Shadows, стр. 20
Through a small doorway, a spiral stone staircase led to a lower level. Yukannak heard running water below, and the rising air was noticeably cooler. When he came to a landing, he realized he was near the eastern junction of the wall and the plateau, where the man-made canal passed below it into the marshes on that side of the city. The noise of the battle told him the fighting was close.
Waornaak ran outside without hesitating, and Yukannak followed. He didn’t want to, but there seemed no other choice. If he defected to the Offworlders, it was a good idea to have one of their operatives who might speak on his behalf; there was a vast difference between “valued ally” and “useful prisoner.”
They ran along the base of the wall until he glimpsed the girl again, and Waornaak was close on her heels. Doorways lined the base of the thick wall. She went to open one but recoiled as soldiers poured out. She ran to the next and ducked inside. Waornaak did the same. Before the door swung closed behind him, Yukannak slid quietly inside.
Barrels of water, marked as potable, lined the walls, along with boxes and empty stoneware jars. Even with the spring, the wells, and the river, it became a treasure when the Sear began. Crouching near the doorway, Waornaak didn’t hear him, but he heard Waornaak laugh.
“I know you are here, woman. You’re going to answer for the trouble you’ve brought.” The sound of fighting outside grew heavier. Inside the room, however, only the crunch of Waornaak’s footsteps indicated the presence of other humans. “Come out, woman. I don’t know who you are, but you have brought trouble. Your curiosity will be your end.”
It was clear now that Waornaak intended to kill her, and perhaps rape her first, the same type of cruelty Yukannak had seen often in such men. Leaning forward, he could make out Waornaak’s shadowy figure. Gripping his pistol tighter, Yukannak made up his mind. If the woman was a spy, what better way to endear himself to the Offworlders than by killing her assailant?
“There’s nowhere to hide.”
Waornaak wasn’t an agile man, and he made a lot of noise searching among the water barrels. Yukannak rose and moved toward him, being careful to make no sound. Seconds later, he heard scuffling and a woman’s shout. Spilling water followed a loud crack as somebody kicked a barrel.
The woman screamed, “Get off me!”
Waornaak yelled back. “Offworlder!”
The word electrified Yukannak’s brain. She was an Offworlder? Here was what he’d been looking for, a chance to ingratiate himself with the Offworlders, to defect with a realistic chance of staying alive. He had to save her, if he could.
The woman shrieked again, this time in unmistakable pain, but in the semidarkness all Yukannak could see were dark, tangled figures. Waornaak was wielding some sort of weapon, which he swung downward like a club.
The doorway crashed inward in a spray of wood and rocks. Yukannak leapt sideways and slammed into a heavy crate, expecting men to rush inside, or the room to collapse. The last thing he expected was one of R’Bak’s ubiquitous whinaalanis, which charged into the room, bellowing at Waornaak with bared teeth.
The animal bit at Waornaak but missed, and Waornaak struck it near the left eye with his weapon. He moved closer, raising the weapon for another blow, but a gunshot echoed through the room and caused Yukannak to flinch. When he looked up again, Waornaak was standing over the woman again, a long rod held aloft in his right hand.
Yukannak raised his pistol, told himself that this was no different than practicing at the range, and believed himself just long enough to squeeze off two steady rounds.
Both rounds hit. Waornaak half-turned before his legs gave out, and he fell against the barrels, on top of which lay the woman they’d been following. Yukannak knelt over the dying man, grabbed his bloody robe, and pulled him close.
“The archive, where is it?”
“Wha—?” Waornaak said, his eyes focusing on something Yukannak couldn’t see. “Oh no, no…”
“The archive, where—?”
Waornaak never spoke again. Yukannak released him and glanced toward the woman. His eyes met hers, and they each recognized the other. He’d seen her at a merchant’s stall and found her attractive. She was the spy?
The woman said, “Thank—”
Something smashed through the wall behind him: a second whinaalani. Without waiting for it to bite him, Yukannak darted past the beast and out the door.
“Wait! Yukannak!”
* * *
The crump of detonating mortar rounds caused Captain Cutter’s fists to clench with tension. He was sitting with his back to a boulder, some two hundred yards southwest of the last row of houses in Imsurmik’s Outer City. Between his position and the city were farm fields, shacks, and drainage sewers. They’d been in place for hours, now.
Nearly two hundred years had passed since he last heard such explosions, but he’d passed those centuries in cold sleep; to him, it seemed like last week. The blasts sounded no different than any other detonating mortar shell. He’d been in desperate need of R&R then and was even more so now. But, as the old woman he’d met sitting in the ruins of her home in St. Lô, France, had said to him in a hopeless tone, “C’est la guerre.” If anybody knew about the fortunes of war, it was the French.
It wouldn’t be long now until Cutter’s platoon went into the city looking for the HVTs Colonel Murphy