Part 33 (2/2)

”Always!” he repeated, catching the gleam in her eyes. He set down his goblet on the table and gently detached hers from her hand. Then the two monstrous armoured forms came together, and the sun-gilded rocks echoed with the clas.h.i.+ng consummation.

Secure in his redoubt of peanut sacks, Tony Wayland watched from the loft of a dockside warehouse as the looting of Bardelask wound down to its fatal finale.

The last packtrains loaded with goods were gathering along the quayside road. Gangs of human captives, half-dead after almost a week of forced labour, now brought up the few remaining treasures to be gleaned from the buildings along the wharf: kegs of oil, alcohol, and dyestuffs, bales of rare leathers, loaf sugar, silken cordage and fabric, coffee beans in jute sacks, and cases of processed spices and precious strawberry jam.

Fortunately for Tony, the Firvulag did not care for peanuts.

And after eating little else for six days, he was getting thoroughly sick of the worthy legume himself.

Through his golden torc, he could hear the dispirited telepathic speech of the grey-torced prisoners. (Anyone torced with gold or silver had been summarily slain.) From Tony's point of view, there was good news. Instead of holding Bardelask and using it as a base for harrying s.h.i.+pping on the Rhone, the invaders had been ordered to withdraw. The leader of the Famorel Host, a malignant gnome named Mimee whose illusory aspect was that of a flightless roc, had exploded in a paroxysm of avian rage at being deprived of this additional source of booty, and had snapped off the heads of twenty-two helpless greys before recovering his self-possession. Somewhat later, Tony learned that Mimee had suffered a second fit of pique when King Sharn cancelled Famorel's partic.i.p.ation in a projected a.s.sault on Roniah. This piece of intelligence helped Tony make up his mind to travel north, not south, when it was safe to leave his hiding place among the goobers.

Meanwhile, he used the time to get reacquainted with his torc.

The golden collar that the late Skathe had given him contained mind-expanding components precisely similar to those in the silver torc he had worn in Finiah. Unlike the silver, however, the golden torc had no slave-circuitry binding him to Tanu control, nor the tracking device that would enable gold-torced persons to locate him with minimal exertion of fa.r.s.ense.

Wearing gold, Tony was free-but once again possessed of the wonderful powers that had made life so satisfying back in lost Finiah.

The enhancement of his modest psychocreative faculty gave him the ability to perform numerous small but useful energymanipulative acts. He could extract water from the air for drinking, and remove it from his clammy clothing when the river mist enveloped his hiding place at night. He could roast the peanuts in their sh.e.l.ls. When it was safe, he could strike a small light without recourse to a permamatch. He could zap fleas or other tiny vermin that dared to infest his person. When the loft grew stifling hot during the day, he could whistle up a cool breeze. If he became bored, the magic collar provided autoerotic amus.e.m.e.nt. It eased the pangs of physical fatigue, made injuries unnoticeable, sent him into refres.h.i.+ng sleep in a trice, woke him if any medium-to-large life-form approached within fifteen metres of his hiding place, banished anxieties, and cleared his head for fruitful planning. With it, he could speak, hear, and dimly see with his metasenses over a range of some 300 kilometres. (This last talent was none too common among silvers; but Tony had had eleven years of practice.) Since Finiah was a bit of a backwater, it had amused him to ”collect” the mental signatures of certain Tanu notables whom he met at social occasions in the pleasure dome. Later, he would spy on them during their peregrinations in the open air. To his regret, he could not fa.r.s.ense through stone walls, but it had been diverting to see what the exotics got up to al fresco. Hunts were the least of it!

Now, as Tony waited for the Firvulag to evacuate Bardelask, he began to wonder which, if any, of his old silver-torc comrades might have survived the destruction of Finiah. Where were they now-old Yevgeny and Stendal, c.o.c.ky Liem and stolid Tiny Tim, luscious Lisette and Agnes Virgin-Martyr? Now he could call them ... and for an hour or so, he did. But the signatures broadcast into the aether evoked not a single response. His friends of yore were either detorced or dead, lost in the chaos of changing times. He had no desire to farspeak his former Tanu a.s.sociates, not even those who had called themselves his Creative Siblings. The exotics wouldn't care about him, a single human outcast among thousands of others. They had troubles of their own these days, poor devils-and not a few of them human-caused.

There was Dougal. Mad but loyal, he had been some kind of friend. But Dougal had worn no torc, and by now he was probably maggot-meat in the Hercynian Forest, where Karbree the Worm's patrol had ambushed them. No ... there was only one living soul left in the Many-Coloured Land who might care if Tony Wayland lived or died.

Or did she hate him by now? It would serve him right.

His eyes misted in self-pity and he leaned his head back against the crunchy peanut-sack pillow. Outside the warehouse were the noises of guttural Firvulag commands, whips cracking, h.e.l.lads and chalikos snorting and blowing, the jingle of harness, the thump and thud of loading. It was hot and humid and tedious-time to call upon the torc's solace.

Then he heard an exotic's rage-filled roar. A human shriek bubbled and then stilled. Tony switched to the grey band and heard: d.a.m.nd.a.m.nd.a.m.n look at poorWerner!

Poor sod should know better use figureeight hitch loose load like that bound spillBut to pull his tongue out?

His fault for lipping Spook.

MaryMother he's bleeding death!

Sowhat? Weall be dead soon.

Lookoutlookout here come 3 Jabberwocks OChrist with zappersSickened, Tony shut them out. There was nothing he could do to help the poor doomed b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Wails sounded outside, and curses, and a certain word barked out loudly in the Firvulag language. Then came sizzling chirps from Matsu carbines, one note after another in precise rhythm, until the human babble was stilled.

Tony let the torc's bright comfort cover him. He saw himself crossing the Rhone in a stolen boat, travelling cautiously north on the Great Road, surviving by his wits and the cachet of mental gold. Once the Truce began, the track north of Roniah would be mobbed with sports lovers of all three races, peacefully heading up to the Grand Tourney. It would be safe to travel openly then. He would go up the Saone trail, pa.s.s Firvulag-held Burask (harmless in Truce Time), and finally voyage down the Nonol to the only sanctuary left to him-the city with toadstool domes that gleamed like El Dorado, the city hemmed with meadows and linked to the tournament Field of Gold by a rainbow bridge. The city of monsters, the city of friends. He would go home to Nionel and Rowane.

Rapt in the fantasy, he held her and knew joy. Later he woke to find that the sun had set and it was much cooler. Except for the distant howls of hyenas and the squeaking of rats in the warehouse, Bardelask was utterly silent.

Tony stood up, brushed peanut sh.e.l.ls from his clothes, and went confidently down the loft ladder. Outside on the quay he found what he was afraid he would find. But there was also a stout little wherry, complete with oars, tied up below the devastated s.h.i.+p chandler's shop. After a brief foray for items that the Firvulag had thought too insignificant for looting, Tony was ready to cast off. The boat floated on the placid Ysaar and there was no need to row. The current would carry him to the confluence with the Rhone, less than a kilometre away, and he could camp on the opposite bank of the larger river and start out for home in the morning.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

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