“Sorry, Aldora, but it couldn’t be helped,” beamed Milo’s thought. “You know my farspeak won’t range more than ten or twelve miles, even under optimum conditions. So without the use of Major Ahndros’s fine mind. ..”
The woman’s thought then became halting and tinged with pain. “Ahndee? He … he’s dead, then? So … so young and vital and… and sweet.”
“No, Aldora, not dead, not yet, but according to Master Ahlee, it’s still touch-and-go. There was a nasty little skirmish the evening I last spoke with you. He wasn’t really hurt too badly, but he went into shock before Ahlee got to him and the good doctor is now afraid to let him stay conscious for very long at one time.”
“Whom are we speaking through then?” she inquired.
“The handsome, young heir to old Hwahruhn you mentioned? He truly does have farspeak, then?”
“Bili is now Thoheeks, my dear. Hwahruhn is gone to Wind. And I feel sure he has much, much more than just farspeak. Even without training, he may well be a very valuable man, though I’ve had no chance to make certain. You see,” he went on, “a great deal has happened here in a very short time; things are moving much faster than we’d anticipated, much faster than they’d been planned to go, unless that bastard, Kornblau, misled us … and there’s always that possibility. Actually, I’m contacting you through the mind of one of the Sanderz Sept Prairie Cats, Whitetip.”
“Thank Sun and Wind!” Aldora mindspoke vociferously. “There’s been too much inbreeding in recent years and more and more kittens are being born dead or retarded or crippled. And breeding in Treecats just isn’t the answer. Oh, sweet Sun be praised, not only new blood, but farspeak blood at that!”
Mile’s exasperation was transmitted with his thought. “That’s all very well, Aldora, but it will wait, there are other matters which will not! First of all, I managed to take one of the witchmen alive. Tell Mara that he says his name is William Gold and that he was working under the name of Kooreeos Skiros. I want her to learn as much as she can about him from Kornblau, especially whether or not he customarily works with a partner. I need that information quickly too.
“Second, Gold appears to have some deviltry up his sleeve. I took a pistol-you know what that is, remember I described it to you once-away from him and who knows what else he has in circulation around here. In fact, I think that he was hinting that this hall was going to be reduced with explosives tomorrow!”
Beneath her warm blankets, Aldora’s shapely body shuddered. “Sun grant not, Milo! What you have told me of those ancient terrors sounds horrible beyond imagining .. . and what the Song of Prophecy tells of that long-ago time, the gods’ monstrous death arrows, which obliterated whole, huge cities in fire and invisible death …”
“Now don’t panic, girl!” Milo reproved. “I hardly think the whoresons would go so far as to use nuclear weapons, not with one or more of their own well within range and unprotected. But as I’ve often said before, I don’t want to see the ancient technology reintroduced. I want this new world to develop its own.
“At any rate, I want you here as soon as possible, you and the troops. Knowing you, you’ve probably ridden ahead with most of the cavalry. Just how close are you? How much of a force is with you? And how far back is the main body?”
Beaming, “Just a moment,” she threw off the blankets and padded the few steps to the small folding table. Dis-regarding the night chill which prickled every square inch of her bare skin, she extracted a map from a tooled leather case, unrolled it, and anchoring one end with the watch lantern, pored over it for a few moments. “About sixty-three kaiee, Milo, a little less than forty clanmiles. If I break camp at dawn, I can have my immediate force there by midafternoon. I’ve got only a little over twenty-seven hundred horsemen with me-two thousand kahtahfrahktoee, five hundred lancers, and two hundred of my bodyguard. The rest of the cavalry is with the infantry and the trains, and they’re on the Traderoad, maybe two days behind us.”