work. The yard was piled with cut stone and construction timbers. Now that the ground was thawing, the foundations for the inner wall were being dug. Where it was still hard, Steel’s engineers were injecting boiling water. Steam rose from the holes, obscuring the windlasses and the diggers below. The place was louder than a battle field: windlasses creaking, blades hacking at dirt, leaders shouting to work teams. It was also as crowded as close combat, though not nearly so chaotic.
Steel watched a digger pack at the bottom of one of the trenches. There were thirty members, so close to each other that their shoulders sometimes touched. It was an enormous mob, but there was nothing of an orgy about the association. Even before Woodcarver, construction and factory guilds had been doing this sort of thing: The thirty-member pack below was probably not as bright as a threesome. The front rank of ten swung mattocks in unison, carving steadily into the wall of dirt. When their heads and mattocks were extended high, the ten members behind them darted forward to scoop back the dirt and rocks that had just been freed. Behind them, a third tier of members hauled the dirt from the pit. Making it work was a complicated bit of timing—the earth was not homogeneous—but it was well within the mental ability of the pack. They could go on like this for hours, shifting first and second ranks every few minutes. In years past, the guilds jealously guarded the secret of each special melding. After a hard day’s work, such a team would split into normally intelligent packs—each going home very well paid. Steel smiled to himself. Woodcarver had improved on the old guild tricks—but Flenser had provided an essential refinement (actually a borrowing from the Tropics). Why let the team break up at the end of a work shift? Flenser work teams stayed together indefinitely, housed in barracks so small they could never recover their separate pack minds. It worked well. After a year or two, and with proper culling, the original packs in such teams were dull things that scarcely wanted to break away.
For a moment Steel watched the cut stone being lowered into the new hole and mortared into place. Then he nodded at the whitejackets in charge, and walked on. The foundation holes continued right up to the walls of the starship compound. This was the trickiest construction of all, the part that would turn the castle into a beautiful snare. A little more information via Amdijefri and he would know just what to build.
The door to the starship compound was open just now, and a whitejackets was sitting back to back in the opening. That guard heard the noise an instant before Steel: two of its members broke ranks to look around the side of the compound. Almost inaudibly, there came high screams, then honking attack calls. The whitejackets leaped from the stairs and raced around the building. Steel and his guards weren’t far behind.
He skidded to a stop at the foundation trench on the far side of the ship. The immediate source of the racket was obvious. Three packs of whitejackets were putting a team’s talker to the question. They had separated out the verbal member and were beating it with truncheon whips. This close, the mental screams were almost as loud as the shouting. The rest of the digger team was coming out of the trench, breaking into functional packs and attacking the whitejackets with their mattocks. How could things get so bloody screwed up? He could guess. These inner foundations were to contain the most secret tunnels of the entire castle, and the even more secret devices he planned to use against the Two-Legs. Of course, all of the workers on such sensitive areas would be disposed of after the job was done. Stupid though they were, maybe they had guessed their fate.
Under other circumstances, Steel might have backed off and simply watched. Failures like this could be enlightening; they let him identify the weaknesses in his subordinates, who was too bad (and too good) to continue in their jobs. This time was different. Amdijefri were aboard the starship. There was no view through the wooden walls, and surely there was another whitejackets on guard within, but— Even as he lunged forward, shouting to his servants, Steel’s back-looking member caught sight of Jefri coming out of the compound. Two of the pups were on his shoulders, the rest of Amdi spilling out around him.
“Stay back!” he yelled at them, and in his sparse Samnorsk, “Danger! Stay back!” Amdi paused, but the Two-Legs kept coming. Two soldier packs scattered out of his way. They had standing orders: never touch the alien. Another second and the careful work of a year would be destroyed. Another second and Steel might lose the world—all on account of stupidity and bad luck.
But even as his back members were shouting at the Two Legs, his forward ones leaped atop a pile of stone. He pointed at the teams coming out of the trench. “Kill the invaders!”
His personal guards moved close around him as Shreck and several troopers streamed by. Steel’s consciousness sagged in the bloody noise. This was not the controlled mayhem of experiments beneath Hidden Island. This was random death flying in all directions: arrows, spears, mattocks. Members of the digger team ran about, flailing and crying. They never had a chance, but they killed a number of others in their dying.
Steel backed away from the melee, toward Jefri. The Two-Legs was still running toward him. Amdi followed, shouting in Samnorsk. A single mindless team member, a single misaimed arrow, and the Two-Legs would die and all would be lost. Never in his life had Steel felt such panic for the safety of another. He raced to the human, surrounding him. The Two-Legs fell to his knees and grabbed Steel by a neck. Only a lifetime of discipline kept Steel from slashing back: the alien wasn’t attacking, he was hugging.
The digger team was almost all dead now, and Shreck had pushed the surviving members too far away to be a threat. Steel’s guards were securely around him only five or ten yards away. Amdi was all clumped together, cowering in the mind noise, but still shouting to Jefri. Steel tried to untangle himself from the human, but Jefri just grabbed one neck after another, sometimes two at a time. He was making burbling noises that didn’t sound like Samnorsk. Steel trembled under the assault. Don’t show the revulsion. The human would not recognize it, but Amdi might. Jefri had done this before, and Steel had taken advantage even though it cost him. The mantis child needed physical contact; it was the basis for the relationship between Amdi and Jefri. Similar trust must come from letting this thing touch him. Steel slid a head and neck across the creature’s back the way he had seen parents do with pups down in the dungeon laboratories. Jefri hugged him harder, and swept his long articulate paws across Steel’s pelt. Revulsion aside, it was a very strange experience. Ordinarily such close contact with another intelligent being could only come in battle or in sex—and in either case, there wasn’t much room for rational thought. But with this human—well, the creature responded with obvious intelligence—but there wasn’t a trace of mind noise. You could think and feel both at the same time. Steel bit down on a lip, trying to stifle his shivering. It was
… it was like having sex with a corpse.
Finally Jefri stepped back, holding his hand up. He said something very fast, and Amdi said, “Oh Lord Steel, you’re hurt. See the blood.” There was red on the human’s paw; Steel looked at himself. Sure enough, one rump had taken a nick. He hadn’t even felt it till now. Steel backed away from the mantis and said to Amdi, “It’s nothing. Are you and Jefri unhurt?”
There was a rattling exchange between the two children, almost unintelligible to Steel. “We’re fine. Thank you for protecting us.”
Fast thinking was something that Flenser had carved into Steel with knives: “Yes. But it never should have happened. The Woodcarvers disguised themselves as workers. I think they’ve been at this for days waiting for a chance at you. When we guessed the fraud, it was almost too late… You should really have stayed inside when you heard the fighting.”
Amdi hung his heads ashamedly, and translated to Jefri. “We’re sorry. We got excited, and t-then we thought you might get hurt.”
Steel made comforting noises. At the same time, two of him looked around at the carnage. Where was the whitejackets that had deserted the stairs right at the beginning? That pack would pay—His line of thought crashed to a halt as he noticed: Tyrathect. The Flenser Fragment was watching from the meeting hall. Now that he thought about it, he’d been watching since right after the battle began. To others his posture might seem impassive, but Steel could see the grim amusement in the Fragment’s expression. He nodded briefly at the other, but inside Steel cringed; he had been so close to losing everything… and the Flenser had noticed.
“Well let’s get you two back to Hidden Island.” He signaled to the keepers that had come up behind the starship.
“Not yet, Lord Steel!” said Amdi, “We just got here. A reply from Ravna should arrive very soon.”
Teeth grated, but out of sight of the children. “Yes, please do stay. But we’ll all be more careful now, right?”
“Yes, yes!” Amdi explained to the human. Steel stood forelegs-on-shoulders and patted Jefri on the head.
Steel had Shreck take the children back into the compound. Till they were out of sight, all his members looked on with an expression of pride and affection. Then he turned and walked across the pinkish mud. Where was that stupid whitejackets?
