Slovotsky walked over to the shack and leaned in. "Please tell the Engineer that Walter Slovotsky and Ahira are here, bringing a load of dwarven blades, raw silver, and fourteen hefty appet.i.tes."

The man inside began beating a rapid tattoo on the telegraph key.

Walter Slovotsky threw his arm around Jason's shoulder. "So tell me, what's this bulls.h.i.t I hear about your dad going after the sword?"

"I haven't heard anything about it," Jason said, his face reflecting what appeared to be only honest puzzlement. "And I'd like to. Now."

You're taking on something of your father's imperiousness, Jason me boyo, and I don't like that much. Before you get to sing the blues, you gotta pay the dues.

"Make it a bit later, okay?" he said, trying to put just a trace of sternness in his voice. "We've had a long trip."

Jason visibly considered it for a moment, then nodded. "Agreed, Uncle Walter."

Slovotsky smiled. "Now, get on your horse. I want the ten-cent tour of Homea"by way of the bathhouse, and with special attention to the brewery. Seems there's been some changes of late."

"Brewery?" Ahira smiled. "Good idea. While you do that, I'm going to head for Loua"is he in the cave?" he asked, raising his voice and turning to the guard in the customs house.

"Yes, Ahira; I'll alert him that you're coming."

"That won't bea""

"Easyway, warfday," Slovotsky said. "Ememberay ouyay aren'tway ayormay," he added in pig latin, knowing that it took most of a lifetime of English speaking to be able to follow deliberate fracturing of the language.

Jason smiled and nodded his agreement, but the guard was puzzled. Which was just the way Slovotsky wanted it; no need to embarra.s.s his friend in front of strangers.

"Right," the dwarf said. "And please ask him to tap a keg; I haven't had Homemade beer for far too long."

Taking another pull at his third tankard of beer, Ahira nodded in approval, both at the brewa"either his memory and taste buds were going, or it was a lot better than it had been back when Ahira was mayora"and at the noisy machine Riccetti was patting the side of.

The beer was awfully good, he decided. Not quite up to the level of Genesee Cream, but at least as good as St. Pauli Girl.

The machine was impressive, too. "An honest-to-G.o.d boiler and generatora"Lou, you did good," Ahira said, shouting over the clangor of the machinery. The machine was hot and noisy, and Ahira really didn't understand the need for the odd-looking piston arrangement that had the huge generator humming, but it clearly worked.

Riccetti smiled briefly. "Thank you," he shouted back. "It seems to do the job."

Ahira looked the human over carefully as they stood near the warren holding boiler and generator, the heat from the machine beating against them like a wave, despite the cross-draft ventilation.

The years hadn't been kind to Lou Riccetti; his unhealthy-looking skinniness had only gotten worse, and his head was now completely bald. His face and hands were splotched and scarred, and he walked with absolutely no spring in his step. The marriage to an ex-slave that Karl and Chak had arranged had been a profound failure; Danni had left with a trader several years ago.

But there was an unselfconscious forcefulness in his manner, something that Ahira had never even seen traces of in the old days.

"The phrase, Ahira," Riccetti shouted, "is 'happy as a pig in s.h.i.t.' Which I am. Hang on a moment; I have to do a bit of business."

He raised a hand and beckoned to the nearest of the engineers, a chunky man in his mid-twenties, who trotted over and bent his head near Riccetti's mouth.

"Bast, you remember Ahira?"

"Sure." The tall, broad-shouldered engineer stuck out a calloused hand; the grip was firm, for a human. "Good to see you again."

"Have him buy you a drink later; we've got a lot of work for now," Riccetti said, dismissing the formalities. "Now, send the word out that the telegraph is going down for the night, and then hook up the DC generator around darka"and have Daherrin post extra guards, all armed with signal rockets."

"Trouble?" Bast asked, clearly perfunctorily.

"No, but I'm getting skittish in my old age."

"Good." Bast nodded. "We going to run the hydroxy rig?"

"Right; I want a long runa"all through the night and into tomorrow. So break down the compressor, clean it, then put it back togethera"and cofferdam around the bottles; I don't want anything else to break if they go this time."

"They shouldn't. I think the new valves will hold."

"We'll see."

"That we will." Bast nodded and walked off.

Riccetti beckoned to Ahira, and the two of them exited into another warren, the clatter of the generator fading in the distance.

"I take it you're suitably impressed?" At Ahira's nod, Riccetti went on: "A year or so ago, Karl asked me for some plans for a telegrapha"he wants to set one up over therea"and that led to all of this. I think we can give him a nice price on the whole package, now that we found that new seam of hemat.i.te."

The warrens were a bustle of activity; sights, sounds, and smells.

Riccetti guided him down a lefthand turn and into the residence section of the warrens, and past a guard into the Engineer's quarters. The room hadn't changed much, although Riccetti's sleeping area was now a real bed instead of a simple pallet.

Over in the corner, the telegraph rattled constantly.

Riccetti seemed to give it only a small portion of his attention; the news was probably not terribly important, Ahira decided, but he approved of the idea of keeping something going down the lines at all times. The mere fact of information traveling up and down the line was rea.s.suring.

But there was something that the young engineer had said. . . .

"Hydroxy?" Ahira asked.

"Righta"just elementary electrolysis. Pour a direct current through a tub of water, collect up the bubbles with a nice blown-gla.s.s rig, and then run the ga.s.ses through a compressora""

"Electric motor?"

"Next year; right now, it's literally horsepowered. In any case, we squeeze the gla.s.s into bra.s.s bottles, and we've got bottled ga.s.ses."

"I could have guessed that."

"Eh?"

"If you put some gas in a bottle, it's bottled gas."

"All sorts of uses for that," Riccetti said. "You can get a very hot welding flame with hydrogen alone."

"I know; nice." Ahira nodded.

"Wait until next yeara"if we've got the valve problem solved. We may have electric lightsa"Aeia, of all people, pointed out how she could give night cla.s.ses to farmers if we had decent lighting."

Aeia . . . Ahira smiled.

The first time he'd seen Aeia, she'd been a badly brutalized little girl who had been rescued by Karl, Walter, and Chak from a slaver; she was skinny, k.n.o.bby-kneed, and homely.

The last time he'd seen her, she was lovely, almost ready to burst into her prime as a woman. He was willing to bet heavily that by now she was a treat for the eyes.

"How's she doing?"

"Good, but . . . I don't think we're going to have her around much longer." Riccetti shook his head. "It may not be long at all. Don't you believe that Bren Adahan is here just to help Valeran keep an eye on Jason. Or learn from me, despite his sincere smile. He's chasing her, and hard."

"You disapprove?"

"Not really." Riccetti sat silent for a moment before answering. "I just wonder about ulterior motives. Including my own; she's a h.e.l.l of a schoolteacher."

"Good point." Being married to the emperor's daughtera"even an adopted daughtera"was hardly a bad political move for a conquered Holtish baron. Of course, marriage to Adahan would mean that Aeia would have to leave Home, and maybe Lou was just suspicious because he wasn't all that thrilled with that idea.

Ahira would have to talk to her. "And how are things political?"

"No problem." Riccetti shrugged. "I've been having Petros handle most of the local politics for mea"and as far as Khoral goes, all I have to do is delay wootz shipments whenever he makes annexation noises. Only trouble's been with the raiders."

Ahira didn't like the sound of that. "Bad?"

Riccetti shrugged. "More of too much of a good thing. With the way that we've cut into the guild in the vicinity, it's hard to find caravansa"some of the raiders are giving up on the life, taking up farming or mining." He shook his head. "Others drink too much. We had a murder earlier this year. Couple of Daven's men tried to extort some money out of a farmer, and killed him when he said no."

That sounded stupid; at Ahira's puzzled look, Riccetti shook his head. "No, I don't think they intended to; they were just trying to rough him up." He shrugged. "Didn't make much difference when they were dancing on the end of a rope." Riccetti took a long pull at his beer. "I can still see their faces, Ahira, still . . ." He slapped himself on the knee. "But we've got toa""

He cut himself off as the rattling of the telegraph took up a more insistent clamor. "That's my call; hang on a second." He walked over and tapped out a quick tattoo on the bra.s.s telegraph key.

At the clattering response, his face whitened. "s.h.i.t. Did you hear that?"

"I don't know Morse, Lou."

"Oh. Sorry." Riccetti shook his head. "We've got a messenger from Khoral. There's been a slaver raid in Therranj . . . numbers to followa"I think that's Artyn, rushing the elf alonga"three days ago. Major raid . . . they hit a baronial capitol hard, took treasure and slavesa"elves and humans. Khoral's soliciting our help. We can keep the treasure; he just wants the raiders punished and the elves freed."

Riccetti nodded to himself. "The old elf is learning. He can afford to lose a few pounds of gold to us more than to let them get away with a raid."

Ahira bounced nervously in his chair. "And what does he use for soldiers? Marshmallows?"

Riccetti shook his head. "Most of his troops are on the Melhrood border, not dispersed along the west. He is antic.i.p.ating trouble with Melhrood; he wasn't looking for an attack from the westa"we've got a peace treaty with Therranj. You started the negotiations for it, remember?"

"Yeah, a treaty. Not a mutual a.s.sistance pact. Mmm . . . still, it is slavers and all. . . ."

"Exactly." Riccetti looked at Ahira. "The only difficulty is, what with a lot of Daherrin's people up in the mines, we're deficient in manpower."

Ahira snorted. Riccetti was sounding more and more like a bureaucrat. "You mean you don't have enough warriors handy."

Riccetti glared at him. "It'll take at least a couple of days to bring them out and get them all organized; we'll have to send runners, since we haven't strung the telegraph wire that far."

Ahira walked over to a sideboard and uncorked a bottle of Riccetti's Best, tilting it back for a long swallow. The fiery liquor burned its way down his throat. "Okay. What can you do?"

"Maybe I could spare a hundred warriors, but a lot of them would be fairly inexperienced."

"Unblooded. That's not good."

Riccetti jerked his thumb toward the telegraph. "I don't know the size of the raiding party, but it's not going to be any smaller than a hundred. I just hope it isn't a lot larger."

He paused expectantly.

Deep inside, the thought of violence still frightened Ahira as much as it always did, save for the times when his rare berserker rages washed such feelings away in a red flood.

But he just shrugged. "You could use an additional dozen or so? Thirteen blooded dwarves, plus Walter." If there was a better recon man than Walter Slovotsky, Ahira had never even heard legends of him.

Riccetti looked at him for a long moment. "I think so." He tapped a rapid message on the key, then turned back to Ahira. "I'm ordering horses, weapons, and supplies for a party of a hundred and twentya"half of the scouts are to be diverted to finding the raiding party. And a war council. Petros, Bast, Daherrin, Daherrin's second, you, me, Slovotsky. Hmm . . . I'll add Valeran, Bren, Jason, Aeiaa""

"Why Jason? Why Aeia, for that matter?"

"She's got as good a head on her shoulders as anyone I know. And he is Karl's heir; he's got to find out how to do things like this."

"Then it's on?"

Riccetti shook his head and momentarily chewed on his lower lip. "All that's on is a war council." He tapped on the key again. "For the time being."

Walter Slovotsky held his peace through most of the discussion. Everyone was talking about whether they should send a raiding party, and Walter wasn't interested in arguing over closed cases. It was clear from the start that Lou was going to dispatch a raiding party after the slavers, but was letting everyone burn out his concerns while the team's equipment was being loaded.

Slovotsky was impressed. Riccetti was getting clever; it was a trick Lou had probably picked up from Karl, and one Karl had picked up from Walter.

The counterraid was a necessity, both political and financial. For one thing, local raiding-team pickings had been too thin for too longa"Daherrin's team hadn't hit on a good slaver caravan for better than a year, and many of his men and dwarves had taken up mining or cropping to fill in. The thought of a nice slaver caravan, heavily laden with an elf baron's treasury, was irresistible.

It would have been nice if they'd had Ellegon to do a skyside recon, but the dragon wasn't due for several days, at a minimum.

Even that squared nicely with Karl's doctrine, which had always been to try to stage raids just before the dragon's arrivala"Ellegon's arrival as the air cavalry had saved more lives than Walter could count.

Still, some kind of recon was necessary. Walter had a hunch who was going to get to do one, once the slavers were located. That didn't bother him, just as it wouldn't have bothered Paderewski to play a few arpeggios on a piano.

There was one thing that did. . . .

"Loua"is there any chance that this could be some sort of diversion, some sort of trick? Could the guild be trying to divert the Home Guard?"

"There's a theoretical possibility of almost everything." Riccetti considered it for a moment, then shook his head. "But it doesn't look that way."

Daherrin shook his head. "Doesn't matter. We got those cannons we been casting for Karl; there's about seventeen of thema""

"Sixteen," one of the junior engineers corrected. "The new one cracked under test this morning."