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close up, he could easily tell they were not
Doimari. Their Oltec was all new and shiny, and they didn't wear it as though
they were used to it. Two of them were wearing hand grenades hung by the
rings. Blade quickly corrected that.
"The Lords of the Law must watch over fools, or both of you would be dead by
now," he said sharply.
He showed them the correct way of handling grenades, then asked, "Why are you
all armed with Oltec?
Has there been a new find? Or did Peython give everything there was to the
guards on the border?"
"Oh, Peython gave first choice to us of the border, sure enough," said the
leader. "But no one in Kaldak is short of Oltec now. When Bairam and Saorm
came back from Gilmarg, they turned out every man and woman as you urged. We
tore the city apart almost stone by stone. There is Oltec now for many more
things than killing Doimari, although we will have to do that-"
Laughter interrupted the man and made Blade turn around. Kareena was standing
in the Hovercraft's hatch, laughing wildly. For a moment Blade was frightened,
thinking she'd gone into hysterics. Then he realized that she was just amused.
He had a nasty feeling he knew what was making her laugh.
"All right, Kareena," he said when she'd quieted down. "What's the joke?"
"I'm sorry, Blade. But when he was telling you they'd found all the Oltec
themselves, you looked like this." She opened her mouth in an idiotic gape
with her tongue sticking out and rolled her eyes up in her head.
"Did I really-?" Blade began to ask the men around him, then shook his head.
"No, don't tell me."
It was embarrassing to work hard at the risk of your life for weeks on end,
then come home and find somebody else had done most of the same job while you
were away. But it was also good news. The
Kaldakans' work would save months in arming and equipping their army with
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Oltec, and might very well save their city.
Also, if Kareena could laugh this way after learning that her ordeal might
have been unnecessary, she was on her way to being healed. Every war has its
inevitable victims, but it was good to think Kareena wouldn't be a victim of
this one.
It was normally five days' travel from where Blade met the patrol to Kaldak.
In the Hovercraft Blade
covered the distance in less than five hours. They arrived in plenty of time
for Peython to put on a truly magnificent party that evening, celebrating his
daughter's safe return and Blade's discovery of Doimar's secrets.
Blade learned that in his absence, the Lawmakers had already met to begin a
reappraisal of the existing
Law. So many changes had occurred in Kaldak after the discovery of the hoards
of Oltec that the Law had to be carefully rewritten. What was more, it was
decided that Blade was a great hero and that there would be no need for a
meeting of the Gathering to pass judgment on him.
Blade also had time to learn exactly what else the Kaldakans did in his
absence. It was really quite a lot, even if most of it was done by trial and
error. The only person who really seemed to have known what he was doing was
the merchant Saorm.
"Did you know more about the cellars of Kaldak?" said Blade. "Or did being the
father of Bairam's future bride inspire you again?"
"A family can always use more honor fairly gained," said Saorm. He grinned.
"As for the other question-does it matter now?"
It was on the tip of Blade's tongue to tell Saorm that if he'd spoken out
earlier and admitted to his knowledge of Kaldak's store of Oltec, he might
have saved his chief's daughter a gruesome ordeal. He decided to hold his
peace. No one in Kaldak except her father and Bairam knew the details of
Kareena's captivity, and Blade wanted to keep it that way. Also, Saorm had
done his best according to his own standards. That "best" had not been really
too bad, either in Gilmarg or here in Kaldak.
The Kaldakans found many things they knew how to use, and more things they
thought they knew how to use, such as the hand grenades. There'd been several
fatal accidents, and plenty of croakers to proclaim that this was what came of
meddling with the Law. When Blade studied what the Kaldakans were doing with
machinery and weapons they barely understood, he was surprised they hadn't
wiped out a good part of their city.
They'd even discovered the waldoes and their command center. Fortunately
Peython and Sidas prevented any dangerous experiments here. "Other Oltec
weapons kill only those close to them if they go wrong," said Sidas. "These
steel men could walk through Kaldak, killing everyone they found. They could
do us more harm than the Doimari!"
At the party Blade drank a toast to Peython, Sidas, and their common sense. In
fact he drank quite a number of toasts, but still managed to get to bed early.
There was more work facing him than he liked to think about. He suspected that
he'd be up at dawn tomorrow, and for many days after that.
Blade was right.
Part of his work was minor details, like teaching the Kaldakans not to hang
grenades by their rings.
Most of this detail he quickly delegated to Bairam, Sidas, or Kareena. With
the help of a cane Kareena got around well enough, and keeping busy kept her
mind off her memories of Doimar.
Another part of Blade's work was training Kaldak's infantry. They would need
new tactics, now that they were heavily equipped with Oltec themselves and
facing an enemy even better equipped. They had to be taught how to concentrate
the fire of their own rifles, scatter to avoid the Doimaran mortars, and take
cover to avoid the lasers of the waldoes. With Peython's help Blade picked
fifty of the brightest leaders of the Kaldakan infantry and put them through a
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weeklong crash course in tactics. During that
week Blade got hardly any sleep at all.
The results he got would still have made a Home Dimension company commander
have a stroke. The
Kaldakans' casualties were going to be appalling. However, they were tough,
enthusiastic, and knew they were going to be fighting for their lives and the
future of their city. They might just be able to take those casualties and go
on fighting. Blade hoped so. There wasn't much else he could hope to do with
the
Kaldakan infantry in the time available.
Blade had better luck with the waldoes. The first thing he did was find out
how many of Kaldak's waldoes and control chairs were still working. That meant
another week of getting to bed at midnight and getting up at dawn. Fortunately
he was able to teach a few Kaldakans how to make the tests, although in a
"monkey see, monkey do" fashion. With their help he soon knew there were about
a hundred working waldoes and at least fifty control chairs which might last
out a battle.
Using the waldoes was not hard to learn. It wasn't so easy that Blade could
hope to teach it to fifty
Kaldakans in the few weeks or at most months he had left. Even if the Doimari
didn't attack by then, he himself would probably be snatched back to Home
Dimension.
Not for the first time, Blade wished he had some control over the time of his
return to Home Dimension.
Lord Leighton would howl at the idea, since he didn't like the idea of guinea
pigs with a will of their own.
Even J might have doubts, fearing Blade would run unnecessary risks to finish
some minor task.
Blade wouldn't admit either point. He was a man, not a guinea pig, and he
trusted his own judgment of how many risks he should run. He absolutely did [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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