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It took them two hours to reach the road, and then they had to parallel it
within the forest. There was a lot of traffic there, mostly wagons and such,
almost all going away from the hub in steady streams. The conquerors were
leaving the scene of victory now, taking what remained with them. For a
victori-
ous army who'd just done the impossible, they looked pretty damned grim.
Much of the town had been destroyed; cannibalized for the wood and other
materials to build the structures at the border, but some of it remained. A
small group of colonial natives remained; small, hairy humanoids with short,
thick snouts and shiny yellow eyes the size of egg yolks, but it was hard to
say whether they were the remnants of those who had lived there or if they
were part of the force. Dorion did not remem-
ber seeing any of them at the campsite.
A couple of hours reconnaissance convinced Dorion that they probably weren't
part of the attack force or anybody official. Apparently they were scavengers;
opportunists there at battle's end who made forays into the campsite and came
back with whatever wasn't nailed down that they could get away with. There
were only a dozen or so, but they were tolerated because they were the "host"
race and this was, after all, their world and their region now. Too many to
take on, particularly when one good yell or scream would bring some of the
passing "allied" forces to their aid. And, as expected, the orchards and such
nearby had been picked clean.
There was, however, a mounting pile of discards out back, including a lot of
soldier's kits cold rations and the like.
They were either quite choosy or quite wasteful, and Dorion was too hungry and
in too much need to quibble. When it grew late, and the inhabitants of the
town ruins bedded down and the procession halted or at least slowed to a
trickle, Dorion led Charley across the road and to the back. They were not
particular, and Dorion didn't give Charley the exact details and she didn't
want to know. It was enough that the food was edible, that it filled, and that
it wouldn't harm them.
236 fack L. Chalker
The fact that it was somebody's half-eaten garbage showed just how low they'd
fallen so fast.
"If we can get enough for a little journey, we'll head south again and off
towards the west," he told her. "There's a bunch of groves and orchards down
there, maybe two- or three-days' walk, that I'm sure the locals would have
pro-
tected. They were parts of old plantations here, as I remem-
ber. I'll rig up some kind of shelter in the bush nearby there, and every
night I'll go down and pick what we need so that they won't notice. We might
be able to survive almost indefinitely."
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She sighed. "Indefinitely. Like animals. And how long would it be before we
crack, Dorion? How long before we talk each other out and stop? How long
before survival be-
comes the only reason for living? Maybe it's different with you, but you can
see. The sheer boredom would kill my mind in weeks once we got set up and got
a pattern established. I'd flip out, be nothing more than a naked chimp in the
wild.
We're not living any better than that now. No. I'd rather die than that."
He shrugged. "What other choice is there?"
"Dorion, we have to get out of Masalur. We have to go where they don't control
things yet. Not back, though. Not where they're going. You lived here in the
glory days. There must be decent colonial worlds that aren't a part of the
rebellion. Ones with gentle people we might find some help from. You told me
yesterday that Coleel hid out from his king and sorcerer and all for like
fifteen years. We got to do that, too. You can still navigate, can't you?"
"Yeah, sure, but. . . . What if I pick wrong? The only places that might be
likely, and that's just by reasoning it out, are ones to the east. That was
the side that they didn't attack from, probably because they didn't have
enough allies there.
Or we could guess at one right here if they had to import folks from Covanti
to fight, then there's got to be a lot of colonies who didn't want to join
up."
"Yeah, but you'd have to call it up from the null. I kind'a think that would
draw attention. No, that east is best."
He stared at her. "But that means going right through the camp, across'the
whole null, and through part of occupied
Masalur hub!"
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM
217
"Yeah," she agreed, "but it would scratch that itch in my head. It's gotta be
a mess over there, and I can fend for myself in the null. Sam once did
something like that. I say try it. If we're caught, we're caught. If not, we
at least got a chance at some kind of life.''
"All right," he sighed. "Then we'd better eat good and cross in the dark
tomorrow. And pray to whatever god you have that all the Stormriders are gone
and that there are no magicians in range. Otherwise you'll go back to being a
pet, and I'll be at hard labor until I drop."
9
Boolean
THERE WERE STILL a ;of of people at the border, but a fair number seemed to be
male Akhbreed slaves doing massive cleanup and even more massive burials.
Apparently, with their furious working, the rebel magicians had created liter-
ally thousands of Akhbreed staves out of both the survivors of the. defending
army and the locals who lived in the nearest
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