Spacebread Read online

  Spacebread fingered her blaster anxiously, and the figlet, had he realized exactly how close they were to discovery, would have been charging up his cryo-pistol.

  Where in the jungle, demanded the captain. The headwoman calmly pointed to the place in the forest where, just moments before, a few women had reshaped Spacebread’s trail through the growth to move around the village and disappear north. He eyed her coldly, then mounted his beast (one carried three men) and they waddled off into the bush. Spacebread sighed and bolstered her gun firmly.

  Old Lucidan turned, her eyes pale as a fog on a glacier. “The mirror reflects the village’s doom. Fire. Fire from a cloud.” A sigh like an old breeze rippled her shoulders. “We must evacuate.”

  THE PALE LIGHT from Ralph’s twin moons was the only illumination. The entire village plus Spacebread and the figlet crouched in a copse of tall fragrant trees just within sight of the old village, its decoy fires flickering coldly. Not a word was spoken; babies suckled silently. They waited, waited for an old woman’s vision to come and eat the huts with fire. Tension slipped into boredom, and children slept.

  Suddenly, around midnight, Spacebread woke the figlet. Her sword was quivering like a tuning fork. A silver shape was hovering above the village and its carnpfires.

  “Quickly, Klimmit, use your gun! Freeze the trees above us!”

  The figlet, stunned from being awaken so suddenly, now felt his sap begin pulsating fiercely. He raised the pistol quickly and fired repeatedly at the boughs over their heads, shutting his eyes in fear. Ice crystals raced along the branches.

  “It will neutralize our body heat and camouflage us from their warmth-perceptors,” his mistress whispered absently, her gun drawn and eyes pinned to the saucer.

  A light, green, like a searchlight, suddenly swept across the village in a broad “X.” A wall of flame shot up behind the rays. The huddled women groaned, a mild sound, suppressed. First their men had been taken to build the fort, and now what belongings they couldn’t carry were gone. It was a bad year.

  The saucer remained just a moment longer, scanning the forest for pricks of animal heat, then hissed off as it had come. But there were only ashes where the settlement had been. Silent ashes. Old Lucidan stared into the blank night skies, as black to her in daytime, and wished her vision had not been true.

  [6]

  Sonto

  IN THE MORNING LIGHT, Spacebread looked tired. The women of the village grimly sifted through the ashes in search of salvageable items. The children stared vacantly around them at the open space that had been their homes.

  “It’s changed now,” she said. “I find more and more evil is being done because of me. Gramlin and Thracko were killed because of me; this village was destroyed because I might have been here. I cannot ignore these things despite the Power and my oath to it. I will go to the gnorlff’s plantation and retrieve my buckle. If I can do it successfully, no matter how it affects this planet, I will do it and leave. But if I have to, I will see that Basemore and every other obstacle, including the government, that stands in my way is swept aside. It is the only thing I can do.”

  “I’m with you,” the figlet added immediately, feeling brave.

  “And I,” rasped Lucidan from where she stood with the women raking ashes. “I must accompany you northward. I have seen it.”

  When Spacebread told her flatly no, Lucidan told her just as flatly yes. When she tried to dissuade her, Lucidan answered, “It is my right to see this matter finished. My home was destroyed. And I have seen fearful things in the darkness. A great winged snake, and a flaming house of ice. And I will help you.”

  Spacebread saw that it was no use. Lucidan would come.

  “Then be ready to continue with us now. Without delay,” said Spacebread.

  They said their farewells to the headwoman and the others, and when that was through, they turned to find Lucidan with a bundle of food tied to her broom-haft, waiting for them.

  She insisted on walking beside the ghorse, declaring she was only sixty Ralphian years old and could still walk as fast as any three-legged beast.

  They set off through the trees where the women were already clearing another settlement area and stacking wood, and by midday had caught a steady pace and were making good time. The old woman spoke to them softly as they walked through broad bracken fields in the forest. She told them what she knew of star-sight, how it had struck her when she was only a child, how her constant night was shot through with veins and vortices of color that sometimes became pictures and sounds. It was imperfect, sometimes revealing trivial things, sometimes important, and she never really knew which when the visions occurred. Her voice was always the sound of moss-speech, the whisperings of ferns and grasshoppers, and the figlet was a little afraid of her. But she was robust enough to keep pace with them, and she traveled well.

  The terrain became less lush and tropical and more like a true forest. That afternoon they spotted a flock of butterflies fluttering through angled sunbeams. When they began circling Spacebread’s head excitedly, she realized it was the group she had been trying to communicate with. They were apparently migrating. They kept up with her for a while, twittering indecipherably in recognition, and then flew away at their own swift rate.

  As Ontagon dipped below the distant tree-tops the travelers came upon a narrow clearing dominated by a swelling, grassy mound. To its side was a boggy area, and Spacebread nudged Jolita up the slope rather than make Lucidan slog through the muck. Suddenly the old woman drew back.

  “Holla!” she hissed, her white eyes focused toward the mound.

  “But it is only a hillock,” Spacebread protested. “There is a bog to the right. Surely …”

  “Then let us pass through the mud.” Lucidan nodded. “This is one of the old places. A tumulus, so-called, built by the old ones for their own reasons. The Vortex spins stronger here, and all Ralphians know to avoid them. Ill-luck is buried here.”

  Spacebread smiled to herself, then winked at Klimmit and indulged the old woman’s superstition, following through the mud.

  When they camped it was in a grotto that Lucidan knew, sunk in a field of ferns and shrubs. It offered cover from patrolling saucers, though they had spotted none that day. They slept soundly through a shower that night and awakened to sunlight in a misty damp dale.

  They pushed on, then paused at noon the next day to eat a little and rest in the shade of a vine covered tree that grew on a sandy bank sloping down into a swirling brown creek. Lucidan said it ran into the river Sonweck a short way distant. They sat and ate, the rushing gurgle of the creek drowning out the other sounds of the forest.

  The creek was such a pervading and steady sound that they did not feel the thumping of the earth or hear the clicking of armor as a patrol came through the ferns. A great lizard crawled up on the other side of the tree and stopped. Its riders had heard nothing but the creek also; they stared routinely ahead, unaware of the three who lay almost beneath them.

  Suddenly, Spacebread froze in a midst of a bite. There was a golden helmet winking at her through a gap in some moss. The helmet turned casually and a bored eye met hers. The eye instantly spread wide in surprise. But Spacebread had drawn her sword first, and cutting through the moss over the figlet’s head, she dove through. He saw only the glint of Thorian steel and heard a scream and a flurry of shouting behind him before he drew his gun and buzzed into the air. Turning, he saw Spacebread struggling with armored figures. Her sword flashed, some great animal reared and thumped back to earth.

  The figlet zoomed to rest, panting, in the branches of the tree. He saw the silver sword smash a soldier off his lizard, heard gunfire. There were other mounted soldiers galloping through the brush toward Spacebread!

  The figlet fired. He leaped from the branch and plummeted, still firing, to the left of Spacebread over the sandy bank. Two soldiers howled, grasping frozen arms, and tumbled off their mount, which stumbled stupidly through the bracken. But the soldiers were everywhe
re! Two on foot tore out of the thicket behind Spacebread, who was wrestling with a third. But as soon as they started firing, a sheet of moss erupted behind them and Jolita was upon them, kicking and braying, her sharp horns catching one under his helmet and tossing him.

  The figlet sped to where Spacebread fought, tumbling in the grass. The soldier rolled on top, grappling. Klimmit’s cryo-beam caught him in the back of his helmet, freezing it to his skull. He howled, and in a moment was plunging away after his mount.

  Spacebread and the figlet dove for cover behind the tree, again ducking plasma bolts. The ghorse sprang beside them, licking blood from her pelt. Spacebread’s pistol nosed out of the moss and returned fire. There were ten or so more soldiers hiding in the thick grass along the creek bank. Five lay sprinkled about in odd postures. Spacebread hit another one as they crawled for cover. There was the electric crackle of a transmitter over the scattered firing.

  Spacebread huddled behind the tree just as a volley of rays burned the remaining branches off the trunk. Her eyes were wild.

  “They’ll call a saucer. We must cross the creek!”

  The figlet nodded, breathless. “I’ll go up the tree again. You must get Lucidan across.”

  Without waiting, the figlet hummed up through the higher branches and alighted on a thick mossy one. He could see most of the soldiers hiding, but they didn’t think of looking in the tree. Three of them were working their way around to the left behind some bushes. He tried to remember that he was a Sanguakkoid Warrior, setting his pistol for a wide pattern. He could hear Spacebread whispering instructions to the old woman beneath.

  Suddenly Spacebread’s white paw flashed up, and an object bounced beside one of the two soldiers covering the transmitter. They snapped their rifles around to cover it … and it exploded. The figlet flinched when the shock wave rolled past him, but his pistol had already been aimed at the infiltrators on the left. The gun whined and two of them staggered to the ground. The third escaped into the covering brush.

  Smoke curled into the sky. He could see no sign of people where the transmitter had been, but Spacebread and Lucidan had made it to the water. Lucidan led the ghorse across. The sand was loose, they slipped and tumbled up the opposite bank toward the protecting woods.

  The figlet at last let go of the limb and sped after them across the chasm, landing on the other bank to spin and cover Spacebread’s retreat. Not a soldier showed himself; but Spacebread shoved the old woman back into some undergrowth below the bank and tumbled over the brim herself, just as a soundless disk appeared over the treetops to the south. In a second it was hovering over the creek, surveying the scene with invisible eyes. The only sound was the gurgling of the water.

  A flickering green beam licked out and followed their sprawling tracks up the bank, leaving molten sand behind. The beam engulfed the top of the bank across the stream. Flames roared. Then an impudent shot rang out, a beam lanced off the hull of the saucer. Before the craft could answer, a cryo-beam crackled, and it too struck the saucer. Imperviously, it moved forward and fired repeatedly into the foliage. Five shot up in the beam’s wake. But again a beam reached out from below, and then Spacebread threw herself over the rim of the bank, spinning in a shower of sand. She was making a last effort to draw the fire away from the figlet and Lucidan. The saucer’s ray snapped and dodged, trying to catch her, but only obscuring her in a blanket of steam each time it struck the water. She ran like a demon up the other bank and poised on its brink, her arms braced to fire a last time. The craft moved directly over her for the kill.

  Then, without warning, a loud crack sounded from downstream. A blinding light sprayed through the air and thumped into the side of the saucer, leaving a blackened worm-trail on its skin. The craft wobbled, its beam fluctuating, trying to locate the place from which the shot had come. Meanwhile Spacebread knelt and fired steadily into the black seam.

  Another shot sounded and cut another swath down the center of the saucer. Spacebread fired into it; a dull concussion twirled the disk onto its side, flipping it through the air and slamming it into the sandy bank. Spacebread found cover and aimed at the downed craft. Steam rose all around it. She watched coldly as a figure rode up to the edge of the bank on a gray horse. The cowled rider aimed a heavy plasma cannon at the wreck, bracing it with both arms. The rifle barked, jerking upward; a painfully bright beam sliced into the broad silver belly of the craft. Smoke, fire, and flying pieces of metal obscured the creek.

  As the steam and smoke cleared, Spacebread rose somewhat uncertainly to face the cowled figure, who trotted his horse up the edge of the bank toward her. But her gun was still at the ready.

  “My thanks, if you know what you have done,” she said clearly, shaking her scorched cape back from her sword. “You are most timely.”

  The horse clumped up beside her, its rider drawing back his dark cowl and sheathing the cannon in a leather socket on the saddle. He was a tall sleek black cat with violet eyes and shiny whiskers. His green cloak fell in thick folds around silver boots.

  “I think I have just destroyed one of VolVarnix’s offworld craft,” he said with a smile. “I noticed the uproar and decided to help out when the odds got a little lopsided. Those saucers were meant for attacking spaceports and bastions, not a single brave but beautiful cat and her companions.”

  A wide smile grew across Spacebread’s face. She holstered her gun. “Then I do thank you. My name is Spacebread. And these …” She pointed at the figlet and old woman emerging from the blackened opposite bank. “… are Klimmit BarKloof and Lucidan, my friends.”

  He bowed from the saddle. “Sonto Ghram, at your service.” He glanced quickly over his shoulder at the crater where the saucer had been. “But before we continue with the introductions, don’t you think, milady, that we should put some space between us and this place?”

  Spacebread nodded. “Our position will be known soon, if not already …”

  “And there will be more saucers,” Sonto said coolly.

  The old woman was in good shape, despite some singed hair, and Jolita was unharmed, so Lucidan was placed on the ghorse with the figlet. With some coaxing Spacebread accepted a seat on the horse’s broad rump behind Sonto. They must put kilometers behind them, and with speed.

  With Lucidan clinging to Jolita’s neck and Spacebread and Sonto leaning into the wind, they fled the Sonweck River, the fused crater, the scattered bodies, and smoldering blotches of forest. They raced through wild growths of purple vines, past fetid marshes and across natural log bridges. Cloth tore on clinging twigs, flesh bruised against branch or beast, and still they fled at full gallop. Their former battleground became a dark smudge on the southern horizon, and then was lost. Sonto seemed to know which path to follow, as if the land were a familiar haunt, and he led the flight with no uncertainty.

  Thus they left the mossy woodlands and passed into a dark and foreboding swamp. In spots planks had been laid across bogs, and Sonto’s horse trotted them surely. Jolita followed, with the figlet bobbing behind. The landscape grew gloomy; the trees were gnarled gray giants and their branches matted over with opaque strands of moss. They passed two more of the odd ceremonial mounds; and Spacebread noted that Sonto did indeed steer clear of them, though she still scoffed. An occasional sunbeam gave the only notice of the presence of daylight. The only sound was the thumping of hooves along sodden marshland trails.

  At long last, just when the figlet thought he could go no further, Sonto slowed to a canter beside a dank hillock covered with brown lichens. He walked his horse off the path between clusters of pale mushrooms and stopped where a niche folded into the hillside. There he leaned out and with his dagger prodded aside a curtain of blue moss. Behind it was a small and very black opening.

  Sonto turned to Spacebread. “A cave. It will shelter us this evening from prying mechanical eyes.”

  Reluctantly Spacebread assented. The black cat had helped her, but who and what was he? The figlet and Lucidan did not care what his motiv
es were for the moment; their creaking bones descended from Jolita’s back, giving thanks for solid earth and a place to sleep on it.

  The trees were so thick it was hard to tell when sunset happened, but before Sonto could cook his provisions, thick strips of meat, outside the cave was much blacker than inside. The smoke curled harmlessly into the hundreds of moss-laced cavelets twisting beyond the cavern roof.

  As they ate with the hunger of utter fatigue, the figlet (who of course did not have to eat) scrutinized the newcomer. He had a fluffy, unkempt coat, with wide violet eyes flickering in the camplight. His ears stood tall, their gray interior freckled with brown. And he wore a dark blue tunic with a pouched belt and fine silver dagger. Klimmit was intrigued. He had always had problems keeping occupied while people ate, so he occupied himself with questions.

  “Who are you, sir? And why do you fight the regent’s men?” he asked, breathless.

  Sonto smiled wryly behind a hunk of roast, an old scar rippling beneath his face fur. “I might ask the same of you, sir figlet, did I not know that you and the lady are the authors of such an uproar in Black-Black that VolVarnix brought out his saucers a full month ahead of schedule. But I will ask why you robbed the royal treasury and killed Captain Thracko.”

  Spacebread’s sharp laughter cut off whatever outraged protest the figlet was mustering. “So I’m the thief, now,” she hooted. Then, growing grimmer, she leaned over the fire and looked deeply into Sonto’s eyes. “No. Let us dispense with subtlety. I came too close to being fried today to play games tonight with my only ally. If you are against the regent, we will ride with you, but we are not plunderers and we have no wealth. Tell.”

  Sonto put down his supper. “I am against no one. Yet. I will tell you who I am because you move and speak like an honest cat. Afterward you will tell me who you are, if you are satisfied with my story.”