“His mind is tense and inward,” she said, “and easily threatened. Mostly he allows his psi to function only with verbalized thoughts, and that only guardedly.
“And your sight-could you see when you were out of the body?”
“Better than with eyes. More finely, and in every direction at once.”
She nodded. “And now?”
“I’m going to the two star men, Matthew and Mikhail, and see how things are with them-what the situation is.”
Concentrating but without effort he edged into thereness until he could see Matthew. He sensed at once the familiar feel of Draco’s dungeon, which he had not expected. He’d assumed they were Ahmed’s prisoners, and it had been clear earlier that Draco and Ahmed were enemies. Scanning, he sensed Mikhail nearby, the still catatonic Chandra, and a female with Chandra, desolate and in pain, that had to be the one called Anne Marie. The hostages had been brought together.
A dungeon captain, ill-at-ease, psi intent, was moving sword in hand down the alleyway between the rows of cells, and Nils withdrew. For only a minute he stayed in his body, sensing Ilse’s awareness, then left again.
Nephthys was alone at her loom, looking critically at a half-completed tapestry. She was conscious of him almost at once. Carefully she looked around, saw nothing meaningful, and took her lip thoughtfully between her teeth.
“I’m not asleep,” she thought. “Is it you? Can the dead return?”
He acknowledged that it was him. “Is the one called Ahmed still alive?” he asked.
“No. Draco had him killed and rules the entire army now.” She hesitated. “Do you know about your people?”
“What about them?”
“Ahmed made an alliance with them. Oh Nils, I heard they’d blinded you but I didn’t know you’d been killed.”
“They blinded me.” His mind was gentle but persistent. “What about my people?”
“They sent out an army to help Ahmed overthrow Draco. Ahmed had promised to protect them with his sky chariot if Draco tried to attack them in the open. They believed if Ahmed won he’d take us all to Egypt and leave this country to them. But now… ”
She paused and he finished for her. “And now Draco has the sky chariot and the whole orc army and plans to destroy us.”
Mentally she nodded.
“When?”
“I don’t know. As soon as his army reaches them. It left this morning.”
She looked around her again.
“I can see you now, barely, as if you were made of pale light. Can you let me see you better?”
He made a stronger facsimile of his body until it appeared almost like flesh. Nephthys reached toward him and touched… nothing. “Can’t you take me in your arms then?”
Gentle negative.
“You have sons. Two of them.” She walked to a slender silvered cord and somewhere a bell rang. Nils withdrew to near absence, and in a moment a servant entered.
“Bring the babies,” Nephthys ordered.
The slave girl curtsied and left. In three minutes she was back, pushing a large-wheeled crib of simple elegance, and left it. Somewhat, Nils reappeared.
“They are not light-skinned like you,” Nephthys said, “but they have hair.”
Nils smiled softly in her mind.
“I wish they could have known you.” She was suddenly forlorn. The response she read in him had nothing of regret or unhappiness, only a soft awareness akin to love. He began to fade.
“When Draco comes back from killing your people, he will die,” Nephthys thought alter him. “I promise you.”
He was gone.
Nils conveyed to Ilse what he had learned, then got up from the deck. “I need your help to bathe,” he said. “I smell of injury and old sweat.”
Ilse sat up and put her feet on the floor. “I’ll take you to a bathing place; they call it a ‘shower.’ It is very pleasant; you can have the water as warm or cold as you want. Come, I’ll help you.”
For lack of clothes to fit him, someone had cut and hemmed a sort of toga from a bed sheet until something better could be sewn. The man looked, Ram thought, like an artist’s conception of Alaric, the Visigoth chief, after his barbarians had sacked Rome. Alaric with his skull shaved and grown to disreputable stubble. Alaric with empty sockets ugly in his face. He’d have to have eye patches made.
“It’s time we talked about getting Nikko Kumalo back from your people,” the captain said brusquely.
“It’s time to get all your people back.”
Easily said, Ram thought cynically, then reminded himself that this was a man who had escaped a dungeon while naked, unarmed, and blind.
“Get them back? How?”
“Land your pinnace on the root where you picked me up, close to the air chimney so it will be inside your shield. Then send men down on a rope and bring the prisoners up.”
“Aren’t there armed guards down below? I can’t risk sending men into that!”
“Let some of my people go down. It’s their nature and pleasure to fight.”
“It’s no one’s nature to fight-not in mortal combat!”
“It’s some people’s nature.”
“And what if the orcs come in the Alpha and attack us while we’re sitting on the roof? We wouldn’t have a chance. All we could do would be to sit there inside the shield. And the orcs would think of things, like attacking the commast to make us pull it in, and then sending smoke up the ventilator. Then we’d have to deactivate, and they’d hit us with grenades from the Alpha before we could get away.”
Nils flowed admiration at the man’s quick mind, but Ram could not accept admiration now, so the Northman eased off, saying, “That couldn’t happen if you captured or destroyed the Alpha first.”
Ram stared at him.
“There were two or armies,” Nils continued, “one ruled by Ahmed, the other by Draco. The two men were deadly rivals. Ahmed made an offer to my people: if they would help him attack Draco, then when he’d won control, he’d take the orcs to another land and leave the country to us. Now, my people wouldn’t willingly meet a large army in open grassland where orc numbers could overwhelm them. But Ahmed promised to use the Alpha to keep Draco from riding out against them.
“And they agreed.
“But somehow Draco overthrew Ahmed, and the entire orc army left the city today to attack my people, and the Alpha will also attack them.
“The men in the Alpha will be looking and thinking downward, not upward. They think of you as cowardly and will hardly expect you to attack. That would be a good time to strike with the Beta. If you succeed, you could borrow warriors from my people to raid the dungeon.
“You are not used to war and violence, and ruthlessness is foreign and terrible to you, so naturally you feel uncertain and afraid. But you are a man who’s faced and overcome difficulties before. You helped build this star ship, and that was not easy. If you concentrate on how to take the Alpha, you may very well succeed. The advantage is yours, because you know what your, your science, is able to do.”
Ram’s face reflected a hardening commitment now, a decision made. “All right,” he said, “I’ll do it. I think I already see how; I just need to work out the details. Meanwhile I’ll have someone take you down to your people to warn them.”
“No, I can go myself without a pinnace, the way Ilse went to help me and the way I went back to the city today and learned what I just told you.”
Ram was jarred inwardly by Nils’s words. It hadn’t occurred to him to wonder how this man had gotten his information. Damn! I shouldn’t have overlooked that, he told himself. In this world of savages I’m a baby, credulous and naive.
But I’m damned well also a first-class engineer, and there’s no one at all down there to match what I can do with that.
At 3,500 meters the pinnace cruised slowly, as if gloating, checking the progress of the Northman army. It was a loose assemblage of mounted platoons covering many hectares of plain, conspicuous to the naked eye even though yesterday’s rain had laid the dust.
