rock. Since I feared that I couldn't control myself, I let the rock control me, restore me, bring me peace.
* * *
"They've set the Cramers free and they're taking Mueller slaves," one soldier who joined our army told us in horror. The reaction was electric-- many of our soldiers had families in West Mueller, where the Cramers might be creating havoc with no one to defend our people. I was not surprised that our numbers began diminishing as soldiers slipped off to head southwest. I was even less surprised when most of our scouts failed to return. Still, we had to try to hold our army: I insisted that Father stop asking for volunteers for scouting missions.
We were only thirty kilometers from the Great Bend when the most important information of all came from someone we had never thought to see again."
"Homarnoch," Father whispered as he saw the man madly driving a wagon along the road we had just come down. "Homarnoch! Here!" he cried, and the old doctor was soon beside us. We called a rest; the soldiers stopped on the road.
"No use," Homamoch said. "I've killed a brace of horses coming to tell you. The Nkumai didn't take your bait. They only sent Dinte and his force to Mueller-by-the-Sea, and when you turned southeast the rest of them were ahead of you all the way. Not five kilometers off they're waiting for you. They've been at the Great Bend for days."
Father called his commanders and gave them orders to have our men prepare for a much faster march.
"We'll fight them and win," Harkint insisted.
"We'll escape and survive," Father answered, and Harkint went off in a rage.
While the preparations were going on, Homarnoch told us how and why he had come. "They were going to take everything-- all our work for thousands of years. I wouldn't have that. Not those tree-dwelling apes."
I didn't bother telling him that those tree-dwelling apes had given faster-than-light travel to the rest of the universe.
"So I poisoned the rads," Homarnoch said.
Father was shocked. "Killed them!"
"They were five tons worth of iron on the hoof, Ensel, and I couldn't let the inkers have that. So I poisoned them. Not even their fingenails'll be worth a gram of iron in trade."
I said nothing, but remembered a time when I had had five legs and an extra nose and still believed I was a man.
"I also got the library. The essential records. The theory. It's all in that wagon, " he said, "and I burned the rest. With Dinte's men in charge of the city, nobody even thought to keep me in."
"A master stroke," Father said. Homarnoch beamed with pride.
"'Having the books with us doesn't answer the real question, " I said. "What do we do now?"
"Harkint wants to attack," Father said with a wry smile.
"Harkint's a heroic ass," I answered. "But I can see why he wants to do it. There's nowhere else to go. Dinte's men are between us and the sea, and there's nothing in the north but Epson. They won't be inclined to provoke Nkumai by taking us in."
"Dinte's no match for us."
"He outnumbers us five to one. With odds like that they don't need a competent commander."
We sat in silence. Homarnoch mumbled something about needing to check the horses. And then Harkint came back. The troops were ready. "And what I want to know is, are we going into battle or running from it?"
"Running," Father said. "The question is, which way."
Harkint snorted. "I never thought the day would come when the Mueller would be a coward. I've followed you through everything that's gone wrong, including harboring this Class A bastard" --meaning me-- "but I'll be damned if I'll turn tail and run from a fight. And there's others that feel like me."
If he'd had any sense of the theatrical, he would have stormed off then. But he hadn't. So Father answered. "Go through the troops then, Harkint, and ask for all who want to go with you. But tell them that the Mueller is withdrawing, and asks all men to come with him. You tell them that, and take all those who'll go with you."
Harkint nodded and left. I began scratching out a rough map of Mueller and the surrounding territories.
"South and west is out of the question," Father said. "Everyone in Mueller would kill you, and everyone in Helper, Cramer, and Wizer would kill me."
"And north is impossible," I answered, "because Epson is too weak to protect us, and too strong