Somewhere in the ruck of hundreds of men exercising on the plain below Hansen, Culbreth wore Hansen's own battlesuit.
The warriors of the royal army were going through tactical evolutions in small groups. The troops particularly needed experience in how to deal with armor of exceptional quality. When Hansen was too exhausted to go on, another trusted warrior took his place in the suit.
The skin was raw over Hansen's joints, the places where his body first touched the interior of the battlesuit as he moved. He was wrung out physically and mentally. Though he trained his eyes in the direction of the troops as he chewed a grassblade on the bluff above the exercise field, he wasn't really seeing the men.
He had been this tired before. He was sure he must have been, sometime or other.
Black wings beat through the Matrix. He could feel Searchers coming closer. . . .
On the field sunlit below, warriors fell battered—their armor stunned, their bodies bruised by hitting the ground.
But they weren't dying—and as with ravens, little but death would summon the Searchers.
Hansen turned without rising as the dragonflies, two of them, changed from shadows to matter more solid than that of the scrub grass on which they landed—
And vanished again a millisecond out of temporal phase, leaving their riders behind. The Searchers wore linen rather than their powered armor.
"Race," Hansen said. He crossed his legs beneath him, then straightened them like the arms of a scissors bridge to lift him upright. "Julia."
He gave the women a smile that was not so much careful as ready for whatever came next. The Searchers were North's minions, but Hansen had the powers of a god. . . .
"Does North have a message for me," Hansen said, "that he doesn't choose to bring himself?"
"Who knows what North does?" Race said.
"We came for ourselves, Lord Hansen," Julia added in a gentler tone. "Nobody sent us."
The women were like enough to be sisters, though not twins. Race's nose was a little higher than that of her companion. Her eyes were blue rather than gray, and her body looked vaguely more taut than Julia's—though Julia moved like a cat, while Race had more of a birdlike jerkiness.
Both of the Searchers were beautiful; and both were hard, by the standards of the warriors battering one another in training below.
"Look, we . . ." Race said.
Thanks did not come easily to her tongue. She paused to watch the movements on the practice field, her hair flying in the breeze that came up the bluff and broke in turbulence.
"Look, we may as well sit," said Hansen, indicating the ground.
Herds being driven to slaughter in Frekka pastured often enough in the area to keep the grass on the overlook cropped. Neither beasts nor herdsmen were in sight at the moment.
"You gave us our dragonflies back," Julia said. "We came to thank you."
"I liked Sledd well enough," Race said. "But I'd been free before. You don't know what it's like to be . . . held. When you've been free."
"You may like having the wind blow in your face . . . ," Hansen said. He sat, recrossing his legs and lowering himself in the same fashion as he had gotten up "But I don't. And—"
His tone became softer, partly because he was below the level of the constant breeze and no longer had to speak over its keening. "—I really didn't do anything that requires thanks."
The Searchers settled also. Race squatted; Julia sat on one hip, curling her feet behind her and supporting part of her weight an her left arm.
"Krita said she wouldn't come unless you ordered her to," Race said, scowling at her interlaced fingers. She wore rabbit-leather slippers and a chemise that fell to mid-thigh when she stood but hiked up to the hip joint in her present position.
"I did nothing important," Hansen said in a sharper voice. "I showed Krita that her mirror was a doorway as well as a window—that she could touch anything she could see through it. That's nothing."
Julia said, "You are a god, Lord Hansen. We're only servants. For you to think of us at all was an honor."
Unlike her companion, Julia wore a loose shirtwaist belted over a pair of trousers. The belt was of gold worked into a broad strap and clasped by a sapphire-eyed dragon swallowing its tail.
Hansen laughed. He was amazed at how bitter he felt at the images called up by the Searcher's words, "Be thankful you at least know who you serve, Julia. And don't—"
He stared critically at the rubbed spot over his left wrist-bone, then patted it with his fingertips. "Don't ever think that I'm not still human."
"Your warriors are pretty good," Race said neutrally as she watched the practice field. "Are they the whole army?"
"About a third of it," Hansen said, turning sideways to look over the bluff. "Every warrior in the kingdom has been mustered. It costs Prandia a fortune just to feed and maintain them, but it's the only way that they're going to get the training they need."
Julia eased forward so that she also could see the field. Viewed from the bluff, the arcs and glowing forcefields were a work of art; but all three of the watchers could add the reality of their own experience to the distance-blurred portrait.
Dust, sweat; the bitterness of lactic acid cramping muscles. Ozone scouring mouths and nasal passages, making eyes water even before the tears of fatigue started. Blood from pressure cuts and lips bitten in the shock of falling. Bruises and raw skin.
And above all, pain. The same constant, enervating pain which was as certain a concomitant of battle as death, and which practice trained warriors to accept until death or victory released them.
Hansen shivered.
"It's going to be a slaughter," Race said. Her voice held no loading but that of professional experience. "If all your men are as good as these—"
"More or less," Hansen said.
He turned to squat beside the Searcher, facing the practice field. "This is Wolf Battalion, but Bear and Eagle started with personnel as nearly equal as my staff and I could pick."
"Then you may win," Race continued. "But the Solfygg champions in royal suits will cut your lines to ribbons, no matter how good your training is."
"North will be pleased," said Julia. They now perched on the bluff like the three wise monkeys. "There will be a slaughter like the world has never known."
Hansen turned to her. "Do you think I don't know that, Julia?" he said very softly. He was shivering again.
Race cleared her throat. She continued to face over the edge of the bluff. "Krita learned that the mirror was open to what it showed," she said. "Because she kissed your image through it, Lord Hansen."
Hansen's head rotated. "She can do as she pleases!" he snapped. "That's none of my business!"
"Lord Hansen?" Julia said. She put her right hand softly on his shoulder. "This is what we please, Race and I."
"I'm jumpy," Hansen said in embarrassment. He backed into a sitting position a little farther from the edge of the bluff. "I'm sorry. I—"
Julia was smiling. Her free hand released her dragon-clasped belt. She stood up for a moment to let her trousers slip down about her ankles, then stepped out of them.
Race tossed her crumpled singlet on top of the trousers while Julia was still lifting her shirtwaist over her head.
"We could try spreading clothes to cover the ground," she said. Her pubic wedge was light red, almost orange. "If the grass bothers you."
"It never has yet," said Hansen as he and Julia reached together for the waist tie of his shirt.
Hansen started to laugh with real humor for the first time in too long. He laughed several times more in the next hour and a quarter.