she thought in sudden weariness. All right, let me tell him what little
I can.
{A cave in the mountains near Salmenbrok held the sparse gear which kept
her and her fellows alive. They stood around her on a ledge outside, but
except for Trohdwyr shadowy, no real faces or names upon them any more.
Cliffs and crags loomed in darkling solidity, here and there a gnarled
tree or a streak of snow tinged pink by a reddish sun high in a purple
heaven. The wind thrust slow, strong, chill; it had not only an odor but
a taste like metal. A cataract, white and green half a kilometer away,
boomed loud through thick air that also shifted the pitch and timbre of
every sound. Huddled in her parka, she felt how Diomedes drew on her
more heavily than Dennitza, nearly two kilograms added to every ten.
Eonan of the Lannachska poised almost clear in her mind. Yellow eyes
aglow, wings unfurled for departure, he said in his shrill-accented
Anglic: “You understand, therefore, how these things strike at the very
life of my folk? And thus they touch our whole world. We thought the
wars between Flock and Fleet were long buried. Now they stir again–”
(Both moons were aloft and near the full, copper-colored, twice the
seeming size of Mesyatz (or Luna), one slow, one hasty across a sky
where few stars blinked and those in alien constellations. The night
cold gnawed. Flames sputtered and sparked. Their light fetched Trohdwyr
from darkness, where he sat on feet and tail in the cave mouth, roasting
meat from the ration box. The smoke bore a sharp aroma. He said to
Kossara and her fellow humans: “It’s not for an old zmay to tell you
wise heads how to handle a clutch of xenos. I’m here as naught but my
lady’s servant and bodyguard. However, if you want to keep peace among
the natives, why not bring some Ythrians to explain Ythri really has no
aim of backing any rebellion-minded faction?”
Steve Johnson–no! Stefan Ivanovich. Why in the name of madness should
she think of him as Steve Johnson?–replied out of the face she could
not give a shape: “That’d have to be arranged officially. The resident
can’t on his own authority. He’d have to go through the sector governor.
And I’m not sure if the sector governor wants Ythri–or Terra–to know
how bad the situation is on Diomedes.”
“Besides,” added -?-, “the effects aren’t predictable, except they’d be
far-reaching. We do have a full-scale cultural crisis here. Among
nonhumans, at that.”
“Still,” said a third man (woman? And was his/her nose really flat, eyes
oblique, complexion tawny?), “whatever instincts and institutions they
have, I think we can credit them–enough of them–with common sense.
What we will need, however, is a least a partial solution to the Flock’s
difficulties. Otherwise, dashing their hopes of Ythrian help could drive
them to … who knows what?” (If those features were not a mere trick of
tattered memory, well, maybe this was a non-Dennitzan whom Uncle Bodin
or his agents had engaged.}
“Yes,” Kossara opined, “the trick will be to stay on top of events.”
Was that the very night when the Imperial marines stormed them?
{Or another night? Trohdwyr shouted, “Let go of my lady!” In the gloom
he snatched forth his knife. A stun pistol seat him staggering out onto
the ledge, to collapse beneath the moons. After a minute, quite
deliberately, the marine lieutenant gave him a low-powered blaster shot
in the belly.
No surprise that Kossara didn’t remember the fight which killed her
companions. She knew only Trohdwyr, stirring awake again. His guts lay
cooked below his ribs. After she tore loose from the grip upon her and
fell to her knees beside him, she caught the smell. “Trohdwyr, draganr
He coughed, could not speak, maybe could not know her through the pain
that blinded him. She raised his head, hugged it close, felt the blunt
spines press into her breasts. “Dwynafor, dwynafor, odhal tiv,” she
heard herself crazily croak.
A man dragged her away. “Come along.” She turned on him, spitting,
fingers rigid for a karate attack. Another man got a lock on her from