"Hooo! True words." The gardener took hold of Gretchen's shoulders and set her back on the track with a gentle touch. "Paths are dangerous – if you follow, does it not lead? If you follow all the way, it must take you far from the safety of your own garden, out into brambles and marsh and among twisted rocks."
"I suppose." The last gleam of the sun faded, leaving them in complete darkness. Anderssen produced her flashlight. A cool light sprang out, illuminating the roots of the trees and setting stems of grass in sharp contrast. The flashlight made her feel better. See? I can drive back the darkness! "I don't want to follow a dangerous path! I want to do my job, get paid a reasonable wage and go home and talk to my kids about how their day went at school."
She laughed hollowly. "I've already been offered your far-traveled path, filled with spines and pricking wounds and bitter pills. A path into shadows and hidden places – where true secrets lie, not just the grave-goods and barrows of the dead. I said no then, and I'd say no now."
The gardener made a deep humming sound in the back of her throat. "Hooo… Of course. But this old walnut wonders…" Malakar reached out her claw into the beam of the flashlight, making a jagged, monstrous shadow spring up against the silver-barked trees. "Shadows imply light." Her claw withdrew, revealing the track winding ahead of them. "And a path, direction. You remind me of how much I have lost by fearing both."
"Fearing?" Anderssen began walking, finding the bare, widely spaced tree trunks oppressive. "You didn't fear to oppose the Master and his policies!"
"Hooooo… I feared to leave the Garden. What sprouts have gone untended elsewhere as I lay anguished on a mat in the common room, biting my own tail and dreaming useless thoughts of revenge and malice? Will I ever know?" Malakar lifted her snout, pointing ahead. "Do you see the lanterns?"
Gretchen angled the flashlight towards her feet. Her eyes adjusted and she saw – ahead, obscured by a line of trees – gold and silver lights and heard the rattle of drums and pipes. In the faint glow of distant lamps, she caught the outline of buildings, sharp rooftops, banners and the hot glow of a bonfire.
"Do you hear the voices?" The gardener picked up her pace. "Nemnahan has begun!"
The Gemmilsky House Gandaris, "Bastion of the North"
Crouched in darkness, Colmuir squinted at the view from one of the perimeter spyeyes. This one was focused down on the front gate from a realspruce tree, where the Jehanan soldiers had found the portal held closed by more than a simple wooden bar. Their commander – even at this range, staring at a reptilian face mostly obscured by black rubber goggles, the master sergeant could pick out an officer – waved his men back, then stepped smartly away. The entire gate structure shivered as the tank approached, cobblestones cracking under heavy treads. The armored behemoth – Colmuir counted one main gun, four cupola-mounted machine guns, some kind of grenade launcher on the turret and a smoke dispenser – ground down the lane, stopped, chuffed diesel smoke, and rotated ponderously on one set of treads.
"Just a moment," the master sergeant whispered. "He's at th' gate now."
The rumbling of dual engines carried even through the tiny microphone on the spyeye, as did the grating scrape of dozer blades emerging from the front of the machine. Gears shifted, generating a violent rattling sound, and the tank rolled forward, belching exhaust, and slammed squarely into the gate.
"Go!" Colmuir growled, feeling the ground shake. He thumbed a glyph depicting a conical mountain belching flame. In the spyeye view, he saw the front gate shatter, torn off its hinges by the weight of the tank. The stone pillars on either side of the entrance shuddered, but stood firm until the armored shoulders of the machine ground into them. Then ancient granite split, spewing dust and the entire structure collapsed backwards. The tank rolled up over the debris, treads spinning and crashed down on the other side. Jehanan soldiers darted into the opening, automatic rifles at the ready.
Two Imperial Marine issue Fougasse antipersonnel mines hidden in the verge a dozen paces back from the gate detonated as the tank rumbled past onto the lawn. Each popped up from the hedge to chest height and blew apart. A shockwave of flame, choking smoke and fingertip sized needles smashed across the Jehanan infantry. The invaders were thrown backwards by the blast and their body armor, uniforms and exposed scales were shredded by the glassite projectiles. Wherever the needles punched through scale into flesh, they splintered into wicked monofil buzzsaws, shredding muscle, ligament and bone. The entire lead squad crumpled in a spray of blood.
The Jehanan officer cursed, ordered his men to hurl grenades into the foliage and led the second squad onto the grounds at a rush as soon as the blasts had cleared the way.
In the sub-basement of the house Dawd knelt between a sump pump and the old boiler, a blazing white-hot spark howling between his hands. Limestone flooring volatilized, boiling up around him in a dusty cloud. At the far end of the room, Colmuir had his back turned, attention wholly focused on his remotes. Tezozуmoc stood between the master sergeant and the cutting beam, hands over his ears, desperately wishing for a drink, any kind of drink, even the barely refined gasoline the natives liked so much.
Dawd shifted his knees, drew the engineering tool back around to complete the circle and felt the stone and brick give way. The circular opening collapsed, spilling bricks and dust into a hidden pit. The edges glowed a dull red where the beam had sheared them to a glossy smoothness. The Skawtsman kicked the rest of the debris away.
Four meters below, a dry sewage tunnel was now filled with the litter from his efforts. Gemmilsky had installed new pipes and a modern sewage recycling module in one of the gardening sheds. The previous owner, however, had been forced to pump all of his waste into the common city drainage. During construction of the new house, all of the old sewage, water and power adits had been sealed up with brick, plaster and a new coat of paint.
"Clear!" Dawd called to the prince and the master sergeant. He squeezed himself down into the opening, hung by his hands for a moment and then dropped down into the old tunnel. The sergeant's combat visor switched into infrared, he glanced both ways and saw the passage was empty. "Come on, mi'lord. We've got to move quickly."
The prince swung over the edge, closed his eyes, muttered a prayer to the Beneficent and Merciful Jesus and dropped into the Eagle Knight's waiting arms. Dawd set the young man down in a rubble-free section of tunnel and tapped his comm. "Master Sergeant? Let's not be waiting about!"
"Just a second, lad. There's a wee bit more work to be done."
Colmuir rotated one of the spyeyes to scan the horizon. The aerocar which had brought them to Gandaris had departed at first light to deliver Mrs. Petrel and her ladies to the palace and return with 'refreshments.' The master sergeant assumed the use of kujenai troops to attack the mansion meant Clark, the aerocar and the civilians had all been seized by the kujen. He was waiting until the last moment, hoping the corporal would reappear.
The sky was overcast and gray and threatening a day of drizzling rain. There was no sign of the aerocar. Colmuir muttered six and a half kinds of curses to himself, tapped the last glyphs on his fuse screen and scurried to the pit.
A muffled series of thuds and booms filtered through the roof of the sub-basement. The old foundation groaned, feeling the house above shift and sway. A distant crashing sound followed, and the lean Skawtsman imagined the entire portico toppling onto the tank and trapping the metal behemoth in a ruin of double-paned windows, marble statuary and triply-varnished lohaja-parquet flooring. He slapped two bomb packs on either side of the opening, gave them twenty minutes to live and dropped down into the darkness.
An hour later, Dawd used his combat knife to saw through the bar holding a sewer-grate closed and, after listening cautiously, stepped out into a domed, brick-lined roundabout deep under the center of Gandaris. His Fleet medband chirped politely, informing him of excessive levels of methane, carbon dioxide and airborne bacteria in the newly entered atmosphere.
"Oh, gods of my fathers," the
prince exclaimed, splashing clumsily into the grand sewer. "This place smells…urk… oh god…" Tezozуmoc doubled over, nearly falling into the stream of dark brown effluvia streaming towards the river, and added a gagging heave of yellow bile to the greater collection of Gandarian waste. Dawd seized him by the upper arms and waited for the boy to finish his business.
"Excellent nose for navigation, lad." Colmuir closed the gate to the dry tunnel behind them and replaced the bar. "You've got a fix on the airport, then?"
"No airport in Gandaris, Master Sergeant." Dawd consulted his comp, which had been keeping track of the twists and turns in the sewer system. "Or we'd have landed there when we arrived… That's odd, we've lost any comm signal but ourown. The jamming must have gotten worse." He shook his head in dismay. "If Clark managed to escape with the aerocar, he won't be able to raise us, or find us, unless we're out in the open as he flies over, waving the locust-flag of Chapultepec over our heads."
"That won't happen," the master sergeant said, peering over Dawd's shoulder. "Options?"
"We could walk about a thousand kilometers to Parus," the younger Skawtsman said, tabbing up a map of Gandaris and the greater valley. The city spread up a series of terraced hillsides from the banks of the Kophen to reach the embrace of the higher peaks. The far side of the river was subdivided into agricultural plots, and then bisected by the railroad running southeast towards Bandopene. "We could steal an aerocar, if there was one to steal, and be back in Parus tonight."
"What…" The prince spat and cleared his mouth. "What about calling for someone to come and pick us up with a combat shuttle?"
"No comm," Dawd replied, shaking his head. "Or we could find a place to hide out, sit tight…"
Colmuir considered the map, removed a tabac from a half-crushed paperboard case, smelled the cigarette and put it back. Then he nodded to himself. "We take the train."
"What?" Dawd stared at him, surprised and horrified at the same time. "We'll be arrested at the station!"
"The train?" Prince Tezozуmoc frowned. "Wait a moment…wasn't someone saying something about the train the other day? About…oh, who was that?"
Both Eagle Knights stared at him expectantly, but the young man shook his head, bemused. "Huh. Nothing." He rapped his head with his knuckles. "Empty as a gourd! I've forgotten who it was. Don't mind me."
"We don't," Colmuir said in an offhand way. He gave Dawd a tight little smile. "Now, laddie, you haven't lived until you've jumped a train, as my da would say. And he jumped one or two in his time. Now, which way t' the station?"
Dawd made a sour face, hitched up the assault rifle on his shoulder, consulted his comp and pointed up a tunnel spilling a slow, turgid sludge into the main sewer. "That way."
A gloved hand reached up, grasped hold of a marble lip around the urinal and Dawd heaved himself up and onto the floor of an empty restroom. The chuffing sound of a steam engine mixed with the hooting and warbling of Jehanan adults echoed in through high windows. The sergeant glanced around, making sure the large, stone-floored room was empty, and knelt to take the prince by the arms and hoist the boy up. Colmuir scrambled up through the wide-mouthed opening – Jehanan bathrooms were well appointed with ornamental stone, delicate carvings and elegant fixtures but consisted solely of a deep pit to raise tail over – and took a moment to let himself breathe cleaner air. The sharp smell of hot metal, coal dust and hundreds of natives rushing about trying to get aboard the afternoon express train filled his nostrils and he beamed a smile of relief at Tezozуmoc, who was batting at legs dripping yellow-green ooze.
"Ah! Much better." The master sergeant considered their appearance and his smile faded. "Now, we must make ourselves presentable enough to cross the tracks and get aboard a luggage car – Dawd you think these faucets will work?"
The sergeant was at the doorway, peering out into the waiting hall with a perplexed expression on his face.
"Sergeant Dawd? Can you hear me?"
The younger Skawtsman shook his head, breaking out of something like a daydream and nodded. "Yes, Master Sergeant. I'll have a look at the faucets – but you should scope this…"
Grumbling to himself and waving the prince to stand beside the marble sink lining the wall – and out of the line of fire from the entrance – Colmuir edged up to the door and looked out. At first, all he saw was a melee of Jehanan – young and old alike, all dressed in harnesses hung with flowers, long narrow sun-hats and gaudy drapes and accompanied by a great deal of luggage in woven bags and heavy-looking steamer-style trunks – surging past. And then, much as the clouds might peel back from the mountaintops looming over the city, a troupe of monks in very tall, saffron-colored hats stamped past and he saw, waiting patiently beside the number four track schedule board, Mrs. Petrel and her two young ladies with no more luggage than their handbags, traditional Imperial festival clothes over flesh toned skinsuits and Army-issue umbrellas for parasols.
The Resident's wife seemed entirely composed and perfectly at ease. None of the Jehanan rushing about, hooting and trilling and warbling in their alien tongue, seemed to pay her the least attention.
Colmuir pursed his lips and wished he had a fresh pack of tabacs to hand. He looked back to the prince, saw Dawd had affixed a length of hose from his duty bag to the nearest faucet and was sluicing the sewer ooze from the boy's legs, made up his mind to escape the train station somehow and looked back in time to have his heart lurch into his throat.
The auburn-haired of the two girls accompanying Mrs. Petrel was hurrying through the crowd, directly towards the bathroom, with a very determined expression on her face.
"Ah that's torn it," Colmuir cursed, stepping back out of sight. "Dawd, get that hose on me swift-like, we've company coming t' dinner."
The master sergeant had managed to clean off his gear, though his uniform legs and underlying combatskin were still dripping wet when the girl strode into the bathroom and took the sight of the three of them in with a frown.
"Do you have any other clothes," she said, in a brisk tone very reminiscent of her mistress. "Capes or something to drape about all your…guns and tools and things?"
"We do," Tezozуmoc said, while both Eagle Knights were goggling at the audacity of a rather prim-looking Nisei girl barging into the gentleman's restroom. The prince tapped Dawd on the shoulder. "Sergeant, do you have a rain-cape in the back pocket of your gunrig?"
Dawd blinked, nodded and turned to let Tezozуmoc unseal the pouch and drag out a rain poncho. "They're autocamo -" the sergeant started to say, but the prince had already turned the poncho inside out and found the little control panel woven into the waterproof fabric.
"Very useful," Tezozуmoc said cheerfully, using his thumbs to switch through the settings, "if you'd like to just sit quietly outside of headquarters and, ah, have a smoke or something…" He winked at the girl, which made her stiffen slightly. "Big enough for two, most times."
The rain cloak settled into a dull pattern of interlocking brown and yellow-green triangles. The prince swung the garment around Dawd's shoulders, drew the hood mostly over his face and snapped the bottom straight. The sergeant stared down at himself and realized the young man had chosen a pattern close to the coloring of Jehanan scales.
"You too, Master Sergeant." Tezozуmoc nodded to Colmuir and then looked at himself. The Fleet skinsuit he'd donned in the house was dull black, like most Imperial garments, and had its own autocamo capability, but being skin-tight, made him look far too human in outline.
"Miss." He looked at the Nisei girl. "Does your mistress have any local money?"
The Parus Express shuddered into motion, the linkages between the cars drawing tight one by one, clouds of steam and coal-smoke billowing up against a glassed-in ceiling. In the next to last car, Colmuir squeezed into a reserved compartment and immediately drew the window curtains closed. The clashing of wheels on the tracks drowned out all other sound until the door slammed shut behind Dawd.
Then something like silence – save for
the swinging rattle of the train car itself, and the assorted sighs of relief from the six humans in the compartment – settled around him.
"Now," the master sergeant said, sitting down beside the prince, "that was some quick thinking, mi'lady."
Greta Petrel smiled at the Eagle Knight and carefully removed her hat from the high, coiffed, hairpinned and gelled pompadour she had elected to sport for the festival. "Nonsense, master Colmuir, I always reserve an entire compartment for myself and my young ladies. Otherwise," she glanced in amusement at the Nisei girl and her Anglish companion, "we would be forced to endure the company of reprobates, villains and men with sacks of smelly ham sandwiches."
"Or those who smoke," the Nisei girl said, glaring pointedly at the master sergeant, who had just fished the last tabac from the crushed box in his vest pocket. "There is no smoking."
"Mei," Mrs. Petrel said, leaning a little towards the master sergeant and smiling faintly, "has asthma."
"Your pardon, miss," Colmuir replied, licking his lips and returning the tabac to its box. "Wouldn't want t' be a bother, now would I?"
"Not at all," Mrs. Petrel said. "You are very, very welcome company. I was afraid the Lord Prince had fallen into the hands of the kujen and his fellow conspirators."
"A conspiracy?" Sergeant Dawd glanced at the prince, who was sitting between him and Colmuir, now dressed in flowing native robes and a wickerwork sun hat which hid his entire face behind a long visor designed to protect the snout of a Jehanan matron from the fierce sun. "Just in Gandaris, or…"
"I expect the whole of the Five Rivers has risen up." Mrs. Petrel said, turning sideways so Mei could undo her hair. "There have been rumors for months of a secret cabal among the native princes – a society called the moktar – which is devoted to expunging the taint of Imperial thought, goods and presence from Jagan." She sighed with relief as the last of the pins came out. The white streaks sweeping back from her temples emerged as she shook out her hair.
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