One, then three armored figures rode their dragonflies out of time. They trembled at the edge of visibility as if they were sliding in and out between the fracture planes of mica schist.
In the millisecond intervals when they were visible, happy laughter caroled from the external speaker of the black battlesuit.
Gordon crouched lower and muttered, "Just like your mirror showed. When and where . . . and especially who."
Sparrow laid a hand the size of an ice-bear's paw on Gordon's shoulder to remind him to be silent.
The dragonflies sharpened into perfect temporal focus. Brush crackled under the weight of the vehicles and their armored riders. There was a brief trail of steam; dew which the sun missed had touched hot metal.
The riders dismounted. The Searcher in black armor reached down to the latch below her right armpit and pulled the front of the battlesuit open. When the latch released, it shut off all the battlesuit's systems—including the servos which ordinarily powered the articulated joints of the armor.
The black-haired woman inside the suit swung the dead weight of the massive frontal armor as easily as if she were a man with triceps twice the size of those of her own trim arms.
Sledd wrinkled his nose; Sparrow's and Gordon's eyes prickled a moment later. The dragonflies ionized air when they appeared. A tendril of ozone drifted twenty meters to where the brothers hid.
The fire-orange battlesuit with bronze highlights opened as well. The blond Searcher inside coughed.
"For North's own sake, Krita!" she complained. "Why can't you let the stink blow off at least? We aren't on a deadline."
"Krita's always on a deadline, Race," said the other of the big blonds, waving her hand back and forth to dissipate the ozone. "She thinks if she runs fast enough, death won't catch her."
Krita laughed again. She pulled herself out of her battlesuit, both legs together—an awkward task that her muscular grace made look easy. She wore a singlet of doeskin; her feet and long legs were bare.
"Come along, Race, Julia," she called as she pushed through the screening brush to reach the flowered slope beyond. "Last one to the water never gets to touch a man again."
The two blonds climbed out of their armor as lithely as Krita. They were both taller than their companion, and they looked softer—the way oak cudgels seem softer than chipped flint.
"That," called Race as she and Julia loped along after Krita, "I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy!"
The blonds wore linen shifts. They were already lifting the garments over their heads as they disappeared downhill from the brothers.
Gordon exhaled heavily. "You're right," he said to Sparrow. "It is worth it."
"I didn't remember how long it had been," Sledd murmured.
Sparrow said nothing. He was watching the image in his mirror, the shrunken figures of women sprinting down the hundred meters of gentle slope.
The blonds' longer strides made up distance, but Krita held her lead to the sedges where water spilled from the rocks. The three women plunged together into the deep pool in the spring's center. Their clothing lay on the bank.
"Now," said Sparrow as he got up deliberately and walked to the equipment which the Searchers thought they had left concealed.
Sledd ignored the dragonflies on their spindly, wonderfully strong, monocrystalline legs. Instead he caressed one of the battlesuits whose quality he could fully appreciate. The suit's pattern of scarlet, silver, and mauve scales was not painted on, as Sledd had assumed, but rather integral with the outer sheathing.
"I still say we ought of worn our own armor," he said.
"There's nothing I want from those three that I can get with a battlesuit on," Gordon replied.
Some of the nearby foliage was shrivelled. Ozone had bleached the green out of it.
Sparrow bent over Krita's dragonfly, then squatted. There was a set of manual controls on the underside of the saddle's edge. He did not touch them. Instead, the master smith adjusted the image in his mirror to show the same controls.
"What are you doing?" Gordon asked.
"Sledd, don't show yourself," Sparrow grunted absently. The third brother was peering through the brush in the direction the women had gone.
Sledd grimaced and squatted beside Sparrow. "Well, what are you doing?" he demanded.
"When the Searchers see us," Sparrow explained, "they'll either run away or they'll attack. We can't keep them from killing us, soon or later, unless we're willing to kill them."
Sledd spat. "That'd be crazy," he said.
"Yes," said Sparrow. The image of the dragonfly controls blurred, then focused. There was a subtle difference between reality and the form in the mirror. "But it may be that we can keep them from running."
Sparrow poked a broad finger through the surface of his mirror and touched a control switch.
There was a dull pop. The dragonfly beside him vanished, but the image in the mirror remained.
The big man let out a long sigh of relief. "Like that," he said as he rose and moved to the next vehicle.
"Where did you send it?" Gordon asked with a frown. He looked at the black battlesuit standing as a monument to the vanished dragonfly.
"It's still here," said Sparrow as he focused his mirror on the controls of Race's dragonfly. "But it isn't now, not quite. It's waiting—"
His finger jabbed. The second vehicle vanished from the brothers' present.
"They're waiting in a time state just out of phase with the space around them," Sparrow went on as his mirror blurred and sharpened. "It's in the regular controls; it's where they stay when they ride the battle plains."
"Where Searchers ride," Gordon said.
"Of course Searchers!" Sledd snarled. "We knew that before we started, didn't we?" He shivered in the summer shade.
A trill of laughter echoed from the spring. Sparrow looked at his brothers. "Calm down," he said in a firm voice. "There's risk. We don't have to make the risk worse."
Gordon grimaced. "Sorry," he said. "Sorry."
The last dragonfly puffed out of sight. Sparrow panned the image back momentarily, showing all three of the vehicles still on the knoll . . . with the empty battlesuits, and in the presence of the brothers.
Sledd muttered a curse. He felt in the air where the mirror said a vehicle should be. His hand met nothing, though a stray beam of sunlight danced across the ginger hairs on the backs of his fingers.
Sparrow switched the mirror's image back into a mere reflection in polished metal. He hung the artifact around his neck by a rope whose gold and silver strands were as fine as those of a battlesuit's circuits.
"What do we do now, Sparrow?" Gordon asked. Below, the Searchers giggled like young girls as they climbed from the water to look for berry bushes.
"Now . . . ," said the master smith. He combed absently at his beard as his eyes focused on a possible future. "Now we wait. And hope."
The women chattered as they walked up the slope. There were damp patches on their garments where their skin had not dried when they pulled the clothing on. Krita and Race held hands.
Julia had lifted the hem of her shift to cup a double handful of fresh blackberries. She yelped, then giggled, as a branch whipped back and caught her where the linen would normally have been some protection.
Krita saw the three big men standing beside the battlesuits. They were dressed in breeches and jerkins of tanned leather, crudely sewn but ornamented with metalwork of exquisite quality.
Krita took her hand from Race's and said, "There," in a quiet, charged voice.
Julia shook the berries from her garment. The groups were poised like packs of dogs meeting at the boundary of their ranges . . . or a pack of wolves, and a family of bears.
For a moment, Krita could imagine that it was the men's bulk which hid the dragonflies from her. She edged to the side, and her keen eyesight pricked the life out of that hope.
"We mean you no harm, ladies," Sparrow said. He stepped forward slowly, as though he were taking part in a ritual. He lifted the mirror from his breast. "We hold you in honor."
"We want nothing of you," Race called threateningly. "Do you realize who we are? Do you want the gods to blot away the very memory of you?"
"You are kings' daughters and Searchers, lady," said Gordon. Sparrow took another slow step. His brothers remained as motionless as the empty battlesuits beside which they stood. "But we are the sons of a king ourselves."
"We're smiths like no others that ever lived," said Sledd. "We'll make you wonderful things."
"Where are our vehicles?" Krita asked in a voice like frozen steel.
"You can't catch us, you know!" snapped Julia.
"And if you did," added Race in an unknowing echo of Gordon's words of months before, "then—you'll have to sleep sometime." Her teeth as she smiled were as bright and sharp as those of a predator.
"Your armor is here, ladies," Sparrow said. "You can kill us now if you like. We are a king's sons, and we wish you only honor as our wives."
Sparrow had crossed half the distance separating him from the women. He held the mirror out to Krita and said, "Take it. It's for you."
The sleeveless jerkin showed deep pink scars from the bear's claws on the inside of Sparrow's forearm.
Krita stepped forward with brisk certainty instead of making a quick, rodentlike grab for the dangling object. Her eyes met Sparrow's. She took the mirror, then backed away.
"Give us our vehicles," she said flatly.
"Anything but your dragonflies, Lady Krita," Sparrow said.
The shaggy form of the master smith contrasted sharply with his cultured voice. His pale eyes were calm, but no one could look into them and hope that prayer or threats would make Sparrow draw back from the words he had just spoken.
"Wonders that not even the gods can match," Sledd boasted.
Julia glanced at him. She chuckled.
"Look into the mirror, Lady Krita," Sparrow coaxed. "Yes, like that. Ask it to show you something—anything, anyone."
Race played with a spot of berry juice on her garment. "You can make it change by speaking to it?" she asked, flicking her gaze from the object to its maker.
Krita murmured to the mirror. Its surface blurred.
Sparrow nodded. "Like a battlesuit's controls," he said. "Many smiths build battlesuits, lady. Only I could have created that."
"Well, is it true, Krita?" Julia demanded. "Does it work?"
"Oh, yes, it's true," Krita agreed in a distant voice. There was a decisive hardness in her expression that been missing before. She hung the mirror's cord over a bare twig to free her hands.
"We wish only to honor you as our wives, lady," the master smith repeated.
Krita barked a short, harsh laugh. All five of the others watched her.
"Well, girls," Krita said in a bright voice. "We came here to relax for a while, didn't we?"
She reached down and began deliberately to pull her singlet over her head.
Race sighed, then smiled at Julia. The blond women lifted off their shifts. The brothers stepped forward in increasing haste.
Birds chirped and fluttered among the foliage. The mirror rotated lazily on its cord. Its surface showed the face of Nils Hansen.