CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Stop,Adrianthought/projected.
Harvey did, and sank down with a slow smooth motion, soundless despite the twigs and last year’s leaves.
So much for too old for this shit, Adrian thought.
He was as quiet himself. The night buzzed and crickled with insects; it was a little rank with the scents of new spring growth. Ahead and miles downslope to the northeast the lights of Rancho Sangre were a glow through the darkness of early evening.
The patrol he’d detected came into sight in a little clearing a hundred yards below, all going to one knee at the edge of the open space. The grass there was tall, still a little green with May; it was starred with rose and owl’s clover, columbine, lily of the valley and forget-menots, purple and yellow bush lupine and drifts of golden California poppies. The breeze blew from them to him, carrying the harsh scents of male sweat and gun-oil from the Gurkha mercenaries amid the sweet lingering fragrance of the flowers. Their rifles had argent rounds, the silver alloy a slight gritty-tingling sensation in the night.
I’m glad I am not too proud to wear body-armor! Adrian thought.
Two more were T?kairin retainers in close-fitting black, including masks across their lower faces, with swords slung over their backs. The trickling menace of inlaid, glyph-wrought blades hummed past the sheaths. The black- clad men’s eyes needed no technology to see through the light spring night; they had the distinctive sharper, ranker body-scents of Shadowspawn.
He could feel their attention fanning out. Automatically his mind pushed. Slightly, subtly, switching pathways to the ones where they missed/ignored/didn’t notice any evidence that something was amiss, which was the highest probability anyway.
With them was a huge gray wolf. It blurred for an instant, sparkling with energies to Shadowspawn sight, then became a naked man on one knee, dark and lean and scarred, his beak-nosed brown face still raised to sample the air.
I’m impressed, Adrian thought. I couldn’t tell he was night-walking except by deduction. And the way the soldiers are afraid of him. I can smell that. The other two are in-the-body.
“Jir?, Kenta?” Dale Shadowblade asked softly, in the quiet conversational tones that carried least. “You catch anything?”
The narrow gold-flecked dark eyes of Hajime’s clansmen scanned carefully. One hesitated for an instant, his hand going towards the sword-hilt that jutted over his left shoulder, then shook his head.
“No. Though there are so many Wreakings soaked into the earth and rocks here I jump at my own shadow! Like kami, only real.”
“Yeah, the Br?z?s have been busy. Let’s get the circuit complete. I gotta get back to town to meet Michiko and… a friend.”
Another silent blur, and the wolf turned its long muzzle. Adrian let his own eyelids drift down as the yellow gaze seemed to meet his. Then it turned and bounded away. The men followed, scarcely less silent or less swift. After a long moment there was a quiet whoosh of breath from behind him.
“Now, that was just a mite nerve-racking,” Harvey said quietly.
“You could say so. Or that my luck is very strong,” Adrian grinned, with an expression halfway between relief and sheer exhilaration.
Danger too can be addictive. I had forgotten…
They waited another half-hour. Patience was a hunter’s virtue… or a sniper’s, if there was a difference. Then they began their step-at-a-time progress. Adrian paused with his foot in the air.
“Wait,” he said. “Wreaking.”
Old, old and strong. Keyed into the volcanic rock, like the structure of its atoms, but at a far finer level.
Trace the linkages. If-this-then…
“Step on that and you break your leg,” he murmured. “And trap it in that crack, so that any attempt to free yourself causes more damage. If you are sentient at all. Unless it recognizes the Br?z? blood.”
“DNA.”
“Whatever. Let me convince it…”
He drew a small sharp knife and nicked one finger with the tip. The scent filled his nose, but it would fade quickly; he willed the tiny wound to dry. A drop fell, and soaked into the porous stones beneath. He felt a response, and a glyph showed for a moment where the blood had struck.
“Ai-siiii.”
Congruence/recognition/fitness. With it came a ghost of the mind that had set the trap, many years ago, a snicker of gloating anticipation of pain and the long dying of someone crippled and helpless.
“My grandfather’s idea of a joke,” Adrian said, letting out a shaky breath.
“This is like walkin’ through a garden of carnivorous plants,” Harvey grumbled slightly.
He was in the same splotched dark charcoal-gray outdoors clothes-better than black at night. A heavy case on his back carried the knocked-down rifle and more than half their gear, but there was only a light coat of moisture on the older man’s face.
“Tired of the sweaty manly stuff yet, old friend?” Adrian asked under his breath.
“Before we began,” Harvey said, as they moved slowly on, stopping every few yards.
He had a small electronic device in his hand, and a thin wire leading to an earpiece. A grunt from him froze them both.
“OK, got a blip. Your sister ain’t relyin’ on hex-marks only.”
“How progressive of her,” Adrian observed dryly.
“There. Lemme… cracking the code… Sheila comes through again…”
Harvey indicated a live-oak, its roots writhing into the fractured stone of the hillside like a slow-motion strangling.
“Visual and audio pickup. Now foxed, you can relax. Sorta. A little.”
Beyond the rock grew steeper. A rattlesnake stirred at his passing; its dim reptile brain obeyed the prompting of instinct and probability, threading away deeper into its hole. Then a deep cleft appeared.
“Bingo. Here’s that observation post. Good ol’ Brotherhood, thinking ahead.”
“To opportunities that never occur,” Adrian said dryly. “Let’s get set up.”
“And have ourselves an MRE,” Harvey said, as they ducked into the sheltering cave. “Yum!”
His face was darkened with camouflage paint, but his grin was white at Adrian’s expression.
“We made it.”
“For now,” Adrian said sourly. “There are three days yet until the… festivities. My sister may order another sweep.”
“Or come ’round herself.”
Adrian sighed as he set down his heavy pack. “I doubt it. She has much to occupy her, besides her usual… diversions.”
“My parents were quite taken with you,” Adrienne told her.
Then she pivoted and struck.
Crack.
“Uh! ” Ellen gasped.
Crack.
The nine tight-braided thongs of the silk whip hissed through the air and slapped against her lower back. It melded into the aching glow that stretched from her shoulders to her thighs after the slow, deliberate lashing. The pain was much more than a sting, considerably less than agony. That lurked, though, if the damage didn’t stop. Already her sweat stung like fire in one place where the skin had been broken a little.
And I can’t make it stop.
Some corner of her mind thought that, as she slumped against the padded cuffs that held her arms spread above her head. Vision blurred with tears and sweat; the smell of her own was heavy in her nostrils, and the subtly
