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Stramod, and the others gave in.
So it was on foot that sixty-odd men and women from the Union headquarters
moved out some four hours after the last shot of the battle with the soldiers.
Stramod and Blade would have liked to have moved out even sooner, but that
would not have been humanly possible. They could only head into the hills and
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hope the Conciliators had not thrown an impenetrable cordon around the whole
area. Stramod doubted it, but Blade was disagreeably aware of war's habit of
taking the one thing you most doubted would happen and hitting you over the
head with it.
As they passed over the crest of the first hill and started down the path into
the wooded valley below, the rear guard still on the crest saw the smoke and
flames rise into the sky over the treetops behind them. The demolition charges
were going off, and now it mattered little when or whether a
Conciliator legion descended on the resort itself, for there would be nothing
for it to capture, interrogate, or carry away except blackened rubble.
Stramod turned to Blade as he saw the coiling smoke clouds and shrugged
wearily. "That is one chapter in our history closed. But we got the people
away safely, thank the High Spirits of the Hills. And with the people, we can
go on. If they had all been burning in that smoke and flame& " He left the
thought unfinished and turned away to scuttle down the hill and resume his
place at the head of the line.
After a moment's further looking, straining his eyes to see if he could catch
a glimpse of low-passing fliers, Blade shouldered his beamer, readjusted the
straps of his heavy pack, and moved on in his assigned place at the rear of
the line.
They were well down in the valley and the day was drawing toward evening
before they heard the whistle of fliers overhead. But those were not the
danger, for they could not land on anything except flat, clear ground or
water; Blade knew that the Graduki had never invented the helicopter. Pursuit
on foot was another matter. Although Conciliator soldiers tended to be
city-bred and therefore indifferent woodsmen, so were most of the Union
people. It was at Nilando's suggestion that those few who had
camping or hunting experience, or came from farms, were placed at the rear of
the line to wipe away as much of the traces of their passage as possible.
Otherwise, as Nilando put it, "a blind and half-witted girl-child could follow
us." Apart from that, there was little to do but keep going, to put as much
distance as possible between themselves and the abandoned resort, certain to
be the first goal of the enemy.
The Union people kept going, in fact, until it was almost too dark to find a
proper campsite. Many of the people were by now so exhausted that they simply
staggered to a convenient patch of ground, unrolled their sleeping bags, and
fell asleep without further movement. But Stramod posted sentries, and when he
had made the rounds of the sentry posts, he called Blade, Nilando, and Leyndt
aside for a private conference.
He repeated what he had said to Blade earlier: the need to find safety in
flight to the Treduki. But how? Even assuming they could evade the searches
for that length of time, it would take several months to reach Treduk
territory on foot. Such a trek would be as far beyond the abilities of most of
the people as would be swimming an ocean. Nor did a voyage by sea hold much
more promise. To reach the coast they would have to travel for several days
through the most heavily populated area of the Graduk lands and then steal a
ship without detection and travel north for more than a week without being
over taken by
Conciliator ships or fliers. And even if they reached the coasts of the Treduk
lands, they would have no few days' march overland before them still; Graduk
raids from the sea had driven the Treduki well inland.
(Nilando nodded grimly at this, and for the first time seemed to be feeling
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