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military carts drawn by teams of mules hauling supplies and large cannon and
mortars south; a steady stream of aimless refugees north.
They stuck to open country, which was mostly deserted now, everyone down
south into the fight or guarding the Sacred Stones and Zone Gate. They were
able to relax and straighten out their situation.
Because of the precariousness of the camp, Doma's packs had never been
unloaded, so they still had their supplies. They ate first; to Mavra, it was a
humiliating type of experience she would have to get used to. They'd started
to spoon-feed her, but she'd resisted that. They opened a tin of meat which
Renard warmed, then broke up some small fruit, and put it in a wooden bowl.
By standing on her hind legs and kneeling on her forelegs, she could eat,
like a dog or cat. It was hard; the thin legs were even thinner at the
ankles, and the legs moved forward, not back, and the damned bowl kept
moving, but she managed it and the food tasted good. Water she drank by two
methods: lapping, like an animal, and sticking her face in the pan and
drinking the top half down.
But it worked, and that was enough for her.
Vistaru tied her hair up between and in back of her enormous ears with an
elastic band, which kept it out of her face and food. She could even see level
in front of her, by standing on her forelegs while kneeling on the hind ones.
That position, too, was uncomfortable, but she didn't mind. It gave her neck
some relief, and allowed her to see.
The clothing was more of a problem, though she'd need it. It was slightly
chilly in Olborn, and it would be frigid in the upper reaches of Gedemondas.
They cut the sleeves off her shirt and managed to get it on. The pants were a
bigger problem, and they didn't quite reach all the way, but Vistaru buckled
the wide belt around her bare midsection and that helped. It looked wrong and
stupid, and felt wrong, too, and the pants kept slipping, but it was something
and it felt better. The long coat tailored for Gedemondas would possibly do
what was needed, covering that impossible tail, they hoped. Some cut-off
gloves might
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help protect the exposed skin in Gedemondas snow. Maybe.
Oddly, Mavra felt better now. Obstacles were to be surmounted; that was part
of the joy of it all. They noticed a pickup in her spirits they couldn't
comprehend.
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Sleeping was the worst compromise; the animal's legs were designed for
sleeping standing up, but the human torso was not, and sleeping on her stomach
was no longer possible. She managed lying on her side.
In the meantime, the war was going from bad to worse for those of Olborn.
Occasionally they'd meet some frightened refugees, not looking as fierce or
confident as those back in the priest's lair. Their world was coming apart,
and with it their world-view and their notions of their place in it. No
longer sure of anything, they were somehow sad and pathetic. People they ran
into kept trying to surrender to them.
Roving military patrols caused worse problems; most were composed of
deserters with the social restraint imposed on them by their life's
conditioning and faith in their favored status with the
Well all gone; they brutalized the refugees, they tried brutalizing the alien
party, but renewed
Lata venom and Renard's highly charged personality soon dealt effectively
with them.
Mavra also found it interesting that no one gave her a second glance. To
these insular people, she was just one more weird alien creature.
But progress was slow, and they turned their attention to trying to find some
way to get Mavra and Renard on Doma. The problem was the great wings, which
needed to be unimpeded, and which came down most of the length of the great
animal's body.
Finally, experimentation achieved a compromise that Doma and practicality
could accept.
Nonessential supplies were jettisoned, and the Lata took as much as they
could in their pouches.
The weight would slow them, but Doma would also be slowed and impeded. With
the instruments tossed out-Renard insisted he never used them anyway-she
could sit, legs astraddle, on the lower neck of the pegasus, while he sat
just behind, body pressed into hers. Straps from some of the excess
saddlebags would hold her, and Doma, while uncomfortable with the extra
weight on her neck, managed. The only problem was that it took all three of
the others and some cooperation and kneeling from Doma to get her up there in
the first place.
Finally, though, they could fly, and the distance sped by. They ducked south
of the hex corner, avoiding any more priestly fanatics, and crossed barely
into Palim.
The inhabitants of the hex eyed them nervously, but did not interfere or
challenge them. The
Palim resembled nothing so much as giant long-haired elephants. Their form
was deceptive, though;
they were a high-technology people, with carefully managed groves of food
trees and grain, and a criss-cross of a large electric rail system and odd,
gumdrop-shaped city buildings in clusters linked by ramps. They stayed clear;
the Palim seemed too unconcerned by the nearby violence. It indicated that
they had elected to sit out the war, and that meant the Yaxa-Lamotien-Dasheen
alliance was probably making good use of that rail system in the east.
Even slowed, they made the border of Gedemondas in under two days. There was
no doubt where they were; the great mountains of the frigid hex were visible
from the flat plain, like some intrusive wall, a great distance before they
reached it. With a few hours to scout around by air, they found the relatively
small plains area that was in Gedemondas itself. It was the logical point for
the two advancing armies to head for, and it was empty of all but some minor
wildlife when they arrived.
They were first, but by how much?
They studied the maps. It was obvious that the Makiem would airlift over
Alestol, probably to near the point where they now were. The Yaxa would move
from Palim at the rail terminus, then about thirty kilometers overland to the
northern edge of the plain. Renard wondered idly if there would be room for
both forces.
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"There will be quite a battle," Mavra predicted grimly. "If one gets here
first the other will have to dislodge them if it can. If they get here at the
same time, the clash will just be more
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immediate, with this a no man's land. Either way, this nice little plain is
going to be littered with the dead and dying before long."
"According to the hex map, here, there's a little shelter over near that
cleft in the rocks,"
Vistaru noted. "That's where we're supposed to meet our guide, if anyone's
still there."
Mavra tried to look to where the Lata pointed, but her head wouldn't come up
enough. Two or three meters, that was the limit. She swore in frustration, but
there was determination on her face as well.
It was about fifteen degrees centigrade on the plain, which was comfortable,
but that wouldn't last long, either. The air cooled almost two degrees for
every three hundred meters in altitude, and some of those passes were over
three thousand meters high.
They walked leisurely to the shelter, and almost missed it. It was a low
cabin of old stone and wood set back against the rocks, so old and
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