Around Town

In Trick’s opinion the town of Harbek Valley wasn’t named very well. Places with valley, gulley or gulch in the name made him think of one or two road towns, population in the hundreds, nestled in the shadow of a sprawling valley. Harbek was a very different kind of place.

For starters the town was at least a dozen streets. It was also protected by a large wall made of a dull sandy colored material that he guessed was the same as the ceramic lid Sari had covered the lumi well with. The color was similar, at least. From the look of things the wall was about eight feet tall and there were towers twice that height spaced along it.

A big telescope lens poked out of the top of each tower. Trick found himself stealing glances at Bertran’s spyglass device, which he was still carrying in a decidedly martial fashion, and wondering what exactly it did. He’d fought three of the strange starsight creatures since arriving on the seventh sphere and they all had the ability to fire beams of energy from their many eyes. If the people of Harbek could do the same with telescopes using lumi it was no wonder they considered the stuff worth so much risk to collect.

And they could do the same thing. Trick knew they could because, before they even crested the hill leaning down into Harbek's titular gulley, they could see the gleaming light of those beams firing back and forth over the horizon. Bertran saw it and motioned for them to stop, scanning the night sky with what he called a lens. Clearly it functioned as a telescope on top of its other uses.

"What do you see?” Sari asked.

"There's at least four of them,” he replied. "Maybe five, but they're moving a lot, it's hard to be sure.”

Bertran lowered his lens, his jaw working in frustration. "The gates will be closed and the barriers illuminated, there's no way back into town right now unless we can get to the reservoir.”

“How does the reservoir help us?” Trick asked.

“It’s well covered by the wall’s lenses so creatures from the dark avoid it,” Sari said. “If we follow the canal in from there the guardsmen will open the portcullis for us and we can get in. There’s just one issue…”

Trick studied the landscape as she spoke, a sinking feeling coming over him. He didn’t see any water. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. The reservoir is on the other side of the town.”

“That it is.” Bertran slung his lens over his shoulder again and indicated the lefthand side of the canyon. “We’ll approach from the opposition side. There’s more scrub on that side of Harbek, we’ll have better odds of going unseen.”

“What do we do if we get seen anyway?” Trick asked.

Bertran gave him a sideways look. “Then you and I will distract the starsight and the women will take the harvest and run for the walls. You’re the fastest, Sari, so don’t wait, not even for Gemma.”

Sari made a small sound at his orders but she didn’t argue with them and, with the veil and all, it was impossible to tell if she was offended or upset. The four of them gathered themselves up and headed off. Trick figured the natural place for him to be was at the end of the line, since he didn’t know where they were going and he had the magic bug killing sword. So he let the others get in front of him.

Along the way he had a great view of the chaos unfolding around Harbek itself. The towers seemed to function in one of two ways. A few fired strobing yellow blasts up into the night followed by a storm of scorching red lines from the other towers that created a roaring noise bordering on thunderous even from a quarter mile away. Every so often counterattacks were fired back from the sky in waves of orange and blue. He wasn’t sure what Bertran meant by illuminated barriers but the starsight attacks seemed to stop before they got down to the walls so Trick guessed he was seeing some kind of energy shields at work.

It would have been pretty if he hadn’t seen those kinds of attacks melt stone just a couple of hours ago. Now it was just spooky.

Turned out Bertran hadn’t been kidding when he mentioned the scrub brush. They worked their way uphill as they got closer to the town and, as they got closer, the plant life went from grass to low bushes to towering hedges that stood a good seven feet high.

Like most of the plants he’d seen so far they had rubbery branches and long, frondlike leaves. They did a really good job hiding the ground from view. So long as you didn’t make the mistake of touching them as you moved around, then they started rustling and waving in a very obvious fashion. That wouldn’t have been an issue except the available space between hedges quickly vanished.

The path Bertran was leading them on quickly became more and more obtuse, to the point where Trick could only keep track of where Harbek was because of all the noise and light coming from that direction. Trick was tempted to ask why they were being so roundabout but he didn’t want to make noise. Besides, the obvious answer was probably correct. He was trying to avoid setting too many of the hedges rustling and possibly attracting attention.

Now Trick didn’t think of himself as an expert on the starsight but he had noticed they had a lot of eyeballs. He didn’t know how sharp their eyes were but presumably they could make up for the distance and the dark through sheer quantity so it was probably best they avoided drawing attention. Not that it mattered.

They’d been picking their way through the hedges for at least twenty minutes, and Trick had just started hearing waves, when a sudden downdraft set the leaves around them shaking. Trick had a pretty good idea what he’d see before he looked up. Sure enough, two more starsight had swooped into view, their eyes all open and burning orange.