IX
"LORD NESSIL, THE ang-the strangers are just over the rise, not more than twenty rods beyond the tips of the gray rocks." The armsman in brown leathers keeps his voice low and looks up to the hatchet-faced man in the heavy purple cloak. Blotches of moisture have soaked through the armsman's leather trousers, and green smears attest to his crawling through underbrush and grass.
Lord Nessil brushes back a long lock of silver and black hair, then smiles. "Are they as attractive as the screeing glass shows?"
"Pardoning Your Grace, but I wasn't looking at them that way." The armsman's eyes flicker to his right as another trooper leads his horse back to him. "They don't seem bothered by the chill. They wear light garments, like they were in Lydiar in midsummer, but I wasn't looking beyond the clothes, more for blades, and only the black-haired wench bears one. A pair she has."
"A pair of what?" asks Nessil.
Lettar looks down at the grass.
"For that, Lettar, you shall have one to enjoy." Nessil laughs softly. "Women warriors, and only one has a blade. I shall enjoy this." He turns toward the wizard in white. "What do your arts show, Wizard?"
"There are less than a score that I can scree there, eighteen in all, and but three men. They bear some strange devices that radiate some small measure of order, and others that bear some measure of chaos. They have set up a spindly windmill that will be ripped apart in the first good wind." Hissl inclines his head.
"What would you have us do, Wizard?"
"I would like your men to preserve their devices. We might learn something from them. I cannot advise Your Grace on tactics, My Lord. You are the warrior. I can but say that they are likely to be more formidable than they appear. I cannot tell you why."
Nessil laughs again, still softly, but more harshly. "You caution me that they could be formidable, but not why. Thus, if I succeed in capturing them all, I will be pleased." His face darkens. "If I fail, you may claim you warned me. Wizard's double words! Ride beside me, Ser Wizard."
"Pardoning Your Grace, but what shall we do? Ride down on them?" asks Lettar.
"No. We will be civilized. We will ride up and demand their surrender for trespass. That way, we might get them all. We do outnumber them more than three to one." Nessil looks at Hissl. "And we get the wizard close enough to use his firebolts if need be."
"What about the men?"
"If they resist, kill them. If not, we can always use them somewhere. Try to save as many of the women as you can. I've never had a silver-haired wench-or one with fire-red hair." Nessil offers a boyish grin and looks along the line of threescore mounted troopers. "Shall we make our appearance? Bring out the banners. After all, we do come in peace, one way or another."
Hissl's eyes glaze slightly, as if he is no longer quite within his body.
Then the horsemen ride toward the low rise, over which looms the ice-needle peak that dominates the Roof of the World. The banners flap in the brisk wind that blows out of the north and spins the windmill beyond the crest of the hill.
The starflowers left in the meadow on the far side of the ridge-those that have not been destroyed by the cultivation or wilted as their season has passed-bend in the wind.
X
ABOVE THE PLOT where Gerlich and several marines half toiled at ditch-digging, partly sheltered by a line of boulders, Nylan studied the laser, and the array of firin cells in the portable rack. He mumbled and made another adjustment to the powerhead on the laser.
"Why don't you just try it, ser?" asked the stocky blond marine behind him.
"Because, Huldran, we can only replace a fraction of the power."
"What about the emergency generator?" Huldran nodded her head toward the man-sized but flimsy-looking windmill set near the crest of the hill. Beneath it was a small array of solar cells. Both the cells and the generator fed through a converter into a single firin cell.
Nylan laughed. "The laser uses more energy in a few units than the generator supplies in a day." After another readjustment to the powerhead, he straightened and wiped his sweating forehead. "It gets hot here in the day."
"Yes, ser." Huldran wiped away the sweat from her fair-skinned forehead.
"I heard that, Ser Engineer," said Gerlich from the plot. "It's frigging hot here. It would have been hard to try to live any lower. I'll bet those lowlands are like the demons' hell." The shirtsleeved Gerlich blotted his brow and handed the makeshift spade to one of the marines. "Your turn."
"Yes, ser." The dark-haired marine took the shovel and continued digging the ditch that would divert stream water through the plot. Her eyes continued to scan the rise to the north as she slowly dug.
Three other marines grubbed at the ground with makeshift implements resembling hoes to clear away the mixture of what appeared to be grass and a high-altitude clover bearing occasional reddish blooms. Their eyes occasionally darted toward the top of the ridge or toward one of the rock formations. The shortest marine wiped her forehead, her hand unconsciously touching the slug-thrower at her belt.
"How long do we have to play at being innocent would-be peasants, anyway?" asked Gerlich.
"Until our visitors arrive," responded Ryba from the end of the small plot. "In any case, you've proved you can toil with the best, Gerlich." She motioned to the former weapons officer. "You can even bring in game with a bow-even dangerous game." Her eyes flicked to the rack where another marine had stretched out the hide of what appeared to be a cougar and studied a small manual. "No one knows what to do with the hide. What do you know about making bows and arrows?"
"Not much. I use them. Others make them."
"We're all going to have to do some making here."
Gerlich smiled lazily and shrugged.
Ryba's hand flicked, and, as if by magic, the tip of one of the steel blades appeared at the brown-haired man's throat. Her eyes met his, as they stood there, the captain almost equal in height to the husky weapons officer, and in breadth of shoulders.
Gerlich swallowed.
"In case you've forgotten, I'm not only captain, but I'm tougher than you are-and so are most of the marines, in case you get any ideas." Ryba's blade vanished back into the scabbard. "Now ... do you want to try to figure out how to make something useful?"
"You've made it clear I have little choice."
"None of us do, not if we're going to survive. I intend to make sure that we all do."
A light flashed across Ryba's face, and she squinted, then turned toward the sentry up in the rocks. After a moment, she called, "Ready! Stand by for visitors."
"Ready, Captain," responded Fierral, squaring her broad shoulders.
To the north of the plot, but to the right of the rockier ground where Nylan's crude stakes marked the tower that might never be built, Saryn sat in the shade of a boulder and used one of the three survival knives to pare down a fir limb into the shaft of what would be another shovel. At Ryba's command, she eased her own slug-thrower out of the holster and onto the flat rock. She stopped peeling and carving, but still held the knife loosely.
Beyond her, still partly sheltered by a line of boulders, Nylan made yet another adjustment to the powerhead on the laser. He straightened, then frowned as he both heard Ryba's command, and somehow felt the presence of horsemen beyond the ridge.
Was it just his imagination?
Ryba walked uphill toward the rocks until she was less than a dozen paces from where Saryn and Nylan worked. "Company's about to arrive."
"Wonderful.. ." mumbled Nylan. "We're barely planet-side an eight-day, and someone has decided to start a fight. Humans are such peaceful creatures."
"We're angels," hissed the dark-haired Saryn.
"Same same," muttered the engineer back.
"High Command would have your head for that," pointed ' out the second pilot.
"We'll never see High Command again."
Saryn shivered.
"Keep your slug-throwers ready," added Ryba. "Aim for the body."
The ground vibrated slightly as the horsemen crossed the top of the ridge. In the van were two young men bearing purple banners, followed by a man in a purple cloak thrown back to reveal an iron breastplate and a large hand - and - a - half sword worn in a shoulder harness.
Ryba reached for the slug-thrower at her hip.
"That won't do much," observed Nylan. "They'll just think it's magic of some sort. I suspect that they only recognize blades and arrows as weapons."
"I don't care what they call it. We have to stop them."
"Will it hurt to talk?" Nylan asked. "They look too like us not to be human."
"I suppose not, but if they're really human, they're here to fight." Ryba's eyes flicked toward the ridge where the head marine stood. The snipers remained hidden. "Fierral has her troops ready to gun down the whole mass of them if I give the order."
"All of them?"
"If necessary." Ryba's face was hard. "People don't like facing the unknown. If they're hostile, I'd rather have them all disappear. We could plead ignorance in the future. It's hard to plead ignorance when there are witnesses."
The three studied the riders as the horsemen rode down toward the angel encampment. Beside the purple-clad leader rode a man cloaked totally in white, and Nylan could even feel a sense of whiteness, tinged with red, emanating from the man, who was the only one not carrying visible weapons. That lack of weapons bothered the engineer.
"Watch out for the one in white," he said quietly as his hand drifted to the standard-issue sidearm that he had never used against the demons of light or their mirror towers.
"I'll keep that in mind." Ryba kept her broad shoulders square as she stepped forward and somewhat away from the rocks.
The horsemen drew up in a rough line, a sort of half-circle centered on the small plot being ditched. The marines in the plot had lowered their hoes, and their hands rested by the butts of their sidearms.
The man in the purple cloak reined up well short of Ryba, inclined his head, and declaimed something.
"Not good," whispered Nylan. "They know she's in charge."
Ryba inclined her head slightly, then, without turning her head, asked, "What did he say?"
"The general idea is that we don't belong here."
"I could tell that myself," snapped Ryba, her eyes still fixed on the man in purple.
The leader of the locals added a few more words, the last ending in what seemed a partial snarl.
Ryba looked back at him, then responded in an even tone. "I suggest you do the same to yourself."
Purple cloak drew the big hand - and - a - half sword, holding it at the ready.
"Now what do you suggest?" asked Ryba.
"Put one of those Sybran blades through him and run like hell from the guy in white," suggested Nylan.
"I'm afraid we can't recognize your authority." Ryba's voice was almost musical.
Another sentence followed from the local's leader, and he gestured toward the heavens overhead.
Nylan pursed his lips. Did the locals know they had come from space?
"Returning to where we came from is clearly impossible," Ryba responded.
The sword jabbed skyward again.
"No."
The purple-cloaked man barked a command. The sword swept toward Ryba as he spurred his horse forward, as did the other horsemen.
"Fire at will!" yelled Ryba.
Even before the local's heavy blade was within a body length of Ryba, the purple-clad rider was sagging from the big horse, a length of Sybran steel protruding from his chest.
The other horsemen continued to charge whoever happened to be close, blades out and looking for targets, maintaining a rough double-line formation. Only the man in white held back, his eyes scanning the meadow area.
Crack, crack, crack, crack... Even the first staccato impacts of the marine slug-throwers that echoed across the high meadow hurled nearly a dozen armsmen from their mounts. One of the purple banners fluttered to the ground.
The others ignored the sounds and rode toward the handful of marines in the open.
Crack! Crack! Crack! More slug-throwers discharged, and more horsemen tumbled, their frozen faces wearing expressions of disbelief.
Nylan aimed at the man in white. Crack!
Nothing happened, but the engineer had the feeling that somehow the ceramic composite shell had fragmented before it reached the target.
Crack!
With a long and dramatic-sounding set of phrases, the man in the white tunic and trousers raised his right hand and gestured.
Ryba dove behind the nearest boulder, and Nylan ducked. The two of them jammed together.
Whhssttt! The firebolt seemed to bounce off the rock, flared over the half-hoed field, and smashed across the side of the nearest lander. White ashes cascaded onto the meadow. Where the firebolt had struck was a gouge in the dark tiles that showed metal beneath.
"Frig ..." muttered Ryba. "Personal laser! Can't believe it."
Whhhsssttt!
Another firebolt flared above them, gouging a line of fire through the meadow clover.
Whhhssstt!
Crack! Ryba's shot also failed to reach the man in white.
"That's no laser." Nylan peered over the edge of the boulder, then frowned. The man in white was gone, although Nylan thought he could feel someone riding up the hill. More feelings that seemed to be correct, and that bothered the engineer.
"Where did he go?" snapped Ryba.
"Forget him!"
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Nylan lifted the slug-thrower as two horsemen, low in the saddle, swept around the end of the rocks and headed toward them.
Both the captain and the engineer fired again.
Crack! Crack! Crack! When the hammer came down on the empty chamber, Nylan scrambled to the other side of the rock, emerging a moment later. His mouth dropped open as he saw Ryba on one of the horses, chasing down, and slicing open one of the hapless armsmen, and then another.
"Get the damned horses!" yelled Ryba before she rode uphill after a fleeing mount.
Nylan looked at the nearby horse, then flung himself behind the boulder as another horseman galloped toward him.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The slugs whistled over Nylan's head, and one of Saryn's shots dropped the horseman.
"You'd better reload!" suggested Saryn.
"Thanks!" Nylan, crouching behind the boulder, fumbled the second and last clip into the slug-thrower. He hoped the marines had more firepower. He also hoped they were better shots than he'd proved to be.
When he scrambled up, there were no horsemen nearby, just the mount of the man Saryn had dropped. Nylan, ignoring his apprehensions about grabbing onto anything ten times his size, grasped the reins of the nearby mount, which promptly reared. "Now ... now ..." He tried to be reassuring, but the horse reared again, nearly dragging him off his feet before it settled down.
Whhheeeee . . . eeeee . . . eeee . . .
"I don't like it any better than you do, fellow, lady, whatever you are." Horses? What was he doing hanging on to horses on an impossible planet? He tried not to shiver and concentrated on calming the horse.
Slowly, somehow, he managed, even as he looked across the meadow. He swallowed. From what he could see, there were large numbers of bodies strewn almost at random. Three of them, beyond the plot, wore shipsuits.
Absently, Nylan patted the neck of the horse.
Wheee . . . eeee . . .
He glared at the beast that towered over him, and, surprisingly, the animal seemed to whimper. Patting the animal's neck, he added, "Just take it easy."
His eyes flicked across the meadow, then toward the top of the hill where Ryba had reined up.
"They're gone, frig it!"
Nylan led the horse toward the lander shells and the half-grubbed and ditched plot, not quite sure what to do with the animal. At the least, he needed to find someplace to tether it. Several marines were working over two angel bodies as he led the horse toward the nearest lander, where, absently, he tied the reins around an internal door loop. No one was going to be closing the door anytime soon.
Then he hurried through the fallen horsemen. One moaned as Nylan passed. He looked down at the hole in the man's abdomen, and his guts twisted at the blood. The man moaned again. Nylan knelt. There wasn't much he could do.
The soldier muttered something, blood oozing from the corner of his mouth. Had he fractured ribs in his fall from the horse? The man's hand clutched Nylan's, and he muttered, "Nerysa . . . Nerysa . . ."
His hand loosened, as did his jaw.
Nylan closed the dead man's eyes and slowly stood. Then he walked toward the group between the end lander and the plot where three gathered around a prone figure in a ship-suit.
"It's no use." One of the marines sat back and wiped her forehead.
The unmoving figure was that of the junior officer- Mertin. Above sightless eyes and streams of dried and drying blood, his forehead looked slightly lopsided.
The marine stood. "Those blades are more like iron crowbars. Not much edge. Damned sword caved in his temple. He just stood there and shot, never ducked He got about four of them."
Nylan looked toward the other grouping. "Who's that?"
"Kyseen, I think. Mangled leg. Three of them hit her at once. She got two. The third got her with his horse. She still got him."
Nylan shook his head. The entire fight still seemed both horribly real and terribly unreal.
From what he could tell, several other marines were also down.
From the hillside above, Ryba rode downhill, leading three more riderless mounts. More to the west, another marine and Gerlich were on horseback, trying to corner several more of the riderless horses. Nylan counted nearly a score of mounts being held, tethered, or chased.
Nylan glanced back toward Kyseen.
"Dumb bastard!"
Since she sounded as though she had a chance for recovery, and since he was certainly no medtech, he walked back toward the uphill side of the lander shells where Ryba was directing the construction of something where the horses could be tethered.
"Nylan!" ordered Ryba. "Get a couple of marines and check the bodies. Those that aren't too badly wounded we'll try to save for information. Gather all the weapons, anything valuable, and have your detail bury the rest deep enough that scavengers, or whatever they have here, won't get them. Keep any cloaks or jackets or armor or boots-if they're in good condition."
Nylan nodded. While he didn't like the idea, he understood the need.
"Don't bury any of the dead horses yet." Ryba made a sour face. "Maybe we can butcher some and stretch out the concentrates."
Nylan frowned. Horse meat? Maybe it would be better than concentrates, but he had his doubts. To stop thinking about that, he asked, "Who got away besides the fellow in white?"
"Maybe a half dozen. One or two were wounded, I think." Ryba turned her mount toward the end of the meadow where Gerlich lurched in the saddle as his mount nearly carried him into an overhanging pine branch. "Use your legs, Gerlich, and your head!"
Nylan pointed to the three nearest marines. "You, you, and you-we're the scavenger - and - burial detail." He saw Huldran. "You too, Huldran. We'll start up by the rocks and sweep down. Carry the bodies to the lower end of the meadow, near the drop-off." He gestured.
"That's a long ways," pointed out a tall woman, who, like him, had come out of the mysterious underjump with silver hair.
Nylan tried to remember her name. Was it Llysette?
"Llysette, it's downhill-"
"It's Llyselle, ser."
"Sorry. In any case, Llyselle, it is downhill and away from the water, and it's going to be hard to bury them deep enough to get rid of the smell. There are rocks there, for a cairn, if necessary."
"Yes, ser." The four gave him resigned looks.
"Why don't we just drop them over the cliff?" asked Huldran.
"That would probably just cause more trouble with the locals, and we don't need that."
"How would they know?"
Nylan shrugged. "I don't know, but they've got something-call it technology, call it magic. They knew Ryba was our leader, and they knew we came from space or the local equivalent."
"Great.. ." mumbled one of the other marines.
"Stow it, Berlig," said Huldran tiredly. 'The engineer's usually been right, and these days that counts for a lot. Let's get on with it."
'Take any weapons, knives, any gadgets or coins. Jewelry, too," added Nylan. "The more we find, the more we might be able to figure out about these people."
The sun had dropped behind the mountain peaks by the time Ryba, Gerlich, and their work crew had completed a makeshift corral for the captured mounts and by the time a large cairn and five individual graves had been completed and filled in the southwestern corner of the open area, just beyond the end of the meadow and less than two dozen steps from the beginning of the drop-off.
Saryn was by the cook-fire area, making an attempt to butcher a dead horse. Nylan shook his head, but kept walking toward the stream. He needed to get the blood and grime off himself, if he could.
Not much more than an eight-day and already five were dead-Mertin and four marines. Then, again, reflected the engineer, without the combat-trained marines and Ryba, things would have been worse, much worse.
Nylan bent down and washed the rock dust and dirt from his hands in the narrow stream. Then he walked back toward the lander where they had stockpiled the plunder, such as it was, from the corpses. They had gathered nearly three dozen of the heavy iron blades that scarcely seemed sharp enough to hack wood. After thinking about Ryba's Sybran blade and how she had sheared right through the local plate and chain mail, Nylan shook his head.
He neared the lander, and Ayrlyn, who stood by the single remaining local. The man half sat, half lay almost against the side of the end lander on a thin tarp. The pale green eyes surveyed Nylan, and the man spoke.
Nylan almost caught the words.
"He's asking if you're the only true man here," said Ayrlyn from his elbow. "He wants to give you his sword. Or he would if he still had it."
"Honor concept, I suppose."
"Only men have honor here? Are we in trouble!" snorted the former comm officer. Her brown eyes flashed that impossible shade of blue.
"If I take his sword, I'm responsible for him, I suppose."
"Something like that, I'd guess."
"Does that mean he gives his word not to escape, or is it meaningless nonsense?" Nylan's voice was hoarse, tired.
"Who would know?"
Nylan stared at the local. "I'll take his moral sword, or whatever. Tell him that if he breaks his word, he'll wish no one in his family had ever been born." Nylan was tired. Tired and angry, and he just wished that things hadn't degenerated into slaughter so quickly.
Even before the flame-haired comm officer started to speak, the man paled, and words tumbled from his lips.
Ayrlyn looked sideways at the engineer. "For a moment, I thought you almost glowed." She shook her head, and fires seemed to shimmer in her hair. "Whatever you did, he claims you're his liege. His name is Narliat." She lowered her voice. "You did something that scared the living darkness out of him. He called you master or mage, something like that."
Nylan rubbed his forehead. "This place makes me feel strange. It's almost like being on the net, except it's not." He almost could understand the man's words, and the language was somehow familiar, but not quite. He kept rubbing his forehead.
Ayrlyn looked at him. "It is strange. I've had a couple of flashes like that, except it's more as though I could feel the trees or the grass." She glanced around nervously. "I'm not crazy. I'm not."
"We're probably just tired." Nylan looked at the prisoner. "Now what?"
"Tell him to stay here, and he will."
Nylan did, and Ayrlyn repeated the words. Narliat bowed his head.
The two angels walked toward the cook fire where Ryba waited. Nylan glanced to the rocky outcropping where a pair of sentries were outlined against the twilit sky.
The captain turned her head. "How many in the cairn?"
"Forty-three."
"Forty-three? That many?" burst out Kyseen from the litter by the fire.
"That few," said Ryba. "There were almost sixty, I think. Probably another three or four were wounded. They'll probably die, if the locals' medical care matches their weapons. That means almost a dozen escaped."
"Killing two thirds of an attacking force sounds pretty good," pointed out Saryn.
"I'm more worried about the one in white," mused Nylan. "It wasn't a laser, but he had a lot of power."
"It doesn't make sense. Whatever weapon he used burned right through the lander's ablative tiles like they weren't there-until it got to the thin steel undershell. That's not a laser. The ablative tiles would have stopped even a small weapons laser." Saryn winced as she shifted her position on the stone.
"Call it magic," suggested Nylan.
"Magic?" Ryba's eyebrows lifted.
"There's something here like a neuronet-"
"You think this is all imagination? That we're really trapped in the Winterlance's net?"
"Oh, frig ..." muttered Gerlich.
"No. There are too many independent variables for a net to handle, especially the interactions and apparent actions between individual personalities. Also, there's a feel about the net," explained Nylan. "It's not here."
"Thus speaks the engineer." Gerlich's tone was openly sarcastic.
Nylan ignored it.
"What do you think of the local swords?" Nylan asked Ryba. "You're the only one with any experience, I think."
"Not quite," said Gerlich. "I did club fencing for a while."
"So did I," added another voice. "Sers . .."
Nylan looked at the wiry silver-haired marine.
"I'm Istril," the marine explained apologetically.
"That's a help," said Ryba slowly. "You're all going to have to use blades, I think, before the year is out, anyway. Maybe sooner. Unless we can manufacture bows and learn archery."
"Why ..." started a voice farther back in the twilight. "Oh ... sorry."
"Exactly. Fierral took inventory. That little firefight cost us nearly three hundred rounds. That's actually pretty good. One in nine shells counted. Except we only have about six hundred rounds left. That's maybe two battles like we just went through." Ryba bowed to the marine force leader. "Without the marines, we'd all be dead or slaves."
Ryba turned to Nylan. "I fear you were correct, Ser Engineer, about the need for a defensive emplacement, a tower."
Nylan nodded. "You never answered the question about blades."
"Most of their blades are hatchet-edged crowbars. That hand - and - a - half blade the leader carried is a fair piece of work, and so was one other thing like a sabre. Why did you ask?" Ryba smiled tightly. "You don't ask questions, ser, unless you know the answer."
"I saw what your blade did to the local leader," Nylan replied honestly. "I just wondered what the comparisons were."
"If we could find blades like mine, it would give us an advantage-not so much as slug-throwers-but I don't see those for a long, long time to come."
Neither did Nylan.
"But," continued the captain, "I don't know how we could find or forge blades like mine."
Nylan frowned, then pursed his lips. Was there any way? He shook his head.
"What about the language?" Ryba turned to Ayrlyn.
"That doesn't make sense, either. It sounded like an offshoot of Anglorat," said the comm officer.
Nylan nodded, mostly to himself. He should have recognized it, but he hadn't expected the demon tongue to show up here. "What was that idiot saying? Where were you, anyway?" asked Ryba. "Where you put me ... on the other side." Ayrlyn gave a slight shiver. "I didn't get it all, and some of the words didn't make any sense, but the general idea was that we had to surrender because we were trespassing on his lands-"
"His lands?"
"His lands."
"Darkness help us," said Ryba. "We would knock off the local ruler. That can't be good."
"It might be very good," mused Nylan. "Anyone else might decide to wait a while before taking us on."
"Either that, or they'll all be up here on some sort of holy war against their version of the demons. That's what we probably look like to them."
Nylan laughed.
"What's so funny?"
"We got here because we were fighting the demons, and as soon as we land, we're fighting more demons."
"You think this place was a Rationalist colony?" Ryba's eyebrows knit together.
"How could it be? It's not even in our universe," snapped Gerlich.
"Maybe they got here like we did," suggested Saryn.
"We don't even know how we got here, not for sure," pointed out Nylan. "Or where here even is."
"You obviously have some ideas, O Bright One," snapped Gerlich. "So how do you think we got here?"
"We were at the focus of a lot of energy, more than enough to blow the boards and the Winterlance right out of existence. We're still around, even if it's someplace strange-"
"Are you sure we're just not dead, or imagining things?" asked Ayrlyn.
"The physical sensations seem rather intense for being merely spiritual and mental. . . and I explained the limitations of a net..."
"So you did."
Nylan turned to look fully at the taller man. "So . . . listen. I'll listen to your knowledge. If we don't listen and save every bit of knowledge we have to share, we'll be dead-or our descendants will suffer more than they have to:-or both."
"That assumes we'll live that long," snapped Gerlich.
Ryba's blade flickered again, and the cold steel touched Gerlich's neck. "I'm getting very tired of having to use force to keep you in line, but it seems like that's all you respect."
"Without that blade . .."
Ryba handed the blade to Istril, the small marine. "Hold this."
Gerlich looked puzzled.
"Some people never learn." Ryba's foot lashed out across the bigger man's thigh.
"Missed, bitch." Gerlich charged.
Ryba danced aside, and her hands blurred. Gerlich slammed facefirst into dirt and clover, then scrambled up and took a position, feet wide, hands in guard position.
Ryba feinted with her shoulder, once, twice.
Gerlich did not move.
The captain seemed to duck, then with a sweep kick knocked Gerlich off his feet, although the brown-haired man scrambled and slashed at her arm. Ryba took the arm, and Gerlich went flying into the meadow.
He rose slowly, holding his arm.
"It's only dislocated," snapped Ryba. "I could have broken your worthless neck. So could most of the marines."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because you have some stud value. But I could break both your arms and keep that."
Nylan shivered at the chill in Ryba's voice. He looked up at the unfamiliar stars. They looked very cold, and very distant.
Gerlich slumped and slowly walked forward toward the fire.
"Jaseen, can you snap that back in place?" asked Ryba.
"Yes, ser."
"Do it."
Gerlich sat down on a boulder, while Ryba reclaimed her blade and sheathed it. Nylan glanced across the faces of the twenty-two women-all but the two standing in the rocks as sentries-and then at Gerlich. Things were going to be different. . . very different. He repressed a shudder.