“Perhaps hope will return,” Merrick said. “I must leave now. May your evening be pleasant, and your night restful.”
If it wasn’t a standard farewell, it apparently wasn’t ridiculous enough to spark unwanted curiosity. The old woman merely nodded and returned to her knitting, the infrared pattern of her face showing no extra surge of emotion that might indicate suspicion. Turning, Merrick headed off down the path between the houses toward the gray building.
No one was visible. That bothered him, especially considering that there’d been a fair amount of foot traffic going back and forth only a few minutes ago. He tried notching up his audios to try to get some clue as to where everyone was, but the sounds of his own footsteps was drowning out any noise anyone might be making, and he didn’t want to risk drawing attention by suddenly stopping to listen. He reached the end of the staggered row of houses and eased his eye around the corner.
Part of the mystery, at least, was now solved. Between the houses and the gray building was a wide open area, into which a large crowd had gathered. It was hard to tell for sure from his angle, but it looked like they had formed themselves into a circle, several people deep, with an open area in the center.
It looked like a sports rally, or some other kind of preparation for a game. For the Games? Probably.
Only unlike any other game or sport Merrick had ever attended, the crowd here wasn’t cheering or chanting or even talking among themselves. They were utterly silent, as if it were a wake or funeral instead of a game.
Maybe be was. Death and madness, the old woman had said.
Merrick had seen some of the madness in Gangari, when Henson Hillclimber had refereed combat between a pair of preteen boys. The fight had gone on way longer than it should have, thanks to the bersarkis drug that Hillclimber had administered to the fighters.
But even with that drug-induced frenzy, that Game had ended in only unconsciousness. Did the Games in Svipall operate under more lethal rules?
And then, without warning, the whole open area lit up.
Reflexively, Merrick ducked back behind the edge of the building. But there was no outcry or other evidence that he’d been spotted and targeted.
He stayed pressed against the side of the house for another few seconds. Then, gathering himself, he eased back to the corner and again looked around it.
Sure enough, the lights weren’t part of an intruder alarm. They were, instead, coming from a set of four pole-mounted floodlights that he hadn’t noticed and which had turned the center of the open field into daylight brightness.
And now, with the spectators’ faces much easier to see, Merrick realized that the old woman’s hopelessness wasn’t an isolated case. Every face he could see had the same resignation deeply etched into it.
Slowly, he scanned the faces, looking for one that might still have a spark of life in it. If he could find someone—anyone—who hadn’t given up, maybe he could approach him and find out what the Trofts were doing in that big building.
And then, abruptly, he caught his breath. Standing on the edge of the crowd, their faces in profile but readily identifiable, were three of the slaves from their transport ship: Leif and Katla Streamjumper and their young daughter Gina. Three of the group that had accompanied him and Anya on their two-day walk to Gangari after the transport dropped them off on Muninn.
Gangari was where he and Anya had left them. So what were they doing in Svipall?
Best-case scenario was that the Trofts had taken the handful of people who could identify the fugitives on sight and scattered them around to some of the nearby villages. Worst-case scenario was that the Trofts had already guessed that Merrick would be showing up at Svipall.
There would probably come a time when Merrick would need to reveal himself and confront the Trofts. But that time wasn’t not tonight. Not if he could help it.
The fading daylight had turned nearly to dark by the time Merrick returned to the spot where he’d jumped the fence. It was dark enough, in fact, that he quickly discovered that his infrared trick for distinguishing the plants from each other no longer worked.
Luckily, with a boost from his opticals’ light-amp setting, he found that the spots where he’d landed on the way in were easily identifiable from the bent and broken plants. Launching himself over the fence, he hit the first safe area, regained his balance, and jumped for the second.
He was two jumps from the end of the field and the safety of the forest when a large aircar abruptly shot into view over the trees to the north.
Merrick dropped into a crouch, cursing his lack of vigilance. He’d been so focused on getting across the field that he hadn’t kept his audios keyed for unexpected company. If that aircar was hunting him, he was in serious trouble.
But the Trofts inside seemed to have other plans for the evening. Instead of continuing toward him, the aircar came to a halt just outside the reflected glow from the Games area, which was by now about two hundred meters away from him. There it settled into a low hover, as if its occupants had merely come to watch the show.
Perhaps they had. A sports arena term he’d read once flicked to mind: owner’s box.
Merrick apparently hadn’t been spotted. His primary job now was to keep it that way.
If he stayed where he was, waiting for the Games to start and the aircar’s occupants to be more distracted, he might have a better chance of hopping out of here undetected. On the other hand, the longer he crouched in the middle of an open field, the greater the chance that someone up there might do a random IR scan. Merrick eyed the aircar, feeling sweat gathering under his collar, trying to decide which option posed the smaller risk.
Only then did it suddenly dawn on him that while his neck was indeed sweating, his heartbeat was also increasing, his vision felt a little odd, and there was a new and disturbingly sour scent in the air.
He looked down. He’d landed in the middle of the safe zone…but when the aircar’s sudden appearance had sent him into a crouch he’d reflexively put out a hand for balance.
And that hand had landed squarely on top of one of the bersark plants.
His first impulse was to jerk back from contact with the broken stem and leaves. A second later he realized that if the poison was a contact variety it was far too late. If it was instead airborne and not contact…but it was too late for that, too. One way or the other, he’d been exposed, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Except get the hell out of here before whatever was going to happen happened.
But there was still the aircar hovering over Svipall. And it was getting louder. It must have seen him and—
He frowned. The aircar hadn’t moved. Yet it was louder. Had it somehow revved up its grav lifts without rising any higher?
No, that wasn’t it. Because the insects were also louder. So were the scratchy scurrying sounds of small animals in the forest beyond the bersark field, and the flapping of birds flying nearby.
He must have somehow notched up his audios. But a quick check showed that he hadn’t. His hearing had suddenly just gotten better.
He looked back at the aircar. As his hearing had improved, he realized with mild interest, so had his sight. Even through the glare of the floodlights he could now make out the symbols on the vehicle’s side, the cattertalk script marking it as the property of the Drim’hco’plai demesne.
The demesne that had enslaved Muninn for generations…and suddenly Merrick felt a righteous anger boil up inside him. How dare they do this to his fellow humans? He straightened to his feet, bent his knees for a mighty leap that would send him soaring across the sky to the aircar—
He staggered as a sudden wave of vertigo swept over him, knocking him off his feet and threatening to slam him face-first in the bersark. He caught himself in time, gripping the plants as he tried to stop the violent spinning in his head. The spinning slowed, and he started to stand up again.
And cursed as a bird slammed into his shoulder, again knocking him off balance.
He winced at the impact, though a small, functioning part of his brain noted with some surprise that a collision that would definitely leave a bruise wasn’t hurting. He got back to his feet again and glanced around, looking for his assailant.
It wasn’t just a single bird. It was a whole flock of them: dark, streamlined shapes—ten, fifteen, maybe more—all of them curving around and swooping out of the sky.
Heading straight toward him.
The damn things were attacking.
And suddenly, something within him snapped.
He could target them, he knew: lock his opticals sequentially on the birds and blast them to feathers and charred meat. But that would be too easy. Too quick. The birds wanted him? Fine. He would make sure they learned pain before they died.
He dropped into a crouching stance, hands held up and flat like game paddles. The birds shot toward him—
He slapped away the first wave without any of them getting past his defenses, batting them away to both sides like leaves in the wind. The second wave did a little better, a couple of them getting through and slashing past him with wings and talons. He could feel the wetness of blood on his cheeks, but still there was no pain. The birds kept coming—
And then, suddenly, they were gone.
He looked around him, breathing hard. The birds were scattered across the field, unmoving, dead or stunned.
One battle against flying things had been won. Now, the second battle could begin.
He looked up at the aircar. Unbelievingly, it still hadn’t moved. Hadn’t it seen or heard the carnage of the battle?
Apparently not. And as it had with the birds, that arrogance would cost them. He bent his knees again for the magnificent leap that had been so rudely interrupted.
And spun around. Had that been a snapping of branches in the forest?
It had. Even in the dim light he had no trouble seeing the three human silhouettes skulking in the bushes.
Watching him.
Agents of the Trofts? Probably. Agents or slaves, it was really all the same.
One more distraction for him to deal with.
He spun around on one foot, then shoved off the ground with that same single leg, just to show he could do it. He landed just past the edge of the field, hitting the uneven forest ground a bit off-balance. No problem—his nanocomputer could handle the readjustment. The other humans had scurried backwards at his sudden arrival, but they couldn’t scurry faster than a Cobra.
He smiled at the thought of a Cobra scurrying. His instructors back at the Sun Center would have been horrified at the very thought of such a word being used for the noble warriors they were molding. The Qasamans—
Actually, the Qasamans would probably be amused. That was one thing about the Qasamans: they might take themselves and their world deadly seriously, but at least they had a sense of humor lurking behind it all.
What the people of Muninn thought about scurrying he didn’t know. Nor did he really care. All he knew was that the ones in front of him were doing a pretty good job of it as they tried desperately to get away from them.
As well they should. Merrick strode toward them like an avenging demigod—which, really, he was—wondering if he should bother with a target lock and deciding against it. His bare hands had been good enough for the birds. They would certainly be good enough for people, too. He raised his right hand…
And felt his feet stumble to a confused halt. His bare hands…his bare hands…
He looked around him, blinking and staggering with a fresh surge of vertigo. But this time, instead of coming off the dizziness with a sense of power and majesty, the spinning in his mind seemed to drag him over an unseen precipice into a dark pit.
“Quickly, now,” a voice murmured in his ear.
Merrick came to with a start. He was walking—or, more correctly, staggering—through the forest, a pair of strong hands around each of his upper arms steadying him. He craned his neck to look back over his shoulder, only to discover to his shock that Svipall was no longer in sight. More than that, whereas it had been merely a heavy dusk before, now a total blackness was pressed all around him.
A blackness, and people. How many people, he couldn’t tell. But there were definitely more than just the two who were holding his arms. At least two others, maybe more. Was it a parade? He chortled a sudden giggle at the thought.
“Quiet,” someone growled. “You want to get us all caught?”
“Sure, why not?” Merrick said, feeling a ghost of his earlier confidence rippling through him. Let the Trofts come. He could take them. He could take all of them. He was a Cobra.
He frowned. Right—he was a Cobra; and with that thought came the belated realization that he had optical enhancements that could relieve some of the darkness around him. A bit of fumbling with the control, and suddenly the blackness lightened to a muted gray.
There were five of them, he saw now: two young men helping him along, a third young man bringing up the rear, and a middle-aged man and woman in front. Their outfits seemed to wrap tighter around them than the usual Muninn clothing, and were composed of mottled shades of brown, gray, and dark green. Rather like the camo gear he’d seen hunters wearing back on Aventine, he vaguely recalled. “Where are we going?” he asked.
“Shut up,” one of the men holding him bit out. “Stupid, stupid. You ruined everything.”
“No, no,” Merrick admonished him. “Not stupid. Don’t call me stupid. Anya doesn’t like it when people call people stupid.” He closed his eyes, an odd weariness washing over him.
And jerked as a pair of hands grabbed his shirt collar. “Anya?” a woman’s voice demanded. “Who do you mean, Anya?”
Merrick opened his eyes. The woman who’d been in front was suddenly staring into his face, her eyes barely thirty centimeters from his. “What?” he asked.
“Anya,” she repeated, her tone urgent, her fingers gripping his collar tightly. “Who is this Anya? What other name is she called?”
Merrick had to think a moment. He’d know her as just Anya for so long… “Winghunter,” he said. “She’s called Anya Winghunter.”
Something in the woman’s face seemed to somehow go deeper. “Where is she?” she demanded. Her head twisted back and forth to both sides, as if Anya might be lurking somewhere in the woods around them. “Did you just leave her alone out here?”
“Of course not,” Merrick said, wrinkling his nose. Anya was fine—couldn’t this woman see that? “She’s with the master. Master Kjoic.”
The woman’s grip tightened. “She’s with a master?”
“Isn’t everyone?” Merrick countered. For some reason the response struck him as wonderfully witty, and he laughed.
Or rather, he giggled. Again. A small, severe part of his mind informed him that giggling wasn’t a very dignified way for a grown man to laugh. But he didn’t care.
“Where is she?” the woman demanded again. “Where is she?”
“Take it easy,” Merrick said, frowning into the wild eyes. This woman seriously needed to calm down. “She’s right over there.” He pointed straight ahead.
He frowned. His nanocomputer had a built-in-compass, which was inexplicably telling him he was facing north, not west. When had they all changed direction?
Didn’t matter. Anya was to the west—that much he knew. “No—that direction,” he amended, shifting his pointing finger toward his left.
“How far?” the woman asked.
“A few kilometers.” Merrick considered. Did his nanocomputer keep track of things like that? Probably, but he couldn’t remember how to access the data. No matter. “About eight of them, probably. She built a shelter, so they’re all right.”
“What did she make the shelter out of?” the middle-aged man asked. “Bambus?”
“I don’t know the name of the stuff,” Merrick said. “Green, fuzzy, pointy things. Big clusters of them.”
“How big a patch was it?” the man asked.
“How should I know?”
Merrick countered. “We didn’t count the things. There were a lot of them, that’s all I know.”
“Was it near the river?” the woman asked.
“I don’t think so,” Merrick said, trying to think. The world was going hazy again. He keyed up his opticals, but it didn’t seem to help. “There was a small stream nearby, not a river. I hopped it on the way out.”
The man and woman looked at each other. “Could be the Dewer’s Hollow bambus patch,” the man suggested.
“Sounds like it,” the woman agreed. “You’d better take him home while we sort all this out. I’ll take a few men and go find her.”
“No, you’ll take him back and I’ll go get her,” the man said. “There’s a master with her, remember?”
“And he’s got a laser,” Merrick said. “But don’t worry—he’s also got a bad leg.” This time it wasn’t a giggle, but a single, explosive guffaw. “Because—he shot himself!”
Again, the man and woman looked at each other. “Better take a couple extra,” the woman advised.
The man nodded, gave Merrick a final look, then headed away at a brisk walk. “But don’t hurt him,” Merrick called after him. “Really—don’t. He’s our ticket into Svipall and that big gray box.”
He didn’t remember much about the rest of the trip. Mostly he remembered shuffling along in a sort of mental haze, a fogginess punctuated at intervals by sudden flashes of clarity.
Only sometimes the clarity…wasn’t.
Sometimes he was completely lucid and able to think. Other times he came up out of the haze charged, revved, and ready to declare war on the local Trofts, their demesne, and the whole Trof’te Assemblage.
And other times he came out literally shaking with fear, self-loathing, and despair. Wondering what in the name of everything holy he was doing here.
It was while he was struggling through one of the maelstroms of depression that the haze rolled in one final time and then melted into a final and welcome darkness.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Integrated Structural Implantation System—Isis, for short, because no one in their right mind would ever use a thirteen-syllable name if they didn’t have to—had been a major factor in the Qasaman’s victory over the invading Trofts. As such, it was a military secret of the highest order, and Jody found it completely understandable that not a single Qasaman aboard the Squire would breathe word one to her about where it was being hidden.