Fourteen days passed before we took air for Horse, a modest town
lying between the Windy Country and the Plain of Fear, about a
hundred miles west of the latter. Horse is a caravan stage for
those traders mad enough to traipse through those two wildernesses.
Of late, the city has been the logistical headquarters for
Whisper’s operations. What skeleton forces were not on the
road to the Barrowland were in garrison there.
Damned northbound fools were going to get wet.
We drifted in after an eventless passage, me with eyes agog.
Despite the removal of vast armies, Whisper’s base was an
anthive swirling around newly created carpets.
They came in a dozen varieties. In one field I saw a W formation
of five monsters, each a hundred yards long and forty wide. A wood
and metal jungle topped each. Elsewhere, other carpets in unusual
shapes sat upon ground that looked to have been graded. Most were
far longer than they were wide and bigger than the traditional. All
had a variety of appurtenances, and all were enveloped in a light
copper cage.
“What is all that?” I asked.
“Adaptation to enemy tactics. Your peasant girl
isn’t the only one who can change methods.” She stepped
down, stretched. I did the same. Those hours in the air leave you
stiff. “We may get the chance to test them, despite my having
backed off the Plain.”
“What?”
“A large Rebel force is headed for Horse. Several thousand
men and everything the desert has to offer.”
Several thousand men? Where did they come from? Had things
changed that much?
“They have.” That damned mind-reading trick again.
“The cities I abandoned poured men into her
forces.”
“What did you mean, test?”
“I’m willing to stop fighting. But I won’t run
away from a fight. If she persists in heading west, I’ll show
her that, null or no null, she can be crushed.”
We were near one of the new carpets. I ambled over. In shape it
was like a boat, about fifty feet long. It had real seats. Two
faced forward, one aft. In front there was a small ballista. Aft
there was a much heavier engine. Clamped to the carpet’s
sides and underbelly were eight spears thirty feet long. Each had a
bulge the size of a nail keg five feet behind its head. Everything
was painted blacker than the Dominator’s heart. This
boat-carpet had fins like a fish. Some humorist had painted eyes
and teeth up front.
Others nearby followed similar designs, though different
artisans had followed different muses in crafting the flying boats.
One, instead of fish fins, had what looked like round, translucent,
whisper thin dried seed pods fifteen feet across.
The Lady had no time to let me inspect her equipment and no
inclination to let me wander around unchaperoned. Not as a matter
of trust, but of protection. I might suffer a fatal accident if I
did not stay in her shadow. All the Taken were in Horse. Even my
oldest friends.
Bold, bold Darling. Audacity. Becoming her signature, that. She
had the entire strength of the Plain just twenty miles from Horse,
and she was closing in. Her advance was ponderous, though, limited
to the speed of the walking trees.
We went out onto the field where the carpets waited, arranged in
formal array around the monsters I had spotted first. The Lady
said, “I planned a small demonstration raid on your
headquarters. But this will be more convincing, I think.”
Men were busy around the carpets. The big ones they were loading
with huge pieces of pottery which looked like those big
urn-planters with the little cup-holes in the upper half for small
plants. They were fifteen feet tall; the planter sites were sealed
with paraffin, and the bottom boasted a twenty foot pole with a
crossbar on its end. Scores were being mounted in racks.
I did a fast count. More carpets than Taken. “All these
are going up? How?”
“Benefice will handle the big ones. Like the Howler before
him, he has an outstanding capacity for managing a large carpet.
The other four bigs will be slaved to his. Come. This one is
ours.”
I said something intelligent like, “Urk?!”
“I want you to see it.”
“We might be recognized.”
Taken circled the long, skinny boat-carpets. Soldiers were
aboard them, in the second and third seats. The men facing aft
checked their ballistae, munitions, cranked a spring-powered device
apparently meant to help restretch bowstrings after missiles were
discharged. I could see no apparent task assigned the men in the
middle seats. “What’s the cagework for?”
“You’ll learn soon enough.”
“But . . . ”
“Come to it fresh. Croaker. Without
preconceptions.”
I followed her around our carpet. I do not know what she
checked, but she seemed satisfied. The men who had prepared it were
pleased by her nod.
“Up, Croaker. Into the second seat. Fasten yourself
securely. It’ll get exciting before it’s
over.”
Oh yeah.
“We’re the pathfinders,” she said as she
buckled into the front seat. A grizzled old sergeant took the rear
position. He looked at me doubtfully, but said nothing. The Taken
assumed the front seat aboard every carpet. The bigs, as the Lady
called them, had crews of four. Benefice rode the carpet at the
center point of the W.
“Ready?” the Lady shouted.
“Right.”
“Aye,” the sergeant said.
Our carpet began to move.
Lumbering is the only word to describe the first few seconds.
The carpet was heavy and, till it managed some forward motion, did
not want to lift.
The Lady looked back and grinned as the earth dropped away. She
was enjoying herself. She began shouting instructions which
explained the bewildering bunch of pedals and levers surrounding
me.
Push and pull on these two in combination and the carpet began
to roll around its long axis. Twist those and it turned right or
left. The idea was to use combinations somehow to guide the
craft.
“What for?” I shouted into the wind. The words
ripped away. We had donned goggles which protected our eyes but did
nothing for the rest of our faces. I expected a case of windburn
before the game was played out.
We were two thousand feet up, five miles from Horse, well ahead
of the Taken. I could see traces of dust raised by Darling’s
army. Again I shouted, “What for?”
The bottom fell out.
The Lady had extinguished the spells which made the carpet go.
“That’s why. You’ll fly the boat when we hit the
null.”
What the hell?
She gave me a half dozen shots at getting the hang of it, and I
did see the theory, before she whipped toward the Rebel army.
We circled once, at screaming speed, well outside the null. I
was astounded at what Darling had put together. About fifty
windwhales, including some monsters over a thousand feet long.
Mantas by the hundred. A vast wedge of walking trees. Battalions of
human soldiers. Menhirs by the hundred, flickering around the
walking trees, shielding them. Thousands of things that leaped and
hopped and glided and flopped and flew. So gruesome and wondrous a
sight.
On the westward leg of our circle I spied the imperial force,
two thousand men in a phalanx on the foreslope of a ridge a mile
ahead of the Rebel. A joke, them standing against Darling.
A few bold mantas cruised the edge of the null, sniping with
bolts that fell short or just missed. I judged Darling herself to
be aboard a wind whale about a thousand feet up. She had grown
stronger, for her null’s diameter had expanded since my
departure from the Plain. All that bewildering Rebel array marched
within its protection.
The Lady had called us pathfinders. Our carpet was not equipped
like the others, but I did not know what she meant. Till she did
it.
We climbed straight up. Little black balls trailing streamers of
red or blue smoke scattered behind us, shoveled overboard hastily
by the old sergeant. Must have been three hundred. The smoke balls
scattered, hovered just feet short of the null. So. Markers by
which the Taken could navigate.
And here they came. Way up, the smaller surrounding the W
formation of bigs.
The men on the bigs began releasing the giant pots. Down, down,
down went a score. We followed, sliding along outside the smudge
pots. As they plummeted, the flowerpots turned pole-downward.
Mantas and whales slid out of their way.
When the pole hit ground it drove a plunger. The paraffin seals
burst. Liquid squirted. The plunger hit a striker. The fluid
ignited. Gouts of fire. And when that fire reached something inside
the pots, they exploded. Shards cut down men and monsters.
I watched the blooming of those flowers of fire, aghast.
Above, the Taken wheeled for a second pass. There was no magic
in this. The null was useless.
The second fall drew lightning from whales and mantas. Their
first few successes cured them, though, for the pots they hit
exploded in the air. Mantas went down. One whale was in grave
trouble till others maneuvered overhead and sprayed it with ballast
water.
The Taken made a third pass, again dropping pots. They would
hammer Darling’s troops into slime unless she did
something.
She went up after the Taken.
The smoke pots slid around the flanks of the null, outlining it
completely.
The Lady climbed at shrieking speed.
The W of bigs went away. The smaller carpets took on more
altitude. The Lady brought us into position behind Whisper and The
Limper. Clearly, she had anticipated Darling’s response.
My emotions were mixed, to say the least.
Whisper’s carpet tipped its nose downward. Limper
followed. Then the Lady. Others of the Taken followed us.
Whisper dove toward one especially monstrous windwhale. Faster
and faster she flew. Three hundred yards from the null two
thirty-foot spears ripped away from her carpet, impelled by
sorcery. When they hit the null they continued on in a normal
ballistic trajectory.
Whisper made no effort to avoid the null. Into it she plunged,
the man in her second seat guiding the carpet’s fall wilh
those fish fins.
Whisper’s spears struck near the windwhale’s head.
Both burst into flames.
Fire is anathema to those monsters, for the gas that lifts them
is violently explosive.
The Limper trailed Whisper with elan. He loosed two spears
outside the null and another two inside, just dropped as his
second-seat man took the carpet within inches of the windwhale.
Only one lance failed to strike home.
The whale had five fires burning upon its back.
Storms of lightning crackled round Whisper and Limper.
Then we hit the null. Our buoying spells failed. Panic snatched
at me. Up to me? . . .
We were headed for the burning whale. I jerked and banged and
kicked levers.
“Not so violently!” the Lady yelled.
“Smoothly. Gently.”
I got it in hand as the whale roared upward past us.
Lightning crackled. We passed between two smaller whales. They
missed us. The Lady discharged her little ballista. Its bolt struck
one of those monsters. What the hell was the point? I wondered.
That was not a bee sting to one of them.
But that quarrel had a wire attached, running off a
reel . . .
Wham!
I was blinded momentarily. My hair crackled. Direct hit from a
manta bolt . . . We’re dead, I
thought.
The metal cage surrounding us absorbed the lightning’s
energy and passed it along the unwinding wire.
A manta was on our tail, only yards behind. The sergeant ripped
off a shaft. It look our pursuer under the wing. The beast began to
slide and flutter like a one-winged butterfly.
“Watch where we’re going!” the Lady yelled. I
turned around. A windwhale back rushed toward us. Fledgling mantas
scurried in panic. Rebel bowmen threw up a barrage of arrows.
I hit and yanked every damned lever and pedal, and pissed my
pants. Maybe that did it. We scraped the thing’s flank, but
did not crash.
Now the damned carpet began spinning and tumbling. Earth, sky,
windwhales swirled around us. In one glimpse, way up, I saw a
windwhale’s side explode, saw the monster fold in the middle,
raining gobbets of fire. Two more whales trailed
smoke . . . But it was a picture there and
gone in a moment. I could find none of it when the carpet again
rolled to where I could see the sky.
We began our plunge from high enough that I had time to calm
down. I fiddled with levers and pedals, got some of the wild spin
off . . .
Then it did not matter. We were out of the null and it was the
Lady’s craft again.
I looked back to see how the sergeant was. He gave me a dirty
look, shook his head pityingly.
The look the Lady gave me was not encouraging either.
We climbed and moved westward. The Taken assembled, observed the
results of their attack.
Only the one windwhale was destroyed. The other two managed to
get under friends who doused them with ballast water. Even so, the
survivors were demoralized. They had done the Taken no injury at
all.
Still, they came on.
This time the Taken dropped to the surface and attacked from
below, building speed from several miles away, then curving up
through the null. I maneuvered between whales with a more delicate
hand but still fell dangerously near the ground.
“What are we doing this for?” I yelled. We were not
attacking; we were just following Whisper and Limper.
“For the hell of it. For the sheer hell of it. And so you
can write about it.”
“I’ll fake it.”
She laughed.
We went high and circled.
Darling took the whales back down. That second pass slew two
more. Down low the Taken could not throw themselves all the way
through the null. None but Limper, that is. He played the
daredevil. He backed off five miles and built a tremendous velocity
before hitting the null.
He made that pass while the bigs were dropping the last of their
pots.
I’ve never heard Darling called stupid. She did not do the
stupid thing this time.
Despite all the flash and excitement, it was clear that she
could, if she wanted, press on to Horse. The Taken had expended
most of their munitions. Limper and the bigs were headed back to
rearm. The others circled . . . Horse was
Darling’s if she was willing to pay the price.
She decided it was too dear.
Wise choice. My guess is, it would have cost her half her force.
And windwhales are too rare to give up for a prize so
insignificant.
She turned back.
The Lady broke away and let her go, though she could have
maintained the attacks almost indefinitely.
We touched down. I scrambled over the side even before the Lady
and in a calculated, melodramatic gesture, kissed the ground. She
laughed.
She had had a great time.
“You let them go.”
“I made my point.”
“She’ll shift tactics.”
“Of course she will. But for the moment the hammer is in
my hand. By not using it I’ve told her something.
She’ll have thought it over by the time we get
there.”
“I suppose.”
“You didn’t do badly for a novice. Go get drunk or
something. And stay out of Limper’s way.”
“Yeah.”
What I did was go to the quarters assigned me and try to stop
shaking.
Fourteen days passed before we took air for Horse, a modest town
lying between the Windy Country and the Plain of Fear, about a
hundred miles west of the latter. Horse is a caravan stage for
those traders mad enough to traipse through those two wildernesses.
Of late, the city has been the logistical headquarters for
Whisper’s operations. What skeleton forces were not on the
road to the Barrowland were in garrison there.
Damned northbound fools were going to get wet.
We drifted in after an eventless passage, me with eyes agog.
Despite the removal of vast armies, Whisper’s base was an
anthive swirling around newly created carpets.
They came in a dozen varieties. In one field I saw a W formation
of five monsters, each a hundred yards long and forty wide. A wood
and metal jungle topped each. Elsewhere, other carpets in unusual
shapes sat upon ground that looked to have been graded. Most were
far longer than they were wide and bigger than the traditional. All
had a variety of appurtenances, and all were enveloped in a light
copper cage.
“What is all that?” I asked.
“Adaptation to enemy tactics. Your peasant girl
isn’t the only one who can change methods.” She stepped
down, stretched. I did the same. Those hours in the air leave you
stiff. “We may get the chance to test them, despite my having
backed off the Plain.”
“What?”
“A large Rebel force is headed for Horse. Several thousand
men and everything the desert has to offer.”
Several thousand men? Where did they come from? Had things
changed that much?
“They have.” That damned mind-reading trick again.
“The cities I abandoned poured men into her
forces.”
“What did you mean, test?”
“I’m willing to stop fighting. But I won’t run
away from a fight. If she persists in heading west, I’ll show
her that, null or no null, she can be crushed.”
We were near one of the new carpets. I ambled over. In shape it
was like a boat, about fifty feet long. It had real seats. Two
faced forward, one aft. In front there was a small ballista. Aft
there was a much heavier engine. Clamped to the carpet’s
sides and underbelly were eight spears thirty feet long. Each had a
bulge the size of a nail keg five feet behind its head. Everything
was painted blacker than the Dominator’s heart. This
boat-carpet had fins like a fish. Some humorist had painted eyes
and teeth up front.
Others nearby followed similar designs, though different
artisans had followed different muses in crafting the flying boats.
One, instead of fish fins, had what looked like round, translucent,
whisper thin dried seed pods fifteen feet across.
The Lady had no time to let me inspect her equipment and no
inclination to let me wander around unchaperoned. Not as a matter
of trust, but of protection. I might suffer a fatal accident if I
did not stay in her shadow. All the Taken were in Horse. Even my
oldest friends.
Bold, bold Darling. Audacity. Becoming her signature, that. She
had the entire strength of the Plain just twenty miles from Horse,
and she was closing in. Her advance was ponderous, though, limited
to the speed of the walking trees.
We went out onto the field where the carpets waited, arranged in
formal array around the monsters I had spotted first. The Lady
said, “I planned a small demonstration raid on your
headquarters. But this will be more convincing, I think.”
Men were busy around the carpets. The big ones they were loading
with huge pieces of pottery which looked like those big
urn-planters with the little cup-holes in the upper half for small
plants. They were fifteen feet tall; the planter sites were sealed
with paraffin, and the bottom boasted a twenty foot pole with a
crossbar on its end. Scores were being mounted in racks.
I did a fast count. More carpets than Taken. “All these
are going up? How?”
“Benefice will handle the big ones. Like the Howler before
him, he has an outstanding capacity for managing a large carpet.
The other four bigs will be slaved to his. Come. This one is
ours.”
I said something intelligent like, “Urk?!”
“I want you to see it.”
“We might be recognized.”
Taken circled the long, skinny boat-carpets. Soldiers were
aboard them, in the second and third seats. The men facing aft
checked their ballistae, munitions, cranked a spring-powered device
apparently meant to help restretch bowstrings after missiles were
discharged. I could see no apparent task assigned the men in the
middle seats. “What’s the cagework for?”
“You’ll learn soon enough.”
“But . . . ”
“Come to it fresh. Croaker. Without
preconceptions.”
I followed her around our carpet. I do not know what she
checked, but she seemed satisfied. The men who had prepared it were
pleased by her nod.
“Up, Croaker. Into the second seat. Fasten yourself
securely. It’ll get exciting before it’s
over.”
Oh yeah.
“We’re the pathfinders,” she said as she
buckled into the front seat. A grizzled old sergeant took the rear
position. He looked at me doubtfully, but said nothing. The Taken
assumed the front seat aboard every carpet. The bigs, as the Lady
called them, had crews of four. Benefice rode the carpet at the
center point of the W.
“Ready?” the Lady shouted.
“Right.”
“Aye,” the sergeant said.
Our carpet began to move.
Lumbering is the only word to describe the first few seconds.
The carpet was heavy and, till it managed some forward motion, did
not want to lift.
The Lady looked back and grinned as the earth dropped away. She
was enjoying herself. She began shouting instructions which
explained the bewildering bunch of pedals and levers surrounding
me.
Push and pull on these two in combination and the carpet began
to roll around its long axis. Twist those and it turned right or
left. The idea was to use combinations somehow to guide the
craft.
“What for?” I shouted into the wind. The words
ripped away. We had donned goggles which protected our eyes but did
nothing for the rest of our faces. I expected a case of windburn
before the game was played out.
We were two thousand feet up, five miles from Horse, well ahead
of the Taken. I could see traces of dust raised by Darling’s
army. Again I shouted, “What for?”
The bottom fell out.
The Lady had extinguished the spells which made the carpet go.
“That’s why. You’ll fly the boat when we hit the
null.”
What the hell?
She gave me a half dozen shots at getting the hang of it, and I
did see the theory, before she whipped toward the Rebel army.
We circled once, at screaming speed, well outside the null. I
was astounded at what Darling had put together. About fifty
windwhales, including some monsters over a thousand feet long.
Mantas by the hundred. A vast wedge of walking trees. Battalions of
human soldiers. Menhirs by the hundred, flickering around the
walking trees, shielding them. Thousands of things that leaped and
hopped and glided and flopped and flew. So gruesome and wondrous a
sight.
On the westward leg of our circle I spied the imperial force,
two thousand men in a phalanx on the foreslope of a ridge a mile
ahead of the Rebel. A joke, them standing against Darling.
A few bold mantas cruised the edge of the null, sniping with
bolts that fell short or just missed. I judged Darling herself to
be aboard a wind whale about a thousand feet up. She had grown
stronger, for her null’s diameter had expanded since my
departure from the Plain. All that bewildering Rebel array marched
within its protection.
The Lady had called us pathfinders. Our carpet was not equipped
like the others, but I did not know what she meant. Till she did
it.
We climbed straight up. Little black balls trailing streamers of
red or blue smoke scattered behind us, shoveled overboard hastily
by the old sergeant. Must have been three hundred. The smoke balls
scattered, hovered just feet short of the null. So. Markers by
which the Taken could navigate.
And here they came. Way up, the smaller surrounding the W
formation of bigs.
The men on the bigs began releasing the giant pots. Down, down,
down went a score. We followed, sliding along outside the smudge
pots. As they plummeted, the flowerpots turned pole-downward.
Mantas and whales slid out of their way.
When the pole hit ground it drove a plunger. The paraffin seals
burst. Liquid squirted. The plunger hit a striker. The fluid
ignited. Gouts of fire. And when that fire reached something inside
the pots, they exploded. Shards cut down men and monsters.
I watched the blooming of those flowers of fire, aghast.
Above, the Taken wheeled for a second pass. There was no magic
in this. The null was useless.
The second fall drew lightning from whales and mantas. Their
first few successes cured them, though, for the pots they hit
exploded in the air. Mantas went down. One whale was in grave
trouble till others maneuvered overhead and sprayed it with ballast
water.
The Taken made a third pass, again dropping pots. They would
hammer Darling’s troops into slime unless she did
something.
She went up after the Taken.
The smoke pots slid around the flanks of the null, outlining it
completely.
The Lady climbed at shrieking speed.
The W of bigs went away. The smaller carpets took on more
altitude. The Lady brought us into position behind Whisper and The
Limper. Clearly, she had anticipated Darling’s response.
My emotions were mixed, to say the least.
Whisper’s carpet tipped its nose downward. Limper
followed. Then the Lady. Others of the Taken followed us.
Whisper dove toward one especially monstrous windwhale. Faster
and faster she flew. Three hundred yards from the null two
thirty-foot spears ripped away from her carpet, impelled by
sorcery. When they hit the null they continued on in a normal
ballistic trajectory.
Whisper made no effort to avoid the null. Into it she plunged,
the man in her second seat guiding the carpet’s fall wilh
those fish fins.
Whisper’s spears struck near the windwhale’s head.
Both burst into flames.
Fire is anathema to those monsters, for the gas that lifts them
is violently explosive.
The Limper trailed Whisper with elan. He loosed two spears
outside the null and another two inside, just dropped as his
second-seat man took the carpet within inches of the windwhale.
Only one lance failed to strike home.
The whale had five fires burning upon its back.
Storms of lightning crackled round Whisper and Limper.
Then we hit the null. Our buoying spells failed. Panic snatched
at me. Up to me? . . .
We were headed for the burning whale. I jerked and banged and
kicked levers.
“Not so violently!” the Lady yelled.
“Smoothly. Gently.”
I got it in hand as the whale roared upward past us.
Lightning crackled. We passed between two smaller whales. They
missed us. The Lady discharged her little ballista. Its bolt struck
one of those monsters. What the hell was the point? I wondered.
That was not a bee sting to one of them.
But that quarrel had a wire attached, running off a
reel . . .
Wham!
I was blinded momentarily. My hair crackled. Direct hit from a
manta bolt . . . We’re dead, I
thought.
The metal cage surrounding us absorbed the lightning’s
energy and passed it along the unwinding wire.
A manta was on our tail, only yards behind. The sergeant ripped
off a shaft. It look our pursuer under the wing. The beast began to
slide and flutter like a one-winged butterfly.
“Watch where we’re going!” the Lady yelled. I
turned around. A windwhale back rushed toward us. Fledgling mantas
scurried in panic. Rebel bowmen threw up a barrage of arrows.
I hit and yanked every damned lever and pedal, and pissed my
pants. Maybe that did it. We scraped the thing’s flank, but
did not crash.
Now the damned carpet began spinning and tumbling. Earth, sky,
windwhales swirled around us. In one glimpse, way up, I saw a
windwhale’s side explode, saw the monster fold in the middle,
raining gobbets of fire. Two more whales trailed
smoke . . . But it was a picture there and
gone in a moment. I could find none of it when the carpet again
rolled to where I could see the sky.
We began our plunge from high enough that I had time to calm
down. I fiddled with levers and pedals, got some of the wild spin
off . . .
Then it did not matter. We were out of the null and it was the
Lady’s craft again.
I looked back to see how the sergeant was. He gave me a dirty
look, shook his head pityingly.
The look the Lady gave me was not encouraging either.
We climbed and moved westward. The Taken assembled, observed the
results of their attack.
Only the one windwhale was destroyed. The other two managed to
get under friends who doused them with ballast water. Even so, the
survivors were demoralized. They had done the Taken no injury at
all.
Still, they came on.
This time the Taken dropped to the surface and attacked from
below, building speed from several miles away, then curving up
through the null. I maneuvered between whales with a more delicate
hand but still fell dangerously near the ground.
“What are we doing this for?” I yelled. We were not
attacking; we were just following Whisper and Limper.
“For the hell of it. For the sheer hell of it. And so you
can write about it.”
“I’ll fake it.”
She laughed.
We went high and circled.
Darling took the whales back down. That second pass slew two
more. Down low the Taken could not throw themselves all the way
through the null. None but Limper, that is. He played the
daredevil. He backed off five miles and built a tremendous velocity
before hitting the null.
He made that pass while the bigs were dropping the last of their
pots.
I’ve never heard Darling called stupid. She did not do the
stupid thing this time.
Despite all the flash and excitement, it was clear that she
could, if she wanted, press on to Horse. The Taken had expended
most of their munitions. Limper and the bigs were headed back to
rearm. The others circled . . . Horse was
Darling’s if she was willing to pay the price.
She decided it was too dear.
Wise choice. My guess is, it would have cost her half her force.
And windwhales are too rare to give up for a prize so
insignificant.
She turned back.
The Lady broke away and let her go, though she could have
maintained the attacks almost indefinitely.
We touched down. I scrambled over the side even before the Lady
and in a calculated, melodramatic gesture, kissed the ground. She
laughed.
She had had a great time.
“You let them go.”
“I made my point.”
“She’ll shift tactics.”
“Of course she will. But for the moment the hammer is in
my hand. By not using it I’ve told her something.
She’ll have thought it over by the time we get
there.”
“I suppose.”
“You didn’t do badly for a novice. Go get drunk or
something. And stay out of Limper’s way.”
“Yeah.”
What I did was go to the quarters assigned me and try to stop
shaking.