seeing true view along OOB’s main axis. Peripheral windows were held in fixed geometry with main. Pham’s eyes flickered from one to another, as his hands played over the command board. As near as could be, he was flying by his own senses, and trusting no one else.
But Pham still had use for the ultradrive. They were twenty million klicks off target, a submicroscopic jump. Pham Nuwen fiddled with the drive parameters, trying to make an accurate jump smaller than the standard interval. Every few seconds the sunlight would shift a fraction, coming first over Ravna’s left shoulder and then her right. It made reestablishing comm with Jefri nearly impossible.
Suddenly the window below their feet was filled by a world, huge and gibbous, blue and swirling white. The Tines’ world was as Jefri Olsndot advertised, a normal terrestrial planet. After the months aspace and the loss of Sjandra Kei, the sight caught Ravna short. Ocean, the world was mostly ocean, but near the terminator there were the darker shades of land. A single tiny moon was visible beyond the limb.
Pham sucked in his breath. “It’s about ten thousand kilometers off. Perfect. Except we’re closing at seventy klicks per second.” Even as she watched, the world seemed to grow, falling toward them. Pham watched it for few seconds more. “Don’t worry, we’re going to miss, fly right past the, um, north limb.”
The globe swelled below them, eclipsing the moon. She had always loved the appearance of Herte at Sjandra Kei. But that world had smaller oceans, and was criss-crossed with Dirokime accidents. This place was as beautiful as Relay, and seemed truly untouched. The small polar cap was in sunlight, and she could follow the coastline that came south from it toward the terminator. I’m seeing the northwest coast. Jefri’s right down there! Ravna reached for her keyboard, asked the ship to attempt both ultrawave comm and a radio link.
“Ultrawave contact,” she said after a second.
“What does it say?”
“It’s garbled. Probably just a ping response,” acknowledgment to OOB’s signal. Jefri was housed very near the ship these days; sometimes she had gotten responses almost immediately, even during his night time. It would be good to talk to him again, even if…
Tines’ world filled the entire aft and side windows now, its limb a barely curving horizon. Sky colors stood before them, fading to the black of space. Icecap and icebergs showed detail within detail against the sea. She could see cloud shadows. She followed the coast southwards, islands and peninsulas so closely fit that she could not be sure of one from the other. Blackish mountains and black-striped glaciers. Green and brown valleys. She tried to remember the geography they had learned from Jefri. Hidden Island? But there were so many islands.
“I have radio contact from planet’s surface,” came the ship’s voice. Simultaneously a blinking arrow pointed at a spot just in from the coast. “Do you want the audio in real time?”
“Yes. Yes!” said Ravna, then punched at her keyboard when the ship did not respond immediately.
“Hei, Ravna. Oh, Ravna!” The little boy’s voice bounced excitement around the deck. He sounded just as she had imagined.
Ravna keyed in a request for two-way. They were less than five thousand klicks from Jefri now, even if they were sweeping by at seventy kilometers per second. Plenty close enough for a radio conversation. “Hei, Jefri!” she said. “We’re here at last, but we need—” we need all the cooperation your four-legged friends can give us. How to say that quickly and effectively?
But the boy on the ground already had an agenda: “— need help now, Ravna! The Woodcarvers are attacking now.”
There was a thumping, as if the transmitter was bouncing around. Another voice spoke, high-pitched and weirdly inarticulate. “This Steel, Ravna. Jefri right. Woodcarver—” the almost human voice dissolved into a hissing gobble. After a moment she heard Jefri’s voice: “‘Ambush’, the word is ‘ambush’.”
“Yes… Woodcarver has done big, big ambush. They all around now. We die in hours if you not help.”
Woodcarver had never wanted to be a warrior. But ruling for half a thousand years requires a range of skills, and she had learned about making war. Some of that—such as trusting to staff—she had temporarily unlearned these last few days. There had indeed been an ambush on Margrum Climb, but not the one that Lord Steel had planned.
She looked across the tented field at Vendacious. That pack was half-hidden by noise baffles, but she could see he wasn’t so jaunty as before. Being put to the question will loosen anyone’s control. Vendacious knew his survival now depended on her keeping a promise. Yet… it was awful to think that Vendacious would live after he had killed and betrayed so many. She realized that two of herself were keening rage, lips curled back from clenched teeth. Her puppies huddled back from threats unseen. The tented area stank of sweat and the mindnoise of too many people in too small a space. It took a real effort of will to calm herself. She licked the puppies, and daydreamed peaceful thoughts for a moment.
Yes, she would keep her promises to Vendacious. And maybe it would be worth the price. Vendacious had only speculations about Steel’s inner secrets, but he had learned far more about Steel’s tactical situation than the other side could have guessed. Vendacious had known just where the Flenserists were hiding and in what numbers. Steel’s folk had been overconfident about their super guns and their secret traitor. When Woodcarver’s troops surprised them, victory had been easy—and now the Queen had some of these marvelous guns.
From behind the hills, those cannons were still pounding away, eating through the stocks of ammunition the captured gunners had revealed. Vendacious the traitor had cost her much, but Vendacious the prisoner might yet bring her victory.
“Woodcarver?” It was Scrupilo. She waved him closer. Her chief gunner edged out of the sun, sat down an intimate twenty-five feet away. Battle conditions had blown away all notions of decorum.
Scrupilo’s mind noise was an anxious jumble. He looked by parts exhausted and exhilarated and discouraged. “It’s safe to advance up the castle hill, Your Majesty,” he said. “Answering fire is almost extinguished. Parts of the castle walls have been breached. There is an end to castles here, My Queen. Even our own poor cannons would make it so.”
She bobbed agreement. Scrupilo spent most of his time with Dataset in learning to make—cannons in particular. Woodcarver spent her time learning what those inventions ultimately created. By now she knew far more than even Johanna about the social effects of weapons, from the most primitive to ones so strange that they seemed not weapons at all. A thousand million times, castle technologies had fallen to things like cannon; why should her world be different?
“We’ll move up then—”
From beyond the shade of the tent there was a faint whistle, a rare, incoming round. She folded the puppies within herself, and paused a moment. Twenty yards away, Vendacious shrank down in a great cower. But when it came, the explosion was a muffled thump above them on the hill. It might even have been one of our own. “Now our troops must take advantage of the destruction. I want Steel to know that the old games of ransom and torture will only win him worse.” We’ll most likely win the starship and the child. The question was, would either be alive when they got them? She hoped Johanna would never know the threats and the risks she planned for the next few hours.
“Yes, Majesty.” But Scrupilo made no move to depart, and suddenly seemed more bedraggled and worried than ever. “Woodcarver, I fear…”
“What? We have the tide. We must rush to sail on it.”
“Yes, Majesty… But while we move forward, there are serious dangers coming up on our flanks and rear. The enemy’s far scouts and the fires.”
Scrupilo was right. The Flenserists who operated behind her lines were deadly. There weren’t many of them; the enemy troops at Margrum Climb had been mostly killed or dispersed. The few that ate at Woodcarver’s flanks were equipped with ordinary crossbows and axes… but they were extraordinarily well-coordinated. And their tactics were brilliant; she saw the snouts and tines of Flenser himself in that brilliance. Somehow her evil child lived. Like a plague of years past, he was slipping back upon the world. Given time, those guerrilla packs would seriously hurt Woodcarver’s ability to supply her forces. Given time. Two of her stood and looked Scrupilo in the eyes, emphasizing the point: “All the more reason to move now, my friend. We are the ones far from home. We are the ones with limited numbers and food. If we don’t win soon, then we will be cut up a bit at a time.” Flensed.
Scrupilo stood up, nodding submission. “That’s what Peregrine says, too. And Johanna wants to chase right through the castle walls… But there’s something else, Your Majesty. Even if we must lunge all forward: I worked for a ten of tendays, using every clue I could understand from Dataset, to make our cannon. Majesty, I know how hard
