A few yards up from the beach, hidden in the trees, was a narrow road paved with a pebbled gray plastic. A large truck-like vehicle more than forty feet long stood in the shade, its slab sides coming so close to the ground that Blade could not make out whether it ran on wheels, tracks, or for all he knew, feet. The guards loaded the prisoners into the truck through the rear door, but none climbed inside after them.
Left alone for the first time after many hours of enforced silence, the prisoners burst out into a gabble of oaths, questions, lamentations, and complaints. Even Nilando cursed quietly. Only Blade was silent. When the others had run out of breath, he looked at Nilando and asked quietly, «Is this the usual Graduk method, or are we getting special treatment?»
«It is the first time I have ever heard of one of their slaving patrols raiding so far north. It must be very costly to send those great machines all that way to pick up a few prisoners.»
Blade nodded. «It would be. But I think they had more in mind than just a few prisoners for slavery. I think they were trying to frighten the people of Tengran. Have the Tengrans been doing anything the Graduki would consider particularly bad?»
Nilando frowned as he tried to think out an answer to this question. «Nothing that I know for certain. The Ice Dragons do not approach Tengran, so it has never asked for help. Nor have its people ever asked for refuge in the south. They are brave.»
«If the Ice Dragons cannot swim, the Tengrans are also quite safe,» Blade reminded him. «Do the Ice Dragons merely not attack Tengran, or do they avoid the whole area?» He had the feeling that something was beginning to take shape out of the fog of ignorance through which he had been groping for nearly a week, or might take shape if he kept prodding Nilando, trying to squeeze information out of the man.
«I have heard tales,» said Nilando slowly, «that the Ice Dragons do not come within a day's fast walking of the shores of the lake. But they are only tales. If they were true, I do not see why many thousands of our people have not settled by the lake in search of safety.»
«Unless,» said Blade, also speaking slowly, also trying to define his own thoughts, «Tengran had some reason for not wanting too many people to see what they are doing?»
«By the High Hills!» exploded Nilando. «Are you trying to say that they may be the creators of the Ice Dragons? Then we must escape, so we can lead all the Treduki against these monstrous people and throw them all into their own lake. They-«
«No, damn you!» exploded Blade, losing his temper. «I didn't mean that! I meant-«and there he stopped, because he was very far from sure he had a theory he could explain to Nilando. And he was very sure that if his theory was correct the worst thing he could do was explain it anywhere he might be overheard by Graduk soldiers. They might be silent and sadistic, but they probably were not stupid enough to entirely ignore what they overheard.
Fortunately, the van ended the exchange by starting up with a whine, a clatter, and a series of jolts that sent all the people inside bouncing about like corn in a popper. Nilando swore again.
The driver of the truck must have had frustrated ambitions to be the Graduk equivalent of a racing driver, because the truck swayed, jolted, and lurched wildly along. The prisoners inside kept bouncing about and picking up bruises and gouges from the bare metal interior for the better part of an hour. They were also getting hungry and thirsty. Blade managed to keep his mind off his present discomforts and his dubious prospects by turning his theory over and over in his mind, and also by trying to guess what sort of motor drove the truck. It gave off a continuous, unvarying, maddening whine, somewhat like an enormous mosquito trying to sing bass.
Without any warning or slowing, the brakes went on and the van slammed to a stop so sudden that all six prisoners flew like bowling balls the full length of the interior and crashed into the front wall. In the silence that followed the sudden cut-off of the motor, Blade heard a new sound coming from outside-the growl and murmur of an angry mob.
There was nothing for a moment that Blade could make out except a formless and incoherent roar. Then he began to make out single voices shouting specific words
«Kill the Treduki!»
«Treduki bring disease to our people!»
«The arena is for the rich. The money spent on slave raids is taken from the poor!»
«The Treduk animals feast while we starve!»
— and others more or less as ominous. It seemed the truck was surrounded by some group in opposition to the Graduk government. But it was a howling and perhaps armed mob, and its slogans seemed to have nothing to do with the Ice Dragons and much to do with murdering Treduki. Blade had seldom felt quite as helpless as he did now, sitting locked and bound in a truck surrounded by a mob that might be hostile to his guards but was likely to prove even more hostile to him.
A moment later the van began rocking back and forth, and the shouts from outside took on the rhythmic quality of a sailor's heaving chanty. Blade grimaced. The mob had decided to try overturning the truck. No doubt it weighed a good many tons, but several hundred determined people can push hard. And after they got it over, then what? Set it on fire? Yes. Blade heard a new shout: «Burn the animals in their cage! Burn out the disease from our cities!»
Blade saw Rena turn white, and Nilando put an arm around her to comfort her, although the Irdnan's own face was tight-drawn and pale itself. The rocking grew more violent; several times Blade felt one set of wheels rise completely clear of the ground and slam back. Once he heard a scream and a crunch as somebody didn't jump back fast enough from the descending truck.
Then the scream of a siren cut through the uproar outside, just as the truck heaved up more mightily than before, reached its point of balance, and went over. Whether anybody was under it when it hit Blade didn't notice; he was too busy bracing himself as well as he could to keep his brains from being bashed out against the walls. As it was he went head over heels and landed with a spine-jarring crash that momentarily made his head swim and added bruises to most of the places that hadn't already been bruised in the course of the trip.
As he lay there, battered and coldly determined that the next person who touched him or tried to make him do anything was going to be killed, the truck door crashed open. He twisted himself around until he faced the light and then lurched to his feet, his bound hands raised clublike. Two of the soldiers squatted in the opening, their beamers leveled at him.
«Outside!» one of them snapped. Blade moved slowly forward, hearing the others behind him groaning and staggering to their feet, until he was squarely between the two soldiers. One of them prodded him in the hip with the butt of his beamer.
Blade spun on his left foot and his right foot shot out like a stone flying from an explosion, smashing into the soldier's stomach and catapulting him through the open door. Before the other could bring his beamer up and aim it, Blade swung his bound hands against the man's head in a hammer-blow that slammed him against the edge of the door. Blade heard the soldier's skull crack. Then he leaped through the door into the sunlight, far too angry to be cautious but not too angry to notice what was around him.
The mob still surrounded the overturned truck at least a thousand strong, but they had backed away a little. From the overturned van to another similar one about thirty feet away a double line of men in blue uniforms made a clear alley. Blade at first thought these were more soldiers. Then he noticed the different cut of the uniforms, and that these men were armed with heavy barreled, green-painted pistol-like weapons with wide mouths, rather than the too-familiar black heatbeamers. He saw some of these turning toward him, staring and raising their weapons-then he suddenly had too much to do to look more.