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was looking on numbly. "Those soldiers were doomed from the moment they set
out to pursue the Waskorians. The outcome was a foregone conclusion."
"Truly," Thirg agreed. "Just as Horazzorgio and the Kroaxians were doomed from
the moment they chose to set foot in the Meracasine. And now the whole of
Carthogia is surely doomed."
Lumian weapons such as these which a Carthogian raiding party led by
Dornvald had seized deep inside Waskorian territory, had been the cause of the
disasters that had befallen the Carthogians recently in rapid succession. A
routine border patrol had failed to return, and the force sent to look for it
had been almost annihilated in a Waskorian ambush. Then the Waskorians had
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attacked a border fort which fell after putting up a stiff fight. A small band
of survivors escaped and managed to join up with a relief column advancing
from Menassim under the command of a General
Yemblayen. Kleippur had ordered Yemblayen to halt and avoid further
engagements until the reason for the sudden Waskorian invincibility was better
understood.
The most worrisome aspect of the unexpected Waskorian successes was that the
Lumian weapons must have come from the Kroaxians, with whom the Lumians were
known to have made contact. If the Waskorians were taking over the border zone
as preparation for an all-out invasion from Kroaxia, and if the whole of the
regular Kroaxian army had been equipped, with firepower as devastating as that
being demonstrated behind Kleippur's residence, then
Carthogia wouldn't last another bright. Kleippur's social experiment would be
over; night would fall over an Age of Reason that had barely begun to dawn;
and everything that Thirg and Lofbayel had sought to escape would ensnare them
once again.
"What is your opinion, Pellimiades?" Kleippur asked the technical advisor, who
was examining another sample of Waskorian weaponry with an artisan's keen eye.
Pellimiades shook his head dubiously. "Such detail and precision are only to
be found growing naturally upon this world," he replied. "No work of any
craftsman that I have seen, nor any of which I have heard tell, could remotely
approach it. If this is Lumian workmanship, then the Lumians could well be
lifemakers indeed."
"You can offer no imitation, however crude, nor any other means by which our
soldiers might hope to compete on equal terms?" Dornvald asked.
Pellimiades shook his head again. "None, General."
Two soldiers arrived at a run from the far end of the grounds and presented
four target plates. The first had the center of its red disk completely blown
away; the second was torn into a tight cluster of overlapping holes offset to
one side of the disk; the third was peppered with a pattern of more widely
scattered holes; and the fourth was much like the first.
Kleippur drew a long, heavy intake over his coolant vanes and shook his head
gravely. "We have no choice," he said. "Our only chance is to accept the terms
which the Merehant-Lumians offered us originally. If we cannot supply
comparable armaments of our own, then we must obtain theirs; and if taming
forests for Lumians is the price we must pay, then so be it. This has become a
matter of survival." He turned to Lyokanor, the army's senior intelligence
officer. "Assemble the Cabinet to agree what shall be the form of our message.
We will convey it to the Lumian merchant princes by way of the inquirers who
still occupy the Lumian camp."
"At once, sir," Lyokanor replied and hurried away.
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"We will proceed to the Council Chamber and await the others there,"
Kleippur said. "Our first task must be to arm every able-bodied citizen as
best we can in case the Kroaxians invade, and to agree on tactics for holding
out until we begin receiving Lumian aid. The times ahead will be hard ones, I
fear."
Thirg felt dejected as he and Lofbayel followed the rest of the party across
the rear courtyard toward the house. Kleippur, with his usual pragmatic
acceptance, was devoting his efforts to making the best of the situation as it
existed and not wasting time and energy on futile accusations or complaints.
But it was Thirg who had persuaded him that the
Wearer was sincere, and who had talked him into heeding the Wearer's
treacherous words. It was clear now that the whole episode involving the
Wearer had been a Lumian ploy to keep Carthogia unsuspecting and inactive
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while negotiations were concluded with Kroaxia, the start of a process that
would eventually bring all the robeing nations under the Lumian heel. The
Lumian strategy to attain that goal had been cold, calculated, ruthless, and
efficient, and its implementation seemed so practiced that Kleippur suspected
the whole technique to have been perfected long ago used, perhaps, for the
enslavement of dozens, or even dozen-dozens, of worlds.
But whatever the truth of that, there could be no stopping the process now.
Better a slave state than no state at all the main task now was to ensure the
survival of Carthogia.
Worst of all, Thirg had placed all his personal trust in the Wearer and had no
alternative now but to admit that he had been betrayed cruelly. That
bewildered him the most. He had never been more sure of anything in his life
than of the special relationship which he had thought he and the
Wearer shared a relationship based on a mutual understanding of the power of
mind and reason that transcended differences in language, race, form, and even
world of origin. Each had recognized a common quality in the other that
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