Betrayals (57 page)

“Weren’t in no stockade,” Holter replied with a shake of his head. “Thet there noble Blendin’ bested us mostly fair, an’ ended knockin’ us out. It felt like a real long time b’fore I woke up, an’ when I did we wus with these here folk. Arinna, you tell ’em, ’cause you talk better’n me.”

“You talk just fine, Pagin, but I’ll be glad to help out,” the woman Arinna said with a smile. She was a small and pretty woman, a bit smaller even than Holter, but the lively look in her eyes said she was much bigger on the inside, where it counts.

“I’m our group’s Fire magic user,” Arinna continued, also smiling at Valiant and Tamrissa, who had now come over to join the conversation. “As Pagin said, we blacked out during the competition and didn’t wake up again until we were with this group. They told us they’d given us Puredan and we were bound to obey them the way everyone else did, but we knew better. When we got together we laughed over the secret we had, then we got ready to Blend and get ourselves away. That was when we discovered that it couldn’t be done like that.”

“Because a fully Blended group doesn’t do well moving around,” Jovvi said while everyone else made sounds of surprise and questioning. “That’s fairly obvious, but you’ll notice that some of our group overlooked the point, too. You could have defended yourselves as a Blending, but you couldn’t have left the area; or you could have left the area, but couldn’t have defended yourselves with the strength of a Blending.”

“Exactly,” Arinna said with a wry expression. “And on top of that, we had no idea where we were. After a little while we discovered that we’d been sent directly to the front, because Lord General Grib over there had run into resistance no one had been expecting. That was when we realized that we were in Astinda, and that most of the destruction we saw was our own empire’s doing. We pretended to go along with what they wanted, but none of us actually added strength to the link-groups we were assigned to.”

“Which someone would have noticed fairly quickly,” Tamma said, nodding her understanding. “Now I see why Pagin was in such a hurry for us to get here.”

“No, actually, that wasn’t the reason,” Arinna denied as she exchanged a disturbed glance with Holter. “Our biggest problem stems from the fact that we’re now in retreat. In point of fact we’ve been running for half the day, trying to put as much distance between us and our former position as possible. People from other sections came streaming into our camp, some of them wounded and some just hysterical. The people of Astinda have been resisting this invasion all along, but now they’ve apparently managed to put together an army which ours can’t stand against. We don’t know just how close that army is or what its composition is, but old Gribby over there has been furious over the need to run away.”

“An’ his bullies’ve been takin’ it out on us,” Holter added with a growl. “They’re real big men, knowin’ nobody c’n do nothin’ to ’em no matter whut they do. But I’d like t’see ’em try it again now.”

“If most of them don’t live very long, don’t wonder why,” Arinna said with a tightness to the words. “The army calls the men below the officers prods, meaning their job is to ‘prod’ the segments and link-groups into doing what the officers want done. Our people had to obey their orders, you see, but none of them were happy about it. The prods would beat them—us—to make us work harder and faster, and at night the women among us were shared around by the officers as well. My groupmates Blended to keep me and Rad-dia safe, but the same couldn’t be done for the others …”

Her words ended on a note of inner turmoil, and Jovvi reached out automatically to soothe the woman as best she could. All these people had had a really terrible time, but at least it was over now.

“It might be a good idea for the Blendin’ to have a look around before we get to questionin’ those officers,” Valiant said as he fought an inner disturbance of his own. “We need to know what they’re runnin’ from, but even more we need to know how close that somethin’ is. If we have the time, we might want to stay here for a bit. There’s grazin’ for the horses, and we ought to talk about what we’re all goin’ to do next.”

Everyone agreed with that, of course, which produced one reaction that was less than positive. Jovvi turned her head in surprise over the flash of heavy anger she felt, and was even more surprised that it came from Alsin Meerk. He now looked at Valiant with a glare of thick resentment, which gave Jovvi a fairly good idea about what the problem was. Alsin was supposed to be in charge of their strategy and tactics, but Valiant hadn’t even consulted him before making his suggestion. And Jovvi was fairly certain that the omission had been deliberate on Valiant’s part. What in the world was going on between those two?

The next instant Jovvi shook her head at herself, annoyed at having asked so foolish a question. Tamma was what was wrong between Valiant and Alsin, that and the fact that they were both natural leaders. They’d worked together well enough until now, but whatever had gotten Tamma so upset must be at the root of this new hostility. Jovvi decided that she’d have to speak to Lorand and Rion. Possibly the three of them working together could find a solution to the difficulty. …

But that would have to wait until later. A disappointed Lorand was walking back toward them, so in another moment they would be able to Blend. Jovvi looked around while she waited, trying to decide whether to hope they could stay there for a while, or hope that they couldn’t. There was a… heavy, invisible cloud hovering over that entire area, a cloud composed of agony and terror, desolation and despair. And Jovvi wasn’t the only one who felt it, she knew. Everyone seemed unhappy there, or at the very least uncomfortable.

And then Lorand joined them, so Jovvi was able to initiate the Blending. The entity formed as quickly as usual, looked about at the flesh forms it had visited earlier, then began to change its focus to find the enemy they had spoken about. It began to, then something else, in the opposite direction, took its attention. Those enemy flesh forms who had been following …

Intent became action, and the entity floated quickly in the direction its own flesh forms had come from. That morning it had found the enemy a shade closer than they’d been until now, but not close enough to cause worry. This time, however, no more than hours later, the distance between them had closed drastically. It would be only a short while before that particular group of enemies reached them, a disturbing revelation even for the entity.

It flashed back to where its flesh forms waited, then took a quick look in the direction it was to have investigated. Although a large number of beings could be detected in that direction, they were in no wise as close as the first group. That, then, would have to be made the first priority….

“Those miserable sons of chaos,” Valiant growled as soon as Jovvi dissolved the Blending. “They must have realized we were checkin’ on them only in the mornin’ and at night, so they waited until after our mornin’ check and then galloped flat out in an effort to catch up before we noticed. And since we’ve been takin’ our time, they can’t be more than a couple of hours away.”

“This must be what all those remounts were for,” Lorand put in, sounding just as angry. “They disguised the two extra horses each guardsman led as pack animals, but they’re really remounts. They ran the first set of horses into the ground, and now they’re on the second. When these are done, and they’re almost to that point now, they’ll mount the third and just keep coming.”

“But now we have the means to defeat them,” Rion pointed out, gesturing to the people they’d freed. “If our new friends are willing to cooperate, we should have no trouble overcoming those louts.”

“Are we to understand that the guardsman detachment is almost on top of us?” Alsin interrupted to ask, looking around at everyone but Valiant. “I thought you people were keeping an eye on them.”

“They obviously have a better strategist than we do, so the eye did no good,” Valiant replied, almost in passing. “But that’s beside the point. Right now we have to find out how many of these new people are willin’ to fight on our side. We can compel them of course, but I don’t believe we should.”

“No, of course not,” Jovvi began, but Alsin’s increased anger forced him to interrupt.

“What do you mean, ask these others?” he demanded. “If you can compel them to fight, that’s what you have to do. We don’t have the chance of a water drop on a hot skillet without them, and for some reason I’m not in the mood to die. Tell me how close that detachment is, and I’ll start to make immediate deployment plans.”

“Alsin, calm down,” Lorand said, overriding the angry response Valiant would have made. “None of us wants to die, but forcing people into fighting for and with us is wrong. We all know you believe the same, and probably more strongly than we do, but right now you’re upset. Take a couple of minutes to pull yourself together, then we’ll talk about this again.”

Jovvi felt Alsin’s urge to snap out a refusal and disavowal of what Lorand had said, but since she already touched the man with her talent, that didn’t matter. He calmed at once, of course, having no idea that he’d been soothed by her, but the intrusion had been necessary. If there was a worse time to fight among themselves, it could only be when the enemy was actually in sight.

“Let’s start asking around,” Tamma suggested when Alsin calmly turned away to sit down alone a short distance off. Jovvi knew that the others all realized what she’d done, and only Valiant was faintly disappointed. All the others were more relieved, and they really did have very little time.

They went in separate directions and spread the word, and it took a while but the wait and effort were worth it. Some of the link-groups weren’t happy about it, but all of them agreed to fight against the coming guardsmen. Their hatred and resentment of empire authority was intense, representing as it did the instrument by which their lives had been ruined. In contrast to the bold wine red and white uniforms worn by the officers and prods, the “segments” were dressed in clothing that was little more than rags. Most of them were also gaunt from not having been fed very well, and some of them were even in pain from the “discipline” given by the prods. But all of them were willing to give the five and their companions all the help they needed.

“I’m glad I asked Lidris to make a big meal from the army supplies before we began to talk to those people,” Lorand said to Jovvi after they’d finished speaking to their new allies. “They need a solid meal desperately, and now it’s just about ready. And our Earth magic people have volunteered to do some healing for those who need it. By the time all that is done those guardsmen will be here, but then our forces will be in better shape to face them.”

“In better shape physically,” Jovvi corrected with a sigh. “Their minds are terribly hurt, Lorand, and I’m not sure they’ll ever be able to get over this horrible experience. But they are ready to fight with us, and at the moment that’s what counts. Later we’ll have to try to help them forget, but for now…”

“For now we none of us have a choice,” Lorand agreed as he touched her face gently and with love. “But I meant to ask you: what’s going on between Valiant and Alsin? If you and I hadn’t interfered, I think they would have been at each other’s throats.”

“They seem to have two disagreements,” Jovvi responded, glancing around to see that the former captives were already lining up for their meal. “One is Tamma and the other is leadership, and we’re going to have to keep them apart until we have the time to sit them both down for a talking-to. We’ll also have to tell Rion about what’s happening, since I’m certain we’ll end up needing his help.”

Lorand nodded, then he led Jovvi over to join the very long lines of those waiting for food. They’d already had their lunch, but with fighting so close on the horizon for them, another meal would do more good than harm.

No one took their time eating, which turned out to be a very good thing. Jovvi and Lorand were able to speak to Rion and Naran and to finish their own meal, and then the link-group acting as sentries alerted them. The guardsmen were only a few minutes away, and they seemed to have already linked up. And it also seemed that they had no intention of stopping and dismounting. Their unslacking rate of speed suggested they meant to gallop into and through the camp, trampling anything and everything unfortunate enough to be in their path.

“So what do we do?” Tamma asked after hurrying over to where Jovvi and Lorand and Rion and Naran now stood.

“If we Blend, our bodies could be trampled. If we don’t, our forces will have to do without our entity’s strength. There has to be another choice!”

Jovvi shared the frustration filling Tamma and the others, but an answer to the question refused to come—until Naran spoke hesitantly.

“Excuse me, but I have a silly question,” she ventured. “If I’m bothering you when I shouldn’t I apologize, but I was just wondering…”

“Wondering what, love?” Rion asked gently when her voice trailed off. “As you’re certainly one of us, no intrusion can be possible. Tell us what has occurred to you.”

“All right, if you’re sure,” Naran agreed, bolstered not only by Rion but by the nods of everyone else. “I just wondered why you needed other people to protect your bodies while you were Blended. Couldn’t your—entity—station itself in front of you, and use its strength from there? But you’re always talking about how it goes places, so maybe that isn’t possible.”

Jovvi exchanged silent stares with her groupmates, feeling just as stupid as they now did. Of course their bodies could be trampled if they Blended, but not with their entity standing—or floating—right in front of them. Their protective link-groups might be run down just as easily, but if anything got past their Blending entity, the fight would be completely lost anyway.

“Naran, the next time we forget to consult you about a problem we have, please do us the favor of kicking us hard,” Tamma said after a moment. “We’ve gotten so used to sending our entity places, we forgot that we don’t have to. We certainly can stand it in front of us, since that’s what we did only a short while ago, so that’s what we’ll do again now.”