A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

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Shadow and thunder of wings fell over Kossara. She looked up from the rolling, tawny-begrown down onto which she had come after stumbling from the forest. Against clouds and the plum-colored sky beyond, a Diomedean descended. She halted. Weariness shivered in her legs. Wind slithered around her. It smelled of damp earth and, somehow, of boulders.

An end to my search. Her heart slugged. But what will I now find? Comrades and trust, or a return to my punishment?

The native landed, a male, attired in crossbelts and armed with a knife and rifle. He must have been out hunting, when he saw the remarkable sight of a solitary human loose in the wilds, begrimed, footsore, mapless and compassless. He uttered gutturals of his own tongue.

“No, I don’t speak that,” Kossara answered. The last water she had found was kilometers behind. Thirst roughened her throat. “Do you know Anglic?”

“Some bit,” the native said. “How you? Help?”

“Y-yes. But—” But not from anybody who’ll think he should call Thursday Landing and inquire about me. During her trek she had sifted the fragments of memory, over and over. A name and nonhuman face remained. “Eonan. Bring me Eonan.” She tried several different pronunciations, hoping one would be recognizable.

“Gairath mochra. Eonan? Wh … what Eonan? Many Eonan.”

There would be, of course. She might as well have asked a random Dennitzan for Andrei. However, she had expected as much. “Eonan who knows Kossara Vymezal,” she said. “Find. Give Eonan this.” She handed him a note she had scrawled. “Money.” She offered a ten-credit bill from the full wallet Flandry had included in her gear. “Bring Eonan, I give you more money.”

After repeated trials, she seemed to get the idea across, and an approximation of her name. The hunter took off northward. God willing, he’d ask around in the bayshore towns till he found the right person; and while this would make the dwellers curious, none should see reason to phone Imperial headquarters. God willing. She ought to kneel for a prayer, but she was too tired; Mary who fled to Egypt would understand. Kossara sat down on what resembled pale grass and wasn’t, hugged herself against the bitter breeze and stared across treelessness beneath a wan sun.

Have I really won through?

If Eonan still had his life and liberty, he might have lost heart for his revolution—if, in truth, he had ever been involved; she had nothing more than a dream-vision from a cave. Or if he would still free his people from the Empire, he might be the last. Or if cabals and guerrillas remained, he might not know where they hid. Or if he brought her to them, what could she hope for?

She tossed her head. A chance to fight. Maybe to win home in the end, likelier to die here: as a soldier does, and in freedom.

Drowsiness overflowed. She curled herself as best she could on the ground. Heavy garments blunted its hardness, though she hated the sour smell they’d gotten. To be clean again … Flandry had saved her from the soiling which could never be washed off. He had that much honor—and, yes, a diamond sort of mercy. If she’d done his bidding, tried her best to lead him to whatever was left of her fellows, he would surely have sent her back, manumitted—he’d have the prestige for such a favor to be granted him—unscathed—No! Not whole in her own honor! And release upon a Dennitza lashed to the Empire would be a cruel joke.

Then rest while you can, Kossara. Sleep comes not black, no, blue as a summer sky over the Kazan, blue as the cloak of Mary … Pray for us, now and in the hour of our death.

A small callused hand shook her awake. Hunger said louder than her watch what a time had passed while the sun brooded nightless. She stared into yellow eyes above a blunt muzzle and quivering whiskers. Half open, bat wings made a stormcloud behind. He carried a blaster.

His face—She sat up, aware of ache, stiffness, cold. “Eonan?”

“Torcha tracked me.” Apart from the piping accent, mostly due to the organs of speech, his Anglic came fluent. “But you do not know him, do you?”

She struggled to her feet. “I don’t know you either, quite,” she got out. “They made me forget.”

“Ungn-n-n.” He touched the butt of the gun, and his crest erected. Otherwise he stood in taut quietness. She saw he had arrived on a gravsled, no doubt to carry her.

Resolution unfroze him. “I am Eonan Guntrasson, of the Wendru clan in the Great Flock of Lannach. And you are Kossara Vymezal, from the distant planet Dennitza.”

Gladness came galloping, and every weakness fled. “I know that, barem! And you dared meet me? Then we are not finished yet!”

Eonan drew the membranes over his eyes. “We?”

“The revolution. Yours and mine.” She leaned down to grip his upper shoulders. Beneath fur and warmth, the flight muscles stood like rock.

“I must be careful.” His tone underlined it. “Torcha said you promised him a reward for fetching me. I paid him myself, not to have him along. Best we go aside and … talk. First, in sign of good faith, let me search you.”

The place he chose was back in the highlands. Canyon walls rose darkly where a river rang; fog smoked and dripped till Kossara was soaked with chill; at moments when the swirling grayness parted, she glimpsed the black volcanic cone of Mount Oborch.

On the way, Eonan had fed her from a stock of preserved Terran food, and explained he was the factor for Nakamura Malaysia in the area where he dwelt. This gave him wide contacts and sources of information, as well as an easy excuse to travel, disappearing into the hinterland or across the sea, whenever he wished. Thursday Landing had no suspicion of his clandestine activities. He would not speak about those until she related her story in full.

Then he breathed, “E-e-e-ehhh,” and crouched in thought on the gravsled bench. Finally, sharply: “Well, your Terran officer has likeliest concluded you slipped off in search of the cloudflyers—the, keh, the underground. A spacecraft was seen to lift from hereabouts not many sunspins ago. When I heard, I wondered what that meant.”

“I imagine he went to warn the resident and start a hunt for me,” Kossara said. “He did threaten to, if I deserted.” Anxiety touched her. “Yes, and a tightened space watch. Have I caused us trouble?”

“We shall see. It may have been worth it in all events. To learn about that spy device is no slight gain. We shall want your description of the place where you threw the ring away. Perhaps we can safely look for it and take it to study.”

“Chances are he’s recovered it. But Eonan!” Kossara twisted around toward him. “How are you doing here? How many survive? With what strength, what plans? How can I help?”

Again the third lids blurred his gaze. “Best I keep still. I am just a link. They will answer you in the nest where I have decided to take you.”

The hideout was high in a mountainside. Approaching, Kossara felt her eardrums twinge from pressure change and cold strike deep. Snowpeaks, glaciers, ravines, cliffs, crags reached in monstrous confusion between a cloud ocean which drowned the lower slopes, and a sky whose emptiness the sun only seemed to darken. Silence dwelt here, save for ah- booming over the windshield and a mutter of native language as Eonan radioed ahead.

Why am I not happy? she wondered. I am about to rejoin my comrades and regain my past—my purpose. What makes me afraid?

Eonan finished. “Everything will be ready,” he informed her. Was he as tense as he looked? She must have come to know Diomedeans well enough during her stay that she could tell; but that had been robbed from her. What had he to fear?

“I suppose,” she ventured, “this is headquarters for the entire mission. They tucked it away here to make it undiscoverable.”

“Yes. They enlarged a cave.”

She recalled another cave, where she and Trohdwyr and a few more had huddled. “Were we—those who died when I was captured—were we out in the field—liaison with freedom fighters whose homes were below timber-line? Maybe we were betrayed by one of them”—she grimaced—“who’d been caught at sabotage or whatever, and interrogated.”

“That sounds plausible.”

“But then nobody except us was destroyed! Am I right? Is the liberation movement still healthy?”

“Yes.”

Puzzlement: “Why didn’t I tell the Impies about our main base when they put me under hypnoprobe?”

“I do not know,” Eonan said impatiently. “Please be quiet. I must bring us in on an exact course, or they will shoot.”

As the sled glided near, Kossara spied the defense, an energy cannon. It was camouflaged, but military training had enhanced her natural ability to notice things. A great steel door in the bluff behind it would go unseen from above, should anyone fly across this lofty desert. Instruments—infrared sensors, neutrino detectors, magnetometers, gravitometers, atmosphere sniffers, a hundred kinds of robot bloodhound—would expose the place at once. But who would think to come searching?

The door swung aside. The sled passed through and landed in a garage among several aircars. Here were warmth, echoes, a sudden brilliance of light better suited for eyes human or Merseian. Kossara shed her parka before she stepped off. Her pulse raced.

Four stood waiting. Three were men. She was not surprised to see the last was a big green heavy-tailed person, though her heart said O Trohdwyr—and for an instant tears stung and blurred.

She rallied herself and walked toward them. Her boots thudded on the floor; Eonan’s claws clicked. Those in front of her were simply clad, shirts, trousers, shoes on the men, a tunic on the zmay. She had expected them to be armed, as they were.

It flashed: Why did I think zmay, not ychan? And: They aren’t Dennitzans! None of them!

She slammed to a halt. The men differed widely, genes from every breed of mankind scrambled in chance combinations. So they could be from Terra—or a colony within the Empire—or—

Eonan left her side. The Merseian drew his pistol. “Hold,” he rapped. “You are under arrest.”

He called himself Glydh of the Vach Rueth, nicknamed Far-Farer, an afal of his navy’s Intelligence corps. His immediate assistant was a lanky, sallow, long-nosed man, introduced as Muhammad Snell but addressed by the superior officer as Kluwych. In the middle of wreck, Kossara could flickeringly wonder if the Eriau name had been given him by his parents, when he was born somewhere in the Roidhunate.

They took her to an office. On the way she passed through such space and among such personnel that she estimated the latter numbered about twenty, two or three of them Merseian by species, the rest human. That was probably all there were on Diomedes: sufficient to keep scores of native dupes like Eonan going, who in their turn led thousands.

Though are they dupes? she thought drearily. Merseia would like to see them unchained from the Empire.

No. That isn’t true. Merseia doesn’t give a curse. They’re cheap, expendable tools.

The office was cramped and bleak. “Sit,” Glydh ordered, pointing to a chair. He took a stool behind a desk. Snell settled on the left; his eyes licked her, centimeter by centimeter and back again.

“Khraich.” Glydh laid his hands flat on the desktop, broad and thick, strangler’s hands. “An astonishing turn of events. What shall we do with you?” His Anglic was excellent.

“Isn’t this, uh, Captain Flandry more urgent, sir?” his subordinate asked.

“Not much, I believe,” Glydh said. “True, from Vymezal’s account via Eonan, he appears to be capable. But what can he know? That she defected, presumably joining a remnant of the underground if she didn’t perish en route.” He pondered. “Maybe be isn’t capable, at that—since he let her go, trusting her mere self-interest to keep her on his side.”

Hoy? Chives said Flandry is famous … No. How many light-years, how many millions of minds can fame cover before it spreads vanishingly thin?

“Of course, we will have our cell in Thursday Landing keep him under surveillance, and alert our agents globally is he leaves there,” Glydh continued. “But I doubt he represents more than a blind stab on the part of somebody in the opposition. I don’t think he is worth the risk of trying to kidnap, or even kill.”

“We may find out otherwise, sir, when we interrogate Vymezal in detail,” said the man. He moistened his lips.

“Maybe. I leave that to you. Co-opt what helpers you need.”

“Um-m-m … procedures? Treatment? Final disposition?”

“No!” Kossara heard the yell and felt the leaping to her feet, as if from outside her body. This was not real, could not be, must not be, God and saints, no. “I am not a, a Terran agent—I came here to—at least I’m a prisoner of war!”

“Sit!” Glydh’s roar, and the gunshot slap of palm on desk, flung her back like a belly blow. She heard his basso through fever-dream distances and humming: “Don’t babble about military conventions. You are a slave, property we have acquired. If you do what you are told, there need not be pain. Else there will be, until you are broken to obedience. Do you hear me?”

Snell’s fingers twisted together. He breathed fast. “Sir,” he said, “it could be a long while before we get a chance to send a report offplanet and ask for instructions about her. So we have to use our own judgment, don’t we?”

“Yes,” Glydh answered.

“Well, considering what was originally intended for her, and the reason—sir, not a woman among us in this whole region—”

Glydh shrugged. His tone was faintly contemptuous. “Quiz her out first under narco. Afterward do what you like, short of disfiguring damage. Remember, we may find use for her later, and the nearest biosculp laboratory is parsecs hence.”

I will make them kill me! Even as she plunged toward Snell, fingernails out to hook his eyeballs, Kossara knew Glydh would seize her and not let her die.

The explosion threw her against a wall. It made a drum of her skull. The floor heaved and cracked. Snell went over backward. Glydh flailed about to keep his balance.

Faintly through the brief deafness that followed, she heard screams, running, bang and hiss of firearms. Ozone drifted acrid to her nostrils, smoke, smells of roastedness.

She was already out of the office, into the central chamber beyond. At its far end, through the passageway which gave on the garage, she saw how the main door lay blown off its trunnions, crumpled and red-hot. Beyond was the ruin of the cannon. Men boiled around or sprawled un-moving.

Enormous shone the bulk of a suit of combat armor. Bullets whanged off it, blaster bolts fountained. The wearer stood where he was, and his own weapon scythed.

As she broke into view—“Kossara!” Amplified from the helmet, his voice resounded like God’s. His free hand reached beneath a plate that protected his gravbelt. He rose and moved slowly toward her. Survivors fled.

Fingers closed on her arm. Around her shoulder she saw Glydh. He swung her before his body. “That’s not nice,” the oncoming invader pealed. He spun his blaster nozzle to needle beam, aimed, and fired.

Glydh’s brow spurted steam, brains, blood, shattered bone across Kossara. She knew a heartbeat’s marvel at that kind of precision shooting. But then the heavy corpse bore her down. Her head struck the floor. Lightning filled the universe.

The armored man reached her, stood over her, shielded her. A spacecraft’s flank appeared in the entry. It had sprouted a turret, whose gun sprayed every doorway where an enemy might lurk. Kossara let darkness flow free.