when Vendacious was sure that it was safe), the sky was clear and almost cloudless.
In fact, there was already uneasiness about the weather. At noon it could get downright hot. The wind was constant, drying. The forest itself was drying out; they must be careful with fire. And with the sun always up and no clouds, they might be seen by lookouts many kilometers away. Scrupilo was especially bothered. He hadn’t expected to fire the cannons en route, but he had wanted to drill “his” troops more in the open.
Officially Strupilo was a council member and the Queen’s chief engineer. Since his experiment with the cannon, he had insisted on the title “Commander of Cannoneers'. To Johanna, the engineer had always seemed curt and impatient. His members were almost always moving, and with jerky abruptness. He spent almost as much time with the Dataset as the Queen or Peregrine Wickwrackscar, yet he had very little interest in people-oriented subjects. “He has a blindness for all but machines,” Woodcarver once said of him, “but that’s how I made him. He’s invented much, even before you came.”
Scrupilo had fallen in love with the cannons. For most packs, firing the things was a painful experience. Since that first test, Scrupilo had fired the things again and again, trying to improve the tubes, the powder, and the explosive rounds. His fur was scored with dozens of powder burns. He claimed that nearby gun thunder cleared the mind—but most everybody else agreed it made you daft.
During rest stops Scrup was a familiar figure, strutting up and down the line, haranguing his cannoneers. He claimed even the shortest stop was an opportunity for training, since in real combat speed would be essential. He had designed special epaulets, based on Nyjoran gunners’ ear muffs. They didn’t cover his low-sound ears at all, but instead the forehead and shoulder tympana of his trigger member. Actually tying the muffs down was a mind- numbing thing to do, but for the moments right around firing it was worth it. Scrupilo wore his own muffs all the time, but unsnugged. They looked like silly little wings sticking out from his head and shoulders. He obviously thought the effect was raffish—and in fact, his gunner crews also made a big thing of wearing the gear at all times. After a while, even Johanna could see that the drill was paying off. At least, they could swing the gun tubes around at an instant’s notice, stuff them with fake powder and ball, and shout the Tinish equivalent of “BANG!'.
The army carried much more gunpowder than food. The packs were to live off the forest. Johanna had little experience with camping in an atmosphere. Were forests usually this rich? It was certainly nothing like the urban forests of Straum, where you needed a special license to walk off marked paths, and most of the wild life were mechanical imitations of Nyjoran originals. This place was wilder than even the stories of Nyjora. After all, that world had been well settled before it fell to medievalism. The Tines’ had never been civilized, had never spread cities across continents. Pilgrim guessed there were fewer than thirty million packs in all the world. The Northwest was only beginning to be settled. Game was everywhere. In their hunting, the Tines were like animals. Troopers raced through the underforest. The favorite hunt was one of sheer endurance, where the prey was chased until it dropped. That was rarely practical here, but they got almost as much pleasure from chasing the unwary into ambushes.
Johanna didn’t like it. Was this a medieval perversion or a peculiarly Tinish one? If allowed the time, the troops didn’t use their bows and knives. The pleasure of the hunt included slashing at throats and bellies with teeth and claws. Not that the forest creatures were without defenses: for millions of years threat and counterthreat had evolved here. Almost every animal could generate ultrasonic screeching that totally drowned the thought of any nearby pack. There were parts of the forest that seemed silent to Johanna, but through which the army drove at a cautious gallop, troops and drivers writhing in agony from the unseen assault.
Some of the forest animals were more sophisticated…
Twenty-five days out, the army was stuck trying to get across the biggest valley yet. In the middle—mostly hidden by the forest—a river flowed down to the western sea. The walls of these valleys were like nothing Johanna had seen in the parks of Straum: If you took a cross-section at right angles to the river, the walls made a “U” shape. They were cliff-like steep at the high edges, then became slopes and finally a gentle plain where the river ran. “That’s how the ice gouges it,” explained Woodcarver. “There are places further up where I’ve actually watched it happen,” and she showed Johanna explanations in the Dataset. That was happening more and more; Pilgrim and Woodcarver and sometimes even Scrupilo seemed to know more of a child’s modern education than Johanna.
They had already been across a number of smaller valleys. Getting down the steep parts was always tedious, but so far the paths had been good. Vendacious took them to the edge this latest valley.
Woodcarver and staff stood under the forest cover just short of the dropoff. Some meters back, Johanna sat surrounded by Peregrine Wickwrackscar. The trees at this elevation reminded Johanna a little of pines. The leaves were narrow and sharp and lasted all year. But the bark was blistered white and the wood itself was pale blond. Strangest of all were the flowers. They sprouted purple and violet from the exposed roots of the trees. Tines’ world had no analog of honeybees, but there was constant motion among the flowers as thumb-sized mammals climbed from plant to plant. There were thousands of them, but they seemed to have no interest in anything except the flowers and the sweetness that oozed from them. She leaned back among the flowers and admired the view while the Queen gobbled with Vendacious. How many kilometers could you see from here? The air was as clear as she had even known it on Tines’ world. East and west the valley seemed to stretch forever. The river was a silver thread where it occasionally showed through the forest of the valley floor.
Pilgrim nudged her with a nose and nodded toward the Queen. Woodcarver was pointing this way and that over the dropoff. “Argument is in the air. You want a translation?”
“Yeah.”
“Woodcarver doesn’t like this path,” Pilgrim’s voice changed to the tone the Queen used when speaking Samnorsk: “The path is completely exposed. Anyone on the other side can sit and count our every wagon. Even from miles away. [A mile is a fat kilometer.]”
Vendacious whipped his heads around in that indignant way of his. He gobbled something that Johanna knew was angry. Pilgrim chuckled and changed his voice to imitate the security chief’s: “Your Majesty! My scouts have scoured the valley and far wall. There is no threat.”
“You’ve done miracles, I know, but do you seriously claim to have covered that entire north face? That’s five miles away, and I know from my youth that there are dozens of cavelets—you have those memories yourself.”
“That stopped him!” said Pilgrim, laughing.
“C’mon. Just translate.” She was quite capable of interpreting body language and tone by now. Sometimes even the Tinish chords made sense.
“Hmph. Okay.”
The Queen hiked her baby packs around and sat down. Her tone became conciliatory. “If this weather weren’t so clear, or if there were night times, we might try it, but—You remember the old path? Twenty miles inland from here? That should be overgrown by now. And the road coming back is—”
Gobble-hiss from Vendacious, angry. “I tell you, this is safe! We’ll lose days on the other path. If we arrive late at Flenser’s, all my work will be for nothing. You must go forward here.”
“Oops,” Pilgrim whispered, unable to resist a little editorializing, “Ol’ Vendacious may have gone too far with that.” The Queen’s heads arched back. Pilgrim’s imitation of her human voice said, “I understand your anxiety, pack of my blood. But we go forward where I say. If that is intolerable to you, I will regretfully accept your resignation.”
“But you need me!”
“Not that much.”
Johanna suddenly realized that the whole mission could fall apart right here, without even a shot being fired. Where would we be without Vendacious? She held her breath and watched the two packs. Parts of Vendacious walked in quick circles, stopping for angry instants to stare at Woodcarver. Finally all his necks drooped. “Um. My apologies, Your Majesty. As long as you find me of use, I beg to continue in your service.”
Now Woodcarver relaxed, too. She reached to pet her puppies. They had responded with her mood, thrashing in their carriers and hissing. “Forgiven. I want your independent advice, Vendacious. It has been miraculously good.”
Vendacious smiled weakly.
“I didn’t think the jerk had it in him,” Pilgrim said near Johanna’s ear.
It took two dayarounds to reach the old path. As Woodcarver had predicted, it was overgrown. More: In
