adventures, and the patrol's, including contact with the humans.
"The humans will be treated as security-risk guests," he concluded. "They will have a separate shelter, rations, water, medical care, and other needs. They will not be allowed weapons, until we have negotiated a basis for our future relations with them."
Unspoken was the warning that, until then, no one was to have contact with the humans without permission from Jazra, Zolaris, or Gregis. The same would apply to the humans, without permission from both Rael leaders and Ohlt.
Gregis, the senior officer at the camp, gave a report on the survivors' condition. Most of what he said confirmed what Zolaris had already told Jazra. Twenty-five Rael survivors, three of them with disabling wounds, and five others walking wounded; adequate survival equipment and shelter; no water shortage, and no food problems, assuming they could live off the local biosphere; many other minor details.
Gregis gave no updated weapons inventory, which Jazra hoped was security-consciousness rather than bad news. She did not expect him to give an inventory of what he had managed to slip out of Fworta under the enemy's nose, but Zolaris had mentioned five bulging pouches, a backpack, and three crates that each needed a man each to carry them, over and above the ammunition and weapons.
Gregis was clearly up to his usual tricks. Since that usually meant bad news for his enemies, and almost always good news for his friends, Jazra wished him well.
"Corporal Zolaris, Technician Gregis," Jazra said. "Well done. In the name of the Authority, under the laws and regulations of the Navy of the Rael People, I accept command of this outpost garrison. Are there any questions?"
"Yes," came a voice from the rear, and a civilian woman pushed her way to the front. Jazra did not groan; Zolaris had warned her about Breena.
The trade delegate looked rather more battered by the fight, crash, and escape, than most of the soldiers, but she was nearly the oldest of the party. Jazra remembered that Breena had left three children behind on Kel-Rael. Not knowing if your family is alive or dead does not make for ease of mind.
"I protest calling this a garrison, and keeping it under military command," Breena said. "We are not combat-capable under the present circumstances."
This drew a rumble of polite discontent from the soldiers, but there were half a dozen civilians in the camp, and some of them nodded. Jazra ran her thumbs outward along her eyebrows.
"I acknowledge the protest as legitimate, but incapable of ad- ; judication at the moment. A proper adjudication requires higher rank than I—"
"Excuse me," Breena cut in, not sounding at all apologetic.; "My rank in the trade delegation is high enough to permit such adjudication."
"Such adjudication also requires a disinterested party," ; Gregis put in. "Delegate Breena, the way I remember the law is that if you make the protest, that means you're interested. You can't be a judge in your own case."
"Neither can Commander Jazra," Breena snapped.
"I have to decide whether or not this is a combat situation," Jazra said. "Trade dele
gates do not have that privilege, no matter what their rank."
This drew a vast silence, unbroken even by the civilians, who were looking unhappy, and by Breena, who was looking at the ground. In that silence, Jazra heard a distant rumble, with a painfully familiar shrieking above it.
"Alert!" Zolaris called, raising his voice only enough to be heard.
The only one who ran was Gregis, who shortly reappeared hauling a folding dish antenna, and a conglomerate of wiring and small boxes. Jazra recognized an improvised radar station, and wondered if he had collected the components before or after the attack on Fworta.
Everybody else was taking their posts, not running but moving briskly enough that some of the civilians were nearly bowled over. Two of them, however, moved as purposefully as the soldiers—and Jazra noted that both of them were armed.
By the time everybody had reached their posts, Jazra had joined Gregis and Zolaris at the radar's miniature console. As the rumble died away, Zolaris turned to Jazra with a grin.
"Breena can put that anywhere it pleases her," he said. "That was an air strike going in right where we went after we left the valley. I suppose they thought we couldn't have dragged that much firepower too far from our main base camp."
"Without the humans, we couldn't have," Jazra said. "And just to make matters better, they'll send in a ground patrol to follow up the air attack before looking elsewhere. That should give us two or three days more."
"It'll take longer than that for everyone to make up their minds about the humans," Gregis said. "A lot longer for Delegate Breena."
"I thought she'd already decided that the humans were native primitives, and no use to us," Zolaris said.
Jazra was not going to ask if that was a direct quotation. She did not want to fight the temptation to throttle Breena with her bare hands.
She looked at the camp, from which people were now emerging two or three at a time. There'd been three well-camouflaged shelters, further concealed amid boulders and trees. Working outward from a natural cave, they had already dug out enough room to move one of the shelters underground.