Homecoming

XXV

The city appeared on the horizon and seemed to move toward them, spreading, the black tower dominant even at a distance, marking the palace. And now what? Ivan thought. He glanced at Charles DuBois sitting beside him, wiry, muscular, the perennial handgun champion at the Deep Harbor harvest games. Sidearms were belted to his waist now and the pockets of his mechanic’s coveralls bulged with grenades. The man’s hobby was guns and his reading was of war. Probably he’d regretted living on New Home instead of, say, twentieth-century Earth.

Ivan reduced their air speed as they approached the first rows of buildings, and suddenly he was aware of something between Charles and himself. The Northman knelt there, or seemed to, and on the other side of him-through him-he saw Charles staring narrowly.

“Go slower and circle the tower not far above the higher roofs,” Nils instructed. The voice was not a voice, Ivan realized; it spoke within his mind. He cut both speed and altitude and swung around the tower.

“Closer and slower. Then look down and watch for me.” And he was gone. Seconds later Ivan saw him atop a ventilator cap, and floated down beside it, not quite landing. Nils disappeared. Charles jumped out, hurriedly placed four small charges, and jumped back aboard. The pinnace veered away some seventy meters, there was a sharp blast, and the ventilator cap spun into the air, accompanied by shards of rock and pieces of mortar.

Quickly Ivan moved the pinnace back to the spot, landed, and activated the shield. Speed was important now. Charles was out again, with a collapsible tripod, and swiftly began setting it up, its pulley over the shaft opening. The six Northmen crouched in the pinnace, still grinning, waiting.

Nils was there again. “It’s not blocked,” he said, gesturing at the shaft. “They don’t know how I got out. The noise alarmed them just now in the guard room, but they don’t know what it was or what it means. I’ll go back down and distract the guard officer. The longer it is before they know what’s happening, the less chance they’ll have to bring in more soldiers.”

He disappeared again.

Charles pulled slender cable off a winch newly bolted to the pinnace deck. It had loops at five-meter intervals. “All right, out!” he said to Sten, who gestured to the other Northmen. Ivan knelt by the winch control and watched first Charles and then the Northmen start one by one down the shaft. The last two were still on top when orcs came streaming from a stairway onto the roof with swords drawn, charging the pinnace and ventilator. The first several crashed into the unseen shield as into a stone wall, falling back stunned. Those behind stopped short and stood uncertainly, their eyes shifting from the final disappearing Northman to the pinnace door, through which they could see the kneeling Ivan. Their leader spoke sharply. Two of his men trotted to the head of the open stairs and out of sight. Then he looked thoughtfully at the commast: Ivan moved to the panel and lowered it to safety.

At the bottom of the shaft, Charles crawled quickly into the narrow horizontal duct. Nils was waiting at the junction ahead and directed him into the branch that led to the guard room. The eyeless Northman was a pale light that illuminated nothing; the walls of the duct were as black as if he wasn’t there. When Charles had negotiated the turn and started toward the opening, he heard an angry voice ahead, with a tone of command.

“The guard captain is a telepath,” Nils whispered in his mind. “He’s sensed you; be ready. They’ll shoot arrows into the duct as soon as they see anything.”

A cold hand had gripped Charles’ gut as he crawled. Now it turned to a feeling of utter paralysis through which somehow he continued to crawl forward. The square of light ahead grew quickly until it was an opening almost within reach of his hand.

And almost miraculously the fear disappeared. Now he felt only calm and alert, quick and strong. He lay there long enough for the warriors to close up behind him, at the same time pulling a grenade from a pocket. Sten squeezed his foot. He pulled the pin, let the safety lever snap free, and deliberately counted to three before awkwardly tossing the grenade through the opening. An arrow zipped into the duct and rebounded, slicing his calf with its sharp-edged head, and there was an explosion in the guard room. Quickly, furiously, he scrambled head-first into the opening, and, without taking time to look or think, he rolled onto his back and pulled his upper body out with his hands. Sten grasped his feet and pushed, and in one spasmodic moment he was being lowered head-first, then dropped. The stone floor crashed into him, striking his extended hands, then his back, and he rolled to his knees beside a shattered orc, drawing his autopistol. An orc in a doorway was pulling his bowstring. Charles snapped a shot, and saw him fall as the arrow struck the high ceiling.

There was an instant’s silence, then a thud and a grunt and Sten rolled into him. Instantly the Northman was on his feet, reaching up to help the next man who was sliding out of the duct, back arched, like some grotesque steel-mailed myth birthing from a stone womb. A hurried arrow darted from the doorway, striking Sten’s steel cap and deflecting. Charles fired three more rounds, drew a second grenade, let the safety go, then fired another short burst as he rushed and pitched the grenade around the corner of the door. It roared, fragments whirred, and he darted in. There were cots and fallen men. One man was still on his feet against a wall, eyes and mouth wide, and he shot him down.

The key! He was supposed to get the key! Charles ran out again, saw an orc with a breastplate sprawled by the table, knelt, and shot off the ring that held the single large key to his belt.

There were shouts then, like voices in a well, words neither Anglic nor Scandinavian, and two of the Northmen ran past him into a short corridor toward the sound, swords in their hands. He started after them.

“No!” The wraith of Nils cut him off. “The other way! Quickly! The corridor to your left, and let your people out of their cells!”

For just a second he hesitated, confused, staring after the two warriors, then turned, dodged another rushing Northman, and ran with the key in his hand. But behind his eyes was what he’d started toward a moment before-orcs, a mass of orcs spilling through a doorway and the two Northmen hacking at them. He’d be killed. They all would. They were trapped down here like rats.

“Here!” The wraith was ahead of him again, pointing. Charles thrust the key into a lock and turned it.

“Watch now. There are two more farther on-Matthew and Mikhail. Quickly!”

The two men were at their cell doors, amazement in their eyes as Charles ran up and let them out. They started down the corridor, stopping to obey when a ghost called to them to help Chandra and Anne Marie.

Charles sprinted past them, pushing a fresh magazine into his pistol grip, then brought out another grenade. Pulling the pin with his teeth, he careened through the guard room and into the corridor where the two Northmen had been fighting.

It was over. Three Northmen stood there now by a litter of bodies. A heavy iron door had dropped into the opening from which the orcs had been issuing, nearly severing some bodies that lay across the threshold. Sten leaned grimly on a lever near it, a bloody sword in his hand. Three of the dead were Northmen.

Charles realized he had an armed grenade in his hand, walked back through the guard room and peered into the room with the cots. An orc knelt there, wounded, trying to stem the flow of blood from a comrade with the corner of a blanket.

Damnl thought Charles. No place to throw the damned thing. What in the hell do I do with… Abruptly the kneeling orc was on his feet, a knife in his hand, and Charles as quickly shot him, then backed from the room and lobbed the grenade around the edge of the doorway. The five seconds were forever before it exploded.

In the guard room, Matthew and Mikhail stood beside Anne Marie, staring at a Northman scalping an orc. Matthew had the slack-bodied Chandra over his shoulder. The other two Northmen strode in, hands and wrists smeared red.

“Let’s get out of here,” Charles said urgently, “before something happens.”

Sten looked at him, nodded, and gave an order in Scandinavian. They moved the heavy guardroom table beneath the ventilator. One Northman was boosted up and pulled himself into the duct. Then one after another they all were helped until only Sten was left to jump for it.

When they were gone, the only sound was the soft moaning of a twice wounded orc still alive in the guard quarters. The prisoners in their cells were as silent as if a threatening guard might come momentarily and punish them.