We went back inside, through the kitchen and across the little walled herb garden into the scullery behind the dining hall. Smoke fumes strung the air like silk hangings. I had one last means of escape, one I believed they didn't – couldn't – know about.
Barbarisater twitched and I knew someone was coming. I pushed Aemos back behind me.
Two figures came into view. One was Eleena Koi, the untouchable assigned to the house. She was supporting Xel Sastre, one of Kircher's men. He had been wounded in the arm and shoulder.
'Eleena!' I hissed.
'Lord! Thank the Emperor! We thought you were dead!' Her narrow face was taut with panic and Sastre's blood was all over her brushed epinchire gown.
I took a quick look at Sastre's wounds. They were bad, but he'd live if we could get him to an infirmary.
'Have you seen any others? Kircher? Have you seen him?'
'I saw him die/ said Sastre. 'They were driving us back, and he stayed to hold the main hall. Took on twenty of the bastards.'
'You sure he's-'
They blew him apart. But not before he'd finished a good half dozen. He told me… told me Kronsky let them in.'
'What?'
'Kronsky. The new guy hired last month. He betrayed the whole house. Shut down the defence system.'
An inside job, as I had feared. Kircher had employed this Kronsky in good faith, and no doubt scrupulously vetted his background and subjected him to a mind-search. And I had welcomed Kronsky to my house. My respect for the resources, skill and preparation of my unknown enemy grew.
A speeder howled by close outside, and the sound of its sporadic fire shook the windows in their frames.
'Can you keep up?' I asked Sastre and Eleena. They nodded. Where are we going?' asked Eleena.
'Out through the dining hall, then quickly across the lawn of the rose garden into the orchard behind the maze. After that, we swing south, make our way to the front fence and then over the main road into the woods.'
I was describing a journey of over two kilometres, but no one balked. Staying put was suicide.
I wanted to try my vox again and try to raise Medea, but knew it was pointless. The raiders had all channels covered. Instead, I reached out with my mind.
To my amazement, I was answered almost at once. It was Vance.
The dining hall was in darkness and the buffed wood floor was littered with glass. The windows had been blown in and the drapes rustled in the night breeze.
We made our way across to the windows. Outside, the rose garden was quiet and gloomy. The light of the fires cast long shadows across the immaculate lawn.
We ducked back inside as a flier flew over. It paused above the lawn, engines wailing, its downjets rippling the surface of the lawn. It was so close I could hear the crackle and sputter of the cockpit intervox. The searchlamp swung towards us, suddenly blinding, jabbing beams of frosty white light into the dining hall. The glass litter glittered like a constellation.
Then the speeder moved off again, thundering around towards the back of the house.
'Go!' I hissed.
We ran across the lawn. Aemos was surprisingly spry, but Eleena struggled with Sastre. I dropped back and helped her with him. He kept apologising, telling us to leave him.
He was a good man.
We reached the edge of the orchard and lost ourselves in the shadows of the arbors, following the back of the maze. The air was richly scented with the maze's pungent privet and the sweet, acid smell of the ripening fruit. Moths and nocturnal insects fluttered in the half light.
Well into the orchard, seventy metres from the house, we stopped for breath. Weapons fire and shouting still echoed from the residence. I looked around, trying not to look at the brilliant blaze of the buildings so I could adjust to the gloom under the trees. They were low, graceful apple, tumin and ploin, planted in orderly rows. The white bark of the tumin trees shone like snow in the dimness, and some of the early ploin clusters had been carefully bagged against scavenging birds. Scant days before, I had been out here with the junior staff, joking as we gathered up the first tumin crop. Altwald had been with us, taping the bags around the dark, swelling ploins. That night, Jarat had served a glorious tumin tart as dessert.
Jarat. I wondered what had become of her in all this.
I never did find out.
Sastre stiffened and brought up his laspistol at a movement nearby, but it was just a garden servitor, moving along the aisle of fruit trees, spraying pesticide. Oblivious to the carnage nearby, it was simply obeying its nightly programming.
We started forward again, but when I looked back, I saw several figures coming out of the dining hall windows and spreading out across the rose garden.
I bade the other three move ahead and crept back, staying as concealed as possible, in case they had night-vision lenses or motion detectors.
I came upon the slow-moving servitor from behind, opened a back panel as it trudged monotonously forward, and keyed in new instructions. It moved off towards the rose garden, adjusting its route only to avoid trees. I had increased its pace.
I was already on my way back to rejoin the others when I heard the first few shots: the raiders, surprised by the sudden appearance of the servitor. With any luck, it would delay or distract them. If they had been following
our movement, then maybe the servitor would convince them that was all they had detected.
We kept going until we were well clear of the maze and had left the orchard behind. We crossed dark, overgrown paddocks, fumbling blindly. The only light came from the haze in the sky behind us where Spaeton House blazed.
We turned south, or a rough estimation of south. This was still my estate – indeed the land I held title for stretched for several kilometres in all directions – but this was uncultivated wood and scrubland. I could hear the sea, tantalisingly out of reach beyond the headland behind us.
I wondered how far we could get before the raiders finished their quartering of the house and realised I had slipped through their fingers.
We hurried on for another twenty minutes, passing through glades of scrawny beech and wiry fintle. The ground was lush with nettles. We reached a waterlogged irrigation ditch, and it took us several minutes to manhandle Sastre across.
I could see the perimeter fence and the road beyond. On the far side of that, the rising mass of the wild woodland, the heritage forests that still covered two thirds of Gudrun, untouched and unmolested since the first colonies were built there.
We're almost there/ I whispered. 'Come on/
Tempting fate, as always, Eisenhorn. Tempting fate.
