The Mask And The Master (Mechanized Wizardry Book 2) (15 page)

The girls dashed to the trees as quietly as they could on bare feet.  Columbine winced as she barked her toes against a half-buried rock, and bit her lip to keep from speaking out.  They peeked past the trunk of a tree, resting their hands on the fuzzy brown vines that were encircling it.  Their eyes widened at the sight beyond.

“Two Forks,” Columbine whispered.

Down below, there was a stockade encircling a cluster of homes; domes, really, covered in a paste of mud and leaves.  The stockade, a long fence of sharpened tree trunks embedded in the ground, was only about two and half meters high, but covered what looked like quite a large area.  Even with most of the village obscured from their vantage point, Columbine could count a dozen domed houses inside the barrier.  A creek babbled into the village at one side, just at the edge of their vision to the north (if Ariell was right and that really was north).  The water passed out through a slimy wooden grating they could see built into the stockade on the side closer to them, and it quickly split into two smaller creeks winding their way through the Tarmic Woods.

Maybe five hundred meters away was a big swinging door built into the stockade.  A woman on a horse was chatting with a short, aproned woman in front of the gate.  The white-and-brown speckled horse fidgeted beneath its rider, ready to get moving as it sniffed the tasty autumn air. 

“We don’t know that this is Two Forks,” Ariell whispered back, her hands nervously clenching the stonebow.  Columbine looked at her, brown eyes narrowing.

“Sure we do.”

“No we don’t!  And even if it is, we can’t trust that these people are farmers.  They could be thieves or killers, like the men who came to our farm—”

“They’ve got gardens,” Columbine said impatiently, pointing a stubby finger at the patches of cultivated land clearly visible within the stockade.  “They’re farmers.  Let’s say hi.”

“We are
not
saying hi!”  Ariell said, grabbing Columbine by the shoulder.  She moved her head in close, so their foreheads were almost touching.  “Here’s what we do,” she hissed. “We wait here until nighttime.  We sneak through the stockade, and see what we can take.  Food, water, clothes… more Petronaut stuff, if we see it lying around…”

“You wanna steal from them?”

“They’ve got homes!  They’ve got a wall!  They can afford it, and we need it more.”

“So why don’t we just ask them for help?”

“Too risky,” she said, shaking her head vigorously.

Columbine looked at her sister.  Then she drew herself up to her full height and pointed a finger in Ariell’s face.  “Ariell, you’re just a great big scaredybird.  You keep making good things into problems, like some big scared baby.  Well, you better stop it; ‘cause if you don’t grow up fast, you never will.”

Ariell’s mouth dropped open.  Columbine tossed her hair as she spun around and began marching towards the women at the gate.  She pulled the gooey orange bag out of her belt pouch and started waving it like a flag.  “The pretenders will fall!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.  She could hear Ariell swearing and scrambling on the leaves behind her, so she started to run.  The two woman wheeled towards her, and the horse reared up a little bit.  “The pretenders will fall!” she shouted, a big smile on her face.

The woman on the horse trotted towards her, and she stopped running.  Columbine threw a quick glance over her shoulder.  Ariell awkwardly slid to a stop on the muddy ground, trying to keep the stonebow aimed at the rider.  The woman on horseback had dirty homespun clothes and leathery, weathered skin;
just like a farmer
, Columbine thought triumphantly.  Her hair was thin and black, and pulled back in a long braid.  The girl just now noticed that the woman had a short bow resting against her thigh, an arrow notched and ready.  Columbine looked up into the woman’s face as she looked down with dark brown eyes.

Columbine raised the orange bag high with both hands.  “The pretenders will fall?” she tried again.

The farmwoman shook her head, grinning.  “Ain’t you a little young to be political?”

“…No?”

“Well.  Either Delia’s a lot worse’n it was when I left, or some folks with a gold cart told you to say that.  Either way, little Miss…?”

“Columbine Fletcher.”

“Miss Columbine; how ‘bout you call your bodyguard off, there?”

The woman cast her eyes up to Ariell lazily.  Ariell moistened her lips and kept the trembling stonebow raised.  “Ariell,” Columbine barked.  “Be nice!”

The horse snorted like it was laughing.  After a long moment, Ariell exhaled and lowered her bow.  “You are completely dead, little sis,” she promised, in a low, menacing voice.

“Plenty of time for that after you have some biscuits,” the farmer said congenially, pulling the reins on her horse.  “Come on in, girls!  There’s a place for you here in Two Forks.”

Chapter Twelve

Vanguard

The Tarmic Woods covered a long arc of countryside, thinning out into meadows and marsh in the west and abutting the mountainous border with Svargath over two hundred kilometers east.  Traversing the forest end to end could take weeks on foot.  North to south, however, the forest pinched down to as few as thirty kilometers wide at its narrowest points.  The well-travelled road from Delia north-north-east to Kess was just a long day’s ride.  Consequently, most Delian settlement of the woods had happened vertically, along or just outside the trading corridor with its northern neighbor.  The state had no great incentive to develop the east, when logging was plentiful enough close to home, and trade and travel to Svargath could be accomplished so much more easily by sea, or the roads hugging the southern coastline.  So Delia knew virtually nothing about the eastern Tarmic beyond what her mapmakers had sketched out generations earlier.

And these Golden Caravan loons know it
, Samanthi thought, breathing heavily.

She had her arms out wide for balance as the nine of them clambered up the hillside.  The seven-league boots that encircled her legs up to the knee were still disconcerting, even after half a day of walking.  The ranine coils added extra bounce to her stride and took most of the strain of walking away from her muscles.  On flat ground, it was fantastic; she was cantering along with the rest of the ‘nauts at twice the speed of a regular hiker, without her leg muscles screaming for mercy.  But on slopes like this one, not being able to really feel the ground was sending her wobbling.  The insulating coils made her feel like she was on stilts, without the contours of the ground plainly announcing themselves through her customary thin-soled shoes.  Samanthi bit her lip and swung her right arm across her body as her foot yet again landed in a way she didn’t expect. 
Mathias walks wearing this junk every day?  I think I’ll stay a technician, thanks
, she groused.

She was one of three lucky techs (including Iggy) to be out in the vanguard like this.  Since this Golden Caravan had been operating for who knows how long without being spotted, they had to be based in the eastern Tarmic where Delia’s eyes and ears were thinnest.  The Army wanted them found, and fast.  The commanders also recognized that sending scouts out in ones and twos to find an army with Petronaut weaponry was a good way to clear out an excess supply of scouts, but not much else.  So instead, they’d search in bands large enough to win fights, or at the very least, hold the line long enough to get reports back to Delia, or Fort Campos in the east.

The compromise between speed and power was that six ‘nauts (and select oh-so-fortunate techs) would barrel forward into the woods at Petronaut speed to a friendly logging camp in the east, on the banks of the Bantam River.  As a unit, the ‘nauts would begin preliminary intelligence gathering while two platoons of musketeers would make their slower way to the camp with more techs and fresh supplies.  By the time the soldiers arrived, the ‘nauts would have had about two days of reconnaissance, and would, with any luck, know where to find the Golden Caravan and strike it in force.  The danger, of course, was in either half of the team being caught in a fight in the days before they met up; but it was a risk the Army and the Board of Governors had considered worth taking.

Not that we’re exactly pushovers right now
, she thought, adjusting her backpack straps as she finally staggered to the top of the slope.  It was a sign of these paranoid times that a team of six fully armored ‘nauts could be considered ‘at risk’ from much of anything.  She saw Kelley and Mathias leading the pack in their sleek black armor, about a hundred fifty meters ahead through the thin white trees.  Dame Gaulda of the Shock Troops was momentarily stopped, watching the sky through her death’s head helmet.  The compact woman inside the camouflaged gray-green steel wasn’t much of a talker, unless you got her going on her favorite subjects: her two-year-old son, and the relative terminal ballistics of conical bullets and cast lead shot.  Iggy, flying above the treeline in Ironsides, had developed a serious platonic crush on the hard-edged ‘naut at their briefing, and was irrepressibly determined to get Dame Gaulda “drunk and happy” before the mission was done.  Samanthi wasn’t quite ready to sign on for drunk target practice with the Shock Trooper, but she admitted to feeling her own flutter of excitement inside the woman’s aura of confident competence.  The prospect of seeing Dame Gaulda open up on a host of badniks with all the fiendish weapons just below the surface of her suit was as dazzling as it was macabre.

Three Cavaliers and their tech, a bookishly handsome ginger named Zig, rounded out the team.  The Cavaliers were the oldest squad in Delia, and the largest.  From the first Petronauts in Delia through until the beginning of King Randolph’s reign, all suits were built to the same basic specifications, with each individual ‘naut making cosmetic or functional changes haphazardly, as their interests and inspirations moved them.  But in the ‘40s, as Workshop Row grew and King Randolph began the reforms Tess would help him complete a decade later, the Petronauts started to consider how suits might change if designed, say, specifically for Reconnaissance, or specifically for Aerial travel.  Workshop sketches turned into prototypes, and models into battle-hardened reality.  One by one, over the decades, seven other squads formed with their own specialized suits, missions, equipment and cultures.

The Cavaliers were the embodiment of the jack-of-all-trades spirit of the early ‘nauts.  Their suits weren’t as tough as the Bulwark’s armor, or light and quiet as the Recon squad’s, or as powerful as the Shock Troops’, or mobile as Aerials’ or Haulers’; and their diplomatic training was less thorough than what the Civics or the Parade squad received.  But balanced equipment and a broad knowledge base made Cavaliers reasonably good at most everything a Petronaut might be asked to do.  Their rallying cry was
Primel Vuluntaris
, or ‘First to Volunteer’ (which, jaded members of the more specialized squads were fond of saying, was because they were never the first ones picked).

Damn chipper idiots probably volunteered for this trip
, Samanthi thought, shaking her head with a grin as the three Cavaliers trotted into view up the hill, in their black armor with silly white trim on their shoulder blades and outseams.  Their sabres clattered against their legs as they moved.  Sir Xiaoden noticed her taking them in as the tech caught her breath.

“Doing all right, Ms. Elena?” he asked brightly, his voice coming out clearly through the amplifier in his helmet.

“Sure thing, Sir, thanks.”

“We can break in fifteen for some water,” Dame Orinoco said solicitously.

“No, no, I’m fine,” Samanthi brushed away the concern, looking up at the female ‘naut.  Dame Orinoco was one of the tallest women in the world, or so it seemed to Samanthi from her (arguably) lower-than-average vantage point.  Maybe it was just a trick of the racing stripes on the Cavalier’s outer thighs, but she seemed to be entirely legs, even more so than Dame Miri.  One might think that would elevate her into a new realm of heterosexiness, but the effect was less sex kitten and more sex giraffe.  Samanthi tilted her head, wondering if anyone had ever considered the anthropomorphic sexiness of giraffes before. 
Maybe I could use a water break after all
, she thought a moment later, her mind continuing to drift in wide, fuzzy loops.

Dame Orinoco galloped forward, probably to spread the word that the techs needed a break soon.  Samanthi didn’t raise any objections.  The third Cavalier, a sturdy dark-skinned woman closer to human height, laid a metal hand on Samanthi’s arm as gently as she could.  “Only a few more hours today,” Dame Julie told her.

“That was some hill, huh?  I can’t wait to take off these seven-leaguers,” their tech, Zig, complained with a smile, as if that could make whining ingratiating. 
Take ‘em off, then; and say hi to the troops when they catch up with your corpse in two days, ‘cause there’s no way you’ll keep up with us without them.
  Samanthi was in no mood for any woe-is-me tech banter, but she just nodded and kept her mouth shut.  She had to stay on good terms with Zig because if anything happened to one of the six ‘naut suits over the next few days, the two of them were going to be logging a lot of hard hours together.  The only tools were what they had in their packs, and whatever dated, dusty equipment was going to be at this logging camp, a ramshackle outpost of Delians that doubled as an out-of-the-way surveillance site for the Army.  Serious repairs would fly or fail on the basis of how much sweat they put into them.  Letting her tongue wag too much would just get in the way.

I feel like I’m doing that a lot lately
, she mused as she started walking again, the whining gears in her seven-league boots launching her forwards. 
Clamming up instead of speaking my mind.Worrying about rubbing people the wrong way. 
She deliberately aimed her foot towards a little red mushroom peeking up from the soil.  Her mechanized boot mashed it into pulp, without any audible crunch or feeling through her metal sole, and she felt a little guilty.  Were the people around her getting more uptight, or was she getting more nervous? 
I just want to be myself again, warts and all.  I want to joke and swear and annoy the piss out of the idiots I work with, and still finish the job early enough to go get a beer.