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I do not think you will end your journey alive. Yet perhaps you will be
fortunate and make it successfully back to your own lands."
"You know what we are, then?" asked a puzzled Jon-Tom.
The driver nodded. "I know that beneath those skins of chitin there
are others softer and differently colored."
"But how?"
The driver pointed to the back of the wagon. Mudge looked
uncomfortable. "Well now wot the bloody 'ell were I supposed to do? I thought
'is mind had been turned to mush and I 'ad to pee. Didn't think 'e saw anyway,
the 'ard-shelled pervert!"
"It does not matter," the driver said.
"Listen, if you're not magicked and you know who and what we are,
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why are you taking us quietly where we wish to go instead of turning us over
to the authorities?" Jon-Tom wanted to know.
"I just told you: it does not matter." The driver made a two-armed
gesture indicative of great indifference. "Soon all will die anyway."
"I take it you don't approve of the coming war."
"No, I do not." His antennae quivered with emotion as he spoke. "It
is so foolish, the millenia-old expenditure of life and time in hopes of
conquest."
"I must say you are the most peculiar Plated person I have ever
encountered," said Clothahump.
"My opinions are not widely shared among my own people," the driver
admitted. He chucked the reins, and the wagon edged around a line of
motionless carts burdened with military supplies. Their wagon continued
onward, one set of wheels still on the roadway, the other bouncing over the
rocks and mud of the swampy earth.
"But perhaps things will change, given time and sensible thought."
"Not if your armies achieve victory they won't," said Bribbens
coldly. "Wouldn't you be happy as the rest if your soldiers win their
conquest?"
"No, I would not," the driver replied firmly. "Death and killing
never build anything, for all that it may appear otherwise."
"A most enlightened outlook, sir," said Clothahump. "See here, why
don't you come with us back to the warmlands?"
"Would I be welcomed?" asked the insect. "Would the other
warmlanders understand and sympathize the way you do? Would they greet me as a
friend?"
"They would probably, I am distressed to confess," said a somber
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Caz, "slice you into small chitinous bits."
"You see? I am doomed whichever way I chose. If I went with you I
would suffer physically. If I stay, it is my mind that suffers constant
agony."
"I can understand your feelings against the war," said Flor, "but
that still doesn't explain why you're risking your own neck to help us."
The driver made a shruglike gesture. "I help those who need help.
That is my nature. Now I help you. Soon, when the fighting starts, there will
be many to help. I do not take sides among the needy. I wish only that such
idiocies could be stopped. It seems though that they can only be waited out."
The driver, an ordinary citizen of the Greendowns, was full of
surprises. Clothahump had been convinced that there was no divergence of
opinion among the Plated Folk. Here was loquacious proof of a crack in that
supposed unity of totalitarian thought, a crack that might be exploited later.
Assuming, of course, that the forthcoming invasion could be stopped.
Several days later they found themselves leaving the last of the
cultivated lowlands. Mist faded behind them, and the friendly silhouettes of
the mountains of Zaryt's Teeth became solid.
No wagons plied their trader's wares here, no farmers waded
patiently through knee-deep muck. There was only military traffic. According
to Clothahump they were already within the outskirts of the Pass.
Military bivouacs extended from hillside to hillside and for miles
to east and west. Tens of thousands of insect troops milled quietly,
expectantly, on the gravelly plain, waiting for the word to march. From the
back of the wagon Jon-Tom and his companions could look out upon an ocean of
antennae and eyes and multiple legs. And sharp iron, flashing like a million
mirrors in the diffuse light of a winter day.
No one questioned them or eyed the wagon with suspicion until they
reached the last lines of troops. Ahead lay only the ancient riverbed of the
Troom Pass, a dry chasm of sand and rock which in the previous ten millenia
had run more with blood than ever it had with water.
The officer was winged but flightless, slim, limber of body and
thought. He noted the wagon and its path, stopped filling out the scroll in
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his charge, and hurried to pace the vehicle. Its occupants gave every
indication of being engaged in reasonable business, but they ought not to have
been where they were. The quality of initiative, so lacking in Plated Folk
troops, was present in some small amount in this particular individual
officer.
He glanced up at the driver, his tone casual and not hostile. "Where
are you going, citizen?"
"Delivering supplies to the forward scouts," said Caz quickly.
The officer slackened his pace, walked now behind the wagon as he
inspected its occupants. "That is understandable, but I see no supplies. And
who is the dead one?" He gestured with claws and antennae at the limp shape of
Talea, still encased in her disguise.
"An accident, a most unforgivable brawl in the ranks," Caz informed
him.
"Ranks? What ranks? I see no insignia on the body. Nor on any of
you."
"We're not regular army," said the driver, much to the relief of the
frantic Caz.
"Ah. But such a fatal disturbance should be reported. We cannot
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