The Worlds of the Sheaf

The Confrontation - Part 1

     "What did they eat, then?" wondered Matthew. "If this one city really did cover the whole continent, where did they farm their food?"

     "Where did the ring dwellers grow their food?" replied the wizard. "Maybe they didn't need farms. Maybe they had some other way of getting food."

     "Magic?" asked Jop Sonno.

     Thomas shook his head. "In all the time we've been here, I haven't sensed a single trace of coherent magic. It's been thousands of years, of course, but even so, there ought so be something, some faint residue. All I can sense, though, all I've ever been able to sense since we came here, is the ambient magic in the atmosphere, and even that's faint compared to back home. It's hard soaking up enough of it to power my spells."

     "Could that be why we haven't heard from Saturn?" asked Matthew. "He simply hasn't got the power for a Farspeaking spell?"

     "It doesn't need that much power," said Thomas, though. "He should be able to cast it, if he's alive." The possibility that he might not be alive sent them into a depressed silence, and they said nothing more until their next rest break.

     At their next camp, Drenn spread the maps out on the bare earth floor of a crumbling skyscraper. "According to this, we're approaching the territory of a tribe of feather folk," he said. "Two questions. Do we go through, or around? And if we go through, do we try to make contact with them?"

     "We have to go through," said Thomas firmly. "We're moving far too slowly as it is. We may arrive at the spaceport to find Saturn's been and gone, left us stranded here. We have to go as fast as possible, by the most direct route."

     "But if we have trouble with them, like we did with the Malganians, we may lose more time than we gain," argued Matthew.

     "We've seen feather people before," pointed out Drenn. "They've left us alone so far."

     "Probably because they were only small hunting parties," replied the Flight Leader. "But if we stroll right into one of their settlements they might get nasty. They might think we're Malganians, come to attack them."

     "We'll probably have difficulty persuading them we're not Malganians," agreed Thomas, "but as far as we've seen, the Malganians leave them alone. I'm sure we wouldn't have seen the feather people we have if they were being actively hunted. They would simply hide at the first sight of us."

     The others nodded. "Makes sense," agreed Matthew thoughtfully. "Okay, I'm for taking the direct route."

     "Then it's decided," said Drenn with satisfaction.

     Nobody bothered asking Jop Sonno or Roj Villa. They were Matthew's subordinates and would do as he told them. As it was, though, they agreed with the decision, as they told each other as they chatted together some distance away from the others. They just wanted to go home, and if the way home led through the spaceport, then they wanted to get there as fast as possible, no matter what the risk. The two juniors had long since become fast friends and they had trouble remembering the divisions that had existed between them aboard the Jules Verne.

     They were nevertheless prepared for trouble, though, as they continued on their way. They all kept their eyes on the surrounding buildings and the undergrowth through which they pushed their way, alert for the first sign of hidden observers. Thomas kept his defensive spells at the forefront of his mind, ready to be cast at a moment's notice, and the others kept their hands on the hilts of their swords. Drenn's steely grey eyes flicked from right to left, studying every shadow with the intensity that only priesthood training could provide, and he would occasionally inform the others, in a soft voice, of things that they had missed. Subtle signs of recent occupancy and frequent visitation.