Each compound housed intact militia groups, organized by region and village cluster as they had been Sesei. Some militia fighters trained and fought with the same men and women with whom they attended nursery school.
Ara caught up with the postman, laboring under bundles of hundreds of messages, lashed together in thick sheaves and heaped on his shoulders.
“Let me help you with those,” said Ara. She took a bundle off his hands, which proved more bulky than heavy.
“Why, thank you, comrade,” said the postman. “I was afraid I might dump the whole load in the mud.”
“Do you always carry so much mail?” said Ara, surprised by its volume.
“When there’s news,” said the postman. “We had a bit of excitement this morning with the Mercomar going dark. Something to tell the folks back home, raise a little hope.”
The postman seemed oblivious to Ara’s situation. Either the man did not recognize her, or Ingar had not passed on word of his edict camp-wide. Perhaps this would be her only opportunity to leave. Ingar’s constraints would only tighten and this window would close, especially once he discovered she had defied his orders.
They passed through a training area where slashed bundles of willow switches stuffed with marsh straw served as surrogate enemies for militias practicing sword play. She remembered the words of an old sergeant: “If only our enemy were made of straw, Venen would be ours.”
Ara hesitated at a familiar fence of stout reeds threaded with vine. They had reached the part of camp she knew best—her former compound, the one she knew when she first came to Gi as a militia recruit.
“I need to pass word to a friend,” said Ara. “I’ll just be a moment.”
“Let me take that bundle off your hands,” said the postman.
“No need,” said Ara. “I won’t be long.”
The postman looked uncomfortable. “The convergence peaks within the hour. We expect a strong junction but I expect things to be busy.”
“No worries, I’ll be there, I promise,” said Ara, dashing in through the gate. She strode across the freshly swept clay of the common and paused outside the hut of Garoen, her former commander. She heard sleepy, subdued voices, the scrape of spoon on bowl. She dropped her bundle and popped inside without a warning.
Garaoen and Sing, the unit’s top sergeant, nearly dumped their porridge at her sudden appearance.
“Ara!”
“Quiet!” said Ara, pulling the flap of the entrance closed.
“I thought you were quarantined,” said Garaoen.
“Are you going to report me?”
“Of course not,” said Garaoen. “But … why the quarantine? They wouldn’t tell us.”
“It’s complicated,” said Ara. “And I can’t linger. I stopped to goodbye … and to ask a favor of those I can trust.”
“You can depend on us, Ara,” said Sing. “Like you said those Urep’o fighters say – always faithful. That’s us as well.”
Ara’s gaze hung in the ether for long seconds before she could speak.
“I attacked the Mercomar,” she said.
“You what?”
“That missing militia unit?” she said. “That was me. I commandeered it under false pretenses. We battled Crasacs on the mountain. Destroyed the heliograph.”
Garaoen and Sing looked at each other, perplexed, and then burst out laughing.
“Never thought it would take a language teacher to break the stalemate,” said Garoen. “How did it go?”
“Enough of us survived to fight another day,” said Ara. “But it was no rout. Those who fought with me are still in the valley. If it’s at all in your power to send a force to help them. I beg you, please do all you can.”
“Well I’m certainly willing, as would be our fighters,” said Garaoen. “But Ingar’s got us locked down tight.”
“We could get permission to go on maneuver,” said Sing. “Tell Ingar, it’s for training.”
“Please try,” said Ara. “And see if any other militias can join you. The Ortezei company is out there, all exposed. They have some Nalkies with them, but they couldn’t withstand a concerted attack. I wish I could stick around to help, but I seem to have a black mark with Ingar.”
“I can’t promise you anything,” said Garoen. “But we’ll try.”
***
Scarf wrapped around her head, ostensibly against the morning chill, Ara waited below the mound of dredged mud and marsh straw that hosted the camp’s xenolith. She huddled with the motley band of couriers, fever victims, miscreants and those assigned to escort them to Sesei with the morning’s convergence.
Ara’s name was not on the crossing manifest, but it seemed that the officer managing the crossing had already gone through the list when she arrived. Luckily, the postman was not the most suspicious or attentive soul. He seemed pleased enough that she had shown up in time with the extra bundles of mail.
Commander Ingar and a pair of his cadre captains appeared at the opening in the picket fence surrounding the convergence mound. Ara hunkered low with her bundle of post and pushed her way deeper into the throng.
The xenolith began to hum and spew mists that wove their strands into helices. A party made their up to the mounded earth that served as the convergence zone.
“Minutes away,” said one among the contingent of armed guards overseeing the event.
The officer managing the convergence strutted over. “You can all queue up now,” he said. “But wait your turn. Incoming goods first. Keep the portal clear until I give the word.”
The waiting gaggle stretched out single file and Ara lost her cover. Only the postman and her bundles screened her from Ingar and his captains.
“There’s to be a massive festival, I hear, the feast of feasts, on the day of reconciliation,” said one of the captains to another, as he strolled with Ingar to the benches outside the convergence zone, where observers gathered.
“I’ll believe it when my feet kick the dust of Ubabaor,” said the other captain.
“Reconciliation is a fact,” said Ingar. “It will be done. Believe it.”
Reconciliation. Baren had often used that word. Ara could never grasp what it meant. She gathered it was to be an extended truce with concessions – a province here, a xenolith there in return for restraint. To her it seemed that reconciliation was just a euphemism for surrender.
The field around the xenolith expanded and the air around it seemed to thicken in spots and refract the light like an oily prism. Oranges and purples and blues predominated. Columns formed in the air. Tree trunks. Mists swirled. Evergreen breezes mingled with the dank rot of the marsh.
Those in the queue waited nervously. Just before peak convergence was the safest time to cross, and that time was approaching. Minutes passed. More trees appeared and attained solidity. Finally, a courier appeared, a plump fellow, apparently plucked directly from the offices of Cadre Command. He acted like he had never traveled by portal before, stumbling around like a drunk. He passed a packet of documents on to Ingar.
Ingar thumbed through it.
“What’s it say?” said one of the captains.
“Not much,” said Ingar. “Negotiations have resumed. No resolution yet.”
Those watching waited expectantly for more arrivals.
“It’s just me,” said the messenger. “I came alone.”
A groan went up among the militia gathered to watch as they realized that they would be receiving no post, no supplies this convergence.
The officer managing the portal turned to the queue. “Alright you all. Hustle through. Only a few minutes to go.” The queue shuffled forward slowly.
“I need to return,” said the messenger. “Can’t I go first?”
“Get in back of the queue,” snarled a sergeant.
Those in the queue, laden with cargo, darted into the field one by one, counting off to five before following. Ara found herself two behind the man in front, when Ingar met her nervous gaze.
&nb
sp; “Ara?” he said, mouth agape.
She dropped the mailbag and dashed into the portal, running into the back of the man just entering the field. They tumbled together. Rippling forces bent their bones and twisted their flesh. Ara dumped out into the St. Johnsbury town forest amongst a gaggle of couriers gathering their goods. Ara ran through the trees, heading for the glow of the town, away from the relay point in the forest beyond that would take the others to Sesei.
Like it or not, she was back in Vermont.
Chapter 35: Distraction
Canu dashed along the wall, Pari nipping at his heels like a pestering dog.
“Stop right there Canu. We need to talk. I said stop, we need to talk. What did you mean by distraction? What kind of distraction?”
Canu ignored her, concentrating on the western Nalkies below, who had formed up yet another defense against the advancing Crasacs along a berm separating two beet fields. Distance muddied the sounds of fighting, rendering it indistinguishable from calls at pleasure contests one might attend at festival.
The wall petered out and the pasture gave way to a well-managed woodlot with widely-spaced trees. Two wounded but ambulatory fighters guarded the road that led up to the moors and down to the causeway. Canu hailed them with a whistle as he descended towards the wrinkle in the hillside where he had hidden the red car.
The guards whistled back, requesting an identifier.
“You know who we are,” he shouted, with annoyance.
“Tell me what you’re doing,” said Pari.
“My part,” said Canu.
“Which is what? Botch everyone else’s efforts so that you can look like a hero?”
Canu peeled back the wilted bushes and slabs of bark that disguised the car. One of the wheels looked a little soft, but full enough to roll. A ragged sheet of torn metal hung down from the front, tangled with uprooted weeds. Canu yanked it off. It was far from the first dangly bit that he had pulled from the machine and the overall result had been a vehicle with much better ground clearance than the one he had started with.
“Canu, you need to tell me right now what you plan to do. I’ve got my crossbow cocked. A healer knows how to take someone down without killing them. You let me know now or we’ll talk about it while you’re mending.”
She pressed the crossbow against his buttocks.
Canu hopped back. “Damn it, Pari, I’m just going across the causeway and back, that’s all. Just to distract them, make them pause, make them chase.”
“But why?” said Pari.
“So Feril and Igwa can take them by surprise.”
“Have you even told Feril and Igwa this?”
“They have eyes. If I told them, they would stop me.”
“For good reason. It sounds risky.”
Canu curled his lips in a sneer. “They can’t catch me in this thing. Have you seen how fast it goes?”
Canu turned to the road guards who both carried long bows. “Who among you is the best shot?”
“That would be me,” said the guard with the bandaged face and half his beard cut away.
“Maybe when you still had two eyes,” said the other guard.
“Who wants to come along and snipe at some Cuasars?” said Canu.
Neither guard looked eager to join him.
“I’ll go,” said Pari. “But only if you promise to turn around before contact.”
“Of course,” said Canu. The door creaked open. He dropped into the driver’s seat. “Do I look crazy?”
Not a muscle twitched in Pari’s face as she opened the door and got in beside him. She took off her quiver and placed it on the floor between her legs. Two bolts were already loaded and cocked in her double-slotted crossbow.
Canu started the car and tried to pull out of the hollow. The front wheels spun in place, throwing bits of leaf and mud against the trees.
Canu opened his window.
“Don’t stand there, gawking! Help us out of this hole!”
The guards put down their weapons threw their weight against the back of the car. By increments, they eased them out of the hollow and the car sprang forward as soon as it found traction. They hurtled down the shaded slope towards the causeway.
***
Canu rolled past a row of ruined barns and granaries on the edge of Xama. “Do you see them?” he whispered.
“All I see is mud,” said Pari. She climbed out the door window and wiped the mud off the windshield with a fistful of crumpled leaves. “Stop moving, so I can wipe your side.”
She stood on the door, leaned over the roof and swabbed an arc clean in front of Canu’s face. A clamor grew downstream. A gaggle of fleeing Nalkies appeared over a rise in the beet field. Pari slid back into her seat.
“Ready?” said Canu.
“Wait,” she said. She squinted up into the pasture across the river. Feril and Igwa’s troops remained under cover. She saw no hint of their presence even though she knew exactly where to look.
Pari noticed activity by a ford just downstream from the causeway. A contingent of Cuasars was getting ready to ford across and cut off the Nalkies path to safety. She and Canu had been lucky to cross the causeway undetected.
Pari’s gaze darted nervously to movements up the road, obscured by a wooded bend.
“How about now?” Canu chomped at the bit.
Pari poked her crossbow out the window and nodded.
“Okay,” she said.
Canu made the red vehicle creep forward at a walking pace.
“Why so slow?” said Pari.
“It stays quiet thus way,” Canu whispered. “When I go fast, it roars.”
“They have eyes, Canu,” said Pari. “You expect to hide something so bright and so red? And anyway, the point is to create a diversion. We want them to see us.”
Canu stomped on the pedal. The back wheels showered red earth and the car roared away.
Pari leaned out the window with her crossbow. The car surged forward unexpectedly, nearly whipping her out into the dirt. Her crossbow slipped from her grip but she managed to pin it against the skin of the car and haul it back in.
“Warn me next time you do that,” Pari scolded.
“It wasn’t me,” said Canu. “It was the car.”
The Cuasars hiding by the river wheeled about and emerged into the plowed fields, exposing themselves.
“They see us! That’s enough. Turn around.”
Canu’s eyes flitted down to the pedals on the floor. His face deconstructed into a panic.
“It doesn’t work,” he said. “I can’t stop it.”
“Press the pedal!”
“I did! It doesn’t work. It’s going by itself.”
“How?”
Canu gripped the wheel as if it would fly away if he let go.
Pari resisted an urge to open the door and leap out. Too much speed. Too many trees growing close to the road.
They sped past a side trail opening into the forest and a large cluster of men on horses, men and beasts staring, stunned. Some drew lances and charged out into road.
“This is it Canu,” she said. “There’s no turning back.”
“What do we do?”
“Don’t look at me,” said Pari. “This was your idea.”
Wheels sliding in the soft earth, they swung around the bend, straight towards a Venep’o war wagon, drawn by armored oxen, bristling with turrets and fighting slots. Dust clouds rose from supporting companies of Crasacs and other wagons to its rear.
Across the river, an entire block of advancing Crasacs had stopped to watch the red object flying down the road. Feril’s fighters took advantage of the moment to pour down the meadows into the invaders’ flanks.
Canu found no combination of levers or pedals that could alter the pitch of the engine or modulate their speed.
Pari reached over and pulled a dangling strap over Canu’s chest, clicking a latch into place by his hip.
The war wagon turned askew as the oxen attempted to bolt in
to a ditch.
Canu looked over at Pari. “We have no choice,” he said, looking like a small, frightened boy behind his scraggly whiskers.
Pari reached for Canu’s shoulder strap and buckled it for him before fastening her own. She folded her hands in her lap and closed her eyes.
Chapter 36: Telephone
Miles and Misty barreled down the path, through a forest oozing with seeps and sloughs. Patches of gloom, the stubborn vestiges of night, lingered beneath the dense canopy. The roar of the waterfall had faded to a vague, directionless hum.
Miles recalled days earlier when he had followed that troop of fierce children in the opposite direction. He had mistaken Lizbet for a place name—a village with a Coca Cola stand and a mini-bus station where he could hop a ride to larger towns with travel agents and shuttles to international airports. The belief had buoyed his strides with the conviction that every step took him one step closer to home.
But Lizbet turned out to be a lady, and Gi a place far from the world he knew, maybe even beyond his imagining. But somehow it connected to Greymore, intermittently at least, by radio and cell phone. And then there was the matter of his car, parked half in a bog on some alpine moor. These primitive roads would be rough on a Prius, but its full tank could get them four hundred miles closer to civilization as he knew it. Perhaps.
For now, he sought a wireless signal strong enough and persistent enough for him and Misty to place two calls. The first, promised to Misty, would let her clear up some personal matter between her and her sister. And then Miles would dial 911.
He couldn’t tell the operators the truth, or they would dismiss him as a crank. But he could pose as a lost hiker, and ask them to figure out where he was. They had ways of triangulating between cell towers to geolocate signals. Not that he expected a rescue team to be dispatched, but whatever they found might provide some clue as to his location.
Misty maintained a brisk pace, sandals clapping clay, crossing bridges one pole wide without pause. Miles had to push to keep up. His gaze alternated between the muddy path and Misty’s muscular legs and taut butt.