Джеффри Лорд - Return To Kaldak

«Assuming she comes to Kaldak of her own free will, what then?»

«A lot of Detcharn's enemies will rally around her if she's alive after the raid. She won't be if we don't get her out of Doimar. Detcharn will kill her if he survives the raid, and his friends will try if he doesn't. With luck, Feragga will be ruler of Doimar again.»

«It will take more than luck,» said Baliza. «It will take the consent of the Council of Nine.»

For the first time, Geyrna spoke. «I think that will not be such a problem as you might think.» Something in her voice. .

«You two worked this out between you,» Baliza exclaimed. «You-you've been playing with me all this time!»

Sidas tried to look ashamed. He wasn't very successful. As angry as she was, Baliza wanted to laugh. Finally she said, «All right. Feragga will make a good rallying point. Even if she doesn't, she shouldn't die at the hands of Detcharn's hired killers. I'll go, on one condition.»

«Yes?» said the other two, almost in unison.

«If I don't come back, if Voros returns, go to him and speak plainly about his secret. If he is-my father-ask him to forgive me for-what I tried to do. Tell him I honored and loved him as best I could, although not as much as he deserved.»

«And if he doesn't come back?» said Sidas quietly. Baliza remembered how many people her stepfather had sent out who hadn't come back. For the first time she saw clearly that he was growing old under that burden.

«Then let him be remembered as a warrior of Kaldak. He was that, whatever else he was.» They could all drink to that.

The lifter came to a stop a man's height above the ground. Baliza swung herself out the door and dropped into the long grass. She carried a heavy pack, but the grass and the damp earth made for a soft landing. She stepped out from under the lifter and waved to the two pilots. They waved back, then the lifter whined away across the field. It stayed low, and quickly vanished behind the trees dimly visible on the edge of the field.

The long grass and soft earth now made walking difficult. After a while Baliza gave up trying to avoid leaving a trail and simply plowed straight on. By the time she reached the edge of the field it was noticeably lighter. She was soaked to the skin from the waist down, and she also discovered that the grass was full of insects. She took her trousers off and picked the insects out while studying her map.

She was about two days' walk from Doimar by the shortest route, which she could not use. It brought her too close to the biggest training camp of the army of Doimar. The countryside there would be crawling with soldiers and the sky filled with lifters. So she would have to take a longer route. Call it four days' traveling. That should still get her to Doimar with plenty of time to find out where Feragga was and how to get her out of the city, before the raiders struck the rocket base. After the raid, the Doimari would be very much on the alert, not to mention quick on the trigger. Also, Feragga might be dead.

Things might go faster if she got help from the agents Kaldakan Intelligence already had in Doimar. Certainly they would have orders to do their best for her-Sidas had made that very clear.

«If they don't, I'll be asking why. And if they don't have some very good answers, they'll be envying Tribesman slaves before I get through with them.» From Sidas's expression, Baliza was glad she hadn't tried to lie to him. He wasn't cruel, but he was ruthlessly just in handing out both rewards and punishments.

«The Intelligence people owe us a big debt for their clowning around. If they'd done their work properly, we'd have learned about Detcharn's fever rockets a long time ago. We wouldn't have to be throwing good men into a fangjaw's mouth to do their work for them!»

However, the fact remained that the Intelligence people certainly hadn't lived up to their name. Would they be more trouble than help, when it came to snatching Feragga?

Right now, though, she had to get to Doimar, before she even needed to worry about anything else. When she'd finished getting the insects out of her pants, Baliza pulled a set of farm woman's clothing out of her pack. Turned inside out, her pack looked just like a Doimari carrying sack. To complete her disguise, she unfolded a broad-brimmed hat. It shielded her face from the sun and prying eyes. A concealed pocket in the brim also held a miniature laser pistol, where she could easily draw it with a gesture nobody would suspect.

An hour after sunrise, two things happened at once. Baliza reached the bank of the Pesto River, and three lifters flew overhead. One of them was towing a balloon-load of troops. Before they were out of sight, Baliza saw the lifters start to circle, while the balloon began to descend.

It might be just a training exercise. But it looked to Baliza a lot too much like a search party. For the moment they were a long way behind her, but that might change. She had to get out of the area as fast as she could-not easy, with a river half a mile wide in front of her.

However, there were boats on rivers. Baliza started prowling along the bank, looking for an untended boat. Half an hour later she found a fisherman sitting on the bank, beside a beached canoe. He was sitting facing the river, all his attention on the dip net in his lap. He was mending its broken handle as Baliza crept up through the bushes behind him.

When she knew she hadn't been detected, she pulled out a slingshot and a handful of clay balls. Being the Sky Master's daughter gave her the chance to learn all sorts of unusual fighting skills from equally unusual teachers. She still didn't think she knew as much as her father-the tales of his bare-handed duel against the arrogant Hota still thrilled her. But she felt she'd learned enough to be a worthy daughter to the Sky Master-and would she ever have a chance to ask him if he thought so, too?

Baliza aimed the slingshot, pulled the cord back, and let fly. The clay ball took the fisherman in the temple and he toppled over sideways without even a groan. Baliza hurried out of cover and examined him. The clay ball had disintegrated on impact, as it was supposed to. The fisherman himself was senseless but breathing steadily. In a few hours he would awake with a crashing headache, a blue bruise on his temple, and no memory of what happened to him. The captured Tribesmen who'd taught her to use the slingshot in return for his freedom would have been proud of her.

She dropped her pack and hat into the canoe and pushed it into the water, then climbed in. A few paddle strokes took her out into the current. Within moments she was on her way downstream toward Doimar, faster than she could have walked and with much less effort.

The morning sun blazed on the water and made the ripples sparkle like jewels. She put her hat back on but took off her shirt. She knew that a soldier who sees a good-looking woman going about bare to the waist will seldom bother to ask questions-or at least not questions about whether she's a spy.

It was late afternoon, with the shadows growing long and the heat of the day beginning to die. Shangbari stretched, then rose to his feet and started walking restlessly up and down. If this had been a common hunt or raid, the men would by now have been picking up their weapons; cleansing themselves before the Grandfathers, and gathering ready to leave the camp.

Not this time, with Voros the Wise leading them against the wizards of Doimar. The sixty warriors would go aboard the sky-machines at night, fly to the wizards' home in the darkness, and attack it at dawn.

«They won't find it easy to see us on the way in,» Voros had said. «By the time we've finished wrecking the place, they'll be too busy to bother us on the way out.» Although Voros had also said that victory would be worth the life of every one of the raiders, he seemed determined to bring home as many men as he could.