Chapter Four

“A Perilous Road”

1.

“the lady rests comfortably?” Onxym Haat asked Nathanial. Kak’hamish translated and smiled to himself, imagining Nathanial’s thoughts at the moment, as he clutched the edge of the swaying howdah atop the ruumet breehr.

A damned sight more comfortably than I do, I’ll wager, would be his answer were he less diplomatic. To Kak’hamish’s surprise, the young scientist forced a smile at the caravan master—more of a pained grimace, but the intent was good.

“Tell Master Onxym Haat my telepathic powers have failed me for the moment, but when last I saw her she was as comfortable as could be expected.”

Kak’hamish couched the translation in more diplomatic terms, then went back to studying the sky. He had seen a solitary skrill earlier in the morning. He was certain no one else in the caravan had noticed, which was all the more reason to keep a careful watch. A raid by the Queln at this point would cause—well, more complications than Kak’hamish cared to think about, including a fair amount of injuries and perhaps deaths.

Queln raids were seldom deadly unless the caravan resisted, but could cause frightful damage if they did. Everyone knew that. This caravan, to judge from the words of its Master of Sword, intended to resist, even looked forward to it. Kak’hamish had looked the guards over and found nothing special about them. The musketeers struck him as hard men, but hardened by the soldier’s road, not the cutthroat’s. They would stand their ground and fight hard, given good leadership.

The mounted guards were a different matter. They neglected their mounts, straggled and wandered too far during the march, and spent their off-time gambling and drinking—although Kak’hamish wondered how simple guards made enough to afford to drink every night. Field wine was cheap, if you didn’t mind the headache the next morning, but even field wine was not free. Even now he saw a mounted guard lift his wine skin and drink as his gashant wandered listlessly away from the caravan. Where was the Master of Sword? Why wasn’t he checking his outriders?

Kak’hamish looked back to the sky and he noticed Nathanial now doing the same. He could not have seen the Queln so must have noticed Kak’hamish’s attention. Nathanial caught his eye and raised an eyebrow expressively. Kak’hamish shook his head slightly and flicked his eyes toward the backs of the caravan master and his ruumet breehr driver. Only they were within hearing distance, and so far as Kak’hamish knew neither of them spoke English. But the inescapable truth was that at least someone in the caravan spoke what Nathanial called “the Queen’s” but would not admit it. It could be anyone, and so best to guard his words.

That was a result of the note which Kak’hamish had not originally considered. Inevitably the note made them more careful in their conversations. Would an enemy who secretly spoke English deliberately give away such an advantage, and thus deny himself a potential source of intelligence? It seemed unlikely.

He looked up again, slowly swept the southern sky, and there they were!

“Push your mother down a well!” Kak’hamish exclaimed. The others in the howdah followed his gaze and saw the three or four specks in the southern sky. Not a full raid, although Kak’hamish would see if the caravan guards were bright enough to realise that.

“Queln! Queln!” Onxym Haat shouted, and pointed to the south. The closest mounted guards reined their mounts in to the sound of shrill clucking. “Riders, pass the word—defensive formation!”

Within moments the caravan erupted into frantic activity. Shouting drivers turned the twelve large beasts of burden to the right and closed into a tight line, shoulder to shoulder. This left the wagons with scarcely six feet between their axles. Only five of the great beasts carried howdahs, the others being driven by a rider astride the neck. Onxym Haat tipped the rolled rope ladder over the side and Kak’hamish saw men in the other four howdahs do the same. Soon two panting musketeers, their weapon slung over their backs, scrambled up and over the side into the interior. They unslung their muskets, removed the canvas wrapping which protected the fire locks, cocked the hammer and opened the pan, and primed their weapons with a dash of powder from a horn slung from their shoulder.

Below them the mounted guards retreated to the spaces between the wagons, as did the walking servants and labourers. Of the Master of Sword, Kak’hamish saw nothing for the moment.

He looked up again and saw the skrill riders grow closer, details resolving as they made their rapid gliding descent. Their blue-grey hide rendered them nearly invisible at higher altitudes. Their upper limbs extended perhaps three meters to each side and ended in long articulated talons which he saw flexing in anticipation. Their large black eyes sparkled in the afternoon sun, and two long horns extended forward from their brow ridges above the eye sockets.

A bellowed command from below arrested his attention. In the open ground behind the clustered wagons, the Master of Sword and several dismounted guards hastily planted long poles in the ground, thrusting the narrow pointed ends into the soft soil and angling them toward the approaching Queln warriors and their mounts.

No, those were not simple poles. The ends aimed at the sky were much thicker, long cylinders on the end of a longer wooden rod. One of the soldiers ran from the wagon carrying a firebrand. Kak’hamish remembered what the Master of Sword had said that first evening at dinner. “My purpose is to make it rain skrill blood.”

“Good Lord, those are rockets!” Nathanial exclaimed, and Kak’hamish moved to his side to better see. Behind them Onxym Haat laughed and nodded vigorously.

“Yes, rockets from our friends the Ru-Shaans. They care little for trade, but Lord Jed-An persuaded them to supply us with these. The heads are filled with small rocks and when they burst in the sky, they will sweep it clear of your friends the Queln!”

Kak’hamish knew there was only one course. He inflated his lungs as full as he could, blew out the air, inflated them again, and again, trying to completely saturate his lungs with oxygen. Gathering one last chestful of air, he raised his hands to his mouth, placed the thumbs together to make a sort of trumpet, and blew the Depart! call.

For those close by, particularly as they had never heard it, the call was deafening, painful, and probably terrifying. Onxym Haat and the musketeers covered their ears in pain. Nathanial stood stock still, open-mouthed, perhaps dumbfounded that such a sound could issue from a man-sized being. There was confusion on the ground as guards and labourers turned fearful eyes to see if a skrill had come suddenly upon them from behind, but there was no skrill. There was only Kak’hamish, now dizzy from his exertion and steadying himself on the side of the howdah.

A cry from the men below made Onxym Haat and the others turn and shout in anger. Kak’hamish looked up and smiled. The formation of skrill dispersed and wheeled away. The mounts gathered altitude and headed south, away from the caravan. The crisis had been averted.

One crisis had been averted. Another appeared imminent as Onxym Haat turned on him, rage in his face.

“Treacherous son of a whore! Dung-eating Queln-loving bastard! You warned them away. We had them and you warned them away. That’s the last Queln raiding party you will save. Guards, cover him!”

The two musketeers levelled their weapons at him.

“Now see here!” Nathanial said and shouldered his way between Kak’hamish and the others. “I don’t know what just happened, but I won’t have someone shot over it. Do you understand me?”

Of course they did not understand his words, but his indignation was clear enough and Onxym Haat’s anger now turned on Nathanial as well.

“Ah, another one, aye? Well we can deal with you as well. Over the side and down to the ground. We’ll finish this there.”

All of this was in Koline, of course, of which the scientist remained completely innocent.

“We are to climb down, Nathanial. They are quite angry with us, I am afraid, so we should do this without protest. Give tempers some time to cool or there may be grave results.”

Whatever momentary surge of emotion had prompted Nathanial to intervene waned, and as it did so he noticed the round black bores of the two muskets now pointed at him and his eyes grew larger. “Yes…well, ah, we can sort this out down there as easily as here, I suppose.”

Kak’hamish followed Nathanial down the swaying ladder to a swarm of angry guards and labourers. As he reached the ground, the Master of Sword strode over, a rocket on its long stock held in his right hand. He shook the rocket at Kak’hamish, brandished it in his face.

“What sort of man betrays his own blood to those carrion eaters? As sure as the northern snows melt in the spring, you’ll pay for this.”

The warrior struck Kak’hamish in the mouth with his fist, drove him back against the flank of the ruumet breehr. For a moment Kak’hamish saw only flashing light, thought he might fall, but his hand found the great beast’s harness and he steadied himself. His mouth filled with the taste of salt and iron. He spat out blood, but his vision cleared and his dizziness abated.

The angry muttering around them grew and one of the louder of the labourers took his lead from the Sword Master and pushed Nathanial sharply from behind. The Englishman stumbled forward and nearly lost his balance, but Kak’hamish caught him, held him up, and whispered one word in his ear.

“Courage.”

The embers of violence glowed bright and needed only a breeze to ignite them. If either he or Nathanial lost their nerve, if either of them reacted with fear or anger, they would die right here where they stood. In any case it would probably end that way for him, Kak’hamish knew, but it mustn’t for Annabelle and Nathanial. Their welfare mattered; his did not. He found it strange, though, that he still felt something akin to fear. He had not felt it in the desert. Of course, the desert had not threatened to beat him to death.

Nathanial drew himself up, turned, and looked at the leering man who had pushed him, simply looked at him, and then he looked at the semicircle of angry men surrounding them, hemming them against the leg and harness of the ruumet breehr. The mob grew calmer. Genuine dignity was not a quality Kak’hamish would have ascribed to the awkward young English inventor, this man who knew volumes about the silent spaces between the worlds and nothing of himself, but wherever it came from, for that moment he found the dignity to stare the beast in the eye, and the beast blinked.

“What is this?” The ambassador Jed-An’s voice cracked like a rifle shot and the remaining courage of the mob was extinguished as a candle’s flame is by a sharp puff of air. The ambassador shouldered his way past guards and labourers, his own hunched and shuffling servant in tow. The crowd edged back, giving him room in the small amphitheatre in which the drama played out.

“They…a moment, your lordship,” Onxym Haat puffed as he finished climbing down from the howdah. He paused to catch his breath, but extended his finger toward Kak’hamish in accusation. “He warned the Queln.”

Jed-An looked at Kak’hamish with a mixture of suspicion and satisfaction.

“And the Earthman helped him,” Haat said after two more pants of air. Kak’hamish saw a flicker of disappointment in the ambassador’s eyes, gone as quickly as it had come. He looked at Nathanial then back at Kak’hamish.

“Is this true?”

“I ordered them to depart and they did so. Lives were spared—lives in the caravan as well as aloft.”

“This was a warning of danger?” he asked, but Kak’hamish saw the flicker of a smile that came from already knowing the answer.

Kak’hamish chose his answer carefully. He did not wish to die with a lie on his lips. “It communicates only to depart. It can mean danger, but it can also mean the caravan travels under the protection of the iTaka-Queln.”

Jed-An nodded and turned to Onxym Haat. “Look south and tell me what you see, caravan master.”

The sweating merchant shielded his eyes from the afternoon sun and studied the sky. “I see five departing Queln raiders. No, wait! There are more of them, joining from the west. Why, there’s over a dozen more!”

So someone in the caravan had noticed the small size of the raid, and deduced what it meant. That it was an ambassador who had done so rather than a warrior was interesting. The others turned and looked as well and the Master of Sword let the rocket pole in his right hand rest on the ground as he scratched his scalp with his other hand.

“What does it mean?” the Master of Sword asked.

“It means that while you set up your rockets to fire at the diversion,” Jed-An said, “the full raid approached unseen from the west, out of the afternoon sun, probably in single file. They would have been on us before we knew there was another, greater threat. If the Ru-Shaan rockets had done their murderous job on their decoys, the warriors would have fallen on us with rage in their bellies, hungry to extract the blood price twice over. That is the way of the Queln, is it not?”

This last question he directed to Kak’hamish.

“That is our way, Lord.”

“Your way?” he spat back. “Do not play with lives, Ugly One! They are not your coins to gamble away.”

Kak’hamish said nothing but he bowed to Jed-An, because the ambassador was right. It was a foolish answer, prompted by pride, and it endangered Nathanial and Annabelle, if only slightly. He had no right to add even one pebble to the weight of their hazards, and no right to pride.

“This…creature Kak’hamish,” Jed-An said to Onxym Haat, but in a volume which made clear he meant his words for all, “whatever we may think of him, has saved us from grievous loss, and perhaps defeat. I will not thank him for it, because I know not what was in his belly, but neither will I condemn him. The English acted honourably; he owes the renegade a blood debt and stood by him in danger. No honest man here can fault that. No harm will come to them. They now travel under my protection.”

He turned and strode away to his covered carriage, followed by his servant whose shorter, faster steps emphasised the dignity of his master. The crowd drifted away, puzzled and vaguely disappointed that no blood had been spilled.

“What just happened?” Nathanial asked Kak’hamish.

Clack-clack. “I am not certain,” he answered. “All I can tell you is what words were spoken. Even that will take some time. Come, Miss Annabelle will be worried.”

“Beside herself with curiosity is more likely,” Nathanial said.

2.

Annabelle watched the lone skrill rider, high in the sky to the south, paralleling the caravan. She tried to imagine what it felt like to ride the skrill high in the sky, to climb in lazy spirals and then go into long, shallow dives which piled on speed, racing down toward the ground faster and faster, wings flaring at the last moment to soar up again. It must, she thought, feel a great deal like skiing. The thought gave her a tingling sensation down where she would have sat astride the skrill, pressed against its shoulders and neck, and the feeling made her blush.

The lone rider had appeared the day after the Queln raid and had shadowed the caravan ever since. Sometimes it disappeared, perhaps to rest or hunt, but always to return within an hour or two. Annabelle noticed Kak’hamish watching it as well, his eyes wistful as if he might know this rider.

In the three days since the attack Annabelle often thought of riding the skrill, at least when alone, but that had been less frequent of late. She was finally judged healthy enough to venture out in society, assisted by a crutch and her stalwart myrmidons—Nathanial and Kak’hamish—to either side. They were unlikely champions, and so much dearer to her for that. She had finally, the evening before, met their new benefactor, Kaleen Jed-An, the dignified ambassador from Sharranus. She saw his luxurious carriage drawn by eight of the two-legged gashants instead of a ruumet breehr, even dined with him. Kak’hamish said the food was much better at Jed-An’s table than at the caravan master’s, to which Nathanial agreed enthusiastically.

Annabelle had found Jed-An interesting. She imagined that Martian women found him very attractive, although she had little knowledge of what “look” was fashionable at the time, or even what masculine features Martians found handsome in general. Annabelle knew genuine, unaffected confidence when she saw it, however, and while good looks might prompt admiring glances, confidence aroused something deeper in women, or at least in those Annabelle had known—and in herself, she admitted.

She found his conversation, even through the filter of Kak’hamish’s translation, lively, witty, and indicative of a broad-ranging mind. He asked intelligent questions about their travels, about the worlds they had visited, and was particularly interested in the society of the Selenites, among whom she had spent so much time. His interests paralleled hers to a remarkable degree, and the more she talked, the more his interest grew, until it seemed as if they were the only two in the room.

That was illuminating: he was, in his way, seducing her. She enjoyed the sensation, but she wondered what motivated him. Did he intend to win her over for some purpose she did not understand? Or was seduction simply his habit? Possibly. She had on occasion met men who could not help but seduce, men who were not even aware they were doing so. After an hour of conversation over dinner, she felt as if she had known Jed-An all her life, but she also knew that if their acquaintance lasted another five years, she would never know him any better than she did at that moment. Perhaps diplomats made the best seducers. Or was it vice versa?

So now she rode in the back of her wagon. The morning sun, rising high in the eastern sky, had warmed her face, but it had passed over the top of the wagon and she rode in the shade. She dangled her leg over the back of the wagon, and her four musketeers kept up with their long, easy strides, joking with each other and flirting with her until a party of gashant riders, led by the ambassador Jed-An himself, trotted toward her. The musketeers parted and dropped back to a discreet distance and Jed-An reined in. His stooped translator rode beside him and two of his grim-faced guards followed close behind

“Ambassador, what a pleasure,” Annabelle said. “I was just thinking of you and our delightful dinner and conversation last evening.”

The servant translated, or so Annabelle assumed, as he spoke in an unfamiliar language, not Koline. Jed-An ignored him, never made eye contact with him, and listened with his eyes on Annabelle’s as if the words came directly from her. His smile broadened and he bowed in the saddle and replied.

“The ambassador is pleased he finds his way into your thoughts,” the servant translated, and his expression said he was pleased as well. Whatever pleased the master pleased the servant. Jed-An spoke again. “My master offers the service of two of his guards to accompany you.”

“Tell the ambassador I appreciate his most generous offer, but I feel completely secure in the company of my four Immortals.” Annabelle gestured to the four musketeers who walked behind the riders, fanned out to either side.

The servant’s face fell and he translated this with his eyes closed and head turned slightly away from Jed-An, as if he expected a blow for communicating unwelcome news. Apparently any negative response, no matter how politely worded, was unwelcome, although nothing in Jed-An’s demeanour suggested so.

Jed-An bowed from the saddle again and spoke, and the servant translated with relief. “They must be fine warriors indeed to have won your confidence. The Ambassador must meet with the caravan master, but hopes to see you again later.”

“And I him,” Annabelle replied. The four riders trotted forward past her wagon and as they left she thought about the stooped, cowed servant. Nothing in Jed-An’s behaviour seemed to warrant his frightened demeanour, and yet Jed-An seemed not to consider it extraordinary in any way. Annabelle was left with the conclusion that either Jed-An was a more tyrannical master in private than in front of guests, or that he was simply the sort of man who expected his servants to bow and scrape. Neither alternative reflected well on him, to Annabelle’s thinking. Some were called to serve, and some were given to be served, but it seemed to her that in both cases it could be accomplished with dignity. She had certainly seen such among both the British and the Apache. That it was not so in Jed-An’s household must be by his choice.

The musketeers closed up on her wagon. “Annabellanna, I picked berries,” the one called Harran said, or at least that’s what she believed he said. Her Koline was still limited to one or two hundred words, so sentences sometimes contained blanks which her mind filled in with guesses. He held out his hat half-full of orange berries, covered with bumps like raspberries but as big as ripe olives, so she assumed the last word referred to them.

“What are the berries called?” she asked, using the unfamiliar word to learn it. “Or is that their name?” She tried one. It was very tart, so much so it made her pucker and close her eyes. The musketeers laughed, but Harran popped one into his own mouth to show it was not a practical joke. He puckered and squinted himself, but also smiled in pleasure.

“They are called cutberries, I think because plant has big thorns. Not quite ripe. In one week less sour, but good for thirst now.”

She admitted they were, in the same way lemon juice or tonic water quenched thirst more effectively than did sweet drinks. She took another one. “The liking grows,” she said.

Nathanial and Kak’hamish appeared from around the rear of the wagon, both bearing small packages wrapped in rags. She waved and smiled and had another cutberry.

“I see you are in good spirits this morning,” Nathanial said. “Those berries look delicious.”

“May Nathanial have one?” she asked Harran, and he quickly offered the hat to him, a smile on his face. Nathanial took one and nearly spat it out, but he had become far too considerate to do so and instead he gave the musketeers a pained grin. They laughed, but not unkindly.

“You might have warned me,” he said in English, but he chuckled as he did so, enjoying the joke despite his discomfort.

“Why? Are they too tart for you?” she asked innocently. “What do you have all bundled up?”

“What?” Nathanial said and looked at the package in his left arm as if noticing it for the first time. “Oh this. Well, something for you to try out once we stop for our afternoon break, which should be any time. Ah, there’s the horn now.”

The ruumet breehr, never very fast to begin with, slowed even more and the driver turned it left, toward the small stream in the middle of the dry canal. The animals would water while the humans rested and took their meal.

“Goodby, Annabellanna,” her musketeers called and she waved to them as they left to join their messmates for their meal.

“Something for me to try?” she asked, intrigued.

“For your exercises,” Nathanial explained, and she felt her heart drop a little.

She was finally getting used to her exercises, was able to do them without assistance. Now were they to become more difficult? But she forced a smile. “Very well, let me see these new devices with which I shall be tortured.”

Nathanial unwrapped his bundle. He held a stiff leather sack, about six inches across and a bit more than that deep, open at the top and slightly rounded at the bottom. It had a long strap run through loops around the top, and a small metal buckle. It took her a moment to recognise it for what it was: a leather cover for her stump. For a moment she felt a wave of nausea. She found it far easier to contemplate what was missing from her leg than what was left. She felt a far more intimate connection to her vanished foot and shin and knee than she did to the scarred and puckered stump which remained.

Despite her best efforts at self-control, some of her feelings must have shown in her face.

“It is only temporary,” Nathanial hastened to explain. “It will take a while for you to get used to the cup, and the size of your…”

“My stump. You can say it, Nathanial. The word will not injure me further.”

“Of course. The size and shape of your stump will change as the swelling goes down and the muscles become better developed. This is a crude cup, I know, but once we have returned to civilisation, I shall make one from rubber, with such a good fit you will not need this strap and buckle. This is just—ˮ

“To toughen my stump and get me used to it. Yes, I see. I notice there is a socket to accept a peg. Do we have one?”

Kak’hamish stepped forward and offered his own long, thin bundle to her. She took it and unwrapped it, quickly at first, but then she slowed when she caught sight of what was within.

The peg was not round in cross section, but square, or at least angular, and it was carved from what the musketeers called blackwood, the stubby trees with drooping branches which grew at intervals along the waterways. The wood was well-named. The peg had been lightly oiled to make it gleam, but the natural colour was a deep, warm grey, like lightly rusted iron. How odd, she thought, that the wood bore the same name as the book which had taken her leg, but undoubtedly saved her life.

Kak’hamish had carved it so that it appeared to be a complex mechanical construct, with seams, raised plates, the suggestion of gears and pistons, and even rivets at regular intervals. The rivets were a different texture and she realised each one had been carved separately as a peg and sunk into the wooden leg, fixed with glue. On one of the panels, high up near where it would enter the socket in the cup, were two words, carved in an angular, blocky alphabet Annabelle did not recognise. She ran her fingers across them. They felt as if they had been stamped in steel instead of carved into wood.

“Kak’hamish, it is…beautiful. What do the words mean?”

“They mean Annabelle’s Spirit in my native tongue.”

She looked up at him. “You think my spirit is iron?”

Clack-clack. “As strong as iron, but the leg is from a living thing, not metal.”

She embraced him, held him very close for several long seconds until she trusted herself not to weep. “No person could ask for finer friends than I have in you two,” she said when the lump in her throat had gone down. “I shall work very hard with the leather cup you have made, Nathanial, and I shall always treasure this leg.”

“I am working on a more involved one, you know,” Nathanial said. “I promised you a knee and you shall have one, although it will take some time and a proper workshop. I have some drawings if you would like to see.”

“Yes, very much,” Annabelle said, while she hugged the carved leg to her bosom. Nathanial drew out a paper and unfolded it.

“It is quite advanced in design, I believe, although I do not understand why this has not been done before. It draws on the same principle as the artificial hand made by the German mercenary Götz von Berlichingen, in the sixteenth century.”

“Götz von Berlichingen?” she said.

“Yes. Chap had his right forearm taken off—by a cannonball, as I recall—and yet he carried on as a warrior knight for another thirty or forty years. He made a spring-operated mechanical iron hand which could open and close, hold anything from a sword to a quill pen. It turns out those iron fists the Germans like to plaster all over the place started with him.”

“He fought as a knight with an artificial hand?”

“Yes, one he and his blacksmith cobbled together over three hundred years ago. I cannot imagine why artificial limbs have not become more advanced in the interim, but it is high time they did. You see, I’ve been doing a deal of walking this last week, and I’ve paid attention to what happens as I do—the physics of it, if you will. Fascinating, actually, the way the different parts of the leg act in concert.”

She looked at the diagram he held. For all of its mechanical internal complexity, externally it looked very like a real leg. That pleased her.

“This leg design uses a series of opposed springs which store and discharge energy at different points in the leg’s motion,” he went on. “You see, as you lean forward in your stride, your ankle bends, but provides resistance, then unbends to propel you forward. Opposed springs in the artificial ankle will produce a similar effect. And see here, this pressure rod attached to the heel? As you put your weight on your leg this rod compresses the spring in the knee, which provides the energy to unbend the leg in the back stride.”

“I want a secret compartment,” Annabelle said.

Nathanial paused in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

“Here,” she said, pointing to the thick part of the calf. “Your pressure rods run through the front of the leg, where the bones would be, yes? This back part seems largely decorative. You could make a secret compartment for me there, something long and thin.”

“I…well, yes, I suppose so. Long and thin you say?”

“Ah, for a stiletto,” Kak’hamish said.

She beamed. “Yes! A lady never knows when a stiletto might be an essential accessory. Do you really think the leg will work this well, Nathanial? Are you that much more clever than this Götz von Berlichingen?”

“Well of course I am!” he said with mock wounded pride. “Really, Annabelle, how could you think otherwise? The fellow was German.”

3.

nathanial felt splendid riding on the gashant. It was only his second time, and the animal’s gait was difficult to get used to, but he felt splendid nevertheless. Kak’hamish told him the two gashants they rode were old and tired, and so fit only for children and old women, but Nathanial did not care. He felt as free and alive as he could ever remember.

The day was clear, as every day on Mars had been so far, and as cool as he could remember at midday. To either side of them the dark brown and black escarpments of the dead canal bank marched in perfect parallel formation to the horizon. Sand had drifted over the scarp and lined the base of the cliff. Beyond that the ground gave way to a bed of rocks polished round and flat by long-vanished water, then a broad stretch of scrub, and finally lush grass and wildflowers in the centre of the old basin. Nathanial saw no free-standing water on this stretch of the gardenway, but he knew it was there under the surface, the plants sending down deep, thin roots to find its sweetness.

God in heaven, what a glorious day!

“Kak’hamish, I believe I shall grow a moustache.”

“All English men do,” the Martian answered from his own saddle mount.

“That’s not true! Actors and barristers cannot, by law. But I mean a real moustache, a wild jungle of a moustache, not some tame little ornamental shrub, some…potted daisy of a moustache. I believe I shall grow it thick and long, and curl the ends up. I may grow a goatee as well.”

Kak’hamish chuckled. “If it brings you pleasure, my friend, you must do it.”

“You think I’ve a cracked plate, don’t you? That I’ve gone off my nut out here. Well I don’t care; I’m doing it regardless of what anyone thinks.”

“I do not think you have lost your senses, Friend Nathanial. People find themselves in the desert, they do not lose themselves. Sometimes that discovery brings despair. Other times it brings freedom.”

Freedom. Yes, that was exactly how he felt—free. He wondered now if he had ever truly felt free before.

“The desert seems to have brought freedom to the mounted guards as well,” Kak’hamish said, the banter gone from his voice. “The two outriders to the north wander further and further from the caravan. If the Sword Master paid more attention to his men and less to his toy rockets, the world would be a happier place.”

They did seem to have strayed even farther than usual, Nathanial noticed. “We are due in Abak’hn the day after tomorrow. Perhaps there is less need for vigilance here,” he suggested. The look Kak’hamish gave him said otherwise. “Yes, very well. Someone had better give old Onxym Haat a nudge, I suppose. He won’t pay any attention to you, so it’s up to me. You stay back here while I ride ahead. Ha git-git-git!” he called as he put his heels to the flanks of the gashant, coaxing it into a half-hearted trot.

After twenty or thirty paces it slowed to a walk again. “Ha git-git-git!” he repeated, the command taught them by one of Jed-An’s personal mounted guards. Now those four were real cavalry troopers! You could see it just looking at the well-maintained carbines resting in their saddle holsters, how they sat their mounts, how their eyes were always moving, always alert for danger. Not like these other sad bastards playing at caravan guard. “HAAA git-git-git!” he tried again, and this time his mount resumed its trot. He passed four lumbering ruumet breehr before he came to Onxym Haat’s beast second from the front.

“Ho, there! Hello the howdah! Haat, you old desert thief, it is I, Moustache Nate the desperado! HALLOO!” The words meant nothing to Haat, of course, but the shouts attracted his attention.

The porcine caravan master peered angrily over the side of the howdah and down at Nathanial, who in turn pointed north toward the two outriders, now riding slowly through the belt of scrub. Haat looked that way, shading his eyes from the sun, his face betraying boredom and irritation. Then he stood up straight and screamed the alarm. Nathanial turned to his right where perhaps a quarter mile away more than a score of gashant-mounted men seemingly boiled up from the ground like an eruption of lava and thundered toward the caravan.

Again the caravan seemed to explode into motion, but less organised this time, more desperate Nathanial thought. The ruumet breehr turned toward the raiders in a straggling, uneven line, but there was no time for them to close up. Nathanial pulled his mount’s reins hard to the left and kicked his heels into the beast’s flanks.

“HAAA git-git-git!”

This time the animal took the command to heart and stretched out into a long-striding run, head down and tail extended directly out to the rear for balance. Nathanial clung desperately to the saddle to stay on his bouncing, swaying mount. He flashed between the flanks of two ruumet breehr and through a scattering crowd of men on foot, then into the grass belt beyond. Ahead of him he saw two more outriders in animated conversation, but who did not ride toward the caravan.

Nathanial’s mount came to the shallow dry ravine through the centre of the grass belt and leaped into the air to hurdle it. Nathanial became completely airborne, connected only by his death grip on the saddle. When the animal hit ground, Nathanial came down off-centre, lost his hold, and fell into the tall grass, tumbling over and over.

The fall dazed him and for a moment he lay in the grass recovering his wits. The sound of a musket shot, and then another, brought him back to the present. He sat up and looked north over the brush. Just sitting up made him dizzy. The caravan had stopped and was now a swirl of confused activity. There had been no time for the musketeers to climb into the howdahs. Knots of men on foot clustered by wagons—a musketeer here and there but mostly labourers. Most cowered in panic or scrambled under the wagon beds while a few stalwarts pulled long pikes from the wagons.

Nathanial located Annabelle’s wagon, the fifth one to the right from Onxym Haat’s. He saw no sign of Kak’hamish. Nathanial crawled on hands and knees through the tall grass toward the wagon but came to the gully immediately, slid down into it, crossed to the far bank, and paused as his head spun.

The gully was little more than three feet deep, but the grass to either side was nearly as tall. From here he could see nothing, which meant no one could see him. The riders were interested in plundering the caravan, not murdering some lone straggler, and so were unlikely to venture this way. He was unarmed, while Annabelle had her four musketeers and Kak’hamish to defend her. Could he contribute anything important to that defence? Surely not. Better to wait here until things sorted themselves out.

Nathanial stood still in the gulley and heard the war cries of mounted raiders, the shouts of fear and pain of men from the caravan, scattered musket shots, the collective sounds of a desperate battle where people he knew struggled for their lives, and some of them perhaps lost that struggle. As he listened, his head cleared. A ruumet breehr bellowed in pain, another answered in fear, wood splintered, men cried out in terror or rage.

No. This would not do. He could not simply stand here and listen. He was not sure what to do, but inaction was not an option. He might need a weapon, he supposed. He knelt and pried a grapefruit-sized round rock from the muddy bed of the stream. He made his way down the gulley until he judged himself opposite Annabelle’s wagon, where he scrambled up on the bank of the gully for a better view.

The look of the battle had changed in just the few moments he had been in the gully. Several riderless gashants ran free in the area but Nathanial could not tell if they were the mounts of raiders or caravan guards, or perhaps a mix of the two. One ruumet breehr was down on its side, coughing blood but still kicking, trying vainly to regain its feet. The beasts to either side shied away, overturning a wagon and spreading more confusion. Another animal further down the line had bolted—if the lumbering waddle of the animal could be thus described—to the north, dragging behind it a wagon which had already lost a wheel and which leaked an irregular stream of bales and boxes of goods in its wake.

A large knot of defenders, pikes bristling, clustered around the base of Onxym Haat’s animal and wagon, and similar groups formed two or three other defensive hedgehogs further back. The pikes held the riders at bay while a few musketeers stood between them, fired at a rider, and then fell back behind the pikes to reload. Solitary raiders wheeled and charged the pikes, threw javelins when close, then galloped back away from the deadly points.

No similar cluster of pikes stood near Annabelle’s wagon, only four musketeers in a tight semicircle around the back and one tall pikeman dressed in rags—Kak’hamish. The riders probably sought a weak point, and they would find it soon enough, right there.

Nathanial pushed forward on hands and knees into the tall grass. A rider looking directly at him might see but he imagined they had more pressing demands on their attention. He dropped to his belly as he approached the area already trampled down by the earlier path of the caravan, pushing himself forward with his knees and elbows. Three mounted raiders now trotted at a cautious distance from the four musketeers. A fourth rider, closer to Nathanial, had halted his mount and was occupied in wrapping a bloody rag about his left forearm. Someone had at least drawn blood. Nathanial saw movement among the musketeers but no fire issued from them.

“Shoot the rascals,” Nathanial heard himself say softly. “Go on, what are you waiting for? Just shoot the lot of them!”

Unaware he had stood up, he found himself on his feet and the heavy rock in his hand. He ran toward the wounded raider, whose attention remained on his own arm and the cluster of men around the wagon. The rider never heard him coming and after a dozen strides Nathanial leaped into the air and seized the rider around the waist, pulling him awkwardly from the saddle as his mount squawked in alarm and bolted.

The two fell to the ground and the stone slipped from Nathanial’s hand before he had a chance to brain his opponent. The Martian was stronger than Nathanial but had little use of his left arm. That might have made the contest even, if Nathanial had any idea what he was doing, but he did not. Once on the ground he found himself flailing at the raider, landing ineffective blows on his shoulders and head. They rolled onto the clutch of javelins which had fallen from the rider’s hip quiver when they had tumbled. Nathanial felt several shafts snap under their weight and the broken wood tear into his shoulder.

The Martian pushed back away from Nathanial, sat up, and shook his head to clear it. Nathanial rolled away from him and searched frantically in the grass for his lost rock. The Martian drew the knife from his belt and with a cry leaped forward and Nathanial grabbed the first thing which came to hand, a stick, and held it up to stave off the attack.

He had not seized a stick, but rather one of the scattered javelins. Unfortunately, the end the Martian ran onto was the blunt one. The warrior fell back with a grunt of pain, rubbing his ribcage with his free hand. Nathanial, now frantic with fear and anger, rose to his knees and began beating his opponent with the javelin, using it as a rod. One of the blows landed full on the side of the man’s head and stunned him and another knocked the knife from his hand. Nathanial struck him again and the javelin splintered and broke in half.

Nathanial looked at the shattered stump of javelin in his hand for a moment, at first unsure what he held. Then he reversed it, so the fire-blackened point faced the raider, and with a shout thrust at him. Nathanial stopped short of stabbing the raider, however, and the Martian scrambled back on hands and knees. Nathanial shouted and poked at him again and the wounded man jumped to his feet and ran away as fast as he could.

Nathanial knelt for a moment in the grass holding the broken javelin, panting with the exertion and feeling a mounting sense of primal power. The warrior had run away from him. From him! He picked up the warrior’s abandoned knife in his left hand, looked at it, and he wanted to roar in triumph, like a lion over a kill.

“Nathanial! Look out!” he heard Kak’hamish call.

Nathanial turned toward the wagon to see a mounted warrior, no more than fifteen yards away, galloping at full speed toward him, javelin raised overhead and poised to throw. Nathanial froze and time seemed to as well. In that instant he saw the warrior’s pock-marked face twisted in a war cry he did not hear, saw the cuirass made of horizontal bleached wooden rods strapped across his chest, the single blue pebble tied to his ear by a thin leather thong.

A musket thundered somewhere. The centre of the warrior’s cuirass exploded outward in blood and bone. Astonishment replaced the killing rage in his eyes, and then his face went blank and he tumbled backward over the saddle and into the grass, where he lay motionless. The gashant continued its run past Nathanial and brushed his shoulder, but he could not move, not even to duck aside.

4.

kak’hamish watched Nathanial walk to the wagon, clothes torn and muddy, hair awry, a knife thrust in his belt and the broken javelin still in his right hand. Across the stream the raiders galloped away in retreat.

“You did well, my friend,” Kak’hamish said.

“Dash fire, I did!” Nathanial answered angrily. “Who shot the warrior?”

“I do not know. It was not one of the musketeers here.”

Anger darkened the young scientist’s face. “No? Why the devil not? Were they waiting for a bloody invitation?” He glared at the four guards who now idled by the wagon, and they returned his look without interest or concern.

Kak’hamish put his hand on his friend’s shoulder to calm and steady him. “Because they are professionals, Nathanial, and because they were guarding Annabelle’s safety, not yours. Two had discharged their muskets and were reloading. The other two will not fire until the first two are done, so the squad is never without two loaded muskets, lest the enemy charge them. It is their way, and it is how they kept the raiders at bay.”

Nathanial unsteadily ran his left hand over his face and then nodded. “Yes, of course. Quite right. Sorry I went on so. I just…the experience was unnerving. It is just that what with my actions on Peregrine Station and now here, I…” Nathanial shook his head. “I am sorry, frightfully sorry, to have used such vile language. I beg you accept my apology.”

“Although I do not believe an apology is necessary, I accept it in any case,” Kak’hamish answered.

“These are the times that try us so,” Nathanial said softly, then seemed to pull himself together and continued. “So who do you suppose shot that villain at the last second? Our mysterious friend?”

Clack-clack.

That was an interesting thought. Kak’hamish turned and looked both ways, up and down the caravan. With the ruumet breehrs shifting nervously, the jumble of wagons and tumbled cargo spread across the ground, it appeared as if the shot could have come from almost anywhere. But most of the musketeers had been on the ground defending the pike hedgehogs, and there was not an abundance of firearms in the caravan. More than that, it would have been a very long, and very precise, shot for a smoothbore musket, which was not very accurate beyond fifty or so paces, even in the hands of an expert. No, this would have been a rifle shot, possibly from an Earth-manufactured weapon, or perhaps from one of the long banded rifles used by the hill folk.

But the answer to that question would have to wait.

“We need to look in on Miss Annabelle,” Kak’hamish said. “She has taken the attack hard, which puzzles me.”

In an instant concern blotted out every other emotion on Nathanial’s face. He dropped the broken javelin and scrambled up and into the wagon and Kak’hamish followed him. They found Annabelle deep in the wagon, having pulled grain sacks over herself.

“Annabelle, it is all right,” Nathanial said as he tried to pull off a grain sack to which she clung desperately. “It is Kak’hamish and I. The attack is over.”

She relaxed her hold on the sack and as Nathanial removed it, Kak’hamish saw her face stained with tears and distorted in terror, so much so he hardly recognised her as the courageous woman he had come to know.

“Are the Apaches gone?” she asked with quivering voice.

5.

Kak’hamish looked up and down the length of the caravan and noted the gradual return to a semblance of calm. Annabelle, having regained her composure, now sat on the back of her wagon—for that is how everyone now thought of it—and smiled gratefully at the offer of an earthen mug of herbal tea brought by one of her musketeers.

“Oh, thank you, Koomaret,” she said in passable Koline. “Much, much needed.”

The Master of Sword appeared behind a nearby wagon, saw the cluster of men, and called angrily to them to come assemble.

“We must go, Annabellanna,” the musketeer named Harran said. “The big private calls us.”

As the musketeers walked toward the assembly, making a show of not hurrying, Kak’hamish thought, big private. That was all the musketeers thought of the Master of Sword. It would offend the officer to know that, but there were worse things they could have called him. They at least accepted him as one of their own, although one who had grown too big for his own harness. Kak’hamish had met soldiers who did not credit their officers even with the sense of a common private, so this was something.

Kak’hamish turned his attention to Annabelle. “Who are these Apaches you mistook the raiders for, Miss Annabelle?”

“Really, Kak’hamish, that is nearly an impertinent question,” Nathanial admonished. “I am certain that if Annabelle wished us to know―ˮ

“No, Nathanial. Thank you for your concern, but it is perhaps for the best I speak of this. I am surprised by the intensity of this recollection and, I admit, shaken by it as well.

“I cannot tell you everything, because I do not recall everything—disturbingly little, as a matter of fact. Nathanial knows I am an orphan and that my uncle, Cyrus Grant, is my guardian. What I doubt that you know, at least in detail, is how that came to pass. My parents lived in the Arizona Territory, where they owned a ranch. When I was young, a party of Chiricahua Apache killed my parents and took me prisoner. I lived as a captive among the Chiricahua for some time, but was…well, rescued by an expedition of the United States Army several years ago—not cavalry but foot soldiers, what the Apache call ‘walk-a-heaps.’ I have some recollections of life among the Apache but they are disjointed and incomplete. I have few memories of my childhood, and until today I did not remember the particular events surrounding the day when I was taken and…and my parents killed.”

She stopped and turned away, pressed her eyes closed, but despite her efforts tears again ran down her cheeks. She shook her head. “I am sorry, but what they did…and I witnessed it all.”

“They must be a particularly savage and bestial tribe,” Nathanial said with a mixture of sympathy and anger, and he put his hand on her shoulder for comfort.

Annabelle’s head came up sharply. “I never saw a Chiricahua strike a child or mistreat an animal. They are the kindest, most generous people I ever met—among themselves. But they draw the circle of humanity very tightly about their lodges, and have no sympathy for creatures outside that circle. I wish they would draw their circle wider, but I also wish the society I count myself part of treated those within its circle more as do the Apache.”

“In the desert, share,” Kak’hamish said.

Annabelle turned to him. “What?”

“That is what you said to Nathanial, when we first met. He sensibly hesitated to give me water, but you said, in the desert, share. You learned that from the Apache, I think.”

She nodded.

“There are similarities between your Apaches and these raiders,” Kak’hamish went on, and he silently admitted there were many with his Queln as well. “The steppe tribes are nomadic, but have regular ranges. Their entire villages are mobile, using gashants and cargo sleds similar to the one Nathanial drew through the desert, but without benefit of liftwood. These warriors who attacked us are of the Amentote. I am not familiar enough with that nation to know their particular tribe, as this is considerably east of their normal range.”

“They don’t look like you,” Nathanial observed. “I saw two of them very close, and they look physically different.”

“They are hill people, as are the Queln. The differences are more obvious than significant. Their skins are darker than those of us who hail from the canals and lowlands and they are slightly shorter in general. Their shoulders appear heavier, which gives them a more powerful appearance, but it does not come from greater strength. The fatty deposit between and over their shoulder blades enables them to go longer without water, or rather to store it for later use—a useful feature in arid country.”

“Their animals are different, as well,” Nathanial said. “I note the species of gashants ridden by the guards have atrophied front legs, so they are simply stumps, but the mounts of the hill people seem a more vigorous and primitive version, with front…feet I suppose you’d call them, equipped with impressive talons. I should not like to face one, were it enraged.”

“The species is the same,” Kak’hamish said. “The canal people cut off the forearms of their gashants when young to make them easier to handle and train, and make them dependent on their masters.”

For a moment the two Earth folk were silent. Annabelle’s gaze fell to her own amputated leg and she shuddered. “Horrible,” she whispered.

“Well, that’s something Conklin’s has wrong,” Nathanial added thoughtfully.

One of many things, my young friend, Kak’hamish considered.

The sound of trotting gashants made all of them start, but the approaching party consisted of Jed-An accompanied by his servant and two of his mounted guards. They reined in by the rear of the wagon.

“Ah, my friends from Earth! You are safe? Miss Somerset seems so, but Mister Stone seems to have been ill used.”

“We are well, Ambassador,” Annabelle said in Koline before Kak’hamish could translate. Once he did so, Nathanial walked to Jed-An’s mount and offered his hand.

“Ambassador, it is very good to see you alive and well! An experience such as this reminds one that life can at any moment be cut short, and a thanks delayed may be one forever unspoken. Let me express my gratitude once more for everything you have done for us.”

Kak’hamish translated the scientist’s words and Jed An shook the offered hand, smiling in slight bemusement at this uncharacteristic display of emotion.

“I have been glad to help you, Mister Stone. Soon our paths may diverge, which pains me, as my duties will keep me in Abak’hn while yours will draw you away. But my position at least carries some influence, and I believe I can guarantee no obstacle will be placed in your way by the municipal authorities. Now I must meet with Onxym Haat and determine the extent of the damage and delay.”

As Kak’hamish translated, Nathanial released the ambassador’s hand and even gave him a small bow. The ambassador and his party cantered away toward the head of the caravan and Nathanial’s unctuous smile faded. He raised his hand to his nose and sniffed, then held it out to Kak’hamish.

He smelled it. “It is not Jed-An, then,” Kak’hamish said.

“No,” Nathanial said. “No scent of gunpowder on him.”