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"Come on, you bastard! Onward and upward!"
* * *
Krindi Fain grunted and heaved at the wheel of the turom cart. For a moment, nothing happened, and then someone else shouldered in beside him. Erkum Pol's massive muscles flexed, and the cart lurched upward, lifting out of the crevice hiding under the knee-deep water roaring down the roadbed. Fain straightened his aching back and watched the cart move farther up the hill, then turned as someone tapped him on the shoulder.
"Captains don't, by and large, push carts up mountains, Captain," Armand Pahner observed.
The line of carts was barely moving—not too surprising, perhaps, given the steep slopes they'd encountered since leaving Sran. The first three had been bad enough, but the fourth was the worst so far, nearly two hundred meters long, and climbing at a constant fifteen-degree angle. Virtually everyone, human and Mardukan, had a shoulder into the carts, and the turom had been unhitched from the rearmost carts and doubled up on the lead ones to make the ascent.
As Fain turned towards the human, a ripple of lightning struck, jumping from one side of the gorge to the other with a sound like an artillery barrage. It started a small landslide, and the turom went berserk—or tried to, straining at their harnesses and slipping on the stones of the road as boulders careened about their feet.
"Well, I'm not a commander at the moment, Sir!" Fain shouted over the tumult, jumping forward to throw his shoulder back into the cart beside Erkum's as it started to slide backwards. "And I don't have any significant duties. So it seemed to be the best use of my time."
Pahner grabbed a chock and threw it under the right wheel as one of the turom slipped to its knees.
"Just don't get yourself killed, okay?"
"Not a problem," the former quarryman panted. "What is it you humans say? 'Caution is my middle name.' "
"To the winds," the Marine laughed. " 'Captain Krindi Caution-to-the-Winds Fain.' "
"Maybe so," the Mardukan captain grunted as the cart slipped again. "But at least 'caution' is in there somewhere!"
* * *
"This isn't going well," Roger said, "but at least we don't have company."
The reason the road was so little used had become only too evident. The column had made less than twenty kilometers since leaving Sran, and the long Mardukan day was well into its equally lengthy afternoon. It was hard to estimate how fast the Kirsti forces could react, but all of them were surprised that nothing had come up the road after them already.
"It's possible that the High Priest's death has kicked off an outright civil war," O'Casey pointed out. "Unlikely, but possible. In which case the lack of reaction is because everyone is consolidating their positions and they don't have any forces to spare for something as unimportant as chasing us down."
"It's more likely that they're simply taking their time," Pahner said. "I'd guess that the raiders really are out of it, though. They probably could've reacted before this, unless there was some specific reason not to. Like, for example, if Sor Teb was in enough trouble to possibly get a personal introduction to the Fire."
"We can always hope," Roger said sourly.
"But hope is all," O'Casey pointed out. "And even if he is dead—or, at least, in serious disfavor—someone should be chasing after us by now, unless something is distracting them closer to home."
"Don't rely too much on the delay," Pahner cautioned. "I'm sure the Scourge could move quickly enough to have overtaken us by now, but a conventional unit is going to want all its logistics in place before it moves. And speaking of logistics—"
"—we've got too much, for once," Roger finished.
"Not precisely, Your Highness. What we have is too few carts, or too few turom, for the stuff we've got. We need to reduce the load. Probably to about half of what we're pulling now."
"If we do t'at we won't have 'nough to make it to t'e port," Poertena pointed out.
"And if we try to drag it all with us, we won't live to get there, anyway," Pahner said. "If we can't trade with the tribes for what we need, we'll never make it through, period. Dump it."
"Aye, aye."
"The Vashin say that there's another forty or fifty kilometers of this," Pahner continued. "They're at the pass, though, or close enough to see it. We need to be to their position by tomorrow evening, or we're going to be in deep trouble."
"Of course, if we can't take the pass after we get there ..." Roger pointed out.
"Oh, thank you so very much for reminding me of that, Your Highness."
* * *
"Good gods," Honal said. "That's not a curtain wall—that's a bloody fortress."
He and Rastar were perched on a ridgeline with a good view of the pass. The opening was narrow, not much more than a wide canyon with nearly vertical sides. A stone wall and gatehouse had been thrown across it, and a series of structures were under construction or complete along the nearer side of the wall. On the southeast side of the pass, a wooden palisade and keep were being converted to stone, and on the western side a bastion was being laid out. The keep had been tied into the curtain wall, and it was apparent that in the long run the Krath intended to fill the pass with fortifications.
"I'm not going to underestimate the humans," Rastar said. "Maybe they can do this. Send a messenger. We're not going to take this place with cavalry."
"We might as well get dug in and get some fires going," Honal commented, looking at the angle of the sun. "It's going to be a long day."
* * *
Roger reined in his civan and slid to the ground, handing the reins to one of the waiting Vashin. He started to turn away, but he caught Dogzard's warning growl just in time, and backhanded the civan as it tried—again—to take a chunk out of his arm.
"It's not time for di
"They just have to know who the boss is, Your Highness," Honal said with a gesture of humor.
"That's usually not a problem," Roger said. "Where's your position? I take it you're not standing out in the open so they can all watch you checking out their little fort."
"Up on the ridge," Rastar said, gesturing over his shoulder. "We're pretty sure we've been spotted, but we're not making our presence, or numbers, known."
"Have they sent out a patrol?" Roger asked as he started to climb the hill.
"Two of them," Honal said with a grunt of laughter.
"And?"
"We captured both groups," Rastar said. "We're holding them in a side valley. It looks like the garrison is composed almost entirely of lowland peasants, too. They certainly aren't mountain boys, anyway! They didn't even see our ambush until we'd sprung it, and they gave up almost immediately. The second patrol had ten in it, and we took it with only two Vashin."
Roger chuckled as he topped out on the ridgeline and increased the magnification on his helmet visor.
"What's so fu
"What you just said is the punchline to a very old human joke. It's in a lot of cultures, but the punchline is always the same: 'It's a trap! There were two of them!' "
"I'd like to hear it sometime," Honal said. "You humans have good jokes."
"Yes, it's surprising how many points of congruence there are between humans and Mardukans," Roger said. "More than between us and the Phaenurs, that's for sure! Those people are weird. Of course, humor is one of the qualities that has the hardest time translating across species lines. That's what I meant about points of congruence."
"We laugh at the same stuff? That's a big thing?" Honal asked.
"Bigger than you can probably guess, yet," Roger assured him as he peered out across the valley. Then he zoomed his helmet back and removed it so he could run his fingers through his hair.