“Corporal, you’re out of line!”
“This cold light’s not going to last the hour. See, it’s fading.”
“Well, don’t shake it up, you moron, when it glows brighter it goes faster.”
“Give me that—!”
Bothari’s teeth gleamed in the darkness. It was the first smile Cordelia had seen crack his face in months. Silently, he saluted her. They tiptoed softly away, into the chill of the Dendarii night.
Back on the trail, Bothari sighed deeply. “If only I’d had a grenade to drop down that vent. Their search parties would still be shooting at each other this time next week.”
Chapter Thirteen
Four hours down the night trail, the distinctive black and white horse loomed out of the dark. Kly was a shadow aboard it, but his thick profile and battered hat were instantly recognizable.
“Bothari!” The name huffed from Kly’s mouth. “We live. Grace of God.”
Bothari’s voice was flat. “What happened to you, Major?”
“I almost ran into one of Vordarian’s squads at a cabin I was delivering mail to. They’re actually trying to go over these hills house by house. Dosing everyone they meet with fast-penta. They must be bringing the drug in by the barrel.”
“We expected you back last night,” said Cordelia. She tried not to let her tone sound too accusing.
The felt hat bobbed as Kly gave her a weary nod of greeting. “Would’ve been, except for Vordarian’s bloody patrol. I didn’t dare let them question me. I spent a day and a night, dodging ’em. Sent my niece’s husband to get you. But when he got to my place this morning, Vordarian’s men were all over. I figured we’d lost everything. But when they were still all over by nightfall, I took heart. They wouldn’t still be looking for you if they’d found you. Figured I’d better get my ass up here and do some scouting myself. This is beyond hope.”
Kly turned his horse around, heading back down the trail. “Here, Sergeant, put the boy up.”
“I can carry the boy. Think you’d better give m’lady a lift. She’s about out.”
Too true. It was a measure of Cordelia’s exhaustion that she went willingly to Kly’s horse. Between them, Bothari and Kly shoved her aboard, perched astraddle on the pinto’s warm rump. They started off, Cordelia gripping the mailman’s coat.
“What happened to you?” Kly asked in turn.
Cordelia let Bothari answer, in his short sentences made even shorter by his burdened stride, as he carried Gregor piggyback. When he got to a mention of the men heard down the vent, Kly barked a laugh, then clapped a hand over his mouth. “They’ll be weeks getting out of there. Good work, Sergeant!”
“It was Lady Vorkosigan’s idea.”
“Oh?” Kly twisted around to glance back over his shoulder at Cordelia, clinging wanly.
“Aral and Piotr both seemed to think diversion worthwhile,” Cordelia explained. “I gather Vordarian has limited reserves.”
“You think like a soldier, m’lady.” Kly sounded approving.
Cordelia wrinkled her brow in dismay. What an appalling compliment. The last thing she wanted was to start thinking like a soldier, playing their game by their rules. The hallucinatory military world-view was horribly infectious, though, immersed in it as she was now. How long can I tread water?
Kly led them on another two hours of night marching, striking out on unfamiliar trails. In deep pre—dawn dark they came to a shack, or house. It seemed to be of similar construction to Kly’s place, but more extensive, with rooms built on and other rooms built on to the additions. A light from a tiny flame, some sort of greasy homemade candle, burned in a window.
An old woman in a nightgown and jacket, her grey hair in a braid down her back, came to the door and motioned them within. Another old man—but younger than Kly—took the horse out of sight toward a shed. Kly made to go with him.
“Is it safe here?” Cordelia asked dizzily. Where is here?
Kly shrugged. “They searched here day before yesterday. Before I sent for m’ nephew-in-law. Checked it off clean.”
The old woman snorted, surly memory in her eye.
“What with the caves, and all the unchecked homesteads, and the lake, it’ll be a while before they get around to re-checking. They’re still searching the lake bottom, I hear, they’ve flown in all kinds of equipment. It’s as safe as any.” He went off after his horse.
Meaning, as unsafe as any. Bothari was already taking his boots off. His feet must be bad. Her feet were a mess, her slippers walked to flinders, and Gregor’s rag shoes utterly destroyed. She’d never felt so near the end of all endurance, bone-weary, blood-weary, though she’d done much longer hikes before. It was as if her truncated pregnancy had drained life itself out of her, to pass it on to another. She let herself be guided, fed bread and cheese and milk and put to bed in a little side room, herself on one narrow cot and drooping Gregor on another. She would believe in safety tonight the way Barrayaran children believed in Father Frost at Winterfair, true because she desperately wanted it to be.
The next day a raggedy boy of about ten appeared out of the woods, riding Kly’s sorrel horse bareback with a rope halter. Kly made Cordelia, Gregor, and Bothari hide out of sight while he paid the boy off with a few coins, and Sonia, Kly’s aged niece, packed him some sweet cakes to speed him on his way. Gregor peeked wistfully out the corner of one curtained window as the child vanished again.
“I didn’t dare go myself,” Kly explained to Cordelia. “Vordarian has three platoons of men up there now.” A wheezing chuckle escaped him at some inner vision. “But the boy knows nothing but that the old mailman was sick and needed his re-mount.”
“They didn’t fast-penta that child, did they?”
“Oh, yes.”
“They dared!”
Kly’s black-stained lips compressed in sympathy with her outrage. “If he can’t get hold of Gregor, Vordarian’s coup is likely doomed. And he knows it. There’s not much he wouldn’t dare to do, at this point.” He paused. “You can be glad fast-penta has replaced torture, eh?”
Kly’s nephew-in-law helped him saddle up the sorrel, and buckle on the mailbags. The mailman adjusted his hat, and climbed up.
“If I don’t keep my schedule, it will be near-impossible for the Gen’ral to contact me,” he explained. “Got to go, I’m late already. I’ll be back. You and the boy stay inside, out of sight, as much as you can, m’lady.” He turned his horse toward the bare-branched woods. The animal blended quickly into the red-brown native scrub.
Cordelia found Kly’s last advice all too easy to follow. She spent most of the next four days in her cot-bed. The dull silence of hours went by in a fog, a relapse into the frightening fatigue she’d experienced after the placental transfer operation and its near-lethal complications. Conversation provided no diversion. The hill-folk were as laconic as Bothari. It was the threat of fast-penta, Cordelia thought. The less you knew, the less you could tell. The old woman Sonia’s eyes probed Cordelia curiously, but she never asked anything beyond, “You hungry?” Cordelia didn’t even know her last name.
Baths. After the first one, Cordelia did not ask again. The old couple worked all afternoon to haul and heat enough water for herself and Gregor. Their simple meals were nearly as much labor. No Pull Tab To Heat Contents up here. Technology, a woman’s best friend. Unless the technology appeared in the form of a nerve disruptor in the hand of some dead-eyed soldier hunting you down carelessly as an animal.
Cordelia counted over the days since the coup, since all hell had broken loose. What was happening in the larger world? What response from the space forces, from planetary embassies, from conquered Komarr? Would Komarr seize the chaos to revolt, or had Vordarian taken them by surprise too? Aral, what are you doing out there?
Sonia, though she asked no questions, would now and then return from outings and drop bits of local news. Vordarian’s troops, headquartered in Piotr’s residence, were close to abandoning the search of the lake bottom. Hassadar was sealed, but refugees escaped in a trickle; someone’s children, smuggled out, had arrived to stay with
