Cordelia chased a suddenly very lumpy bite of bread with a swallow of hot tea. But were his psychoactive drugs truly therapeutic, or merely political in their effect? “Let me know if you are experiencing any kind of difficulty, Sergeant,” she said cautiously.
“Not so far. Except it’s getting harder to sleep. They suppress dreams.” He took his tea and wandered back to his post.
Cordelia carefully refrained from cleaning up their campsite. She did escort Gregor to the nearest rivulet for a personal washup. They were certainly acquiring an authentic hill-folk aroma. They returned to the cavern, where Cordelia rested a while on the bedroll. She must insist on relieving Bothari soon. Come on, Kly… .
Bothari’s tense low voice reverberated in the cavern. “Milady. Sire. Time to go.”
“Kly?”
“No.”
Cordelia rolled to her feet, kicked the pre-arranged pile of dirt over the last coals of their fire, grabbed Gregor, and hustled him out the cave mouth. He looked suddenly frightened and sickly. Bothari was pulling the bridles off the horses, loosing them and tossing the gear on the pile with the saddles. Cordelia pulled herself up beside the cave and snatched one quick glimpse over the treetops. A flyer had landed in front of Kly’s cabin. Two black-uniformed soldiers were circling to the right and left. A third disappeared under the porch roof. Faint and delayed in the distance came the bang of Kly’s front door being kicked open. Only soldiers, no hillman-guides or hillman-prisoners in that flyer. No sign of Kly.
They took to the woods at a jog, Bothari boosting up and carrying Gregor piggyback. Rose made to follow them, and Cordelia whirled to wave her arms and whisper frantically, “No! Go away, idiot beast!” to spook her off. Rose hesitated, then turned to stay by her lame companion.
Their run was steady, unpanicked. Bothari had his route all picked out, taking advantage of sheltering rocks and trees and water-carved steps. They scrambled up, down, up, but just when she thought her lungs would burst and their pursuers must spot them, Bothari vanished along a steep rock face.
“Over here, Milady!”
He’d found a thin, horizontal crack in the rocks, half a meter high and three meters deep. She rolled in beside him to find the niche shielded by solid rock everywhere but the front, and that almost blocked by fallen stone. Their bedroll and supplies waited.
“No wonder,” Cordelia gasped, “the Cetagandans had trouble up here.” A thermal sensor would have to be aimed straight in, to pick them up, from a point twenty meters in the air out over the ravine. The place was riddled with hundreds of similar crannies.
“Even better.” Bothari pulled a pair of antique field glasses, looted from Kly’s cabin, from their bedroll. “We can see them.”
The glasses were nothing but binocular tubes with sliding glass lenses, purely passive light—collectors. They must have dated from the Time of Isolation. The magnification was poor by modern standards, no UV or infrared boost, no rangefinder pulse … no power cell to leak detectable energy traces. Flat on her belly, chin in the rubble, Cordelia could glimpse the distant cavern entrance on the slope rising beyond the ravine and a knife-backed ridge. When she said, “Now we must be very quiet,” pale Gregor practically went fetal.
The black-clad scanner men found the horses at last, though it seemed to take them forever. Then they found the cave mouth. The tiny figures gesticulated excitedly to each other, ran in and out, and called the flyer, which landed outside the entrance with much crackling of shrubbery. Four men entered; eventually, one came back out. In time, another flyer landed. Then a lift van arrived, and disgorged a whole patrol. The mountain mouth ate them all. Another lift van came, and men set up lights, a field generator, comm links.
Cordelia made a nest of the bedroll for Gregor, and fed him little snacks and sips from their water bottle. Bothari stretched out in the back of the niche with the thinnest blanket folded under his head, otherwise seeming impervious to the stone. While Bothari dozed, Cordelia kept careful count of the net flow of hunters. By mid-afternoon, she calculated that some forty men had gone below and not come up again.
Two men were brought out strapped to float pallets, loaded into a medical—evacuation lifter, and flown away. A lightflyer made a bad landing in the crowded area, toppled downslope, and crunched into a tree. Yet more men became involved in extracting, righting, and repairing it. By dusk over sixty men had been sucked down the drain. A whole company drawn away from the capital, not pursuing refugees, not available to root out the secrets of ImpMil … it wasn’t enough to make a real difference, surely.
It’s a start.
Cordelia and Bothari and Gregor slipped from the niche in the gloaming, cleared the ravines, and made their way silently through the woods. It was nearly full dark when they came to the edge of the trees and struck Kly’s trail. As they crossed over the ridge edging the vale, Cordelia looked back. The area by the cave mouth was marked by searchlights, stabbing up through the mists. Lightflyers whined in and out of the site.
They dropped over the ridge and slithered down the slope that had so nearly killed her to climb, hanging on to Rose’s stirrup two days ago. Fully five kilometers down the trail, in a rocky region of treeless scrub, Bothari came to an abrupt halt. “Sh. Milady, listen.”
Voices. Men’s voices, not far off, but strangely hollow. Cordelia stared into the darkness, but no lights moved. Nothing moved. They crouched beside the trail, senses straining.
Bothari crept off, head tilted, following his ears. After a few moments Cordelia and Gregor cautiously followed. She found Bothari kneeling by a striated outcrop. He motioned her closer.
“It’s a vent,” he announced in a whisper. “Listen.”
The voices were much clearer now, sharp cadences, angry gutturals punctuated by swearing in two or three languages.
“Goddammit, I know we went left back at that third turn.”
“That wasn’t the third turn, that was the fourth.”
“We re-crossed the stream.”
“It wasn’t the same friggin’ stream, sabaki!”
“Merde. Perdu!”
“Lieutenant, you’re an idiot!”
“Corporal, you’re out of line!”
“This cold light’s not going to last the hour. See, it’s fading.”
“Well, don’t shake it up, you moron, when it glows brighter it goes faster.”
“Give me that—!”
Bothari’s teeth gleamed in the darkness. It was the first smile Cordelia had seen crack his face in months. Silently, he saluted her. They tiptoed softly away, into the chill of the Dendarii night.
Back on the trail, Bothari sighed deeply. “If only I’d had a grenade to drop down that vent. Their search parties would still be shooting at each other this time next week.”
Chapter Thirteen
Four hours down the night trail, the distinctive black and white horse loomed out of the dark. Kly was a shadow aboard it, but his thick profile and battered hat were instantly recognizable.
“Bothari!” The name huffed from Kly’s mouth. “We live. Grace of God.”
Bothari’s voice was flat. “What happened to you, Major?”
“I almost ran into one of Vordarian’s squads at a cabin I was delivering mail to. They’re actually trying to go over these hills house by house. Dosing everyone they meet with fast-penta. They must be bringing the drug in by the barrel.”
“We expected you back last night,” said Cordelia. She tried not to let her tone sound too accusing.
The felt hat bobbed as Kly gave her a weary nod of greeting. “Would’ve been, except for Vordarian’s bloody patrol. I didn’t dare let them question me. I spent a day and a night, dodging ’em. Sent my niece’s husband to get you. But when he got to my place this morning, Vordarian’s men were all over. I figured we’d lost everything. But when they were still all over by nightfall, I took heart. They wouldn’t still be looking for you if they’d found you. Figured I’d better get my ass up here and do some scouting myself.
This is beyond hope.”
Kly turned his horse around, heading back down the trail. “Here, Sergeant, put the boy up.”
“I can carry the boy. Think you’d better give m’lady a lift. She’s about out.”
Too true. It was a measure of Cordelia’s exhaustion that she went willingly to Kly’s horse. Between them, Bothari and Kly shoved her aboard, perched astraddle on the pinto’s warm rump. They started off, Cordelia gripping the mailman’s coat.
“What happened to you?” Kly asked in turn.
Cordelia let Bothari answer, in his short sentences made even shorter by his burdened stride, as he carried Gregor piggyback. When he got to a mention of the men heard down the vent, Kly barked a laugh, then clapped a hand over his mouth. “They’ll be weeks getting out of there. Good work, Sergeant!”
“It was Lady Vorkosigan’s idea.”
“Oh?” Kly twisted around to glance back over his shoulder at Cordelia, clinging wanly.
“Aral and Piotr both seemed to think diversion worthwhile,” Cordelia explained. “I gather Vordarian has limited reserves.”
“You think like a soldier, m’lady.” Kly sounded approving.
Cordelia wrinkled her brow in dismay. What an appalling compliment. The last thing she wanted was to start thinking like a soldier, playing their game by their rules. The hallucinatory military world-view was horribly infectious, though, immersed in it as she was now. How long can I tread water?
Kly led them on another two hours of night marching, striking out on unfamiliar trails. In deep pre—dawn dark they came to a shack, or house. It seemed to be of similar construction to Kly’s place, but more extensive, with rooms built on and other rooms built on to the additions. A light from a tiny flame, some sort of greasy homemade candle, burned in a window.
An old woman in a nightgown and jacket, her grey hair in a braid down her back, came to the door and motioned them within. Another old man—but younger than Kly—took the horse out of sight toward a shed. Kly made to go with him.
“Is it safe here?” Cordelia asked dizzily. Where is here?
Kly shrugged. “They searched here day before yesterday. Before I sent for m’ nephew-in-law. Checked it off clean.”
The old woman snorted, surly memory in her eye.
“What with the caves, and all the unchecked homesteads, and the lake, it’ll be a while before they get around to re-checking. They’re still searching the lake bottom, I hear, they’ve flown in all kinds of equipment. It’s as safe as any.” He went off after his horse.
Meaning, as unsafe as any. Bothari was already taking his boots off. His feet must be bad. Her feet were a mess, her slippers walked to flinders, and Gregor’s rag shoes utterly destroyed. She’d never felt so near the end of all endurance, bone-weary, blood-weary, though she’d done much longer hikes before. It was as if her truncated pregnancy had drained life itself out of her, to pass it on to another. She let herself be guided, fed bread and cheese and milk and put to bed in a little side room, herself on one narrow cot and drooping Gregor on another. She would believe in safety tonight the way Barrayaran children believed in Father Frost at Winterfair, true because she desperately wanted it to be.
The next day a raggedy boy of about ten appeared out of the woods, riding Kly’s sorrel horse bareback with a rope halter. Kly made Cordelia, Gregor, and Bothari hide out of sight while he paid the boy off with a few coins, and Sonia, Kly’s aged niece, packed him some sweet cakes to speed him on his way. Gregor peeked wistfully out the corner of one curtained window as the child vanished again.
“I didn’t dare go myself,” Kly explained to Cordelia. “Vordarian has three platoons of men up there now.” A wheezing chuckle escaped him at some inner vision. “But the boy knows nothing but that the old mailman was sick and needed his re-mount.”
“They didn’t fast-penta that child, did they?”
“Oh, yes.”
“They dared!”
Kly’s black-stained lips compressed in sympathy with her outrage. “If he can’t get hold of Gregor, Vordarian’s coup is likely doomed. And he knows it. There’s not much he wouldn’t dare to do, at this point.” He paused. “You can be glad fast-penta has replaced torture, eh?”
Kly’s nephew-in-law helped him saddle up the sorrel, and buckle on the mailbags. The mailman adjusted his hat, and climbed up.
“If I don’t keep my schedule, it will be near-impossible for the Gen’ral to contact me,” he explained. “Got to go, I’m late already. I’ll be back. You and the boy stay inside, out of sight, as much as you can, m’lady.” He turned his horse toward the bare-branched woods. The animal blended quickly into the red-brown native scrub.
Cordelia found Kly’s last advice all too easy to follow. She spent most of the next four days in her cot-bed. The dull silence of hours went by in a fog, a relapse into the frightening fatigue she’d experienced after the placental transfer operation and its near-lethal complications. Conversation provided no diversion. The hill-folk were as laconic as Bothari. It was the threat of fast-penta, Cordelia thought. The less you knew, the less you could tell. The old woman Sonia’s eyes probed Cordelia curiously, but she never asked anything beyond, “You hungry?” Cordelia didn’t even know her last name.
Baths. After the first one, Cordelia did not ask again. The old couple worked all afternoon to haul and heat enough water for herself and Gregor. Their simple meals were nearly as much labor. No Pull Tab To Heat Contents up here. Technology, a woman’s best friend. Unless the technology appeared in the form of a nerve disruptor in the hand of some dead-eyed soldier hunting you down carelessly as an animal.
Cordelia counted over the days since the coup, since all hell had broken loose. What was happening in the larger world? What response from the space forces, from planetary embassies, from conquered Komarr? Would Komarr seize the chaos to revolt, or had Vordarian taken them by surprise too? Aral, what are you doing out there?
Sonia, though she asked no questions, would now and then return from outings and drop bits of local news. Vordarian’s troops, headquartered in Piotr’s residence, were close to abandoning the search of the lake bottom. Hassadar was sealed, but refugees escaped in a trickle; someone’s children, smuggled out, had arrived to stay with relatives nearby. At Vorkosigan Surleau most of Piotr’s armsmen’s families had escaped except Armsman Vogti’s wife and very aged mother, who had been taken away in a groundcar, no one knew where.
“And, oh yes, very strange,” Sonia added. “They took Karla Hysopi. That hardly makes sense. She was only the widow of a retired regular Service sergeant, what use do they expect to make of her?”
Cordelia froze. “Did they take the baby, too?”
“Baby? Donnia didn’t say about a baby. Grandchild, was it?”
Bothari was sitting by the window sharpening his knife on Sonia’s kitchen whetstone. His hand paused in mid-stroke. He looked up to meet Cordelias alarmed eyes. Beyond a tightening of his jaw his face did not change expression, yet the sudden increase of tension in his body made Cordelia’s stomach knot. He looked back down at what he was doing, and took a longer, firmer stroke that hissed along the whetstone like water on coals.
“Maybe … Kly will know something more, when he comes back,” Cordelia quavered.
“Belike,” said Sonia doubtfully.
At last, on schedule, on the evening of the seventh day, Kly rode into the clearing on his sorrel horse. A few minutes later Armsman Esterhazy rode in behind him. He was dressed in hillman’s togs, and his mount was a lean and spindle-shanked hill horse, not one of Piotr’s big glossy beasts. They put their horses away and came in to a dinner Sonia had apparently fixed this night of Kly’s rounds for eighteen years.
After dinner they pulled up chairs to the stone fireplace, and Kly and Esterhazy briefed Cordelia and Bothari in low tones. Gregor sat by Cordelias feet.
“Since Vordarian has greatly widened his search area,” Esterhazy began, “Count and Lord Vorkosigan have decided that the mountains are still t
he best place to hide Gregor. As the search radius grows enemy forces will be spread thinner and thinner.”
“Locally, Vordarian’s forces are still hunting up and down the caves,” Kly put in. “There’s about two hundred men still up there. But as soon as they finish finding each other, I expect they’ll pull out. I hear they’ve given up on finding you in there, Milady. Tomorrow, Sire,” Kly glanced down and addressed Gregor directly, “Armsman Esterhazy will take you to a new place, a lot like this one. You’ll have a new name for a while, for pretend. And Armsman Esterhazy will pretend he’s your da. Think you can do that?”
Gregor’s hand tightened on Cordelia’s skirt. “Will Lady Vorkosigan pretend she’s my ma?”
“We’re going to take Lady Vorkosigan back to Lord Vorkosigan, at Tanery Base Shuttleport.” At Gregor’s alarmed look Kly added, “There’s a pony, where you’re going. And goats. The lady there might teach you how to milk the goats.”
Gregor looked doubtful, but did not fuss further, though the next morning as he was put up behind Esterhazy on the shaggy horse he looked near to tears.
Cordelia said anxiously, “Take care of him, Armsman.”
Esterhazy gave her a driven look. “He’s my Emperor, Milady. He holds my oath.”
“He’s also a little boy, Armsman. Emperor is … a delusion you all have in your heads. Take care of the Emperor for Piotr, yes, but you take care of Gregor for me, eh?”
Esterhazy met her eyes. His voice softened. “My little boy is four, Milady.”
He did understand, then. Cordelia swallowed relief and grief. “Have you … heard anything from the capital? About your family?”
“Not yet,” said Esterhazy bleakly.
“I’ll keep my ears open. Do what I can.”
“Thank you.” He gave her a nod, not as retainer to his lady, but as one parent to another. No other word seemed necessary.
Bothari was out of earshot, having returned to the cabin to pack up their few supplies. Cordelia went to Kly’s stirrup, as he prepared to swing his black and white horse about and lead Esterhazy and Gregor on their way. “Major. Sonia passed on a rumor that Vordarian’s troops took Mistress Hysopi. Bothari had hired her to foster his baby girl. Do you know if they took Elena—the baby—too?”
Barrayar b-2 Page 21