The Secret City

by Brian K. Lowe

  I asked Maire to fetch Sanja, who was leading her tribesmen, and within seconds they were both beside me. I pointed out the four guards.

  “We need to remove them, quietly. If they alert the base, Fale Teevat will send up ships and we will be all dead before we get half-way back to Jhal. Can your men do it?”

  Sanja gave me a look of mixed incredulity and offense such as only a young girl can create. The next second she was gone like a puff of wind.

  We waited. I strained my ears and my mind. A single yelp could mean catastrophe. Seemingly unconcerned, the guards continued to stand at their posts, occasionally moving listlessly as they attempted to alleviate the boredom.

  And then they were gone. All four vanished simultaneously.

  “It’s done,” Sanja breathed, again at my elbow. “I left the others there in case replacement guards showed up.”

  “Then bring the rest of your men up. Maire, you follow them with the crew and the volunteers. No noise. Gaz Bronn, you are with me. If you see anything that resembles a control tower or a command center, let me know.”

  We began moving across the final stretch of the cave like a mob of army ants. Every man and woman, acutely aware of our danger, crept as carefully as he might. I had emphasized before we set out that speed was secondary to secrecy. I would rather a man trail his fellows than betray them in the attempt to keep up. Midway through our approach, an airship rose silently from the center of the base and by pre-arrangement everyone fell to the ground, unmoving until it was high above our heads and bound for the crevice leading to the outside.

  Crossing the boundary, we gathered up our Zilbiri infiltrators and began searching outbuildings. The last thing I wanted was to find us being attacked from the rear. I lead a party into one building only to find it empty. Once it was secured, I went back outside to find my lieutenants gathering in the shadows of another structure.

  “We haven’t seen anyone,” Maire reported. “Every one of these buildings is empty.”

  I looked to Gaz Bronn. “What do you think?”

  “I think Fale Teevat has bitten off more than he could chew. His plan was to eliminate me and choke off the opposition to his war party. But when that didn’t work and he used his forbidden weapons to try to stop us from escaping, a lot of his allies probably deserted him—or died. I think his only chance now is to take the war directly to the Nuum, and then come back with the trophy and convince everyone he was right all along.”

  I bit my lip. “So you believe he has only enough troops to man his ships? That would explain the empty buildings.”

  “I think he left before they knew I had come back. He didn’t know there was an organized opposition in the city. He thought it was just a bunch of slaves.”

  “He must be planning to come back sometime,” Maire said, “because he had guards out. So he still needs this base, but he may not have enough men left to defend it.”

  “All right, then. That makes it even more important that we find his headquarters. As soon as we get in there, Fale Teevat is trapped; he can hardly tell his men to bomb his own command center. Gaz Bronn, take the lead.”

  A ray-bolt from a ship directly overhead carved a crater into the ground where he had been standing.

  Chapter 45

  Under Fire

  Gaz Bronn was not one to stand still, and when I instructed him to lead us on, he had not lost a second in moving ahead, a swiftness that saved his life when the razor-sharp beam caused the ground to explode where he had been standing an instant earlier. Even so, the concussion knocked us all off of our feet. Had the pilot of that ship known what he was about, he could have decapitated our entire attack with one shot.

  But he did not know, and for some reason he seemed to fixate on Gaz Bronn, tracking him with a narrow beam that left the rest of us alone. Perhaps it was an ingrained sense of not wanting to waste valuable resources, or perhaps there was a bounty on Gaz Bronn’s head and he was hoping to leave proof of his kill, but despite multiple red lances churning up the ground all about us, we humans remained untouched.

  Gaz Bronn, of course, was not so exempt. Jumping in and out of shadows, scrambling for nonexistent cover, he was, through design or chance, giving his would-be assassin more entertainment than he could have bargained for. And the rest of us could do nothing but stand and watch. We had no weapons that could have any effect on a target hovering only a hundred feet over our heads.

  Or rather—or rather they didn’t. It was forbidden; I had forbidden my own people from doing it, but if I did not do it, Gaz Bronn had seconds to live. I pulled my Webley from its holster and pointed it straight up, firing off four of my precious, nearly irreplaceable rounds at a target too fat to miss.

  I had no hope of damaging the ship, but such was not my plan. I was aiming for the pilot. With the ban on projectile weapons, he had no expectation of reprisal, and the sounds of my shots hitting the underside of his vessel panicked him. He veered away, breaking off his attack.

  Gaz Bronn was already rolling to his feet when I reached him. His tail provided him with extra leverage as well as balance.

  “He’ll be back, or some of his friends,” he said, head jerking about, looking for inspiration. “There! The command center’s over there!”

  Not stopping to ask how he knew, I mustered my troops and sent them off after him, keeping any humans or klurath who might have been frightened by my actions too caught up in events to object. Now speed was everything and stealth was forgotten. I stood my ground, making sure everyone was heading the same way, one eye on the airspace above me. Thanks to our attacker’s fine focus, no one was injured. I took off at a sprint after the last of them.

  Something tugged at the corner of my vision and I threw myself violently to my right, narrowly missing the fiery red light spearing from the sky. The ship was back—and not so particular about his targets this time.

  I stumbled to my feet and ran off in a different direction from everyone else, hoping to draw fire. My back burned in anticipation of a lethal blast that would eradicate any trace of me, but it never came. One shot sprayed me with painful gravel and sent me sprawling, and then there were no more. Was the pilot was leaving to concentrate on my friends? Given his marksmanship I felt they would be in little danger from him, but that was not his plan. He knew that Fale Teevat had more than four men.

  Whatever garrison remained had finally turned out, and a half-dozen armed klurath were rushing at me. I stole a quick look after my companions, but the last of them had disappeared. I had seen better odds, and my gun was nearly empty. I backed toward the nearest building, my Webley in my hand, waiting for the best opportunity to shoot; I had three bullets left, and they needed to count.

  Suddenly I heard a door bang open behind me, and I looked back to see if I was being attacked from the rear. Bryal burst outside wielding a sword with little skill but great enthusiasm. Screaming like a Viking berserker, he launched himself forward to come to my aid—and then Hargreen appeared, rushing him from behind! I had barely time to shout a warning before I had to come about and snap off my last three shots.

  The klurath were massed together, but Hargreen’s attack had distracted me, and my three rounds eliminated only two of my foes. The others halted in shock, and I charged them, heading for one side, where I might strike and keep running, for I fully suspected I was the faster. That it would leave Bryal—should he fend off Hargreen—alone was unavoidable. I had to hope that I would draw the remaining klurath after me.

  I ran at my chosen target and he moved clumsily to parry my unorthodox assault, only partly successfully. I managed to inflict a painful wound as I ran by, but I had forgotten his damnable tail, and I tripped, rolling heavily and losing the Webley, which I had planned to use as a club. The Library stabbed me painfully as I fell on it, slowing me further. I barely managed to turn myself onto my back before all four of them were upon me.

  Still they were massed too closely, and I rolled sideways away from their first vicious strike
s. My own blade bit deep into a lizard’s thigh, but he barely seemed to notice, raising his blade over his head like an executioner’s axe in a blow I could never hope to block.

  But his blade kept going backward, and he followed, and only then did I see Hargreen, bellowing with all his might, wrench a blade out of that klurath’s back and charge the next. They twisted with inhuman speed to confront him, and only the element of surprise saved his life in the next moment—but they were three and he was one.

  By the time I could gain my feet, Hargreen was streaming blood from a half-dozen wounds, but somehow he found an opening and a klurath fell dead—directly onto him. In the instant it took the two survivors to shove their comrade’s body aside to finish their work, I had skewered one, then the other, from behind. It was butchery, but no worse than they deserved. They fell to either side of the man they had killed, sacrifices to a bravery I had never imagined in a man whom I had always maligned.

  I knelt beside him as his life ran out, and he managed a smile. “You thought…it was me, but…it was Bryal.”

  I am not ashamed to say that my tears mixed with his life’s blood. “I know,” I whispered. “I was wrong.”

  “You see…? Sometimes Thorans know better than Nuum…”

  Gently I laid his head on the ground as his voice trailed away. I closed his eyes and said a prayer for his soul. If he could have read my thoughts at that moment, he would have known that in all my days and nights on the front, I had never seen greater courage.

  In his way, he had given his life to free the slaves of Jhal. I swore that, come hell or high water, when Fale Teevat was dead, the slavery of all Thorans, everywhere, was going to die too.

  Some sixth sense warned me to look up. The klurath ship hovered two hundred feet above me, ready and able to grind all of my fine vows into dust.

  Chapter 46

  A Suicidal Gamble

  I could count my heartbeats as I stood there, the only living man on that field, waiting to join the dead. I fancied I could read the thought of the klurath pilot as he paused with his finger on the firing button…

  …and the far side of the ship suddenly exploded!

  The force of it blew the ship sideways past me and it crashed beyond the perimeter. I was still staring in mute surprise when Maire breathlessly grabbed me.

  “There you are!” She hugged me fiercely. “Did you see that? I’ll bet Fale Teevat didn’t figure we could use his guns on his own ships!”

  “Yes…I saw it,” I said slowly. “Very nice shooting.”

  “What happened to you?” she demanded, looking at all the bodies. “I’ve only been gone five minutes. Oh—Hargreen… Gaz Bronn will be sad. He doesn’t like to show it, but he likes Thorans more than he admits. I think Hargreen was his friend, as much as any Thoran could be.”

  I stared down at the body. “He was my friend, too, had I only known it.” I picked him up, heedless of the blood. “Has Gaz Bronn found the command center?”

  “Yes,” she answered, glancing at my burden. “There was a crew manning it, but when the Zilbiri… Let’s just say they weren’t ready for us. Gaz Bronn’s already got people trying to negotiate the controls; Skull is giving them a hand.”

  “Good.”

  We passed Bryal’s body near the door whence he had come.

  “What should we do with him? Do you want to send someone to bring him in?”

  I kept on walking. “Leave him.”

  I laid Hargreen on a table, arranged as peaceably as I could. Although I looked about, there was nothing with which to cover him. I could only hope I saw Gaz Bronn before he passed by here. Inside the control area, klurath and humans pored over screens and holographic charts. I spotted Skull and moved toward him. Gaz Bronn might be the ultimate authority here, but Skull knew what he was looking at.

  “It looks like almost all of Fale Teevat’s fleet is deployed,” I said, and he nodded.

  “Looks like. Probably wanted to take the fight to the enemy like you figured. Explains why they weren’t a lot of guards around.”

  “I doubt he thought he would need them in any event. He only had guards on the surface in case Gaz Bronn came back. Once we did, it was too late to reassign them.” I glanced about, seeing only a scattering klurath and crewmen from The Dark Lady. “Did Gaz Bronn take everyone else to look for stragglers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I wish he would stay here. Without him, we would be in trouble.”

  “He needs to be seen out there. Don’t worry. He’s got Timash with him. Timash could wrestle one of those ships to the ground by himself.”

  “And Sanja,” Maire added. “Don’t forget her.”

  “Oh, I won’t,” Skull murmured, his attention firmly fixed on his work. Maire and I exchanged a sly glance.

  “Do we have an inventory of the ships on base?” Maire asked.

  “Getting it now. It took a little time to figure out their system, but some of the klurath knew enough about computers to get me started.” A holographic screen appeared with lists of numbers, helpfully accompanied by a telepathic narration.

  “One ship?”

  “There were two,” Skull explained, “but one of them exploded.”

  Maire shrugged. “What was I supposed to do, let them keep it?”

  I kissed her quickly. “Believe me, you did the right thing. Come on, we need to decide our next move.”

  We stepped outside, where I could hear occasional shouts and loud instructions, but there was no feeling of urgency, and no clash of metal on metal, which I took as a good sign. I tilted my head back to study the gash in the cavern ceiling which formed the main exit, the reason this base had been placed here.

  It was wide enough at this end to accommodate at least two of the small craft the klurath used, and I knew it was equally wide at the top, but in between it narrowed to half that. We were fortunate that this geologic gullet was no wider, and that generations of klurath had not seen fit to carve it into a more convenient shape. Perhaps they were worried that it would bring the roof down, or expose their work to their fellows in Jhal or the surface-dwellers. It reminded me of Timash’s people in their city inside a mountain, not so different than this, and how they, too, preferred security to returning to the open outer world.

  “I had hoped we might to be able to mount some kind of flanking attack, but with only one ship…”

  “They’re going to come back at some point to resupply,” Maire pointed out. “What are we going to do then?”

  I sighed. “Is the elevation of their gun emplacements great enough to knock them down as they come in?”

  It was her turn to sigh, with more vehemence. “The elevation of their guns was barely enough to take out the one I did. They’re so scared of a cave-in they won’t even defend themselves properly—and these are the ones who have guns.” She squeezed my hand. “As soon as they figure out what we’re up to, they’ll destroy us.”

  “And their base with us.”

  “True. But if they land their troops, they might be able to take back the base on foot. We don’t know how many men Fale Teevat has.”

  We fell silent. We were in a bad tactical position. My flanking attack idea was finished for lack of ships. If we stayed, we were vulnerable from air attack, and the enemy probably outnumbered us in a ground assault. We might be able to lure in a ship or two and overpower the crews when they disembarked, but how many times could that work? If we retreated back to Jhal, we were in the same position as when we started. We lacked even explosives to wreck the base—assuming Gaz Bronn would have allowed us to use them.

  Staring at the ceiling, cursing the twist of fate that made all of our lives dependent on waiting until something came through that corridor, an alternative began creeping through my brain, something so radical, so dangerous, that I was more than ever glad that Maire could not read my mind. In all likelihood, it would end in disaster, for me, and possibly for thousands, and more troubling, it had to be done now—before Fale Teevat�
�s forces returned. A single cruiser could ruin everything we had fought and died for.

  “You have an idea,” Maire said. It was not telepathy; it was a wife who knew her husband.

  I nodded unhappily. “Yes. And I need you to get everyone off the base and back to Jhal in case it fails.”

  She looked me straight in the face, her brown eyes dark and turbulent. “No. Where you go, I go. This is forever, Keryl; I don’t care if that means a hundred years or another hour.” And she seized me in an embrace that betrayed strength I hardly knew she had.

  “All right, all right. I’ll get the Librarian to prepare the ship. He says he might not be able to fly it, but I doubt that. Tell Skull to round up Timash and Gaz Bronn and Sanja. And tell him not to tell Gaz Bronn anything—just get him back to Jhal!”

  “How can he tell Gaz Bronn anything? I don’t even know what’s going on!”

  “Tell him if Gaz Bronn resists, have Timash carry him! And meet me on the ship!”

  Even as the Librarian raised the last klurath warship (still protesting his lack of qualifications), I could see our forces abandoning the camp—and although I could not be sure, I thought I saw a lump that looked suspiciously like an ape carrying a large, struggling lizard. I had to tear myself away from the scene to finish giving the Librarian instructions, since even he, for once, had been left behind in my planning. One thing I was confident of, even if he was not, was that the Librarian could navigate the tricky route to the surface better than anyone—assuming we met no one coming the other way.

  “So, you want to tell me what you have in mind? If we’re going to die up here, I’d like to know why.”

  In a few terse sentences, I summed up my strategy. “I know it sounds crazy, but I see no other way out. Neither we nor the Nuum have the manpower for a fair fight.”

  Maire, a ship’s captain herself of no mean ability, took a few moments to reflect.

  “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. You’re crazy. I love you, but you have completely lost your mind.”