The Long War

Sally gritted her teeth. ‘Is this really the time for an archaeology lesson, Valienté? Just listen . . .’ She spoke very rapidly, and he realized she was hoping the beagles, and the kobold, wouldn’t be able to follow fully. ‘The caches the kobold raided before are all exhausted. Locked up. To get at fresh ones he needs another key.’

Joshua’s mind, unusually flexible for once – maybe it was the goad of the lingering pain – made the connection. ‘The key is the ring we found in the cave of bones. The ring I kept, the ring you took from the airship—’

‘The ring I now have secreted on my person,’ Sally murmured. ‘But they don’t know I have it.’

‘I’m not surprised. And the ring the Granddaughter is wearing—’

‘Opened a weapons cache that’s now exhausted.’

‘He needs a new key. He, or his buddies, must have combed Rectangles for the keys. How come he didn’t find the one we did?’

‘On the finger of a long-dead corpse? Some taboo, maybe. Or instinct. He’s not human, Joshua. He’s not going to seek stuff out the way a human would.’

‘OK. What now?’

‘So here’s the deal we made. The beagles can’t step, right? So we go over to Rectangles – that is me, Jansson, the kobold. He shows us where the cache is, we open it with the ring, we come back with more ray guns, nicely charged up. That was the plan. But I’ve been playing for time, Joshua. For a month now. Time before I had to give away our only advantage. Time before I had to hand over high-energy weapons to these sapients we’ve only just met. I just hoped something would turn up, that we’d find some other way out. You were a wild card, Joshua. Once you got here – if you got here at all – I hoped I could use you to force a bluff, somehow. Get out of here, get to the trolls. Instead of which—’

‘Here I am with a crossbow stitched to my back. Sorry to let you down.’

‘Don’t apologize,’ Sally said without a hint of irony. ‘Not your fault. Once again I didn’t guess the non-human motivation right.’ She sighed. ‘Look. While you were out we talked, came up with a deal. I think we’ll have to hand over the damn weapons. If they exist, if we can bring them back. The deal is that if we do make it back with the weapons, you get to speak to the trolls. But you’ve also become a kind of hostage, to make sure we won’t just step away out of here.’

‘Maybe you should do just that. Step away. Take Jansson, Bill with you—’

She sighed, irritated. ‘You’ve always been an idiot, Valienté. If I left you here I wouldn’t care, but Helen would kill me. Besides, it wouldn’t do any good in the long run. We have to handle this situation with the trolls here somehow. And resolve humanity’s relationship with the beagles. We come back, and then, when everybody’s got what they want—’

Joshua, his back twinging every time he moved, turned to the Granddaughter. ‘Yes, what then, uh, Granddaughter Petra? Are we free to go?’

She smiled. Her lips pulled back over gleaming teeth. It was an almost human expression, if a chilling one. ‘You will still be alivve. And perhaps you will live on, if you display honour-rhh . . .’

Joshua tried to make sense of that.

Bill spoke up. ‘Joshua. Remember, they’re not human. “Honour” meant something different to that gobshite kobold, didn’t it? I wonder what “honour” means to a sentient species descended from pack-hunting carnivores.’

‘I have a feeling I’m going to find out,’ Joshua said with dread. ‘First things first.’ He stood carefully, but his back flared with pain and he staggered, until Sally grabbed his arms. ‘Where are the trolls?’

65

SO, FULFILLING THEIR part of the deal, Jansson, Sally and the kobold stepped back to the Rectangles world.

Despite a strong dose of anti-nausea pills, the steps still felt like the usual punches in the gut to Jansson. When she got at last to the Rectangles, she folded over, groaning.

Sally stood over her, rubbing her back. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Never gets any easier. Not since the very first time I stepped.’

‘On Step Day. I know. Out of my father’s living room, with a Stepper he made, and left behind.’

Jansson, doubled over, thumped the ground, frustrated. ‘It’s not just the stepping. This damn illness, it gets in the way of doing stuff. You know?’

‘I can imagine.’

The others waited the few minutes it took her to recover enough to stand straight. Sally was grave, patient. The kobold stood alongside her, restless, his own injuries obviously paining him. But he oddly aped Sally’s stance, and he cocked his head as if in mock-sympathy, his gaze flickering from one face to the other, as if seeking approval. Jansson turned away from him, repelled.

She managed to stand up and look around. There was the airship hovering overhead, Joshua’s Shillelagh, a massive, competent-looking, reassuring presence. Jansson took a deep breath. This world smelled of dryness, of baked, rusty stone. But it didn’t smell of dog, and that was a huge relief.