In just a few beats he was back, sauntering into the cockpit. "They're our very good friends," he said, "and anxious not to annoy our employer with irrelevant questions or paperwork. As long as the coin holds out, of course."
"Of course," Doc said. "Who's our employer?"
"Why, that famous construction magnate, Joseph of Neckerdam." Jean-Pierre gestured like a man stating a fact of nature. "He's biggest, he's boss."
"Stands to reason. Now go out and arrange to have us refueled and served. Hire Joseph a lorry or a car. And ask about any Valkyries landing."
"Perfection is never enough for you, Doc."
The road was a one-lane blacktop situated between towering ranks of trees—the biggest, most gnarled oaks Harris had ever seen. They leaned across the road and stretched limbs down as though waiting to swat unwary motorists off the road. There were no streetlights, no reflective signs on dangerous turns, no stripes down the middle to indicate lanes. In the car they'd hired—a huge convertible roadster, the personal property of one of the airfield owners—Jean-Pierre roared ahead with a singular indifference to the fate of the vehicle or its passengers.
Harris clutched his jacket tight around him; it was inadequate in the cold air whipping across them. "First thing we get back," he shouted, "I invent the seatbelt."
"Seat restraints aren't new," Doc shouted back. "They're just not necessary." He had Duncan Blackletter's tracer in his hand; its screen cast a green glow on his features. He frowned at it.
"Ask Jean-Pierre to drive smack into one of those big trees, then try to tell me that again."
Doc waved his objections away. "Shut off your screen device, would you? You too, Gaby. They're interfering with this."
"Sure."
Doc raised his voice even louder so Jean-Pierre, Noriko and Alastair, in the front seat, and Joseph in the rumble seat could also hear him. "Adennum is a village. I don't think we need worry too much with it. Near it is an ancient site of worship, the Adennum Complex. It has a great hill, circle stones, standing stones, radiating lines and paths; it covers a lot of ground. It's sacred to the goddess Sull, Lady of the Dark World, Bringer of Death and Knowledge, and it's very old."
Gaby tried futilely to keep the wind from whipping her hair into a nightmarish tangle. "You think Duncan Blackletter will be at the complex."
"Yes. The village is just a village. The complex is a place of power."
"What does he want there?"
"We'll find out. We'll look at the site. If he hasn't arrived yet, we'll set up for him. A couple of us will go on to Beldon, the capital, and see whether we can find out anything about Caster Roundcap or the Valkyries.
"But if they're here now . . . we move against them." He looked back at the tracer. "I get a signal. There are men of the grim world within a few destads."
The village of Adennum was still at this hour of the night. Harris saw only glimpses of the houses as they roared along the village's winding streets, but he marveled at the strange architecture. The homes looked like small, round hills built of irregular stone. No two were alike in size or contours, but all doors opened to the east. Soft light emerged through the second-story shuttered windows. Harris thought that someone had erected tall, thin white columns all over the village, but realized he was looking at enormous beeches lining the roadways. Then the car was past the town and into the forest again.
After another mile, the trees fell away to the left and the travelers could look out over a large plain. Harris could see the silhouettes of standing stones, lone sentinels set up at intervals in a straight line. He saw small circles of stones laid into the earth.
Doc kept his attention on the tracer. "Not here," he said. "But getting closer."
The field of stones went on for hundreds of yards, then the trees encroached again and hid them from sight.
A few minutes more, then Alastair shouted, "Someone is conjuring nearby. I can see trails of overflow power."
"The great hill, probably. It's the correct direction." Doc leaned forward to tap Jean-Pierre's shoulder. He pointed to a turnoff marked by a standing stone. "Go past. The approach may be guarded."
Jean-Pierre passed the turnoff, but a few hundred feet further found a spot where he could pull off the road behind a screen of trees.
Doc said, "Noriko, you're vanguard."
She nodded. From the boot of the car she removed her scabbarded sword. She slung it over her shoulder by its cord, exchanged a quick look with Jean-Pierre, and loped off into the trees.
Doc gathered the rest and followed at a slower pace. Harris watched with interest as they fell without discussion into formation to pass through the trees: Doc was first and center, Alastair and Jean-Pierre yards out to either side. Joseph solemnly walked some distance back from Doc; Gaby and Harris trailed him. Gaby had her rifle slung by its strap. She kept her attention on the surrounding woods.
Jean-Pierre was first to notice a white scar cut into an oak branch off to his left. "Noriko's mark." He went to look at it, then waved the others over.
Harris took a quick look at the man slumped at the base of the tree. He was short, muscular, not bad looking. His gray suit was streaked with dirt and leaves. His face was familiar. "This is the guy who shot at me when I was driving," Harris said.
Jean-Pierre looked unhappy. "Blackletter probably has a lot of men here if he can spread them around guarding the approach."
Ahead they saw lights through the trees—stationary lights, very bright, very high—and became even more cautious, creeping along with teeth-grinding slowness. Soon enough the trees thinned and gave way to an open field. Jean-Pierre and the others crouched low and moved carefully forward from tree to tree.
Ahead of them was a treeless hill; it was a rounded cone, perfect and artificial. Wooden poles, more than a dozen, rose from the lower crest of the summit. At the top of each was a spotlight shining down on the hilltop.
There was a great deal of equipment set up on the summit. Harris saw dozens of wooden cabinets the width of a man and twice as tall. Each one was wired with flickering lights, green and red, that put him in mind of Christmas trees. More wooden cabinets were laid lengthwise across the tops of the upright ones. He could see silhouettes moving around in the center of the arrangement, but they were just silhouettes to him. There was a steady motor noise from the top of the hill.
The arrangement reminded Harris of something. It took him a moment to remember what.
Stonehenge. The cabinets were set up like a wooden Stonehenge, each one representing a monolithic stone. On this model, none of the stones was missing; even the massive lintel stones were represented.
Long yards of bare, hard ground separated the line of trees from the lower slope of the hill and the four lorries parked there.
Doc squatted and studied the situation. "Where's Noriko?"
Jean-Pierre nodded toward the trucks. "There first. Since there's been no noise, she'll either have eliminated the guards . . . or found that there are none. Now she'll be circling around to deal with as many perimeter guards as she may."
"That's the right idea. Very well. Priorities." Doc counted them off on his fingers. "One. Evaluate the situation. If it's just too much for us, retreat; we'll follow them. Two. Retrieve Caster Roundcap and any other prisoners. Three. Stop whatever they're doing. Four. Capture—or kill, if we must—Duncan, the Changeling, Angus Powrie. Any questions?"
There were none.
Doc looked them over. "Joseph, I hate to say it, but you move . . . "
"Like a dying steer in a glassworks," Joseph said.
"You've said it a little more pointedly than I would have. Get to the trucks. Take three of them out of commission and wait there." He turned to Gaby and regret crossed his face. "I must ask this. If worst comes to worst, will you kill to save me? Or Jean-Pierre, or any of us?"
Harris saw pain cross her face. She looked not at Doc but at him, Harris, for a long moment. "Yes."
"Go with Joseph. When trouble starts, the men in the woods will head back to the hill and the trucks. You have to support us and keep them off you. If you have to retreat, take the truck Joseph has spared."
She nodded.
"Alastair, Jean-Pierre, Harris and I will spread out around the hill and ascend. Gods grace us. Let's move out." He rose and immediately glided off clockwise around the hill.
For a moment, Harris felt a thrill of accomplishment. Doc had counted him in without asking. Maybe he had no more proving to do.
On the other hand, he'd just been included in something that would probably get him killed.
Harris, creeping counter-clockwise around the hill, kept Gaby and Joseph in sight as they moved across open ground toward the trucks. The two of them were mostly concealed by shadows; he had little difficulty picking out their motion, but then he'd been watching them since they left him. Maybe Blackletter's men, occupied by other things, would miss them.
They reached the four trucks and disappeared among them. Still no noise from the top of the hill. Harris felt the coil of tension around his chest let go. He picked up his pace.
Alastair would be some yards behind him; ahead, nothing but forest verge and Blackletter's guards. He kept his revolver pointed high.
It took him long, tense minutes to pass to the other side of the hill. In spite of the cold air, he sweated his shirt and jacket through. But he encountered no one and decided that he'd gone far enough. He stared up the hill; the Cabinet-henge at the top of the hill looked the same from this side as the other.
How to climb—the gun in hand or in his jacket pocket? He decided on the latter approach. Even as regular and gentle a hill as that was, he felt certain he'd need both hands to climb it in the dark.
He took the lowest portion of the hill on two feet. But the first time his foot slipped beneath him, he deliberately went flat, quiet as he could manage, and began negotiating a deal with God—payable only if the men at the top of the hill hadn't heard him.
Doc lay prone and wondered how he might cross the last fifteen paces to the henge of cabinets . . . when Blackletter's men made it easy for him.
The green and red lights on the cabinets and the spots atop the poles flared into incandescence for a moment, then went black.
A column of swirling light shot skyward from the center of the wooden circle and the ground rumbled.
Doc felt a voice in the rumble. He knew it was the goddess of this place. He knew she felt pain. Then both the light and the noise faded.
Doc heard laughter, cheers, applause from the men inside the circle. But he took advantage of the sudden darkness, moving forward spiderlike to the outer ring of wooden blocks. He drew his automatic.
He edged around the cabinet and peered into the center of the arrangement. The overhead lights were out and there was no moon, but some of the men were carrying electrical torches.
Twenty men, he estimated. At the center of the layout was a wooden altar; smoke still rose from it, but all Doc smelled was burned wood. Doc saw a pile of ten large metal drums and, near them, a large piece of machinery Doc took to be a generator; two men were pulling at its starter and cursing.
He closed his right eye and looked with his good one.
The whole area blazed with the green-yellow light of a recent devisement. He was surprised by its intensity. And inconvenienced; it would be difficult to pick out any lesser glows in that wash of light. He opened his other eye and the glow faded.
As he waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, it happened.
Jean-Pierre's voice: "Angus Powrie!"
Gunshots, four in quick succession.
Men shouted. Some dropped to the ground. Others ran blindly.
Doc almost cursed. On the hilltop, his friends' few guns faced their twenty. This was not going to be good.
More gunshots. Doc heard an autogun open up. Maybe it was Alastair's. Regardless, he had to do something before Duncan's men realized just what an advantage they had.
He aimed at the pile of metal drums and fired three quick shots, then ducked back behind his cabinet.
More shouting: "This side, too! They're all around us!"
Another autogun began chattering. Doc felt blows as his cabinet was hammered.
He spun in place, dragging a toe, making the crudest possible circle to stand within. He concentrated and made the sound of gunfire fade away.
"Great Smith," he said. "I will give you lives in combat." The ancient, wicked promise made him quail inside, but he had nothing else to sacrifice. "Give me a spark from your anvil. Give me a wind from your bellows. Give me a blow from your hammer. I have faithfully served the gods. I will keep faith with you!"
He focused on the promise, imagined it as a living thing, a demon that must be stroked and fed, and felt his power grow within him.
More blows against his back. Shouting, dim and distant; he tried to keep it at bay.
A raging, roaring pride swelled inside him. It snapped him upright, stretched him to the limits of his limbs. He heard his own roar mingle with the shouts of his enemies. The pride within him longed to see those men smashed flat as by the broad head of a hammer, their bones crushed, their blood soaking the earth.
He stepped around the cabinet and flung the power he felt in his hand.
Fire leaped from his palm. It was no larger than his fist, but it unerringly flew to the liquid leaking from the drums he'd fired upon.
The pool of fuel caught fire and began burning brightly. Now he heard the cries of the men, loud and close in his ears, and he exulted in their fear. There was more gunfire but he felt no pain.
He made a sweeping gesture, a circle in the air, and wind tore across the hilltop, rocking the cabinets. The fire flamed up into incandescence under the pile of drums.
The blow. He balled his hand into a fist and struck his left palm with it—and felt the last of the power leap from him.