It was clear from the colonel’s demeanor that he fervently hoped that whatever mold she came from hadn’t been broken, but he maintained control.
“I can see you have great power but you’re under a binding spell,” he noted. “You made yourself that way.”
“I was forced to!” she shot back haughtily.
“Let’s not mince words, Colonel,” Matson interjected. “That woman is this lady’s daughter and my granddaughter. She was a powerful wizard, one of the strongest, yet they snared her and forced her into this. They can do the same to any of us. They’re from New Pericles, I’m from Guildhall, and my grandson here is this other lady’s son and they’re both from Freehold. The major’s just along for the ride. We’re far less threat to anything here than the Habib group, and I think you know it.”
When the colonel avoided a reply, Morgaine stood up. “Colonel, I’m sure we can work this all out. Maybe just you and me going into your office there and—discussing things a little less formally. I’m sure we can come to some agreement.”
Spirit had a sharp intake of breath. “Morgaine!” she whispered.
The colonel, however, could count. They were inside his fort, inside his town, and they wanted something from him. “I would be delighted to discuss opening relations with you, madam,” he responded.
Morgaine looked at them. “Be back in a while. Amuse yourself. Take a good look around,” she suggested. . Matson cleared his throat and got up. “Yes, I think that would be a very good idea. We’ll be back in a little while.”
“Don’t hurry,” she breathed, and walked into the inner office, followed by the colonel, who could hardly keep his pants up.
They walked back out, conscious of the mass of moving feet beyond the door as clerks tried to get back into position to seem as if they’d always been there, and then out onto the street.
“Why did you let her do that?” Spirit asked her father angrily. Sondra had a more amused expression.
“She knows what she’s doing,” the old stringer responded. “By the time she’s through with him we’ll not only have what we want, we’ll have everything on the raiders, the war, and the secret keys to the Fluxlords’ castles. She’s right about us, too. This place smells funny for a Fluxland town, even a Liberty one. Morgaine stopped the show for a while but you can feel the tension here. Pretty far from the war to be so tight.”
“I know, I know,” Spirit sighed. “It’s just that she seems so damned eager.”
“I don’t know how, but I swear there’s some Suzl in her,” her grandfather noted.
It was Verdugo looking around the place who finally put his finger on it. “The place is too empty,” he told them. “Yeah, it’s far from the front but it’s a key area all the same. What you said about Flux wars, Matson—that you hit them from as many sides as you can. That makes this place vital, even if it isn’t being hit now. It should have a full brigade, at least, with strong wizards at the lead. All that’s here are some clerks, old guys, and support personnel. Where’s the army a place this size supports?”
Sondra nodded. “He’s got it. And that feel we noticed. It’s the kind of tension you find in support troops when they’ve sent their own forces into battle and can’t do anything but sweat it out until the outcome is known.”
There was the sound of a woman shrieking from the headquarters building. Spirit looked disgusted. “If only she wasn’t so damned loud,” she muttered.
Matson hadn’t even noticed, his head sunk deep in thought. Suddenly his fist slammed into the palm of his other hand. “Damn! We have to get out of here, folks, even if it’s breaking up a romance, and the sooner the better!”
They all looked at him expectantly.
“Don’t you see? Their forces are matched to a combined Flux-wizard and conventional attack! The damned fools have gone in to get that projector! That’s why we’re being stalled here—to keep us out of the way!”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” Sondra responded, “but what’s the rush?”
“They don’t know what that thing can do to wizards. Once they take on this army—well, if they win, they’ll need to silence the whole damned area before one of Liberty’s Fluxlords turns his or her attention this way.”
“It’s only the combined power of two in the raider group,” Dell noted. “They might just take it.”
“No, I think not. There won’t be more than about that power coming at them, since they had to leave the colonel here in case the enemy used it to attack. That projector effectively doubles their power, so they can negate one or maybe all of the Liberty forces. Sondra, you’ve got military training. Fly out there and check on it. We’re leaving, moving southeast out of range, as soon as we can. Join us there.”
“But if I do that it’ll create a surge that might attract the Fluxlords’ attention!”
“All the better if it does. Then we might end a big part of it right here. Now—go!” There was a flash of light, and Sondra became a great flying beast and soared off into the heavens and away from them.
Matson sent Dell and Verdugo to get the horses ready, and he and Spirit headed back for the headquarters. They had barely gotten to the front door when Morgaine opened it and almost knocked Matson down. He caught her, then had to steady her, because except for her jewelry she was stark-naked and shoeless as well. She was also almost out of breath, but she gasped, “Those idiots—are taking on— Ayesha! We got to—get out of—here!”
“Ahead of you,” Matson assured her, and he and Spirit assisted her down as the two men arrived with the horses, which had, fortunately, only been quartered and not bedded down and so still had their bridles, saddles, and packs.
As Spirit used the supernatural strength that Flux could provide to get her daughter up on her horse and then jumped on her own, the whole headquarters building seemed to erupt with people, including a dazed-looking colonel who wore only the top of his uniform—nothing below.
As they sped off, the colonel threw a complex spell in their direction, but Spirit and Dell were both ready for that and it fizzled out before getting to them. The yells and commotion, however, caused the guards to turn inward, and guns to be brought to bear on the fleeing group. They did not try to outshoot them; as Spirit kept the colonel in check, Dell cast a spell at the guards and their guns would not fire. A few shots did whistle by them from points Dell hadn’t seen, but none hit the mark and, in the excitement, nobody had thought to close the gates.
A squad was sent after them, but it was several minutes behind, there being no real combat personnel on duty, and the colonel either could not or would not come with them. It was simple to use spells and simple geography to confound them and watch them ride right by, chasing phantoms.
“We’ll wait it out here,” Matson told them. “It’s roughly where I told Sondra to look and it’s out of the range of interest, if not out of range, of that thing of theirs.”
Spirit looked at Morgaine, who was still breathless and shaken. “What the hell happened to you?” her mother snapped.
“He was—well, he was my equal in power. He wasn’t bad for a dirty old man, but he wasn’t much on long-term screwing.”
“I don’t mean that!”
“I’m getting there. Whoo! Can’t get my breath! Anyway, he started saying he’d finally found the girl for him after two hundred years, and I was telling him I wasn’t exclusive, and he started bragging about what he was going to do when his troops got the projector. He had big plans, I’ll tell you, and they didn’t include his current Fluxlord masters. Well, when I heard that, I figured I’d better get out of there, but he got real lusty and power-mad all of a sudden and shoved me back down. I got mad, picked up the first thing I could get my hands on, which was one of his boots, and let him have it. He staggered, and I didn’t wait around to get dressed. The office crew was so shocked by me and hesitant about the colonel that they just froze there, thank heaven. You know the rest.”
Spirit sighed. “Well, if that program that’s got you is a stock one, I guess we can replace what little you lost, but I hope you learned something by this. What if he’d been a stronger wizard than you, amplified by passion or lust? Nobody can change what you are but they can sure add to it!”
Morgaine gave a sassy grin. “You would have rescued me. Nobody has power like a mother whose kid is in trouble. Besides, I might not count real well but I sure knew how many wizards they had and what kind of power we had. That’s why I knew we had to get out of there. Anybody who’s a wizard colonel and can’t count as good as me can’t possibly beat Ayesha and Suzl!”
Matson sighed. “I’m afraid you’re right,” he said, “but I sure as hell wish I knew right now what was going on over there.”
There was no absolutely safe zone Sondra could use and still see what was going on, but she kept as distant as possible. There was simply no way of knowing exactly what was going to happen, and she didn’t want to be caught in the same sort of trap as Morgaine had been.
Clearly the initial assault had taken the raiders completely by surprise. Although they should have expected that all hands would now be against them, clearly they still had some learning to do. Even so, the wizard who would ultimately be at the controls of that projector had taken on the Samish and won; five hundred troops, only three of whom had any appreciable Flux power, didn’t seem so daunting. Conventional wisdom still favored the attackers; they had more power and five times the force to follow it in. Convention, however, was not what this was all about.
The Liberty officers had divided themselves into three roughly equal groups and began the shield assault from three points simultaneously. It was classic military; classic, of course, because it almost always worked.
For a while, it appeared, it had worked. The shield was clearly weak in places, and a strong bulge had been made in one side nearest the Fluxland interior. The raiders had fallen back behind the collapsing wall, rather than take on what was clearly a far superior and seasoned force.
Sondra saw that a second push inward was being made from the opposite side, also with some effect. The shield was small, perhaps two thousand meters in all, and such movement was clearly noticeable. She began to wonder if they had caught everyone napping, or Suzl and Ayesha in one of their obvious liaisons, because so far there was no real resistance at all and the shield really couldn’t hold much longer.
Suddenly a tongue of Flux flowed from the shield through the grid through the first attacking force, ignoring it, going clearly for the wizard who was pushing in—and finding him. To wizard eyes, the square on which he was mounted on a gray horse simply went dead.
At that moment, raiders on foot poured from a sudden drop in the shield, weapons blazing. The advancing Liberty troopers had gotten so used to being safe that they were not prepared for it, and a large number were cut down without a chance. Their wizard officer tried to move out from the dead area and help his troops, but the blank spot followed him no matter where he went.
Reinforcements were called in from another of the triad, and the wizard there took the pressure off in order to reinforce his comrade. That was a mistake, for it allowed the operator of the projector, presumably Suzl, to follow his line of force back to his position and it, too, went dead.
Confused, and unable to comprehend what had never happened before, the third wizard, a tall and stately woman and an obvious veteran of Flux wars, took the pressure entirely off the shield to ride around and see just what the hell was going on. That was a mistake. The shield snapped back on full as Suzl instituted a search pattern for the third wizard. In the meantime, the raiders, with their share of power, were able to form small walls of Flux for cover while the mass of troops, now getting organized once again and taking a small toll on the defenders, were completely unprotected and in the open. Their sergeants knew when to retire, and began pulling back just as the search pattern from the projector found the third wizard and neutralized her.
The raiders were still far outnumbered, and the attackers’ conventional firepower was nothing to be sneezed at, but Sondra did expect the defenders to maintain a deadly skirmish line to insure the attackers’ withdrawal and then make a quick move, as soon as they felt secure, to the northeast and back into the void. She sympathized with the forces of Liberty below; trapped in a militaristic society, made to fight in a deadly war their own greedy Fluxlords had started but whose blood was theirs, even their wizard officers really slaves to their Fluxlord masters, they had all seen a way out and tried to take it. It just wasn’t that easy.
Suzl, however, did not do the obvious or the expected. Faced with a retreating force, its wizard power totally negated, she expanded the shield, weakening it somewhat as she did so, and swallowed the attacking army, wizards and all.
Sondra wasn’t sure what they were going to do next, but she got the hell out of there and fast.
9
A BRUSH WITH SOME FLUXLORDS
“In the old days,” Matson told them, “there weren’t very many wars. Once in a while, though, one of these Fluxlords would start believing his own dreams and attack another, usually a neighbor, just to show he was really a god. Can you imagine folks being forced to go to war because one Fluxlord says another Fluxlord is blasphemous for not worshipping him? Now it’s gotten more political, and nastier.”
They were still in the trees, and had been for hours, even though Sondra was back with her report.
“I never heard that Liberty’s Fluxlords were that way,” Spirit noted. “Then why the big war at all?”
“Size. Sheer size. You pull what Suzl pulled in a standard Fluxland and it’s a fight to the finish. This thing’s too big for the lords. I’m half surprised these trees are still here. Hell, even their shields are a hundred kilometers in from their borders. You don’t hold down this kind of place by Flux supremacy. You have to be a politician. Control the common folk another way. A war’s always a good rallying cry for the folks, so long as you win it and so long as it doesn’t drag out forever. That’s the problem here. They bit off more than they can chew and things are getting lax. The kind of revolt those officers mounted here would be impossible in a one-Fluxlord Fluxland.”
Dell sighed. “What do you think they’re doing in that shield?”
“I figure they know they can’t get to the void before a Fluxlord comes. Might be one here now. Without their officers, though, all those troops are at the mercy of the immediate Fluxlord, which is Suzl. They’re hers now: All transformed and all still ready to fight. The three officers won’t do much better. They don’t dare leave;—the Fluxlords would make them wish they were dead. They can’t really escape. My feeling is they’ll wind up getting the treatment voluntarily, same as Morgaine, to save their necks, only they won’t be any Ayesha doubles. Counting the family as one, they have five wizards now. That’s not bad. Five wizards and the projector and a few hundred total converts. It’d take three or four of Libery’s five Fluxlords to beat ’em, and they can’t spare that many; they’d be punched through and smashed to hell up north. They’ll make a deal. Move out with the traitors to the void unmolested or maybe they’ll punch through this shield and really cause havoc.”