The administrator clasped his hands, upper left with middle right and vice versa, in a gesture of emphasis.
“—then I will put a stop to this diversion of effort. I am the Guild administrator for this district!”
“Our friends with the axes might have something to say about that,” Froggie said quietly.
“Then you and your warriors will remove them, Centurion Froggie!” Slats said. “It is your duty!”
“Yeah,” said Froggie. “Though in this case, it’d probably be a pleasure as well.”
* * *
The native women had been drifting back from the fields for some while before Froggie saw Slats and his troopers returning. The administrator took his job seriously, which Froggie generally would’ve been glad of.
The fort was small—as it had to be for a single century to defend it—but it was a clean, professional piece of work. There were gates in all four walls and fighting towers kitty-corner on the northwest and southeast angles. The walls were eight feet high, and the earth-filled hurdles were actually more difficult to bore through than stone because gravity would fill the holes between pick-strokes.
“We don’t have a proper ditch around it, Top,” said Glabrio, beside Froggie and leaning against the baffle protecting the north gate.
“It’d get in the way,” Froggie said. “Besides, with maybe three thousand barbs in the town, how long d’ye think a ditch would slow them down? Dis, they could take the thatching off a few houses and fill any ditch sixty men could dig.”
Glabrio frowned, but he didn’t argue the point. He was tense because he knew things were about to happen and he couldn’t tell for sure how it was going to turn out.
Froggie sighed. He couldn’t tell either.
The bearers carried Slats to where Froggie was waiting. Slats grabbed the sides of the palanquin and chirped an order so that he could seem to be telling the girls what to do this time. They set him down.
As the administrator got out, one of the girls stroked his shoulder the way you’d polish a nice piece of pottery. He hopped away sideways; all the bearers giggled.
“Come on inside here, Slats,” Froggie said. “I’ll show you the way we’ve been carrying out the Commander’s orders to keep busy.”
Slats looked at his palanquin. He could walk fine, so it was just a status thing that he wanted to be carried.
“Come on, Slats,” Froggie repeated gently. “There’s not room enough to turn that travelling couch between the gate baffle and the main wall anyway.”
He reached out his hand, but Slats was already scuttling down the open-topped passage. The gate looked crude, but the leaf pivoted on a bearing of hollowed stone. Everywhere workmanship would affect function, the job had been accomplished to the highest standards.
“I am very angry, Centurion Froggie,” Slats said. “What Warrior Laena said was true: half of the labor force is wasting its efforts on mutilating kiro trees. This sabotage of Kascanschi’s output is as pointless as it is deliberate.”
“Step over here by the wall, Slats,” Froggie said. Somebody—meaning somebody with an axe—on the city gates could see down into some of the fort’s interior; that was the disadvantage of having had to build so near to the city. Froggie could’ve taken the administrator into the timber-roofed barracks, but the light was better if they stood close to the wall nearest the town.
Froggie brought an oval tube the length of a man’s middle finger out of his wallet. There were indentations at several places on the surface, perhaps intended for finger pressure.
“What?” said Slats in amazement. He snatched the gadget. Froggie had to tug him back or he’d have stepped into plain view with it. “Where did you find this?”
“The head of the guys with axes had it,” Froggie explained. “The feathers’re dyed, by the way. His girlfriend slipped it to Queenie. Only girlfriend isn’t exactly the right word, because I guess she’d rather he was dead and a long time dying.”
“This is the key to a dimensional portal!” Slats said. “There’s nothing on this planet that would justify the cost of constructing a portal! Even ordinary stardrive is a marginal proposition for the products available here.”