The Merchant’s War полностью

"I'm so glad." Huw squinted at the scanner, then nodded. "Okay, nothing on the air. Radio check. Elena?"

"Oh, what? You want-the radio?"

"Go ahead."

Elena reached into her jacket pocket and produced a walkie-talkie. "Can you hear me?"

Huw winced and turned down the volume. "I hear you. Your turn, Yul-" Another minute of cross-checks and he was happy. "Okay. Got radio, got weather station, acquired the beacon. Let's get the tent up."

The tent was a tunnel model, with two domed compartments separated by a central awning, for which Huw had a feeling he was going to be grateful. Elena had already unrolled it: between them they managed to nail the spikes in and pull it erect without too much swearing, although the tunnel ended up bulging in at one side where it wrapped around an inconveniently placed trunk.

Huw crossed the clearing then, stretching as high as he could, slashed a strip of bark away from the trunk of the tree nearest the spike. Then he turned to Yul. "Where was that chunk of asphalt?"

"That way, dude." Hulius gestured down the gentle slope. The trees blocked the line of sight within a hundred meters. "Want to go check it out?"

"You know it." Huw's stomach rumbled. Going to have to find a stream soon, he realized, or send Elena hack over to Jill up the water hag. "Lead off. Stay close and stop at twenty so I can mark the route."

It was quiet in the forest, much too quiet. After a minute, Huw realized what he was missing: the omnipresent creaking of the insect chorus, cicadas and hopping things of one kind or another. Occasionally a bird would cry out, a harsh cawing of crows or the tu-whit tu-whit of something he couldn't identify marking out its territory. From time to time the branches would rustle and whisper in the grip of a breeze impossible to detect at ground level. But there was no enthusiastic orchestra of insects, no rumble of traffic, nor the drone of engines crawling across the upturned bowl of the empty sky. We 're alone, he realized. And: it feels like it's going to snow.

Yul stopped and turned round. He grinned broadly and pointed at the nearest tree. "See? I've been here before."

Huw nodded. "Good going." His headache eased slightly. "How much farther is it?"

"About six markers, maybe a couple of hundred meters."

"Right." Huw glanced round at Elena. "You hear that?"

"Sure." She chewed rhythmically as she reached up with her left hand to flick a stray hair away from her eyes. She didn't move her right hand away from the grip on the P90, but kept scanning from side to side with an ease that came from long practice-she'd done her share of summer training camps for the duke.

"Lead on, Yul." Huw suppressed a shiver. Elena-was she really as brainless as she'd seemed over breakfast? Or was she another of those differently socialized Clan girls, who escaped from their claustrophobic family connections by moonlighting as manhunters for ClanSec? He hadn't asked enough questions when the duke's clerk had gone down his list of names and suggested he talk to her.

But the way she moved silently in his footsteps, scanning for threats, suggested that maybe he ought to have paid more attention.

Ten, fifteen minutes passed. Yul slopped. "Here it is," he said quietly.

"I have the watch." Elena turned in a circle, looking for threats.

"Let me see." Huw knelt down near the tree Hulius had pointed lo. The undergrowth was thin here, barely more than a mat of pine needles and dead branches, and the slope almost undetectable. Odd lumpy protuberances humped out of the ground near the roots of the tree, and when he glanced sideways Huw realized he could see a lot farther in one direction before his vision was blocked by more trees. He unhooked the folding trench shovel from his small pack and chopped away at the muck and weedy vegetation covering one of the lumps. "Whoa!"

Huw knew his limits: what he knew about archeology could be written on the sleeve notes of an Indiana Jones DVD. But he also knew asphalt when he saw it, a solid black tarry aggregate with particles of even size-and he knew it was old asphalt too, weathered and overgrown with lichen and moss.

"Looks like a road to me," Yul offered.

"I think you're right." Huw cast around for more chunks of half-buried roadstone. Now that he knew what he was looking for it wasn't difficult to find. "It ran that way, north-northeast, I think." Turning to look in the opposite direction he saw a shadowy tunnel, just about as wide as a two-lane road. Some trees had erupted through the surface over the years, but for the most part it had held the forest at bay. "Okay, this way is downhill. Let's plant a waypoint and-"he looked up at the heavy overcast"-follow it for an hour, or until it starts to rain, before we head back." He checked his watch. It was just past two in the afternoon. "I don't want to get too far from base camp today."