The Adversary - 4 (36 page)

Kawai bowed gravely to the officers. "Good morning.

Welcome to Hidden Springs Canyon. Under terms of the Armistice attested by King Sharn and Queen Ayfa, you are my honoured guests."

He held out the bouquet of roses.

The Firvulag leader lifted the visor of his helmet, revealing a grotesquely creased visage knit in a ferocious glower. "I am Betularn of the White Hand, Champion and Great Captain and First Comer and Scourge of the Foe!" he declaimed in a grating bellow. "Pray to whatever puny gods you acknowledge, Lowlife!"

"I have already done so, thank you," said Kawai, stepping close to the monster's chaliko. "Your flowers, Lord Betularn."

He thrust up the roses, smiling and insistent.

There was a rumble from the other officers. The one with the pouter-pigeon cuirass unhelmed and turned out to be a frizzhaired female, who grinned broadly at her superior. "Well, he's got you cold, White Hand-although how a Lowlife ever tumbled to that obscure geis, Te only knows! Take them."

The white gauntlet claimed the flowers. Miraculously, the weapons were lowered. The other two officers opened their visors and looked down upon Kawai with bemusement. One of them made a gesture to the mounted troopers, who trotted away toward the village.

"So the gift of flowers has meaning among your people as well as our own," the old man remarked suavely.

Betularn ignored that. He cocked his head as though listening, then gave a grunt of surprise. "Gone?" he exclaimed. "What do you mean-gone?" He peered down at the old man. "Where are the rest of the Lowlives?"

Kawai composed his features in an expression of formal regret. "Gomen nasai, Lord Betularn. They have all gone away.

You see, we have suffered so many misfortunes during the past months. Marauding forces acting contrary to the wishes of your Monarchs attacked our peaceful settlements, killing many people. It was decided that these lands are too perilous for human occupation. All of the Lowlives except myself have gone to Nionel, to accept the hospitality so generously offered by Lord Sugoll and his consort, Katlinel the Darkeyed."

"Well, that's one less tiff to distract our lads and lasses," the female officer said. "On to the main event!"

"You shut up, Fouletot," snarled the Great Captain. He asked Kawai, "When did your folks take off?"

"Oh, ages ago. They must be nearly to the Pliktol headwaters by now."

Betularn chewed his grizzled moustaches and tugged at his beard. "Damn ... we'll have to sidetrack to check this out."

"It's only a week until Truce!" shrilled the dwarf officer.

"You shut up, Pingol!" roared Betularn.

"Remember our orders," the second male ogre said.

"You shut up too, Monolokee! Te blast me to a cinder-let me think for a moment."

Kawai said softly, "I can offer you only meagre hospitality, good neighbours. However, the spring house contains cold beer, which might be refreshing after a hot ride, and I have a rather large crock of strawberry jam."

Betularn fixed the smiling little human with a piercing eye.

"If this is a trick ... "

Kawai spread his hands in a protestation of submissiveness.

"I am all alone. Surely your forces have confirmed the fact by now. Please-follow me. You are most welcome, I assure you."

He turned about and began to walk toward the village.

Dear Amerie-chan, he prayed, your roses accomplished half a miracle.

You wouldn't want to blow it now, would you, daughter?

Behind him, he heard monstrous laughter, the creak of harness, the slow plop-plop of clawed feet in the dust. "That damn beer better be cold," muttered Betularn.

"Oh, yes!" Kawai grinned over his shoulder. "Just come along. It's not far."

"Are you certain that you want to go ahead with this?" GregDonnet enquired.

The single blue eye in the centre of the Howler woman's forehead was unblinking. "If I had looked like a human, he would have loved me. My illusions were not good enough.

Having once worn a silver torc, he had insights superior to those of the other Lowlife husbands."

She removed the last of her garments, handed them to the female laboratory assistant, and stood shivering slightly beside the expansive array of the tank apparatus and its directive console. Her mutant body was slender, scaly, with a light pelt like that of a blue fox growing about her shoulders and down the midline of her thorax. "I am ready. What do I do now, Melina?"

"Step into the tank," the technician said, "and we'll just wrap you in the Skin. Then Dr. Prentice Brown and I will apply the monitors and attach your life-support equipment. It will feel like you're going to sleep. You'll never know when the tank fills."

"Will I dream?" The question was fearful.

"Good dreams," Greggy reassured her. "Perhaps of him."

The little creature smiled. "I know there is a chance that I will die, or emerge from the tank more deformed than ever.

But I do this thing gladly. If he should come before I wake, you will tell him that, won't you?"

"Certainly," said Greggy. "Now in you go-and think positive thoughts! It's very important to initiate your self-redactive impulses voluntarily."

He and his assistant went to work, swiftly wrapping the mutant woman in transparent membrane and attaching the ancillary equipment. They closed the tank, did a final scan of her functions, and let the great crystal container fill. The body floated free and assumed a horizontal position, tethered by the Medusa-cap that would soon begin feeding regenerative commands into the sleeping brain.

Greg-Donnet touched his golden torc as he watched the changing readouts on the console. "Are you asleep, Iambic? Can you hear me?"

Brainwaves cycled slowly on the monitoring screen. A single word crossed the threshold of consciousness before the mutant's mind surrendered to the Skin-tank and its healing oblivion: Tonee.

CHAPTER SIX

The eight units of the brave new RATVC, freshly painted in plum and gold, charged out of the surf and onto the sandy Breton Island beach. From the whip antenna of the command vehicle streamed the digitus impudicus banner of King AikenLugonn, who was himself at the controls. He was in a high humour because, for a change, all the news was good. The Alpine Expedition had mapped a route up the tricky Gresson Icefall and had set up the first supply camp. The Famorel force marching toward Monte Rosa, on the other hand, had been hit by a fortuitous landslide in the Tarentaise, losing a day's march and more than thirty troops. In Roniah, Kuhal Earthshaker reported that the stockpile of Milieu-style arms was more extensive than they had dared hope. He was packing the bulk of the armoury for shipment to Goriah via the roundabout but safe southern route. It was deemed unwise to risk shipping the weapons directly along the Western Track, even during the Truce. A heavy guard of Tanu stalwarts would bring them down the Rhone, overland to Sasaran, and then via riverboat down the Garonne, where the Royal Fleet could sail them to Goriah.

Feeling frisky, Aiken leaned on the ATV's klaxon and sent a fanfare of oogahs ricocheting off the grassy dunes. Sandpipers and godwits scattered and the King laughed. He was, along with certain of his courtiers and fourteen of the young North Americans, on his way to the formal opening of the Royal Siderurgical Establishment up in the Breton highlands, which was ready to go into full production at long last. The castle caterers had packed an outstanding lunch, the ATVs rolled smartly on a well-graded track made to accommodate heavy traffic from the new forges, and the cobalt sky was piled with cauliflower clouds.

"Much too nice a day," Aiken remarked to Dougal, "for a coup. You probably imagined the whole thing, old son."

The counterfeit medievalist, who sat in the co-pilot's seat, gave a great sigh. "Such welcome and unwelcome things at once, 'tis hard to reconcile! It is the bright day that brings forth the adder; and that craves wary walking ... And if the wight plans no harm, then why rides he with the Children of Rebellion?"

"Vilkas goes where his boss goes," said the King reasonably.

"And Yosh is checking out the course-director robotics of Hagen's ATV. Seems there's some kind of minor-glitch."

"I am but a poor lackwit," Dougal said, "but I have told you truly what I heard this morning as the caitiff North Americans assembled in the castle base-court. (They pay no attention to me because I'm mad.) The import of their scheme was clear, Sire. They know of your mental disability through information supplied by the malefactory Lithuanian, and plan somehow to use you treacherously this day."

The King's eyes were black glittering slots beneath the brim of his golden hat. "Vilkas and Yosh and the other lad were there in Calamosk when I pulled my trick. But what could be Vilkas' motive for betraying me?"

"He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous! And he is of a sour and grudging temperament, and bitter because he was not torced with gold."

Alberonn Mindeater, who sat with his wife Eadnar in the navigation seats at the rear of the cockpit, now leaned forward radiating anxiety. "If treason is afoot, High King, we should turn back to Goriah at once. You have none too many stalwart minds accompanying you on this excursion, nor have you seen fit to wear your mechanical screens."

"I find them stuffy," said Aiken. He revved the turbine as the trail became a straightaway. Soon their ATV outdistanced the other vehicles in the pack, tearing through the open woodland at nearly 90 kph. The windscreen ionizers had broken down again, and the King squinted through the bug splatters, deep in thought. When they came to the new suspension bridge over the Proto-Oust he eased the throttle so that they crawled sedately across. None of the other vehicles was in sight.

Aiken pulled to a stop and waited. The terrain-survey display showed the smeltery buildings less than three kilometres ahead.

He said, "And you're certain they were cooking up something for today, Dougie? Not just indulging in a bit of foolish lesemajeste?"

"Foolery, Sire, does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere!" The zany underwent one of his lightning changes of persona and added cogently, "Fourteen of those junior Rebels along on this outing. Only Miss Cloud and the three scientific whizzes stayed home. Plenty of brainpower there for a nasty little coercive metaconcert. And I heard the foxy-faced one, Nial Keogh, say that an iron foundry offered unique opportunities."

Alberonn and Eadnar threw out simultaneous thoughts: Bloodmetal in amplesupply! Your stalwartdefenders mostly Tanu&vulnerable!

The other seven vehicles now approached the bridge, led by the one bearing Hagen and his confederates. Aiken studied it through his farsenses and perceived nothing but innocent merriment within. The repair job on the autopilot had evidently been accomplished, and now the North Americans were plying Yosh, Vilkas, and Jim with jugs of the undistinguished but plentiful muscadet wine that the commonalty of Goriah had dubbed Poodle Pee.

Aiken zinged Yosh with a trenchant inquiry: Important.

Think! Could the glitch in robotics be deliberate fabrication excuse get you & assistants into Hagen ATV instead of another?

Well hell Chief ... it's possible. Why you ask?

Nevermind Yoshilad just keep alert for mischief.

"There's such divinity that doth hedge a king," Dougal reassured Aiken, "that treason can but peep to what it would."

"You think so, do you?" Aiken bestowed a bleak grin on the big ginger-beard who had become his court jester through an uncanny sort of insinuation. "Your divinity better look slippy if I have to fight Hagen and his gang as well as Marc Remillard!

Here I thought I had the young Rebs on my side-and now it seems that they were just biding their time, waiting for the chance to launch a royal screw. They've probably decided I'm a burnt-out case after what Vilkas told them about the Calamosk chicane."

"They should know better," Alberonn exclaimed, "having seen you direct the metaconcert manoeuvres of our forces!"

"Ah, but a director doesn't have to be a personal hotshot,"

Aiken observed. "As long as he has the right program tucked away in his noodle, mental strength isn't nearly as important as adroitness and the ability to channel energies. I think Hagen might be afraid that I'd be unable to handle Marc in a one-onone confrontation, without a concert to back me up. He's a supercautious young prick, you know. He doesn't much care for my freewheeling style-going blithely about without three sigma-shells and a full suit of cerametal armour to safeguard my royal ass from sneak attack. The kid could be worrying that his old man might simply grab me. And use me."

The other ATVs rumbled over the span, one at a time.

Hagen's breezy thought addressed Aiken on the intimate mode: Sir you left us all in the dust didn't you? You're a better driver than any of us! Would you like us to form up for a parade entry into the Establishment? I could even broadcast some snappy bagpipe music over the loudhailerAiken's thought was wry: Just follow Me.

"He would," Dougal said softly, as Aiken started up their own vehicle. "He'd follow for expediency's sake, provided that you demonstrate once and for all who is vassal and who is King." And he tapped the lion's head embroidered in gold on his knightly surtout.

Aiken cast a sidelong glance of surprise at the medievalist, who wore no torc yet so often seemed to know his thoughts.

He noticed for the first time that the leonine charge now wore a crown, and this tripped a half-forgotten memory from his misspent youth on the planet Dalriada. But the thought slipped away before the press of immediate matters and he said, "First we must make absolutely certain that they're planning a coup.

It's never a good idea to waste your shots. Especially when you don't have all that many in the old quiver."

The Iron Master of the new Royal Siderurgical Establishment was a tough old bareneck named Axel, an early defector from the Lowlife Iron Villages in the Vosges. With the King's carte blanche on materials and personnel, the technician had organized a far more sophisticated setup on Breton Island-one that was, moreover, secure from virtually any kind of attack short of aerial bombardment. The mineworkings, which yielded siderite, were entirely underground. Ore was removed with a minimum of human labour by four compact mining machines liberated from the Goriah contraband cache. The initial smelting was done in an adjacent blast furnace equipped with a pair of huge water-powered bellows.