Concealed behind a pierced screen on the uppermost deck, he watched as, amidst the usual feverish activity, it was carried down the gangway on the shoulders of a st.u.r.dy Mute and dumped into a handcart. Those following him threw their loads on top then, when the cart was full, it was hauled away into one of the warehouses.

After a bone-shaking ride, the crushing weight that had threatened to suffocate Clearwater was removed.

Several more stops and starts followed. Voices and footsteps came and went. Clearwater felt the cart move off again. It rattled over cobbled streets, then the bundle of furs in which she lay hidden was hoisted on to another strong back. She felt herself being carried up a flight of stairs and was once again dumped unceremoniously, this time on to a floor. Despite the thick coc.o.o.n of furs, the impact drove the breath from her body. Doors slid shut and were barred, making it clear that her period of incarceration was not yet over. Even so, she was relieved to be back on dry land.

Eventually the door opened again and she heard the familiar sing-song voices of Su-Shan and Nan-Khe. They untied the bundle of furs and Clearwater emerged to find herself in another windowless room. It was, however, larger and better furnished than the cabin which she had occupied on the wheelboat and which, for the last three days, she had shared with two severed heads. She had tried to avoid looking at them but the room was so small, they hovered constantly at the edge of her vision. At mealtimes there was no escape: the house-women had been instructed to place her meals on the table between the heads and wait until she had eaten every last sc.r.a.p.

It was not the heads that upset Clearwater. Headpoles were a common sight in any Mute settlement and were the visible proof of a warrior's prowess. The heads of two cloud warriors had been placed on poles outside her own hut in recognition of the part she had played in their downfall. What she found hard to stomach was the hideous way in which the two victims had been mutilated. And that, in turn, reminded her of how the other six had died on the great waterwheel, and the cruel laughter their deaths had provoked.

The Plainfolk did not kill in cold blood, nor did they attack the weak, or defenceless. Where was the honour in that? Warriors of both s.e.xes fought only to defend their turf against rival clans. When it came to killing, the dead-faces were as ruthless as the sand-burrowers. They were two of a kind and both would suffer the same fate when Talisman entered the world like an avenging angel.

And that day would come. Towards the end of the voyage and even now, as she sat imprisoned in another gilded cage, Clearwater sensed that the cloud warrior was already in Ne-Issan. The golden one who had captured her soul was here! Close by to where she now lay! Her mind had picked up the faint vibrations that emanated from his presence reflections of the power she had poured into his bladed quarterstaff to help protect him from the dangers that lay ahead. The stones had not lied. He had returned with death hiding in his shadow and would carry her away on a river of blood.

What had been foretold would come to pa.s.s: the Plainfolk would become a bright sword in the hands of Talisman their Saviour. And that sword would reap a grim harvest under a blood-moon. The weeds and thorns that threatened to choke the seed of the Plainfolk would be cut down.

Their roots would be torn from the earth and consigned to the fire; their ashes would be ground to dust. And from that dust a new generation of Plainfolk would rise, straight and strong as the Heroes of the Old Time. The world would be made whole, the blood would drain from the earth and the land would be green again.

For Jodi Kazan and Dave Kelso, who, along with thirty other renegades, had been captured and traded by the clan M'CalI, the relief at being back on terra firma more than outweighed the harsh treatment meted out by their guards. Like all Trackers, Jodi had been trained to cope with physical violence, constraints and abuse, but an extended sea-journey and the debilitating effects of prolonged motion-sickness had been a nightmare trip into a totally new dimension. For ten days and nights she and the others had sat huddled together on the quivering through-deck of the wheelboat, listening to the rumbling thunder of the paddle wheel and taking turns to be sick in a wooden bucket. Whenever it had fallen to Jodi to empty it into the endless, undulating grey-blue wastes that surrounded them, she had been sorely tempted to follow its contents over the side.

During the voyage, the relatively small number of renegades travelling with the Mute journeymen had been taken away in turn for interrogation. The questions had been detailed and far-ranging, covering everything from their name, rank, number and technical qualifications to the operational capabilities of wagon-trains and the conditions inside way-stations and the underground divisional base that had been their home-station.

The fact-finding sessions were conducted with the same thoroughness as any of the operational debriefings that Jon had attended, but the Iron Masters' information-storage methods were right out of the Stone Age.

Each of the chief interrogator's questions were translated into Basic for the benefit of the renegades; their replies were then translated back into gobbledygook and meticulously noted down by a wizened clerk on sheets of yellowish material resembling plasfilm using a brush and a pot of black liquid. The signs the d.i.n.ks made were as incomprehensible as the sounds they uttered, but Jodi found the whole process fascinating to watch. It might be a crazy way to do things, but the old guy was certainly a whizz with a paintbrush.

At the end of the session a short length of coloured tape had been threaded through a slot in the metal ID plaque that she, and everyone else, now wore fastened round their right arm. When all the renegades on their boat had been processed, Jon and Kelso found they were the only ones with blue tapes. As wingmen, they had always considered themselves something special, but the thought that they had now been singled out from their fellow-breakers made them feel distinctly uneasy about their future prospects.

The port of Kari-faran had marked the beginning of the scenic route that took them across country through a system of locks and ca.n.a.ls. It also marked the end of their period of enforced idleness. Mutes and Trackers were formed into work-parties and herded down gangplanks to help open the lock gates and haul the huge wheelboats through the sections where the gates were bunched close together. Jodi had a hunch the vessels could have manoeuvred under their own steam, but doing it the hard way gave the Iron Masters an opportunity to knock the new batch of 'guest-workers' into shape.

Those who weren't hauling ropes or heaving open lock gates were divided into small groups and made to jog up and down from bow to stern until they had completed ten circuits of the deck. Jodi and the others did this fun-run twelve times in the two and a half days it took to get from Kari-faran to the inland port of Pi-saba. Their wrist shackles and the drag-weight clamped round their right ankle did not make it easy or enjoyable but it did at least give them a chance to get a breath of much-needed fresh air and take a look at the brave new world they were soon to be part of.

The trio of wheelboats reached Pi-saba about four hours before sunset.

There was a lot of traffic on the river . Besides several smaller steam-driven wheelboats, Jodi glimpsed square-sailed barges, shallow-draft ferries and small, one-oared dorys going up and down and back and forth across the waterway. Columns of dark grey smoke drifted up into the sky from an area where there seemed to be several large fires. Finally, the paddles slowed, stopped, then went into reverse.

Ropes were thrown ash.o.r.e and anch.o.r.ed round bollards by teams of waiting men and, after much heaving and shouting, the wheelboats drifted gently into contact with the woven rope b.u.mpers hanging from the wooden jetty.

It was the signal for a mini-horde of white-stripes and boot-licking Mute overseers to go on the rampage. They ran through the closed deck, cracking their whipping-canes across the shoulders of their human cargo, yelling at them to get to their feet and form up in the groups to which they had been allocated.

Having helped to pull the huge wheelboats through the ca.n.a.l system, the Mutes and Trackers were now given the privilege of unloading their cargoes. But first, their wrist shackles were removed. Every item carried aboard at the trading post had been checked, labelled and listed by tally-masters, and now the whole laborious process went into reverse as the bales and bundles were carried down the gangways to be carted away and piled neatly in stone-walled storage units that had curious sloping roofs.

The only overground constructions Jodi had seen before coming to Ne-Issan were the almost featureless way-station bunkers, the forbidding work camps with their towers, traps, and wire cages, and the fortress-like access ramps at places like Nixon/Fort Worth. She had never seen any buildings whose design pre-dated the Holocaust - in this case by several hundred years- and the video archives she could access with her ID card contained no record of them.

The unloading was completed as darkness fell, the final checks and tallies being made by the light of lanterns while the newly arrived additions to the labour force devoured a generous ration of steaming rice, shredded vegetables and meat b.a.l.l.s, washed down with a draught of hot, pale green liquid.

It didn't taste anywhere near as good as java but what the h.e.l.l, thought Jodi, it's no good pining for the tastes of yesteryear. We ain't ever gonna get our lips round a cup of that again.

As she watched the tallymasters and their clerks comparing their stock lists with the bills of lading, Jodi found herself wondering why some bright spark hadn't gotten around to generating electricity. After all, they had steam power, everything she had seen so far had been beautifully made, and the way the clerk had keyed all that data on to the page was proof of their amazing dexterity.

It was really strange. They had all the skills and the tools 'they needed, and it wasn't as if they didn't know it existed. The present batch of renegades were not the first to be interrogated, and the questions she and the others had been asked showed that they were anxious to discover what made the Federation tick.

So how come they were still in the dark ages?

When the brief meal-break came to an end, Mutes and Trackers were ordered to wash their thin metal cups and bowls in big wooden tubs before putting them away in the small cotton bags that had been distributed with the eating utensils. The bags had ties so they could be fastened around the waist. There were no knives, forks or spoons.

You ate with your fingers and licked or drank whatever was left.

The next thing on the schedule was a clothing issue.

The Mutes had been stripped down to a cotton loincloth and their moccasins; the Trackers had been allowed to keep their T-shirts - if they had them - and their camouflage trousers and boots. The night of 10 June 2990 was mild and dry, but they were all issued with ponchos woven from coa.r.s.e strands of jute, wide cone-shaped straw hats, and a thin cotton quilt. As with everything the Iron Masters did, the distribution was smoothly organised, the strange sign and number on their armplate being quickly stencilled on their poncho, hat and quilt as they waited in line to pick them up.

Once they had been kitted out they were ordered to rea.s.semble in their respective colour groups. Being the only blues, Jodi and Kelso decided to stay well behind everybody else. As people milled around in an effort to find their place, they managed to catch sight of Medicine-Hat and several other breakers from Malone's outfit. They exchanged silent but expressive farewells, then stood up straight and tried to fade into the background as the white-stripes began chivvying people into neat lines with their whipping-canes. The canes were made from several thin sharp-sided strips of bamboo bound together to form a flexible rod not much thicker than your little finger. When it landed, it married itself to the curve of your back, transmitting its force along its full length. The edges cut deep into naked skin and it hurt, man, it really hurt.

Encouraged by a chorus of screams, shouts and a flurry of blows, the luckless Mute journeymen and women were formed into a long column and then marched off to whatever fate awaited them. Jodi watched them trudge past but was unable to feel any sympathy for their plight. The lumpheads had been sold down the river by their own kinfolk; the same four-eyed b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who had traded her and the other breakers for a few pots and pans. She had had no choice in the matter, but these guys.

h.e.l.l, you had to be pretty stupid to let someone swing a number like this on you. Serve 'em right.

A masked samurai and four red-stripes approached the goon in charge of the a.s.sembled renegades. Since docking at Pi-saba, the lower echelons of Iron Masters had dropped the Phantom of the Opera routine, exposing their flat-featured, yellowish faces and their curiously shaped eyes.

At first Jodi couldn't figure out why they looked so odd, and then the penny dropped: they had no eyebrows - and the hair the samurai wore wasn't their own.

In the ten miserable days spent at sea, Jodi and the other breakers had learned the basic rules of Iron Master etiquette the hard way. You went down on your hands and knees whenever a samurai came by and you put your nose to the floor and kept it there till he left town. Above all, you never looked 'em right in the eye.

It wasn't exactly a new situation. The Deputy Provos back home regularly roughed up defaulters who came on strong in the eyeball department, but with these high-flyers it was fatal. Federation justice was thought to be swift and tough but it was a slow-motion replay compared to what happened when these d.i.n.ks got on your case. If you stepped out of line that was it, you got it right there and then.

Jodi had seen a breaker and three Mutes get their cards cancelled and, from the few words they had managed to exchange with guys from the other flank boat during the meal-break, it was clear they weren't the only ones. Whatever the treatment being handed out, the d.i.n.ks allowed no protests. They expected total submission, and the best way to stay out of trouble was to walk around with your head permanently bowed. So far it had worked. There had been a few occasions when Jodi had toyed with the suicidal idea of sinking her teeth into the cotton-clad tootsies of the pugnacious pygmy that towered over her, but she had wisely kept her mouth shut.

The red-stripes set down a stepped box in the middle of the a.s.sembly area. The samurai mounted it, surveyed the kneeling renegades, then addressed them in Basic.

'Now you a-SITA!" Everybody sank back on their heels and placed their hands on their thighs. Most kept their eyes down, chins on their chest. Those that didn't got a whip laid across their neck.

'Arr those wiv baroo arma-ribbon wee-rah now stair fo'wah!" Baroo ...?.

Jodi and Kelso exchanged hesitant glances, then leapt to their feet as they saw several white-stripes converging on them with raised canes.

They ran through to the front and knelt, as directed, before the samurai.

'Ah-raise ah-rye han' i-fuh you know how fly-uh sky ma-shin."

Kelso extended a clenched fist With a sinking heart, Jodi did the same.

A similar procedure was employed during training in the Federation to recruit 'volunteers' for s.h.i.tty details like swabbing down the john.

The samurai switched into j.a.panese and issued a string of instructions to his sidekicks. Jodi and Kelso were hauled to their feet and hustled away.

Jodi cursed inwardly. Oh, Dave, you meathead! Fancy telling those d.i.n.ks on the boat you were a wingman! And persuading me to do the same! They'd never have known if you hadn't gone and opened your big mouth. What a dumb thing to do...

The red-stripes ran them at the double down a confusing maze of alleyways, some lit by solitary lanterns, others in darkness. They stopped before a stout door. It was quickly unlocked and they were pushed inside. As they ducked their heads, wooden-soled feet slammed painfully into their backsides, propelling them headfirst on to a pile of straw. The door closed with a bang. A key turned in the lock, bolts slammed home.