CHAPTER VII HIRELINGS' HONOUR Grey wisps of fog wreathed through the camp like the winter breath of phantoms as Jeremy approached Trajan, who lay sleeping beside the burnt-out campfire, and shook him awake, whispering urgently in his ear, "Jackal wants to speak to you." Trajan threw aside his blanket and ran his fingers through his tousled hair, blinking in disgust to the headgear Jeremy handed to him in cupped hands. "Rouse the others," he grunted, not in the best of moods, "tell them to get prepared at once." Jeremy vanished into the tent and Trajan strapped on his helmet swearing to himself. He fastened his rephar, put on his jacket, secured the silver poniard at his shin and pulled on his boots. Young Rohmi accompanied him as he tramped through the quietness of the camp that slowly and reluctantly stirred into wakefulness and into the realities of another sombre day. Jackal stood with arms akimbo on the bank, stripped to the waist and dripping wet with water from the river that glistened like oily sweat on his muscles. A jewel, a large amethyst gleamed on his bare chest, flirting flickers with the first lights of the breaking dawn. "Captain!" Jackal greeted him with a theatrical sweep of his broad arm. Trajan envisioned him grinning with ill will behind his metal mask. "Today is going to be another grand day!" Trajan crossed his arms. He already felt perspiration clotting on his face under the musty headgear and longed to follow Jackal's example and bathe in the river in all openness. He didn't bother to disguise his repugnance. "Cut short the good morning wishes. And no more double- talk. State your business as plainly and briefly as I will allow you!" "If you so wish," Jackal agreed, coming closer with slow, menacing steps. "I am prepared to make a deal with you, Captain. A truce. Maybe an alliance, between your forces and mine?" He stood still with legs planted wide, the strange stone set in the cross-section of two yellow-gold bars, one short and the other long with a loop at the top of the longer bar, rolling to and fro on his chest with every jerk and move he made. "My manpower has been cut in half by the skirmish yesterday but I have weapons and a great amount of provisions. You, on the other hand," his chuckle came sepulchral through his mask, "have a great many more mouths to feed and no food, but the most remarkable weaponry I have seen so far. I figured that you're going south, like us. The Magni-Xandian army may not be pushing so far into that region, not yet, but there will be others on the road ahead, deserters, renegades, all mean and vile with hunger, as desperately hungry as the children in your camp. I will share my food supplies if you agree to join forces, on my terms." "On your terms?' "Yes, Captain!" Jackal snarled, "A man is willing to offer a hand in friendship but not before he knows who he is offering it to. You are strange company, indeed. Surely hirelings riding under no banner but those women, children and elderly you drag in tow. Captured booty, servants, slaves? But of a kind so lovingly cared for and preserved, for what? For some ceremonial sacrifice? "They are the clan who used to dwell in the Great Divide, or what has remained of them, isn't that right, dear courageous Captain. Are you a Cougar, like that young thug of a lieutenant of yours? Only a few has managed to deceive the eyes of the Jackal!" "What is it you want?" Trajan asked carefully, "a truce, or something else. Under the circumstances I may be willing to agree to a truce." Jackal's voice rasped through his headgear, "The suspension of hostilities between us is only my second objective. My first is your identity. Who are you? Uncover your face, and I will do likewise. Let us see each other man to man." Trajan's arms slowly slipped to his sides, his body taut and alert. "I am not sure I can trust you. I thought it was the hirelings' unspoken code of honour not to reveal their identities." "Sure," Jackal slapped his thigh, "but only for hirelings under hire. For those who have deserted their master, a disguise is sometimes more of a burden than protection, especially for hirelings who wish to form their own army and serve only themselves. Is your face so hideous and scarred that looking at it is like looking at your own sins? I assure you, my own face won't give you bad dreams and I take my chances with your ugliness." Trajan cut him short irritably: "You do have surprising propositions but before I agree to your terms I have to consult my team." He swung round, leaving Jackal standing on the bank bellowing taunting laughter into the misty air. Arriving at the camp he perceived that the party was in the midst of dismantling the tents, packing the goods and clearing the glade for their departure. His companions looked at him with questions in their eyes but he briskly cut down any hopes, advising no further support could be expected from Jackal's corner. They had to make do with whatever they had until they reached the border town. "Are we able to cut short our travelling time with the horses?" he asked Jeremy. "Probably, although we have no wagons. But during the night my people have put together drags from the wood of the rafts on which the old and young can travel. With luck we could reach the town by nightfall and trade some of the horses with provisions, and other materials. Jeremy ground into the hard grit with the tip of his boot. "An infant died during the night. As winter approaches we have to look for warmer clothing as well. By the way, one of Jackal's wounded men also gave up the spirit in the night. The other two are not expected to live long. If this goes on, he won't be much of a threat by the end of the day." Jeremy's eyes glinted with fierce cunning. "When he is off guard, we might be able to tackle him." "No!" Trajan said decisively. "I will not permit it, absolutely not. We will try out all other options. The day is still very young. "And stop that, you brute! You are annoying me!" he rasped, whirling on his heels and glaring at the black stallion who had been nudging his back persistently throughout the conversation. "He is only trying to be friendly," Leoynar said gently. "What has put you so on edge?" "Why are you all still standing around here?" Trajan asked them thinly. "Have you run out of work? Are we just waiting here to greet the enemy with open arms?" "If you say so, My Lord, to work then." Deyron bowed low, his headgear wobbling grotesquely on his shoulders. "Let's go and carry out his wishes, mates, and work our fingers to the bone. It seems that My Lord has stepped out at the wrong side of the bed!" Trajan breathed deeply, blowing puffs of steam through his mouthpiece as his companions trooped away, and turned his attention to the stallion who bowed its proud head, looking hurt. "Relax," he spoke in a consoling voice, stroking the black manes with a hesitant hand, "forgive me, but where I come from subspecies rarely demand so much attention. They are a proud and independent lot compared to you. And nothing seems to go right lately. I have to come up with a solution very soon or there will be another needless killing." The stallion raised his head, whinnying a prolonged summons into the morning breeze. "What is it you're trying to say?" Trajan strained his Seventh Sense to catch the particular pitch and inflection of the steed's language, so much harder to understand than the more familiar voices of his world's fauna. Deep within his soul his Other Essence stirred, tingling him with sensations of comprehension, Starglory counselling him on the traits of instinctive trust linking creatures together in times of great need. "You are impatient to be on the way," he said softly, rubbing the mighty flanks of the horse. "Nowhere is it safe except when you are constantly on the move, constantly on the alert for the perils that are to come. You are absolutely right, my friend, black as night, yet as bright and lofty as day, Brightloft, we can't waste time!" He climbed onto the stallion's back and rode into the centre of the clearing. The harshness of the Cougars' shouts, the panic in the children's shrills and the edge of hysteria in the parents' cries foreshadowed a difficult and uneasy journey. They started to move out into the Plains as the sun appeared through a slit in the cloud pall with sickly milkiness, sending down beams as drab and dreary as the surrounding ocean of fallow weeds. Jackal's party had already departed, vanishing with all speed into the smokiness of the southern horizons. Throughout the hours of the morning anxiety gnawed at Trajan and he ordered no halts, not even when the scouts returned at noontime reporting that the old freeway was only a few yards distant and some of the riders' untrained buttocks were screaming for a rest. "We take a rest when we reach town," he shouted over the din of protestations. "The freeway appears deserted for now but maybe not for long." "Captain!" Deyron screeched, "any longer on that bumping drag and I won't be able to sit down for the rest of my life. I beg of you, a break will do me good, will do all of us good." "Go ride on a steed," Trajan yelled to him, "it is less bumpy and it may save your life, trust me." Deyron jumped off, bristling with indignation. "Is that beast of yours sneering at me?" he growled, pointing an accusing finger at Brightloft. Trajan laughed, one hand fondly stroking the horse that had bared his teeth and snorted at the party as though he was enjoying the situation. "Nobody is making a laughingstock out of hireling Deyron, least of all a well-behaved steed like Brightloft, but circumstances don't allow us to take a rest. We are easy targets in this bare region, under this naked sky. No trees, no bushes. no hills where we can take cover. Speed is our only course. On our way!" Leoynar drew his bay alongside the still fuming Superpre and extended a hand with an amused smile. "Come, share my steed. She is a sturdy mare, she can put up with both of us. When we reach town, you can pick out your own mount and I will teach you how to ride. Trajan is right, you know. It will be to your great advantage learning how to ride a steed, since so far I have not seen any aeromobile winging through the air. And don't hold my waist so tight, I have to breathe!" "This is simply humiliating," Deyron muttered, adjusting his weight uncomfortably on the horse's hard, rippling back. "No self-respecting surety videt would suffer to put up with such a situation, except me of course. And where is that other relative of yours, Trevarthen, that self- computing changeling? He, you and the Captain; you are one of the same family, aren't you? All descended from the Great Lar Irwain Trevarthen. What am I doing here amongst such High Blood?" Leoynar raised his eyebrows quasi-astonished "I never thought what a bellyacher a Superpre could be. You are making me deaf with your whining! Look ahead to the two of them over there. They're coping in an admirable way!" Deyron's swept his gaze gloomily over the length of the ragged grey road where just a few metres in the foreground Nagus, together with Ralph, rode on a spirited blue roan, as easily and unconcerned as if they were welded together as parts of one whole. The Superpre hunched his shoulders and had nothing more to say. Age, neglect and violent times had imprinted their mementos on the old expressway, the iron-grey face no longer smooth but scarred by a moonscape of gashes and potholes, the edges chewed and frayed by the encroaching Plains. Each step, each trot, each drag brought them deeper into rugged barren lands, where the fangweed finally yielded to grit and hard rock. The arid air parched their throats and the wind, blowing stronger from a northeasterly corner, cut through them like a blade. Scouts were despatched and they returned reporting no news as they galloped away again. The freeway seemed to stretch into unending monotony, lifeless and abandoned, silent and dead as it pointed with a stern arm to the hazy southern line, bare of trees and hills. Weariness and fatigue had even stilled the whines of the children. Jeremy drew his horse alongside Brightloft. "It appears no armies are in the vicinity," he said pulling off his headgear, his voice as grim as the desert around him. His expression clearly implied the desire for a brief respite from the punishing speed of the journey as his eyes searched for a softening in Trajan's almost despotic stance. "You may be right," Trajan said who had likewise bared his face. He raised his eyes in study to the foggy sky. "But danger may not be coming from over the ground but from above. All the more reason to speed up our progress." Jeremy's face worked frantically as he struggled with an impulse of open defiance. He had so far respected the Captain's leadership; yet now he was coming face to face with a disturbing element. As commander the Captain would rarely be inclined to stoop so low as to listen to a Cougar warrior. He had taken the place of the Elder, and the Elder was at times a hard man to understand and obey. As if sensing the young Cougar's mounting rebelliousness, Trajan turned and looked him in the face, his eyes glinting from studious darkgrey to compelling purple. "Jeremy, the choice here is between straining muscles and bones to get to safety in time, and being scattered as corpses all over the Plains. I want you all safe, from the eldest to the youngest infant in your Clan!" "Captain!" A rider approached in a fury of dust, drawing his foaming horse to a halt with a hoarse, pitched cry, "Gliders!" The scout's alarm jolted the party into instant panic. The defenceless immediately clumped together in balls of fear on the drags and the defenders hastily converged to discuss strategy. "Where are they coming from?" Trajan enquired. "From the southeast quarter!" the scout panted, his eyes great circles of fear. Jeremy was puzzled. "Southeast? From across the southern border? Have the invaders managed to come so far ahead of us? "How many are there?" "I don't know, I couldn't see them, I only heard them." "You can't see them!?" Jeremy barked. "What are we going to do?" Leoynar interrupted anxiously, "turn back?" Trajan looked at Jeremy. "The gliders, each man attached to his own backpack thruster but supported by a deployment of others. Not wholly unlike from a mounted trooper in a cavalry. Are there any other differences?" Jeremy shook his head hesitantly. "No, at least so far as I know, except coming from the sky they have more mobility than a cavalry. Our weapons are not fast enough." "Our rephars are," Trajan said curtly. "Too bad we did not bring along a plasma spreader which would really make short shrift of them. But we cannot interrupt the journey, there's no turning back. "Jeremy," he ordered, "lead your people off the freeway and head towards the west as quickly as possible. Don't stop on any account and take as many of your guards as you think necessary." "If you don't mind, Captain." Jeremy said in a voice coming out harsher than he would have liked, "I prefer to stay and face the gliders. Rohmi can take charge of my people." "As you wish," Trajan wheeled Brightloft round to instruct his Iucarian companions. "We have to synchronize our rephars within a very short margin, picking out targets on the exact moment as they appear. A quick eye and absolute precision is critical, because we are only - four against so many. Deyron! Are you able to control a horse on your own? Carrying two weights will distract Leoynar's, and defocus your vision and range of firing." "If I must then I must," Deyron said resignedly, dismounting and stumbling awkwardly on the ground. "Take our colt," Nagus advised him, "he is young and eager to go into battle. For me, I don't think I am cut out to be a fighter, with or without a helmet. With your permission, Trajan, I'd rather join Ralph on the drag." Trajan nodded, restrapping his headgear. "Leoynar," he quietly directed, "give your spare rephar to Jeremy and instruct him how to use it. And, don't waste time and effort. Turn the setting to eliminate. Rephars are less messy." A few of the young men remained with the small band of defenders as auxiliaries, a rearguard to cull those gliders slipping through the first web of rephar fire. They spurred their horses onto the grit wasteland and galloped ahead in a southeasterly direction while the main body of the party left the freeway and turned westwards. Pushing forward with great speed they had already left the freeway far behind them when a drone, like the chorus of a legion of wasps, drifted down from above the clouds. Jeremy reached out a hand, seizing Trajan's shoulder with sudden fright. "What is that sound?" he gasped. "Don't gliders make such a sound when they are approaching, to give us fair warning?" Trajan remarked with some sarcasm while he unloosened his rephar. "They usually don't make a sound until it is too late," Jeremy lectured him none too patiently. "This--this is something new. We can hear their voices but where are they?" Quickly noticing the growing unease and puzzlement of Jeremy hearing the approach of an unseen enemy who had hitherto menaced the Clan in a very visible form, Trajan said equally puzzled: "Have you never heard the noise of shuttles before, of machines flying through the air? That's how they sound like, you can't see them because they are too far up in the sky." "Maybe that's a good thing," Deyron commented laconically. "They are too high up to be bothered with little insects like us on the ground." "Don't rejoice too soon," Leoynar said. "Look, there they come! Three? No, four, rather diminutive compared to our EROS." Trajan reholstered his rephar and retrieved the range-scanner from his saddlebag, suddenly convinced that the danger had passed as inexplicably as it had first threatened to dive- bomb them. When he had done his surveying through the scanner, he told them pensively: "Intriguing! They are spitsoars, fashioned more or less like ours but much smaller and not as powerful. Do you think they have come from the Dominion in the North, Jeremy?" "No, Captain," Jeremy replied demurely, greatly reassured by the calm of Trajan's behaviour. "I have never seen them before, nor do I think that the Magni-Xandians have the capacity to manufacture things--machines like those. In my honest opinion, they look like foreign design, of the kind that maybe only your people know how to build." With sudden apprehension Trajan came to the far from reassuring conclusion that Jeremy might not be too far away from the truth. Those unidentified craft disappearing into distant strata of the upper atmosphere, in size resembling more like aeromobiles but in nature definitely not as innocent; they required the workings of a higher technology, a more advanced society promising more than the barrenness and savage lifestyles of the surrounding wasteland. And East was where those craft flew from. "I think," Trajan concluded, "we are going in the right direction. They're gone. Let's go and find the others." Jeremy sent one of the scouts to go after the drags and lead them back onto the freeway. When they once more pursued the end of the day's journey in company, a steady breeze had disseminated the cloudbanks to the far north leaving the setting sun as an unwashed bloodstain on the clear sheet of a grey-blue sky. At long last the shanty town loomed up in the dusk, splotched at the foot of a hillock like an old sore. Under the tattered roof of a hut the Overman of the hirelings munched on a slice of bread and watched the party straggling into town. The scouts reported more distressing news. The town had been abandoned. There was no one with whom you could talk, or trade food. Jackal walked down the porch with slow, nonchalant steps. "My offer still stands, Captain," he spoke, his mouth working behind the gauze of the mouthpiece as if he was grinning wickedly. "But let me warn you in case you have intentions of robbing me of my supplies. My wagons are all booby-trapped. The first man who touches them will have his belly filled with lead instead. I don't think you have any more choices left." He strode off with thumbs tucked in his trouser pockets, disappearing behind the hillock. Uneasily the head members of the party crowded around their Captain. "What offer is he talking about?" Leoynar asked. Trajan shook his head, staring hard at the ground. "He is right, I don't have a choice." "What is he offering you, Captain?" Jeremy asked urgently. With one hand on his hip Trajan tugged at his helmeted chin with the other. "He is offering us a truce and food. On one condition, I have to unmask myself." "No!" Jeremy called out. "You cannot bare your face to another hireling!" "Oh and why not? He already knows you came down from the mountains. Our rephars clearly show we were not born here. What else is there to give away once I take this headgear off?" Jeremy jerked at his metal face and threw it on the ground. His eyes blazed with grey fire, his frantic teeth drew blood from his pale lips. He suddenly ran away and Trajan chased after him. In a deserted alley he pulled the boy to a stop. Without turning Jeremy spoke, his desperate voice ringing through the veil of coming night: "Long ago people used to tell stories of a legend, a legend now forbidden under penalty of death, the Legend of the Lords Laris." "The Lords Laris!" Trajan cried aloud, staring at Jeremy's heaving back. Jeremy continued to speak: "When I was very young, before my mother took me to the mountains, I witnessed an execution at the market-place. An adherent of the Lords was taken and brought to face the ultimate penalty on the incinerator. I saw her face when they strapped her down in the chair, a face looking as clear and noble as yours, Captain, truly the face of an angel the very old then whispered sadly amongst themselves, but when the executioner pulled the switch there was nothing left of her, her body, face, her beautiful eyes, except charred pieces of flesh. People talked how the traitor who reported her to the authorities became the richest man in town." Jeremy swung round, looking at him with an ashen face. "When you uncover your face to the Jackal, he will know you are not a hireling. In fact he will know what he can gain by you. I do not want it to happen to you, Captain, My Lord, My Lord Ermiz. If such Lords Laris existed then you have embodied their image!" "Jeremy!" Trajan shouted. His palms pulsated with sparks, his fingers glowed with blue fire. Starglory was about to erupt from his veins and incinerate all mothers' sons and daughters from end to end in its devastating brilliance. No, not this way, NOT THIS WAY. But this was not Starglory but his own emotion, his emotions of anger, outrage, grief were now controlling the Power of Light; they had become one. --'Control your emotions, your impulses,' Krystan had written, 'Do not commit deeds in rage. Do no wantonly destroy.'-- "Jeremy," Trajan called to him once more as the boy stumbled back, his eyes wide, his limbs trembling. Trajan caught him as he was about to fall on his knees. "Listen," he grated through his headgear, "I forbid you to tell any more of your horror stories and I forbid you to call me My Lord! Look, you are petrified! Shame on you, shame! Forget, forget what you have seen. "Are you all right now?" Jeremy wiped an unsteady hand across his perspiring brow. "I guess so. What happened? Suddenly I feel faint." Sternly Trajan wagged a finger at him. "No more storytelling unless I say so. I am going to settle with Jackal and put a stop to all this morbid nonsense." With bowed head Jeremy muttered: "There is one more reason why hirelings hide their faces but I gather you'll find it out for yourself." Trajan was hardly listening. He briskly walked out of the alley and the party watched him silently as he marched off, rounding the foot of the hill where behind a slope Jackal and his men stood poised near their wagons. "I want privacy." Jackal nudged with his chin to his men who promptly departed from the scene. With a fierce hand Trajan yanked the headgear off his head. "Now you, Jackal." Jackal did not move for explosive seconds. Then he put his big hand to his headgear, hauling it off his head and face in deliberate slow-motion. "I don't think," he said, a broad grin spreading like a sandstorm over the gaunt landscape of his face, violated by numerous battlescars and a tantalizing criss-cross of burnt-out and fresh tattoos, "that you derive the same pleasure from you looking at me as I looking at your wholesome face, Captain. What is the reason for hiding it so jealously?" "Now you know how I look like, are you going to sell me to the highest bidder, or are you going to stand by your word?" Jackal flung his headgear away, unsheathing a long dagger which he held up in the feeble light of the dusk. "Maybe not. You can never trust a jackal, can you?" Trajan slowly drew out his poniard which flashed momentarily like a jewel catching the last rays of the old day. "You are right. Jackals prey on the dead, and the weak." Jackal's teeth glinted like yellow granite. "What are you suggesting?" "Winner takes all." Jackal's raucous laughter echoed around the hill and the abandoned ramshackle houses, as he sprang forward with his long dagger in his great hand. The wind and the darkening evening fell into eerie silence as the two combatants circled around one another. A strange soundless combat took place as two figures of disparate sizes but equally agile pranced, thrust, and dodged without making sounds like performing a shadow play in the darkening dusk. Trajan remembered well the last evening drill with Chief Guillen at Mount Argento, locking eyes with your opponent, anticipating his moves, knowing his purpose. What does he want? What do I want? Jackal wanted to win because winning for him meant staying alive. I am only thinking of the destitute people of the Clan who, if I do not win, would go to bed hungry tonight. Jackal made several savage attacks and Trajan parried each thrust nimbly. It would be more a contest of endurance rather than a match for winning. He had not been able to defeat his Chief; he had made the mistake of wanting to win too quickly. Jackal was strong, he was able to duel until daybreak but he was lapsing into the old sin of impatience; the game was fraying his nerves. Jackal perceived that his opponent's tactic was to wear him out and in frustration he swung out his left fist. It glanced off the Captain's chin but the force seemed sudden and brutal enough to send him flying backwards. Trajan deliberately slackened his movements, pretending that he was stunned and when Jackal jumped upon him with fingers curled for the coup de grace, his foot shot out kicking the hireling hard on the knee. Then he leapt forward and the edge of his left hand smashed into the big man's midriff sending him sprawling in the sand. He kicked away the Jackal's dagger and shook his poniard, the blade whistling to a white-hot thin sword under the waning moon. He bent over the Overman. "What do you say now, Jackal?" He plucked out from his pocket the amethyst that he had brought along, and tossed it down on the heaving chest of his adversary where it snuggled like a long lost twin with the one that hung from the hireling's neck. "Dego's--," Jackal gasped, "Dego's Stone! How did you get it?" A trace of fear, and of helpless fury, started to quiver in the Jackal's eyes. "A thought-provoking question. Dego gave it to me for saving his people. One of a pair he said, but how did you get yours?" The rapier sparkled fiercely like a blade of diamonds. * * * When the two of them reemerged from behind the hill, the anxiously waiting company at once perceived that a truce had been accomplished, and a new alliance forged. Jackal did not dally any longer and distributed supplies and blankets around the camp. For once in so many days of hardship men, women and children drifted to rest and sleep around the campfires with full bellies. In the late hours of night Jackal joined Trajan who sat before the glow of a fire with the microcom on his lap. Without lifting his eyes from the screen Trajan commented: "I still find it hard to believe that you are Dego Kolmarin's grandson." Jackal guffawed. "Because of the disparity in our sizes? The father may be a dwarf but his sons are full-grown men. It happens here all the time. Doesn't your region have to cope with such stimulating variety of human infestation?" "Someone once said that we are a dull species." Jackal slapped his knees. "I can see why. It would be insufferably dull indeed if all your people share the same insufferable tallness, leanness and good looks. But enough of it. You spoke with my grandfather and I believe he is well. Do you know where he is now?" "Before he disappeared, Dego was in remarkably good spirits and optimistic that he would return to his old home, but I really don't know where he is now. He could be anywhere. If you want to find him I suggest find Governor General Carlomon." "Carlomon, the new Paramount of Magnificent Xandia!" "What!" "Don't you know that he has overthrown the old Paramountcy of Xandia? Don't you know that he is the one who has instigated this war of invasion across the Southern Belt of States?" Trajan put aside his microcom, frowning darkly. "Jeremy has told me nothing of this!" "Pah! What does a mountain cur like him know about politics? And I'll tell you more about what I have learnt when I was pressed into service for Carmel. This war is only a precursor, a consolidation of some sort, as groundwork for the grand venture of all times. The war of conquest against the Dominion of Aseur." "Why would Carlomon want to conquer Aseur?" Jackal shrugged indifferently. "Revenge, bad feelings? He was ousted from his seat of government in the Paramountcy of Vespar by a popular rebellion and the other Paramounts in the Dominion refused to come to his aid." "And this has occurred only recently?" "Fairly recently, fourteen months ago. The new Dominion of Magni-Xandia has only been established for eight months." "Fourteen months?" Trajan quickly picked up and fingered his microcom, "which means in terms of our reckoning, roughly six seasons after Sunder. It also means Carlomon landed through the Equation in Vespar, with the rest of the company, about fourteen months ago. And if Kolmarin is still alive, he must still be in Vespar." He muttered to himself: "And the opposite End of the Equation." Jackal jumped to his feet and paced around the circle of the campfire, flailing his arms now and then in great excitement. "But Granddaddy Dego must be alive, or else what I have been doing all these years is futile. Futile! Giving myself out as a plug-ugly for hire, nearly having my entrails fed to the dogs on numerous times. For one reason only, to earn enough Nuclear Irridio-chips to annul Granddaddy's contract so that he can retire in all luxury in Geosphere D'Or." "Geosphere D'Or?" "Yes, yes! Geosphere D'Or, or the Great Experiment, the Magnificent Flop, or what toothless folklorists call it, as it used to be called in pre Minus Zero history, the Great Sahara Desert. What does it matter! If Granddaddy is no longer there, all my efforts have been for nothing, absolute zilch!" "Geosphere D'Or," Trajan distractedly threw twigs into the fire, "as Dego said to me, 'a place maybe not as wondrous as yours but as equally dear to us. We were born there and will return there to die ... where we live free and happy.'" "Used to live free and happy," Jackal blustered, the scars on his face throbbing like reopened sores in the glow of the fire, "after geegee Carlomon annexed the place it became a grand screw-up, a free-for-all. But maybe now that the old monarchy of Vespar has been restored, with a new geegee at the helm, maybe things could be a little different. And Granddaddy might still be alive!" He sat down with a thud. "Wonder what the new geegee would be like, must be quite a fellow, quiet a fellow indeed! He routed several armies of Carlomon's Black-Clads in a single day. I wonder if he has need of my talents. Captain--no, Colonel, Colonel Jackal the Cleaver at your service, Governor General of the Double Sun!" Trajan sat for long silent moments staring into the fire struggling quietly with a wholly different kind of fire flaring deep inside him. "I am glad you and I are now on the same side, Jackal."