Chapter 5: For The Goddess!

"You gotta admit one thing, Stan sure went out in style," Chad commented sourly after a careful search through their binoculars disclosed no signs of life amidst the wreckage. "Gilson may have thought he was getting the best of Stan, but it sure didn't do him a whole lot of good. I suppose that the explosion might have come from Gilson or one of his men screwin' up, but my guess is that Stan set it up somehow."

"Yeah, but now we're stranded here! How are we gonna we get back home?" Mike's freckles stood out against his tanned skin, which was suddenly several shades lighter than his reddishbrown hair as the reality of their predicament struck him. "Stan was the only one who knew how to call for the portal to come get us when we was done here. I ain't got the faintest idea of how he would of done it, or even what kinda machine he brought along to do it with. None of us did, that was Stan's secret. We're stuck here, and it's all that damned Gilson's fault!"

"And so now Gilson's dead, too. Him, and all of his friends along with him. Just calm it down, you're the one what was thinking of making yourself to home here." Chad forced a somewhat feeble grin, shaking his head ruefully. "Now we've gotta go ahead with it, is all. The first thing we'd better do is to take a good look at what we've got to work with. There ain't gonna be a whole lot left down there that'll do us any good. Not unless you're into scrap metal and ashes." He took the canvas sack that the binoculars had come from and upended it before handing it back to Ahlenya. "Here's a couple of brush knives and compasses that I managed to snitch from the storage shed, but I could only scrounge two extra clips of shells for the carbines. Lom's sack is pretty well full of emergency ration packs and stuff like that."

"Hey! You've been planning for something like this!" Mike accused, scowling down at him. "Well? Haven't you?"

"You're damned right I have," Chad snapped back at him. "It's a good thing one of us did. After what happened to me before, I'm gonna have some kinda escape hatch spotted ahead of time whenever there's a chance that trouble will hit. Maybe it won't always work, but I ain't about to get caught with my pants down like that again. Not if I can help it. Even once is about two times too many. I've had a feelin' for quite a while that something was gonna pop around here sooner or later. I didn't know what it would be, but I figured it wouldn't hurt nothing to be ready when it did, is all." He was rearranging the contents of the two sacks as he spoke, evening up the load between Lom and Ahlenya. "Now, let's head back down to what's left of the camp. We need to see if there's anything at all down there that we can salvage, not that it's any too likely after that big of a blast. Whoops! I'll take that back. Lookit who's showed up for the party!"

"What? Oh, my God!" Mike almost dropped his binoculars. "Soldiers! Must be a dozen of them. Jesus Christ, what else is there can go wrong?"

"Don't ask, you just might find out." The grin that Chad flashed at Mike was a feeble one, but it was at least a kind of a smile. "Yeah, I've wondered how come none of them've showed up around here before this. We ain't any too far from Ahlenya's farm, you know, and it shouldn't of been all that hard for them to follow our bug's tracks through the woods if they came across them."

The soldiers were cautiously exploring the ruins of the camp, prodding at the bodies lying between the wreckage and the edge of the woods. Chad grew more and more nervous, watching them.

"We'd better get moving. We ain't doin' no good at all here. From what Ahlenya says, those critters the soldiers ride can track people almost as good as hunting dogs. They'll be checking around to see if anybody got away. If they cross our tracks, they'll be off after us like hound dogs trailin' a bunny rabbit. And us without no briar patch handy, neither."

"Your hunches have always paid off so far," Mike agreed. "What about Lom and Ahlenya?"

"That's a good question." Chad turned to the two captives who had been standing side by side, whispering to each other as they watched the goingson with wideeyed interest. "What do the two of you want to do? Me and Mike are on our own, now. No friends. Nobody to back us up. You two are free to go if you want, just as long as you promise that you won't tell anybody about us."

Lom wavered, undecided, but Ahlenya had already made up her mind.

"Not leave! You capture us in fair fight, treat us with honor. We not run from soldiers, like vards when gurohs come. You not go far by selfs. Not know way around Gardhe. Not know ways of doing, how to find food in woods. You need to find camp of outlaws, go live with them. Beside, it what Goddess want."

"Not leave," Lom agreed glumly, his dour expression gradually lightening into a broad grin as he thought it over. "Now never go back to farm, not herd grahls and gurohs again. Lom go with you. Live in woods with outlaws. See new things. That what Ahlenya want to do when we leave Bortai farm, anyway."

"That's settled, then," Chad snapped. "Let's make tracks outa here!"

"Okay," Mike shrugged, looking at him oddly but letting Chad take the lead. "You seem to have thought things out. Which way do you think we should go?"

"Straight away from camp for now. We'll head more or less due east for a couple of hours, then a little south until we get to that river our scouts spotted. Then if the soldiers are still on our tail, we might be able to lose them by crossing water."

"Soldiers maybe not follow us that far," Ahlenya told them. "They too afraid of outlaws."

"Who are these outlaws?" Mike asked as they jogged easily along through the forest. "How many of them are out there?"

"Not many, any one place. Landsmen follow Dark God. Hate Followers of Goddess. Long, long time ago, is big fight. They chase away or kill all who follow Goddess. Ones who get away, they go live in woods, be called outlaws." She hesitated, then added, "Soldiers hunt most hard for ones favored of Goddess."

"Why did the Landsmen want to drive out the Followers of The Goddess?" Chad asked.

"Landsmen want to cut down trees all over Gardhe, make many big farms. Raise much food, have big families so can have more soldiers for fights between cities. Goddess say, already have enough people for soldiers. Not cut down trees to make fields. Not chase away animals and birds."

"You keep saying, 'The Goddess says.' Who tells you what She says, and just who are these people who are 'Favored of The Goddess'?"

"Here, I show you." She paused under a large tree whose dense shade had stifled the growth of ground vines, leaving a few patches of bare dirt around its roots. "I have a little bit the favor of Goddess."

Smoothing off an area as large as might be covered by the palms of her two hands, she removed a small amulet from a thong around her neck. Holding it reverently with both hands, she placed it in the center of the smooth dirt. Then, sitting crosslegged with her eyes partly closed, she gazed blankly down at it.

Her breathing gradually grew slower and deeper, her gaze more intent. Before their unbelieving eyes, the tiny talisman rose slowly into the air. It bobbed and swayed in the vagrant breeze for a moment, then settled back to the ground, inert.

"See? Like so." She smiled sunnily up at them, drawing in a deep breath and brushing beads of sweat from her forehead. "That how Goddess tells us what to do."

"Wha... What'd you do? Here, lemme see that thing!"

Still smiling impishly at his astonishment, she picked up the amulet and handed it to Chad. It was heavy, weighing at least several ounces, and had the slightly greasy feel to it of very pure gold.

"Hey! It's cold!" He juggled it from hand to hand, almost dropping it.

"Is always, after mindtouch," she answered with a shrug, as though stating something everyone knew.

Wordlessly he turned it over, looking at it from all sides. At first glance it had seemed crude, perhaps unfinished, but a closer look showed that it was finely sculpted where its surface details hadn't been smoothed away by long wearing. The nugget had been given the form of a coiled serpent, the scaled body flowing smoothly into the torso and head of a woman.

Her arms were merely hinted at by ridges on the sides of the body. Her head, though, was quite detailed. It had tiny chips of red gem inset to highlight exotically slanted eyes, and two spined ridges swept up and back from the forehead in place of hair, extending about half way down her back before fusing into a single crest that ended where the serpent body began. The leather thong that supported the amulet around Ahlenya's neck threaded through a coil of the serpentine body.

"That how Goddess tells," Ahlenya repeated.

"Yeah?" Mike asked suspiciously. "And just what did she have to say?"

"What way to go. She turn and move that way." She pointed a little to the right of the way they'd been heading. "She only move little way, so not need go far, but move quick."