Ice Dragon

Chapter 10

Except for Blade, Stramod, Nilando, Leyndt, and the men on guard, the whole camp slept well and undisturbed through the night. It was chilly in the small hours of the morning, but the returning sun swiftly warmed the air and roused the sleeping camp to movement.

Whether the Conciliators had abandoned the search for the refugees from the resort, or whether they were simply waiting like a cat at a mousehole for their quarry to make its own way out into easier terrain, was not clear. But there was no sign of pursuit on the ground all during the day's march, and only twice did fliers whistle overhead, both times so high that Blade found it hard to believe they could be searching for anything in a forest certain to be only a green blur from their height and speed.

Blade and Nilando led a scouting party from the camp that night, on to where the forest cover of the valley gave way to more open terrain, much of it farmland. Neither returned optimistic about getting sixty people, few of them with much training or experience, across two days' march worth of such territory, let alone penetrating the base after the march. Even Stramod had to admit that it would be risky.

«But what else can we do? We have still received no reliable Union messages. What can that mean except that the Union has collapsed under a massive assault by the Conciliators? Every day's delay by us gives them more time to track down the other groups and release forces for pursuing us. As it is, we may find the land between us and the base at least comparatively unpatrolled by anything our own weapons cannot defeat. If we wait too long, however, we could find entire legions barring our path.»

Blade accepted this only because he had no wish to try to usurp the command of the group from the man to whom it properly belonged. But he was tense and strained the remainder of the evening. He needed several hours of walking the rounds of the sentry posts and then another bout of love with Leyndt before he could sleep. His last thoughts before drifting off were of finding out from Leyndt the names of the Union people at the base, then making a cross-country trek on his own to get in touch with them in advance of the rest of his companions. Granted that he didn't know the country that well, it was vital to get some advance word to the people at the base …

. , except that when he awoke in the morning, he discovered that one of the people from the base had arrived at exactly the same conclusion. Leyndt woke him and called him aside to join a conference with Stramod, Nilando, and a swarthy little man in a grass- and mud-stained blue uniform who was squatting in the middle of the circle formed by the others, wolfing down stew and ration bread.

Stramod rose as Blade and Leyndt approached. «Meet Captain Pnarr, of the Flier Service. He has plans for aiding us.»

The captain nodded. «Right. The Union's pretty much smashed up all over the country, so my friends and I thought we'd make plans to get out ourselves. We were going to use some of the smaller fliers. But there won't be any big problem getting three of the big ones fueled and lined up on the ready moorings. How we're going to get you people aboard-another problem. A lot nastier.»

«Could you taxi the fliers over to an uninhabited part of the lake shore?» Stramod asked.

«Not a chance,» Pnarr grunted, and bit off another chunk of the flinty bread. «Only chance we'll have of getting away is to fire up and take off as soon as everybody's on board, before the shore-based beamers pick us off.»

Stramod looked reluctant to give up his idea, but realized that the pilot knew more than he did about such things. Blade decided to put in his idea.

«What we've been worried about most is getting into the base and through it to wherever the planes are. You said they're anchored offshore?»

«Right.»

«How far offshore?»

«Twelve valh.» (The standard Graduk measurement, equal to about two hundred yards.)

«And the shore is patrolled?»

«Damned right it is. You'd be picked up and squashed like bugs, trying to get across the beach.» Blade nodded. «I expected that. But are there any patrols offshore, on the lake side of the anchorage?»

«One boat, usually. Two or three men in it,» said the pilot. His face lit up as he grasped what Blade was getting at. So did Stramod's.

«Exactly,» said Blade. «We've got to get to the lake shore anyway. But once there, instead of marching clear around it and trying to get through the base, we can find boats and travel the rest of the way by water.» He turned to Stramod. «Are there any Union people you know living along the lake shore?»

Pnarr broke in before Stramod could reply. «Don't worry about that. One of the base sympathizers-a ground type, not a pilot-has a big boat on the lake. Big enough for all of you, I'll bet. Work out a rendezvous point and I'll have him be there. And it's a boat the patrol will let past into the anchorage because he uses it a lot to run out on service missions.» Pnarr's face was positively gleeful.

His good spirits were infectious; half or more of their problems seemed to have been washed away. Leyndt squeezed Blade's hand and he smiled back at her. There was still the problem of getting across to the lake, even though now the distance they would have to march was so reduced that they could in a pinch do it in a single night. Blade had a nasty feeling that if they tried that, they would face the prospect of having to abandon stragglers. But they would have won most of their battle by the time they reached the lake. At least if Pnarr was trustworthy-and Blade could judge only by what Stramod and Leyndt were saying to him.

Blade would have liked a word with Pnarr, or several words, to try to influence him. A fully fueled flier with a competent pilot was an essential part of his plans for discovering the truth about the aliens. But he had not had time to fully judge how to approach the man. And Pnarr himself had to make his way back to where he had left his car. There was, unfortunately, no way to gather together enough vehicles to carry them all to the lake shore without being noticed, and being noticed was the most important thing to avoid now. Next to missing the rendezvous, that is.

Blade did not really believe that they were not going to miss the rendezvous until thirty-six hours later, when he stood behind a bush on the shore of the lake, watching a broad-beamed slab-sided powerboat glide up to the shore until its bows scraped the rocky bottom. A man dressed only in shorts scrambled up onto the bow and threw a line ashore; Blade caught it and tied it to a bush. Then he whistled into the darkness behind him, and watched the darkness come alive as the party filed out of cover and stepped into the water, holding their weapons and gear above their heads. Although the water rose above most of their waists, they were silent, swift, and as efficient as any company of soldiers might have been.

Well, perhaps that was what they were turning into. They had had to leave nine people behind them along the grueling night march to the lake, nine people who could not go another step no matter how hard they tried. Fortunately the weather was warm and clear, and there were farms within a few hours' walk. Seven more had simply dropped out, refusing to trust themselves to the Treduki or the pilots, preferring to take their chances of slinking away into anonymity among those same farms. There was nothing to be done about either group; neither the weak in body nor the weak in heart would have any place in the north.

Nilando's urgings had kept a fair number of people going even after they left blood at each step; they, by all that was sacred, weren't going to collapse and let a damned Treduk call them weak! But more people were beginning to develop a respect for the Treduk chieftain, a respect that Blade hoped would make cooperation once they reached Treduk territory easier than it might have been otherwise. They might get safely to Tengran, even safely into the woods, but the long-standing distrust between the two peoples might well sabotage all Stramod's plans. As it was, the mutant now treated Nilando as a second-in-command fully equal to Blade, and gave him special responsibility for the scouting parties.

Hobbling, gasping, limping, exhausted in body and mind, the survivors of the party had reached the lake shore just before the light became too strong to make traveling safe. An outbound flier screamed overhead at that exact moment, but they remembered their instructions and froze to the spot, not even looking up. Before the next one came over, they were under as much cover as a patch of forest could provide. They bathed their swollen feet, caught up on sleep, nibbled the last of their rations, and waited for darkness and the arrival of the boat.

The last two people in line were now passing Blade-Nilando and Rena, hand in hand, but with the other hand each holding a beamer high overhead. The water molded Rena's tunic against her lithe figure. Now Nilando was beckoning; Blade swung his own beamer up over his head and waded down into the water. He had barely scrambled over the side of the boat when its motor sprang to life and it began backing away from the shore and heading out into the lake.

Their craft was no speedboat, but the water was mirror-smooth and the wind as feeble as the puffs of air moving in a cave. It was as black as a cave, too, out on the water, with neither moon nor stars in the sky and the shores glowering in the distance without a light. Normally, Pnarr said, there would be a good many lights from the vacation homes and the like showing along the shore. But with all the uproar over the suppression of the Union, most people were too frightened to leave their homes in the comparatively well-patrolled cities and make their way to the lonely countryside. Sensible of them, Pnarr added, since if the Union really did want to launch a terror campaign the Conciliator soldiers couldn't do a damned thing about it! Bunch of stumble-footed incompetents, he concluded, with the normal lordly disdain of those who have their business in the high skies for those who plod along the ground.

It was two hours before the lights of the base showed clearly on the shore ahead, clearly enough to show the six big hydro-fliers anchored offshore and the complex of hangars and sheds that housed the others. To landward the base was well lit, with brilliant white lights pouring glare down on high chain-link fences. As they drew closer, Blade could see the shapes of sentries patrolling the fence. Getting in there from the shore would have been impossible. He went below and began to prepare for his assigned mission. In spite of his wounded thigh, he was still the best man for it.

When he returned to the deck, stripped to the skin and with his body blackened with camouflage cream, Stramod handed him a belt to tie around his waist, a belt from which hung six small but immensely powerful bombs and two fighting knives in sheaths. Beamers could not survive being submerged. Leyndt held out her hand to him and he grasped it briefly, but he was grinning as he slipped over the side into the cold water. Commando work had always been one of his favorite things.

One of the patrol boats was ambling slowly back and forth about two hundred yards away, the heads of three men visible inside it. He began to swim silently toward it, while the boat behind him continued on a course intended to draw the patrol toward him. Blade saw the patrol boat suddenly turn as its crew noticed the larger craft gliding across the water, heard a harsh challenge, saw one of the men in the patrol boat rise to his feet and flash a light toward the intruder. He gambled that they were now too preoccupied with the other boat to notice him, and quickened his stroke to a racing pace.

He shot up to the boat just as a man in it turned to look down and squalled a warning. He grasped the sides of the boat with both hands and heaved himself out of the water, then in a single fluid motion pivoted on his arms and swept his muscular legs across the boat like a scythe. One man went clear overboard with a splash and a cry, his beamer flying out of his hand as he did so; a second slammed up against the side, fumbling for his beamer. The third ducked below the swinging legs and grabbed for the communicator in the bottom of the boat; he was about to speak into it when Blade chopped him across the back of the neck and he collapsed. The second man now had his beamer coming up into firing position, but Blade's knife came out of its sheath before the man could complete the movement, and rammed into the man's chest before he could fire.

A movement behind him made Blade swing around. The first man was climbing back over the side of the boat, a knife in his hand, held in the point-up stance of the trained knife fighter. Blade did not rush in on this man; he was too dangerous. But he still had to kill him, and quickly, before somebody on shore noticed the commotion.

The man came at him, cat-footed and cat-quick, one arm held out as a blocking shield against Blade's knife while his own knife flickered in and out like a striking snake. Blade tried to use his longer reach to go in over the man's guard, but the other was too quick for that, and Blade nearly had his arm laid open. The other launched an attack; Blade had to parry a lightning slash at his jugular.

Then Blade stepped on the arm of the man fallen over the communicator. Like a fallen log the arm turned under him, and he went over backward. By a fraction of an inch he missed smashing his head against the control panel, but lay full-length on the deck. His opponent leaped forward, knife held out and reaching for the life of an apparently helpless victim.

As the man came within reach, Blade rolled his torso aside while both legs shot out and his ankles clamped tight around the other man's calves. Blade heaved, with every muscle in his body contributing in its own way to that heave. He heard the other man's leg bone crack, and heard him let out a scream that must have carried across the water to the base. The man crumpled onto one knee, the knife in his hand slashing down but only nicking Blade slightly under the left arm. Then Blade brought his own knife up before the man could recover and parry, and the man sank down onto his face, blood gushing from his throat.

Without worrying about whether the remaining man was dead, Blade stood up in the boat and gave the agreed-on signal with his arms outstretched. He heard the motor of the other boat speed up, then rolled himself over the side of the patrol craft into the water and headed for the farthest of the three fliers at the left end of the line. His six little bombs were for them. There would still be scores of fliers of all sorts and sizes that the Conciliators could use, but the Unionists could at least put out of action the three that could give pursuit most quickly.

He made no effort to swim silently now, but plunged through the water like a hunting shark. He saw lights in the cockpit windows of the fliers as he passed them, and lights moving around on shore in an aimless and frantic pattern. How thoroughly the base had become alerted during his fight was a nasty question. That knife fighter had delayed him beyond reason.

The little bombs were only the size of hand grenades, but each contained more than enough explosive to tear a flier apart. The first one was looming up now, with a figure silhouetted black against the light in one hatch. Blade estimated the distance to the hatch, dove under, and came up precisely below it. The man had no time to scream as a long arm snaked out of the water and plucked him over the side, then a razor-edged knife drove into his chest. Blade set the fuses of the two bombs and slapped them against the hull below the waterline. An adhesive plate would hold them against the hull. Then he turned and thrashed away toward the second flier.

This one had no one watching on the side he approached, and he was able to place his bombs unseen. To save time he then plunged under and swam beneath the flier, staying under until his breath seemed to pound red-hot in his throat and chest. He surfaced, took a deep breath, and plunged under again, passing beneath the third flier and coming up in the shadow of the tail. It concealed him from any watchers in the forward cabin, but gave him a clear view of the shore and what was happening around the other three fliers.

The big boat was moving among them, and people were throwing their beamers and bags into their open hatches, then slipping over the side and swimming across. Black figures stood silhouetted in the hatches, snagging gear out of the air and flinging it inside. He saw Nilando and Stramod standing atop the cabin of the boat, urging people to hurry, saw Leyndt drop over the side and scramble up into the nearest plane, followed by Pnarr. He slapped the two bombs onto the hull of the flier sheltering him and swam out into the open.

On shore now was a flurry and alarm visible even at this distance; running figures, lights swiveling around, shouts and alarm sirens wailing. A large boat with a beamer turret mounted amidship was putting out from shore, its deck crowded with armed soldiers. Blade heard the engines of the farthest flier crack and whine into life, then settle down to a swelling roar; he increased his pace. So did the approaching boat; the beamer turret was swinging around now, but the shore-based beamers were holding their fire to avoid hitting it.

Before the boat could do anything, however, Unionists in the turrets of two of the captured fliers discovered they had a clear field of fire. Two beams chopped into it in the same second; it flew apart in a tremendous blast that sent spray, smoke, flames, bits of debris, and mangled bodies hurtling into the air for a hundred yards in all directions. Then the flier-mounted beamers began picking off the shore mounts, and screams, crashes, and the flare of more explosions ashore told of their accuracy. Blade grinned. For the first time, it seemed that the heavy firepower was on the side of the «good guys.»

In the middle of the uproar on shore, the bombs he had placed on the first flier went off, a double-barreled whump that sent a painful concussion battering through the water against Blade's body. The fuel aboard the flier went up in a sheet of green flame, and again pieces of metal splashed down all around Blade.

Now the second of the captured fliers was firing up its engines; the first was already well out on the lake, turning for its take-off run. As its engines went to full thrust the bombs attached to the second of Blade's victims went off, and flames once more spewed high. The second captured flier began taxiing out; then Blade's view of it was cut off by the loom of the third one as he thrashed up to its hatch. Hands-Leyndt's among them-reached down by the dozen. He seemed to fly out of the water and fall headfirst through the hatch, to sprawl with a thump on the metal floor at Stramod's feet. He barely had time to sit up and look forward to Pnarr seated at the controls, when the beamer turret above blazed out, and he heard another distant roar as something on shore collapsed or exploded.

Simultaneously came a much closer roar, as the third and final pair of bombs went off, and fragments pattered and clanged on the fuselage of the flier. Then Pnarr rammed the throttles forward and the engines built up to a roar as the flier came around, heeling over so hard that one wing skipped along the surface of the water. Then it straightened out, the engine roar swelled still further, the acceleration slid him back along the floor into the heap of people huddled dripping against the rear wall of the cabin, and he felt the flier lurch up on its ski. A moment later he felt it lift, and looking forward, saw nothing but sky showing through the windows beyond Pnarr's hunched head. And a moment after that the soupy blackness of the clouds swept past, and in the windows ahead the stars shone out bright and clean in the black sky as the flier banked around on to its new northbound course.