by Sharon
"All I ask," the gentle mannered merchant would say, as the child Shan tagged after him through acres of warehoused carpets, "is an honest advantage. When I have that, the other party is nearly always positive that my position is weak."
Shan tipped his head, deliberately meek, and reached out, oh, so gently, with Healer sense, inspiring Dustin with goodwill.
"Corporal," he said, voice and face all calm reasonableness. "I've spent the better part of a day inside my work suit inside a lifeboat. At least grant me a chance to walk around."
Corporal Dustin blinked and Shan moved closer, looking gravely into eyes the color of nutmeg. "I suggest you take me to the departure point," he murmured. "I should get a feel for my boots, if I'm going to have to march in them."
Dustin blinked again, glanced down at the boots the quartermaster had supplied. After a moment, he nodded.
"Yessir. We can move in that direction. Might happen we can at least take a glance toward that spitfire of yours when we go by."
Shan smiled and withdrew the tendril of goodwill. "Thank you, Dustin."
They had passed several sentries, but it became quickly apparent that Sub-Commander Kritoulkas did not believe in concentrating her people in one spot. Dustin directed him this way, that way, up a series of trails, all of which showed use, but none that were obviously more important than another.
Shan nodded to himself, pleased with the sub-commander's arrangements—and then, on the very edge of his sharpened hearing, caught a sound.
He listened, ignoring the sound of Dustin's boots scraping against stone: a familiar sound, common in ports and cities. . .
"Dustin," he said softly, "do we have heavy-lift rotor-craft on our side? Perhaps two or three of them?"
The corporal flicked him a startled look, stopped heavily and took his hard hat into his hand. He cocked his head to one side, listening—then snatched for his belt comm.
"Traffic," he said distinctly. "Possible copter noise, any ID?"
"Traffic," came the quick reply. "Ear's going on. Reports to Traffic Two, thank you."
Shan listened. The sound was distinct, now, though it was difficult to be sure of direction through the canopy of trees.
He thought of his late spiral worldward, the rotor noise growing in his ears. From what he recalled, the sounds were coming—
"From the coast," he said, abruptly. "At least two!"
Dustin looked at him seriously, nodded, and thumbed his Communit again. "Traffic Two, we have estimate of two plus rotors coming from the coast."
"Traffic Two acknowledges. The Ear says three, real low. Thanks, son." There was a slight burp then and the whisper of a new message from a dozen spots in the nearby woods.
"This is the Dealer, this is the Dealer. Shuffle the deck, please, and cut it three ways. Player names the game."
"Good ear, sir," Dustin nodded respectfully at him. "Best move with me. If we get separated—anyplace where there's a definite Y in the trail you'll find a dugout about ten meters in toward the empty side, long as you're inside the camp. Might need to hunt a bit. If there's crossing trails you should see a faint fifth trail—look on the opposite side of that."
Shan nodded, pleased again with the sub-commander.
By now the sound was a definite heavy chop. Coming in low. Fast and low.
At the first Y they came to Dustin took him straight ahead into the woods. The corporal ducked low beneath a branch, and disappeared. A moment later Shan found the dugout and dropped in beside him.
Shan felt the dugout slope deeper into the earth, could see where portions of the wall had been reinforced with local wood and branches. One of the cut branches, as tall as he and with a few gray-green leaves still clinging to it attracted his attention. He leaned against the branch. It flexed slightly, but felt sternly durable. His hand went around it comfortably. . .
"This is the Dealer, this is the Dealer. We've got a three-handed game of Stone Poker. Cards are on the table. Jacks are wild. Spectators will refrain from spitting."
Dustin nodded. "C'mon, Sir. Jacks are wild means every available hand. Stone Poker means they're up toward the quarry somewhere—"
"My boat!"
"Yessir. Or maybe the Yxtrang wreck."
There was a roar overhead. Dustin ducked back into the dugout. Shan, peering upward through a gap in the trees, saw three black forms lifting into the sky—heading back toward the coast in a hurry.
"That refrain from spittin' stuff," Dustin said, easing out of the dugout. "That means no shooting til we get orders, sir."
Shan looked at him and held out his empty hand and his stick.
"Yessir, I know. Please follow me."
He began to do that, then realized that the sound of the retreating rotors had changed somehow. He fell to his knees, found the gap in the sheltering branches—
The last of the copters was moving very slowly, almost hovering. Perhaps they had spotted someone or—
A figure appeared from the belly of the copter, sliding down a cable made visible by his motion. A second figure followed, and a third. Four. . .
There were eight of them on the ground, the last having dropped a good distance as the rotor began to move away.
"Sir?" Dustin had missed him and returned, sounding both relieved and annoyed. "Sir? You'll need to come this way—"
Shan stood, automatically brushing the dirt from leather-covered knees.
"Corporal, that last copter dropped eight soldiers over this way."
"I didn't see it," Dustin said doubtfully.
"I did. They must be on that rise over there. Slid down a rope in a hurry."
The comm burped and gave out a muffled chant.
"This is the Dealer. Side-bets are in order when you see cash. Repeat, side-bets are in order when you see cash."
Shan glanced at Dustin's worried face, eyebrows lifted in question.
"Sir, that means we can engage if we have to, local unit leader to decide." He grimaced. "Guess that's me."
He reached for the comm and thumbed the switch.
"Traffic Two, chance that eight slid down a straw near—" He waved a beseeching hand. Shan nodded, pointed as best he could through the trees.
"Traffic Two, that's maybe eight down the straw near hill four."
There was a pause then, and Shan could feel the tension building in the man's emotive grid.
Finally, "This is Traffic. We have the straw report. Confirm visually, says The Dealer. Tell me go."
"Gone," said Dustin and tucked the communit in its holster, switch off.
Shan wished he'd had a chance to break the boots in. As it was, he'd have sore feet tonight. If the luck smiled, of course.
He also wished he had something more than a branch and a utility knife for weapons. He'd considered making a spear out of the stick—it was nearly his height and reasonably straight—but he didn't have the necessary time. So he carried it, hoping balefully that he now knew how to use a cudgel if he needed to.
The going was slow. They'd climbed down a hill and now were inching up a rocky slope sparsely studded with trees. Portions of the slope were nearly cliff, and it was Dustin's knowledge of the trails that kept Shan from taking several bad turns.
Halfway up the hill they heard muffled voices, speaking a language that Shan's sharpened hearing found unfamiliar. Dustin glanced back, signaling by tapping his ear and then waving an empty hand around the land.
Shan nodded, concentrated. After a moment, he pointed carefully to his left, but still uphill.
Ever more slowly they climbed, with Shan from time to time cringing at the amount of noise Corporal Dustin threw into the wind.
The alien voices wavered, lowered. Dustin looked back to him and Shan concentrated, heard not with ears this time, but with Healer sense: eight intent patterns, one lanced with red sparkings of pain. Shan swallowed and pointed for Dustin—to the left yet, but not nearly so far uphill.
At a crawl, they went on.
A few moments later Shan saw his first Y
xtrang. And then his second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh. They stood alertly on the edge of a shaded pocket of bush and branches just above a near vertical rock drop.
Each carried weapons, some several. Shan recognized a sniper gun, four carbine equivalents, a heavy automatic weapon, and what looked like an anti-armor tube.
When his eyes got used to the light, Shan saw his eighth Yxtrang. That one was sitting down, in the dim pocket of bush, employed in fashioning a rough splint for his left leg. He stood, almost fell, and eased himself carefully back to the ground.
Voices again, as two of the standees leaned in toward the pocket, followed by a snarling phrase that might have been an order given.
One of the standees saluted, fist thumping to shoulder, then the seven whole Yxtrang dropped into trail crouch and moved off, melting quietly into the landscape.
Shan considered the remaining Yxtrang, who had readjusted the splint and was prying himself to his feet by using his rifle for a cane. It came to him, calmly, that a rifle was a far better weapon than a stick. He looked over to Dustin.
It took several moments to make the Corporal certain of what he wished to do, and more than a little exercise of his own will over the other man's to still the argument he saw leaping in the nutmeg eyes.
He moved slowly, silent over the rocks and twigs, and came up on the pocket of brush. He had a moment's vertigo, as he stared down the steep incline and he wished in that moment with all his heart to be back on the Passage, and never again be the man who had formulated—who would carry out—this plan.
He shook himself and crept forward a few more inches, making sure of his grip on stick and knife.
The Yxtrang looked up, surprised by the sudden, sure intrusion into his safe place, the trigger of his rifle-cane well away from any useful finger.
Shan moved, the cudgel swung in a knowing arc, slamming the hand that fumbled at the gun, taking the other man off balance, onto his injured leg. Shan closed, the cudgel rising quickly to catch the thrust of the Yxtrang's knife. The eyes that locked on his in the moment before the cudgel crushed the man's windpipe knew no pity, sought no quarter.
The Yxtrang's body went over the lip of the pocket, the knife still uselessly clutched in one hand.
Shan sighed once, short and sharp, and bent down to claim his rifle.
Erob's Hold: Practice Grounds
There had been two meetings—one, the scout and captain alone in the privacy of the tent they shared, Nelirikk standing guard at the entrance, as was his right and jealously held duty.
That meeting, the first, had been a quiet thing, for all that it danced through four separate languages, and at the end of an hour they two had emerged and walked shoulder-and-shoulder across the practice field, Nelirikk in his place as rear-guard, until they came to the command tent.
The meeting there had not been so quiet.
Commander Carmody and aged General tel'Vosti—they heard the captain out with the respect due her rank and battle years. The elder female civilian—the delm of the House to which the captain and the general belonged, and to whom each owed differing degrees of allegiances in a pattern which Nelirikk had not quite puzzled out—that was something else.
"You will send your lifemate alone into a nest of Yxtrang?" she demanded, the Liaden High Tongue sounding like splinters of glass.
"High melant'i, indeed, Lady yos'Phelium. But, tell me, do, what you expect one man might accomplish against a horde of ravening animals."
There was silence in the command tent for a moment and the old general looked no less grim than the Terran commander. Captain Miri Robertson sighed and shook her head.
"Couple points you're missing," she said, using Terran to counter the blade of the old lady's outrage. "First off, the man's a scout. He don't wanna be seen—you don't see him. Second, he's got a touch with an explosive that's really something special. Third thing is?" She looked at the old delm until that one stiffly inclined her head.
"Third thing is," the captain said then, "is it's his idea. I don't like it any better'n you do. Spent the last hour trying to talk him out of it. Won't give an inch. Stubborn, too, while we're airing his faults. But the fact of the matter is he's got a point. He's got a chance of getting in, creating serious damage, and getting back out alive. He's the only one we got that I know of has that chance, with the possible exception of Beautiful, here. If we don't stir Yxtrang around, keep 'em off balance and blow us up an ammo dump or two, we're all gonna be real sorry, real soon."
"Good soldier sense, from scout and captain," the General said. "Make your bow to the truth, Emrith."
She glared. "I have seen enough war to last me this lifetime and the next, Win Den. And I say to you that, dragon or scout, the only likely outcome of this lackwitted scheme is that he will die."
"Not necessarily," the scout murmured, and smiled when the delm's eyes crossed his. "I do hold—certain—skills, besides having the advantage of knowing my targets in advance. I may die, but I assure you that it is much more likely that I will come away whole, and return to stand at my lady's side."
Erob sniffed and used her chin to point at Nelirikk, where he stood guard inside the entrance.
"If that has an equal chance of creating mayhem and escaping, why not send it?"
The scout shook his head in the Terran manner and bowed lightly in the Liaden.
"Why so," he said, and to Nelirikk's ear the tone was almost teasing, "should the luck frown and I fall, I will have left my captain with a like weapon with which to continue the war."
"I'll OK it," Commander Carmody spoke then and nodded at the scout. "Draw what you need from stores, and mind! If you take that flitter, you bring it back, boyo. Am I clear?"
The scout bowed once more, eyes serious, though his mouth smiled. "You are clear, Jason. Thank you."
It was on the second day after the scout quit camp that Nelirikk was called to the command tent once more.
He went hurriedly, with a nod for the comm tech who had been testing his memory of call code and band protocol, and arrived to find commander, general, his own captain and the full complement of minor staff awaiting him.
"Sit down, Beautiful," the commander said, giving him the grace of his field-name, and with a wave that might have been an acknowledgment of Nelirikk's salute, or part of the order to be seated.
"Them big hummers of rotor craft," the captain said, without preamble. "What do they carry? Troops, equipment, special weapons? You got the floor."
It took him a moment to realize that he was not being offered a floor as his own, but the opportunity to speak.
"Captain. When well supplied, each can carry eight dozens of troops, or field artillery and four dozens. I have not the range of them since they may carry auxiliary fuel tanks instead of troops.
"They can be used well for forward supply, but are light on top and side armor. They are not attack aircraft and their gunners are but four. It is not unusual for them to drag—drop troops.
"Rumor is that the landing structure was designed for lighter work and is always under repair. Their crews think themselves far above the troops they ferry."
"Well, there's a bit of good news," Commander Carmody commented. "Too good to work as hard as they could for the ground guys."
"How many?" the captain demanded, intent. Nelirikk shook his head, Terran-wise.
"Each regiment has different numbers. I saw four pods of three at the base I was sent from."
"Fifteen hundred troops might thus be moved in a short-range rush, were everyone crammed to overload," said the general, looking up from the paper which was not filled with idle doodling, as Nelirikk had suspected, but a dense line of manual calculation.
"Gotcha." The commander nodded at tel'Vosti.
"Explorer," asked the general, "are they well supplied?"
"Sir. I do not know the mission. I cannot hazard to say."
"Good boy," the old soldier said unexpectedly. "Don't let us wish ourselves into troubles." He glan
ced speculatively around the table before he spoke again.
"Tell me, Explorer. If you were on the spot, and you knew there to be what might prove to be a courier boat for an opponent's battleship landed within range, what would you do?"
"Courier for a battleship?" The concept amazed. Yet the question was obviously serious. Nelirikk applied himself to the answer.
"If the general pleases. I would send one pod—three—well equipped soonest. A second pod would be fueled and ready for loading depending on need. I would also increase pressure everywhere that I could to disrupt. . ."
"Thank you," the general said, holding up a hand and nodding. "So would I."
Nelirikk sat a moment in uncomfortable silence as something was decided in several glances round the table.
"Yessir," Commander Carmody said, perhaps to himself. "When this little dust up is over, I'm gonna go up the park and find me that fongbear up there and pin a medal on his chest." He came to his feet and Nelirikk jumped up, snapping a salute, only to find that the other was bending over a kit belt.
The commander extracted something small from the belt and handed it to the captain, then turned to Nelirikk, a pistol in his hand.
"Beautiful, we're sending Redhead's Irregulars out in harm's way, and she refuses to budge without you."
The big man extended the pistol, butt first. Nelirikk understood that he was to take it, and did so, stunned by the purity of its balance, its perfect, deadly elegance. The grips were carved of wood, the metal a wondrous satiny. . .
"Took me the same way, first time I saw it," Captain Redhead said from his left. "But listen up, Beautiful—Commander Carmody ain't done yet."
Nelirikk snatched after his wandering wits, raised a hand to snap a salute and was waved into stillness. The commander pointed.
"That pretty belongs to Senior Commander Rialto and if anything happens to it—or to Captain Redhead—she'll give me hell. Bring them both back. That's an order."
His salute was waved away again and the commander held out another large hand.
"You'll want the ammo, too, boyo."
Some things, you didn't question.
Like when the man you'd married, thinking it was bad enough he was Liaden and thodelm in a House she'd figured out by now was one of the fifty called High—when the man you'd slit your own throat before you saw him hurt came to you the night he left for something that might not let him back alive and murmured, "Cha'trez, you must know this. I am Nadelm Korval, by lineage. You are nadelmae, by right of our mating. Should I fall, you must claim the Ring and as delm keep Korval safe."