Dad, Johanna. But Johanna still lived, just beyond these walls…
“Jefri?”
“I don’t know either. H-hide maybe?”
For a moment they just stared at each other. Finally the fragment spoke. “You can do better than hide. You already know about the passages through these walls. If you know the entrance points—and I do—you can get to almost anywhere you want. You can even get outside.”
Johanna.
Amdi’s crying stopped. Three of him watched Tyrathect front, aft, and sideways. The rest still clung to Jefri. “We still don’t trust you, Tyrathect,” said Jefri.
“Good, good. I am a pack of various parts. Perhaps not entirely trustable.”
“Show us all the holes.” Let us decide.
“There won’t be time—”
“Okay, but start showing us. And while you do, keep relaying what Mr. Steel is saying.”
The singleton bobbed its head, and the multiple streams of Pack talk resumed. The Cloak got painfully to its feet and led the two children down a side tunnel, one where the wick torches were mostly burned out. The loudest sound down here was the soft dripping of water. The place was less than a year old, yet—except for the jagged edges of the cut stone—it seemed ancient.
Puppies was crying again. Jefri stroked the back of the one that clung to his shoulder, “Please Amdi, translate for me.”
After a moment Amdi’s voice came hesitantly in his ear. “M-Mr. Steel is asking again where we are. Tyrathect says we’re trapped by a ceiling fall in the inner wing.” In fact, they had heard the masonry shift a few minutes before, but it sounded far away. “Mr. Steel just sent the rest of Tyrathect to get Mr. Shreck and dig us out. Mr. Steel sounds so… different.”
“Maybe it’s not really him,” Jefri whispered back.
Long silence. “No. It’s him. He just seems so angry, and he’s using strange words.”
“Big words?”
“No. Scary ones. About cutting and killing… Ravna and you and me. He
… he doesn’t like us, Jefri.”
The singleton stopped. They were beyond the last wall torch, and it was too dark to see anything but shadowy forms. He pointed to a spot on the wall. Amdi reached forward and pushed at the rock. All the while Mr. Tyrathect continued talking, reporting from the outside.
“Okay,” said Amdi, “that opens. And it’s big enough for you, Jefri. I think—”
Tyrathect’s human voice said, “The Spacers are back. I can see their little boat… I got away just in time. Steel is getting suspicious. A few more seconds and he will be searching everywhere.”
Amdi looked into the dark hole. “I say we go,” he said softly, sadly.
“Yeah.” Jefri reached down to touch one of Amdi’s shoulders. The member led him to a hole cut in sharp- edged stone. If he scrunched his shoulders there would be enough room to crawl in. One of Amdi entered just ahead of him. The rest would follow. “I hope it doesn’t get any narrower than this.”
Tyrathect: “It shouldn’t. All these passages are designed for packs in light armor. The important thing: keep to upward curving passages. Keep moving and you’ll eventually get outside. Pham’s flying craft is less than, uh, five hundred meters from the walls.
Jefri couldn’t even look over his shoulder to talk to the Cloak. “What if Mr. Steel chases us into the walls?”
There was a brief silence. “He probably won’t do that, if he doesn’t know where you entered. It would take too long to find you. But,” the voice was suddenly gentler, “but there are openings on the top of the walls. In case enemy soldiers tried to sneak in from the outside, there has to be some way to kill them in the tunnels. He could pour oil down the tunnels.”
The possibility did not frighten Jefri. At the moment it just sounded bizarre. “We’ve got to hurry then.”
Jefri scrabbled forward as the rest of Amdi crawled in behind him. He was already several meters deep in stone when he heard Amdi’s voice back at the entrance, the last one to enter: “Will you be okay, Mr. Tyrathect?”
Or is this all another lie? thought Jefri.
The other’s voice had its usual, cynical tone. “I expect to land on my feet. Please do remember that I helped you.”
And then the hatch was shut and they scrambled forward, into the dark.
Negotiations, shit. It was obvious to Pham that Steel’s idea of “mutually safe meeting” was a cover for mayhem. Even Ravna wasn’t fooled by the pack’s new proposals. At least it meant that Steel was ad libbing now - that he was beyond all the scripts and schemes. The trouble was, he still wasn’t giving them any openings. Pham would have cheerfully died for a few undisturbed hours with the Countermeasure, but Steel’s setup would have them dead before they ever saw the inside of the refugee ship.
“Keep moving around, Blueshell. I want Steel to have us weighing on his mind, without being a good target.”
The Rider waved a frond in agreement and the boat bounced briefly up from the moss, drifted a hundred meters parallel to the castle walls, and descended again. They were in the no-man’s land between the forces of Woodcarver and Steel.
Johanna Olsndot twisted around to look at him. The boat was a very crowded place now, Blueshell stretched across the Riderish controls at the bow, Pham and Johanna jammed into the seats behind him—and a pack called Pilgrim in every empty space in between. “Even if you can locate the commset, don’t fire. Jefri could be close by.” For twenty minutes Steel had been promising the momentary reappearance of Jefri Olsndot.
Pham eyed her smudged face. “Yeah, we won’t fire unless we can see exactly what we’ll hit.” The girl nodded shortly. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen, but she was a good trooper. Half the people he had known in Qeng Ho would have been in limp hysterics after this pickup. And of the rest, few could have given a better status report than Johanna and her friend.
He glanced at the pack. It would take a while to get used to these critters. At first he’d thought that two of the dogs were sprouting extra heads—then he noticed the small ones were just puppies carried in jacket pockets. The “Pilgrim” was all over the boat; just what part of him should he talk to? He picked the head that was looking in his direction. “Any theories how to deal with Steel?”
The pack’s Samnorsk was better than Pham’s: “Steel and Flenser are as tricky as anything I’ve seen in Johanna’s dataset. And Flenser is cool.”
“Flenser? Hadn’t realized there was a person with that name… There was a ‘Mr. Skinner’ we talked to. Some kind of assistant to Steel.”
“Hmm. He’s tricky enough to play flunky… wish we could drop back and chat with Woodcarver about this.” The request was artfully contained in his intonation. Pham wondered briefly what percentage of Packfolk were so flexible. They might be one hell of a trading race if they ever reached space.
“Sorry, we don’t have time for that. In fact, if we can’t get in right away, we’ve lost everything. I just hope Steel doesn’t guess that.”
The heads subtly rearranged themselves. The biggest member, the one with a broken arrow shaft sticking up from its jacket, moved closer to the girl. “Well, if Steel is in charge, there’s a chance. He’s very smart, but we think he runs amok when things get tough. Your finding Johanna has probably put him to chasing his tails. Keep him off balance, and you can expect some big mistakes.”
Johanna spoke abruptly, “He might kill Jefri.”
Or blow up the starship. “Ravna, any luck with Steel?”
Her voice came back over the comm: “No. The threats are a bit more transparent now, and his Samnorsk is getting harder to understand. He’s trying to bring cannon in from north of the Castle; I don’t think he knows how much I can see… He still hasn’t brought Jefri back to the radio.”
The girl paled, but she didn’t say anything. Her hand stole up to grasp one of Pilgrim’s paws.
Blueshell had been very quiet all through the rescue, first because he had his fronds full with flying, then because the girl and the Pack had so much to say. Pham had noticed that part of Pilgrim had been politely nosing
