Finally, as the eastern sky began to turn pale, King Rikard stood up and drained the last of the great leather jug of beer that had stood beside him through the night.
«Father, I will speak for all of your plans and schemes and say nothing against Silora if you will speak for one plan of mine.»
«What plan is that?»
«The moment the Looters arrive, all the children and all those too old to fight will go down into the Gorge. They will take food, clothing, weapons, tools, seeds, and written records of all the knowledge of the people, including what you have taught us about the Looters. There are caves down in the Gorge where ten times ten thousand of the people can hide so that the Looters will never find them. Those who go down into the Gorge will enter the caves and stay there until the Looter War is over, one way or another.»
Blade laughed. «I will speak with pleasure for that plan. I was going to suggest something like that myself, if there was a place where some of the people could hide from the Looters.» He rose and embraced his son. For a long moment they stood looking at each other, then Blade turned and went out into the courtyard of the King's House.
The hard-packed earth was damp with dew and the eastern sky was rapidly getting lighter. A cool breeze blew up over the New City from the Gorge. Blade stretched and stretched, until every knotted muscle was extended to the full. Then he headed toward the chamber he shared with Silora.
Chapter 24
The people threw themselves into preparing to fight the Looters with an enthusiasm that surprised even Blade. Part of it was their desire to please Mazda. More of it was the joy everyone felt at being able to strike a deadly blow at the Looters, a blow that might end their threat for good. This joy was all the greater because when the people's fighters rode out to battle this time, they would all be going. No one who could fight would be left behind.
This was perhaps the biggest gamble of the whole war. If the Looters did come to the battlefield with a strong force of war machines and were willing to risk using the purple ray, the people could be slaughtered. But without bringing out the whole three thousand fighting men and women of the people, there was no chance of inflicting a truly crushing blow on the full strength of the Looters. Blade wanted to smash the Looters-especially the mercenaries-not just defeat them.
Most of the people shared Blade's desire, but did not know all his reasons. Vengeance for their dead and a desire for peace in the future drove most of the People onward. Blade had another reason, one Silora gave him.
«If all the mercenaries are destroyed by your people here in Tharn,» she said, «Konis will be free of them. It can start on its own road back to civilization, and perhaps I can even go home.» Her eyes filled with happy tears at the thought.
Blade put his arm around her to console her but said nothing. It was a lovely fantasy-saving two dimensions for the price of one battle. But he suspected it was only a fantasy. From what Silora had told him, Konis was too far gone to have much hope of clawing its way back up to civilization, in spite of dimension doors and war machines. They had let the barbarians take over, barbarians they had created themselves. If there was any hope at all for them, it probably lay much farther in the future than it did for Tharn.
But it was obvious that Silora wanted to go home to Konis in spite of that, to take her chances there with her own people, to live and die there. Blade made up his mind that he would do everything he could to see that she got her wish, or at least everything that he could do without danger to the people.
A month passed, a month of furious training and making weapons and explosives, of stocking the refuge caves down in the Gorge, of packing up tools and seeds and written records ready to go. Three of the captured war machines were also hidden down in the Gorge. Their pilots were trained on them down there. One remained on the plateau, carefully disguised. Silora tuned its receivers to pick up the signals that would tell of the arrival of a Looter expedition. For the first few days she spent most of her time in the machine listening for that signal. She worked herself close to collapse listening, so Blade set up a regular rotating watch in the machine, reliable fighters trained by Silora to recognize the signal.
But it was Silora herself who came to Blade in the darkness one night to shake him gently awake.
«Mazda, the signal has come. The expedition is in Tharn. A large one, as we expected. I have never seen so many strong signals.»
«Where are they?»
«No more than two days' ride away, I think, and almost straight east.»
«Good.» Blade rose and started pulling on his clothes.
«Go quietly to the King's House and give them the message. Then join me at our machine.»
«I shall.» She rose on tip-toe to kiss him long and warmly, then vanished into the darkness.
They could have reached the Looter camp in less than twenty minutes by flying fast. But Blade did not want to fly quite that fast just a few feet above the plain on a pitch-black night. They had to fly low, to stay below the Looters' horizon for as long as possible.
Halfway there they landed and Silora crawled out onto the rear platform to arm the bomb. Blade was waiting until now for safety's sake. He was quite sure that Silora would not betray him and the people by setting off the bomb deliberately. But he was equally sure that she could make mistakes, and mistakes with atomic bombs can lead to rather impressive displays of fireworks. Blade wanted to be sure that any such fireworks were a good safe distance away from the people.
The clatter of tools and the scraping of metal sounded from outside for about ten minutes. Then a pale and perspiring Silora climbed back in, unreeling a long teksin cord. She handed the leather loop at the end of the cord to Blade, then closed the hatch, leaving only a two-inch opening. Blade carefully pulled on the cord to make sure it would slide freely back and forth through the opening.
Silora sighed with relief and sat down cross-legged on the cabin floor. «That's done, Mazda. Now all we can do is to hope everything works as we planned it to work and that the mercenaries have followed their usual camp plan.»
Blade nodded slowly. «If they don't-«It was time to face something he had not felt it necessary to mention until now. «Suppose we can only destroy the machines if we are willing to destroy your people, the Peace Lords, along with them? Will you stand by me even then, or would you rather be left here and picked up on my way back rather than see that?»
Silora was silent for a moment. «I will fly with you all the way, Mazda. That is as it must be. But if the bomb must fall on the Peace Lords as well as the mercenaries, then-«Her voice failed her for a moment. She swallowed and continued. «Then when it comes time to drop the bomb, I want to go out on the platform and jump with it. It is better that the Peace Lords die than that Tharn and its people die. But if the Peace Lords die, then I must die with them. That is also as it must be, for I could not live long in that case.»
Blade was silent for quite a long time. He hoped she wasn't expecting an answer to that, because he honestly couldn't think of one. Finally he turned back to the controls and lifted the machine into the sky again.
The armed bomb now rode securely in a complex and rugged cradle of leather strips and teksin rods. A quick tug on the cord running in through the hatch and the whole cradle would collapse, letting the bomb roll off the platform of its own weight and fall free. It was fused to explode when it hit the ground. That would not give absolutely the best results, but with an atomic bomb who needed absolutely the best? It would flatten everything; for a mile in every direction, which was more than good enough.