House of Reeds

trees – gold and silver lights and heard the rattle of drums and pipes. In the faint glow of distant lamps, she caught the outline of buildings, sharp rooftops, banners and the hot glow of a bonfire.

'Do you hear the voices?' The gardener picked up her pace. 'Nemnahan has begun!'

The Gemmilsky House

Gandaris, 'Bastion of the North'

Crouched in darkness, Colmuir squinted at the view from one of the perimeter spyeyes. This one was focused down on the front gate from a realspruce tree, where the Jehanan soldiers had found the portal held closed by more than a simple wooden bar. Their commander – even at this range, staring at a reptilian face mostly obscured by black rubber goggles, the master sergeant could pick out an officer – waved his men back, then stepped smartly away. The entire gate structure shivered as the tank approached, cobblestones cracking under heavy treads. The armored behemoth – Colmuir counted one main gun, four cupola-mounted machine guns, some kind of grenade launcher on the turret and a smoke dispenser – ground down the lane, stopped, chuffed diesel smoke, and rotated ponderously on one set of treads.

'Just a moment,' the master sergeant whispered. 'He's at th' gate now.'

The rumbling of dual engines carried even through the tiny microphone on the spyeye, as did the grating scrape of dozer blades emerging from the front of the machine. Gears shifted, generating a violent rattling sound, and the tank rolled forward, belching exhaust, and slammed squarely into the gate.

'Go!' Colmuir growled, feeling the ground shake. He thumbed a glyph depicting a conical mountain belching flame. In the spyeye view, he saw the front gate shatter, torn off its hinges by the weight of the tank. The stone pillars on either side of the entrance shuddered, but stood firm until the armored shoulders of the machine ground into them. Then ancient granite split, spewing dust and the entire structure collapsed backwards. The tank rolled up over the debris, treads spinning and crashed down on the other side. Jehanan soldiers darted into the opening, automatic rifles at the ready.

Two Imperial Marine issue Fougasse antipersonnel mines hidden in the verge a dozen paces back from the gate detonated as the tank rumbled past onto the lawn. Each popped up from the hedge to chest height and blew apart. A shockwave of flame, choking smoke and fingertip sized needles smashed across the Jehanan infantry. The invaders were thrown backwards by the blast and their body armor, uniforms and exposed scales were shredded by the glassite projectiles. Wherever the needles punched through scale into flesh, they splintered into wicked monofil buzzsaws, shredding muscle, ligament and bone. The entire lead squad crumpled in a spray of blood.

The Jehanan officer cursed, ordered his men to hurl grenades into the foliage and led the second squad onto the grounds at a rush as soon as the blasts had cleared the way.

In the sub-basement of the house Dawd knelt between a sump pump and the old boiler, a blazing white-hot spark howling between his hands. Limestone flooring volatilized, boiling up around him in a dusty cloud. At the far end of the room, Colmuir had his back turned, attention wholly focused on his remotes. Tezozуmoc stood between the master sergeant and the cutting beam, hands over his ears, desperately wishing for a drink, any kind of drink, even the barely refined gasoline the natives liked so much.

Dawd shifted his knees, drew the engineering tool back around to complete the circle and felt the stone and brick give way. The circular opening collapsed, spilling bricks and dust into a hidden pit. The edges glowed a dull red where the beam had sheared them to a glossy smoothness. The Skawtsman kicked the rest of the debris away.

Four meters below, a dry sewage tunnel was now filled with the litter from his efforts. Gemmilsky had installed new pipes and a modern sewage recycling module in one of the gardening sheds. The previous owner, however, had been forced to pump all of his waste into the common city drainage. During construction of the new house, all of the old sewage, water and power adits had been sealed up with brick, plaster and a new coat of paint.

'Clear!' Dawd called to the prince and the master sergeant. He squeezed himself down into the opening, hung by his hands for a moment and then dropped down into the old tunnel. The sergeant's combat visor switched into infrared, he glanced both ways and saw the passage was empty. 'Come on, mi'lord. We've got to move quickly.'

The prince swung over the edge, closed his eyes, muttered a prayer to the Beneficent and Merciful Jesus and dropped into the Eagle Knight's waiting arms. Dawd set the young man down in a rubble-free section of tunnel and tapped his comm. 'Master Sergeant? Let's not be waiting about!'

'Just a second, lad. There's a wee bit more work to be done.'

Colmuir rotated one of the spyeyes to scan the horizon. The aerocar which had brought them to Gandaris had departed at first light to deliver Mrs. Petrel and her ladies to the palace and return with 'refreshments.' The master sergeant assumed the use of kujenai troops to attack the mansion meant Clark, the aerocar and the civilians had all been seized by the kujen. He was waiting until the last moment, hoping the corporal would reappear.

The sky was overcast and gray and threatening a day of drizzling rain. There was no sign of the aerocar. Colmuir muttered six and a half kinds of curses to himself, tapped the last glyphs on his fuse screen and scurried to the pit.

A muffled series of thuds and booms filtered through the roof of the sub-basement. The old foundation groaned, feeling the house above shift and sway. A distant crashing sound followed, and the lean Skawtsman imagined the entire portico toppling onto the tank and trapping the metal behemoth in a ruin of double-paned windows, marble statuary and triply-varnished lohaja-parquet flooring. He slapped two bomb packs on either side of the opening, gave them twenty minutes to live and dropped down into the darkness.

An hour later, Dawd used his combat knife to saw through the bar holding a sewer-grate closed and, after listening cautiously, stepped out into a domed, brick-lined roundabout deep under the center of Gandaris. His Fleet medband chirped politely, informing him of excessive levels of methane, carbon dioxide and airborne bacteria in the newly entered atmosphere.

'Oh, gods of my fathers,' the prince exclaimed, splashing clumsily into the grand sewer. 'This place smells… urk… oh god…' Tezozуmoc doubled over, nearly falling into the stream of dark brown effluvia streaming towards the river, and added a gagging heave of yellow bile to the greater collection of Gandarian waste. Dawd seized him by the upper arms and waited for the boy to finish his business.

'Excellent nose for navigation, lad.' Colmuir closed the gate to the dry tunnel behind them and replaced the bar. 'You've got a fix on the airport, then?'

'No airport in Gandaris, Master Sergeant.' Dawd consulted his comp, which had been keeping track of the twists and turns in the sewer system. 'Or we'd have landed there when we arrived… That's odd, we've lost any comm signal but ourown. The jamming must have gotten worse.' He shook his head in dismay. 'If Clark managed to escape with the aerocar, he won't be able to raise us, or find us, unless we're out in the open as he flies over, waving the locust-flag of Chapultepec over our heads.'

'That won't happen,' the master sergeant said, peering over Dawd's shoulder. 'Options?'

'We could walk about a thousand kilometers to Parus,' the younger Skawtsman said, tabbing up a map of Gandaris and the greater valley. The city spread up a series of terraced hillsides from the banks of the Kophen to reach the embrace of the higher peaks. The far side of the river was subdivided into agricultural plots, and then bisected by the railroad running southeast towards Bandopene. 'We could steal an aerocar, if there was one to steal, and be back in Parus tonight.'

'What…' The prince spat and cleared his mouth. 'What about calling for someone to come and pick us up with a combat shuttle?'

'No comm,' Dawd replied, shaking his head. 'Or we could find a place to hide out, sit tight…'

Colmuir considered the map, removed a tabac from a half-crushed paperboard case, smelled the cigarette and put it back. Then he nodded to himself. 'We take the train.'

'What?' Dawd stared at him, surprised and horrified at the same time. 'We'll be arrested at the station!'

'The train?' Prince Tezozуmoc frowned. 'Wait a moment…wasn't someone saying something about the train the other day? About…oh, who was that?'