"Holy~!", exclaims Hank.
Never having seen a beam-weapon in action, he jerks a half-step back, slipping a little on the deposits lining the tunnel. As softly as possible, he puts Kylar down in the cleanest spot he can find. At the same time, Duplar dives for cover, such as there is, and draws his lighting wand.
Gritting his teeth, Dharak darts forward, pistol drawn. "Watch our backs!" he hisses at Duplar. He crouches as he reaches the opening, and spots at least two figures, probably Kandar, roughly in the direction the shots came from.
He manages to haul Jal back into the tunnel, with Ryzar covering him. There are no further shots.
Dharak hands the two captured weapons to Hank and Roy. Roy takes a look at the device in his hands; it's roughly the same size and shape as a handgun, although the grip and trigger feel strange. Hank takes his with a grim nod, and glances at Roy.
'I hope he knows his way around these things. *I* sure don't!', he thinks to himself.
Gaining Dharak's attention for a moment, Hank asks, so fast the words rush out unorganized: "If there's cover, can we get to safety outside, quickly? I've an idea."
"Yeah, brother, that sounds like it could do the trick," Dharak assents. "We still don't know how many of them are behind us. This is no place to make a stand -- we've got to get out."
Dharak assesses Jaldaric's wound. It doesn't look good.
"Leave me", groans Jaldaric, "Save yourselves". His head slumps to the floor, and his ragged breathing stops.
After a moment's rushed conference, and a flurry of instructional gestures, all's set.
With a final look, to see that everyone's in position, Hank starts the count in hushed tones: ("Ready? one. Two! THREE!"), and blows his whistle full-blast. It's high-pitched and piercing...
In the dark, it wasn't possible to see quite how many bats there were. They fill the cave like a black cloud. Many of them head back down the tunnel the way the party had come from, but a great many head out of the tunnel into the daylight.
Behind the bats follows Dharak, Ryzar and Duplar right behind him, and Roy and Hank in the rear. The tunnel emerges into broken ground affording a reasonable amount of cover.
Dharak opens fire on one of the two figures visible. He thinks he's hit, but it's hard to tell. Simultaneously Ryzar and Duplar aim at the second figure, but both shots go wide.
Hank hasn't held a beam weapon before- he's only held a _gun_ a few times. He watches the experienced hands, but is alarmed to see all three firing quite dissimilar weapons; Dharak's is a red laser-looking thing, Duplar's looks more like an electric spark, and Ryzar's isn't a beam weapon at all, but some kind of projectile weapon firing incendiary bullets. When he squeezes the strange trigger a red beam, which makes some rocks explode.
One gunman returns fire. The cloud of bats fulfills it's purpose, and the shot goes wide, missing everyone. Roy catches sight of the gunman and fires. There's a scream, and the figure drops.
There's no more firing.
Roy gives a shiver, realizing that he may have just killed someone. Or something... something that was trying to kill him.
When the firing stops, Hank looks around him, almost wildly- taking in the terrain, looking at the others in the party, searching the landscape for more attackers. For an instant, a proud grin plays across his face ("It worked! It really worked!")...
He sees a landscape of rolling hills, covered with scrubby bushes and trees. By the lack of vegetation it looks fairly arid, and the lack of leaves on many of the trees suggests late winter or early spring.
The only man-made structure visible is a line of towers marching away across the landscape. They're about a hundred feet apart, and the tallest is perhaps a hundred and fifty feet high. Hank notices the tops are roughly level with each other, and if it were not for one or two gaps, they're equally spaced. An imaginary line joining the tops of the towers would hit the ground at roughly the point at which Hank is standing, and would continue down the tunnel from which they'd just emerged.
Then the adrenal rush fades, and Hank begins to shake. Not in fear, but in a sudden release of nerves, like an extended shiver. For a moment, he looks queasy, but he gets a hold of himself. Pulling himself together, he takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly.
"Ryzar, lets make sure they're down for good," Dharak stage-whispers. "We'll move toward where we saw the shots, covering each other as we go. Duplar, watch our backs. Reylorna, you help our two visitors with the wounded and the prisoners."
"Sounds like an excellent plan", Ryzar answers back in a low voice.
"Ready... go." Dharak goes first, from one rock to another, in the direction of their hopefully vanquished ambushers. He then braces his weapon and waits for Ryzar to "leapfrog" his position.
At his signal the young Borderer dashes forward, running in a crouch and a zig-zag pattern, until he comes to a halt just behind a large square rock which may well not be a natural formation. There, Ryzar takes a bead on the enemy position with his dartgun, then signals Dharak to move forward.
Ryzar reaches the point from which the shots came, to find three bodies lying motionless sprawled across the rocks. All three appear to be kandar.
Now the firing has stopped and Hank has calmed down a but, he helps gather the others, especially the wounded, and sees if there's anything he can do for Jal. Unfortunately there's nothing he can do. Jal is dead.
Holstering his dartgun, Ryzar cautiously checks each figure to see if they are still breathing, have a pulse, or any other indication of continued life. The first one he examines, a rough-looking male, is clearly dead from a wound where the heart would be if he were of Ryzar's own race. The second man is also dead from a head wound. The third man still has a weak pulse.
Ryzar looks back towards everyone else.
"My Lady! Master Duplar!" Ryzar calls out to Reylorna and Duplar, "You may want to come look at these!"
"What have you found Ryzar?", asks Duplar
This was never going to be a safe trip, Duplar thinks to himself, but the casualty levels are a bit high for a normal guild mission...
"Our attackers were Kandar." Ryzar replies, continuing to check over the fallen three, "I thought you might like to look them over for yourselves".
"What???", says Duplar, "You are so right!". He scurries across to Ryzar.
The two of the three dead or dying kandar are dressed in some kind of uniform, much like the two prisoners, although the light armour they were wearing clearly wasn't enough to save them from their own weaponry used against them. The boots are not dissimilar to Kylar's, though their dark brown uniforms don't match what Ryzar has seen of the Legion. There's no insignia of any kind indicating unit or rank.
The third, dead from a head shot, is dressed in vaguely civilian garb of fairly high quality. Duplar guesses that he's probably of a high caste. It's harder to tell from the other two; they have the appearance of mercenaries.
Hank sighs. Looking to Reylorna, he shakes his head, resignedly. "I'm sorry... we're too late."
He closes Jal's eyes, and tries to leave him in a dignified position. If there are any special rites for the dead to be performed, Hank doesn't know them.
With this done, he goes to pick up Kylar, gently, "He's not human," Hank thinks",but until better help's around, he's my responsibility...".
Reylorna moves from cover to assist the wounded. "It seems we spend more time trying to clean up these attacks than just trying to live," she mutters under her breath. Her once white apprentice robes will seriously need to be cleaned after this journey.
"Ma'am? I'm trained in emergency medicine- but until today, I've never seen anyone like this.", Hank says, indicating Kylar, "I can bandage the wounds, but the difference in biology might be too great for much else. Are any of you medics?".
Duplar looks up at Hank. If the stranger from elsewhere is offering medical aid he considers this as a good thing, indicating friend rather than foe...
"I'm no expert", he says, "but the same basic principles must apply because the few first aid dressings I have work equally well on Human and Kandar. I'd be careful with any potions though. There are a few differences there - mainly in dosage I think".
"Thank you", says Hank. Without another word, he sets to work. He removes his pack, puts the beam-weapon down, very carefully, and unhooks his medical pack.
"Can you hear me", Hank says. The others seemed okay with English, so it seems as good a way to check responsiveness as any.
Kylar opens his eyes, and nods.
"My name's Hank Jenkins- I'm here to help. Your friends are nearby. Please try to stay calm".
Kylar says something in a language Hank doesn't understand, then switches to something understandable. "Hurts. What happened?".
"A fight", Hank replies, "I didn't see it".
"I remember", Kylar replies, "The machines, the beastmen. They were trying to open a mirror".
Satisfied that Kylar is lucid, Hank explains what he's doing, step-by-step, so as not to worry him.
Before touching the wound, Hank uses hand-sanitizer on himself, and puts on latex gloves from his kit. No use making things worse...
Hank checks the level of bleeding through the bandage. Some blood is seeping though the bandage, but not a great deal. There's not great bloodstain on the floor where he's lying. Of course, he has no idea how much blood loss is dangerous for kandar.
There's a poultice under the bandage. It smells of some kind of herb, although Hank doesn't recognise it.
"What's this?", he asks Duplar, since his teaching tells him not to undo previous work.
"I'm not sure", Duplar replies, "Ryzar applied it".
"Do you need a hand?", Roy asks Hank, "I took a first aid course a couple of years ago".
Without losing focus on his work, Hank thanks Roy, and asks him to assist in the tricky "moving" parts of the job.
Carefully, Hank removes the dressing, and cleans the shoulder wound with sponges and alcohol swabs. It's a nasty wound, but probably not fatal provided it doesn't get infected. The bleeding has almost stopped now. Kylar winces with pain more than once, but following Duplar's advice, Hank shies away from using the painkillers and 'patch' anaesthetics in his kit until he gets better information.
Given that the 'native' medic knows Kylar's species, and Hank just teleported over about an hour ago, it's reasonable for Hank to assume that the previous work is good. All the time he explains what he's trying to do and tell how he plans to do it. He shows his equipment carefully so as to be clear about its function.
He rebinds Kylar's wounds, using sterile bandages from his pack to replace the rather grubby cloth that was there before. He also offers Kylar some clean water from his supply; Kylar is able to take a few gulps.
Kylar still finds it painful to move, so with Roy's help Hank improvises a sort of "hammock-stretcher" from the tarp in his pack that he usually used for a tent.
= = = = =
Satisfied that Hank knows what he's doing, Duplar joins Ryzar and Dharak with the three fallen enemies.
"Master Duplar," Ryzar says, pointing at the fancy-dressed kandar with the head wound, "This one has the appearance of being High-Born -- but you could probably tell of that better than me. These other two, they dress alike, and were this strange light armour -- is this a uniform that you are familiar with? Or, might they possibly be personal armsmen to the High-Born one?".
"Say!" Ryzar perks up with a sudden thought, "Back in my home of Estcarp, there was a tradition among many of the land's Lords to carry upon themselves a ring engraved with their family crest; a Signet Ring it is called. Do your Kandar Nobles follow any such traditions? If this High-Born carries such, it could aid us in determining where, and how far, this Kolder plot reaches".
Ryzar examines the hands of the three fallen enemies. No rings on any of their fingers.
"Oh, and this one is still alive. For the moment." Ryzar adds with casual unconcern, pointing at one of the uniformed Kandar, "Do you wish me to tend his wound, My Lady, or just leave him to his fate?" Ryzar asks Reylorna.
"I think that we should do what we can to keep him alive. Death is necessary for survival, not for everyone." Her words may sound strange coming from a human Academy of the Mind apprentice in a Kandar dominated society, but it rings true none the less.
"He might even be willing to answer questions," she offers hopefully, even though she doubts the last statement herself.
"Save him if you can Ryzar, but no need to bring him round", Duplar says. "The knowledge of an unconscious mind is mine".
"As you wish, My Lady." Ryzar says with a small bow towards Reylorna, just before he begins removing his backpack.
"I shall do what I can quickly -- try and get him well enough to move." the young Borderer says, as he kneels next to the injured Kandar bodyguard, "After the disturbance we just made in those tunnels, I'm sure that the Kolder will be sending those -- what were they called, again? Vordrals? -- I'm sure that those Vordrals will be after us soon."
Ryzar removes his leather gauntlets, then lays out a supply of bandages and small, neatly wrapped bundles of healing poultices. He works with quick efficiency at cleaning the Kandar's wound, then placing a poultice over the wound, and bandaging it down tightly.
"Master Duplar, have you yet searched the body of the Kandar Noble, there, for any identification or papers?" Ryzar asks with a momentary nod in the direction of the dead man.
"Any evidence from that body I can glean later, but the information in your patient's mind is only open to me while he's unconscious", Duplar replies, "I don't want to be in another mind as it dies, but if you think he will live long enough, I'll see what he knows..."
Ryzar seems to have stabilised the prisoner's condition, so Duplar sends a mental probe into the man's mind. He's actually now hovering on the brink of consciousness. Duplar is dimly aware of the burning pain of the wound, but his mental link isn't deep enough to feel the full force of it. He gets a lot of random scattered thoughts.
…mustn't let them escape… …if they get back we're doomed… …uluum is dead… …can they launch the shuttle…
Meanwhile, still wary of more ambushers, Dharak touches the gear of the three dead kandar, extending his awareness for psychic clues as to their origin, starting with the strange beam weapons they carried. He's struck by a psychic equivalent of vertigo; a twisting in space and time. He's not at all sure what that's supposed to mean.
"What do you think, brother," he addresses Ryzar, "do we have time to bury our dead, or do we need to get a move on?" His face is steeled in concentration, but there is a wounded look behind his eyes.
"A little more of the pain relief would be good for both he and I, if you can do so safely, Ryzar", says Duplar, as he attempts to chase the thoughts in the wounded captive's mind, sending his mental probe deeper in an attempt to gain some images or information connected to his surface thoughts.
He sees random images; a replay of the recent firefight from the perspective of the enemy, an image of equipment and machinery being hastily packed away, of kandar legions marching with flamelances and energy artillery. And a vast metal bird rising into the sky.
Meanwhile Hank asks the only remaining Kalyrian still by the tunnel entrance, the gravely wounded Kylar, if it's time to go.
"W...what are the others doing, over there", Kylar asks weakly, "We need to get out of here fast. Call them over. We..we need to move".
Hank gets the impression that Kylar is a military man, used to command.
As he speaks Hank begins to pack up his gear, gingerly putting the beam weapon somewhere safe on his person and puts on his pack.
He thanks Roy for his help, and asks him to take the front end of the tarp as soon as they're ready to move,
Roy looks briefly at the Kalyrians, then nods his head to Hank.
The size of Hank's pack makes it reasonable for him to take the other end. Before picking Kylar up, Hank asks for Roy to start off on his right foot, while Hank starts on the left, balancing stride making for a more stable trip for Kylar.
"Huh. Good idea." Roy complies as best he's able.
"'Louie, Louie' always seems to help..." Hank adds, helpfully.
"For all their powerful weaponry", Duplar says, "I think these guys are as scared of us as we are of them.
"And I'm not joking about the 'powerful'. They are familiar with giant versions of my lightning wand. They have access to lots of flamelances, more than I've seen in our warehouse at once, and I think theirs are better then our best.
"They also have a way to do heavier-than-air flight, which we know was once possible, but I've never heard a plausible theory as to how it was done."
Hank opens his mouth to say something, then thinks better of it, before he gets himself into even more trouble...
"I've never met Louie Louie", Duplar asks, "Would he be a healer priest of your acquaintance?"
"Ah... no.", Hank replies. Again, he looks like he's about to explain more, but stops himself. "Maybe, once we're to safety?".
Roy says, "We gotta go now."
"Let's get going. We dare not linger," says Dharak gruffly. "A hundred vordral could rush us at any minute."
"I agree", Ryzar says, ceasing his ministrations on the injured Kandar 'Armsman', and packing away his healing kit.
"Jaldar is injured. I'll go help him." Ryzar says, shouldering his backpack as he stands and looks back at the tunnel entrance.....
Then Ryzar sees the too-still figure laying alone on the ground near Kylar and the two strangers.
"Jal?" Ryzar says in a quiet, puzzled tone -- just before he dashes towards the body.
"JAL!" Ryzar shouts, throwing himself down beside his friend and begining to desperately seek any sign of life. "By the Flame! Jal! Don't be dead, dammit! You were just alive!" Ryzar pleads with the corpse.
Hank, still holding up his end of Kylar's hammock-stretcher, looks down and away from this scene.
Roy curls his lip slightly, but then also turns his head away.
After a respectful moment's silence, he quietly says, "His wounds were severe. Instant. There was nothing to be done. I'm sorry".
Ryzar's people do not repress their emotions, but at the same time, they are a practical people, and do not let their emotions control them.
So it is with tears flowing freely down his face, as Ryzar lifts Jals body up into an easy carrying position. While Ryzar looks as if he might be too slender for the task, he has no trouble lifting the slightly larger man.
"I won't leave him here, for the Kolder to despoil." Ryzar says, a determined look on his young-looking face, "He's going back to that human village, to be buried with other humans. I swear this upon my steel".
"What's a vordral?", asks Hank, after a pause
"Ugly twisted things", Kylar says, "Attacked us on the way in, and nearly did for Jathren. Wounded as bad as I, we left him in the village. We're heading back there next".
"Are they some kind of animal?" Roy asks Kylar.
"No, far worse than that", Kylar replies, "They were once men, but became twisted in body and mind due to their evil ways".
Duplar notices blank looks on the faces of the two new arrivals.
"Jathren's my boss, head of Guild Security.
"Ah, you don't know much about the Guild do you. Well never mind. My job is to make sure people don't know too much about the Guild so I'm not going to explain anything until I know I'm not going to have to unexplain it again later.
"My job description does not include exploring strange tunnels in the middle of nowhere full of obscure devices. However something like the device which brought you here was used to dump a large monster exactly in the middle of our guild complex. The result was messy, to say the least, and when Jathren was told to mount an expedition to see why our outpost not far from here had stopped reporting, muggins here was the only other member of the security team left fit for travel.
"Jathren is injured and recuperating with friends. We need to get back to him, and then back to our home base. I think this situation needs kicking upstairs, and just for once I mean as far upstairs as it can go. There is a device I used which, if I get it right, will contact the beings we know of as 'The Guardians', or perhaps a lesser servitor of theirs.
"We need their intervention.
"The Guild has no weapons on this scale. The Academy's skills will work but I don't think there are enough members to have enough effect for long enough to save us."
Duplar turns to Reylorna.
"Mind you, this sudden need for extra minds on our side may well influence local policy on Human membership.
He turns back to the newcomers.
"Ah, but you don't know of the Academy either do you. Well perhaps you are better off that way."
Hank listens carefully to Duplar's exposition, as he continues to bear the wounded Kylar.
"Understood. My name is Hank Jenkins, former United States Peace Corps. That... gadget abducted me and, I guess, Roy too."
"Right?". He turns to Roy for confirmation
"I don't know about your Guild, or 'Guardians', or Academy. I don't know where we are, or what species he or they are. I don't know how we understand eachother in English if you're aliens. There's questions to ask, but first this...man, here needs help. If you can get us home, we can do that later. Please."
"You came from another place through something we call a mirror", Duplar says to Hank, "The ways of making and using them were lost to us many generations ago. I have no idea how to get you back to where you call home".
Hank sighs, a little, but not at Duplar.
"But I work for the people who have the best chance of understanding the equipment in that tunnel", Duplar continues, "other than the people who want to kill us".
Keeping things brief, Hank asks: "Why do they? And what about us?"
"I am not a healer", says Duplar, "The best place for that is a temple in our home city. We cannot get there in enough time, so the best place we can get to is the village where Jathren found help".
"About how far?", Hank asks, "Never mind- your measurements probably won't mean much to me. By nightfall?".
"Not unless you leave me behind", Kylar says.
After a long pause in the conversation, and having no pacing songs come to mind after "louie louie", "Midnight Rider" or "1,000 Miles", Hank says to Roy in a slightly awkward tone; "So... where were you? When this happened, I mean- being shanghaied here."
"Not gonna happen.", Hank says to Kylar, with some determination, "You're coming with us".
"Should we set camp, then, or keep going? I have a flashlight- not a big one, but better than nothing, if we keep on after dark...".
"I'm sorry, but I don't understand how a flash of light would help", Duplar replies, "The guild makes glow-rods, but they are too expensive for me to carry one in the course of my normal duties."
Hank's background gives him some experience in 'backing up and trying again' in explanation.
"Oh. There's something like that back home- Glow-Sticks. Children use them on Hall- in one of our celebrations. A 'flashlight' is... oh, hell. Roy, I'm slowing down a bit...
"Mr. Duplar, if you slide the zip- fastener closest to you, on my pack, to the left, you should see it on the top. A short rod with a lens on one end... close the pack up when you're done. The flashlight's not hard to use..."
Dharak, the dreadlocked, goateed, leather-clad human had remained mostly silent on their march along the line of towers and back into the wooded hills. His nearly-black eyes, excepting the occasional glance back at his string of prisoners, have seemed focused on some middle distance, rather than his surroundings. At the mention of the mirror, he doesn't look at either Hank or Roy, but addresses them in a low, sonorous voice.
"You have just lived our history, newcomers," he begins. "And it is not they, Duplar and Kylar's people, who are the aliens here, but we, as human beings, who do not belong here. As you were brought to this place, so were mine and Reylorna's and Jaldaric's many-times-over great-grandparents torn from your world, and cast into slavery -- in service of these people, the kandar. Many hundreds of years have passed since the time when humans were brought en masse to be the dray horses of this once-splendid civilization. In that time, the kandar have nearly destroyed themselves, and have mostly forgotten the ways of their mighty machines -- including the mirrors."
"Yet now, we know that at least one of these infernal devices is still working, and can still reach your world -- the ancestral home of the humans here. We know little about the forces working the controls of this mirror, but they are clearly in league with otherworldly beings far stranger than kandar." He glances at his cat-man prisoner. "I don't claim to understand how this came to pass, or how, after so many centuries of separation, we still speak essentially the same language. But I do know two things for certain." He looks from Hank to Roy. "I know that you are my brothers. And I know that I am afraid."
He looks away again, his eyes passing briefly over Jal's bundled-up body, his dark eyes blank.
Roy catches Hank's eye and raises an eyebrow at the "brothers" comment.
Then he says, "I don't know about hundreds of years ago, but if anybody tries taking slaves from where I'm from now, they're gonna regret it!" Then he grins.
Hank nods in agreement with Roy, putting out a bravado he doesn't really feel right now. "Yep. Picked the wrong guys."
To Dharak, he (more seriously) adds: "It's an honour, you calling us 'brother'. I honestly wasn't sure if we were prisoners, or not..."
"It is clear to me that the use of mirrors by our ancestors to steal folk of lesser races here to be our slaves was wrong", Duplar says, "But it was done and cannot now be undone".
This sinks in for a moment. "We're... we're NEVER going home again, are we? The truth", Hank says.
"There is no way we can send the Humans back for we have lost the use of the mirrors", Duplar continues, "And if we could, should we? In truth, would their own people now accept them? Would they not be treated as aliens if we dumped them back on the same soil from which those many-time great grandparents were abducted?
"No, the 'Human Problem' is of our making, yet I see no answer.
"The simplest solution would be to exterminate the lot of them.
Roy glares at him, stumbling slightly as he takes his eyes off his footing.
"Oh don't look at me like that! I don't agree with those who see Humans as no more than animals to be worked and then slain when they are of no further value, or even for sport. But as Reylorna can tell you, there are those among my people who sincerely hold that view.
"I can't because two Humans have been admitted to the Academy. Reylorna here may only be as Apprentice, but she is living proof that Humans can have as much of a mind as we Kandar. No mere animal could ever qualify.
"A few Humans have demonstrated as much potential as Kandar in the Guild as well
"Knowing we are superior in our cultural achievements matters little when I see how ignoble some Kandar can be. I have seen Kandar behave worse than Humans, and on rare occasion I have seen a Human behave as I would expect of a Kandar.
"Superior? What is this Academy, anyway -- like in the Academy Awards?" Roy _knew_ these guys were making a movie!
Dharak snorts and shakes his head. "You hear that, brothers and sisters? We are not mere animals! Our long struggle for liberation is finally over!" He glowers at Duplar, his lips pursed as if he has just bitten into something sour. "And here's even more good news, my long-lost siblings," he says, addressing Hank and Roy. "This," he jerks his thumb at Duplar, "is one of the good ones."