- Chapter 5 -

Previously...

The journey to Jaglundar's Rock was on the whole uneventful. Captain Lemmesk's navigator was a master of his art, detecting an especially strong space-current that trimmed nearly two days off the voyage, but apart from that, there was nothing to distract the joint Murgand-Reclamationist assault force from readying for battle.

Strides-Tall was not one for weapons, and only usually carried a knife purely for cutting, but she was happy to take part in the Murgand training exercises. She proved to be an infuriating quarry for the Murgands, her astonishing gymnastic agility enabling her to dodge and dance out of reach of hand or weapon with ease. Often, she left the giants exhausted, whilst barely breaking a sweat herself.

"I thought you'd be no use, being all skin and bone", panted Broxka after one particularly intense sparring session. "Go ahead - prove me wrong…"

"I prefer to prove myself with what I do for real, rather than in practice", said the elven adventuress. "Practice does me little good if my adversary turns out to be something other than a Murgand."

"Speed, wit - and a smart head on her shoulders", said another warrior. "Give her a beard, and a bit more muscle, and she'd be perfect."

Broxka straightened up right away, almost standing to attention, on hearing that voice. "Strides-Tall, this is Brossganth Cinderbeard", she announced, directing the elf's attention to a rather youthful Murgand with a reddish tinge to his thick, dark facial hair. "Heir to the Clan-Seat of Cinderbeard. Lord, you honour us…"

"Rubbish", grunted Brossganth. "Spare me the bowed heads and fancy words! I'm here as a fellow warrior, not as a Clan figure-head."

Strides-Tall had heard that someone of importance was on the ship, but they had not crossed paths before. The elf had been spending a lot of time consulting Tollen's vast reservoir of knowledge concerning the Rock and its internal layout, and the Cinderbeard heir had apparently been doing most of his training in private at the same time. He's uneasy about his position, the adventuress said to herself. He's here to fight, all right - it's something he has to do, and for himself rather than his Clan.

"Tollen has spoken to me about you, milady", said Brossganth, nodding respectfully in the elf's direction. "He is impressed by your desire to learn about our people, and our skills."

"I would say it was purely a professional interest, but I have found your history fascinating", Strides-Tall replied, bowing in return. "As a stranger to The Realm, just about everything I hear is new, and intriguing."

"Master Bresquet says you are an excellent scout, and finder of lost things", Brossganth continued. "Can you find us our lost honour?"

"I certainly hope so", the elf answered. "The way is certainly clearer now, thanks to Master Tollen's memories, and the maps he has drawn up for me. Winning back that honour will, I feel, be purely up to you and your warriors. I will endeavour to determine the nature of the invasion, and bring back word of how best to confront it, and where."

"Yes", said the young Cinderbeard heir thoughtfully - and with some uncertainty. "That which was taken from Murgand must be won back by Murgand. Surprise lost us the Rock in the beginning…and now surprise will help us reclaim it."

There was no training up on deck on the morning of the Brilliant Future's arrival at Jaglundar's Rock, but Strides-Tall still went up to watch, and exercise by climbing the pillars supporting the ring to which the steering sails and their masts were attached. From her vantage point above the deck, she could see the Reclamationist crewmen bring something up from the cargo hold and set to work upon it. It looked, as far as the elf was concerned, like a giant metal bee, complete with segmented legs but with two cylindrical pods in place of wings.

Strides-Tall climbed down to investigate when Bresquet strode out onto the deck to see how things were going. The Reclamationist was clearly pleased, and his trademark grin was firmly in place when the adventuress swung down to join him.

"It's a probe-drone", he declared with delight and satisfaction. "Similar in nature to the war-engine, but lacking independent function. We have to control it from the bridge - come and watch…"

The Brilliant Future was, for the most part, very much like an old-fashioned sailing ship in design, with a curved bottom and a flat main deck, but being designed for space travel, it also had a number of distinct differences. To the rear was the egg-shaped engineering section, to which the power-gathering sails were connected, whilst the steering sails, and their supporting ring, were stationed about mid-way along the boat-shaped main hull, and the control tower, a tall shark's fin of a structure which Bresquet had come from, and now returned to with Strides-Tall, dominated the front of the vessel.

The elf had not been to the ship's nerve-centre before, and did not quite know what to expect. It seemed to be much like the bridge of a more modern ship, with panels of buttons, switches and dials liberally sprinkled across a number of free-standing instrument panels. There were few seats - one, raised above the floor on a pedestal, was constantly occupied by the Captain or his immediate subordinate - and most of these were occupied by crew-men carefully watching energy levels or other factors essential to the ship's operations.

One console in particular did not have a seat, and that was the main steering position. The surface of the steering panel was circular, and sharply inclined, allowing the steersman to move his hands across its glazed surface without having to stretch. At the moment, the star-sailor whose task it was to steer was resting his hands to either side of the glass panel, and only a faint glow could be seen, coming from the exact centre of the panel.

"We're running at low-power mode, as you requested, Mister Bresquet", reported Lemmesk. "Our preliminary scan-pulses have indicated no vessels or other objects in the area, and as yet, no-one has reacted to our presence."

"Let's hope it stays that way", said Bresquet, smoothing back some of his thick, curly, collar-length black hair. "Yibnor, is the probe-drone ready?"

Strides-Tall looked across the chamber, and saw one man, apparently dressed in a long white laboratory coat, react. He looks like the kind of person who'd be fascinated by machines, the elf thought, examining the thin, pale-faced man with wire-rimmed glasses nearly slipping off his nose. "All checks have been completed, sir", Yibnor replied in a meek and somewhat nervous-sounding voice. "We're ready to go, on your order."

"Let's not keep vengeance waiting then", said Bresquet, a gleam of anticipation in his eye. "We've got a hold full of blood-thirsty Murgands - and a board of directors back home who're desperate for that 'star-metal'…"

Talk of 'star-metal', even though the term meant nothing to the adventuress, sparked Strides-Tall's imagination, but no-one was about to offer her an explanation. Bresquet hurried over to Yibnor's console, clearly a more advanced piece of technology than the rest of the ship's instruments, and the eyes of both men lit up as a small rectangular screen flickered into life, revealing a black-and-white image of the deck of the ship, with crew-men moving away.

"The visual link is operational", reported Yibnor, tapping a few buttons on what looked to be a keyboard not unlike that of a typewriter. "The other data-feeds are coming on-line as well. Everything looks good."

Bresquet cracked his knuckles - a sound that made Strides-Tall wince - and ran the tip of his tongue along his upper lip. "All right", he said, almost in a whisper, "let's take a look at Jaglundar's Rock…"

Yibnor flipped open a panel to the right of the keyboard, and a joystick with a moulded plastic grip popped up. At the same time, another panel to the left slid open with a hiss, revealing an opaque plastic ball, recessed into the metal of the console. More technology from before The Ancient Rage, thought the elf as she moved closer, and Bresquet shifted to one side to let her in. Technology even more advanced than anything from back home. The same could be said of this ship, now that I think of it - we only just started sending men into space when I left…

The Reclamationist in the lab coat extended his left hand, almost subconsciously, and brought it to rest on the sphere. He rolled it with the tips of his fingers, and the view on the little screen changed in response. "Visual control reads okay", said Yibnor. "Captain Lemmesk, tell your people to stand clear…"

"My crew know what to do, Doctor Yibnor", said the Captain, his booming voice always sounding as though he was just short of shouting.

A sharp whine cut through the air, reaching Strides-Tall's ears even through the closed door of the bridge. The deck under her booted feet shuddered, and the image on the screen changed again as Yibnor pulled back on the joystick, then centred it and twisted it to the left. On the screen, one could see the back of the control fin, then the dark vastness of space as the drone lifted off the deck and turned to face the squashed, point-down cone of rock that Jaglundar had claimed as his own thousands of years before, only for his people to lose it four hundred and eighty three years ago to an unknown and savage enemy.

"Don't worry - the drone can do a lot, but it won't put you out of a job", Bresquet whispered to the elf. "We'll do a surface survey, look for any external traces of our quarry, then ensure the main harbour is safe before sending anyone ashore."

"Do you see me complaining?", asked the elf. "I'd much rather have you risk your toy than take chances with me."

Bresquet did not laugh, and that made the elf nervous. He's more concerned about the damned machine than he could ever be about a person, she thought. What would he be prepared to sacrifice to get what he wants? Just how valuable is this "star-metal"? Valuable enough to let people die for it...?

Strides-Tall kept her unwelcome thoughts to herself - a task in itself - and watched as the probe drone jetted across the gap between the ship and the Murgand colony, then started making low passes over its surface. To untrained eyes, the Rock was just that - a rock, with next to no outward signs of ever having been set foot on, let alone inhabited.

It would be nice if the "mighty enemy" had decided to move on years ago, thought Strides-Tall, but somehow I doubt any of us could be so lucky.

The highest-ranking Murgand on the ship, Brossganth Cinderbeard was first to set foot on Jaglundar's Rock, planting the "rocksplitter" tip of his hammer-axe in the ground at the entrance to the colony. "Jaglundar claimed this place", he said solemnly, staring purposefully into the darkness of the Hall of Greeting, "now the Clan-kin of Jaglundar return to claim it anew."

No-one who was not Murgand was allowed to disembark until the whole of the Murgand war-party were ashore and Ballank, a war-priest of the Cinderbeard Clan who had accompanied the young Heir, had performed a blessing, in time-honoured fashion. The Murgands then insisted that Bresquet's war-machine come ashore first, pounding their rocksplitters rhythmically into the earth in time with the mechanical knight's lumbering footsteps in welcome.

The Murgand force numbered seventy-seven in all, in accordance with tradition. Seven was a particularly lucky number for Murgands, and seventy-seven was therefore deemed exceptionally lucky, but as she joined the giants, flesh and metal, Strides-Tall found herself wondering if seven hundred and seventy-seven would have been a better number of warriors to bring along. No guarantee it'd be any more lucky, she thought.

"Why the war machine?", pondered Bresquet as he accompanied the adventuress to the gangplank.

"The machine is metal, born from the earth", Strides-Tall explained. "The Murgands are people of the earth, as so they feel a greater kinship with your machine than with its masters."

"You've been spending too much time with that old man", warned the Reclamationist. "You're starting to think like one of them."

The elf nodded, much to Bresquet's surprise. "That's the best way to understand this place - understand the minds that planned it, and carved it from the rock. For all our sakes, pray I've spent too much time with Tollen, rather than too little."

"I don't like the sound of that", murmured Bresquet. Strides-Tall took note of how he showed no inclination whatsoever to leave the ship and join the expedition.

The Reclamationist part of the task-force followed the elf as she strode down onto the quayside. Four squads of twelve men, in dark grey uniforms, heavily-padded breastplates and helmets with red-tinted visors, were being deployed to accompany the Murgands, and six out of each group of twelve were carrying the portable lightning guns the master of arms had demonstrated on numerous occasions during the trip. The others carried a variety of other firearms, the sort of weapons Strides-Tall knew from her home-world - bullet-firing machine-guns, large-bore shotguns, even what appeared to be shoulder-firing missile launchers.

Trust the tools of war to survive the collapse of civilisation, the elf thought, and saw to her own last-minute preparations.

Presented with the threat of a hostile occupying force, Strides-Tall was dressed in what was for her an unusually conservative, safety conscious fashion. She wore thigh-high boots as usual, in this case close-fitting boots in plain black leather with low heels, elbow-length leather gloves with fabric on the palms, and a sleeveless body-suit with pants that ended just short of the tops of the boots. On top of all this went a tightly-tailored waist-length leather jacket, with no superfluous cuffs or fasteners that might snag on nails, protruding bolts or other such obstacles.

The elf was not used to so many layers, especially layers of leather, and they would normally have impeded her movements, but Ashyra's recommendations had borne fine fruit. The leather was the softest and finest the adventuress had ever known, and had been specially treated to enhance its strength and durability.

"Still feel like I'm trussed up for the slaughter", she muttered to herself, tugging at her jacket's snug collar. Why did I say that?, she found herself wondering, shocked that her self-confidence should falter so. And why do I feel so uneasy here? Is there something about this place that's setting off my "magic sense"?

The elf could scarcely contain the shudder that ran through her. Her people, being psychic creatures, were inherently sensitive to psychic energy, and there were legends aplenty of magic gone stale, in lost, dark places…legends that never had happy endings.

 

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