by Sharon Green
"It's clear," the being acknowledged, now exchanging glances with the others in its link-group. "We stand ready to assist you in any way you consider necessary."
The entity, pleased with the response of the link-group, moved on to the next closest groups. It repeated what it had previously said, and shortly there were six link-groups for it to draw power from. This the entity did, conserving its own strength for an emergency, and little by little all the members of the largest group were taken from the control of the smallest. When the chore was done, the entity returned to the being called Pagin Holter.
—All those about you are now prepared to protect you,— the entity informed the being.—Those of lesser talent, however, have not been so commanded, therefore are you to be alert against them. The flesh forms of this entity are not far from your present position, therefore they and their companions will soon join you. Be prepared for their arrival.—
"I'm lookin' forward to it," the being replied with a chuckle, most of the anxiety gone from it. "Whut I most wanna see is thet there general tryin't' give 'em orders. But they better shake a leg. We ain't got a whole lotta time."
That last remark was perplexing to the entity, but questioning could wait for another time. It withdrew back to where its flesh forms waited, and then we were individuals again. Tired individuals, but not as tired as all that work should have made us.
"Rion, that was your idea!" Jovvi exclaimed with the same delight I felt myself. "The one about borrowing strength before we had to, I mean. It was absolutely brilliant, and is probably the only reason we aren't stretched out on the ground in exhaustion right now. How many link-groups did we take over?"
"Fifty at the very least," Lorand offered as he stretched. "Since the entity didn't bother counting, we won't know for certain until we get there. Are we going right away?"
"Going where?" Alsin asked just as Valiant was about to answer. "Who did you find over there, and what did you do about it?"
"We found a section of our victorious army," Valiant replied, speaking to everyone rather than just to Alsin. "For some reason they didn't look very victorious, and we were warned against draggin' Qur feet in joinin' them. What took so long was that we turned their Highs and strong Middles into our supporters, so only the nobles leadin' the section and their pet roaches are left as they were. Anybody interested in goin' straight over there and tellin' them how much we appreciate what they tried to do to our lives?"
A roar of agreement from our companions answered that question without any doubt, drowning out anything Alsin might have said. He hesitated a moment before joining the rest of us in going for our horses, but it was perfectly clear that the matter wasn't over and done with. Valiant had taken all control right out of his hands, and it wasn't necessary to have Spirit magic to know that he was not prepared to let the matter pass.
if I could have, I think I might have ridden off alone in another direction entirely. At the moment that was impossible, but as I mounted and turned my horse in the direction where Pagin Holter and the others waited for us, I decided to look for a time when it would not be impossible at all....
Forty-three
It didn't take long to reach the place on the far side of the village where Pagin Holter and the others waited, and Jovvi made sure to be right up front with those who rode into the makeshift camp first. The small group of nobles—who were dressed up in uniforms to show how high their rank was— were in the midst of giving some sort of instructions to their cadre of guardsmen-equivalents, and when they saw the newcomers, the one wearing commandant tabs on his collar exploded.
"Who in the name of chaos are those peasants?" the man demanded, interrupting his second-in-command's speech to the others. "Never mind, I don't care who they are. Have the link-groups destroy them, but not the horses. We can use whatever supplies they have, and the horses themselves will do for remounts for us."
"Link-groups, attention!" one member of the cadre with smaller collar tabs bellowed in a voice that carried easily.
"Destroy the intruders, but not their mounts. That's an order!"
Then the commandant and his friends and followers stood there waiting to be obeyed, smirks of pleased expectation on their faces. It took a moment or two before they realized that the order which had been given wasn't being obeyed, and by then Valiant had reined up in front of them.
"Don't waste your breath or our time repeatin' that order," he drawled as he looked down at the group. "You don't have a bunch of slaves to do your dirty work for you anymore, but don't let that keep you from tryin' us yourselves. Go ahead, try us."
A number of the nobles including the commandant seemed to reach out to the power, then they gasped and went pale along with those of the cadre who also had clearly decided to flex their ability.
"You really are a pretty talentless bunch, aren't you?" Tamma said then with a laugh. "I don't know about the other aspects, but as far as Fire magic is concerned none of you could light a stove with a match."
"Or handle more than three grains of dirt," Lorand put in after her with a nod of agreement. "With that in mind, why don't those of you with knives and cudgels and things stack them over there, out of easy reach of your group, and then go back and sit down where you're now standing. We'll get to you after we say hello to some old friends of ours."
Jovvi knew that Lorand meant to search for his friend Hat, although the entity would certainly have found the man if he had been there. But Lorand needed to search, so Jovvi simply exchanged a glance with Tamma then dismounted, to help convince their new prisoners not to make a fuss.
"You can't possibly expect to get away with this!" the commandant was sputtering out while his fury raged. "You're a group of peasant nothings, and this section of the army is mine!
"Correction," Valiant said as he, too, dismounted and moved forward to face the commandant. "Nothin' here is yours any longer, except the blame for what's been destroyed. And as far as ownin' things goes, you and the rest of the leeches like you won't be doin' that for much longer either. Now sit down, or you won't like the way I make you do it."
The fool of a noble had to look up at Valiant, and that was one of the man's pet hatreds. Jovvi knew he detested people who were taller than he, but that included most of the human race. He snarled something obscene and actually tried to backhand Valiant as he would have done to one of his servants, but Valiant blocked the blow and took the man by the front of his once-fine uniform. A hard shake rattled the noble's teeth in his head, a shove threw him to the ground, and then bedlam of sorts erupted when the former captive Highs all laughed and cheered.
"That applaudin' should tell you who's on which side," Valiant said then to the rest of the officers and their minions. "This is the last time I'll be usin' words: get rid of anythin' that might be considered a weapon, then sit down and do as you're told."
The officers were furious and those of lower rank sullen, but everyone obeyed the order without further argument. Potential weapons were thrown down out of easy reach, and then they all sat on the ground around their thoroughly humiliated leader.
"All right, people, keep an eye on them, please," Lorand said to their own companions, still anxious to get started with his search. "We're going to have a few words with the newest members of our group, but if you need us, don't hesitate to call. And while you're watching those lowlifes, think about what we can do with them."
That made their own people chuckle and grin, especially when they looked down at the captives. Jovvi checked the captives herself, to be certain that none of them intended immediate attack, but apparently none of them did. Later on would be another story, of course, but for the moment it was possible to give full attention to the people they had actually managed to rescue.
"... don't know where you come from, but we're mighty glad you did," Pagin Holter was saying happily to Rion as Jovvi walked over to join them. "Thought I was dreamin' when thet there entity a yourn talked to me, but then, when it started wo
rkin', I could feel it was real. Don't know how much longer we coulda lasted here 'thout this kinda help."
"Why not?" Jovvi asked as Rion waved away the man's thanks with a smile. "If you and your group were free of the Puredan, and you should have been, why was there a problem? And why are you here in the first place? Couldn't you have done something to escape when you were in the stockade?"
"Weren't in no stockade," Holter replied with a shake of his head. "Thet there noble Blendin' bested us mostly fair, an' ended knockin' us out. It felt like a real long time b'fore I woke up, an' when I did we wus with these here folk. Arinna, you tell 'em, 'cause you talk better'n me."
"You talk just fine, Pagin, but I'll be glad to help out," the woman Arinna said with a smile. She was a small and pretty woman, a bit smaller even than Holter, but the lively look in her eyes said she was much bigger on the inside, where it counts.
"I'm our group's Fire magic user," Arinna continued, also smiling at Valiant and Tamrissa, who had now come over to join the conversation. "As Pagin said, we blacked out during the competition and didn't wake up again until we were with this group. They told us they'd given us Puredan and we were bound to obey them the way everyone else did, but we knew better. When we got together we laughed over the secret we had, then we got ready to Blend and get ourselves away. That was when we discovered that it couldn't be done like that."
"Because a fully Blended group doesn't do well moving around," Jovvi said while everyone else made sounds of surprise and questioning. "That's fairly obvious, but you'll notice that some of our group overlooked the point, too. You could have defended yourselves as a Blending, but you couldn't have left the area; or you could have left the area, but couldn't have defended yourselves with the strength of a Blending."
"Exactly," Arinna said with a wry expression. "And on top of that, we had no idea where we were. After a little while we discovered that we'd been sent directly to the front, because Lord General Grib over there had run into resistance no one had been expecting. That was when we realized that we were in Astinda, and that most of the destruction we saw was our own empire's doing. We pretended to go along with what they wanted, but none of us actually added strength to the link-groups we were assigned to."
"Which someone would have noticed fairly quickly," Tamma said, nodding her understanding. "Now I see why Pagin was in such a hurry for us to get here."
"No, actually, that wasn't the reason," Arinna denied as she exchanged a disturbed glance with Holter. "Our biggest problem stems from the fact that we're now in retreat. In point of fact we've been running for half the day, trying to put as much distance between us and our former position as possible. People from other sections came streaming into our camp, some of them wounded and some just hysterical. The people of Astinda have been resisting this invasion all along, but now they've apparently managed to put together an army which ours can't stand against. We don't know just how close that army is or what its composition is, but old Gribby over there has been furious over the need to run away."
"An' his bullies've been takin' it out on us," Holter added with a growl. "They're real big men, knowin' nobody c'n do nothin' to 'em no matter whut they do. But I'd like t'see 'em try it again now."
"If most of them don't live very long, don't wonder why," Arinna said with a tightness to the words. "The army calls the men below the officers prods, meaning their job is to 'prod' the segments and link-groups into doing what the officers want done. Our people had to obey their orders, you see, but none of them were happy about it. The prods would beat them—us—to make us work harder and faster, and at night the women among us were shared around by the officers as well. My groupmates Blended to keep me and Rad-dia safe, but the same couldn't be done for the others ..."
Her words ended on a note of inner turmoil, and Jovvi reached out automatically to soothe the woman as best she could. All these people had had a really terrible time, but at least it was over now.
"It might be a good idea for the Blendin' to have a look around before we get to questionin' those officers," Valiant said as he fought an inner disturbance of his own. "We need to know what they're runnin' from, but even more we need to know how close that somethin' is. If we have the time, we might want to stay here for a bit. There's grazin' for the horses, and we ought to talk about what we're all goin' to do next."
Everyone agreed with that, of course, which produced one reaction that was less than positive. Jovvi turned her head in surprise over the flash of heavy anger she felt, and was even more surprised that it came from Alsin Meerk. He now looked at Valiant with a glare of thick resentment, which gave Jovvi a fairly good idea about what the problem was. Alsin was supposed to be in charge of their strategy and tactics, but Valiant hadn't even consulted him before making his suggestion. And Jovvi was fairly certain that the omission had been deliberate on Valiant's part. What in the world was going on between those two?
The next instant Jovvi shook her head at herself, annoyed at having asked so foolish a question. Tamma was what was wrong between Valiant and Alsin, that and the fact that they were both natural leaders. They'd worked together well enough until now, but whatever had gotten Tamma so upset must be at the root of this new hostility. Jovvi decided that she'd have to speak to Lorand and Rion. Possibly the three of them working together could find a solution to the difficulty. ...
But that would have to wait until later. A disappointed Lorand was walking back toward them, so in another moment they would be able to Blend. Jovvi looked around while she waited, trying to decide whether to hope they could stay there for a while, or hope that they couldn't. There was a... heavy, invisible cloud hovering over that entire area, a cloud composed of agony and terror, desolation and despair. And Jovvi wasn't the only one who felt it, she knew. Everyone seemed unhappy there, or at the very least uncomfortable.
And then Lorand joined them, so Jovvi was able to initiate the Blending. The entity formed as quickly as usual, looked about at the flesh forms it had visited earlier, then began to change its focus to find the enemy they had spoken about. It began to, then something else, in the opposite direction, took its attention. Those enemy flesh forms who had been following ...
Intent became action, and the entity floated quickly in the direction its own flesh forms had come from. That morning it had found the enemy a shade closer than they'd been until now, but not close enough to cause worry. This time, however, no more than hours later, the distance between them had closed drastically. It would be only a short while before that particular group of enemies reached them, a disturbing revelation even for the entity.
It flashed back to where its flesh forms waited, then took a quick look in the direction it was to have investigated. Although a large number of beings could be detected in that direction, they were in no wise as close as the first group. That, then, would have to be made the first priority....
"Those miserable sons of chaos," Valiant growled as soon as Jovvi dissolved the Blending. "They must have realized we were checkin' on them only in the mornin' and at night, so they waited until after our mornin' check and then galloped flat out in an effort to catch up before we noticed. And since we've been takin' our time, they can't be more than a couple of hours away."
"This must be what all those remounts were for," Lorand put in, sounding just as angry. "They disguised the two extra horses each guardsman led as pack animals, but they're really remounts. They ran the first set of horses into the ground, and now they're on the second. When these are done, and they're almost to that point now, they'll mount the third and just keep coming."
"But now we have the means to defeat them," Rion pointed out, gesturing to the people they'd freed. "If our new friends are willing to cooperate, we should have no trouble overcoming those louts."
"Are we to understand that the guardsman detachment is almost on top of us?" Alsin interrupted to ask, looking around at everyone but Valiant. "I thought you people were keeping an eye on them."
"No, of course not," Jovvi began, but Alsin's increased anger forced him to interrupt.
"What do you mean, ask these others?" he demanded. "If you can compel them to fight, that's what you have to do. We don't have the chance of a water drop on a hot skillet without them, and for some reason I'm not in the mood to die. Tell me how close that detachment is, and I'll start to make immediate deployment plans."
"Alsin, calm down," Lorand said, overriding the angry response Valiant would have made. "None of us wants to die, but forcing people into fighting for and with us is wrong. We all know you believe the same, and probably more strongly than we do, but right now you're upset. Take a couple of minutes to pull yourself together, then we'll talk about this again."
Jovvi felt Alsin's urge to snap out a refusal and disavowal of what Lorand had said, but since she already touched the man with her talent, that didn't matter. He calmed at once, of course, having no idea that he'd been soothed by her, but the intrusion had been necessary. If there was a worse time to fight among themselves, it could only be when the enemy was actually in sight.