Then, just a few minutes ago, Draco had been informed that, when the pair had been taken into custody, Ahmed’s men had questioned them, had wanted to know how to enter a sky chariot if the invisible wall was not in place. A few screams from the woman had broken the man’s refusal.
So the Sudanese dog planned somehow to capture the sky chariot tomorrow, unless this was a red herring covering still another intention.
It might be hard to counter Ahmed’s plan without knowing what it was. The best thing to do, Draco decided, was to make a move of his own. At least he was forewarned. When they went to the landing place he’d be fully alert, ready to react quickly if necessary.
And while they were gone, his own people would strike down the men who guarded Ahmed’s interest in the prisoners. Then they’d be solely his hostages, in his own dungeon. It was risky—Ahmed might even go to war over it—but he couldn’t let Ahmed have the initiative alone.
His hostages. The thought excited him. The woman had screamed and then sobbed, when all they had done was jerk her arm up behind her back and twist it, and strike her in the abdomen once or twice.
Ahmed slipped his helmet on his proud head and was turning toward the courtyard when his spy entered, obviously with something to tell him.
“Make it quick!” he snapped. “I have no time for trivia now.”
“In private, Lordship,” the man said, and that in itself proved its urgency. Ahmed strode into his chamber, Yusuf and the spy with him, and closed the heavy bronze door, leaving his retinue behind.
“Speak!”
“Draco plans to have the man and woman taken for his own! It will be done as soon as you’ve left the city to meet the sky chariot.”
The hardness in Ahmed’s mood eased discernibly. “Good.”
Yusuf’s expression sharpened.
“Our move is risky,” Ahmed explained. “Its success could seem to give us too great an advantage, and Draco might strike with his army immediately, before we could make use of it. His army is the stronger now. And if we kill him today, when perhaps we have a chance, his lieutenants would strike at once. He has been careful to give power to men who hate us as much as he does, and fear us more.
“But now he’ll have his own coup.” Ahmed jabbed the spy’s shoulder painfully with a rigid finger. “You must see to it that he is not foiled. Our success today can be decisive in the long run only if there is a long run, while his will mean little except to his vanity. If he succeeds in this he’ll be pleased with it, and unlikely to strike at us for awhile. By the time he sees its emptiness, it will be too late for him.
“Now let’s get out of here.” The heavy door was delicately balanced and opened easily at his pull. “We cannot be late.”
It was a beautiful carriage, delicate-looking, incongruous on the prairie; it would have been more apropos in a fairy tale. Its erect oval body, completely enclosing, was an opalescent pearly white, like the magical egg of some fabulous bird. The ornate crown around its top was gold plated and its tall wheels marked with gold. The pair of light geldings pulled it almost as easily as they would a sulky, and its springs were so well made that it rocked only modestly at their walking pace, hardly bouncing as it crossed the prairie’s humpy surface.
It was a parade carriage for captured royalty; its upper sides could be slid down for viewing prisoners. Had the detailed carvings of the crown been noticed by the men in the high-hovering Alpha, the triumphant depictions of butchery and rape might have shaken them.
Mikhail and Matthew were alone in the pinnace, watching the view screen. “Trojan horse,” Matthew muttered.
“How’s that?”
“I said ‘Trojan horse.’ It occurred to me that that carriage down there is big enough to conceal several soldiers. Let’s keep that in mind.”
The carriage was on a different course to the landing site, a longer, smoother route, and Draco eyed it suspiciously. It was probably the key to Ahmed’s scheme, though it might be nothing more than a ruse to hold the attention of those in the sky chariot, making them less likely to notice that the people in jump suits were not their people after all.