Blade found a hiding place well inside the trees, lay down, stretched out, and was comfortably asleep within minutes.
The next morning the soldiers were slow to waken and slow to get on the march. After that, they moved briskly enough and by noon were coming up to a pair of smaller villages. From these they took five men, two dozen goats, and several baskets of fruit. By now it was obvious to Blade that much of the tax or tribute was intended to feed the tax collectors and their animals on the march. The young men and the gold were another matter. The men no doubt went to the Shoba's army and the gold to the treasury.
That night the soldiers camped ten miles beyond the village and five miles from the nearest forest. From behind a low rise in the ground, Blade watched them closely. They built no fires, and only a handful of men came out on sentry duty. The wagons formed a ragged circle more than a hundred yards across, wide open to someone who could move in quickly and silently.
Far off to the southwest, the hills seemed to rise higher than usual. Blade studied them in the dying glow of the sunset and noticed a peculiar regularity in their crests. It looked almost as if someone had built a wall along the crest of the whole range. The «wall» seemed to stretch for at least twenty miles before vanishing in the distance. Blade's curiosity was aroused. He found himself hoping that the next day's march would lead him off toward the hills.
Just before dawn Blade woke to hear something scampering past him. He watched several gopher-like creatures pop out of holes in the ground while he quietly picked up his staff in one hand and a loose stone in the other.
Crack, whack, bang. Blade killed three of the creatures before they could get back into their holes, two with the staff and one with a thrown stone. Then he skinned them with the sickle blade and ate them raw. The flesh was gamy, but it was food, and food meant the energy he would badly need.
He saved the skins, which might be useful to protect Twana's feet.
By the time Blade finished his bloody breakfast, the soldiers were moving out again. He was happy to see them swinging off toward the southwest and moved out on their trail the moment it was safe.
By noon Blade could see that the hills ahead rose more than a thousand feet from the plain, their bare flanks always sloping at a forty to sixty-degree angle. Along the crest of the hills ran what was undeniably an artificial structure, a blue-gray wall nearly fifty feet high. It did not run completely level but instead rose and fell slightly with the line of the crest. It reminded Blade very much of pictures he'd seen of the Great Wall of China. Like the Great Wall, it seemed to go on forever.
As the wall came closer, Blade's impression of it began to change. For one thing, it seemed to be made of some solid and homogeneous material rather than built up of individual blocks. The amount of material in just the part of the wall Blade could see must be enough to build a fair-sized city.
There were no towers, there were no gates, there were no stairs or ladders. In many places vines and trees seemed to have sprouted from the hilltops and crept up the wall. Otherwise the outer face of the wall was as bare and unbroken as the face of a dam.
At times Blade thought he saw a faint gold-tinged shimmering along the top of the wall, like waves of heat in the air over a hot road. Twice he thought he saw the sunlight reflected from a large surface of brightly polished metaclass="underline" Once he could have sworn the metal surface was moving along the top of the wall, at least when he first saw it. When he looked again, it had stopped. When he looked a third time, it had vanished.
The mystery of the wall grew each time Blade looked at it. Certainly it would be the next thing he'd study in this Dimension, after he'd rescued Twana and returned her to Hores.
Or he might have to study the wall even before that. If he and Twana didn't get clean away, the wall offered a possible escape route. If the trees and vines grew on one side of the wall to provide a way up, they probably grew on the other side to provide a way down. The soldiers might be able to climb up after him, but they could hardly get their mounts over the wall. Blade was quite certain he could keep ahead of them on foot.
First, however, he had to get Twana free. There seemed to be no more villages in sight, and by now it was midafternoon. The soldiers might be making a rather ragged camp tonight. That would give Blade an opportunity to strike-as good a one as he could expect.
The darkness reduced everything to ghost shapes. Deep inside the camp, Blade saw two torches glowing faintly among the wagons. Each torch threw a faint circle of pale yellow light. Everywhere else there was blackness and starlight. Sometimes an ox or riding animal would stamp or rattle its harness. Otherwise all was silent. The whole camp might have been dead, not just asleep.
Three hundred yards from the camp, Blade went down on hands and knees and crawled forward. Here was where the sentries had walked the last two nights. Tonight the ground ahead was empty. Blade moved to the left, toward a small fold in the ground. It gave him cover for a hundred yards. He crawled another hundred yards after that, then lay down to watch and listen again. The darkness was unbroken. The silence was not. Now he was close enough to hear the heavy snores of the sleeping men. They slept as though there were no possible danger within a hundred miles.
Certainly they were in no danger from him. Blade wanted Twana. He wouldn't lift a finger against any soldier who didn't interfere with that. If they all stayed asleep, they would all wake safely in the morning.
Blade rose on bare feet and padded forward, as alert and deadly as a prowling tiger. The sickle blade was thrust into his belt. In his left hand he carried the staff, in his right a loop of leather he'd picked up on the trail. The soldiers had discarded it as junk. To someone with Blade's skills, it was a perfect weapon for silent killing.
The tents and the wagons, the animals, and the sprawled blanket-wrapped forms on the ground, grew larger. Blade swung around the end of the wagons. One of the riding animals raised its head and made a sizzling sound like grease in a frying pan. Blade froze. The sound drew an answering hiss from one of the wooden cages. The musky odor exhaled from the cages was strong in Blade's nostrils.
He didn't move until he was sure that the noise of the animals would not wake any of the sleeping men. Then he moved on. Before darkness fell, he'd counted the wagons. The women's wagons were fourth and fifth in line. He'd seen nine women taken out of them for dinner and an airing, Twana among them. He'd seen all nine put back before darkness fell.
He was passing the first wagon, and then the second. The third was coming up. Blade advanced one step at a time, lifting his feet carefully and setting them down still more carefully. He was passing the third wagon now. From just ahead he could hear the whimpering of some woman in a nightmare and smell faint hints of perfume.
Squeeee-eeee-eeeeyi! The sound was like a door closing on enormous rusty hinges, and it seemed to come almost from under Blade's feet. He froze, raised the staff, then looked down. A small ape-like animal was chained to the forward axle of the third wagon. Now it was jumping up and down and squealing like a nest of mice. Blade saw it hop up on the axle and draw breath to cry out again.
Blade didn't like the idea of killing someone's harmless pet, but the creature had to be silenced. He shifted his grip on the staff and struck downward. In the darkness his aim was off. The creature leaped nimbly down from the axle and darted away under the wagon to the full length of its chain.
From the other side of the wagon, Blade heard the sound of someone getting to his feet. He set his back against the wagon as two soldiers came stumbling around the end of it into view. From the way they moved and held their swords, Blade realized they were still half asleep.