"Have you ever met anybody else as big and smelly, old friend?" He stepped up to Voros and gripped him by both shoulders. "How's the work here, Voros? Got enough to give me some?"

"You can stay?"

"If you'll have me."

"Will I have you? Does rain fall down, or smoke rise? Come and have a beer. It's the Tribal brew, I'm afraid, but-"

"Won't need to drink that tonight, Voros. I came with a barrel of my own from Bekror's."

"Even better."

The two big men walked off side by side. Shangbari wondered who the new man, Ezarn, was. Obviously a City warrior, and he looked like a good one who would make the attack on the Doimari much stronger. He'd also greeted Voros as though they were sworn brothers or at least old battle-mates.

Then why did Voros look and speak as though he did not understand Ezarn's coming, or even feared it?

Outside the hut it was dark. Blade piled more wood on the fire and rolled the empty beer barrel out of the way. Sparra was already asleep under the furs in the corner. Cheeky was curling up in the crook of her arm, not only asleep but snoring.

"So, old friend," said Blade. "What really brought you out here-besides Bekror's lifter, that is?"

Ezarn had either drunk enough to slow his thoughts, which weren't too fast to begin with, or else he was, picking his words with care. "When I got back from leave, they asked me to come out here. Well, they really asked me if I'd go out to Bekror's, to help train his men. I'd get regular pay, and maybe more than that from Bekror."

"Who asked?"

"The High Commander Sidas."

"He asked, not ordered?"

"Couldn't say. But then, you know him. Could you tell if he was being nice or giving an order?" Ezarn had a point there. So why was Blade thinking that "couldn't say" might have a double meaning?

"I couldn't refuse," Ezarn went on. He hiccupped. "So I came out, and Bekror tells me about you and the friendly Tribesmen. Are their women friendly, too? You've got your own, I see," he said with a wave at Sparra.

"If you're a friend of Voros and observe their customs-yes, the women are friendly enough."

"Good. Real good." Ezarn c.o.c.ked his head on one side, as if he was thinking hard. His head stayed at that angle, then Blade heard a long rumbling snore. The beer had finally got to him.

Blade got up and arranged Ezarn so he could sleep comfortably in the chair. Then he barred the hut door, pulled off his clothes and crawled in under the furs beside Sparra. She murmured contentedly as she felt him beside her, and pressed one firm breast against his arm. Cheeky went right on sleeping-but then, he could sleep through an earthquake if he wanted to.

Blade's feeling that somebody he didn't know was taking a hand in the game was stronger than ever. Or maybe several somebodies? It was no worse than usual in the secret-operations business, but that didn't mean he had to like it!

Ezarn's coming out here was a good sign, though. n.o.body who knew much about the big soldier would send him on any mission dangerous to "Voros." Anybody, who didn't knew Ezarn's loyalty was too stupid to be very dangerous, whatever they wanted.

Chapter 22.

Baliza wondered why High Commander Sidas had invited her and Geyrna to his house outside Kaldak. Didn't he trust the people in his office anymore? At least it got her and her aunt a good dinner-Sidas's cook was famous all over Kaldak.

In his private chamber afterward, Sidas served sweet wine and dismissed the servants. Then he locked the door after them. When he turned back to his guests, his face was suddenly much harder. Baliza was now almost certain that he disapproved of their plan-which they had told him about earlier at his headquarters-to send Doimari lifters to Voros. Sidas probably invited them to his house to tell them so. He probably also had some other things to discuss, and Baliza feared it had something to do with Voros.

Then Sidas sat down on the corner of the great wooden table by the wall, one booted leg crossed over the other. "So you want me to send Voros two or three of our Doimari lifters, do you? Why?"

His sharp tone stung Baliza. "We've already explained why."

"Tell me again."

"Very well, then. The three Doimari lifters can take twice as many men and guns as Bekror's two. Voros will have a stronger force, and he can fly it right into the base. With surprise on his side, he'll do more damage, then get more of his men out again."

"Maybe. You have a lot of faith in Voros."

"Yes. Don't you?"

"Not that much. I would believe the Sky Master Blade could do something like this. Not Voros, a man from nowhere. He's a good soldier, I'll admit. Maybe one of our best, and I don't really doubt his loyalty, even if he did desert after the rape charge. But I don't think he's good enough to do this, and with Tribesmen."

Sidas's eyes were like stones now as he lit a cigar and offered them to the women. Geyrna took one. Baliza refused. She was afraid her hands would shake if she reached for it. Sidas puffed quietly for a minute or so, then stabbed at Baliza with the cigar.

"I'll give Voros the lifters, under one condition. You tell me the truth. Who do you think he really is?"

For a moment Baliza thought she was going to be sick. Then the nausea pa.s.sed and relief took its place. The question she'd feared for so long had been asked, and she was still alive.

"I think Voros is my father, the Sky Master Blade, returned to Kaldak. I do not know how he did this, but I think he has."

"Never mind how he got back here-at least for now," Sidas added. "Tell me how you decided he was-who he is." Baliza was glad to notice the hesitation in Sidas's voice. The idea of the Sky Master Blade among them again had slightly shaken even the iron-nerved High Commander.

So Baliza told Sidas and Geyrna everything she'd learned or thought about the man who called himself Voros. She kept her voice clear and steady, even through the tale of the night she'd tried to seduce him, although she felt her face turning red. Sidas was obviously trying not to laugh, but only said, "I always thought that warm blood of yours would get you into trouble one of these days. Well, better to be the way you are and your mother was, then cold and alone." Then he was silent until she'd finished, when he handed her another gla.s.s of wine. She emptied it quickly.

Sidas sat with his hands folded in his lap, his cigar burning itself out unnoticed, until she was finished. Then: "I'm glad you told the truth," he said. "I wouldn't have held back the lifters, no matter what. In fact, I've already decided to send the lifters. You see, Bekror sent me a serum formula given him by Voros. I had the formula studied by a few of our own people. They say Voros is telling the truth: it is indeed an antidote to the deadly germs Detcharn plans to let loose on Kaldak. So Veros has gotten all the help I can give him, no matter who he is."

"You won't send people from-oh, the City Regiment? Wouldn't they do the job better than raw Tribesmen?"

"With the best weapons and Voros-Blade to lead them, those 'raw Tribesmen' will be good enough. Also, City people wouldn't follow Voros unless he was pardoned for his desertion. That would raise a lot of questions better left lying. If it is Blade come back, he's probably got good reasons for not wanting everybody knowing it. For the time being, I'll respect those reasons, though I did decide to send one man from the City Regiment to help Voros train his men."

Sidas lit another cigar, and this time Baliza joined him, although she put hers down after a few puffs. She was afraid she would be sick all over again. "No, what I'd have done if you'd lied wouldn't hurt Voros. I'd simply have ordered you to sit in Kaldak during this fight. Under arrest, if necessary." She could tell he wasn't joking.

"Then-I can join my-Voros-in the raid on the rocket base?" She hadn't realized until now just how badly she wanted to do this, and she still didn't know exactly why.

Sidas shook his head. "He's too likely to recognize you, and spend time worrying about keeping you out of danger. That's not a worry to give a man leading a raid like that. I know," he said with a sigh. "Your mother, as much as I loved her, would never stop giving me that worry."

"But if he's not my father-"

"Even if he really is just a man named Voros, it's still not a good idea. Do you think he'll want to be remembered as the man who led the Sky Master Blade's daughter to her death?"

Baliza had no answer to that question, then decided there wasn't any. "Very well. You're right. But-the Laws abandon me if I'm just going to sit on my bottom in Kaldak while this is happening! You will have to put me under arrest to make me do it, I warn you!"

"I don't expect you to do anything of the sort!" said the High Commander. "In fact, we've got work for you every bit as important as the raid. You're going to enter Doimar and bring out Feragga."

Baliza must have looked as confused as she felt, because Sidas explained himself very carefully. Baliza was to enter Doimar, find out where Feragga lived, go there, and bring her to Kaldak. Since Feragga was crippled, this would mean stealing a lifter as well.

"You should be ready to take her by force if you have to. But as the Sky Master's daughter, you're the one person in Kaldak who might not have to. That's why you're going alone. If we sent in a squad, she'd probably kill herself rather than move an inch."

"a.s.suming she comes to Kaldak of her own free will, what then?"

"A lot of Detcharn's enemies will rally around her if she's alive after the raid. She won't be if we don't get her out of Doimar. Detcharn will kill her if he survives the raid, and his friends will try if he doesn't. With luck, Feragga will be ruler of Doimar again."

"It will take more than luck," said Baliza. "It will take the consent of the Council of Nine."

For the first time, Geyrna spoke. "I think that will not be such a problem as you might think." Something in her voice . . .

"You two worked this out between you," Baliza exclaimed. "You-you've been playing with me all this time!"

Sidas tried to look ashamed. He wasn't very successful. As angry as she was, Baliza wanted to laugh. Finally she said, "All right. Feragga will make a good rallying point. Even if she doesn't, she shouldn't die at the hands of Detcharn's hired killers. I'll go, on one condition."

"Yes?" said the other two, almost in unison.

"If I don't come back, if Voros returns, go to him and speak plainly about his secret. If he is-my father-ask him to forgive me for-what I tried to do. Tell him I honored and loved him as best I could, although not as much as he deserved."

"And if he doesn't come back?" said Sidas quietly. Baliza remembered how many people her stepfather had sent out who hadn't come back. For the first time she saw clearly that he was growing old under that burden.

"Then let him be remembered as a warrior of Kaldak. He was that, whatever else he was." They could all drink to that.

The lifter came to a stop a man's height above the ground. Baliza swung herself out the door and dropped into the long gra.s.s. She carried a heavy pack, but the gra.s.s and the damp earth made for a soft landing. She stepped out from under the lifter and waved to the two pilots. They waved back, then the lifter whined away across the field. It stayed low, and quickly vanished behind the trees dimly visible on the edge of the field.

The long gra.s.s and soft earth now made walking difficult. After a while Baliza gave up trying to avoid leaving a trail and simply plowed straight on. By the time she reached the edge of the field it was noticeably lighter. She was soaked to the skin from the waist down, and she also discovered that the gra.s.s was full of insects. She took her trousers off and picked the insects out while studying her map.

She was about two days' walk from Doimar by the shortest route, which she could not use. It brought her too close to the biggest training camp of the army of Doimar. The countryside there would be crawling with soldiers and the sky filled with lifters. So she would have to take a longer route. Call it four days' traveling. That should still get her to Doimar with plenty of time to find out where Feragga was and how to get her out of the city, before the raiders struck the rocket base. After the raid, the Doimari would be very much on the alert, not to mention quick on the trigger. Also, Feragga might be dead.

Things might go faster if she got help from the agents Kaldakan Intelligence already had in Doimar. Certainly they would have orders to do their best for her-Sidas had made that very clear.

"If they don't, I'll be asking why. And if they don't have some very good answers, they'll be envying Tribesman slaves before I get through with them." From Sidas's expression, Baliza was glad she hadn't tried to lie to him. He wasn't cruel, but he was ruthlessly just in handing out both rewards and punishments.

"The Intelligence people owe us a big debt for their clowning around. If they'd done their work properly, we'd have learned about Detcharn's fever rockets a long time ago. We wouldn't have to be throwing good men into a fangjaw's mouth to do their work for them!"

However, the fact remained that the Intelligence people certainly hadn't lived up to their name. Would they be more trouble than help, when it came to s.n.a.t.c.hing Feragga?

Right now, though, she had to get to Doimar, before she even needed to worry about anything else. When she'd finished getting the insects out of her pants, Baliza pulled a set of farm woman's clothing out of her pack. Turned inside out, her pack looked just like a Doimari carrying sack. To complete her disguise, she unfolded a broad-brimmed hat. It shielded her face from the sun and prying eyes. A concealed pocket in the brim also held a miniature laser pistol, where she could easily draw it with a gesture n.o.body would suspect.

An hour after sunrise, two things happened at once. Baliza reached the bank of the Pesto River, and three lifters flew overhead. One of them was towing a balloon-load of troops. Before they were out of sight, Baliza saw the lifters start to circle, while the balloon began to descend.

It might be just a training exercise. But it looked to Baliza a lot too much like a search party. For the moment they were a long way behind her, but that might change. She had to get out of the area as fast as she could-not easy, with a river half a mile wide in front of her.

However, there were boats on rivers. Baliza started prowling along the bank, looking for an untended boat. Half an hour later she found a fisherman sitting on the bank, beside a beached canoe. He was sitting facing the river, all his attention on the dip net in his lap. He was mending its broken handle as Baliza crept up through the bushes behind him.

When she knew she hadn't been detected, she pulled out a slingshot and a handful of clay b.a.l.l.s. Being the Sky Master's daughter gave her the chance to learn all sorts of unusual fighting skills from equally unusual teachers. She still didn't think she knew as much as her father-the tales of his bare-handed duel against the arrogant Hota still thrilled her. But she felt she'd learned enough to be a worthy daughter to the Sky Master-and would she ever have a chance to ask him if he thought so, too?

Baliza aimed the slingshot, pulled the cord back, and let fly. The clay ball took the fisherman in the temple and he toppled over sideways without even a groan. Baliza hurried out of cover and examined him. The clay ball had disintegrated on impact, as it was supposed to. The fisherman himself was senseless but breathing steadily. In a few hours he would awake with a crashing headache, a blue bruise on his temple, and no memory of what happened to him. The captured Tribesmen who'd taught her to use the slingshot in return for his freedom would have been proud of her.

She dropped her pack and hat into the canoe and pushed it into the water, then climbed in. A few paddle strokes took her out into the current. Within moments she was on her way downstream toward Doimar, faster than she could have walked and with much less effort.

The morning sun blazed on the water and made the ripples sparkle like jewels. She put her hat back on but took off her shirt. She knew that a soldier who sees a good-looking woman going about bare to the waist will seldom bother to ask questions-or at least not questions about whether she's a spy.

Chapter 23.

It was late afternoon, with the shadows growing long and the heat of the day beginning to die. Shangbari stretched, then rose to his feet and started walking restlessly up and down. If this had been a common hunt or raid, the men would by now have been picking up their weapons; cleansing themselves before the Grandfathers, and gathering ready to leave the camp.

Not this time, with Voros the Wise leading them against the wizards of Doimar. The sixty warriors would go aboard the sky-machines at night, fly to the wizards' home in the darkness, and attack it at dawn.

"They won't find it easy to see us on the way in," Voros had said. "By the time we've finished wrecking the place, they'll be too busy to bother us on the way out." Although Voros had also said that victory would be worth the life of every one of the raiders, he seemed determined to bring home as many men as he could.

So the raiders were facing a sleepless night and a long day. Most were sleeping or resting now. Some were with their women, including Voros himself.

Shangbari had no fit woman for this time. His first wife had died trying to give him a son. He'd been courting a second woman when the Doimari struck and she died under the fire-beams. He would shout her name as his war cry while he fought the wizards.

Still restless, he walked through the village and around on old sow asleep in her accustomed place in the middle of the path. A hundred paces farther on, he came to the three sky-machines. They lay in the shadow of the trees, covered with branches to make them hard to see from the sky. The Doimari war colors showed faintly through the green leaves.

Shangbari was not entirely happy about going into such a great and important battle in disguise. Yet perhaps this was necessary, if you were fighting wizards. If they did not know who you were until your weapons struck them down, they could not work their magic against you.

Certainly Voros had said so, to those who not only had doubts but spoke them out loud. He'd also said that anyone who argued further would have to fight either him or his battle-brother, the Sergeant Ezarn.

No one wanted to raise a hand against Voros the Wise. The battle spirits might punish them for fighting in disguise, but they would be punished far worse for defying the spirit-blessed Voros. As for fighting Brother Ezarn-he could fight any two warriors of the Red Cats without even working up a heavy sweat. He had done so with fifty men looking on, and without breaking any law or custom of the Red Cats while doing it. No, fighting Ezarn might not be cursed, but it would certainly be very foolish.

As he got closer to the sky-machines, Shangbari saw Ezarn himself in front of one of them. He had one of their little doors open and was doing something to what lay inside with City man's tools.

"Hullo, Shangbari."

"Greetings, Ezarn. May I watch?"

"Can't sleep, hunh?"

"No."

"Neither can I. Sit yourself down, by all means."

"I thank you."

Shangbari sat down cross-legged as Ezarn used both hands to pull a length of metal tube out of the door. The hunter thought that if he watched Ezarn long enough, he might learn something about the sky-machines of the Cities. The more he learned, the better. Voros, Sparra, and Ezarn did not seem to care about Tribesmen gaining such knowledge. If there was war again between the Red Cats and the Cities, everything the Red Cats learned would give them new strength.

The towers of Doimar were silhouetted against a sunset sky as Baliza turned into the Street of the Winesellers. Torches and lamps glowed all up and down the street, as the wineshops began their evening's business. Baliza's eyes turned upward, to lights on the roof of a five-story building halfway down the street. That was Feragga's city home. As long as the lights went on every night, she was living there.

A hand touched her shoulder softly and a voice murmured in her ear, "Tombs and cigars."