Land and Overland - Omnibus (20 page)

“We’ll see,” Fera said, her composure unaffected.

Leddravohr drummed his fingers on the balustrade, prolonging the moment, then turned to face the hall. “You,” he said, pointing at Gesalla. “Come with me.”

“But…!” Toller took one step forward, breaking the line, his body a pounding column of blood. He gazed in helpless outrage at Gesalla as she touched Lain’s hand and walked towards the stair with a strange floating movement as though tranced and not really aware of what was happening. Her beautiful face was almost luminescent in its pallor. Leddravohr went ahead of her and the two were lost in the flickering dimness of the upper floor.

Toller wheeled on his brother. “That’s your wife—and she’s pregnant!”

“Thank you for that information,” Lain said in a dead voice, regarding Lain with dead eyes.

“But this is all
wrong
!”

“It’s the Kolcorronian way.” Incredibly, Lain was able to fashion his lips into a smile. “It is part of the reason we are despised by every other nation in the world.”

“Who cares about the other…?” Toller became aware that Fera, hands on hips, was staring at him with undisguised fury. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Perhaps if you had stripped me naked and thrown me at the prince things would have worked out more to your liking,” Fera said in a low hard voice.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you couldn’t wait to see me go with him.”

“You don’t understand,” Toller protested. “I thought Leddravohr wanted to punish
me
.”

“That’s exactly what he…” Fera broke off to glance at Lain, then returned her attention to Toller. “You’re a fool, Toller Maraquine. I wish I had never met you.” She spun on her heel, suddenly haughty in a way he had never seen before, walked quickly back into the day room and slammed the door.

Toller gaped after her for a moment, baffled, then paced an urgent circle around the hall and came back to Lain and Glo. The latter, looking more exhausted and frail than ever, had clasped Lain’s hand.

“What would you like me to do, my boy?” he said gently. “I could return to the Peel if you want the privacy.”

Lain shook his head. “No, my lord. It is very late. If you will do me the honour of staying here I will have a suite prepared for you.”

“Very well.” As Lain left to instruct the servants Glo turned his large head in Toller’s direction. “You’re not helping your brother with all your running about like a caged animal.”

“I don’t understand him,” Toller muttered. “Somebody should
do
something.”

“What would you … hmm … suggest?”

“I don’t know.
Something
.”

“Would it improve Gesalla’s lot if Lain were to get himself killed?”

“Perhaps,” Toller said, refusing to entertain logic. “She could at least be proud of him.”

Glo sighed. “Help me to a chair, and then fetch me a glass of something with heat in it. Kailian black.”

“Wine?” Toller was surprised despite his mental turmoil. “You want wine?”

“You said somebody should do something, and that’s what I’m going to do,” Glo said evenly. “You will have to dance to your own music.”

Toller help Glo to a high-backed chair at the side of the hall and went to obtain a beaker of wine, his mind oppressed with the problem of how to reconcile himself to the intolerable. The mode of thought was unnatural for him and it seemed a long time before inspiration came.
Leddravohr is only playing with us
, he decided, seizing the thread of hope.
Gesalla can’t be to the taste of one who is accustomed to trained courtesans. Leddravohr is only detaining her in his room, laughing at us. In fact, he can express his contempt all the better by scorning to touch any of our women
…

In the hour that followed Glo drank four large bumpers of wine, rendering himself crimson of face and almost totally helpless. Lain had retired to the solitude of his study, still betraying no trace of emotion, and Toller was dejected when Glo announced his desire to go to bed. He knew he would not sleep and had no desire to be alone with his thoughts. He half carried Glo to the assigned suite and helped him through all the tedious procedures of toilet and getting to bed, then came into the long transverse corridor which linked the principal sleeping quarters. There was a whisper of sound to his left.

He turned and saw Gesalla walking towards him on the way to her own rooms. Her black garments, long and drifting, and blanched face gave her a spectral appearance, but her bearing was erect and dignified. She was the same Gesalla Maraquine he had always known—cool, private and indomitable—and at the sight of her he experienced a pang of mingled concern and relief.

“Gesalla,” he said, moving towards her, “are you…?”

“Don’t come near me,” she snapped with a look of slit-eyed venom and walked past him without altering her step. Dismayed by the sheer loathing in her voice, he watched until she had passed out of view, then his gaze was drawn to the pale mosaic floor. The trail of bloody footprints told a story more dreadful than any he had tried to banish from his mind.

Leddravohr, oh Leddravohr, oh Leddravohr
, he chanted inwardly.
We are wedded now, you and I. You have given yourself to me … and only a death will set us apart
.

The decision to attack Chamteth from the west was taken for geographical reasons.

At the western limits of the Kolcorronian empire, somewhat north of the equator, was a chain of volcanic islets which ended in a low-lying triangle of land about eight miles on a side. Known as Oldock, the uninhabited island had several features which were of strategic importance to Kolcorron. One was that it was close enough to Chamteth to form an excellent jumping-off point for a sea-borne invasion force; another was that it was thickly covered with rafter and tallon trees, two species which grew to a great height and offered good protection against ptertha.

The fact that Oldock and the whole Fairondes chain lay in a prevailing westerly air stream was also advantageous to Kolcorron’s five armies. Although the troop ships were slowed down and airships forced to make extensive use of their jets, the steady wind blowing across open seas had a greater effect on the ptertha, making it almost impossible for them to get within range of their prey. Telescopes showed the livid globes swarming in high-altitude contraflows but they were for the most part swept away to the east when they tried to penetrate lower levels of the atmosphere. When planning the invasion the Kolcorronian high command had allowed for up to one sixth of their personnel being lost to ptertha, whereas the actual casualties were negligible.

As the armies progressed westward there was a gradual but perceptible change in the patterns of night and day. Foreday grew shorter and aftday longer as Overland drifted away from the zenith and approached the eastern horizon. Eventually foreday was reduced to a brief dazzle of prismatics as the sun crossed the narrow gap between the horizon and Overland’s disk, and soon after that the sister world was nesting on Land’s eastern rim. Littlenight became a short extension of night, and there was a heightened sense of expectancy among the invaders as the celestial evidence told them they were entering the Land of the Long Days.

The establishment of a beachhead on Chamteth itself was another phase of the operation in which considerable losses had been expected, and the Kolcorronian commanders could scarcely believe their good fortune when they found the tree-covered strands unwatched and undefended.

The three widely separated invasion prongs met no resistance whatsoever, converging and consolidating without a single casualty apart from the accidental fatalities and injuries which are inevitable when large masses of men and materiel enter an alien territory. Almost at once brakka groves were found among the other types of forestation, and within a day bands of naked slimers were at work behind the advancing military. The sacks of green and purple crystals gutted from the brakka were loaded on to separate cargo ships—large quantities of pikon and halvell were never transported together—and in an incredibly short time the first steps had been taken to initiate a supply chain reaching all the way back to Ro-Atabri.

Aerial reconnaissance was ruled out for the time being, because airships were too conspicuous, but with ancient maps to guide them the invaders were able to push westwards at a steady pace. The terrain was swampy in places, infested with poisonous snakes, but presented no serious obstacles to well trained soldiers whose morale and physical condition were at a high level.

It was on the twelfth day that a scout patrol noticed an airship of unfamiliar design scudding silently across the sky ahead of them.

By that time the vanguard of the Third Army was emerging from the waterlogged littoral and was reaching higher ground characterised by a series of drumlins running from north to south. Trees and other kinds of vegetation were more sparse here. It was the type of ground on which an unopposed army could have made excellent progress—but the first of the Chamtethan defenders were lying in wait.

They were swarthy men, long-muscled and black-bearded, wearing flexible armour made from small flakes of brakka sewn together like fish scales, and they fell on the invaders with a ferocity which even the most seasoned Kolcorronians had never encountered before. Some of them appeared to be suicide groups, sent in to cause maximum damage and disarray, creating diversions which enabled others to set up attacks using a variety of long-range weapons—cannon, mortars and mechanical catapults which hurled pikon-halvell bombs.

The Kolcorronian crack troops, veterans of many frontier engagements, destroyed the Chamtethans in the course of a diffuse, multi-centred battle which lasted almost the entire day. It was found that fewer than a hundred men had died, compared with more than twice that number of the enemy, and when the following day had passed without further incident the spirits of the invaders were again at a peak.

From that stage onwards, with secrecy no longer possible, the line soldiers were preceded by an air cover of bombers and surveillance ships, and the men on the ground were reassured by the sight of the elliptical craft patterning the sky ahead.

Their commanders were less complacent, however, knowing they had encountered only a local defence force, that intelligence concerning the invasion had been flashed to the heart of Chamteth, and that the might of a huge continent was being drawn up against them.

General Risdel Dalacott uncorked the tiny poison bottle and smelled its contents.

The clear fluid had a curious aroma, honeyed and peppery at the same time. It was a distillation of extracts of maidenfriend, the herb which when chewed regularly by women prevented them from conceiving children. In its concentrated form it was even more inimical to life, providing a gentle, painless and absolutely certain escape from all the troubles of the flesh. It was greatly treasured among those of the Kolcorronian aristocracy who had no taste for the more honourable but very bloody traditional methods of committing suicide.

Dalacott emptied the bottle into his cup of wine and, after only the slightest hesitation, took a tentative sip. The poison was scarcely detectable and might even have been said to have improved the rough wine, adding a hint of spicy sweetness to it. He took another sip and set the cup aside, not wishing to slip away too quickly. There was a final self-imposed duty he had yet to perform.

He looked around his tent, which was furnished with only a narrow bed, a trunk, his portable desk and some folding chairs on straw matting. Other officers of staff rank liked to surround themselves with luxury to ease the rigours of campaign, but that had never been Dalacott’s way. He had always been a soldier and had lived as a soldier should, and the reason he was choosing to die by poison instead of the blade was that he no longer regarded himself as worthy of a soldier’s death.

It was dim inside the tent, the only light coming from a single military field lantern of the type which fuelled itself by attracting oilbugs. He lit a second lantern and placed it on his desk, still finding it a little strange that such measures should be necessary for reading at night. This far west in Chamteth, across the Orange River, Overland was out of sight beneath the horizon and the diurnal cycle consisted of twelve hours of uninterrupted daylight followed by twelve hours of unrelieved darkness. Had Kolcorron been in this hemisphere its scientists would probably have devised an efficient lighting system long ago.

Dalacott raised the lid of his desk and took out the last volume of his diary, the one for the year 2629. It was bound in limp green leather and had a separate sheet for each day of the year. He opened the book and slowly turned its pages, compacting the entire Chamteth campaign into a matter of minutes, picking out the key events which—insensibly at first—had led to his personal disintegration as a soldier and as a man…

DAY 84.
Prince Leddravohr was in a strange mood at the staff conference today. I sensed that he was keyed-up and elated, in spite of the news of heavy losses on the southern front. Time and time again he made reference to the fact that ptertha appear to be so few in this part of Land. He is not given to confiding his innermost thoughts, but by piecing together fragmentary and oblique remarks I received the impression that he entertained visions of persuading the King to abandon the whole idea of migrating to Overland.

His rationale seemed to be that such desperate measures would be unnecessary if it were established that, for some unguessable reason, conditions in the Land of the Long Days were unfavourable to ptertha. That being the case, it would only be necessary for Kolcorron to subjugate Chamteth and transfer the seat of power and the remaining population to this continent—a much more logical and natural process than trying to reach another planet
…

DAY 93.
The war is going badly. These people are determined, brave and gifted fighters. I cannot bring myself to contemplate the possibility of our eventual defeat, but the truth is that we would have been severely tested in going against Chamteth even in the days when we could have fielded close on a million fully trained men. Today we have only a third of that number, an uncomfortably high proportion of them raw conscripts, and we are going to need luck in addition to all our skill and courage if the war is to be successfully prosecuted.