When they heard the eerie stillness of the null broken by hoofbeats, the sentries were startled, and rather than raise an immediate alarm or go for their rifles, they went out of habit to their warrior stances with the spears.
"Riders'" one called out in the harsh guttural language of the Klutiin, but perhaps not loud enough. Almost instantly he heard a cracking sound and was gasping for air, pulled back and down by a leather whip expertly entangling itself around his neck, and he vanished beneath the mists.
The sentries on either side turned, unsure whether or not their comrade had been downed or simply had slipped on the spongy, soft, wet null surface. A moment later a figure wearing the sickly yellow tribal robes climbed unsteadily to its feet, shifted the rifle on its shoulder, and again assumed the readiness stance with its spear.
The one closest to the other frowned, as if sensing something wrong, but not being certain just how to cope with it. There was a sudden pull on his own neck from the back and he went down, a cry muffled by a knife swiftly and professionally cutting his throat.
Now, suddenly, the horses were visible, heading for the spot right between the recently fallen pair. The sentries further on now gave the cry of alarm and began to hurry towards the spot where the horses would cross, but Halagar on the one side and Boday on the other swung their newly acquired rifles on them and cut them down with short bursts.
Dorion, riding Halagar's horse with its special saddle with Charley in front of him, slowed just long enough for Boday and Halagar to quickly mount the two riderless ones he led, and then they kicked the horses' sides into the fastest possible speed and headed for the true border as shouts and shots and flying spears showed up all over the place.
There was no way to choose or determine which colonial world they would enter, although they'd delayed their attack until a border came up that seemed relatively unfortified and smooth enough for the horses to make a clean run inside. It was a strange-looking fairyland-like forest of the deepest greens imaginable, with lush vegetation but with some clear openings, and, most important, only one border fence, set in from the null.
Halagar and Boday stopped after they reached solid ground, turned, and began shooting at the disorganized but very angry soldiers now rushing towards them from all directions. Dorion pulled up at the fence, saw that it was mostly just barbed wire like it had looked through the binoculars, and began hacking away at it with a sharp sword. He cut three of the four main strands away; the bottom one was just too low for him to reach and not also fall off or cause Charley to fall off. He urged his horse through the breach and it cleared it.
Boday turned, saw the opening, then broke off and headed towards it as well, leaving Halagar to lay down some fire. When she made a small jump through, he turned in the saddle and followed.
The null was out of sight in a moment, but the trio rushed on for a bit until they felt safe to slow down and await the others. Dorion in particular didn't want to lose Boday and Halagar in this stuff, and he certainly didn't want to have to yell to find them. There was no doubt in his mind that a heavily armed and very nasty patrol would be sent after them on the double.
Boday, still wearing the tribal robe, caught up to him and stopped, then pulled off the robe, and threw it away. "Smells horrible," she commented. "Like it lined the sty of a hundred sweating pigs."
Halagar joined them in another minute, a broad grin on his face. "Now, that worked rather well, didn't it?" he said with evident satisfaction. "Rank amateurs, even for colonials."
"Almost too easy," Dorion agreed, "although I did sweat a little right in there. Anybody hurt?"
"I've got a scratch where a bullet winged me, but it's nothing more than that," Halagar replied. "You?"
Boday was scratching all over. "Boday fully believes that the soldier was not the only one inhabiting that robe!"
That gave them a bit of a laugh, although it wasn't funny to Boday, and Halagar jumped down and examined the horses. "No shots I doubt if they've trained much with those rifles, if at all. Not a single one put their weapon on automatic fire, which would have done us in but good at the fence. Still, we came through that one pretty well."
"Yeah, and, just think, we have three more of those to go," Dorion said grumpily, "If we were lucky this time, how many times can we afford to do that?"
"Not many," Hatagar agreed. "But we'll have to take each one as it comes and solve it somehow. Best by stealth, I think, and trickery, rather than directly as here. We also have to get from here to there. If that was all the force they really are putting on the kingdom borders, then their main force must be elsewhere. It is inevitable that we will run into it sooner or later. I certainly wish I knew just what they were up to, though." He thought a moment. "Perhaps not so much holding off Covanti or threatening it as perhaps securing a vital area for other activities, like bringing in more troops by whatever method they've found for doing it. We shall have to watch our backs." He looked around. "Dorion have you ever seen or heard of this colonial world before?"
"Beats me," the magician responded. "There's far too many to ever keep track of."
"I don't like being in these woodlands not knowing what might lurk here," the mercenary noted. "Let's find a reasonably open area and camp here for now. In the day, we'll head east towards the main road and follow it as much as possible without risking ourselves unnecessarily. I dislike moving by day, but in a strange world with an enemy about it is better to risk being seen, rather than not see what is lurking for you. From now on, though, everyone keep a watchful eye and ear at the ready. We want no surprises."
"You're going to camp here?" Dorion said nervously. "They'll be all over here in a matter of minutes'"
Halagar chuckled. "I think not. They can't know any more about most of these worlds than we do, and they can't spare many, if any, troops to go off into this darkness looking for us. Oh, they'll send a patrol or something that we can hear two leegs off, and they'll clomp around for a bit and make like they are doing a major job, but it'll be half-hearted and I doubt if those unlucky souls will really even want to find us. No, they'll just send a message forward that some folks stoned the tine and trust to those further on to take care of us."
"Yeah, that helps a lot," the magician responded glumly. It was amazing how quiet, almost dead, the place felt and sounded. But for the wind in the trees and an occasional sound of some insect or tree-dwelling animal flitting about, disturbed by their passage, there didn't seem to be anyone home at all. When they reached a shallow creek, the horses stopped to drink and didn't fall over, so they decided to make camp there. They set a rotating watch, of course, but if anyone was out looking for them, they missed by a country mile.
It was the quiet that got to them, both in the night and through the first few hours of the next day. This was not the kind of region where no one would want to live or work; the climate was at least subtropical, the vegetation lush but apparently not dangerous, and there seemed to be no predators lurking about anywhere. Still, there were no signs of paths or trails or large animal droppings anywhere about; nothing to indicate that this was a place that had ever seen any sort of man.
Dorion tried to use the daylight to good advantage, hauling out and paging through his Pocket Grimoire for any stock spells he was capable of throwing that might help them out. The invisibility spell held promise, but it was very limited and, being a basic public domain-type spell, was so easily countered that it would probably just trap them. It was strictly a one-person deal anyway, and transitory.
Let's see…. Love spells and charms, aphrodisiacs…. No, even if they might be useful, he couldn't see being fawned over by a love-starved Klutiian or something. The curses, too, seemed both too specific and too complex to be useful in a live or die situation, although they were fully half the book. Well… maybe. Here was blindness, deafness, striking someone dumb, that sort of thing. Fine if he had something organic of the subject's or was face to face with him, but otherwise next to impossible.
The hypnotic spells were a better choice, although they were simple and few and easily broken or stalled by someone with great will power. Those sentries back there, however, might have been easy marks if he had the nerve to pop up near such ones and invoke the spell first. He didn't know what was best. if anything, but he was determined to keep looking.
They found the road without much trouble and followed it along the side, always keeping nearby cover in mind, and cautiously scouting every bend and every hill before venturing forth.
There was, however, no apparent traffic and no threats from either direction. At Halagar's insistence they kept playing it super cautious, which slowed their progress to a crawl, but they soon began to feel alone in a strangely desolate world.
Four days in, they came to a town center. Clearly established as a main support link on the road, it looked to have supported perhaps a thousand people in various forms of activity, but now the nearby fields stood untended and the streets seemed as deserted as the forest.
Halagar waited until nightfall and then went in on his own, looking over the whole of the town and taking his own sweet time about it as the others waited. He finally returned, shaking his head in confusion.
"No one! Nothing!" he reported. "It is strange. Almost as if everyone along here was ordered evacuated. Everything's been put away or carted away that was of any use or value, and the thing has been just abandoned. From the looks of the dung, feed barns, and the like, I'd say it's been this way for perhaps two weeks. There are some ugly signs, though. The government house had suffered a major fire—it's in ruins. A number of the Akhbreed houses and shops had been clearly ransacked not closed in an orderly manner like the rest and there were old, dried bloodstains in great numbers. I think it's safe to go in there now, though, and even sleep in those unused beds and perhaps work up something hot out of what we've got. There's nobody left now. Besides, I'd like to examine the town closer in daylight."
They'd brought along mostly practical food, so there wasn't much chance of a real cooked meal, but it was nice to be able to brew coffee and tea at least. The real beds were comfortable, too, but both Dorion and Boday felt as if they were somehow going to sleep in a gigantic grave; as if the place were somehow haunted, tinged with evil.
The next day, Halagar discovered that their feelings were somewhat justified, although nothing supernatural needed to be involved. He brought them around to a place near the old government house and pointed. "Buildings weren't the only things they burned." he noted.
Someone had dug large pits behind the government house and filled them, then poured something flammable on the piles, and lit them. But bones didn't burn all that cleanly or well.
Halagar sifted through the charred and blackened remains with a stick and uncovered some blackened skulls. "This one had his head crushed in," he noted clinically, "but some of the others appear unmarked. That doesn't mean much, but there are a tot of remains here and they look almost all Akhbreed in both pits."
"What must have happened here?" Boday asked, appalled. "Not an invasion, certainly," the mercenary replied. "They would have just sacked the town and left the remains to rot. This was orderly, organized. Only Akhbreed places were burned or ransacked; only Akhbreed were thrown into the pit. Whatever the natives look like here, they're certainly smaller and different than Akhbreed, and there's none of their remains here. I would wager that if we looked hard we'd find true graves for them. I think the inhabitants of this town— the native inhabitants awoke one day, or perhaps performed by a signal what they had rehearsed for a long time, and systematically slew every Akhbreed in the town without regard to who or what. Then their places were ransacked, their bodies dumped here and disposed of, and they then very calmly packed up all that they wanted or needed and every man, woman, and child went off."
"They would not dare do that!" Boday protested. "They would know that they would be hunted down to the last survivor and tortured to death, and the whole province would be under military occupation."
Halagar nodded. "That's the drill, yes, and it's worked for thousands of years. The Akhbreed colonials here surely thought that way. which was why it was so easy. But, who is going to look at this and vow revenge and hunt them down, Boday? By whose authority? By whose power?"
"Why, the Tishbaal, of course!"
He shook his head sadly. "I doubt it. They're probably withdrawn to the hub boundaries and fortified just like Covanti's. They're not coming in here now, not when they can't be reinforced from the hub. I think you're still thinking too provincialty as well. Don't just look at this pit and this town—think about all the towns and colonial outposts and farms and factories and whatever on this world. All of them. The odds are there are a half billion or more natives on this world and maybe two, three million Akhbreed tops, spread out all over the place, all secure that their sorcerers and soldiers will protect them taking it for granted. I should say that there were two or three million Akhbreed. Ten to one the survivors number in the thousands or less. They sealed the world off and then they rose up and claimed it for their own. I wonder how many worlds like this one there are where this has happened, and nobody knows? And not just Tishbaal, either."
"But they must be mad!" she maintained. "Perhaps things are bottled up now, but they can not crack the hubs, and sooner or later the Akhbreed sorcerers will come with or without the troops and make this entire race wish it had never been born!"
Dorion, also a product of Akhbreed culture, was as stunned by this as Boday was, but he understood what Halagar was thinking. "You're right," he agreed. "They wouldn't dare this knowing what must eventually come if the hubs are in fact impregnable. Clearly the natives here think they're not. 1 wonder what convinced them? This isn't something you do on faith alone."
"Perhaps we'll find out further along the road," the mercenary responded, and they packed up and prepared to ride.
It was close to sundown when they reached it, just over a hill. Sitting on their horses atop the crest of the hill, they looked across a vast valley that was unlike anything they had ever seen.
The ground was yellow and purple, and strewn with tall, spindly plants growing from it up into the heavens with tendrils waving about and not from any wind. The great, green weeds with thorny plates like bones thrashed like some alien squid half-hidden in burrows in the ground. Although planted, some were so close together that tentacles would occasionally touch and there would be a furious battle, ending only when the contacted tentacles of one were pulled out of their trunks by the other. The remains of dead ones littered the landscape as well, where two of the things had been too close for both to tolerate survival.
"Changewind," Dorion breathed.
Halagar nodded. "And note its symmetry. The storm touched down up there—you can actually see the start of it—then progressed in an unnaturally straight course along the center of the valley, stopping Just at the edge of the fields up there. I've seen a thousand Changewind regions, and never one as regular as this. Here's the answer to our puzzle and an unnerving one at that. A demonstration of blessing from the gods. Can't you see the effect this would have if it were announced in advance, through the high priests or whatever of the natives here? On such-and-such a date and such-and-such a time we will produce a Changewind just in this valley as a sign of our godlike powers. Word would get around fast and if the Akhbreed were curious as well, or heard the rumors, or wondered where some of the natives were going and followed, what difference would it make? This would be a sign from the gods writ too large to miss. The uprising must have followed almost immediately. That's why there are still plants out there fighting for their space. There hasn't been enough time to gain balance as yet."
"Could Klittichom actually have done this?" Dorion wondered aloud. "By the gods! If he can do that on cue and to such precision then what chance has anybody got?"
Halagar shrugged. "Who knows how they do it? I suspect it's not as bad as all that, that they need the precise coordinates and limits at the very lea
st. Otherwise they would have to be physically present both a top sorcerer like Klittichom and the almost irreplaceable Storm Princess at each attempt. Too much risk there to them, and too much attention drawn. I doubt if this was done too many times yet. It was practice at an ideal place of their choosing and with careful preparation that also was an effective demonstration of their power to the locals and perhaps visiting dignitaries and potential allies as well. But, think now how easy it would be to get the coordinates to the central government district of a hub, for example. They're fixed, unmoving amidst the constant world shifting around them."
"Yes, but then why have they not just taken out the hubs one by one?" Boday asked him. "There must be more to it than that."
"Maybe. Maybe not. You start taking out the hubs one by one, and you get two or three in a row all this precise, and you can't keep it quiet or quiet the suspicions of the remaining sorcerers. They'd get out of the hubs and fast, I'd think, and then they'd go hunting for Klittichom as a group and that would be the end of this scheme. No, to get them, or at least most of them, you are going to have to attack all over Akahlar simultaneously, or as close to that as possible before they can know what's happened to the others. The power is awesome here, but Klittichom's had to tread on eggs none the less. He and his storm witch are still vulnerable and they'll only get one shot at this. That's what this is about. They're doing selective demonstrations to get sufficient rebel colonial forces to move to the hubs, so there will be an invasion and occupation force when the Changewinds hit. There will still be a hell of a fight. But this is genius. An all or nothing gamble for all Akahlar!"
Changewinds 03 - War of the Maelstrom Page 16