David Clarke

The Final Nexus

Chapters 9-12

Chapter Nine

Another two weeks went by. By now I was nicely settled at school and actually learning something, too, and in other circumstances I'd have been happy to stay where I was: I had a number of good friends who were fun to be with, a roof over my head and enough to eat and drink. But I was also separated from my boyfriend and under the twin threats of a return to slavery and being forced to make an unhealthy expedition into the Grey world. And the real problem was that there was nothing I could do about it: any attempt to abscond in this world would be almost sure to result in my recapture, and until a suitable world presented itself up at Stonehenge there was nowhere else to go.

Sam was working very hard on his Arvelan, not only at school but with Rob and Erik in the evenings. I spent some of the time in the evenings playing computer games with Godfrey and the others, but sometimes I wasn't really in the mood for that, and on those occasions I took one of my books up into the attic where I could read undisturbed. I'd gone back to From a Dusty Basement: I was about three-quarters of the way through it by now and I wanted to find out how it ended: sub-officer Boskiss might have started out looking into a long-dormant case, but it had now reared back into life with the discovery that the original murderer was still alive – and now he was aware that Boskiss was after him.

I read on for half an hour or so, completely engrossed, and then I came to a passage that made me sit up and stare: the bad guy, whose name was Seevist, was an Arvelan and so was of course implanted with a chip, and now that Boskiss knew who he was his capture seemed certain: all the police had to do was trace the chip. Seevist was still able to travel because he'd killed a man, extracted his chip and was using that to make purchases, which would be safe enough until the body was discovered. But his own chip was still emitting its signals, as all of our chips did, and that meant that they could be picked up by surveillance drones, which could then pinpoint his position.

But Seevist had thought of a way round that: he'd purchased some lead from a scrap metal dealer – for model-making purposes, he had said – and had used this to make a sort of vambrace for his left arm, because – or so the book claimed – surrounding the chip with lead would prevent its signal from getting out. And in the book it worked: Seevist had been able to leave the city using a train ticket purchased online using the dead man's chip, and although there were surveillance probes covering all the stations in the city, they failed to pick up his chip, registering instead only the dead man's chip, which Seevist was carrying in his pocket.

I slammed the book shut, scrambled back down the ladder, ran back to our room and thrust the book into Declan's hands.

"Page 326," I said. "Would that work in real life?"

Declan read the passage quickly.

"Probably," he said. "I'm not sure that I'd want to bet my life on it, but it sounds entirely possible in theory. Of course you'd need to find the lead: I'm not sure where the nearest scrap metal dealer is, or if he'd have lead available if you did find one. But modelling is a good excuse, even more so for boys of your age."

"In my world criminals quite often strip lead from church roofs," I said. "All we'd need for that would be a ladder."

"You'd need some luck, too," he pointed out. "I don't imagine Aarnist would be happy if you got caught."

"Probably not. I'll just have to make sure I don't get caught, won't I?"

I felt uplifted: okay, there were hurdles to overcome, but at least now I had something I could do to improve my situation. And if by chance Dec could 'persuade' the scientists to reopen the portal to my world I might even be able to get home – or to a Channel port – untraced by Aarnist's probes. If the lead worked, of course…

Sam came in and greeted us both in Arvelan. He was still really enjoying life here: there was so many things to learn and so much new technology to discover – he'd spent a part of the previous day examining the engine of the Home manager's car and trying to find out how it worked, and he was still having enormous fun with computers, both the one at school which was teaching him the language and the games console in Godfrey's room.

He had let the matter of us having sex drop since our conversation two weeks previously, but I was fairly sure that I hadn't heard the last of it, and when he suggested that we should go up to the attic for an hour or so after supper I expected the subject to be raised once more: I was quite sure that he hadn't given up on the idea. But to start with all he wanted to do was for us to get undressed and snuggle up under the blankets, and I didn't mind that at all.

"I really like this world," he said. "There's so much amazing stuff here, things that I never dreamed could exist… are we really going to have to go somewhere else?"

"You might not have to," I said. "Provided we can get you fixed up with some papers… though you'd almost certainly need a chip, too, and I don't know how we could fix that. Without one you'll never have any money… maybe Dec can find a way to get you one, but I expect there's a lot of bureaucracy involved."

"I'm sure Dec could do it – he's incredible!"

By now Sam had seen Dec in action: the twins had been unusually mouthy one evening, and they'd made the mistake of doing it when they weren't wearing their metal bands. Dec had responded by making them strip and then spank each other, quite hard, and Sam had stared at this open-mouthed. And then, just to demonstrate that it worked on people from other worlds too, Dec had made Sam and me strip and spank each other as well, though nothing like as hard. And since then Sam had been full of admiration for our room-mate. Of course it helped that he didn't have any other experience of the Konjässiem, because it meant that Sam wasn't remotely scared of Dec, who he viewed simply as our friend, and Dec loved having two of us who treated him more or less just like any other boy.

"He does have limits," I warned him. "And there are plenty of adult Konjässiem out there, too, and there's no way that Dec could get past them. I really think getting a chip for you could be a problem. Besides, if we do find a way into another world I'd like you to come with us."

"Really? Why?"

"Because you're clever, and you're more of a scientist than either me or Dec, and I think you'd be able to help us if we got into trouble anywhere."

"Oh. Is that the only reason?"

"Well… no, obviously not. You're our friend, Sam, and we both really like you."

"Really? You're not just saying that because you think I might be useful? I mean, I know you'd rather be with your boyfriend than with me…"

"Stefan's not here, so that's hardly an issue, is it?"

"No, he isn't. So why can't we do… you know, what Godfrey and Peter do? It might be years before you see Stefan again…"

"Go, on, Sam, cheer me up, why don't you?" I said.

"Sorry, I didn't mean… but you know it's true, don't you? So why can't we?"

"Well, first because it might not be long at all before I see him again. But also because it would hurt you, Sam, and I don't want to do that. The first time Stefan did it to me it was painful, even though we'd been building up to it for several months. And if you ask Peter I'm sure he'll tell you that the first time Godfrey did it to him it hurt a lot, too. The only reason it doesn't hurt him now is because he's used to it: they do it three or four times a week, so he's adjusted to it. You'd need to get yourself ready over a period of time before doing it for real."

"But if I'd done whatever I need to do to prepare, could we actually do it?"

"Well… maybe. It's difficult, Sam: I love Stefan and I don't want to do anything that could hurt him. But I like you a lot, too, and I suppose it would be nice if we could…"

"Great! Thanks, Jake!" he interrupted, hugging me hard. "So what do I need to do to get ready, then?"

"Well, you need to get used to having things… you know, inside you," I said. "Stefan and I practised with pens and different-sized candles, and sometimes things like carrots…and you need lots of lubricant, too, otherwise even small things hurt. I expect Godfrey has a favourite lubricant – we can find out later. And probably Peter can tell you a bit about what you have to do to help get it in…"

"Terrific! I'll talk to them before we go to bed tonight, then!"

It was hard not to be affected by his enthusiasm, and so when he hugged me again I hugged him back. And I hoped that in any case the preparation would take a number of weeks, and that might give me a chance to find a way back to my world and so to Stefan. And if it didn't, well, would it really be so very bad to do it with someone else, especially if it was someone I liked as much as Sam?

I decided that the best thing to do would be to wait and see what happened and not to worry about it. Maybe our next visit to Stonehenge would be successful…

I didn't see very much of Sam over the course of the next week: when he got home from school he would either continue his Arvelan lessons or would spent time visiting Godfrey and Peter, and I thought it might not only be video games that he was interested it. But he didn't say anything about it and I didn't ask.

The half term holidays were approaching: there would be no school during the week beginning February 21st and we had decided to go back to Stonehenge on the Monday. We hoped that at least one or two more portals might have been opened since our previous visit, and that maybe we would get a chance to slip through one while nobody was looking.

I'd managed to buy some lead. It had been easier than I had expected: there was a scrap metal dealer in Sarutaale, but there was also a shop that dealt in toys and models, and they sold lead precisely for the purpose of making models. It wasn't even all that expensive. I'd bought enough to make vambraces for me and for Declan, but at that point I discovered there was a problem.

"It's metal," Dec pointed out. "If I have that much metal wrapped around my forearm it's going to interfere with my control. Maybe not too much, but it will still get in the way, and I need to be at my best if there are more than three people in the circle when we get there. So I won't be able to put this on until after we're safely through a portal. And it'll have to come off again if we run into trouble on the other side, too."

"Well, okay, but I think you should wear it for as long as possible after we go through. And it will help if we can get well away from the circle before they start sending probes out, too."

"If you insist. But I can almost guarantee it's going to give me a headache."

On the Saturday morning Sam grabbed me after breakfast and took me up to the attic, and today he was carrying a little bag with him. We undressed and lay down on the mattress, and he pulled the blankets over us and wriggled close to me as usual.

"So where have you been all week?" I asked him. "I've hardly seen you. Your Arvelan must be getting really good, the amount of time you're spending on it."

"I'm obviously not doing that well, because last night Erik had to spank me again. Mind you, I think he might have done that just because he enjoys it, not because I was making lots of mistakes. But, to be honest, I haven't just been working on my Arvelan this week: I've spent a while talking to Godfrey and Peter, too, and watching them… you know, doing it. It's strange watching them, because Godfrey teases Peter all the time and bosses him about, too, and Peter never argues – he just does whatever Godfrey tells him to. But it's really obvious how much they like each other. I think if you tried to boss me about like that I'd get really annoyed, but Peter doesn't seem to care at all.

"Anyway, Peter said that you're right about it hurting the first few times, and he thinks it would be sensible to do what you said to get me ready. So I've been collecting candles."

He opened his bag and showed me a collection of candles and a little jar of something that I assumed was the Arvelan equivalent of Vaseline.

"So I thought we could start today," he went on, selecting the smallest candle, which was no more than half an inch across. "Could you do it for me, please?"

So for the next fifteen minutes or so I taught him what I knew about candles and their use in the field of human sexuality, and at the end of that period he got me to lie on my back and then lay on top of me, exactly as we had done on the train.

"Thanks, Jake," he said, kissing me. "That didn't really hurt at all. If we keep doing that for a couple of weeks I should think I'll be ready to try doing it for real."

"Are you sure you wouldn't prefer to start by doing it with someone else?" I suggested. "The twins, perhaps – they're smaller than me. Or Peter."

"If Peter did it I wouldn't even feel it," he scoffed. "He's tiny – in fact I think Erik's is bigger, judging by the way his trousers stick out when he spanks me. It's hard to believe that Peter is older than me. Besides, I don't want to do it with anyone else. Like you said, it's special, and you should only do it with someone you really like, even if that means I need to practise for a bit longer with candles first. Actually, waiting a bit longer will make it more special when we finally do it – it'll be like looking forward to getting presents on your Name Day."

"Then perhaps we should wait until your Name Day?" I suggested.

"No, thanks – that's ages! I won't be fourteen until Fruit Eight and we're barely into Wind. It's over five months, and I don't want to wait that long. What about your Name Day? I suppose we could do it then if it's soon."

"My birthday is about three and a half months away," I told him.

"That's too far off, too. Of course, we don't have to wait for a special occasion…"

"Perhaps we can celebrate escaping into another new world," I said. "We're going back to the Circle on Monday. Maybe they'll have found us a nice new world."

"Oh, right." Sam really didn't seem enthusiastic: he was still far too engrossed in the wonders of this world. "Well… if we do go through and the new one isn't as good, we can come back here, can't we?"

"We can, but I really don't want to have to," I said. "I want to be a long way away from here before Gordiss and his friends find the Grey World. After that I'd probably lose you anyway, because I can't imagine for a moment that Aarnist will let either you or Dec come with us. And if I once set foot into the Grey World I'll have to be incredibly lucky to get out alive."

"Then I'll be happy to stay even if the new place isn't as good as this," he said. "I don't want to lose you, Jake, and I definitely don't want you to get hurt."

"Thanks, Sam. But we won't go through at all unless there's a world that looks at least halfway decent, so maybe you'll be able to stay here for a bit longer after all."

On the Monday Sam, Declan and I caught the bus to Stonehenge. This time we were prepared: we'd packed a couple of bags with a change of clothing and a sleeping bag each, together with some food and water, a map of the area and a compass. I'm sure that Stefan would have found room for a lot more equipment, but I didn't want the bags to be too big: it would have looked very suspicious if we'd walked into the circle looking as if we were heading off on an expedition up the Amazon or something. So we hung the larger bag on the back of Declan's chair, where it would be fairly inconspicuous, and I carried the other one, which was small enough not to look too out of place.

Once again we checked that there were no Konjässiem in sight before we entered the circle, and once again our luck was in: the scientists were busily setting up a new set of connections, and the slaves were at work shifting one of the smaller lintel stones.

"Morning!" I greeted the scientists. "Got a new one?"

"We hope so," said Gordiss, looking up. "The problem is that at least one of the instruction sheets is missing, so we're having to use guesswork now, and that hasn't been altogether successful lately. We've only managed to open two more portals since your last visit. The one we opened yesterday doesn't look very promising: the landscape is very bleak and the probe hasn't found any people yet – though of course if the world is uninhabited I suppose it'll be a good source of minerals. But really I don't like the look of it. The other one we found seems better: at first we thought it was the same as World Twenty, which is the one with the nomads. But although there don't seem to be a lot of people in it, there are signs of civilisation: there are ruins of quite large settlements, and there was some sort of large vessel crossing the sea when our probe went that way a couple of days ago. That suggests a reasonable level of technology.

"You can come and have a quick look through the portals if you like. The better one is World Eleven, and the nasty-looking one is Twenty-Three. Come and have a look at Eleven first."

He led us over to Arch Eleven and took us through it, and we found ourselves in a lush green field with five connected arches behind us, the fourth of which, counting from the left, was the one we had come through. The air smelled clean and fresh, with no hint of pollution.

"Judging from the ruins, I'd say that this world has been through some major disaster and is now recovering nicely," said Gordiss. "There's no sign of heavy industry, but the ship I told you about suggests that this is more advanced than the nomadic place. All right, now come and see what you think of the one we found yesterday."

He led us back into the interior of Stonehenge and took us across the circle to Arch Twenty-Three.

"This one doesn't look very different," he told us, hesitating on the threshold, "but… well, see what you think."

He stepped through and we followed him. And immediately I noticed a change in the weather: in the world where we were living it was a little chilly, but the sky had been largely free of clouds. In World Eleven it had been warmer, the sun shining brightly on what felt like a fine spring morning. But here the sky was heavily overcast, and there was a cold wind sweeping across the plain. The landscape was bleak: a short distance away we could see a thin belt of small, deformed-looking trees, twisted into weird shapes by the wind, and the grass at our feel looked brown and unhealthy, with white blotches on some of the leaves, and there were strange bald patches where nothing grew at all scattered here and there across the field.

As we watched something skittered into one of these bare patches about twenty yards away from us. It looked most like an albino lobster, though it was larger than any lobster I had ever seen, being close to three feet long. It didn't seem interested in us, instead facing towards the misshapen trees and clicking its left-hand pincher unrhythmically.

There was a sudden break in the clouds, revealing a sky that was the dark hue usually seen around sunrise or sunset, and in the sky was a squashed orb of a deep red colour. It was less than half the size of the moon, but was far too large to be any other celestial body – at least, any that I knew about. The clouds swept back in, hiding it from sight, but that brief glimpse was enough to show us that this world was somewhere far removed from our own.

And then I saw something moving about a hundred yards away, beyond the trees. At first sight it was just a couple of huge bubbles, though they glowed with a pale inner light, and the surface of each seemed to shimmer and swirl. Three or four more appeared, joining together with the two that were already there. The lobster-thing clicked its pinchers once more and then turned and scurried away into the grass, and I didn't blame it: there was something altogether unnatural about the bubbles, and the more I looked at them the more wrong they appeared.

More of them appeared, swirling around the others in intricate patterns. And then one of them seemed to dissolve into what appeared to be a mass of tentacles, and that was more than enough for me.

"Let's go," I gasped, and I fled back to the arch, not even waiting to see if the others were following me. I didn't know what those globes of light were, but I didn't want them anywhere near me: there was something absolutely repellent about them. And clearly the others felt the same way, because as soon as we were back inside the circle Gordiss summoned the slave who drove the fork-lift truck and ordered him to break the circuit that kept the portal to World Twenty-Three open.

"What was that thing?" asked Sam.

"Which?" asked Declan. "The shining globes or the sea-creature?"

"Both," said Sam. "I've never seen anything like either of them. And I don't want to again, either: there was something really nasty about them, especially the light things."

The slave and his colleagues lifted the inner lintel off its uprights and the portal flickered for a moment and then disappeared, and at that I felt a lot better.

"I don't know where that was," I said to Gordiss, "but I'd suggest you don't open that one again."

"I agree with you," said the scientist, looking shaken. "I have never encountered anything like that – it looked harmless enough, but there was a feeling of… this isn't very scientific, but I think I'd use the word 'evil' about it. I imagine Aarnist will at least want another probe or two sent through, but I'll try to persuade him not to send any people through – and I'll get him to close it again as soon as possible, too. Anyway… I imagine you've seen enough for now?"

"Yes, I should think so," I said. "Give us a couple of minutes to recover from that and we'll go. You might as well carry on with whatever you were doing before – thanks for taking the time to show us what you've found. We'll probably come back in another two or three weeks, unless you find the reptiles before then, of course."

Gordiss waited until the lintel was safely on the cradle of the fork-lift truck and so completely disconnected from its uprights and then headed back to the control stone, where his colleagues were still working on the next combination they wanted to try. The slave with the fork-lift trundled after him.

"Come on," said Declan quietly, heading in the general direction of Arch Eleven. "I assume you want us to give this one a try?"

"Yes, I should think so," I said, following him. "If it has a cross-channel ferry service, it's good enough for me."

"Right. Get ready," said Declan. "In a moment they'll be too busy to bother wondering where we went…"

As I watched the fork-lift truck suddenly veered to one side and the lintel-stone slipped from its cradle and crashed onto the trestle-table, scattering papers and metal sheets. The scientists leaped out of the way, and while they were picking themselves up, dusting themselves down and trying to rescue their scattered documents the three of us slipped quietly through Arch Eleven and off to one side, where we were safely out of the line of sight from the control stone. We waited for a moment, but nobody shouted at us and nobody appeared through the portal.

"Nice job, Dec," I said, approvingly.

"Thanks. I only needed to pop into the driver's head for a moment and get him to jerk the steering-wheel… and I also dropped the thought into Gordiss's head that it might be better to close all the portals when they stop work this evening. That wasn't too difficult, either – he was still shaken up by the glowing thing. So hopefully by the time Aarnist realises we've gone missing again he won't know where to start looking. And now I suppose you want me to put that chunk of lead on my arm."

"Yes, I think we should, at least until this evening. If you're right they'll recall the probes before closing the portal, and after that we won't have to worry, but I'd hate to get picked up today. In any case I don't want to wear it for too long – I don't know whether having it against your skin could have an effect, but I do know that lead is poisonous if you swallow it, and I want to get rid of it as soon as we can."

I delved into my bag and produced the two flat sheets of lead I'd prepared, wrapping one around my own left forearm and helping Dec to put the other around his right arm – his chip had been implanted on that side because his left arm was to all intents and purposes useless. And it was damned heavy, too: I hoped I wouldn't have to wear it for too long.

Sam, of course, didn't have a chip, and so he was able to skip along through the grass, whistling cheerfully, his arms unencumbered. On the other hand, it was nice to have a cheerful Sam alongside us: I needed something to brighten me up after that other world.

"What do you suppose had happened in that other place?" I asked Dec. "Could it have been the effects of radiation, or something? I know that's supposed to produce mutant creatures."

"I suppose that could explain the thing with claws," said Declan, "but that other thing was far too weird. Maybe we were hallucinating, or something: maybe there was some sort of poison gas in the air."

"I think the probes would have picked it up if there had been," I said. "They always send probes through first, and if there'd been anything nasty in the air they'd have closed the portal straight away, like they did with the other worlds that didn't look safe. Maybe there was something in the grass that affected us, or perhaps the lobster thing had some sort of defence mechanism – a gas that causes hallucinations or something… anyway, we're not going back there, so there's no need to worry about it. All we have to do is to keep heading south-east until we reach the coast and then follow the shore until we find the ferry-port."

"How far is the sea from here?" asked Sam.

"I'm not sure. I should think it's well over ten miles, and it might be as much as twenty, so we might not get there today. I'm fairly sure it's around eight miles from Stonehenge to Salisbury and then about another ten to Southampton. But with any luck we'll find somewhere to stay before it gets dark, and if all else fails we've got our sleeping-bags – and it doesn't look as if it's going to rain."

We walked onwards, and the further away we got from the monument the happier I felt, even though the lead was making my left arm feel uncomfortable. After we'd been walking for about an hour we stopped in a small wood to have something to eat, and then we set off again. So far we had seen no signs of human life, not even so much as a track through the grass, but that didn't worry me too much: even in my own world there weren't too many people living on Salisbury Plain.

Shortly after we stopped for lunch we came to a river, and this did present us with a problem because there was no way across it other than swimming, an option that clearly wasn't open to Declan. I suppose we could have towed him across, but getting his chair across without shorting out the electrics would be impossible unless we built a proper raft, and I thought it would be better just to follow the river southwards until we came to some sort of habitation, where we should be able to borrow a boat, or where someone would have built a bridge. So we walked on, following the river as it wandered along towards the sea.

I would have to admit that my confidence was slipping a bit by the time we stopped again at five o'clock, because although we'd been walking for around six hours we still hadn't found any signs of human habitation. Okay, we weren't moving all that quickly, but I should think we were doing at least two and a half miles an hour, and that meant that, even allowing for rest breaks, we were now well to the south of where Salisbury stood in our worlds. And it seemed odd that nobody had chosen to settle in a fertile river valley like this.

As it began to get dark we found a patch of woodland to spend the night in, and here Sam demonstrated that we had definitely done the right thing by bringing him with us, because he knew how to make a basic shelter out of interwoven pieces of wood. By the time he'd finished we had something that would give us some protection from any possible wind and rain. We thought we'd be warmer if we zipped the sleeping-bags together, but although it was possible to combine two of them we couldn't connect them to the third one. So in the end we opened the third one out and used it as a groundsheet and the three us squeezed into the double bag which we had arranged on top of it. I didn't think we'd get a lot of sleep, but it was definitely cosy.

And the next thing I knew it was morning, with the sun just starting to filter through the trees.

"Sleep all right?" asked Declan.

"Perfectly. I've no idea how, because we can scarcely move, but I slept like a log."

"Of course you did. I shut you both down as soon as you got halfway comfortable. And once you both stopped wriggling about I slept fairly well myself – though I'd prefer a slightly more comfortable bed next time."

"I'll see what I can do," I said. "We'll reach the coast today, and I'm sure there will be people there – there are always fishing settlements on the coast. And of course we know there's a ferry-port somewhere."

"Actually, we don't," he corrected me. "What Baldy-bonce actually said was that the probe had seen a large vessel crossing the sea. That doesn't mean it's a regular service, just that there was one ship out there somewhere."

"Yes, but a large ship still means civilisation," I pointed out. "It's just a question of finding it. I'm telling you, once we reach the coast it'll be straightforward."

I climbed out of the sleeping bag, got dressed, went for a pee and then checked our food supply, which wasn't quite as extensive as I would have liked it to be. I hoped I was right about there being some sort of settlements on the coast, since otherwise we'd be having to catch our own food within a day or so.

Sam woke up a few minutes later, and once he was dressed we helped Dec to get up and put his clothes on, packed away the sleeping-bags, had a less-than-satisfactory breakfast of a dry roll and some water, and then set out once more. We left the little wood behind and continued to follow the river as it ran on through more open country, though I'd worked out that the New Forest couldn't be too far ahead, assuming that it existed in this world. But before we reached it we ran into civilisation, though not in any form that I had imagined.

We'd been walking for about two hours and were just coming up on a patch of woodland off to our right when a troop of horsemen suddenly appeared around the edge of the wood. They apparently saw us at the same time as we saw them because they came galloping towards us.

"Quick, Jake, get the lead off my arm!" cried Dec, and I rushed to his side, pulled his jacket off and rolled up his sleeve.

"Never mind," he said, in a different tone of voice, and I looked up and saw that the horsemen had almost reached us – and that they were all wearing helmets, which meant that Dec wouldn't be able to do anything to them even if I did remove the lead. The helmets were a strange shape, with red fur around the rim and a spike on the top: they looked more like something from a history book than anything that might be worn by a modern soldier.

The riders were all carrying lances, though they also had rifles tucked into holsters attached to their saddles, so perhaps they weren't as primitive as I had first thought. The leader was a short guy with a brown face, and as he reined in his horse five yards away he addressed us in a language that meant absolutely nothing to me. I replied first in English and then in Arvelan, but both times he shook his head in a clear gesture of incomprehension. So I went through my entire repertoire of languages – French, Kerpian, Elsassisch, Sanöljan and even Grey, but none of them elicited even a flicker of recognition.

The short guy jumped down from his horse, handed his reins to one of his colleagues and came towards us, and now I could see that he was just a kid, probably not a lot older than me. He didn't seem to think we posed any sort of a threat to him, as he just strode past me and started examining Dec's chair. Dec made the chair move forward a foot or so, and the kid jumped back in surprise, and then grinned widely, saying something in his incomprehensible language. Then he made a gesture to Dec that was a clear invitation to repeat the performance, and so Dec rolled the chair forward a bit and then off to one side. The kid positively clapped his hands, beaming at us, and then surprised me again by lifting his left hand to his face, pressing a button and speaking into what was clearly a communication device strapped to his wrist. A voice emerged from it and the kid spoke again, this time quite emphatically. He asked one of his colleagues a question, and the rider consulted a device attached to his horse's saddle and gave an answer, which the kid repeated into his radio. He received a brief reply and lowered his arm, held up a hand to us in a gesture that clearly meant 'Wait'' and got back onto his horse.

Nothing happened for some ten minutes, and then there was a sound from behind the horsemen and a vehicle came into view. It was like an army half-track but without the wheels at the front – or perhaps you could say it was like an open-top tank without a gun. And it was travelling quite fast for a tracked vehicle, at least as fast as the Grey tank Alain had driven during our previous journey.

This drew to a halt beside the horsemen and we were ushered aboard, though before I got on the kid leaned down from his horse and clamped a sort of thick metal bracelet around my upper arm. Sam and I helped Declan into the open area at the back, and then we went back and got his chair aboard. The driver, who was sitting in a separate compartment at the front, turned the vehicle round and headed back the way he had come with the horsemen trotting along behind us.

I suppose that by this point I was so used to being taken prisoner or arrested – by the Greys, by Aarnist's police, by the Marxists – that I was getting almost blasé about it. After all, so far no lasting harm had come to me, and while I had no wish for a return to either shovelling coal or being used for control experiments, somehow this didn't feel quite like that. But my friends hadn't been through this before, and Sam in particular seemed to be on the brink of panic.

"What are we going to do, Jake?" he whispered, his eyes darting about.

"There's not much we can do. What I usually do in this situation is to sit back and see what happens."

"Yes, but what if we're going somewhere bad? Suppose these people have got something to do with those light things from the other world? I don't think I could stand that!"

"I'm sure they haven't. That was a completely different world, Sam."

"Yes, but… they look really primitive. They could be going to do all sorts of bad things with us. Let's run for it!"

"And what about Dec? We can't just leave him."

He bit his lip. "Well, perhaps if I can distract them they'll come after me, and that'll give you a chance to get Dec and his chair out before they come back. Good luck!"

And before I could do anything to stop him he jumped over the side of the vehicle. He fell over as he landed but scrambled to his feet and ran off towards the river, presumably intending to jump in and swim across. But only one horseman went after him, catching up long before he got near the river. The rider jumped down just in front of Sam and hit him, and Sam went down and lay still. The rider knelt down, presumably to make sure Sam was still alive, and then hoisted him across the saddle of his horse and led him back to the vehicle, gesturing for me to come and help get him back aboard.

A minute or so later Sam recovered consciousness and I helped him to sit up. The rider who had recaptured him wagged a finger at him, clearly advising him not to try that again, and then the column moved off once more.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"I think so." He checked that his jaw was still in place. "He could have hit me a lot harder."

"He could have killed you, you idiot! Please don't do that again – we don't want to lose you, Sam."

"All right. I suppose they're not going to kill us, anyway – like you said, he could easily have used his lance…"

And at that point reaction seemed to hit him and he turned and vomited over the side of the vehicle. One of the following horsemen yelled something to the driver and the vehicle stopped. Sam pulled a handkerchief out of his shorts and wiped his mouth, and when the leader trotted alongside to see if he was okay – at least, that's what I thought he was doing – Sam was able to give him a shaky nod of the head. The leader said something to our driver and we set off once more.

I pulled Sam against me, keeping an arm around his shoulders to try to comfort him, and settled back, watching the horsemen as they followed us. I wondered about the strange mix of technologies – cavalry armed with lances on the one hand, radios and vehicles with engines on the other. The boy and his colleagues looked like something from the Middle Ages in their breastplates and strange helmets, but the vehicle we were now in was a modern design. And then we reached our destination and I found myself gawking in amazement.

In front of us was… well, it was clearly a vehicle, because it was moving slowly towards us, but it was huge, about the size of a large cross-Channel ferry. It was silver in colour and curved in shape – I suppose it was a bit like one of those distinctive American caravans made of aluminium, like the ones in the video to Radiohead's Street Spirit, but blown up to the size of a ship and with a flared base. There was a huge Chinese – or possibly Japanese – character painted on the front in red, but otherwise everything about it was silver. As we got closer I could see that it was moving on a large number of caterpillar tracks, like the ones on the vehicle I was riding in but a lot bigger.

As we got closer still I could see that it wasn't quite the perfect silver surface I had thought. Some fairly rough and ready repair jobs had been done in places: there were patches here and there, and dents, and signs of less than perfect riveting jobs. And as we passed around one side of it I could see that there were strange bulges and bumps in places on the hull, as if someone had decided to put in an observation point but hadn't been able to fit it in on the top, or had added the basis for a gun turret but had then discovered that there were no guns available. And the closer we got to it, the less perfect it appeared.

We rode around to the rear, and here there was a ramp leading up inside the machine. Our vehicle went up first and stopped at the far end of what appeared to be a large garage, half of which had been converted into a stable, as the riders followed us in, dismounted and handed over their horses to a gang of stable lads that were ready and waiting to receive them. The boy and his colleagues – and now that they were off their horses I could see than none of them appeared to be an adult – came our way, motioned us to get out of the vehicle and then escorted us through a door, along a corridor, up a flight of narrow stairs (they helped us by carrying Dec's chair) and into a room that looked like… well, a cross between a hospital operating theatre, an electricity sub-station and the Kerpians' language implantation centre. There were a number of what looked like dentists' chairs at one end of the room, and we were installed in these with our arms and legs clamped into place. Next, helmets were brought out, trailing disconcertingly large numbers of cables, and these were put on our heads. Two of the boys clamped metal bands around Declan's and Sam's upper arms – I thought the one who put the band on Sam was the one who had recaptured him when he had tried to run for the river – and then they all trooped out again, leaving just the leader standing next to my chair.

There were some adults bustling about here and there, but they didn't look like doctors because they were wearing a bizarre variety of clothing: woolly trousers tucked into high boots, baggy trousers with soft slippers, big, Cossack-style decorated shirts, something that looked like a Roman toga – and almost all of them had facial hair, huge beards or long drooping moustaches or tiny goatees or big sideburns. And they seemed to be a complete cross-section of races, too, white faces and oriental ones and high-cheeked Slavic ones and the darker South Asian brown of our captor, who was grinning at me again. And the bastard still hadn't taken his helmet off, which meant that there was nothing Declan could do, even though I'd removed his lead arm cover on our way here.

A little bandy-legged guy in a fur hat came across to our boy and spoke to him, and the kid nodded. Fur Hat went over to one of the machines at the side of the room and threw a switch, and I was aware of a tingling in my head. It didn't hurt, but it did feel weird: it was like a tickling inside my head, accompanied by a voice speaking words in several different languages simultaneously. This went on for what seemed an eternity, until suddenly it stopped and was replaced by a low hum with an oscillating tone above it… and then that stopped too. The boy had moved over to the machine and was reading some sort of print-out. He held the paper out to the little guy in the hat and raised his eyebrows, and the man shrugged and nodded.

The kid put down the paper and picked up what was clearly a telephone, hitting a couple of buttons and waiting for a moment. And when he began to speak I found that, although I had no idea what language he was speaking, I could understand him.

"General, it's Xan," he said. "The three I picked up today… we've just run the first test. The older kid and the younger one are both well above average, but the crippled boy is right off the scale, literally. There's enormous potential there… yes, I think so, too… So, complete reconstruction all round, then? Right. I'll let you know."

He put the phone down and walked over to stand in front of me. I wondered what he meant by 'reconstruction' – it sounded a bit like 're-education', which was what Communist dictators used to do with people who disagreed with them, and from what I could remember from my history books it involved all sorts of unpleasantness. I really didn't want to be on the receiving end of that sort of thing at all.

"Good afternoon," the boy said, grinning at me. "Can you understand me? Yes, I can see that you can. Good. At least that means that your brain is compatible with our machines. I did wonder for a moment… anyway, my name is Xan Temur. Welcome to the Horde of General Lee. Sleep well!"

He made a signal to Fur Hat, who pressed another switch, and everything simply faded away.

By now Jake should be used to this sort of situation, but he's going to find this world quite a lot stranger than some of the ones he's been in before.

Chapter Ten

When I woke up I was out of the chair and the helmet had been removed – at least, there was nothing constraining me. But I couldn't see anything, and for a terrifying moment I thought I had gone blind. I sat up – I'd been lying down when I woke up – and clutched at my face, and then I discovered that there were bandages wrapped around my head. I scrabbled about, trying to find the end of the bandage, and someone put a hand on my arm.

"Relax," said a woman's voice in my ear. "You'll be able to take them off shortly. You're perfectly safe. Lie back down and I'll find Xan."

I lay down again, discovering that there was a mound of cushions behind me. I had absolutely no idea of what was going on, but the positives were that I was still alive and that I seemed to somewhere that was warm and comfortable. How long that might last was another matter, but there didn't seem to be much point in worrying about it now.

A few minutes later I felt someone come and sit down beside me.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, and I recognised the voice of the boy who had captured us.

"Fine," I said. "Why is my head bandaged?"

"It doesn't need to be any longer," he said. "Sit up and I'll take it off."

So I sat up again, and this time I felt the bandage being undone and then removed. I opened my eyes and found myself in a darkened… well, it wasn't a room as such because there were curtains all round it rather than walls… perhaps I should call it a cubicle, which contained only the large bed I was lying on and a chest at the foot of the bed. I groped around instinctively, looking for my glasses, but I couldn't find them – and then I realised that I didn't need them, either: I could see perfectly clearly without them. I turned to look at Xan and found him grinning at me again – and now he had finally removed his helmet, revealing that he had very long black hair, piled up on top of his head in a complicated topknot.

"Eye surgery?" I queried. "Why?"

"Because the control helmets won't fit properly if you have those things sitting on top of your ears," he told me. "And because they'd be a damned nuisance in a fight, getting steamed up at the wrong moment or falling off when someone's trying to cut you in half with a pike. Not that you'll have to worry about that for a while…we're pretty sure Khan's mob have crossed the Ditch too, but they don't seem to be anywhere near us. So for now all you need to do is relax. We can start your training tomorrow."

"Training? What training?" I said. "I don't understand half of what you're talking about!"

"No, I don't suppose you do. There's going to be a hell of a lot for you to take in, so it's probably best not to worry about it for now – I'll make sure you get a chance to pick everything up as we go along. Anyway, I'm Xan Temur, as I told you when you got here. That's Xan spelled X-A-N in the western alphabet, even though it's pronounced 'Zhan'. It's a Chinese X, sort of. Who are you?"

"I'm Jake Stone. What is this place?"

"This is the Horde of General Lee. I'll explain all about it later – there'll be plenty of time for that, because I'm assigned to you for as long as it takes. Actually, I claimed you – that's why you're wearing my mark on your arm, to show that you're mine." And he indicated the thick metal bracelet he had clamped around my upper arm.

"Yours?" I said. "As in, your slave?"

He laughed loudly.

"God, no!" he said, once he got his breath back. "We don't have slaves! It's true that back in the old days – the very old days – that might have happened, but not now. No, you're my trainee. It's my responsibility to teach you everything you need to know. Actually, you're my first trainee – I only became band leader a couple of months ago, and you're the first people we've taken since."

"Band leader?" I said.

"Yes – you're now a part of Xan's Golden Riders. Not that we've found much gold to wear yet… still, I'm sure we will eventually.

"Let's back up a bit. So far we've fixed your eyes and dealt with the language problem – and that seems to have gone without a hitch, too. You'll hear several languages here, of course, but you've now got the common tongue – everyone can speak and understand this one. It's what you might call our official language."

"And what is it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, what language is it? I know a bit about languages, but I don't recognise a single word of this one. I've had languages implanted before, so it's no problem using it, but I'd like to know where it comes from."

"It doesn't come from anywhere in particular. It's a sort of combination of bits of several different languages. Every culture we've passed through has contributed to it. The Central System keeps it up to date, and we get monthly update sessions ourselves, because it's a language that is constantly changing. If you want to give it a label I suppose you'd call it Horde Common."

"Right. So if I've had a language implanted and had my eyes seen to… how long have I been here?"

"Six days. The Central System kept your body in full working order while you were asleep, but it would be a good idea for you to get some exercise soon. Maybe we could do something after lunch. Can you ride?"

"What, on a horse? No!"

"Pity. Still, you'll learn. I'll take you out for a ride tomorrow. Today we'll just do a little martial art stuff instead."

"But I can't do that either… don't tell me: I'll learn."

"You certainly will. Are you hungry? I fancy something to eat. Come on."

He stood up, helped me to my feet, opened one of the curtains and led me out into a narrow corridor. And it looked completely chaotic, like pictures I'd seen on the news of refugee camps, with people living on top of each other with only curtains for privacy: there were beds and chests and little else in each cubicle. But the people didn't look remotely like refugees: they seemed completely happy, and they looked well-fed, and some of them exchanged a joke or two with Xan as we went past.

He took me to what appeared to be a small buffet restaurant, grabbing a plate from a pile by the door and heading for the table of food at one side of the room. Here he helped himself to rice, noodles and about three different types of meat. I didn't know what anything was, so I took the same things as he did – I presumed he knew what he was doing. He led me to a small table in a corner and started to tuck in.

"Like it?" he asked, after a couple of minutes.

"Yes, it's great! What is it?"

"That's beef, that's… yes, I'm pretty sure that really is chicken, and the rest is vegetable construct and flavourings."

"I'd have sworn this was real meat," I said, indicating something I'd thought was duck.

"No, that's definitely construct. It's got all the nutrition you need, but it looks most unappetising in its pure form, so the System flavours it and makes it look like meat."

I took another bite, and I'd still have sworn it was duck. "Why do you use any real meat at all if the artificial stuff can taste this good?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I suppose we don't really need to, but our people have a history of raising cattle, and it would be a pity to lose that tradition. And some people think we need to keep eating real meat in order to stay strong. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but I'm happy to eat it, anyway. Now, once we've eaten we need to see about finding you some clothes. The ones you're wearing are about due for a wash, I think."

"Okay. And then can I see my friends?"

"Well… not right away. The pretty one is off with my deputy, and the boy in the chair is still with the medics. But you'll see the pretty one at supper. Why, are you and he partners?"

"No – well, not really. He'd like it if we were, but…"

"Ah. You prefer girls."

"No, it's not that. I like boys, but I have a boyfriend already. He's a long way away, but I still want to get back to him if I can."

"Good. I mean it's good that you prefer boys. I was hoping that I'd read you right… you can tell me about your boyfriend this evening if you like, and about how it is that you and he are not together."

We finished eating and he took me to another room. This one contained a computer terminal, something that looked like an old-fashioned mainframe computer that took up one wall, and a couple of young women who were playing cards and chatting. One of them was nursing a baby at the same time.

"Afternoon, ladies," Xan greeted them. "Who's in the chair?"

"That'd be me," said the one without the baby. She stood up, moved to another seat next to the mainframe, very carefully put a helmet onto her head, flicked a switch on the side of the helmet and then went back to chatting with her friend.

Xan got me to stand at a particular spot against the wall that was marked out with measurements, told me to keep still, went to the terminal and hit a couple of keys. Various things buzzed, a couple of lines of light moved across my body, one horizontally and the other vertically, and then something went 'beep'.

"That's it," Xan told me. "Now we have all your measurements. Give it a moment to access the catalogue… that's it. Now come here, sit down and choose yourself some clothes. Remember, these are clothes for use inside the crawler – the machine will fit you out with some riding kit separately."

It was like being let loose in a fancy-dress shop: there were all manner of styles and colours. But after a moment or two my usual rather conservative personality reasserted itself and I selected a shirt, pair of trousers and shoes not so very different from those I had been wearing when I arrived.

"That's rather boring," commented Xan. "Still, if that's what you like to wear, fair enough. I'll just order you a couple of other things, though…"

He pushed me to one side and tapped in a couple of numbers so quickly that I didn't even get a glimpse of what he was ordering for me. Then he stood up and turned the machine off.

"Thanks, Zuli," he said to the young woman in the helmet, though as far as I could see she had done nothing at all except to sit and talk to her friend.

"The clothes will be with us this afternoon," he told me, leading me back along the corridor. "Now I'll give you a bit of a tour round… except it would be better to start from my room, I think. Come on."

Along another corridor, down some stairs, through another passage and down an even narrower flight of stairs we went, and then through a door and into another section that looked like a refugee camp, only slightly less well organised.

"This is where I live," he said. "The rest of the band are here, too, and we'd like it if you could join us. You can stay where you were this morning if you prefer – there's a bit more space up there, I think – but I'm hoping you'll come in with us."

This was another room full of curtained-off cubicles, and at the far end of the room was Xan's space. This one had a little more furniture – as well as the bed (actually just a mattress on the floor, rather than a proper bed) and the chest there was a desk with an upright chair in front of it, a small sofa, and in the corner was something that I thought was the base unit of a shower but which turned out to be a basic hole-in-the-floor-type toilet. This was completely open, with no partition or even a curtain around it, but I supposed that if this was a one-person cubicle that wouldn't matter much. Except it turned out that it wasn't.

"We'll try to find you a cubicle of your own in this room as soon as we can," Xan told me, "but I'd like it if you could share with me to start with. After all, there's a great deal I have to teach you, and it'll be easier if we're together.

"You'll find your bag in the chest – I'll get another chest brought in for you today, because you'll need it once your clothes get here. Now, let's have that tour I mentioned. Try to remember where everything is – I know it'll be difficult at first, but it won't take long before you'll feel completely at home. Come on."

He led me back through the room and into the corridor beyond, taking the first door on the left into a shower room.

"This is ours," he said. "Don't use the next one by mistake: it's for females, and some of them get a bit annoyed if a man walks in on them. And some of our women carry knives, so you don't want to annoy them."

"Is there a proper supply of water, or are we limited to when we can use this?" I asked.

"No, there's plenty of water, in this country at least. Even in a desert there's enough most of the time – it gets recycled if necessary. Now, if we go up these stairs here we come to our mess hall – it's Mess Hall Three, in case you get lost and have to ask someone. We use this for breakfast and supper – if you're in the crawler and want to eat at midday you use one of the smaller places, like the one we were in earlier. They're mostly on Deck Three, which is the next deck up.

"Most of Deck Six – that's the bottom one – is taken up with the various machine rooms, the ones that deal with harvesting, food preparation and the engines, and some of the Central System computers are down there as well. That's obviously because we want them properly protected if there's an attack. The stables and garages are at the rear of Deck Six, and you'll see those later on, and of course again when we go riding tomorrow.

"Four and Five are mostly accommodation decks. Two and Three are operational, with Central Control on Two, and I'll take you up there later, once your new clothes have arrived – you'll want to look decent to meet the general. And the top deck is armaments, observation and reconnaissance. I think that's where you'll be stationed for inside duty – the report said you'd have the capacity for the main armament, which is quite impressive. I'm up there, too – I deal with spotters, so it'll be good if we're working together."

"I'm sorry, I don't understand that bit," I said. "What do you mean by 'inside duty'? You make it sound as if I've become part of the crew."

"Well, you have. There aren't any passengers on the crawlers, Jake – everyone has a duty of some sort. The System thinks your brain capacity is good enough for an important job, and armaments is a good place to be stationed, because obviously most of the time you're free – it's only when we're fighting that you'd need to be plugged in."

"'Plugged in'? What does that mean?"

"It means connected to the System… look, don't worry about it, Jake. I'll explain it all as we go along. It'll take you a while to get used to all this. I was born here, so I sometimes forget that new recruits don't understand how things work around here."

"But… I wasn't intending to stay," I protested. "I have to get back to my own world."

"Ah, yes – you don't come from this world at all, do you? Sorry, I was forgetting that."

"You mean, you know about that?"

"Yes. Your young friend has been up and running for a couple of days – he didn't need the eye job, after all. He's told us all about it, and the scans that were done while you were asleep confirm it. In fact the general is going to want to talk to you about that – this whole business of moving from one world to another is fascinating. Not that we really need to move ourselves: this world is close to perfect for us. But it's an interesting subject, all the same.

"Anyway, from what I understand you need to be in a particular place to move from one world to another, and the one where you came to this world isn't really available to you because the people there aren't friendly. Now, we might be able to help you there, but that's something only the general can decide. But you're not a prisoner, Jake – you can leave any time you like, and if you do find another way to get back to where you belong we certainly won't try to stop you. But until you do we'll treat you just like one of us – you'll share in our life completely. And you might find that you like it so much that you decide not to go back after all."

"I'm not sure about that," I said. "There are friends I want to get back to, and one in particular."

"I understand that. Well, if I can do anything to help you get back to him I will. Now on the far side of the mess hall you'll find the kitchen…"

He gave me a quick tour of the lower three decks of the crawler. There seemed to be computer systems everywhere – every room seemed to have a terminal of some sort, and some had several. There were several engine rooms on the bottom deck – apparently each track had a separate engine, which meant that if one engine broke down the crawler could keep moving regardless. Xan told me that even if as many as four engines failed the crawler could keep moving. There were also other engines which drove large fans – apparently the entire crawler could also function as sort of a hovercraft when crossing water or soft ground.

Also on Deck Six was the harvesting mechanism, which cut down any suitable vegetation that the crawler might be moving over for use as food, either for the crew or for their animals. Even ordinary grass could be used in the production of human food, apparently. I wasn't too keen on that idea at first, but then I decided that if it could taste like roast duck I wouldn't mind too much.

Next we visited the stable used by Xan's band. Apparently there were a number of stables on the lower two decks, and most of the crew could ride – and, indeed, did so, both for recreation and in time of war. I'd never been on a horse in my life, and so Xan found me a horse that he said was easy-going and fairly placid – not necessarily the ideal war-horse, but a more comfortable choice for an absolute novice like me.

"Tomorrow we'll go for a ride and you can try her out," he told me. I fully expected to fall off, no matter how placid my mount, so I wasn't exactly looking forward to it.

Once we'd finished our tour of the lower three decks we went back to our living quarters, and here we found that there was a package sitting on the sofa: my new clothes had arrived.

"Good," said Xan. "So let's go and have a shower, and then we'll get you dressed in something presentable ready to meet the general."

He took a couple of towels out of the chest, grabbed a couple of bottles of liquid soap from a box in the corner and led me towards the shower-room, but before we got there the door at the end of the room opened and Sam came in. He was dressed in a baggy Cossack-type shirt of emerald green, black trousers and riding boots, and he had a little black fur hat on his head. And I have to say that the clothes suited him perfectly.

"Jake!" he exclaimed, giving me a huge smile. "You're awake! Are you okay? Isn't this an amazing place?" And he ran towards me and jumped into my arms.

"I've been out on my horse," he told me, hugging me hard. "I rode a horse a few times at the farm, but not a horse like this – she can really go! And Vanya's teaching me martial arts, too! Oh, hello, Xan – will Jake be able to come out with us tomorrow?"

"I hope so," said Xan. "But he says he's never ridden a horse before, so he might not be able to come on patrol for a few days yet. We'll have to see how he gets on."

"All right. Look, I can't stop now, Jake, because Vanya's waiting for me – but perhaps we can talk properly this evening?"

"That'd be nice," I said. "Xan said we'd see you at supper, so maybe we can arrange something then."

"He's obviously happy here," I observed to Xan as Sam skipped away.

"Yes, he is. I'm glad I let Vanya overrule me there. See, strictly speaking Sam is still a child, because he hasn't got any hair yet. But he's thirteen, which is generally old enough to be considered a man, and Vanya saw something in him, which is why he claimed him. And he was right: he's already looking like a decent rider, and he's enthusiastic about everything. He'll be a really good addition to the band."

I followed him into the shower room, thinking that I, on the other hand, was likely to be a complete disappointment: I couldn't ride, I couldn't fight, and I couldn't shoot straight, either, so why he was talking about me getting a job in the armaments department was beyond me.

There was nobody else in the shower room, which was a communal type like the ones at the Hub, though not quite so big. Xan got undressed and untied his hair, and now I saw how long it really was: it reached almost to the small of his back. I dumped my own clothes on the bench and followed him into the shower, and immediately I discovered one of the major benefits of corrective eye surgery (or whatever they had done to me): I could see clearly even under a shower. In the past, of course, I'd had to take my glasses off, which meant that I wasn't able to appreciate my fellow bathers in the best way, but now I could see perfectly, and so I was able to admire Xan's physique without blurred vision.

He wasn't quite as tall as me – I was probably three or four inches taller – and he had excellent muscle definition, no doubt as the result of a lot of physical exercise. The long black hair looked amazing – I've mentioned before how much I like long hair on boys, and this was the longest I had ever seen, girls included. And when he turned to face me I was able to appreciate his other attributes, too. To start with, he was circumcised, so that gave us something in common. It was a little smaller than mine, but he had much more hair, a thick black forest around the base of his penis. And he had small tufts in his armpits, too, which is a stage of development I had yet to reach. I was suddenly aware that my body was starting to show signs of interest, so I quickly turned around and started washing my hair.

"You've missed a bit," said a voice in my ear thirty seconds later, and there was Xan, standing right beside me. "Keep still…"

He moved the shower-head slightly, guided me into position and washed the last of the soap out of my hair.

"That's better," he said. "Would you like me to wash your back for you?"

"Well… all right, then," I said. I didn't like to say no… okay, then, I didn't want to say no, either. And he did a wonderful job, applying a massage to my shoulders at the same time, and it felt so good that when he turned me round to face him I didn't have the energy to resist.

"That looks good," he said, looking down at my erection. "And it feels good, too," he added, taking hold and stroking.

I don't know how I didn't explode all over him, but he let go before I disgraced myself. I was pleased to see that his was hard too – and also that I was definitely a bit bigger, probably by three-quarters of an inch or so.

"Come on," he said, stepping back out of the water, "let's get back to my room. We've got plenty of time before we have to see the general."

He went back out to the changing area and started to towel himself down, and I took a couple of deep breaths to calm myself down, switched off the water and followed him. By facing resolutely away from him I managed to get myself under control by the time I was dry.

"Good," he said, approvingly. "Make sure your towel is done up securely – those are mixed quarters out there!" And he grinned at me, wrapped his towel around his waist, picked up his dirty clothes and stepped out into the corridor, holding the door open for me to follow him. We managed to get back to his cubicle without any accidents, and once we were inside he drew the curtain firmly shut, dumped the towel and his clothes in a container next to his desk, invited me to do the same with mine and then stepped over to the bed and lay down.

"Come on, then," he said, holding the covers open for me. "Let's get comfortable, and then you can tell me the story of your life."

I dropped my towel and clothes into the container and went and lay down beside him, and he pulled the covers over us and lay back comfortably.

"I don't know how it is in your world," he said, "but here we take pleasures wherever they are offered. And I definitely got the impression that you were offering. Or was I wrong?"

I shook my head mutely.

"I thought not. You don't need to look so nervous, Jake: I'm happy to do whatever you're happy with… if that makes sense. I mean you take the lead and I'll follow. But perhaps we ought to get to know each other a little better first – after all, so far we know each other's names but nothing else. Well, I'm a child of the Horde – which means I don't know who my father was: my mother was impregnated from the horde seed bank – which, I should warn you, you'll be asked to contribute to before too long. I was born fourteen years and six months ago when the Horde was in Old France. I learned to ride when I was five years old, I like beef dumplings, my favourite colour is green, and I like boys with brains. Like you. Your turn."

"Oh… well, I'm a couple of months older than you – which surprises me a bit, because I thought you were older than me. I was born in this country, though not in this world, and I've lived in another country for the past year and a half. I've never been on a horse in my life, but I can drive cars, provided that they're automatics. I don't really know what my favourite colour is – blue, I think. I've got a boyfriend, but he's at least two worlds away from here and I don't know when I'll see him again. And I like good looking boys with nice muscles. Like you. Oh, and I really like boys with long hair, too. When did you last cut yours?"

"I can't remember. When I was small I didn't like getting it cut, and now I don't have to. Of course, if it gets to the point where it's tripping me up I might change my mind… look, Jake, I was serious about you taking the lead. We don't have to do anything if you don't want – I respect the fact that you've got someone else. But I think we could have some fun together if you want us to."

"I think I would like that, Xan. As long as you understand that if I get a chance to go back home I'll take it."

"Of course. And that might not be quite as difficult as you might think… Anyway, I'd really like to hear how you got here. How did you manage to end up two worlds away from your boyfriend?"

"Well…"

I rolled onto my side facing him and began to tell him how I had got from a small village in Oxfordshire to a different version of Hampshire, via several different worlds, a non-existent continent and a trip in an alien flying machine. He listened entranced, asking a question or two as the narrative continued, and at the end of my recitation he looked at me in admiration.

"That's an amazing story," he said. "So you and Sam and the other one all started out in different worlds? No wonder you're so good at languages."

"What about you?" I asked. "How did a machine with a big Chinese character on the front find its way to England?"

Xan looked at his watch. "That's quite a long story as well," he said, "and I don't think we've got time for it now. I'll tell you about it after supper. Right now we'd better get dressed and go and see the general. Do you think you could help me with my hair?"

He got up, walked over to the desk, took a mirror out of a drawer, set it up on the desk, took a brush out of the same drawer and handed it to me.

"Shouldn't we get dressed first?" I asked.

"Why?"

"No reason." I took the brush, and though I had no experience at all of brushing someone else's hair I did what seemed logical, and Xan didn't complain. When I thought it was looking as good as it was gong to get I put the brush down and stepped away, and he examined himself in the mirror and nodded.

"Good job, Jake. Thanks," he said, taking a length of thin leather and tying his hair into a pony-tail. "I won't bother tying it up tonight. I normally only do that when I'm either riding or fighting… yes, I know I said we'd do some martial arts this afternoon, but it was more fun listening to your history, so it can wait until tomorrow. Now, what are we going to wear? We could go with the riding out uniform… no, I think robes would be best. At least if that isn't a perfect fit it won't matter. So you'll want this, this and these."

He delved into the packet of clothing and extracted a long red robe with a broad white sash to use as a belt, a pair of sandals and what appeared to be a white cotton miniskirt.

"What the hell is that?" I asked.

"It's an undergarment. It's a lot healthier than those closed-off things you were wearing before. Try it."

He took one like it out of his chest and wrapped it around his waist, doing it up with some sort of fastening on the right hand side. It took me a couple of attempts to get mine done up, and then it felt really strange: I was very much aware that my genitals were simply dangling unsupported beneath it.

"Good. Now the robe," said Xan, slipping his own on with practised ease. It took me a little longer to work out which way around it wrapped, and I needed some help to get the sash tied, but we got there in the end. The sandals, at least, posed me no problem.

"Perfect!" said Xan, tying a green and gold ribbon around his neck. I thought the green clashed badly with the red of the robe, and so I wasn't too put out when he told me he didn't have a ribbon for me yet. And then he took me back out through the room and into the passage beyond.

I felt hideously conspicuous: I'd never worn anything like this before and was convinced that I looked a complete idiot, but in fact none of the people we passed gave me a second glance. Xan led me to a proper stairwell that went all the way up to the top of the crawler, took me up to Deck Two and through a door into another corridor, though this one was a little wider than the ones on the lower decks.

"Ready?" he said. And without waiting for a reply he opened the door at the end of the corridor and marched into the main control room with me at his heels.

The main control room looked like the bridge of a ship – or perhaps more like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, since the various crew members were sitting, rather than standing. But it looked like a 1950 version of the Enterprise, in that all of the computer equipment and other machinery around the walls looked old-fashioned even by the standards of my own world. Another strange thing was the number of crew members who were wearing helmets like the one worn by the woman in the clothing store, especially since these seemed to be doubling up with a lot of bare-headed crew. The helmeted people also seemed to by idling their time away playing cards or chess, reading books or – in one case – doing some knitting. I was sure that Captain Kirk would never allow knitting on the bridge of the Enterprise.

There was a large window – and I thought it was a real window and not a viewing screen – at the front of the room, and this looked out over the empty green landscape through which we'd travelled to reach the crawler. I didn't know exactly where we were now: I knew I'd been unconscious for six days, but I had no idea of how fast the crawler was moving, if in fact it was moving at all: the landscape didn't appear to be changing.

The captain's chair was in about the same place as on the Enterprise, and the man in it stood up as we approached. He didn't look that old, and nor did he look remotely Chinese: in fact he had pale skin and red hair. He was wearing a sort of red tail coat over a white shirt and white trousers tucked into riding boots, and there was a small round red and white hat – which did look a bit Chinese – perched on top of his head.

"Hello, Xan," he said. "This is your second recruit, is it? Is this the one who knows about moving between worlds?"

"Yes, General."

"Good. Come with me. Val, could you join us, please?"

He led us to a smaller room at the back of the main bridge, and a middle-aged woman followed us in and closed the door behind her.

"Sit down," the general invited us, indicating a number of chairs around a polished wooden table. "This is Valeriya, my deputy."

Valeriya was a tough-looking woman whose high cheekbones, short black hair and almond-shaped eyes suggested an ancestry somewhere further east than the general's. She was also wearing a white shirt and white trousers, though her red jacket was shorter and rather more stylish than his coat.

"She's also my partner," the general continued, "which means that the operation of the Horde is as much her concern as mine. So, you're the one whose memory-scan kept me fascinated for so long…"

For quite some time they quizzed me about my travels. Apparently they already knew quite a lot from studying the scan of my memory that had been done when I was unconscious, but they still had plenty of questions, mostly about the various peoples I had met in other worlds. I did my best to answer clearly every time.

"I'm surprised you're so interested," I commented at one point. "Xan tells me that this world is almost perfect for you, so why are you so interested in other places?"

"Two reasons," said the general. "First, because we're coming to the limits of this world. It's true that it'll be several years yet before we exhaust the resources of this country, but after that there's nowhere else to go forward. Yes, there are other countries beyond the ocean, but the crawlers aren't designed for a crossing of that magnitude. We had enough trouble just crossing the Ditch. So once we reach the limits of these islands we'll have to stop and settle, and that isn't really our way: we're nomads. Of course we have left settlements behind us, and there will always be those who want to live in one place, but for nearly two hundred years we've been on the move, and most of us prefer to keep going.

"Second, war is almost a religion for us: we live for battle, and we're running out of people to fight. Of course it's still fun fighting each other, but at the height of our power we would combine to fight other enemies, and it would be good to be able to return to those days. I would greatly like to test myself against some of the peoples you have seen, especially those who have efficient military machines, such as the Empire centred on Germany, or that of the reptiles. To reassemble the Great Horde and take on such foes in battle would be to rekindle a flame that is dying. So you can understand why the concept of crossing to another world holds such attraction for us.

"There are of course problems: I understand that in most cases these crossing points are quite small, and so wouldn't be able to accommodate the crawlers, and it would be out of the question to go without them. But there was a great deal of information about them in your memory, and the Central System is currently analysing it. Perhaps it will be possible for us to construct our own crossing-point, large enough for a crawler to pass through."

I wasn't sure if I was happy about that: there were already quite enough belligerent people with portal technology, and I didn't think I'd want the Horde turning up in Elsass, any more than I wanted to see the Greys there, or the Arvelans, or the Marxists, or indeed anyone else. On the other hand, if they could master the technology it might give me another way home.

Shortly after that the general said that he had all he needed for now, but that he'd let me know if he thought of anything else. And then we were free to go to supper.

Xan took me down to the mess hall, which was laid out with long tables running almost the length of the room, with benches to sit on. There were already several people eating, including Sam, who stood up and waved as soon as he saw me. Xan and I went to the serving hatch to collect our food and then made our way to Sam's table, and by getting everyone else to budge up a bit I was able to sit next to him.

"I really like your robe," Sam greeted me. "I was scared to order one myself because I thought I'd look silly, but now that I've seen you I'll have to ask Vanya if I can get one too. After all, I suppose it would be better to blend in a bit."

Sam was wearing his Marxist Scout uniform, though without the beret. I thought he looked nice dressed like that, and I said so.

"Thanks, but I'm definitely going to try wearing stuff like everyone else does, I think. I already like the riding uniform – Vanya says the green goes with my eyes."

Oh, does he, I thought, with a twinge of jealousy. Okay, I had no business feeling jealous: not only had I told Sam I really wanted to get back to Stefan, but I was also sharing a bed with Xan. But I couldn't help the way I felt, and I didn't like the idea of anyone else doing things with Sam.

"This is Vanya," said Sam, indicating the boy sitting next to him and leaning back so that we could say hello.

Xan's deputy was a boy of around my own age, and he was a good example of how mixed ancestry can combine into amazing good looks: he had shoulder-length blond hair (at least, I thought it was natural blond), very light brown skin and slightly slanted eyes with weird purple irises. He looked at me warily.

"Sam says you're his best friend," he told me. "Well, you don't need to worry: I promise I'm looking after him."

I wondered what Sam had told him about me, because Vanya seemed almost scared of me.

"I'm sure you are," I said, smiling and offering my hand.

He relaxed, smiling back and taking it. "Sam says you'll be joining us from tomorrow," he said, "so you'll be able to see for yourself how well he's doing. He's going to be a great rider!"

Of course that just reminded me that I wasn't ever going to be a great rider, so I changed the subject , asking Xan how much of what we were eating was really vegetable construct. And he told me it was most of it. But it still tasted like meat to me, so I got on with it.

After supper Xan invited Vanya and Sam to come and play cards for a while in Xan's room. I knew what would be going through Sam's mind and, sure enough, after about ten seconds he asked me in English if we should challenge them to a game of strip poker.

"Not just yet," I replied in the same language. "Let's get settled in a bit first – after all, this is my first night here."

"I bet it's just because you're scared of losing!"

Since I was only wearing four garments – and that was counting my sandals as two items – he was absolutely right, but I wasn't going to say so.

"Let's just wait until Dec is with us," I suggested. "If he's on our side we'll never lose."

"Is he definitely coming back, then?" he asked. "I was afraid maybe… well, I thought perhaps they think the same about disabled people here as they did in my world."

"Xan, do you know when our other friend will be able to leave the medics?" I asked.

"I'm not sure. That brain of his isn't like ours, and it might take them a while to get everything done. We can drop in tomorrow morning and ask, though."

"Thanks, Xan, I'd like that."

"Great!" said Sam, in English. "I was really worried… I like Dec a lot, and I didn't want… well, you know."

I nodded. "Me neither," I said. I switched to Horde Common. "What are we playing, then?" I asked Xan.

"Since Vanya's playing I thought we should play Idiot," he replied, grinning at his deputy.

"Yes, you're an expert at that," replied Vanya. "You're the biggest idiot in the entire Horde!"

"We'll see," said Xan, pushing the pack across the table to Vanya. "Cut?"

"Err, no!"

"You cut, then, Jake," said Xan. But when I did so, he and Vanya laughed at me. "That makes you the idiot, Jake!" said Vanya, slapping me on the back. "Anyone who touches the cards before the deal is the idiot. Now you have to deal. Give us six cards each."

I did so. This was a smaller pack than usual: when I'd finished dealing there were only twelve cards left. I was told to turn the first of this remnant face up to indicate trumps and then to put the remaining eleven cards on top of it. And the turned up card was nothing I recognised: the suit appeared to be horses – at least, there was a brown horse's head underneath the squiggle that represented the number eight in Common.

The idea was to get rid of all your cards and to make your opponents pick up cards, and the play was simple: Player A put down a card, which Player B had to beat. If he couldn't beat it, he had to pick it up. If he could beat it, the first player was allowed to try twice more to play a card that the second player couldn't beat. In fact it was a bit more complicated than that, but Sam and I picked it up fairly quickly, despite the fact that the suits in this pack were horses, cows, swords and cups, and that the king was a general, the queen was a (clearly female) captain, the jack was a band leader and the ace was a crawler.

"Tomorrow night we'll play properly," Xan promised. "In the proper version, the loser has to drink a large glass of alcohol when he loses. That makes things very interesting by the end of the evening."

"Shall I see if there's any kumis available?" asked Vanya, grinning.

"What's kumis?" I asked.

"Fermented mare's milk," said Vanya. "It's very popular among the traditionalists on board!"

"Or we could just use vodka and orange juice," said Xan. "I should think it would have the same effect…"

We played for around three hours, and I thought that if we played for that length of time playing the alcoholic version, none of us would be able to stand up at the end of the session, though I was sure Xan was right when he said it would be interesting.

Vanya and Sam said goodnight and went out, and Xan drew the curtain behind them, took his clothes off and got into bed. I did the same, pausing to turn the light off first.

"Well?" asked Xan. "What did you think of your first day with the Horde?"

"It was… different," I said. "I still don't understand half of what's going on, but it's definitely interesting. But you still haven't explained how a Chinese machine came to be here, or how a European guy came to be in charge, or… well, that will do to start with."

"The general's easy to explain. He's General Lee now, but obviously he isn't the original General Lee: he died almost two hundred years ago. But whoever takes over when the previous general dies becomes General Lee. Maybe one day I'll be General Lee myself."

"Oh, so it's like the Dread Pirate Roberts," I said.

"Who?"

"It's from a film. The idea is that it's the name people are scared of, not the actual person, so whoever is in charge takes the name of the original leader."

"That's it exactly. Besides, there's a massive hanzi on the front of the crawler that says 'Lee', and it would be a damned nuisance if we had to change it every time our leader died, especially if the new man is called something like von Wesserlin-Wissemburg or something like that. And I'm not making that up, either: one of the Lees about fifty years ago did have a name like that."

"That would take a lot of red paint… and how did you get here?"

"It's a long story, so make yourself comfortable," he said, settling down next to me. "What happened is this: around two hundred years ago the human race almost died out. First there was a massive, world-wide crop failure, and second, there was a plague. We don't know what caused either, just that the results were catastrophic, and the only reason the human race survived at all is because we had outside help. Our planet was under observation by an alien race. From their point of view it was just supposed to be an observation exercise, like bird-watching is for us – not that I've ever really done that myself, though some of our crew spend most of their free time looking for rare species.

"Anyway, the aliens weren't supposed to do anything but watch, but it looked to them as if we were dying out, and so their leader decided to do something to make sure that a remnant of humanity at least survived. Actually he was wrong to think the whole race was going to disappear: small numbers of people did survive in other places, and we've been running into them ever since. Anyway, he brought his ships down in the area where our ancestors lived, which was western China, roughly speaking, and over a period of time they built the Great Horde: three hundred crawlers like this one, entirely controlled by computers – except that 'computer' probably isn't really the right word, because they're only partly mechanical."

"To be honest, I thought the computers look pretty primitive," I said. "Those great big metal cabinets are thirty or forty years out of date in my world, and I'd have thought aliens with faster than light travel would be way beyond anything we've got, even two hundred years ago."

"Don't be fooled by the outside. Those metal cabinets are mainly there to protect against damage – this is a fighting vehicle, after all. Inside they're like nothing on earth – literally. Anyway, the aliens knew they wouldn't be around to fix anything that went wrong – they were breaking the rules badly enough just by helping us in the first place, and they had to leave straight afterwards – and so they installed a whole lot of repair systems using microscopically tiny machines that could repair damaged circuits, including their own. And to save space, and to reduce wear and tear, the computers use human brains to do a lot of their processing. You'll find out about that yourself tomorrow, I expect. That's what the helmets are for: there are little wires inside that connect to the brain through tiny holes that have been drilled in the skull – yes, in yours, too. There's a sort of membrane that covers the holes, and the wires go through it, and when the helmet is removed afterwards the membrane repairs itself.

"Most of our systems don't require the crew member to do anything other than sit there: the computers use part of the brain that basically isn't doing anything else, and that's true of most of the human brain, apparently. And once you're used to it you can do whatever you like while you're wearing the helmet: the computer won't interfere with your conscious processes at all.

"Some of the systems do require the operator to play a conscious part in what is happening, and most of what's up on Deck One involves that sort of work. Again, you'll see for yourself tomorrow. But don't worry – I swear you won't come to any harm."

I wasn't so sure about that: it was impossible to think about humans being plugged into computer systems without thinking of The Matrix, and that wasn't exactly reassuring.

"So, anyway," Xan continued, "eventually all the crawlers were built and ready to go, and the Great Horde set off. We didn't all head for the west: some went east into Mongolia and China, and some headed south towards India and South-East Asia. But most of us began to move west. These things can move a bit in an emergency, but the main idea is to move slowly, harvesting anything that might be remotely useful as we go, and capturing anyone and – more important at the start – any domestic animals we found."

"What, and destroying every settlement you came to?" I asked.

"No, not at all. If the people there wanted to fight, of course, we'd be happy to do that, but most of the people we met were invited to join us. And that's why we have such a mixed crew: some are descended from the original crew, but most are the result of all the recruitment that has gone on since. And nobody is judged on his origins here: if you've got the skills you'll advance, wherever your parents came from.

"Of course, since we started out we've lost crawlers to war, or to equipment failure – after nearly two hundred years even the aliens' repair microbes can't fix everything. And some have found fertile plains to settle in and decided to stay there permanently, and some were lost in an insane attempt to cross the Black Sea in the middle of winter, and some simply disappeared. As far as we know only ourselves and the Horde of General Khan have crossed the Ditch to this country, and we're still in contact with seven generals in Old France, which isn't too far away, and another nine or ten further east and south. But the Great Horde is only a fraction of what it was, which is why the general loves the idea of another real war against a well-equipped opponent: it's a way to draw what's left of us together, and it also offers a glorious ending, which a lot of people think would be better than running out of places to go and having to settle down and raise cattle in one place."

"What about you?" I asked. "You're only fourteen, Xan – surely you don't want to die in battle just yet?"

"Well, no. But I don't want to be a farmer, either. Ideally I'd like to win lots of battles and reunite the Horde into a proper force once again: Xan Temur, Ruler of the Great Horde of the East… but I suppose that right now I'll settle for a good night's sleep and the fun of watching you falling off your horse tomorrow!"

And he grinned at me, his teeth flashing in the dim light coming in under the curtains, rolled over and appeared to go to sleep.

I lay awake for a while, thinking about what he had told me. I wondered if the aliens had been Tammids, but decided that they probably hadn't been: this was a different Earth, and so presumably a completely different universe, too. And as for the rest of it… I supposed it made some sort of sense. As for my own position, in some ways that seemed to have improved: there was, at least, no slavery here. But on the other hand, suppose the general did manage to use the information in my head to open a crawler-size portal: could I persuade him to drop me off somewhere along the way? Because the idea of being in the crawler while it made a death-or-glory charge into a Grey tank regiment didn't appeal to me at all…

Clearly in some ways this world is better than some that Jake has visited, but the downside is that he seems to have involuntarily joined the army.

Chapter Eleven

I woke up next morning to see Xan propped up on one elbow looking at me.

"Are you awake yet?" he asked.

"Huh? No, not really. Why do…"

He threw himself on top of me.

"Warriors have to wake up and be ready for action straight away," he told me, doing his best to pin me down. "If we're attacked in camp you have to be able to react immediately."

"But we're not in camp," I argued, doing my best to push him off me.

"Doesn't matter. You have to be able to wake up and fight straight away."

We struggled for several seconds, but I couldn't shift him, and the way his body was rubbing against mine had an inevitable effect on me.

"Aha!" he said, grinning. "Part of you is awake, at least!"

He grabbed hold of me and twisted sharply, and I gasped, dragged his hand away and renewed my efforts to displace him. And at that point he bit my shoulder. It was just a little nip, but it came as a shock, all the same. For a moment I froze, and that allowed him to grab hold of me again, and this time he kept hold when I tried to pull his arm away. So I decided to use his tactics: his head was still against my shoulder, so I bit him on the neck.

This didn't shift him. Instead he began to rub my erection, and although I kept trying to move him I simply couldn't do anything. In what seemed like no time at all he pulled me over the edge and I ejaculated messily.

"Can't you control yourself better than that?" he asked, taking advantage of my recovery time by sitting on my chest with his knees on each side of my head. "Or do you find me so completely irresistible?"

At that moment I have to say that he did look good: his muscular body had a sheen of sweat, so that his long hair was clinging to it, and his erection was only a few inches in front of my face. So I grabbed his buttocks and pulled him forwards, opening my mouth to receive him, and once he was inside I set to work. And apparently his control wasn't a lot better than mine, because it took less than a minute before I got a mouthful.

When it was over he lay back down beside me, rolled on top of me again and pulled the covers back over us.

"You don't normally do it like that, do you?" he asked.

"Not exactly, no."

"Did you like it?"

"Yes, actually. It was certainly different: normally with Stefan it's sort of slow and gentle. With you it was like all-in wrestling with sex on the top."

"I can do slow and gentle too," he assured me. "Perhaps next time we'll do it your way. But when I saw you this morning I just couldn't resist. Once we've built your muscles up a bit you're going to be absolutely stunning."

That was an adjective I'm pretty sure nobody had ever applied to me before, not even Stefan, and I wondered if Xan had a problem with his eyes. But he seemed completely sincere. And then he leaned forward and planted a quick kiss on my cheek.

"Come on," he said, throwing the covers back and getting out of bed. "I think we need a shower."

He helped me up and we went and had a shower, and afterwards we dressed in the riding kit. I wasn't sure that green was really my colour, but Xan assured me that I looked good, and certainly he did. He got me to help him to tie up his hair and then took me to breakfast, although I have to say that I wasn't too impressed with the porridge. The tea was good, though.

After breakfast we went down to the stable. Xan showed me how to put the saddle and bridle on my horse, kitted me out with a helmet – a plain one, rather than the ornate fur and spike affair the troop normally wore – and then got his own horse ready, but before we could leave the rest of the troop appeared.

"So," said Vanya, grinning in my direction, "is he any good, Xan?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know exactly what I mean! You two weren't exactly being subtle about it, and I am only in the next cubicle, you know."

"Oh, that," said Xan, not sounding remotely embarrassed, though I must have been blushing like a tomato: I'd completely forgotten about the lack of walls in the accommodation area. "Yes, he's very good – a lot better than you, anyway."

"Then he must be truly amazing. Next time you'll have to invite me to join in."

"You'll be lucky – he's mine!"

At that point I caught sight of Sam looking at me, and immediately I wanted the ground to swallow me up. What must he be thinking, I thought. But perhaps he'd been taking lessons from Dec, because he seemed to know what I was thinking. He came over to me and gave me a quick hug.

"It's all right," he said. "It's different here: doing… you know, stuff… it's more of a game to them. And it is fun – I've had naked wrestling matches with Vanya, and it's exciting. But I don't think it means anything – it's just having fun. It's not like the things you and I did in the attic."

"No, it isn't," I said. "Thanks, Sam. I didn't want you to think… well, that I was doing stuff behind your back, or anything."

He hugged me again and went to saddle his horse, and Xan came over and showed me how to get aboard mine, holding her head while I tried not to make a fool of myself in front of the whole troop. And to my amazement I actually managed to get into the saddle at the first attempt.

"Remember, Jake," said Vanya, "there's one secret to being a good rider."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Don't fall off!"

Xan got onto his horse and gave me a quick explanation of the use of the reins, heels and knees and then led the way down the ramp and into the outside world. And my horse seemed happy to follow his.

Once we were outside we set off at a gentle walk, heading back the way the crawler had come, since it seemed unlikely we would run into trouble that way. At first I thought riding was easy, and then after a little while I started to think that it was a bit uncomfortable, having your legs spread like that for long periods at a time. And when we started moving at anything faster than a walk it got more uncomfortable still, so that by the time we finally got back to the crawler after a couple of hours I'd reached the stage where I never wanted to see another horse again for the rest of my life.

"Don't worry," Xan assured me. "You get used to it. A little walk out every day and you'll soon adjust. Can you dismount on your own?"

I could, but I almost fell over on landing because my legs felt distinctly wobbly.

Next came a lesson in caring for the horse and the tack after a ride – there was a sort of ground crew that could help with that, but Xan said he preferred to look after his own horse as much as possible – and by the time that was over I felt I could at least walk again. But the idea of having to go through this torture every day was not an attractive one, and I found it hard to believe that I would actually get used to it, whatever Xan said.

Next we went to the medical centre to see how Dec was doing. We found him enclosed from the shoulders down in what looked like a large coffin that was trailing wires in all directions. He also had a helmet on his head, and was plainly not conscious.

"How long?" Xan asked the medic.

"He should be done by mid-afternoon," the medic told us. "I can't see any problems at this point, but obviously we'll find out later today."

I was just happy to see that he was still alive: I'd been worrying about it ever since Sam had raised the question of whether this society practised euthanasia on disabled people.

After lunch Xan took me up to Deck One, which was where I was apparently going to be stationed. This looked quite a lot like the main control room on the deck below, although the window here was smaller and the various computer stations were mostly around the walls, rather than at forward-facing desks. He introduced me to the man in charge of the weaponry, whose name was Pavel, and then said that he was going to take a spotter out, adding, confusingly, "I'll be in the back room. Come through when Pavel has finished with you."

"I don't know how much Xan has told you," Pavel began, "but this is the one part of the computer system that uses active human input. The system can function without input, but it can only put out a suppressing fire. It needs its human operator to identify and select targets, and that's where you come in. We're training you on the main armament because if you can manage that successfully you'll have no problems with the secondary weapons. This is where you sit."

He showed me to a desk towards the back of the room.

"Put the helmet on," he said, once I was seated. "Keep your head still while you're doing it and the connections will line up automatically."

I was a bit worried about this: that bit about wires going into my brain was a little disconcerting, to say the least. But the helmet went on smoothly and when I flicked the switch on the side I barely felt the connections being made. The screen in front of me lit up and so did the keyboard in front of it, while a panel in the desk opened and a joystick emerged. This was beginning to look exactly like a video game, and I was starting to wish I'd spent more time using Godfrey's console instead of sitting in the attic reading a book.

"You've got direct contact with the spotters," Pavel told me. "There are speakers in the helmet and a microphone at the front. They'll be able to identify targets for you. Of course the main armament is primarily for use against either fortified positions or enemy crawlers, but it can also be used against smaller armoured vehicles. Once you have the location of your target it's mainly a question of point and shoot, but there's a targeting box on the screen to help you, along with distances and elevation.

"In a moment I'll put it in training mode and you'll see for yourself, but first I should warn you that you'll be aware of things happening in your head that you have no control over. Just ignore it. That'll be difficult at first, but in a few days' time you'll hardly notice. In this case the computer will be using your brain to calculate a firing solution based on a lot of information coming from elsewhere: our speed, wind speed and direction, weather conditions, intervening terrain and so on. Just try to pretend it isn't happening. Once you're properly attuned to it you'll be able to use that information almost subconsciously to operate the weapon more quickly and effectively than an unconnected operator could, though it generally takes a while to reach that stage.

"Alright, I'm going to deploy the weapon and put the machine into training mode. Ready?"

He hit a large red button at the bottom of the screen and I was aware of a rumbling noise over my head, and then he hit a couple more switches.

"Warning!" said a voice in my head. "You are in training mode. The weapon will not be fired. To exit training mode, hit Expand and input your crew ID."

"What's my crew ID?" I asked.

"We haven't given you one yet. I'll arrange it later today," said Pavel. "Now, in a moment I'll run a basic targeting scenario. All you have to do is to hit the enemy crawler."

He typed a couple of words into the computer and hit the equivalent of a return key, and of course what followed was a complete and utter shambles.

First, a voice in my ear announced "Enemy crawler spotted at 2.75 li, direction north-north-west, travelling east at approximately 300 chi per minute."

Well, I understood 'north-north-west' but I didn't seem to have a compass on the screen and so I had no idea which way we were heading or which way was north. And the rest of the message was gibberish. How far was a 'li'? I moved the joystick to the left, intending just to rotate until something appeared on the screen, and I was immediately distracted by what seemed to be a screenful of numbers unrolling behind my eyes and a soft whisper of not-quite comprehensible words in my ears.

I spun the joystick in what I thought was a complete circle without seeing anything on the screen.

"Target now heading south-south-east, speed increasing to 500 chi per minute," said the voice. "Enemy main armament deployed. Incoming fire. Minor damage to left forward tracks."

I shoved the joystick in the other direction, but still I couldn't see anything, and the voice in my ear announced, "Incoming fire. Major damage to front central armour. Secondary damage to main armament. Left side weapon unserviceable."

Finally I thought I saw something on the screen, but before I could line it up that bloody voice told me that there was more incoming fire, that the right-hand weapon was now also unserviceable, that Deck One had been severely damaged and that I was dead.

"Don't worry," said Pavel. "That usually happens the first time. What was the main problem?"

"I didn't have a compass, so I couldn't see which way to aim," I said.

"You have a real compass on the desk, under this panel," he told me, sliding a cover to one side. "That's the back-up in case the system is damaged. And there's an on-screen one too, provided that you remember to turn it on. You can set up the screen to show as much or as little information as you like. Here's the operator's manual – read the summary on Page 25 and get things set up the way you want, and then we'll run the simulation again."

The lesson lasted most of the afternoon, and by the time Pavel told me to call it a day I had a distinct headache, mainly caused by all the stuff going on in my head that I had no control over. I took the helmet off, picked up the manual – I intended reading it through before the next session – and walked through to the back room, where I found Xan with a helmet on his head, also sitting at a screen and with a joystick in his hand.

"Hello, Jake," he said, looking up. "Are you finished?"

"We're all finished, thanks to me," I said. "The entire crawler got blown up about six times, mainly because I can't shoot quickly enough. And once I even managed to shoot our crawler myself. You know how the weapons can be depressed to fire downwards at targets close to the crawler? Well, there's an alarm that sounds to warn you if the weapon is pointing downwards at the crawler itself, only I didn't realise what it meant and so I overruled the failsafe device and fired anyway, and according to the simulation I blew up the front of Deck One."

"Don't worry, it'll come," he said. "The first time I flew a spotter I crashed it less than fifty chi from the crawler. It's just practice. Anyway, have a seat while I bring this one in."

I sat down next to him, looking at his screen, which was showing the scene from a flying machine of some sort: right now it was showing a lot of greenery without too many features. But then the crawler came into view. The machine flew along the side of it and then approached it from the rear, passing through a rectangular opening. Xan hit four or five keys on his computer, parked the joystick back inside the desk, flicked the switch on the side of his helmet and removed it, stowing it on the shelf next to the desk.

"Come on," he said. "I'll show you what our spotters look like."

He took me through a door into what I suppose could be described as a miniature hanger. On each side of the room were racks containing a number of model aircraft, twin-engined craft with a wingspan of a little over a metre, and at the far end were three rectangular holes in the outside wall. A couple of crew members were busy extracting one of the small aircraft from a sort of elasticated net in front of one of the openings.

"We've got a couple of other types, but these are the ones we use most of the time," Xan told me. "They have a camera, a microphone, a weapon and an explosive charge around the nose, so in extreme situations we can use them as flying bombs. But we try not to do that – they take a while to build, and the cameras in particular are hard to come by. When I'm plugged into it I can see exactly what the camera sees – I don't actually need to have my screen turned on, even. In a battle these are our eyes and ears… anyway, you don't look too good. Let's go and relax for a bit before supper."

He took me back downstairs, but before we went back to the accommodation room he took me to a small office on Deck Three and spoke quietly to the woman inside. She went into a back room and returned a couple of minutes later with a cup of what I thought was tea.

"Drink this," said Xan, handing it to me.

"What is it?"

"Willow bark extract. It'll get rid of your headache."

It didn't taste great, but I drank it, and then we went back to Xan's cubicle and I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes. But I didn't get much chance to recover, because less than ten minutes later someone came into the room. I recognised him as one of Xan's band, though that was mainly because he was still wearing his riding kit.

"What is it, Miro?" asked Xan.

"I was just checking to see if Jake was here," said the rider. "His friend was looking for him."

"Sam?" I asked, sitting up. "Why? What's wrong?"

And at that point someone followed the rider into the room, but it wasn't Sam: it was Dec. And he was walking.

In an instant my headache was forgotten and I jumped to my feet and ran to greet him. Okay, I suppose I should have worked this out already: if 'complete reconstruction' for me had meant fixing my eyes, then for Declan it would logically mean fixing his left arm and leg. But somehow that had passed me by.

I threw my arms around him and hugged him hard, and he returned it, using both arms for the first time.

"You look different," he said, looking into my face. "I suppose I'm used to having to look up at you. Now I can look you in the eyes."

"It might be that I'm not wearing glasses any more," I pointed out. "They fixed my eyes like they seem to have fixed your arm and leg. Is it really completely working now?"

"More or less. Miroslav tells me I'll need physiotherapy for a few more days to finish building the muscles up, but they did most of it while I was asleep. And they seem to have taught me how to speak the language while I was asleep, too. Hey, where's Sam? I'll actually be able to talk to him properly now, provided he's been given the language, too. He has, hasn't he?"

"We all have. I'm not sure where he is, though – I've been up on the top deck learning how not to fire the main armament, so I haven't seen him since this morning."

"Yes, apparently they want me to help run the main computer, or something like that. I don't quite understand it. Perhaps we can go somewhere quiet and you can tell me about it?"

"There aren't too many quiet places on board, I don't think. Perhaps we'll be able to sit together at supper. Where are you going to be staying?"

"With me, obviously," put in the rider. "He's my student, after all."

I looked at him properly for the first time. He didn't have either Xan's muscular perfection or Vanya's exotic beauty – in fact he looked quite ordinary, with untidy light brown hair and hazel eyes. He was about my height and looked about the same age. The one distinguishing feature he had was a two-inch scar that ran across his right cheek, parallel to his jawbone. It had healed cleanly, but was still visible. Other than that he looked like any other fourteen-year-old.

"So you're in this room?" I asked him.

"Of course."

"Jake," said Xan, "how would you like it if I went and slept with Vanya tonight? That way you, Sam and… I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name?"

"Declan," supplied Dec.

"Right. Sorry. Anyway, that way the three of you could sleep here. I'm pretty sure the bed is big enough, and that way you'll get a chance to have a proper talk to each other and explain to Declan where he is and what's going on – some of it, anyway."

"Thanks, Xan. I think we'd like that."

Dec was certainly nodding, and I was sure Sam wouldn't want to miss out, either.

"We'll do that, then. Miro, would you like to see if you can find Vanya? We can look after Declan for a bit."

The rider nodded and left, and Xan offered Dec one of the chairs, while he and I sat on the sofa.

"So I'm guessing you've never ridden a horse," said Xan.

"Obviously not. Why, will I be able to here?"

"Yes, you will – at least, you will unless the general plans to keep you permanently hooked up to the Central System, and I'll do my best to make sure he doesn't do that. You'll need fresh air and exercise, and riding with my band will certainly give you that."

"It'll give you painful thighs, too," I warned him.

"Only at first. In a week's time even a big girly like Jake will stop complaining and start enjoying it."

We started telling Dec a bit about the history of the Horde, but we hadn't got far before the rider came back with Vanya and Sam. And when Dec stood up to greet Sam the look on Sam's face was priceless. The two of them went into a prolonged hug, and after a few seconds of this Xan said tactfully, "We'll leave you to talk. Supper's in half an hour – don't be late."

"And don't forget that the general wants to see you after supper, Dec," added the rider with the scar.

"Don't worry, Miroslav, I'll be ready."

"You can call me Miro. Everyone else in the band does."

"Right."

Xan and his two colleagues left, and I went and joined the hug: I was feeling left out. And for the next half hour we did our best to bring Dec up to date. Sam was a lot more enthusiastic about riding than I was, assuring Dec that he'd love it and not mentioning sore bums or legs at all.

"And I'm working in Communications," Sam added. "To start with they were just going to use me as a processor – that's where you just sit and let the machine use your brain – but then they saw I was interested in the radio system, and now they're going to train me as a radio operator."

"'Let the machine use your brain'?" queried Dec. "What are you talking about?"

And that discussion kept us going until supper and right through the meal. Afterwards Miro took Dec away to meet the general, while Xan took me to a small gym and started teaching me martial arts. The one in use here seemed to be a combination of judo and karate, with some kick-boxing thrown in – in fact, it was one of those systems where pretty much anything goes. Obviously I was completely hopeless at it, but Xan said that he'd probably be able to train me up fairly well, as long as I trained regularly. And, as it hurt a bit less than riding a horse, I agreed to do so.

Once we got back to our quarters Xan decided to postpone the alcoholic card game for a couple of days: apparently Idiot works best with four, and now we had Dec with us we'd have to learn another game. Besides, he said, he was sure we still had plenty to talk about. So he collected a change of clothes for the morning and then left me to it.

The other two returned shortly afterwards: Sam had been at the shooting range with Vanya, and Dec had of course been visiting the general.

"There's been a bit of a change of plan," he told us as we got ready for bed. "Now that he's spoken to me he thinks I'll be useful as a planner. He wants to teach me a bit about military tactics and then use me to help direct battles. Obviously I told him I've never done anything like that before, but he thinks I'll see possibilities others might miss. He seems to think I'm super-brainy, or something."

"Well, compared to the rest of us, you are," I pointed out. "From what Harlan told me, the reason the gods, or the extra-terrestrials, whoever it was, created your people in the first place was to use your superior intelligence to stop everyone else from killing each other."

"I always thought that was just a story," he said, getting into bed. "I've never felt particularly clever, especially when I was messing up my lessons all the time."

"Trust me, you are," I said, getting in next to him. Sam turned out the light and came and lay down on Dec's other side. "So it sounds as though they think you're officer material. Who knows, maybe you'll be General Lee yourself in a few years' time."

And of course then I had to explain how the succession worked, and Dec thought that was really interesting.

"That would be amazing," he said. "Except… are we going to stay here, Jake? I mean, I know you want to get back to your own world…"

"Yes I do, but I don't think I can risk going back to Stonehenge. And I can't really expect the general to take me all the way back to Eastern France to look for another portal, either. Of course, if they manage to open a portal themselves it'll be different: probably then I will try to find my way home again. But that might take ages. We're safe enough from Aarnist here – at least, we will be if we get our chips removed. We'll have to get the medics to do that for us as soon as we can. So I can't see any reason for us to leave just yet… and of course, even if they do open a portal, you two don't have to come with me. I think you'd both be happy to stay here, wouldn't you?"

"I would, but if you go I'm still coming with you," said Sam, firmly.

"Me, too… at least… except I sort of owe these people now," said Dec. "They've given me a normal body, and I'd feel a bit bad if I didn't give them something in return. If it takes them a while to develop a portal and we get a chance to help run their computers and stuff for a few weeks first I wouldn't feel so bad about leaving. But I don't want to abandon you either, Jake: if it hadn't been for you I'd still be stuck in my chair in Sarutaale. So if you go I'll come with you. Of course, once you're safely back home I suppose I could always come back here again…"

"That depends how stable the portals are," I warned him.

"I'll risk it. I still can't believe that I can actually walk. Their medical equipment is really amazing: apparently they can repair quite serious damage to everything except for major organs. So as long as you're still alive when they wire you up, and provided that there's no damage to the brain, they can virtually restore you to full working order. Better than the original, in fact, because they say both my arms will be stronger than my right arm was before. Isn't this an incredible place?"

"I like the fact that we all speak the same language now," said Sam. "It was frustrating not being able to talk to you before. I wanted to tell you how brave I thought you were, for a start: even when you knew they wanted to kill you back at the farm you never panicked or anything. You just stayed calm and never looked scared at all."

"I was, though," Dec told him. "To be honest I thought Jake was braver than me, because he could have gone home as soon as he found out what was happening. There was nothing to stop him. But he stayed because he wouldn't leave me on my own. And really you were braver than either of us: you were prepared to give up your whole life and go blindly into a world you knew nothing about just so that you could help me, who you'd only known a few days, to escape. That's real bravery, Sam."

He wriggled an arm underneath Sam's body and hugged him, and then he did the same thing to me.

"I like being able to hug you both at once," he said. "I wonder what else I can do to two people at once that I couldn't before?"

It didn't take him very long to think of something, and he actually did it pretty well. I was on his left and so had to make do with his weaker hand, but it still felt good and it still achieved the desired result. Afterwards Sam and I returned the favour between us, and when we'd finished I got out of bed long enough to find a cloth to wipe us down with, and then I got back in, snuggled up to Dec once more and soon fell asleep.

Next morning I went with him when he went back to the medical centre for his physiotherapy, and while I was there I arranged for them to remove our chips. The medic said it should be a simple procedure and booked us in for early that afternoon, and that was another important step taken: at least now if I managed to find my way back to my own world Aarnist wouldn't be able to trace me.

I spent that morning suffering another session of torture on horseback and the rest of the afternoon improving my gunnery – and it actually did seem to be improving, though in view of my performance the previous day that wasn't hard – and working on my martial arts. And that set the pattern for the next week or so, and by the end of it the horse-riding wasn't hurting so much, my gunnery had improved to the point that I was now destroying the enemy crawler before it destroyed us almost every time, and my martial arts was still rubbish, but I suppose marginally less so than it had been at the start.

In the second week I rode out with the band for the first time, and although we only went on a gentle patrol a couple of miles – or about six li, according to Xan – ahead of the crawler I managed to keep up with the rest of the band and didn't fall off once, which I thought was quite an achievement. He also started teaching me archery and trying to improve my skills with a rifle, which I had thought was a lost cause but which turned out to be rather less disastrous than I had expected.

By now Dec was also learning to ride, and in the third week he also rode out with the rest of us. I'd got to know the rest of the band by this stage: I'd been surprised to discover that three of them were girls (it was impossible to tell when they were wearing their armour and helmets), though they rode at least as well as the boys and could fight pretty well, too, as I discovered when Ilse slaughtered me at martial arts. The girls shared our quarters, and sometimes shared their beds with other members of the band, too: most of the boys were straight, and one of them was the current partner of Marie, the prettiest of the girls. But the relationship didn't seem to cause any tensions in the band, any more than did the one between me and Xan.

Once I was considered competent on the main armament I did a little more training on the secondary weapons and was then added to the crew rota. Sam was learning about the radio systems and had a shift already, and Dec was spending a lot of time with the general, Valeriya and the other senior officers, poring over maps and reading accounts of past battles. And by the end of March, five weeks or so after our arrival, all three of us were feeling completely settled.

During this period we hadn't seen any sign of an Arvelan probe – Xan had warned his fellow spotters to be on the lookout for them – and nor had we discovered where General Khan's crawler might be. We'd come across a couple of small settlements, neither of which had shown any wish to fight, and we had settled for trading animals with them, rather than assimilating them into our crew.

And then, just when I was starting to think that maybe it wouldn't be too bad if I had to spend the rest of my life here, I received a summons from the general.

"The Central System seems to have cracked the portal problem," he told me. "There doesn't seem to be anything in your memories about how to choose a world to aim for, but the computer has been able to extrapolate enough information to find a way somewhere. We're fairly sure we will be able to open a portal fairly soon, even if we don't know exactly where it will take us.

"Now, obviously we're not going to take the crawler through, even if we do manage to make a large enough opening: we might as well make use of the resources of this country first. But we do want to send a scouting party through, and because you're experienced in visiting other worlds and can speak a number of languages, we want you to lead it. Of course we'll send a spotter through first, though we're not sure if we'll be able to receive broadcasts from it once it's gone through."

"Probably not,"' I said. "The Arvelans set up their receiving station right by the portal, but it would probably work better if you could set up a station just on the other side of the portal instead. And… look, there are some worlds you really don't want to visit. If I suggest that we leave a world alone, will you accept that?"

"You're the expert. That's why I want you in charge of this. If you think it's not safe, we won't go through."

"Thank you. In that case I'll be glad to help. You do know that you need somewhere where the geography is the same on both sides?"

"If it was in your memory, we know about it," he assured me.

I didn't really like that idea: there were a lot of things in my memory that I'd prefer to keep private. Still, this didn't seem to be the sort of society that would prosecute you for thought crimes, and nor had I seen any sign that anyone here was likely to pass judgement on someone else's sex life, even if it didn't conform to what might be thought of as 'normal' behaviour.

A couple of days later we reached a fairly large river. From the mainly north-easterly direction in which we'd been travelling – unless I was misreading the compass on my targeting system again – I guessed that it could be the Thames, though in the absence of any other landmarks it was hard to be certain. The crawler stopped not too far from the river and a number of spotters and horse patrols were sent out to make sure that we were unlikely to be attacked while we were carrying out the attempt to open the first portal.

Xan's band was not out on patrol because we were on the rota for inside duty at the time, although I wasn't at my post on Deck One: instead I was in the main control room, talking to the general about exploring beyond the portal. But we were interrupted five minutes later by one of the communications team.

"We have a sighting on an enemy crawler," he announced. "About fifteen li south-east of here. The spotter is just flying around to check the front, but it has to be Khan, unless someone else has managed to cross the Ditch since we did."

"I don't think any of the others were close enough to it to have got here this quickly," said the general. "Sorry, Jake, it looks as if the portal will have to wait. Val, sound first alert. All band leaders and section heads to the conference room in ten minutes, please. Sanjay, tell the spotters to concentrate on the south-east quadrant and recall all horse patrols straight away."

The communications man nodded and started to speak into his headset, and I looked for somewhere to sit down, because suddenly my legs felt wobbly: whatever else I might be, I was no soldier, and I had no wish to find myself in a real battle. I'd had one serious experience of that, fighting the Greys as we tried to hold Hub Two against them almost two years previously, and a couple of shorter skirmishes that I'd done my best to extricate us from as quickly as possible, and I had no desire to risk my life again. But somehow I thought I wasn't going to get the choice: as Xan had told me when I had first arrived here, there were no passengers on the crawlers.

Xan arrived in the control room five minutes later. I presumed he'd been flying a spotter, but as a band leader he was needed for the general's briefing, and so would have handed his spotter to another operator.

"Jake, you'd better go and get into riding uniform," he told me. "Pass the word to the others to get ready and wait for me in the stable. They should do that automatically, but some of them haven't been with us long enough to have experienced a real alert before. If you find anyone still in the accommodation area, get them changed and down to the stable and tell them I'll join them as soon as I can. And if you'd like to get my uniform out ready for me, it would be helpful."

Unenthusiastically I made my way down to the accommodation area, where I found half a dozen of the band getting their uniforms on: there was a klaxon somewhere sounding out a repeated pattern of three short beeps, and I assumed this was the first alert that the general had mentioned. I passed on Xan's message and went to our cubicle, where I drew the curtain and sat on one of the chairs, trying to work out if I could get out of this somehow – after all, I wasn't going to make any difference at all in a battle, though I supposed I could keep an enemy soldier occupied for the five seconds or so he would need to kill me… and at that thought my stomach turned over and I barely got to the toilet in time to throw up into it.

I wiped my mouth, stood up shakily and tried to pull myself together. Maybe I wouldn't actually have to fight, I thought: maybe it would just be a patrol, and one where we didn't meet the enemy. And in any case I would have some experienced fighters around me.

I went to my chest and took out the black trousers, the green Cossack shirt and the riding boots and slowly started to get changed. I realised there wasn't really any choice: General Lee had given me a place to stay and had welcomed me into his Horde, providing me with a place where I would be safe from Aarnist, who I was still sure would send me back to Laztaale to be killed once he had no further use for me. I thought that I owed the general my loyalty. And now it looked as though we would be able to open our own portals, too, so all I had to do was to help drive Khan's men off and then I would be able to go somewhere else, hopefully somewhere peaceful.

I finished getting changed, tightened my belt and then opened Xan's chest and started to lay out his uniform, and I had just finished doing that when the curtain opened and he came in.

"Thanks, Jake," he said, looking at his kit. "I'm glad you're still here. Could you help me with my hair, please?"

He sat down and I stood behind him and helped him to tie his hair up, and then he got changed quickly.

"I've been meaning to say," he said, tying the green and gold ribbon around his neck, "I got you one of these at last. Now you're a proper member of the band."

And he tied a similar ribbon around my neck.

"Don't worry," he said, quietly, and I realised that he didn't need to be a Konjässi to see how scared I was. "Khan's bunch are amateurs. We'll murder them. Come on!" And he headed for the stables.

I followed, sure that I didn't want to murder anyone, though I supposed it would be better than having them murder me.

We found the rest of the troop already saddled up and getting their breastplates and helmets on, and once we'd done the same Xan called the band together.

"This is just a patrol," he told them. "Our job is to find out where Khan's troops are, nothing more, so there's unlikely to be a lot of fighting on this outing."

One or two of the band groaned, but I suddenly felt a lot better.

"Of course, if we do come across an enemy patrol we're entitled to take them on – a couple of prisoners to bring back for interrogation would be a mark of how good we are," Xan went on, and now I didn't feel quite so good. "I know almost half of you haven't fought before…" (and that was hardly encouraging, either), "…but we've done plenty of training, and even a complete novice like Jake or Dec is better than any three of Khan's rabble anyway."

If that was true, Khan's riders must all be blind or armless or about six years old, I thought.

"Alright, mount up, and let's show Khan what he's up against!" finished Xan.

So we mounted up and trotted off away from the crawler. I found myself riding next to Dec.

"I'm surprised the general wanted to risk letting you come on this jaunt," I remarked. "Aren't you supposed to be helping in Operations?"

He shrugged. "He says everyone starts out fighting outside the crawler. Unless you've fought on the ground you can't understand what it's like, and that makes it impossible to issue orders and make plans. I can't say I like this, though – I've only had one drill session with the lance, so I hope I don't actually have to use it. And I can't even use my other skills out here, because everyone's wearing helmets, including me. Somehow that feels even more scary than being perched on top of a horse for other people to shoot at."

Oh, great, I thought: until now I'd never even considered the possibility of there being enemy infantry with rifles out there – so far I'd been thinking that it was only enemy lancers who would be trying to kill me.

Sam, on the other hand, seemed genuinely excited to be here. Of course, he was a far better rider than either me or Dec, but I still wondered how long his excitement would last if we actually had to fight.

We rode on for quite a while without seeing anyone, and the further we rode, the more my spirits rose: perhaps we would just be able to finish the patrol quietly and return to the crawler without having seen the enemy at all. But then Miroslav shouted "Look!" and pointed off to our right, and there on a slight rise a couple of hundred metres away I saw four horsemen sitting and looking straight at us.

"Come on!" ordered Xan, wheeling his horse to face them, and the rest of us followed as he increased speed to a canter. And I felt sick again, because it looked as if we were going to have to fight after all…

It's probably fair to say that Jake is not this world's – or any other world's, come to that – greatest soldier. This could be an interesting experience…

Chapter Twelve

The four riders watched us coming towards them for a few moments and then turned and disappeared from the top of the ridge, and for a moment I wondered if Khan's entire army might be drawn up on the far side waiting for us. In Xan's place I'd have sent a couple of riders ahead to scout it out first or, better still, stayed exactly where I was until I'd called up a spotter to have a look at what might be waiting for us. But Xan obviously didn't work that way, because we rode on until we reached the crest, and there ahead of us was a shallow valley with a wood on one slope, and the four riders were cantering away along its floor, though not at any great speed.

"Come on!" shouted Xan, heading after them.

"Wait!" I yelled, as loudly as I could. "Stop! It's a trap!"

"Huh?" said Xan, reining in. "What are you talking about?"

"It's a trap," I said again. "I think there are more of them hiding in the woods."

"What makes you think that?"

"Because it happens in almost every film I've ever seen," I said. "A small group of men sucker a much larger group into chasing them and then spring an ambush. That wood is ideal for it."

"What's a film? What are you talking about?" asked Xan, impatiently.

"He's right," said Dec, who had removed his helmet and handed it to Sam. "I'm pretty sure there are people in there. Give me a minute to get my breastplate off and maybe I'll be able to see for sure."

"Why do you want to take your breastplate off?" asked Vanya.

"Because I can't see properly with it on… Jake, give me a hand, will you?"

By now it was clear that the rest of the band thought we'd gone mad, because obviously this sounded insane to them. We hadn't told anyone about Dec's abilities, and although the scan that had been done when we first arrived had picked up that he had a pretty impressive amount of brain-power, it hadn't found out what he could do with it.

Between us we got his breastplate off, and I held it while he stared at the wood.

"Call a spotter up," I said. "Look, trust me, Xan – if we go down there we're going to be in serious trouble."

"Scared?" asked Marie, scornfully.

"Yes," I admitted. "I'm scared that as soon as we're alongside that wood about fifty guys with rifles are going to pop out of it and blow us all to hell."

"Infantry with firearms don't attack cavalry," Miroslav said. "It's bad form."

"All right, so maybe it's cavalry, not infantry," I said. "After all, there are only four guys down there – where are the rest of their band? Call a spotter and let's see what's in the wood."

"Well… all right," said Xan, and he raised his wrist radio and spoke into it.

"We're at 4644, 1755," Vanya told him, consulting the device on his saddle.

Xan repeated the co-ordinates into his radio. Below us the four riders had stopped and trotted a short way back towards us, making what were clearly abusive gestures and shouting insults at us, and for a moment I thought Xan was going to react by attacking. But he held himself in check. And then one of the four riders removed his helmet, revealing long blond hair, and then undid his tunic – they weren't wearing breastplates – revealing that he wasn't a he at all: she flaunted her breasts at us and called us a host of insulting names, suggesting that we didn't have a penis between us and wouldn't know what to do with it if we did. Once again Xan bristled beside me, and if he had been straight it might have been impossible to hold him back, but as it was he responded to my shout of "Wait!" And then Declan said "Thank you very much" under his breath, and suddenly the situation in the valley changed.

The blond girl dropped her helmet, drew her sword and hit the rider next to her with a great backhand swing using the flat of the blade, and it caught him full in the face and swept him from his horse. Next she turned and yelled "Now!" in the direction of the wood, and finally she threw herself at the third rider and dragged him from his horse.

"There are two bands of riders in the wood," Declan reported. "I'd guess that right now they don't know whether to stay or come out, but if they do come out we're going to be seriously outnumbered."

"How do you know?" asked Xan.

"The blond girl just told me, sort of. Trust me, Xan, we don't want to go down there."

The blond girl and the third rider were still rolling around in the grass fighting, until she managed to knock his helmet off, and at that point they stopped fighting each other, stood up and advanced on the fourth rider, who understandably decided he didn't want any more of this: he rode straight into the wood. And a minute or so later he rode out again with several other riders behind him. At that point Xan gave the order for us to fall back, and we headed back the way we had come.

A minute later a spotter droned over our heads, and a few seconds after that Xan's wrist radio told us that there were around thirty enemy riders in the valley, but that they seemed to be very disorganised.

"All right," said Xan, when we were safely out of range, "who's going to tell me what happened back there?"

"We'd like to talk to you privately about it when we get back," I said. "There are a couple of things you need to know."

We paused for long enough to allow Dec to put his breastplate on again – I was damned if I was going to carry it all the way back for him – and then we rode the rest of the way back to the crawler. Xan handed his horse over to one of the ground crew and told me and Dec to do the same, and then he led us up to Deck Two to report our findings. Dec and I waited outside the control room while he made his report, and then he took us to a larger room at the back of the control room.

"This is the general's briefing room," Xan told us. "So brief me: how did you know there was an ambush back there?"

"Well, I thought it was suspicious from the start," I said. "Just four riders, cantering away at an easy pace – if it had been me faced with superior numbers like that I'd have been galloping flat out. And that wood was just too suspicious. You must have thought that yourself… didn't you?"

"Well, not really," he admitted. "Like I told you, I haven't had my own band for very long, and maybe I'm not as careful as I should be. So it's a good thing we recruited you two, isn't it? But what was all that other performance? Why did the girl suddenly attack her own friends?"

"Because she wasn't wearing a helmet any longer," I said. "Look, Xan, you know we're from a different world? Well, Dec isn't exactly like the rest of us: he's from a completely different race, in fact, and he can do stuff that you and I can't. He can see what other people are thinking, and he can make them do what he wants them to as well."

"What, just by looking at them? Pull the other one!"

"Is anyone likely to walk in on us?" I asked.

"No. Why?"

"Go on, Dec, show him," I said.

We'd all left out breastplates and helmets in the stable, and so there was nothing to hold Dec back. And so Xan stood up and stripped naked.

"See?" asked Dec, releasing him.

"How the hell did you do that?" demanded Xan, reaching for his undergarment.

"I just can, just like I made that rider turn on her friends."

"But why didn't you tell me?"

"Because it makes people nervous," I said. "In his own world people are terrified of Dec's people, and we didn't want people here reacting the same way. So we've been keeping quiet about it."

"Obviously I'd never use it against my friends," put in Dec. "But it still makes people a bit wary of me, and I wanted to avoid that. Everyone's been really good to me since I got here and I didn't want anything to change."

"I can understand why it scares people, anyway," said Xan, doing up his belt once more. "I don't suppose you can imagine how it feels not to be in control of your own body. It's terrifying."

"I can, though," I said. "Dec's done that to me, too, and he wasn't the first, either. But we're still friends and I'd still trust him with my life. You can use his abilities, Xan: he's on our side, remember?"

"I know, but… the others are going to ask questions, you know. They're not stupid: they know you had something to do with that girl going mad. But what did you mean about her taking her helmet off?"

"I have a problem with metal," Dec told him. "We all do. Metal anywhere on the body is a major problem, but metal on the head beats us every time. Get the enemy to take their helmets off and I'll be able to sabotage them completely, but I can't touch them while they're in full armour. And the same thing happens when I'm wearing armour myself: it interferes with my control. On the other hand, I don't want to find myself out there without armour on: it's dangerous enough as it is. So I'll only be able to do my stuff if I'm somewhere safe enough to take the armour off first, and if the enemy aren't wearing any. So maybe I'm not as much use as all that after all."

"There might be a way around that," said Xan. "Our ancestors used armour made of lacquered leather, and there's certainly still some on board. If we can find you some you wouldn't have to wear metal at all, but you'd still be well protected. It'll be a bit heavier than metal, but I expect you'll manage. What do you think?"

"I think it's worth a try," said Dec.

"Of course, you'd look different from the rest of us," Xan went on, "and so the enemy would probably think you're an officer. They might try harder to kill you than the rest of us."

"Then I'll have to hide in the middle of you somewhere," said Dec. "I might as well, for all the good I'll do with a lance."

"Right, then, I'll see what I can find. Now you ought to go and rest. It'll be dark soon, and we don't send mounted units out at night. Generally both sides simply hold their positions during the hours of darkness; but of course we'll have some pickets out in case Khan decides to cheat. So go and rest until supper. I'll join you as soon as I've looked into the armour thing."

Dec and I got up and started to make our way back to the accommodation area.

"Tell me something," I said. "When the girl got her sword out… why didn't you make her kill the other guy instead of using the flat bit of the blade?"

"I've never killed anyone yet, and I didn't want to start then. Maybe that's stupid in a war, but…" And he shrugged. "I didn't need to kill him, anyway: we got what we needed by just causing some confusion. And as long as I can get the results that way I will. I'm happy to leave the killing to the others."

"I agree completely," I said. "But if we get involved in a proper action…"

Of course, I had killed before: the grenade I had thrown at the sleeping Grey soldiers would certainly have killed some of them, and for all I knew I might have killed more with my rifle, both at the Hub and later at the bridge over the Rhine in Torth's world. But I thought that unlikely, given my shooting ability, and in any case it was harder to think of the Greys as 'people' in quite the same way. Khan's troops were clearly human and I had no wish to kill any of them.

"Let's worry about that if it happens," he said, firmly.

Supper was rather boisterous: obviously we weren't the only band to have been out this afternoon, and some of the others had engaged the enemy in a couple of minor actions, and as a result there was a lot of shouting and cheering going on. I felt rather less enthusiastic, and I was actually hoping we'd be held back until our next inside rota came up the following evening. I didn't say so in so many words, but when we settled down for the night Xan was clearly aware of how I felt.

"How long does this sort of engagement usually go on?" I asked.

"That depends. When there were more crawlers in the vicinity someone would generally make a temporary alliance or two, and then the weaker side would generally withdraw. But here, where there isn't anyone else, this could go on for days, until one of us decides we've lost too many men. When that happens one side will withdraw."

"And how many is too many?"

Xan shrugged. "We don't know how many they had to start with. Remember that a lot of the wounded will be regenerated, so unless someone is killed outright they'll be back again in a few days' time, depending how badly they've been hurt."

"Can't we just try to attack their crawler direct?"

"That's difficult. The crawlers usually stay out of range of each other's main armaments, unless one of the generals is desperate enough to try launching a head-on attack, but that hardly ever happens. And there isn't much else that can damage a crawler seriously enough for it to matter. Even crashing our spotters into it doesn't do any serious harm, unless we could actually fly one into their control room, and you can bet there are plenty of guns there to prevent that. I've tried doing it to our own crawler during drills, and I've never got close.

"Besides, the real point is to test each other's forces and to prove we're better than them. Of course it would be amazing if we could knock their crawler out, but really, at least for us riders, it's about showing how good we are, and how much better than Khan's lot. And tomorrow we'll get another chance to prove it."

"Is it all right for us to use Dec's abilities, then? Doesn't that count as cheating?"

"Of course not! We're entitled to use any means we can – after all, today they were trying to lure us into a place where we would have been outnumbered, and you could say that that wasn't very sporting, either. No, we can use any method we like, just as long as we win."

He paused for a moment.

"There is one thing you could do if you're still a bit nervous about fighting," he said. "There's a tradition of it right across the Great Horde. See, there are some soldiers who fight best when they're drunk. They say that once you've had a few drinks you don't stop to worry about what might happen: instead you just want to get out there and start killing the enemy. Some of the older guys say they fight better when they're drunk. Or some use a sort of drug called bhang to get them in the mood for fighting. I've never tried either myself – well, you know I don't mind a drink when we're relaxing in the evening, but I've never used it to get ready for a battle – but if you want to try either method I can fix it up really easily."

I thought about it for a couple of seconds. Yes, maybe in one way it would be good to be so completely intoxicated that I didn't care what happened, but on the other hand I was sure it would be better if I kept my wits about me.

"No, thanks," I said. "I've only been drunk once, and that was quite enough."

Two weeks previously we'd finally got around to playing cards with alcoholic forfeits. Before joining the Horde I had hardly ever touched alcohol at all, and although the evening itself had been a lot of fun, the way I felt the following morning was more than enough to put me off alcohol for life.

"Good. I mean, I'm happy for you to do whatever works best for you, but I'd prefer it if you can think straight. If you hadn't done that this afternoon we might all have been killed. So I suppose I owe you my life, Jake. Whatever could I do to say thank you?" And he grinned at me suggestively.

One thing about the Horde that I liked a lot was their extremely easy-going attitude to sex. I'd thought Elsass and Kerpia relaxed enough, but here nobody seemed to get embarrassed about sex at all, despite the fact that there wasn't a lot of privacy in our living accommodation: we could hear other couples easily enough through the curtains and, as I'd found out the first time we did anything, they could hear us, too. And nobody seemed to care.

It was, as I'd said to Sam, quite different from having a serious relationship: sex here was more or less a recreational activity with no strings attached. I liked Xan a lot, and he fairly obviously liked me too, but if Stefan had walked through the door I'd have walked away from Xan without a second thought. But as things were I was happy to have some fun with Xan, and so on this occasion I was delighted to suggest a number of ways in which he could say thank you, and by the time we'd worked our way through those I was so tired that I slept through the rest of the night with no trouble at all.

Next morning at breakfast we got our orders, and my heart sank when I heard them: we were going to take part in a large attack in force towards the enemy crawler. This didn't sound particularly clever to me: after all, Khan would be sure to have spotters out, and so long before we got anywhere near his crawler he'd have mobilised a large force of his own. But then if the idea was to allow the soldiers on both sides the maximum opportunity to prove that they were better than their opposite numbers, this strategy would work perfectly. It would also get a lot of them killed, but nobody seemed to be worrying about that.

After we had eaten we got changed into our riding kit and made our way to the stable to get our armour on and mount up. The stable was chaotically busy this morning: it looked as if every horse in the place was going out, and there were people milling about everywhere. I thought that if Khan could fly a suicide spotter into the stable right now he could probably kill about a third of our soldiers in one go. But either he hadn't thought of that, or he'd decided it would be unsporting, or 'bad form', as Miroslav had put it the previous day.

While the rest of us were getting our breastplates on, Xan took Dec into a small room at the back of the stable, and Dec re-emerged looking like a Chinese warlord from the Middle Ages: he was wearing a jacket of overlapping leather plates that came down to his thighs and a leather helmet with flaps that fell to his shoulders.

"I don't know what this looks like," he said, "but it's damned heavy. Still, it's what I need: now I won't need to get undressed every time I want to do anything."

We mounted up and rode outside, and there we formed up into a large unit, with other bands around us and, I was pleased to see, ahead of us: when we met the enemy we wouldn't be in the front rank. Xan seemed less happy about this, but I suppose most of the other band leaders were senior to him and so would have claimed the honour of dying first. Well, obviously none of them thought they were going to die: I seemed to be the only one who was thinking that way.

We rode away from the crawler at a walk, moving up to a trot once everyone had settled into position, and I was pleased to see a number of spotters flying ahead of us: it would be difficult to ambush a unit of this size, but clearly the general was taking precautions anyway.

We rode on steadily for some time. Sometimes the unit had to break up to pass natural features such as woods and steep slopes, and each time this happened I got nervous, expecting an ambush. But nothing happened, and in each case the unit was able to reform once the piece of woodland had been passed.

Still there was no sign of the enemy, and my hopes began to rise: perhaps Khan had moved away during the night. But then there came a shout from the unit in front of us, and looking past them I saw a crawler partly hidden by a wood around a mile ahead of us.

"Surely he's not going to let us ride up to his crawler unchallenged?" I asked.

"No," Xan said. "I think he wants us to be in range of his secondary armament, but he won't let us get closer than that without a fight."

And, sure enough, a minute or so later a roar went up from our front rank, and I saw enemy cavalry coming towards us.

To say that I felt scared would be an understatement, and for a moment I wished I'd taken Xan up on his offer to let me get drunk or to take a dose of bhang. I was afraid I was going to disgrace myself completely by turning tail, and how I forced myself to keep station next to Xan was beyond me. Then Xan's wrist radio crackled into life and he yelled at us to wheel left.

"What's happening?" I asked.

"Captain Altay wants us to try to flank them. Our front rank will take them head-on, and we're to wheel and come at them from the side. If it works we'll smash right through them."

"And if they see us coming?"

He grinned at me. "Then it'll be more interesting."

Obviously I was no expert, but this seemed like a good plan to me, especially since our wheeling movement took us out of sight of the enemy behind a stretch of woodland. Our band and two others were making the attempt, and as we emerged from the far side of the wood we wheeled right and closed up. The enemy were a couple of hundred yards dead ahead now, and at first they didn't seem to have seen us. By the time they did it was almost too late, because their front rank was already piling into ours, and the cries from behind them did no more than distract them. The second and third ranks of their unit wheeled to face us, but as we hit them we were moving at the charge and they were almost stationary.

I really didn't want to kill anyone. My only real objective here was to stay alive myself, and so I was concentrating far more on what I did with my shield than with my lance, because I didn't really care if my lance hit anyone else, as long as their lance didn't hit me. And so of course my lance hit somebody's shield full on, and the shock of the impact, which I really hadn't trained for, unbalanced me completely, and I fell off my horse. I managed to kick my feet free of the stirrups, but I landed heavily on my back, winding myself.

I staggered to my feet a few seconds later. I wasn't sure where my horse was because there was fighting going on all around me. My shield was still strapped to my left forearm and I still had my sword, which was hanging from my belt, so I pulled it out of its scabbard and then looked around, trying to see my friends. There were a few other unhorsed riders staggering about, some clutching injuries but one or two looking no more damaged than I was, and I tried to steer clear of them. I was lucky in that the third rank enemy unit we had piled into were young teenagers like ourselves, but I still didn't fancy taking any of them on one-on-one if it could be avoided.

And then I saw something that made me change my mind: a short distance ahead of me Sam, who had not only come off his horse but who had also apparently lost his sword, was being attacked by a tall boy wielding some sort of scimitar. Sam still had his shield and was doing his best to block the attacks, but that scimitar was a heavy weapon and already the shield was showing signs of breaking. So I ran at the tall soldier and slammed my shield into his face, and he staggered a couple of paces away and fell over.

"Are you all right?" I asked Sam.

He nodded breathlessly.

"You'd better find a sword," I said. "If we stick together…"

I broke off, because out of the corner of my eye I saw the scimitar guy coming back. I swung my sword towards him, intending to warn him off, but I'd misjudged how fast he was coming, because instead of merely threatening him my sword crunched into his ribs. He gave a gasp, the scimitar dropped from his hand and he staggered a bit and then fell over.

"Oh, shit!" I said, dropping to my knees beside him and trying to find a way to stop the bleeding. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean… oh, fuck…"

I dragged the boy's belt off and did it up again around his chest, using it to try to keep the wound closed, but he was struggling to breathe and I was afraid I'd punctured a lung. And then I looked up and saw a large man with a beard rushing towards me waving a sword.

I struggled to my feet, picking up my own sword and thinking that I might as well have grabbed a blade of grass for all the good it was going to do me against this guy. And then a couple of paces before he reached me the man was suddenly swept off to one side, caught on a lance.

"Keep your guard up, Jake!" advised Ilse, grinning at me from the saddle as she pulled her lance free from the man's body. "I might not be here next time!" And she rode on.

I took a deep breath and started looking for a way out of this area. But in fact the fighting seemed to be moving away, and by the time Sam came to join me – and he'd found a sword from somewhere, though he said he wasn't much good at sword-fighting – most of the enemy seemed to have disappeared. There were quite a few dead and wounded around us, but there seemed to be far more wearing the dark blue of Khan's forces than the red of ours.

A couple of minutes later Xan came trotting towards us, the bulk of his band still with him

"Still alive, Jake?" he queried.

"Thanks to Ilse," I said. "You haven't seen my horse, I suppose?"

"Over there," he said, nodding off to my left, and sure enough, there was my horse, quietly nibbling at the grass. They obviously trained their horses really well, because I'd expected it to be miles away by now. I jogged over and led her back.

"Now what?" I asked.

"Now we regroup and wait for orders. I think we're on top at this end of the line, but I hear Khan's doing better in the centre, so we'll probably be sent in to help there shortly."

I looked around. There were a number of other horses standing around, presumably the mounts of the dead and wounded blue-clad riders lying around us. And then I looked up at the enemy crawler, less than half a mile away, and I had an idea. I wasn't sure if it would work, and it would certainly be dangerous, but it still seemed to be to be preferable to getting involved in cavalry warfare again: next time I probably wouldn't be as lucky.

Dec had somehow managed to stay on his horse throughout the battle so far, so I told him in Arvelan what I was thinking and asked whether he thought my plan would work.

"Probably," he said. "Provided we don't run into too many of them at the same time, and that they're not wearing armour, of course."

"I don't think they'll be wearing any inside the crawler," I said. "Let's see what Xan thinks."

I gave the reins of my horse to Dec and drew Xan a short distance away from the others.

"I think I've got a way to end this," I said. "If we disguise ourselves in their uniforms I think we can get inside their crawler, and if we can do that I think I know how to win this war."

"It won't work," he said. "We always have sentries on the ramps to stop the enemy doing just this. If we don't know the password, we'll never get inside. And even if we do get inside the deck-master will know straight away that we don't belong there, and he'll raise the alarm."

"Not if Dec tells him not to," I pointed out. "And the same goes for the sentries."

"The sentries will be in armour," Xan objected.

"Dec!" I shouted. "Could you ask one of their wounded what today's password is, please?"

He nodded, got off his horse, found an enemy who was still conscious and bent over him for a moment.

"'One Fat Buffalo'," he announced.

"Well?" I asked. "Is it worth a try?"

"You'll never get into the control room," Xan told me. "It's always kept locked from the inside during combat, and even if we did get in there'll be guards in there, probably in armour – but even if they're not, how many can Dec deal with at once?"

"Four, probably," said Dec, who must have been following the conversation mentally, because he couldn't possibly have heard Xan's low voice from where he was standing.

"It doesn't matter, though," I said, "because I'm not intending to get into the control room – well, not that way, anyway. Come on, Xan – think how good you'll look if it works!"

"Think how dead I'll look if it doesn't," he replied. "But… if you really think it'll work… why not? How many should we take?"

"How many of their horses are there, and how many jackets that aren't completely soaked in blood? If we can find five or six, that should do."

We couldn't find many jackets with no blood on at all, but we mustered five that were just about presentable, so Xan selected Ilse and Miroslav to join himself, me and Dec, leaving Vanya in charge of the band. The enemy wore smart dark blue jackets with fur trimmings that buttoned all the way to the neck, so all we had to do was to remove our breastplates and put the jackets on over our shirts. We replaced our helmets with their rather less ornate ones and selected five uninjured horses. Xan told Vanya to wait for us in the small wood we had wheeled around earlier, and the five of us rode towards the enemy crawler. Like us, the enemy carried automatic rifles on their horses, so we now had everything we would need.

There was quite a lot of traffic as we approached the crawler: small bands of wounded riding back and fresh reinforcements riding out, and that made it a bit easier to look inconspicuous. But when we reached the various ramps leading into the stables we found each one guarded by fully armoured troops. Xan picked a ramp that was comparatively unused and rode confidently forward.

"One fat buffalo," he announced, before the sentry could even ask, and that did the trick: the man stepped back out of the way and we were able to ride up the ramp into the stable. We dismounted, and at that point an angry-looking man strode towards us.

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded. "This isn't your stable."

"I know," said Xan. "But it's chaos in ours, and we need to get in to report. I'm sure you can understand that, can't you?"

Of course by now Dec was hard at work, and so the deck-master, who wasn't wearing any armour, quickly agreed that he understood.

"But you'll need to move them back to your usual stable as soon as it's clear," he added. "Our own riders will need the space as soon as they get back from kicking Lee's arse."

"Of course. Thank you," said Xan, thrusting his reins at one of the ground crew and leading us towards the door that led into the crawler proper.

"How the hell did that happen?" asked Miroslav, as soon as we were through the door. "Is he completely incompetent? We'd never have got away with that in our place!"

"We've got a secret weapon," Xan said. "We'll tell you about it later, provided that this works. Come on."

The layout of this crawler was much the same as ours, though the décor was a little different, and some of the corridors seemed a little narrower. Several times we passed other people, most of whom didn't give us a second glance – I suppose with a crew as large as this it would be impossible for anybody to recognise everyone. A couple of times a challenge did seem imminent, but in both cases Dec persuaded the challenger mentally that there was nothing to worry about, and we were able to continue our progress.

In due course we reached the central staircase, and I led the party right up to the top deck, pausing outside the door that led to the weapons room.

"Get your weapons ready," I said, preparing my own, "but don't shoot unless you absolutely have to. The longer we can go without anyone outside this room raising an alarm, the better our chances are. All we want to do at the moment is to take over this room."

I reached for the door handle, conscious that if it the door was locked we'd be in trouble. But obviously they didn't think it would be possible for an enemy to get this far without alarms being triggered, because they hadn't bothered locking the door. Quickly we stepped inside, closing the door behind us and covering everyone in the room with our weapons.

"Everyone, please keep calm," I said, hoping that Dec was reinforcing that instruction mentally. "If you do as we say nobody will get hurt…"

"Don't press that," interrupted Xan, spotting the communication man's finger straying towards an alarm button. "Stand up slowly and walk to the other side of the room – carefully!"

"Don't go for that weapon, captain," put in Dec, pointing his gun at the deck officer. "Take it out of the holster very slowly, put it on the floor and then go and join your colleague by the wall."

For a moment I thought she was going to disobey, but presumably Dec persuaded her otherwise, because she did as he had told her to. And at that the rest of the dozen or so people in the room seemed to abandon any idea of fighting, too.

We moved them all into the same area and made them sit on the deck. The only one I kept in place was the man sitting at the console for the main armament, and I only kept him there until everyone else had been moved. Then I told him to remove his helmet and stand up.

"I don't know what you're hoping to do," he said, switching off the helmet and removing it, "but it isn't going to work. I'm the only person who can operate the guns."

"I don't think you are," I said, taking his place at the console and laying my rifle carefully on the floor. I picked up the helmet, put it on carefully and flicked the switch, and the console lit up. And of course the first thing that happened was that a large panel appeared on the screen asking for my crew number.

"See?" said the gunner. "And I'm not going to give it to you, whatever you do to me. I'll give you three wrong answers, and after you put the wrong information in three times it'll lock everyone except the general out. So you might as well give up now."

"Ask him for his crew number, Dec," I said.

Dec paused for a moment in front of the gunner.

"It's Green Five One Seven Hyphen Red North Six," he told me.

The gunner's jaw dropped open.

"How the hell did you do that?" he demanded.

"Never mind," said Dec. "Just go and sit down with the others."

I tapped in the code using the Chinese part of the keyboard, and the panel disappeared and was replaced by the normal targeting box. I took hold of the joystick and swung the weapon round until it was facing straight forward, and then I began to depress it. Immediately the warning alarm went off, and I did as I had inadvertently done during my training: I overruled the failsafe device, turned the alarm off and fired.

This time, of course, the weapon was live, and the shot smashed into the roof towards the front of the deck. The main armament didn't fire shells: instead if projected balls of energy of some sort. I didn't know exactly how it worked, and neither, so far as I had been able to find out, did anyone else on my crawler: presumably the aliens had built it, made sure that it worked and then just left the crew to pull the trigger when needed. But, however it worked, it did a hell of a lot of damage. My second shot smashed straight through the armour and exploded at the front of the deck, shattering the window and destroying the captain's desk.

"This might be a good time to call their control room," I said to Xan. "Everyone else, stay alert: this is the point at which they might get violent."

Xan checked that the door was closed and locked and stepped over to the communications desk. After staring at the controls for a few seconds he shrugged and said, "Why don't you just knock a hole in their ceiling, Jake, and then I won't need a radio."

So I fired one more shot, and that duly took out the floor of Deck One, leaving a hole down to Dec Two.

"Hello, General!" yelled Xan, leaning close to the hole. "This is Band-leader Xan Temur, of the Horde of General Lee. We have control of your main armament. Would you like to surrender, or would you prefer us to blow your control room to pieces from above?"

I didn't hear the reply, because at that moment the door to the spotter control room opened and a man with a pistol charged through it and aimed a shot at Xan, which fortunately missed. Ilse swivelled and shot him, and he fell to the deck. At the same time there came a heavy thump from the door that led back to the stairs.

"Call your men off or we'll fire again," Xan yelled.

All that happened was that there was another thump on the door, so I fired again, twice, and there were two loud bangs from below. Smoke started to drift up through the hole, and I hoped I hadn't set the crawler on fire, because otherwise we'd be in serious trouble.

"That was your last warning!" Xan yelled. "If you don't surrender immediately we'll simply keep firing until we're hitting the tracks, and then we'll swivel the guns and blow off the back of the crawler, too. Stop now and you'll be able to repair it: make us keep going and your horde will cease to exist."

There was another bang on the door, but this time it was immediately followed by a muffled yell from the deck below. The noises outside the door ceased.

"Very well," came a shout from the deck below. "I seem to have no choice. I accept."

"Thank you. Please recall all your troops to the crawler. I'll arrange for a senior officer to accept your surrender officially. Oh, and bring all your spotters in too, please – and remember than from where we are we can easily check on that."

"Stay alert," he said to us, quietly. "It would be extremely bad form if he were to renege on a surrender, but you never know." He spoke into his wrist radio for some time and then took up position against the wall where he could cover the hole in the deck. The others covered the door to the spotters' room, the main door and the crew, and I sat at the console, hoping the business could be resolved quickly: if I'd been General Khan I'd have been looking for a way to cut all power to Deck One. If he could do that without disabling the entire crawler we'd be in a serious mess.

"Five minutes," Xan told us. "Once our crawler is within range it won't matter what happens here, because if ours has its main armament working and this one doesn't… and our cavalry will be here sooner than that. If we can hold this deck until they get here we'll have won."

"Watch the window," suggested Dec. "He might think of flying one of the weapon-carrying spotters in here – if he can kill us before our people get here he can still get out of this."

I don't know whether Khan didn't think of that, or of cutting the power, or whether he was more honourable than we suspected, but for whatever reason nothing happened for the next five minutes, or the five minutes after that. And then there was a knock on the door.

"Who is it?" called Xan.

"Captain Altay. You can let me in, Xan – it's all over out here."

"Who's my deputy?" Xan called.

"Vanya Kutuzov."

"How do you know someone hasn't got a gun to his head?" I asked, as Xan walked over to the door.

"If they had, he'd have given a wrong answer to warn me. You really are suspicious, aren't you? I told you, Jake, war is an honourable business: once Khan had surrendered I was fairly sure he'd play fair."

"'Play fair'? It's not a game, Xan – we've been killing each other all morning!"

"Yes, but only according to the rules of warfare. I don't think you understand our methods of warfare at all. I guess wars are fought differently where you come from."

"Yes, they are. It's true that there are some rules about things like the treatment of prisoners and so on, but even the most civilised countries don't always obey them, and some countries don't sign up to the conventions at all. There aren't any gentlemen's agreements where I come from, and I don't think there have been any for about two hundred years."

"Then I'm glad I don't live in your world," said Xan, opening the door.

Captain Altay, a short, dark-haired man with a drooping moustache, walked in, followed by a couple of adult soldiers wearing General Lee's red colours.

"Nice job," he said to Xan. "I don't pretend to know how you did it, but the result can't be argued with. Any injuries?"

"Not on our side," said Xan. "And we only had to kill one of them, and he really didn't give Ilse any choice. It turned out to be a clean operation, which I didn't think it would be when we started."

"Well, you can come back to the crawler and tell the general about it. He's waiting for you."

"Has everything been signed officially?" asked Xan.

"Yes, it's all on paper."

"Then it's safe to go," he said. "Thanks, Jake, I think you can turn it off now."

I switched off the helmet, took it off carefully and put it on the shelf where it belonged and then followed Xan out of the room and back down the stairs. But we only got down one flight before we were intercepted by a middle-aged man in a blue robe. He had black curly hair, and if I'd had to guess I'd have said he was Greek or Italian, even though he now had an Asian name.

"Hell, you're just kids!" he exclaimed. "How the hell did you manage to walk in here without being challenged?"

"We were lucky, I suppose," said Xan. "We're wearing uniforms we took from some of your people, and I suppose we just blended in."

"There's more to it than that. You'd have had to get past too many people who would have challenged you… anyway, I must congratulate you: however you did it, it certainly impressed me."

"Can I ask you something, please, General?" I asked.

"Go ahead."

"Why didn't you cut the power to the top deck? That would have left us with no weapon."

"I couldn't have done it quickly enough. Either we'd have had to open a lot of panels to find the right junctions, or we'd have had to shut the whole crawler down, and that would have been fatal. If we'd had more time of course that's what we would have done, but you didn't give us enough. After all, as your officer said, if you'd kept firing we'd never have been able to repair it. But next time… next time we won't make the same mistakes!"

Next time? I wondered what terms General Lee had imposed if Khan expected to be able to fight us again in the foreseeable future. And when we got back to our crawler I found out.

"A full truce for six months to give them time to make repairs and a defensive alliance with them if anyone else attacks them during that period," General Lee told me when I asked.

"Is that it?"

"That's it. Of course, we'll stay in the vicinity for a couple of weeks at least, in case we can help them out with any spare parts."

"But I thought you were enemies!"

"Why would you think that?"

"Well, the fact that we were trying to kill each other influenced my thinking a little!"

"Oh, that's just practice. We fight each other just to keep our hand in until we find some real enemies. Yes, I know you're going to object and say that soldiers get killed, but that's life – and, besides, it's only the bad ones who get killed. The rest get more skilful. And everyone on board has chosen this: if they didn't want to fight they'd have left the crawler and put down roots in one of our settlements to raise sheep or cattle. Anyway, tell me how you blew up Khan's control room with his own guns."

So we gave him a reasonably full debrief, though of course this meant that we had to tell him at least a bit about Dec's abilities. We told him about his ability to read minds, but managed not to mention that he could compel people to obey him. We didn't want the general to see him as a possible rival.

Of course, once the story got about – and it didn't take long – we were besieged by people wanting to hear about it, and we spent large parts of the afternoon and evening giving them the very basic, modest and Dec-free version, in which we had luckily got past the sentries, flukily not been challenged on our way to Deck One, and had jammily taken the crew of the weapons room by surprise so completely that we were in control almost before they realised that we were there. And of course nobody who didn't work on our Deck One knew that the weapons were protected by a crew number, and so nobody thought to ask how I'd managed to operate their weapon.

By the time we finally went to bed that evening I just wanted to sleep.

"You're still not happy about this, are you?" Xan asked as we settled down.

"No, I'm not. I killed someone today… at least, I think I did. And I damn nearly got killed, too, and if Ilse hadn't been there I would have been. And for what? So you can keep your military skills sharp. I'm sorry, Xan, but it just seems wrong to me."

"Well, look on the bright side: at least you won't have to do it again. Now that Khan's been dealt with we'll be able to have another try at opening a portal, and if it works you'll be able to go somewhere else, if that's what you really want. Of course, I'd prefer it if you decided to stay. I wonder if there's anything I could do to change your mind?"

"I'm too tired, Xan. Mind you, if you ask me again in the morning I might feel more like it…"

"All right. Sleep well, Jake."

He gave me a brief hug and settled down, and I started thinking about portals again. Certainly in a lot of ways I'd be sorry to leave this world: I liked the people here very much. But their approach to war seemed to me to be completely insane.

So Jake has survived his first proper cavalry battle and maybe now he'll be able to slip away into a more peaceful world. Or maybe not: he's got another surprise heading his way.

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