* * *
The Yaxa drifted across the shoreline, its strange eyes searching the ground. It had been a difficult journey; almost twenty days’ worth. Now it was over; now the Yaxa had reached its goal. True, there would be some journeying back, but not as much. It needed only to make a Zone Gate it could use without attracting undue attention. Its prize was destined for Zone, for the Yaxa embassy.
It had been a hard and grueling flight over territory not very friendly or hospitable; she knew that her superiors had been against her going because she was so involved in the forthcoming expedition. But she had insisted and had managed to communicate through friendly Zone Gates to assure her compatriots that all was well.
But, in the end, this had been her part of the project from the beginnings—the long-ago beginnings, when the wars were fought. As the only Entry in Yaxa history from a “human” world, she had special qualifications. The others didn’t understand human nature, no matter what its forms. She did, in all of its variations.
To her sisters’ credit, they recognized her unique capability and had given her the prized task. Her loyalty was unquestioned, her dedication unmatched. Through her influence and authority, she had kept them from sending out a squad or commissioning a gang to kill Mavra Chang. Not Trelig—no, they’d tried to get at him ten times or more, but that slippery frog was always too smart for them.
She’d told them that Chang was loyal to no side but her own, which was true, and that the strange woman was valuable as an alternative to Yulin, just in case. They had accepted what she said. To some extent, it had been the truth. But she had other reasons, ones they, perhaps, would never understand, but ones that Mavra probably would in time.
Now as she circled the compound, she saw immediately that something was wrong. The front wall had been smashed by something huge and powerful, and there had been a fire afterward. Part of the compound was in ruins, and a storage area behind stood open and empty. She felt momentary panic. Robbers? Pirates? Was she, then, too late?
But, no, as she studied further she saw Ambreza and signs of a frantic search through the area.
Dead? Or—?
She swung out to sea, to avoid Ambreza eyes and to think, gliding lazily on updrafts high above the whitecapped, blue-green waters.
She couldn’t believe Mavra Chang was dead, wouldn’t allow herself to believe that—not until she saw the body, or the grave. Not after all this, oh, no.
But—if not dead, then what? If pirates did hit the place, and she got away . . . where would she go? To the Ambreza? No. The Ambreza below looked too much like search parties, even the one out in a small boat.
Not south to Ambreza, nor north to deadly Ginzin, either. By water, then?
But that would mean—kidnapped?
Who would want to kidnap Mavra Chang except her, the Yaxa wondered? Not Ortega, certainly. He had her. Then—
Antor Trelig.
It had to be, she decided. Maybe to make a deal with Ortega, since Trelig was the only player in the game still without his own access to the North. If that were so, he’d hardly take her to Zone. The Makiem didn’t have the defenses of a Yaxa, and he could hardly be expected to shield her presence for long from Ortega.
They would have come by ship, she decided. And that’s how they’d get away—probably north, then, to Domien, which was neutral enough and would allow Trelig a hiding place to bargain with.
No, no, she reprimanded herself. You’re thinking too straight. That’s where Ortega and the Ambreza would look first. They’d surely sail south first, to avoid patrols, then maybe up along the middle coast of that double-hex island until they felt in the clear, then shoot over for Domien.
The Yaxa turned southeast, praying she was right.
Agitar
It was an unusual horse farm. True, it had much of the look of such places—rolling acres of lush, green grass, a large stable, and a ranch-style house. But there were no fences, no track, either. The saddles were strangely shaped to accommodate the instruments in them—wind-speed indicators, altimeters, and the like. Even the casual visitor to Agitar didn’t have to wait long or wonder why, if one of those horses came around. They were huge beasts in pretty lavenders and blues and greens and yellows and all the other colors of the rainbow. And they had wings.
Wings, like those of a great swan, lay folded in two parallel lines along the length of their great bodies. And, yes, they flew, for they were only externally equine; their internal construction included the ability to shift their center of gravity, hollow bones, and a host of other refinements. The creatures were more fragile than they looked, too, for they weighed less than half what anyone would guess.
The lord and master of this, the only major breeding farm for pegasi in all Agitar, had gone there to work over twenty years earlier as a trainer. Thousands of Agitar had learned to ride the beasts in the Wars, but only a special few possessed the affinity for them that made for good trainers. He was one.
His judgment, skill, and plain hard work had been rewarded. First he became Chief Trainer, then Master of Livestock, and now he was General Manager. The government owned the place, of course, but he lived in the big house and he was the boss.
He was also about 140 centimeters tall. Below the waist his body resembled the hindquarters of a goat—thick muscular thighs draped in heavy, curly hair of deep blue became incredibly thin ankles that terminated in small cloven hooves. Like the pegasus, he had a great deal of control over his center of gravity and moved with the grace and ease of a ballet dancer always on point.
Above the waist he resembled a muscular human, skin still deep blue and very porous, whose triangular face sported a blue-black goatee flecked with gray. Between two small, pointed horns, close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair sat atop a demon’s face.
He looked over the place with satisfaction. His name was Renard, an unusual name for an Agitar. Once he was librarian back on a Comworld called New Muscovy. Then he had been picked up by one Antor Trelig, who needed a classicist for his neo-Roman library on New Pompeii and addicted him to sponge. Renard was the one who’d helped Mavra Chang escape and who had originally crashed with her in among the giant cyclops of Teliagin. Mavra kept him alive until rescue, when Ortega ran him through the Well to cure his addiction. He came out an Agitar. The ship he’d crashed in had started the wars, and, before he knew what happened, he was drafted, put atop a pegasus, and sent off to fight—in alliance with none other than Antor Trelig.
Renard deserted, of course, and found Mavra. With two Lata they flew across the seas on his pegasus Doma. In Olborn he kept Mavra from being transformed completely into a mule, and eventually they all witnessed the destruction of the spaceship engines in Gedemondas.
Renard accompanied Mavra Chang into exile, but she drove him off. Even after all these years, he still worried about her. He occasionally received word of her from Ortega, although, because of his responsibilities he had never returned to see her. He felt guilty about that—and knew he should—but it just hadn’t happened.
Mavra had predicted the Agitar would welcome him back as a hero. Well, they hardly did that, but they had dropped the desertion charges because he was a new Entry and did, after all, owe Mavra Chang something. They’d been impressed with his odyssey on Doma, too, and his ability to walk the beast on mountain trails when flying was impossible.
And so the job and the new career. And, except for the lingering guilt about Mavra, so little and helpless and alone, he’d done just fine.
“Renard!” a female voice called to him from the office area. He turned and saw a junior clerk waving at him.
Female Agitar were upside-down males; they resembled a goat in the face and torso, and a more human type below. But that never bothered an Agitar, and it didn’t bother him, either. He’d had a lot of kids by a lot of them.
He ran briskly up to the office. “What is it, Guda?” he called good-naturedly. “Did they raise everybody’s pay?”
She shook her head. Like all Agitar females she was incapable of facial expression, but her eyes reflected something serious. She handed him a telegram just off the government wire. He read it, growing serious himself. He skipped the address and routing codes and read the message:
renard, mavra chang attacked, probably kidnapped. trelig suspected. signs show they may have botched job. can you fly south glathriel asap to help search? check at zone gates along way for further information. am also dispatching vistaru same location. good luck. ortega.
He was stunned. It was the last thing he expected. He hesitated a moment, thinking. Leaving the farm, perhaps for weeks—they weren’t going to like that back in the capital. But, then, it was for Mavra . . .
“Guda, honey, will you saddle Domaru with at least a two-week field pack? I’m going on a trip,” he said to her. “Tell Vili he’s in charge until I get back.”
He turned and trotted out, leaving Guda behind, her long mouth half-open.
Everod, off the Ecundo Coast
There had been fog through most of the night, and they had been drifting southward. They knew it, but decided to ride with the tide as long as there was deep water, at least until they could get a fix from the sun, which they hoped would burn through after dawn.
And the sun did cooperate a little—a barely visible splotch of light off to starboard and just ahead. After gently rubbing the tubular proboscis jutting from its middle, the captain decided to hoist sail and move a little westward, on the chance that the fog was hugging the coast of the Island. This was likely; land heats up and cools down faster than water, which caused early fogs over many seacoasts in warm weather.
Mavra was enjoying herself, was more animated than any of them could remember her. She spent a good deal of time pumping the crew for current information on Ecundo and Wuckl. Joshi, for his part, could not remember a time outside Glathriel and the compound. So after his initial misgivings, he welcomed the sea voyage as a great new adventure, and was all over the place, asking questions, examining the equipment, and enjoying the smell of the sea and the cool gentle caress of the fog.
The crew was especially helpful; the sailmaker had been working for two days on jackets that the Changs could use to carry with ease their most necessary supplies. Though the crew hadn’t neglected to remove Mavra’s valuables from their storehouse, they were really cooperating not because of the big bribe, but because they sympathized with the fugitives.
Tbisi worried constantly, not only about their impending overland journey but also about what would happen beyond that. He was a chronic pessimist, but Mavra endured his attitude because the concern was genuinely for them.
“All right, so suppose you make it through Ecundo, a remote possibility,” he argued, “and you also get through Wuckl and manage to link up with us or with one of the other packets we’ll alert. If we get you to Mucrol, you still have to cross that hex before you get to this Gedemondas. Then you have to climb into the cold mountains—for which you are not in any way prepared and for which, in any case, you have no provisions. Then what? What will it get you?”
She had thought about it often. “Perhaps help—they know me there, and they are sympathetic to me. They seem to regard me as the coming center of their mystical beliefs. Whether you accept that bullshit or not, they believe it. They will give us sanctuary. I feel certain of that. Once we get there, then I can plan for the future.”
She was adamant; Tbisi couldn’t talk her out of her plan, and eventually he stopped trying—partly out of a healthy respect for her mind and the resourceful ingenuity it represented. He secretly suspected that there was a streak of masochism in her, that she was only happy when surrounded by insurmountable obstacles and hopeless odds just so she could figure a way out. An odd way to live, but it commanded respect, for she was alive and still going strong after a life filled with such challenges.
That not a single member of the crew regarded either of them as helpless or unnatural was a measure of her tenacity. They were simply another life form on this strange world of multiple life forms, no more unusual than the others, and no less able to do what they needed to do.
The captain had guessed correctly about the fog; it was thinning, and a bright haze of thin swirling orange developed. The sun was still mostly obscured to the northeast, but it was possible to take a sextant reading.
“Ship ho!” called a lookout from midway up the forward mast. Mavra and Joshi had the same thought: the pursuing Ambreza had been patrolling the edge of the fog, waiting for the inevitable emergence of the Toorine Trader.
They trimmed the sails until they were balanced against the strong southerly current and stood almost still in the water. Mavra and Joshi ran to the side and jumped up to the low ship’s rail. Their forelegs were near the top and they were almost vertical, supported by their hind legs. It wasn’t entirely comfortable, but it gave them vision.
Tbisi came up to them silently on his padded pipe-cleaner legs and looked out with them.
“A little ship,” he muttered. “A small black cutter. Fast, but no threat to us, I shouldn’t think.”
“Ambreza?” she asked nervously.
Tbisi extended his long, impossibly thin neck and peered into the mists. “No, I think not. Not the kind of ship they use. Aluminum hull and armored, it looks like. The ship is Oglabanian—don’t ever see ’em over on the west side—but it’s been heavily modified. I’m afraid I don’t know exactly what it is.”
The small black ship suddenly seemed to explode in a series of bright, blue-white flashes.
“Signal to Trader!” yelled the lookout. “Stand to for board and search! They’re using standard customs codes, but it’s not a government ship for sure!”
The voice of the Trader’s strange captain came through its translator sounding like a cross between a foghorn and a steam whistle. “Board and search be damned!” it yelled. “Not my ship! Signal: We are in mutually neutral waters. Go about your own business!”
A huge lantern was mounted forward, filled with something that glowed brightly but didn’t melt the interior of the lamp. A weasellike creature perched to one side moved a lever back and forth several times, unmasking the forward section of the lamp and projecting a blazing glow into the haze. “Done, Captain!” it yelled.
The Trader waited tensely, wondering what the small cutter would do next.
Mavra, as tense as any, turned to Joshi. “You know, they could be the same ones who attacked us the other night. They must have come by ship—I bet that’s them.”
Joshi nodded without taking his eyes off the unknown ship. His throat was dry, and he could hear his heart pounding. An idle part of his brain hoped that his fear wasn’t all that apparent to Mavra; it never occurred to him for a second that she was feeling the same things.
“Cannoneers to station, pump ballast to port side,” the captain ordered. The crew was experienced; in short order the cannons were manned, loaded, the hatches through which they fired were lowered, and the cannons themselves were pushed up on small rails.
Joshi suddenly became disconcerted. “I think we’re sinking!” he exclaimed.
Tbisi laughed. “No, we carry large tanks of liquid as ballast and pump water into them selectively to balance the ship when we have an uneven cargo load. Now they’re hand-pumping all of it to this side of the ship, so that we’ll present the least hull for them to hit.”
“But that tilts the deck into them!” he noted. “Isn’t that worse?”
Tibby laughed. “No, we can stand a lot of direct hits on the superstructure. Messy, but it won’t sink us or drive us out of control. A shot below the waterline that got between two watertight hatches might send us to the bottom, though.” He turned to face them. “Better take cover, you two. It could get nasty around here. I have to get to my command station in the auxiliary bridge.”
Mavra nodded and then said, “Come on, Joshi. We’ll be no good later on if we’re in bloody pieces.”
He was reluctant to leave; he wanted to watch the battle. However, he never questioned her judgment or common sense. He went.
“They’re angling bow into us, Captain!” shouted the lookout. “Looks like we got a fight!”
“Trim sail completely!” ordered the captain. “I’m going to let the current carry us back into the fog. Hard port! Man stern bridge!”
The sails came immediately down; at the same time, the Trader turned slowly to present the least profile to the challenger. It also started to move slowly backward, at the mercy of the southern current now.
“All aloft, below!” the captain yelled, and everybody, lookouts included, got down fast and went to their stations. Large barrels of water were made handy to wash down the cannon deck. Torches were lit.
The cutter, seeing their maneuver, had matched it. The same current that carried the Trader would carry it, and as long as both were current-propelled, the big ship could not make any speed on the little one.
There was a bright yellow flash and a boom from the foredeck of the cutter, and a smoky plume rose from its bow, then angled toward them.
“Steady as you go . . . steady . . . steady . . .” the captain murmured. They had now turned completely around, bow away from the cutter, the captain on the stern bridge. The smoke plume looped, started to come down.
“Hard port, now!” yelled the captain.
The ship’s massive rudder turned under heavy, trained muscles, the chains that controlled it groaning and the masts swaying as it suddenly turned to present its profile.
There was an explosion about thirty meters out, a tremendous blast as the rocket hit the sea in front of them and struck the surface at a velocity sufficient for spring-loaded detonators to ignite.
Fragments of metal ate into the ship even from that distance, but it was a clear miss, and nothing flew but a few splinters.
The cutter turned sharply now, so that it was apparent that they had only two launch tubes, bow and stern. In the time it would take them to get the stern tube in position, they would have to present a brief but inviting broadside to the Trader.
The second mate, who was in charge of the gun crews, waited his moment. Then, suddenly, for a brief period of time, both ship’s sides were parallel.
“Fire all guns!” he shouted, and immediately bright-burning torches were touched to fuse holes in the rear of the cannons. There was a repetitive series of explosions that shuddered through the ship as sixteen cannon shots went off in series.
They were short. Though great plumes of water rose all around the cutter, and it looked as if the smaller craft had been completely destroyed, as the water calmed, it became clear that none of the missiles had come within fifty meters of the attacking craft.
The Trader continued to turn, bow now facing the pursuer’s stern. The exceptionally strong current allowed the smaller craft to close, but, with the cannon-washes from the salvo, it wasn’t any easier to turn than the much larger vessel.
Ordinarily the Trader would accept such a challenge and engage at a fixed distance circularly, ship-to-ship, but the cutter’s rockets gave it added range, and the captain dared not let it come in too close. That was frustrating; the rocket mines obviously had a greater range than the Trader’s cannon, and, although the big ship could stand some hits, it could not do so without casualties, and if they didn’t immediately disable the opposing craft they’d soon be at the attacker’s mercy. The captain wasn’t one to take such risks if he could avoid them.
Looking out at the attacker, whose second missile was already in the air, the eerie face and glowing eyes of the captain never wavered, but he shouted to the navigator, “Did you get me a fix?”
Before the navigator could reply, the grenade struck, closer this time, metal fragments flying from it and causing a series of nasty gashes in the Trader’s side and forward superstructure.
The captain shouted corrective orders; the fog was becoming thick again, and the cutter was becoming harder to see—as was the Trader. In a matter of minutes they would be invisible to each other. This, oddly, favored the cutter, which would continue to close because of its smaller, lighter nature as they both followed the current.