The Stars Askew (35 page)

One of them grunted. In a strange clipped accent, he said, “Always the mountains. Always in winter.”

Another pulled a spit of roasting meat from the fire. “At least we're not up in the northern ice-halls. That was cold
and
dangerous. When that ice giant hit Akius with that rock and his entire chest caved in … I still dream of it. The way his eye kept moving, even though his body was flattened like a pancake.”

“The way we nearly froze on that glacier,” said another. “I still can't feel the tips of my fingers.”

The Cyclops closest to Armand fixed him with his single large cold eye. He rubbed his hands together close to the flames as he stared ominously.

Armand hurried on, thinking of the paste waiting for him in the hall. When he arrived, Tiedmann was sending his lieutenants from table to table, asking for 7624. Where was he? He hadn't been seen for the entire day. He wasn't in his cot or in the infirmary. Someone had to know.

As Armand shook his head to indicate ignorance, he noticed Tiedmann's eyes lingering on him. It was hard to imagine him without the intensity of those stony eyes, set in the wide planes of his face. The man had barely changed since Armand's arrival. The same air of hostility hung around him and Armand could sense the man's urge to dominate. Everything about him screamed that he would survive, no matter what. Armand thought of his grandfather's ring, which he had traded to Tiedmann. What else might the former Director take from him? Armand lowered his eyes to the rough table in front of him and hoped Tiedmann would look away.

*   *   *

As he left the mess hall, Armand looked up at the sky. In the west, the sun was long gone. To the east, the sky was a dark purple, shading into black. As he walked toward the carpentry shop, Armand looked back to see Tiedmann standing in the doorway of the mess hall, his vast head dark against the light room. There was nothing for Armand to do but to continue on as if everything were normal.

When he stepped into the carpentry shop, the smell of death hit Armand again. In other times, he would have gagged, for it was foul and impossible to ignore. Now, however, things had become too desperate. The barbarians moved around, busy with preparations: packing equipment and the little food that had been scavenged.

Armand turned from them and craned his head through the window to see Tiedmann, and two lieutenants carrying long black truncheons, walking toward the shop. Behind them, the fire threw light onto the massive faces of the Cyclopses not far away.

Armand clasped his head in his hands. “Tiedmann's coming with two men.”

The chieftain grasped a hammer, Ohan a chisel. They sat quickly on stools, and the rest of the Westerners squatted around a pair of dice they often played with. Armand saw a rough piece of wood nearby that would serve as a club if he needed it, but he was painfully conscious that he was standing, awkward and out of place.

“Tihan is digging through to open air. But we're waiting for the others who are still at the mess hall, or in the barracks,” said Ijahan.

And Irik,
Armand thought to himself.

The door swung open, and Tiedmann stepped into the room, his two lieutenants pressing close behind, their truncheons swinging ominously in their hands.

From where they lounged, the barbarians' expressions were brooding, unwelcoming. For a moment, a mad notion leaped into Armand's mind: thin and wasted, with colourful feathers and beads still in their hair, they looked like wild pugnatious birds, ready to defend their nest.

Ohan smiled grimly. “Tiedmann, the new barracks will be finished in the next week.” He gestured to the frames of the new cots, which were now close to assembled.

“That's not why I'm here. We seem to have misplaced my lieutenant, 7624. He hasn't been seen in a day. Yet he can't have left the camp.” Tiedmann sniffed a moment, grimaced a little. His eyes darted for a moment to one side, to a Hessian bag full of equipment for the breakout, but he didn't appear to register it.

“Are you sure he hasn't escaped?” asked Ohan. “He didn't seem like he belonged here.”

Tiedmann's bodyguards gripped their truncheons more firmly, ready to strike at the merest encouragement. They didn't seem to like Ohan's joke.

But it distracted Tiedmann for a moment. He smiled thinly, then contemplated the new beds once more. “What a good job you've done on these cots. You'll transfer them to my lieutenants' barracks when they're done. The ones there can be moved to the new barrack.”

Ijahan nodded in agreement as he spun one of the beads in his white beard between his fingers. “Of course. We can make you some new mattresses with sawdust, if you like.”

Tiedmann scrunched up his button nose again, his eyes roving around the room. “Can you smell something?”

The lieutenants spoke, one after the other.

“A stench, sir.”

“An odor.”

“No doubt about it, sir.”

“Rats,” said Armand. “They hide among the wood and die there.”

Tiedmann looked at Armand. When their eyes met, Armand saw Tiedmann register the lie. He cursed himself: he was never any good at duplicity.

Tiedmann took a few steps toward the far wall, where the trapdoor was hidden. He sniffed once more and his head recoiled. “It seems to be from over there.”

Armand prepared to strike one of the collaborators, but this time he knew their cries would rouse the Cyclopses. The escapees might rush into the tunnel together, but he would never make it to the infirmary to save Irik. In any case, it would not be long before all of them were captured. Their plan had always relied on surprise.

Tiedmann wheeled around. “Yes, the smell seems…” But his voice trailed off as, from this new angle, he caught sight of the hammer that the chieftain wielded, the staves of wood and chisels lying close to the barbarians squatting around their dice. He glanced at the door, then added slowly, “Yes, the smell is a rat, I'd say. Well, if you see 7624, send him to me immediately.”

Everyone understood the situation. As Tiedmann backed away, several barbarians stood up, their makeshift weapons now in their hands, and pressed in on the three collaborators. When Ijahan nodded, they followed them through the door and across the ground toward the square, ensuring that Tiedmann and his men did not call out.

“A rat. Terrible things. Definitely a rat,” said Tiedmann unconvincingly.

Armand rushed behind the strange little group, the remaining barbarians trying to appear casual as they scampered from the mess hall toward the carpentry workshop. There was no time. At any moment the barbarians following Tiedmann would turn back. Then the collaborators would call for help, and the guards and the Cyclopses would descend on the carpentry shop, murdering or capturing any remaining escapees.

Armand broke into a run. When he reached the infirmary, he glanced back. The two groups of barbarians had now met and were headed back to the shop, leaving Tiedmann and his bodyguards to walk on. At any moment the cry would go up.

Armand dashed into the infirmary, where Irik sat on his cot, already dressed. Beside him, his dinner paste was left half eaten.

Irik smiled weakly. “I'm ready.”

“Now. Run.”

Armand hurried back into the cold air just as the call went up: “Alarm! Alarm! The barbarians!” Someone rang the bell. Armand raced up the slight incline toward the carpentry shop, got halfway there, then turned to see Irik struggling weakly after him.

From the square, Tiedmann was directing spear-wielding guards toward them. Farther behind, the Cyclopses grabbed their massive tridents. A moment later they would begin their terrifying charge.

We'll never make it,
Armand realized. The Westerners would be scrambling along the tunnel, but there were too many of them: Armand, Irik, and several more would be trapped in the workshop. If they weren't impaled there and then, they would be made a ghastly example of later, or perhaps sent to the laboratory for bloodstone experiments.

Armand threw the door open, Irik close behind him. Five Westerners milled around the trapdoor. Ohan stood by the open window, his wooden cast still clasping his leg. With natural grace, he nocked an arrow to a longbow. By his side stood a leather quiver with twenty or so more, made from slivers of wood, but with iron tips.

Armand's heart leaped with hope. The other Westerners had thrown bows of their own over their backs. Wooden sword-length spikes, also tipped with iron, swung from their belts.

Ohan nodded to the floor near the trapdoor, where a small bag, a bow, and a spike lay. “Yours are there.”

The barbarian then turned, drew the bow expertly, and loosed an arrow through the window. From the outside, Armand heard a scream. Ohan nocked another arrow, his movements flowing gracefully. The arrow flew through the window. Armand watched it glide through the air and strike a guard in the stomach. The guard clutched at it, looking down, his face trembling as if he might cry.

The guards hesitated, but behind them came the Cyclopses. Huge boots seemed to shake the ground. Massive thighs and arms rippled as the creatures moved.

The last of the Westerners plunged into the tunnel. Irik threw the bow over his shoulder and grasped the wooden spike, but Armand seized the bag before the oppositionist could take ahold of it.

“You first,” said Armand.

Irik dived into the tunnel opening. His feet protruded for a moment, but then he dragged himself along the tunnel floor and was gone.

“Ohan!” said Armand.

Ohan looked back a moment, even as he reached for another arrow. “Armand, I was never going to escape.”

“You can. We'll carry you if we have to. The others are waiting.”

Ohan shook his head, loosed another arrow, turned back quickly. “Look at me, Armand. Look at my leg. I'll hold them off. Go now.”

Armand hesitated. He couldn't leave the barbarian here, not after everything.

“Now!” yelled Ohan, then turned and loosed another arrow.

The last thing Armand saw was Ohan drawing the bow once more, his face a study of calm concentration.

Armand plunged through the trapdoor. Halfway along the tunnel, he heard the door bursting open far behind. Screams echoed around him as he scrabbled along on his hands and knees.

Irik helped Armand scramble up into the cold night air. Already the first group of Westerners was gathered in a copse of pine trees that ran up against the steep mountainside.

The two friends ran toward them, aware that at any moment the Cyclopses and guards might charge at them from the front gate. Armand's breath was heavy in his ears. The cold wind brushed his face. Irik fell, stumbled, and made it to his feet again before they joined the Westerners in the copse, a group of looming shadows in the frigid darkness.

They had run east, farther along the rising valley into the mountain range, the opposite direction to the one they needed to take.

“We must cross the river and double back,” said the chieftain. “We'll find a pass that will lead us south.”

“Guards,” one of the barbarians said. With the same grace shown by Ohan, he loosed an arrow out into the darkness.

“We will go our own way,” said Irik. “You should come with us. The Cyclopses will expect you to go west and south. They'll catch you.”

“We won't go any other way. That is the way home for us, and there is safety in numbers,” said Ijahan.

Armand was surprised. What was Irik planning? “Perhaps he's right. They have hunting skills and knowledge of how to survive out here.”

“Even so,” said Irik. “We have our own path to walk. We are not heading west, but farther east, into the mountains.”

“When the heavy snows come, those routes will be impassable,” said Ijahan. “You'll die in the cold.”

“Still, we must head east, Armand and I. Don't you agree, Armand?” There was a certainty to Irik's voice. “It will help both of us escape, too. They will now have two groups to track.”

Armand looked at the shadow of the oppositionist crouching beneath the pines. He now remembered Irik's words only days before:
There is another way.
Irik had trusted him. Now it was time for him to trust Irik. “I'll travel with Irik. We began this journey together. We may as well end it thus.”

Three of the barbarians were keeping a steady stream of arrows flying through the air into the darkness. “We must go!” one of them hissed.

The chieftain drew a deep breath and lifted his bag from his shoulders. “You'll need this.”

“So will you,” said Irik.

Ijahan slung it over Irik's shoulder. “Not as much as you. Go now, and remember our people. I think it unlikely we will resist the Empire long.”

Armand and Irik headed deeper into the pine trees, where it was even darker than the open air.

 

TWENTY-EIGHT

Armand and Irik hurried through the night, moving over the rocky ground, past huge granite boulders that lay scattered across the landscape. They raced from one copse of trees to another, passing beneath mountain pines where they found them, hoping their tracks would be lost in the fallen needles. Clouds parted and a half-moon lit their way. The mountains loomed to either side of them.

Neither of them spoke. They were fueled by excitement and fear. Their first goal was to put as much distance between themselves and the camp as possible. So they marched on through the freezing cold, their faces rapidly becoming numb, the flesh and bones beneath their skin aching. Only Armand's left inner arm held some kind of heat. He didn't want to think about why, but he did press his other hand against it, and it helped to warm him.

They stopped in a clearing and rustled through the bag that Ohan had given them. Inside, they found soundly made hats and mittens, sewn from Hessian bags and filled with some unknown fabric. Rough blankets had been torn into strips to make scarves, which they wrapped around their faces.