Knight

by Timothy Zahn

  “A couple of hours, probably,” Allyce said. “Possibly as long as three or four.”

  “And you’re not taking any, Jeff. Right?”

  Even in the darkness, Nicole could see Jeff’s scowl. They’d had this discussion—Jeff had called it an argument, but Nicole didn’t consider a conversation an argument unless it involved drawn weapons—two hours ago. Jeff’s point was that he needed to react the same way as everyone else, while Nicole had insisted he could just as easily fake it and that someone needed to be fully functional and ready to defend everyone if something went wrong. “Still not sure that’s the best plan,” he said. “But no, I won’t take any.”

  “Okay.” Nicole took a deep breath. “I guess I’ll see you all at the battle.”

  A minute later she was headed downslope, the paintball gun slung across her back, straining her eyes in the gloom as she tried not to hit any rocks or tree roots. Jeff had warned that Bungie might jump the gun, and she needed to find a good spot and be in position as soon as she could.

  The slope became less steep as she got closer to the ocean, but it was still pretty challenging the whole way. She kept an eye out for a place where she could get to the other side, but the river never really got any narrower. Halfway down an idea occurred to her, but it wasn’t until she was nearly at the twin bluffs that she found the right setup for what she had in mind.

  The setup consisted of a slender tree on her side of the riverbank. She checked it first by tugging at it, confirmed that it was flexible, then tried climbing a few feet up. It bent under her weight, just as she’d hoped it would, leaning her over the edge of the river. She climbed down, tossed the paintball gun carefully into a bush on the far side, then started back up the tree. It continued to bend as she moved along it, until she was hanging almost horizontally over the churning water. She kept going, belatedly wondering if the tree was thin enough to break under her weight and drop her into the river.

  But it didn’t break, and its roots held, and a minute later she was over the far bank. She unwrapped her legs from the trunk, hung by her hands for a moment, then dropped the final five feet to the ground, landing in a crouch beside a bush. The tree, with the tension suddenly gone, snapped back upright, bouncing loudly against the trees and bushes around it.

  Nicole froze. If any of Bungie’s men were in the area, they might have heard that.

  Nothing. Though, really, as she thought about it, how anyone could hear anything over the river noise she couldn’t imagine. She straightened and walked to where the paintball gun hung by its strap on a couple of branches. She tried pulling it off, discovered the strap had gotten hung up on some kind of twig clusters—

  Directly in front of her, someone pushed between a pair of bushes and stepped into view.

  Nicole dropped into a crouch again, cursing under her breath. Luckily, the man’s face had been turned away from her when he emerged from cover, which meant there was a fair chance he hadn’t spotted her. She held her breath as he looked around in the gloom, mentally urging him to turn his back on her and head upriver.

  For a moment she thought he was going to do exactly that. He peered up the slope, swinging his trident back and forth a little, stepping right up to the river’s edge. He shifted his eyes upward as the trident caught on one of the overhanging branches, pulled it free, and leaned over the river, looking upstream and then downstream.

  And then, angling the trident in front of him where it would stay out of the way of the tree branches, he turned and started downslope toward Nicole.

  Nicole winced. Squatting beside the bush she was partially hidden, but that wouldn’t last long. If the man kept going, he would pass no more than five steps away from her. She had maybe ten seconds before a casual glance to his right would nail her to the ground. At that point a quick poke with his trident would be all it would take to end her life right there.

  And all she had to stop him with was a paintball gun.

  She tore her eyes away from him and focused on the gun. Freeing it from the twig cluster would take a few seconds, seconds she didn’t have to spare. More critically, getting it free would shake the bush, which would almost certainly draw his attention.

  But right now, and for the next two seconds, it was pointed nearly straight at his chest.

  There was no time to think. No time to consider the fact that she was barely able to hit a target when she had the gun pressed against her shoulder and was looking along the barrel. No time to wonder how much all that would change with a gun that was hanging upside down from a branch. The gun was there, the target was there, she was there, and the only other choice was to get captured or die.

  Reaching up, sighting as best she could down the barrel, she wrapped her hand around the grip, hooked her little finger onto the trigger, and squeezed. The gun gave its usual little burp—

  The man jerked to a stop, snapping his trident into a two-handed grip pointing in front of him. Nicole fired again. Again he jerked, this time looking down toward his chest. Nicole clenched her teeth …

  Some of the tension seemed to fade from his shoulders and arms. He looked around again, but this time he seemed more puzzled than alert, more confused than determined. He looked at his chest again, then looked up. Shifting his trident back into a one-handed grip, he leaned it back over his shoulder like he was carrying a baseball bat. He looked around one last time, and started back down along the riverbank.

  But casually. Not like a soldier getting ready for battle, but like someone out for a nighttime stroll. He passed Nicole without even looking over at her—now, with him this close, she could see that it was Fauke, one of the men Bungie had set to watch over her the first time she came to this side of the river—and continued down the bank.

  Nicole watched him go, keeping her body still and moving only her head, waiting for the twist. There had to be a twist. He would turn suddenly and run back, or just throw the trident at her, or he was distracting her while someone else sneaked up behind her—she spun back around, tensing, but there was no one there—

  She turned back to see him disappear from sight among the trees and bushes.

  So that was it. The damn drug actually worked.

  She took a shaky breath. That was it? Hardly. She’d neutralized one of Bungie’s men, but there were seven more to go, including Bungie himself.

  Untangling the paintball gun from the bush, holding it close to her body to keep it from snagging on the bushes, she headed downslope.

  Somewhere down there, she knew, Bungie would be waiting.

  * * *

  It wasn’t much farther to the bluffs. Still, in that short distance she spotted two more green-jumpsuited men walking along the river. One of them was peering across the water, while the other poked and prodded at the nearby trees with his trident. For a moment Nicole wondered what the second man was up to, decided he was looking for trees he could bend over and use to get across the river the way Nicole had done half an hour ago.

  That second man never turned around toward her long enough for a clear shot. But the other man did, and she managed to fire four drug balls at him before he turned away again. She was pretty sure at least one of the shots hit his chest, but he started back along the river and disappeared from view before she could tell whether or not the drug had taken effect. She waited until the second man followed him, then continued her own way down the slope.

  Trying to watch all directions at once. If one of the men had spotted her, or if Fauke had said something to someone, Bungie might have set up a trap. With all the trees and bushes crowded along the riverbank, there were lots of places he could do that and practically no way Nicole could escape. Even jumping into the river wouldn’t gain her anything—if Jeff was right about the ocean level starting to pull back, the river would just dump her onto the beach, probably right in front of Bungie’s team.

  But no one leaped out at her, or dropped from the trees onto her, or threw a trident into her. She came around a final bend in the river
…

  And there they were. All of them, the whole team, grouped around the bluff on their side of the river. Crouching down where they would be hidden until Jeff’s team waded through the river and came around the bluff.

  Nicole wrinkled her nose. That was Bungie, all right. He was great at talking big, but he would never take on Jeff face-to-face if he could do something sneaky like an ambush instead.

  But this time he’d outsmarted himself. With his whole team bunched up that way, they were in perfect position for Nicole to hit them with everything she had.

  Carefully, quietly, she lay down on her stomach on the ground, positioning her gun barrel between two bushes as she sorted out the best way to do this. The clearest shot she had of the bluff was above their heads, but that wouldn’t do—the vapor would float up into the sky without ever getting to them. The lower parts of the bluff, unfortunately, were partly hidden by the green team’s bodies and legs.

  But that was where she had to put her shots. Aiming carefully between the bodies down there, painfully aware that hitting someone’s back or leg would alert them to her attack, she started shooting.

  Jeff and Allyce had made up fifty drug balls, roughly six for each of the eight men in the Green team. Nicole had already used six, which left her forty-four. She sent thirty-six of those against the bluff, then paused to evaluate.

  It wasn’t easy. The men were still a good hundred feet away, and the shifting of back and shoulders she’d seen with Fauke wasn’t nearly as visible at this distance. Still, the sky was brightening as the arena’s fake sun started coming up, and the view was becoming clearer every minute. She could pick out individuals now: there was the man she’d shot while his buddy looked for a way across the river; there was Fauke at one end—so now he’d gotten a double or even triple dose, and Nicole wondered briefly if that much of the drug would hurt him—with the other five men still clumped together behind the bluff.

  Her trick had worked. She could see now that all seven of them were showing signs of confusion and uncertainty like she’d seen with Fauke—

  Abruptly, she stiffened. Seven men in green jumpsuits. The original green work group the Shipmasters had brought her to fight.

  Only there should be eight men down there.

  Bungie was missing.

  She was counting again, desperately hoping he was simply hidden from her view behind one of the others, when something swished through the bushes and branches behind her and landed across her back and legs. Something filmy, something that seemed to grab at her jumpsuit like sticky tape—

  “There you are,” Bungie’s voice came from behind her over the roar of the river. “Welcome to the war.”

  seventeen

  Nicole’s first reflex was to drop the paintball gun and roll quickly to her right.

  That was a mistake. She’d barely gotten up onto her side when whatever had landed on her legs tightened like a blanket around her and yanked her hard to a stop, pinning her in place.

  But at least now she could turn her head far enough around to see him. He was about twenty feet back, striding downslope toward her with the sort of arrogant swagger he used to use on the Philadelphia streets.

  Unlike Philly, though, here there was a hint of hesitation, and he seemed to be watching the ground as much as he was watching Nicole. Maybe he was worried about tripping over a branch or root.

  Maybe the slight limp he’d picked up as a result of getting an arrow through the leg in Q4 gave him good reason to worry about his footing.

  Nicole looked down at her legs and hips. She was being pinned to the ground, she realized now, by one of the nets she’d seen the others carrying along with their tridents. The net seemed to be shaped like a big square, with disk-shaped weights at the four corners. Probably thrown like a Frisbee, with the weights keeping it open as it flew.

  Gingerly, she touched it. To her relief, the material didn’t seem to be actually sticky, like she’d first thought. But even though it didn’t stick to her skin, it definitely grabbed at the material of her jumpsuit. Parts of it had also hung up on the bushes beside her, which was how it was holding her stuck here. There were only two ways out: break the net loose from the bushes and push it off her, or else roll back to where she’d started and hope that gave her enough slack to get out from under it.

  Unfortunately, neither way would get her free before Bungie and his trident could reach her.

  Unless …

  Her eyes flicked to the paintball gun lying in the grass between the bushes. Had he spotted it yet? If not, and if she could get back to it before he got in stabbing range, she might still have a chance.

  Abruptly, Bungie jerked to a stop. “What the hell?” he growled. “Where the hell did you get a gun?”

  Nicole clenched her teeth. Damn. “Where do you think?” she countered, thinking furiously. Bungie was arrogant, nasty, and not nearly as smart as he thought he was. With all those weaknesses, there must be something she could use against him.

  “Because if it was Fievj and his buddies, he and I are going to have a problem,” Bungie added darkly.

  And he was also paranoid. Maybe that would be enough. “You don’t really think they want your side to win, do you?” Nicole asked, putting as much scorn into her voice as she could. “Then they’d have to send you home, and they can’t afford to do that. They still need everyone here to fix the Fyrantha for them.”

  Bungie swore. “Bastards.”

  “You just figuring that out?” Nicole said, frowning. He was still standing there, his trident pointed sort of toward her. His eyes were on the paintball gun, but he was making no move toward it. What was he waiting for? “I could have told you they were bastards weeks ago.”

  And then she got it. He wanted the gun, but he wanted her to go for it first.

  Because rolling over in that direction would put her back to him. Not only that, but it would also let him claim afterward that he’d stabbed her in self-defense. That probably wouldn’t mean anything to Fievj, but it was important back in Philly, and old street habits died hard.

  A ripple of contempt ran through her. Not only didn’t he want a straight-up face-to-face with Jeff, he didn’t even want one with her.

  The more immediate problem was how she was going to avoid getting stabbed. If she was going to get to the gun first, she had to find a way to distract him.

  “Speaking of bastards, I hope you don’t think that ambush is going to work on Jeff,” she continued, nodding her head toward the bluff below them. “The way they’re all bunched up—come on; even I know better than that.”

  “They’ll do fine,” Bungie said. Just the same, he took a step to the side and craned his neck, apparently trying to see his team through the trees.

  Which was exactly what Nicole had hoped he’d do. “I wouldn’t count on it,” she said, studying the ground in front of him. One more step and he would be right behind a slight hollow in the ground that had nearly sent her tumbling on her own way down the slope a few minutes ago. If she could get him to charge at her across that, he might fall flat on his face and give her the extra edge she needed to get to the gun. “But, hey, not my problem,” she added. “Not Jeff’s either. He’s all set to stomp your guys into the sand.”

  “Like hell,” Bungie said, a malicious grin spreading across his face. “Jeff’s the one who’s gonna get stomped. Allyce’s got that covered.”

  Nicole frowned. “What does Allyce have to do with anything?”

  Bungie’s grin turned smug. “You’ll find out.”

  “So you’re just blowing smoke, like usual,” Nicole said, ramping up the scorn a little higher. Had he just pulled Allyce’s name at random, or did he know something about their plan? “Doesn’t really work here, you know.”

  “The hell it’s smoke,” Bungie growled. “She said the whole blue team’s gonna be high as a kite, and we can just walk in and bounce ’em around.”

  “Oh, so now it’s Allyce who’s blowing smoke,” Nicole said, a cold k
not forming in her stomach. Was he saying the Setting Sun drug Allyce had mixed up for them was no good?

  But Nicole had seen it work on Fauke. Hadn’t she?

  “What the hell is it with you and smoke?” Bungie growled. “She says you and Jeff don’t want to fight. So she fixed it so you won’t.”

  “I don’t want any of us to fight.”

  “Yeah, you already said that,” Bungie said. “You think anyone gives a damn?” He shrugged. “Don’t worry, I’ll say hi to Trake for you when I get back to Philly.”

  “You’re not going back,” Nicole insisted. Could Fauke have been faking it? But how could he even have known what to fake?

  Because Allyce had told him, of course. She’d told the green team exactly what Setting Sun was supposed to do.

  And in the process had suckered Jeff into wasting all the time he would otherwise have had to come up with another plan.

  Allyce had seemed completely sincere about helping them. And Nicole, focused on the paintball gun and their oh-so-clever Setting Sun plan, had blindly taken the other woman’s word for it.

  Damn her.

  “So what’s the gun supposed to do?” Bungie asked, jabbing his trident toward it. “It’s not one of those fancy green laser things Fievj gave you before, is it? Doesn’t look like one of those. Not that it matters. Not after Allyce fixed everyone up.”

  Nicole opened her mouth to answer—to say something, though she had no idea what—when the tree branches behind Bungie parted.

  And Jeff slipped into view.

  A very wet Jeff, she saw. Wet and trembling slightly with suppressed shivering in the breeze, his face and plastered-down hair as wet as his jumpsuit. Nicole felt a sympathetic shiver run through her—she knew how cold the river was.

  But there was nothing distracted about the expression on his face. An old image flicked across Nicole’s eyes: an alley cat she’d once seen, inching its way toward a rat.