"Partewx?" Then me other querulous guard was half out
of his seat as his companion ran to give the alarm. He didn't
make it to the far door. Pog landed on his neck and began
stabbing rapidly with his stiletto at the guard's head and face.
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The creature swung its four arms wildly, trying to dislodge
the flapping dervish that clung relentlessly to neck and head.
Ror swung low with her sword and cut through both legs.
The other who had turned and drawn his own scimitar
swung at Bribbens. The boatman hopped halfway to the
ceiling, and the deadly arc passed feet below their intended
target.
As the guard was bringing back his sword for another cut,
Jen-Tom swung at him with his staff. The guard ducked the
whistling club-head and brought his curved blade around. As
he'd been taught to, Jon-Tom spun the long shaft in his hands
as if it were an oversized baton. The guard jumped out of
range. Jon-Tom thumbed one of the hidden studs, sad a foot
of steel slid directly into the startled guard's thorax. Caz's
sword decapitated him before he hit the floor.
"Hold!"
Everyone looked to the right. There was a waste room
recessed into that wall. It had produced a fourth administrator
guard. He was taller than Jon-Tom, and the insect shape
struggling in the three-armed grasp looked small in comparison.
The insect head of Talea's disguise had been ripped off.
Her red hair cascaded down to her shoulders. Two arms held
her firmly around neck and waist while the thud held a knife
over the hollow of her throat.
"Move and she dies," said the guard. He began to edge
toward the open doorway leading outside, keeping his back
hard against the wall.
"If he gives the alarm we're finished, mates," Mudge
whispered.
"Let's rush them," said Caz,,
"No!" Jon-Tom put an arm in front of the rabbit. "We
can't. He'll—"
Talea continued to struggle in the unrelenting grip. "Do
something, you idiots!"
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Seeing that no one was going to act and that she and her
captor were only a few yards from the doorway, she put both
feet on the floor and thrust convulsively upward. The knife
slid through her throat, emerging from the back of her neck.
Claret spurted across the stones.
Everyone was too stunned to scream. The guard cursed, let
the limp body fall as he bolted for the exit. Pog was waiting
for him with a knife that went straight between the compound
eyes. The guard never saw him. He'd had eyes only for his
grounded opponents and hadn't noticed the bat hanging above
the portal.
Caz and Mudge finished the giant quickly. Jon-Tom bent
over the tiny, curled shape of Talea. The blood flowed freely
but was already beginning to slow. Major arteries and veins
had been severed.
He looked back at Clothahump but the wizard could only
shake his head. "No time, no time, my boy. It's a long spell.
Not enough time."
Weak life looked out from those sea-green eyes. Her mouth
twisted into a grimace and her voice was faint. "One of.. .these
days you're going to have to make... the important decisions
without help, Jon-Tom." She smiled faintly. "You know... I
think I love you...."
The tears came in a flood, uncontrollable. "It's not fair,
Talea, Damn! It's not fair! You can't tell me something like
that and then leave me! You can't!"
But she died anyway.
He found he was shaking. Caz grabbed his shoulders,
shook him until it stopped.
"No time for that now, my friend. I'm sorry, too, but this
isn't the place.for being sorry."
"No, it is not." Clothahump was examining the body.
"She'll stop bleeding soon. When she does, clean her chitin
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THE HOUR Of THE GATE
and put her head back on. It's over in the corner there, where
the guard threw it."
Jon-Tom stood, looked dazedly down at the wizard. "You
"I'll explain later, Jon-Tom. But all may not be lost."
"What the hell do you mean, 'all may not be lost'?" His
voice rose angrily. "She's dead, you senile old..."
Clothahump let him finish, then said, "I forgive the names
because I understand the motivation and the source. Know
only that sometimes even death can be forgiven, Jon-Tom."
"Are you saying you can bring her back?"
"I don't know. But if we don't get out of here quickly
we'll never have the chance to find out."
Hor and Bribbens slipped the insect head back into place
over the pale face and flowing hair. Jon-Tom wouldn't help.
"Now everyone look and act official," Clothahump urged
them. "We're taking a dead prisoner out for burial."
Bribbens, Mudge, Caz, and Hor supported Talea's body
while Pog flew formation overhead and Jon-Tom and Clothahump
marched importantly in front. A few passing Plated Folk
glanced at them when they emerged from the doorway, but no
one dared question them.
One of the benefits of infiltrating a totalitarian society,
Jon-Tom thought bitterly. Everyone's afraid to ask anything
of anyone who looks important.
They were on the main floor of the palace. It took them a
while to find an exit (they dared not ask directions), but
before long they were outside in the mist of the palace
square.
The sky was as gray and silent as ever and the humidity as
bad, but for all except the disconsolate Jon-Tom it was as
though they'd suddenly stepped out onto a warm beach
fronting the southern ocean.
"We have to find transport again," Clothahump was
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murmuring as they made their way with enforced slowness
across the square. "Soon someone will note either our ab-
sence or that of our belongings." He allowed himself a grim
chuckle.
"I would not care to be the prison commandant when
Eejakrat leams of our escape. They'll be after us soon
enough, but they should have a hell of a time locating us. We
blend in perfectly, and only a few have seen us. Nevertheless,
Eejakrat will do everything in his power to recapture us."
"Where can we go?" Mudge asked, shifting slightly under
the weight of the body. "To the north, back for Ironcloud?"
"No. That is where Eejakrat will expect us to go."
"Why would he suspect that?" asked Jon-Tom.
"Because I made it a point to give him sufficient hints to
that effect during our conversations," the wizard replied, "in
case the opportunity to flee arose."
"If he's as sly as you say, won't he suspect we're heading
in another direction?"
"Perhaps. But I do not believe he will think that we might
attempt to return home through the entire assembled army of
the Greendowns."
"Won't they be given the alarm about us also?"
"Of course. But militia do not display initiative. I think we
shall be able to slip through them."
That satisfied Jon-Tom, but Clothahump was left to muse
over what might have been. So close, they'd been so close!
And still they did not know what the dead mind was, or how
Eejakrat manipulated it. But while willing to take chances, he
was not quite as mad as Jon-Tom might have thought. I have
no death wish, young spellsinger, he thought as he regarded
the tall insect shape marching next to him. We tried as no
other mortals could try, and we failed. If fate wills that we are
to perish soon, it will be on the ramparts of the Jo-Troom
Gate confronting the foe, not in the jaws of Cugluch.
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Once among the milling, festering mob of city dwellers
they could relax a little. It took a while to locate an alley with
a delivery wagon and no curious onlookers. Clothahump
could not work the spell under the gaze of kibbitzers.
The long, narrow wagon was pulled by a single large
lizard. They waited. No one else entered the alley. Eventually
the driver emerged from the back entrance of a warren.
Clothahump confronted him and while the others kept watch,
hastily spelled the unfortunate driver under.
"Climb aboard then, citizens," the driver said obligingly
when the wizard had finished. They did so, carefully laying
Talea's body on the wagon bed between them.
They were two-thirds of the way to the Pass, the hustle of
Cugluch now largely behind them, when the watchful Jon-
Tom said cautiously to the driver, "You're not hypnotized,
are you? You never were under the spell."
The worker looked back down at him with unreadable
compound eyes as hands moved toward weapons. "No,
citizen. I have not been magicked, if that is what you mean.
Stay your hands." He gestured at the roadway they were
traveling. "It would do you only ill, for you are surrounded
by my people." Swords and knives remained reluctantly
sheathed.
"Where are you taking us, then?" Ror asked nervously.
"Why haven't you given the alarm already?"
"As to the first, stranger, I am taking you where you wish
to go, to the head of the Troom Pass. I can understand why
you wish to go there, though I do not think you will end your
journey alive. Yet perhaps you will be fortunate and make it
successfully back to your own lands."
"You know what we are, then?" asked a puzzled Jon-Tom.
The driver nodded. "I know that beneath those skins of
chitin there are others softer and differently colored."
"But how?"
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The driver pointed to the back of the wagon. Mudge
looked uncomfortable. "Well now wot the bloody 'ell were I
supposed to do? I thought 'is mind had been turned to mush
and I 'ad to pee. Didn't think 'e saw anyway, the 'ard-shelled
pervert!"
"It does not matter," the driver said.
"Listen, if you're not magicked and you know who and
what we are, why are you taking us quietly where we wish to
go instead of turning us over to the authorities?" Jon-Tom
wanted to know.
"I just told you: it does not matter." The driver made a
two-armed gesture indicative of great indifference. "Soon all
will die anyway."
"I take it you don't approve of the coming war."
"No, I do not." His antennae quivered with emotion as he
spoke. "It is so foolish, the millenia-old expenditure of life
and time in hopes of conquest."
"I must say you are the most peculiar Plated person I have
ever encountered," said Clothahump.
"My opinions are not widely shared among my own
people," the driver admitted. He chucked the reins, and the
wagon edged around a line of motionless carts burdened with
military supplies. Their wagon continued onward, one set of
wheels still on the roadway, the other bouncing over the rocks
and mud of the swampy earth.
"But perhaps things will change, given time and sensible
thought."
"Not if your armies achieve victory they won't," said
Bribbens coldly. "Wouldn't you be happy as the rest if your
soldiers win their conquest?"
"No, I would not," the driver replied firmly. "Death and
killing never build anything, for all that it may appear
otherwise."
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"A most enlightened outlook, sir," said Clothahump. "See
here, why don't you come with us back to the warmlands?"
"Would I be welcomed?" asked the insect. "Would the
other warmlanders understand and sympathize the way you
do? Would they greet me as a friend?"
"They would probably, I am distressed to confess," said a
somber Caz, "slice you into small chitinous bits."
"You see? I am doomed whichever way I chose. If I went
with you I would suffer physically. If I stay, it is my mind that
suffers constant agony."
"I can understand your feelings against the war," said
Flor, "but that still doesn't explain why you're risking your
own neck to help us."
The driver made a shruglike gesture. "I help those who
need help. That is my nature. Now I help you. Soon, when
the fighting starts, there will be many to help. I do not take
sides among the needy. I wish only that such idiocies could
be stopped. It seems though that they can only be waited
out."
The driver, an ordinary citizen of the Greendowns, was full
of surprises. Clothahump had been convinced that there was
no divergence of opinion among the Plated Folk. Here was
loquacious proof of a crack in that supposed unity of totalitar-
ian thought, a crack that might be exploited later. Assuming,
of course, that the forthcoming invasion could be stopped.
Several days later they found themselves leaving the last of
the cultivated lowlands. Mist faded behind them, and the
friendly silhouettes of the mountains of Zaryt's Teeth became
solid.
No wagons plied their trader's wares here, no farmers
waded patiently through knee-deep muck. There was only
military traffic. According to Clothahump they were already
within the outskirts of the Pass.
Military bivouacs extended from hillside to hillside and for
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miles to east and west. Tens of thousands of insect troops
milled quietly, expectantly, on the gravelly plain, waiting for
the word to march. From the back of the wagon Jon-Tom and
his companions could look out upon an ocean of antennae and
eyes and multiple legs. And sharp iron, flashing like a million
mirrors in the diffuse light of a winter day.
No one questioned them or eyed the wagon with suspicion
until they reached the last lines of troops. Ahead lay only the
ancient riverbed of the Troom Pass, a dry chasm of sand and
rock which in the previous ten millenia had run more with
blood than ever it had with water
.
The officer was winged but flightless, slim, limber of body
and thought. He noted the wagon and its path, stopped filling
out the scroll in his charge, and hurried to pace the vehicle.
Its occupants gave every indication of being engaged in
reasonable business, but they ought not to have been where
they were. The quality of initiative, so lacking in Plated Folk
troops, was present in some small amount in this particular
individual officer.
He glanced up at the driver, his tone casual and not hostile.
"Where are you going, citizen?"
"Delivering supplies to the forward scouts," said Caz
quickly.
The officer slackened his pace, walked now behind the
wagon as he inspected its occupants. "That is understand-
able, but I see no supplies. And who is the dead one?" He
gestured with claws and antennae at the limp shape of Talea,
still encased in her disguise.
"An accident, a most unforgivable brawl in the ranks,"
Caz informed him.
"Ranks? What ranks? I see no insignia on the body. Nor
on any of you."
"We're not regular army," said the driver, much to the
relief of the frantic Caz.
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"Ah. But such a fatal disturbance should be reported. We
cannot tolerate fighting among ourselves, not now, with final
victory so soon to come."
Jon-Tom tried to look indifferent as he turned his head to
look past the front of the wagon. They were not quite past the
front-line troops. Leave us alone, he thought furiously at the
persistent officer. Go back to your work and leave this one
wagon to itself!
"We already have reported it," said Caz worriedly. "To
our own commandant."
"And who might that be?" came the unrelenting, infuriat-
ing question.'
"Colonel Puxolix," said the driver.
"I know of no such officer."
"How can one know every officer in the army?"
"Nevertheless, perhaps you had best report the incident to
my own command. It never hurts one to be thorough, citizen.
And I would still like to see the supplies you are to deliver."
He turned as if to signal to several chattering soldiers stand-
ing nearby.
"Here's one of 'em!" said Flor. Her sword lopped off the
officer's head in the midst of a never-to-be-answered query.
For an instant they froze in readiness, hands on weapons,
eyes on the troops nearest the wagon. Yet there was no
immediate reaction, no cry of alarm. Flor's move had been so