Jack Vance Elder Isles Suldrun's Garden

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an uninhabited wasteland, which suited them well.
At another stream they dismounted from the stilts and sat to rest on a ledge
of rock. They drank water and ate bread and cheese from their packs.
Listening, they heard no far-off belling of the hounds, but they had come a
good distance and expected to hear nothing; probably their absence had not yet
been noticed. The three congratulated themselves that they had possibly a full
day's headstart over any pursuit.
They discarded the stilts and waded upstream in an easterly direction, and
presently entered an upland of curious aspect, where ancient pinnacles and
crags of decaying black rock rose above valleys once tilled but now deserted.
For-a space they followed an old road which led at last to the ruins of an
ancient fort.
A few miles beyond the land once again became wild and rose to a region of
rolling moors. Rejoicing in the freedom of the high skies, the three set off
into the hazy east.
They were not alone on the moor. Up from a swale a half-mile south, under four
flapping black flags, rode a troop of Ska warriors. Galloping forward, they
surrounded the fugitives.
The leader, a stern-faced baron in black armor, spared them only a single
glance and no words whatever. Ropes were attached to the iron collars; the
three Skalings were led away to the north.
Late in the day the troop met a wagon-train loaded with victual of various
sorts. At the rear marched forty men linked neck to neck by ropes. To this
column were joined Aillas, Yane and Cargus, and so, willy-nilly, forced to
follow the wagon train north. In due course they entered the kingdom of Dahaut
and arrived at
Poelitetz, that immense fortress guarding the central buttress of the Teach
tac Teach and overlooking the Plain of Shadows.
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- - - - Vance uses many footnotes in this volume
Chapter 24
Page 244
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
WHERE DAHALT BORDERED ON NORTH ULFLAN'D a scarp eighty miles long, the front
face of the Teach tac Teach, overlooked the Plain of
Shadows. At a place named Poelitetz, the river Tamsour, flowing down from the
snows of Mount Agon, cut a chasm which allowed relatively easy access from
Dahaut to the moors of North Ulfland.
Poelitetz had been fortified as long as men had made war across the Elder
Isles; whoever held Poelitetz controlled the peace of
Far Dahaut. The Ska, upon seizing Poelitetz, began an enormous work, to guard
the fortress from the west as well as the east, so that it might be totally
impregnable. They had closed the defile with masonry walls thirty feet thick,
leaving a passage twelve feet wide and ten feet high, controlled by three iron
gates, one behind the other. Fortress and scarp showed a single impervious
face to the Plain of Shadows.
The better to reconnoiter the Plain of Shadows, the Ska had started to drive a
tunnel out under the plain toward a hillock overgrown with scrub oak at a
distance of a quarter-mile from the base of the scarp. The tunnel was a
project executed with the utmost secrecy, concealed from all but a few Ska of
high rank and those who dug the tunnel, Skalings of Category Six:
Intractables.
Upon arrival at Poelitetz, Aillas, Yane and Cargus were subjected to a
perfunctory inquisition. Then, instead of the maiming or mutilation which they
had expected, they were taken to a special barracks, where a company of forty
Skalings were held in isolation: the tunnel gang. They worked
ten-and-a-half-hour shifts, with three half-hour rest periods. In the barracks
they were guarded by an elite platoon of Ska soldiers and allowed contact with
no other persons of Poelitetz. All realized that they worked as components of
a death-squad. Upon completion of the tunnel they would be killed.
With death clear and large before them, none of the Skalings worked in haste:
a situation which the Ska found easier to accept than to alter. So long as
reasonable progress was made, the work was allowed to go its own pace. The
routine each day was [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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