“Then we shall brazen things out,” said Julian.
“And if we are not successful?”
“Then we are traitors,” said Julian.
Tuvo Ausonius shuddered.
Tuvo Ausonius looked down at the unconscious slave, bound and gagged, at their feet.
“We need her,” said Julian. “She can make an identification of her mistress, as the free woman, the Lady Publennia of Lisle, on Inez IV.”
“We have the drawing,” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“The drawing is only a drawing, and not a mechanical pictorial, and, as far as many would know, only the drawing of someone who closely resembles a supposed slave, or, indeed, it might even be a drawing of an actual slave, the one with the expedition. How could one prove that the drawing, done even by one who had never seen the woman in person, but only by means of the memory of another, is that of the Lady Publennia? Indeed, how could one prove that even a mechanical pictorial of the woman was a pictorial of the actual Lady Publennia?”
“True,” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“The slave is important, too,” said Julian, “if we are separated, as you have never seen the Lady Publennia personally.”
“It seems a pity to take such a pretty, innocent, delicious little creature into what might prove to be a situation of considerable danger, among perhaps even ruthless barbarians and such.”
“Not at all,” said Julian. “She is only a slave.”
“True,” said Tuvo Ausonius.
The two men then, together, eased the body of the redheaded slave, feet first, into the sack, and tied it shut, over her head.
“What if Ottonius does not wait for us at Venitzia?” asked Tuvo Ausonius.
“He must,” said Julian, angrily, jerking tight, and tying, the cords of the sack over the head of the slave. She stirred a little in the sack, but did not regain consciousness.
“But what if he does not?” asked Tuvo Ausonius.
“Then all is lost,” said Julian.
CHAPTER 13
On the day following the great feast of Abrogastes, which is conjectured to have taken place on Ukuna III, a large assemblage of barbarians, and others, climbed to the height of a rude, natural feature known as the mountain of Kragon. There, on its stony summit, well above the tree line, on a great horizontal metal ring, hands laid upon it, a swearing took place, this done by rank after rank of individuals, approaching and withdrawing, which swearing, too, similarly and successively, was repeated, hands placed upon the shaft or blade of a great spear, it seeming to have some symbolic relevance among the Alemanni and certain other peoples, mostly allied or related.
We do not know precisely what was sworn, or what occurred, on that day in that place.
On the other hand, it seems clear that something of importance took place.
It was shortly thereafter, in that world’s spring, after the cessation of the astronomical anomaly of the “wind of stones” that the gates of better than a hundred thousand concealed hangars were slid upward and the great ships rolled forth.
The lions, as it was said, were awakening.
The name of the world, in the language of the Alemanni, seems to have been Ainesarixhaben, or a place where fires are kept. It may have been the home world of the Alemanni peoples.
It was also known, in other barbaric tongues, as Eineskmirgenlandes, a world, or country, of the morning, and Oron-Achvolonarei, the place where stone birds fly.
This was, in the reckoning of the empire, in the third year of the reign of the emperor, Aesilesius.
CHAPTER 14
The horse put its head down, its long hair whipped by the wind. It drew against the traces, and stumbled to its knees in the snow.
It turned in the traces, snorting, wildly, in pain, tilting the sled, and threw its head to the side, its round eyes rolling.
Its body was already half covered with snow.
The man, wrapped in the fur cloak, with the staff, who had been struggling at the side of the sledge, thrusting at it, lifting it, waded to the beast’s side. The horse’s mighty lungs heaved. It gasped. The freezing air seared its nostrils. The wind and air, too, tore at the side of the man’s face, and stabbed his lungs. The breath of the horse whipped away from it, like a lace of fog, broken and splintered. There was ice caked about its jaws.
The man looked down at the animal, bracing himself against the wind.
He could see little, even in starlight reflected from the snow, for the blasting wind and ice.
This was the third night of storms.
Already the stirred, whirled snow was deep on the plains of Barrionuevo, or, as some have it, the flats of Tung. In places, by morning, it would drift to heights of fifty feet.
Tangara is bitter in that place, in the month of Igon. Only once had the Heruls raided in that month, and that was years ago, when they had crossed the Lothar on the ice.
It was then that they, fresh from their defeat of the Otungs, had carried war to the related folk, the Basungs.
It was after this that the plains of Barrionuevo had become, for many, the flats of Tung.
On them the Heruls, a hardy, merciless, slave-keeping folk, in the summer, grazed their herds.
The man knelt in the snow beside the horse. He opened its eye, which had closed, with his mittened fist. It was still alive, gasping.
He drove the staff into the snow, and removed from the sledge a great sword, one which must be wielded with two hands. He lifted it, with both hands, and then smote the horse’s head away. He then, kneeling beside the beast, trembling with cold, cut it open, and cut himself bits of meat, thrusting them, fumbling, into his mouth, his beard crusted with ice. The blood from the horse froze as it entered the air, forming almost instantly rivulets, and breakages, of thick, dark ice. The man cut through the rib cage, and pulled away tissue. He tore with his mittens, and then, as they sopped, and crusted, and might have broken, he dug with his sword, holding it near the point, at the ventral cavity of the beast, emptying it, pushing its contents away, and he then crawled, freezing, huddling, within the body, which, for moments would be warm, but might provide, for days, shelter and food.
It is a trick known to Heruls, and others, for example, to those of certain festung villages, such as that of Sim Giadini, nestled at the foot of the heights of Barrionuevo.
CHAPTER 15
“He is gone! I heard it in the kitchen, from one of the barrack girls!” said the small brunette, rushing into the administration’s cement slave shed in Venitzia, a small city on Tangara, surrounded by its electric defenses. It was the provincial capital.
“Who is gone?” cried the blonde, rising from her simple, sturdy, anchored metal cot, to which she, like the other girls to theirs, was chained.
The surprise, and bewilderment, was universal.
The girls came to the ends of their chains, out, into the aisle, as they could. Their chains must reach far enough to make possible the cleaning of not only their area but of the adjacent portion of the aisle, as well.
“The barbarian!” cried the girl. “He has gone!”
The blonde cursed the chain on her left ankle that would permit her only a handful of feet from the cot.
“I do not understand,” said she who was first girl, even she, at the moment, chained to her cot.
“They are startled, in consternation, furious!” said the brunette. “It seems he left Venitzia before dawn, without informing anyone, taking only a horse and supplies upon a sledge.”
“But why?” asked a girl.
“I do not know,” said the brunette. “He was to wait, for his excellency, Lord Julian. There was some diplomatic mission or other, it seems. But he has gone!”