Charles Stross - The Merchant’s War

Elena stabbed viciously at her solitary fried egg. "To what end are we going?"

"To see if that stuff Yul found really is the remains of a roadbed. To look around and get some idea of the vegetation, so I can brief a real tree doctor when we've got time to talk to one. To plant a weather station and seismograph. To very quietly see if there's any sign of inhabitation. To boldly go where no Clan explorer has gone before. Is that enough to start with?"

"Eh." Yul paused with his coffee mug raised. "That's a lot to bite off."

"That's why all three of us are going, this time." Huw took another mouthful. "And we're all taking full packs instead of piggybacking. That ties us down for an hour, minimum, if we run into trouble, but going by your first trip, there didn't seem to be anybody home. We might have wildlife trouble, bears or wolves, but that shouldn't be enough to require an immediate withdrawal. So unless the duke says 'no,' we're going camping."

They managed to finish their breakfast without discussing any other matters of import. Unfortunately for Huw, this created a zone of silence that Elena felt compelled to fill with enthusiastic chirping about Christina Aguilera and friends, which Hulius punctuated with nods and grunts of such transparently self-serving attentiveness that Huw began to darkly consider purchasing a dog collar and leash to present to his brother's new keeper.

Back at the rented house, Huw got down to the serious job of redistributing their packs and making sure everything they'd need found a niche in one rucksack or another. It didn't take long to put everything together: what took time was double-checking, asking what have I forgotten about that could kill me? When finally they were all ready it was nearly noon.

"Okay, wait in the yard," said Huw. He walked back inside and re-set the burglar alarm. "Got your lockets?" This time there was no need for the flash card, no need to keep all their hands free for emergencies. "On my mark: three, two, one..."

The world shifted color, from harsh sunlight on brown-parched grass to overcast pine-needle green. Huw glanced round. A moment earlier he'd been sweating into his open three-layer North Face jacket: the chill hit him like a punch in the ribs and a slap in the face. There were trees everywhere. Elena stepped out from behind a waist-high tangle of brush and dead branches and looked at him. A moment later Hulius popped into place, his heavy pack looming over his head like an astronaut's oxygen supply. "All clear?" Huw asked, ignoring the pounding in his temples.

"Yup." Yul hefted the meter-long spike with the black box of the radio beacon on top, and rammed it into the ground.

"It looks like it's going to rain," Elena complained, looking up at the overcast just visible between the treetops. "And it's cold."

Huw zipped his jacket up, then slid his pack onto the ground carefully. "Yul, you have the watch. Elena, if you could start unpacking the tent?" He unhooked the scanner from his telemetry belt and set it running, hunting through megahertz for the proverbial needle in a thunderstorm, then began to unpack the weather station.

"I have the watch, bro." Yul's backpack thudded heavily as it landed in a mat of ferns, followed by the metallic clack as he chambered a round in his hunting rifle. "No bear's going to sneak up on you without my permission."

"I'm so glad." Huw squinted at the scanner, then nodded. "Okay, nothing on the air. Radio check. Elena?"

"Oh, what? You want-the radio?"

"Go ahead."

Elena reached into her jacket pocket and produced a walkie-talkie. "Can you hear me?"

Huw winced and turned down the volume. "I hear you. Your turn, Yul-" Another minute of cross-checks and he was happy. "Okay. Got radio, got weather station, acquired the beacon. Let's get the tent up."

The tent was a tunnel model, with two domed compartments separated by a central awning, for which Huw had a feeling he was going to be grateful. Elena had already unrolled it: between them they managed to nail the spikes in and pull it erect without too much swearing, although the tunnel ended up bulging in at one side where it wrapped around an inconveniently placed trunk.

Huw crossed the clearing then, stretching as high as he could, slashed a strip of bark away from the trunk of the tree nearest the spike. Then he turned to Yul. "Where was that chunk of asphalt?"

"That way, dude." Hulius gestured down the gentle slope. The trees blocked the line of sight within a hundred meters. "Want to go check it out?"

"You know it." Huw's stomach rumbled. Going to have to find a stream soon, he realized, or send Elena hack over to Jill up the water hag. "Lead off. Stay close and stop at twenty so I can mark the route."

It was quiet in the forest, much too quiet. After a minute, Huw realized what he was missing: the omnipresent creaking of the insect chorus, cicadas and hopping things of one kind or another. Occasionally a bird would cry out, a harsh cawing of crows or the tu-whit tu-whit of something he couldn't identify marking out its territory. From time to time the branches would rustle and whisper in the grip of a breeze impossible to detect at ground level. But there was no enthusiastic orchestra of insects, no rumble of traffic, nor the drone of engines crawling across the upturned bowl of the empty sky. We 're alone, he realized. And: it feels like it's going to snow.

Yul stopped and turned round. He grinned broadly and pointed at the nearest tree. "See? I've been here before."

Huw nodded. "Good going." His headache eased slightly. "How much farther is it?"

"About six markers, maybe a couple of hundred meters."

"Right." Huw glanced round at Elena. "You hear that?"

"Sure." She chewed rhythmically as she reached up with her left hand to flick a stray hair away from her eyes. She didn't move her right hand away from the grip on the P90, but kept scanning from side to side with an ease that came from long practice-she'd done her share of summer training camps for the duke.

"Lead on, Yul." Huw suppressed a shiver. Elena-was she really as brainless as she'd seemed over breakfast? Or was she another of those differently socialized Clan girls, who escaped from their claustrophobic family connections by moonlighting as manhunters for ClanSec? He hadn't asked enough questions when the duke's clerk had gone down his list of names and suggested he talk to her.

But the way she moved silently in his footsteps, scanning for threats, suggested that maybe he ought to have paid more attention.

Ten, fifteen minutes passed. Yul slopped. "Here it is," he said quietly.

"I have the watch." Elena turned in a circle, looking for threats.

"Let me see." Huw knelt down near the tree Hulius had pointed lo. The undergrowth was thin here, barely more than a mat of pine needles and dead branches, and the slope almost undetectable. Odd lumpy protuberances humped out of the ground near the roots of the tree, and when he glanced sideways Huw realized he could see a lot farther in one direction before his vision was blocked by more trees. He unhooked the folding trench shovel from his small pack and chopped away at the muck and weedy vegetation covering one of the lumps. "Whoa!"

Huw knew his limits: what he knew about archeology could be written on the sleeve notes of an Indiana Jones DVD. But he also knew asphalt when he saw it, a solid black tarry aggregate with particles of even size-and he knew it was old asphalt too, weathered and overgrown with lichen and moss.

"Looks like a road to me," Yul offered.

"I think you're right." Huw cast around for more chunks of half-buried roadstone. Now that he knew what he was looking for it wasn't difficult to find. "It ran that way, north-northeast, I think." Turning to look in the opposite direction he saw a shadowy tunnel, just about as wide as a two-lane road. Some trees had erupted through the surface over the years, but for the most part it had held the forest at bay. "Okay, this way is downhill. Let's plant a waypoint and-"he looked up at the heavy overcast"-follow it for an hour, or until it starts to rain, before we head back." He checked his watch. It was just past two in the afternoon. "I don't want to get too far from base camp today."