Frays In The Weave 43 Southbound: 2

He looked back at the great, red walls of Verd. Men already manned the leftmost tower, or rather the telegraph mounted upon it. Frames cluttered with yellow and black squares went up and down, each frame shouting a message Arthur had never learned to decipher to someone he had never seen. Legend had it the tower had been a jump tower long, long years earlier, allowing mages with the gift to jump to arrive safely on the very walls of Verd. If so, no one remembered, or at least didn't care to do so in public. Mages were executed in Keen. Hunted down like vermin, more likely.

Arthur sighed and tugged his coat closer to keep the rain out. He felt good to be on the road again, even if it meant getting wet. Even if it meant joining another caravan. Different from the one he remembered.

He glared at the hovercraft trailing them. d.a.m.n Bloodhounds had found him in the end. No, b.l.o.o.d.y good for nothing Rear Admiral Erwin Radovic had all but dragged him to his old news team.

He was escaping Verd for very much the same reason he'd escaped Belgera. Stationed around the launch port the Federation army had fulfilled almost every prejudice he had against the military and even threatened Keen with an armed extraction if they didn't comply and turn him over.

The council had refused. Brigadier Goodard made good of his threat and only the presence of body walkers on the city walls and the very visible launch of one of the famous walker flares had stopped the advancing soldiers. Anyone in the solar system knew what those flares meant. TADAT, hot landing, requesting immediate a.s.sistance.

He winced at the memory. The city population saw an impressive spectacle as the rocket went screeching into the sky. He guessed all visitors from home had at least thought of taking shelter. Only an idiot wanted to be in the target zone of a ship to ground bombardment, and the more selective a.s.sault drops weren't much better. Most of the Bloodhounds had come back puking after he blackmailed the police to allow them to join an a.s.sault on a pirate base he had located.

Juanita, who joined his crew less than half a year before that, fired all her missiles before landing inside a housing dome venting all its air into s.p.a.ce. A third of the inhabitants died, either as a result of decompression or severe burns when Juanita turned the shuttle on its end and made a vertical landing with rear thrusters at full power.

He was certain that had been the result of her age, or lack of training, or both. The returning TADAT had spoken about her with a mix of awe and admiration though. The hundred million FEM shuttle was all but wrecked, and as far as he knew even the military tried to keep their vehicles so they could get back from whatever h.e.l.l hole they were sent into.

He grinned as the memories came back to him. Old times, and a different Arthur Wallman. He turned that spectacular mishap into one of his golden shows. It had paid off twenty fold. As far as he knew Red News still made money from it.

He returned to more recent memories. No bombs and no shuttles ever came down from the sky, but Orbit One fired a railgun once. One tracked vehicle was replaced by a crater in the ground. The flare had done its job. Brigadier Goodard retreated back to the launch port and made no new attempts to negotiate at gunpoint. That didn't mean he'd given up, something Arthur had reluctantly accepted when Admiral Radovic explained.

Arthur didn't like to run, but he was a danger to the city now. Not even the news about Ulfsdotir being taken captive in Belgera and then released again made him change his mind, and so here he was, on horseback again.

They rode the southern highway. On their way to Krante, a town he had never visited, and one with a history of its own as he had learned in Belgera.

Pa.s.sing the training fields took enough time for him to watch the soldiers marching up and down. Foot soldiers these. Not as well clad as those he'd grown used to inside the city walls, and a far cry from as well trained. He didn't need to be one himself to see that. Half a year with the caravan escort had told him more than he wanted to know about soldiers, and the young men he saw here would have had the escort captain, no, General Trindai de Laiden now, bellow with displeasure.

Arthur rode with Ken at his side. Ken had been adamant about joining them. To watch and Weave.

The highway was wide enough for a dozen men to ride abreast with room to spare. They watched the road, the fields they pa.s.sed and waved greetings to people they met, trying very much not to pretend they even knew about the fantastic menagerie of outworlder machinery all around them. A few times they exchanged sentences about nothing but for most part each man kept his silence, which suited Arthur just fine.

It was not that Ken was impolite, but he did have an air of superiority around him, and Arthur couldn't for his life guess what made the stranger think so highly of his own importance.

When evening came the steady drizzle that had followed them throughout the day gave up on them as if it had known they were making for a roadhouse where it would be unable to reach them.

They mounted their horses early next morning and rode the next day in as eerily as silence as the one before. Arthur, like Ken, preferred riding to sitting idle inside the hovercraft.

Ken wanted to reach Krante before beginning his lessons. Krante may have boasted a Taleweaver's Inn just like any other sizeable town, but Arthur suspected Ken just wanted to leave the one in Verd behind, as if Arthur had tainted it somehow.

Well, he had the time to spare. Each day got him further away from Verd and the train from the launch port. From, not to. There was no fear in going there any longer. It was what was bound to arrive from there that scared him now, and if Ken preferred his silence as they made their escape from what Arthur wanted to avoid he wasn't one to complain.

Three days later they pa.s.sed the gates of Krante, paid for rooms at a rundown hotel close to the Taleweaver's Inn. They each had a bath, and, by unspoken agreement headed directly for the inn. It was time to share both a meal and tidings alike.