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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.
"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 weatherbeaten that it almost looked a part of the
natural formations. It looked deserted, and they approached cautiously, uncertain of what
surprises might be around for them.
Suddenly the big door, almost as high as the shack itself, creaked open, and a creature came
out.
It looked like a human woman, almost. Long hair tied back in a sort of ponytail, an
attractive, oval face and long slender arms. But she had little pointed ears, and from the waist
down, below her light jacket, she had the body of a white-and-black spotted horse.
A centaur, the classicist Renard thought, no longer surprised. Meeting such
a creature was no longer strange; in fact, it was almost to be expected.
The woman smiled when she saw them, and waved. "Hello!" she called, in a pleasant soprano.
"Come on up! I'd almost given you up!"
Vistaru approached. "You are the Dillian guide?" she said, almost unbelievingly. The Dillian
was no more than a girl, perhaps in her mid-teens.
The centaur nodded. "I'm Tael. Come on in and I'll start a small fire."
They entered; Tael gave the strange-looking Mavra an odd look, but said nothing. Doma waited
outside, placidly munching grass.
The place was built for Dillians, certainly-there were stall-like compartments for four of
them, a lot of straw on the floor, and, up on brick blocks a small wood-burning stove and scuttle
filled with chopped wood. Tael threw a couple of pieces in the stove and lit a small piece of
paper with a very long safety match, throwing it into the cast-iron belly of the stove.
Dillians never sat; their bodies couldn't stand the weight. So everybody else sat on the
straw, Mavra reclining on her side. There was plenty of room.
After some small talk, Renard voiced what they all were thinking.
"Ah, excuse me, Tael, but-aren't you a little young for all this?" he tried, as diplomatically
as possible.
The woman didn't take it badly. "Well, I admit I'm only fifteen, but I was born in the uplake
mountain country of Dillia; my family has hunted and trapped on both sides of the border for a
long time. I know every trail and pathway between here and Dillia, and that's a pretty good
ways."
"And the Gedemondas?" Mavra prompted.
The Dillian shrugged. "They've never bothered me. You see them every once in a while-big white
shapes against the snow. Never close-they're always gone when you get there. You hear them, too,
sometimes, growling and roaring and making all sorts of weird sounds that echo between the
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mountains."
"Is it their speech?" Vistaru asked. "I don't think so," Tael replied. "I used to, but when
they asked me to do this guide job for you they fitted me with a translator, and I didn't hear
any difference. I've wondered sometimes whether they have any speech as we know it at all."
"That could be bad," Renard put in. "How can you talk to somebody who can't talk back?"
She nodded. "I'm still excited about all this. We've tried off and on to communicate with them
for the longest time; I'd like to be there when it's done."
"If it's done," Hosuru added pessimistically.
"I'm worried about the smoke from that thing," Mavra said, cocking her head a little bit
toward the stove. "Not the Gedemondas. The war parties. They have to be close by."
The girl looked uncomfortable. "I've seen them already, but they just took a close look at me
and went on. A few flying horses like yours, and some really strange, beautiful things that must [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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