Palino looked along the four of us and shouted, “Fine! Is Renick—?”
“Dead,” Lewin shouted back. “Neck broken.” He was jiggling furiously at buttons in the controls. My ears started to work again, and I heard him say, “Holmstad’s not answering. Nor’s Ranefell. I’m going back to Holmstad. Fast.”
We set off again with a roar. The van seemed to have lost its silencer, and it rattled all over, but it went. And how it went. We must have done nearly a hundred down Jiot, squealing on the bends. In barely minutes we could see Wormstow spread out below, old gray houses and new white ones, and all those imported trees that make the town so pretty. The clouds over the houses seemed to darken and go dense.
“Uh-oh!” said Terens.
The van jolted to another yelling stop. It was not the clouds. Something big and dark was coming down through the clouds, slowly descending over Wormstow. Something enormous. “What is that?” Neal and Alectis said together.
“Hedgehog,” said Terens.
“A slaveship,” Palino explained, sort of mincing the word out to make it mean more. “Are—are we out of range here?”
“I most thoroughly hope so,” Lewin said. “There’s not much we can do with hand weapons.”
We sat and stared as the thing came down. The lower it got, the more Renick’s bent-up shape was in my way. I kept wishing Lewin would do something about him, but nobody seemed to be able to think of anything but that huge descending ship. I saw why they call them hedgehogs. It was rounded above and flat beneath, with bits and pieces sticking out all over like bristles. Hideous somehow. And it came and hung squatting over the roofs of the houses below. There it let out a ramp like a long black tongue, right down into the Market Square. Then another into High Street, between the rows of trees, breaking a tree as it passed.
As soon as the ramps touched ground, Lewin started the van and drove down toward Wormstow.
“No, stop!” I said, even though I knew he couldn’t. The compulsion those Slavers put out is really strong. Some of it shouts inside your head, like your own conscience through an amplifier, and some of it is gentle and creeping and insidious, like Mother telling you gently to come along now and be sensible. I found I was thinking, Oh, well, I’m sure Lewin’s right. Tears rolled down Alectis’s face, and Neal was sniffing. We had to go to the ship, which was now hanging a little above us. I could see people hurrying out of houses and racing to crowd up the ramp in the Market Square. People I knew. So it must be all right, I thought. The van was having to weave past loose horses that people had been riding or driving. That was how I got a glimpse of the other ramp, through trees and the legs of a horse. Soldiers were pouring down it, running like a muddy river, in waves. Each wave had a little group of kings, walking behind it, directing the soldiers. They had shining crowns and shining Vs on their chests and walked mighty, like gods.
That brought me to my senses. “Lewin,” I said, “those are Thrallers, and you’re not to do what they say, do you hear?” Lewin just drove around a driverless cart, toward the Market Square. He was going to be driving up that ramp in a second. I was so frightened then that I lammed Lewin—not like I lammed the dragon, but in a different way. Again it’s hard to describe, except that this time I was giving orders. Lewin was to obey me, not the Thrallers, and my orders were to drive away at once. When nothing seemed to happen, I got so scared that I seemed to be filling the whole van with my orders.
“Thank you,” Lewin said in a croaking sort of voice. He jerked the van around into Worm Parade and roared down it, away from the ship and the terrible ramps. The swerve sent the van door open with a slam, and to my relief, the body of poor Renick tumbled out into the road.
But everyone else screamed out, “No! What are you doing?” and clutched their heads. The compulsion was far, far worse if you disobeyed. I felt as if layers of my brain were being peeled off with hot pincers. Neal was crying, like Alectis. Terens was moaning. It hurt so much that I filled the van frantically with more and more orders. Lewin made grinding sounds deep in his throat and kept on driving away, with the door flapping and banging.
Palino took his straps undone and yelled, “You’re going the wrong way, you damn cariarder!” I couldn’t stop him at all. He started to climb into the front seat to take the controls away from Lewin. Alectis and Neal both rose up, too, and shoved him off Lewin. So Palino gave that up and scrambled for the open flapping door instead. Nobody could do a thing. He just jumped out and went rolling in the road. I didn’t see what he did then, because I was too busy giving orders, but Neal says he simply scrambled up and staggered back toward the ship and the ramp.
We drove for another horrible half mile, and then we must have got out of range. Everything suddenly went easy. It was like when somebody lets go the other end of a rope you’re both pulling, and you go over backward. Wham. And I felt too dim and stunned to move.
“Thank the gods!” I heard Terens more or less howl.
“It’s Siglin you should be thanking,” Lewin said. “Alectis, climb over to the front and shut that door. Then try and raise Holmstad again.”
Neal said the door was too battered to shut. Alectis had to hold it with one hand while he worked the broadcaster with the other. I heard him saying that Holmstad still didn’t answer through the roaring and rattling the van made when Lewin put on speed up the long, looping gradient of Wormjiot. We had nearly got up to the Saddle when Terens said, “It’s going! Aren’t they quick?” I looked back, still feeling dim and horrible, in time to see the squatting hedgehog rise up inside the clouds again.
“Now you can thank the gods,” Lewin said. “They didn’t think we were worth chasing. Try medium wave, Alectis.” There is an outcrop of ragged rock near the head of Wormjiot. Lewin drove off the road and stopped behind it while Alectis fiddled with knobs.
Instead of getting dance music and cookery hints, Alectis got a voice that fizzed and crackled. “This is Dragonate Fanejiot, Sveridge South, with an emergency message for all Dragonate units still in action. You are required to make your way to Fanejiot and report there soonest.” It said that about seven times. Then it said, “We can now confirm earlier reports that Home Nine is in Slaver hands. Here is a list of bases on Home Eight that have been taken by Slavers.” It was a long list. Holmstad came quite early on it, and Ranefell about ten names after that.
Lewin reached across and turned it off. “Did someone say we slipped up?” he said. “That was an understatement.”
“Fanejiot is two thousand flaming miles from here!” Terens said. “With an ocean and who knows how many Slavers in between!”
“Well put,” said Lewin. “Did Palino’s memo block go to the Slavers with him?”
It was lying on the backseat beside Neal. Neal tried to pretend it wasn’t, but Alectis turned around and grabbed it as Neal tried to shove it on the floor. I was lying back in my straps, feeling gray and thinking, We could get away now. I’d better lam them all again. But all I did was lie there and watch Neal and Alectis having an angry tug-of-war. Then watch Lewin turn around and pluck the block away from the pair of them.
“Don’t be a fool,” he said to Neal. “I’ve already erased the recorder. And if I hadn’t had Renick and Palino breathing righteously down our necks, I’d never have recorded anything. It goes against the grain to take in children.”