Sirna saw another horse-drawn cart with big wooden wheels pull up and cursed to herself at the need to organize another work party to unload it. Then she saw Brother Mytron himself sitting beside the driver. She leaped down the embankment in front of the trench, hiked her skirts above her boots, and ran over to the cart.
"Brother Mytron! Are matters well?"
"I think we lack the necessary time for discussing the basic nature of the universe," Mytron said with a grin. "On a more material plane, I was the last man out of the University. It seemed to me that something important must have been overlooked and sure enough it had." He pointed to the canvas-wrapped bundles in the back of the cart, and Sirna saw the glint of metal mesh in the corner of one. Her heart skipped a few beats until she realized that this mesh was much cruder than the mesh of a Paratime transposition conveyor dome.
"What is it?" Mytron asked, pulling back his cowl. "Lady Sirna, you look as if you'd just spotted one of Styphon's demons!"
"No. Just worried about the real Styphoni devils in human guise only a few marches away."
"Verily," Mytron said, making a circle around the blue star over his chest.
Sirna pointed to the canvas bundles and asked, "What are they?"
"Two of the wire screens for the papermaking. I don't know how anyone came to overlook them. But there they were in one corner, all ready to be carted away and melted down by the Holy Host as demonical. We loaded them in the cart and were just turning around when we saw Nostori cavalry coming back in a rush. I decided they must know something we didn't and had the driver whip up the horses."
"Dralm and Tranth bless you for that, Brother." Sirna cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted. "Urig! Bring three men out here. Another cart to unload."
While Urig was rounding up his work gang, Sirna told Mytron that the other refugees from the University were safely bedded down in an empty storeroom. Then she asked about the battle.
"It hadn't started yet when I passed through our army. They were all drawn up, with King Kalvan and Count Phrames on the right, Prince Ptosphes on the left and more guns than I've ever seen in the center. I heard that Kalvan has plans for those guns and that Captain-General Chartiphon, with help from General Alkides, will command the center. I'm afraid I have no idea what the Great King's plans are-the gods didn't make me a man of war. I'm honest enough to be grateful that I'll be spending the next few days watching over Queen Rylla."
"Is her time near?"
"The chief midwife says so, and who am I to argue with a woman of fifty winters at that art? She also says the baby is coming early, which is not so good."
Sirna whistled. That could be a real problem with no creche wombs or even an incubator. No wonder that contraceptive implants for women were a necessity for outtime University work.
"Will the baby be all right?"
"The chief midwife appears to believe so."
"But would she dare say otherwise about the Great Queen and her child?"
Brother Mytron looked perplexed. Shrugged his shoulders and said, "Amasphalya would not have it otherwise! She would speak her mind to the Red Hand if they were to accost her."
Sirna laughed; this Amasphalya sounded like a real harridan-maybe Rylla had finally met her match. She hoped the old dragon was as good as Mytron believed. She couldn't even imagine the pain of having a child die in childbirth; maybe that was why Sirna had never considered a live birth even when her husband pressed for it-they were all the rage ten years ago among the University elite.
"Hey!" a voice shouted from beyond the cart. "Either move that Dralm-blasted cart on or bring it over here and join the circle."
A mounted man was riding across the field toward the wagon, waving a cattle whip. "The Great King gave orders to-oh, your pardon, Brother Mytron!" he finished in an entirely different voice.
Sirna swallowed a laugh. Brother Mytron grinned. "In fact, after I get a horse from the stable, I'm on my way to Tarr-Hostigos to see the Queen."
"May the true gods give Her Majesty a safe birthing and an heir for the Great Kingdom," the trooper said. Then he turned his horse and rode back toward the huge circle of wagons, carts and baggage that penned in all the refugees' cattle. They were no longer bellowing as loudly as they had at dawn, but as it grew hotter an unmistakable smell was creeping across to the Foundry. Next year some Hostigi farmer was going to have at least one field very well fertilized.
"Add your prayers to his," Mytron said softly. "Much of the luck of Hostigos rides with our Rylla, may the Allfather keep her safe."
Sirna swallowed a sudden lump in her throat, then nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She cleared her throat and turned to meet Urig and his men. "Take these bundles from the cart into the driest corner of the new storehouse and wrap them well."
Urig looked dubiously at the wire mesh. "Is it-that a weapon?"
"It is something that the Great King thinks may become a weapon in time, but only against his enemies and the enemies of the True Gods."
Urig nodded, with an if-you-say-so-Mistress expression on his face, then started shouting to his work party.
That was only partly true, Sirna realized, or at least only partly true in the short run. If Kalvan succeeded in inventing paper and following it up with printing, the processes wouldn't remain secrets for long. Styphon's House could print its propaganda just as enthusiastically as its enemies. In the long run, though, Kalvan was working toward mass literacy and mass education, which were the most potent enemies of superstition and ignorance-and they were his worst enemies.
While the cart was being emptied, Mytron left on a small horse, waving farewell. Sirna made a Grefftscharri gesture of aversion. She didn't know whom she was trying to save from bad luck, but there seemed to be a lot of it going around, rather like fleas…
"You made that gesture as if you believed it," said a voice behind her.
Sirna whirled, ready to shove Lathor Karv into the nearest trench if he were mocking her tolerance toward the Zarthani. Instead she saw Aranth Saln, and she couldn't find anything to say to the expression on the Scholar's face.
In any case, before she could have said two words, they both heard a distant dull thudding off in the heat haze toward the southwest.
"Cannon," Aranth said. "That means the main armies are engaged, not just the skirmishers."