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Updated: May 24, 2025
"The Croutha had bound us two and two, with neck-yokes; these the servants of the Wizard Traders took off from us, and they chained us together by tens, with the chains we still wore when we came to this place " "They killed my child, my little Zhouzha!" the woman with the horribly blistered back was wailing.
"Well, we were dropping boomerang balls yesterday, while we had sun to mask the return-flashes. Nothing. The Croutha have taken the city of Sohram, just below the big bend of the river. Tomorrow, when we have sunlight, we're going to start boomerang-balling the central square. We may get something." "The Wizard Traders'll be moving in near there, about now," Vall said.
Then they were confining their operations to unpenetrated time lines; there had been no reports of firearms in the hands of the Croutha invaders. "After they buy a batch of slaves," Skordran Kirv continued, "they transpose them to this presumably Fifth Level base, where they have concentration camps.
There'd been nothing to it the prophecies weren't precognition, they were shrewd inferences, and the miracles weren't psychokinesis, they were sleight-of-hand. She found herself asking: "What barbarian invasion's this?" "Oh, Central Asian nomadic people, the Croutha," Tortha Karf told her.
What's to prevent a gang of unscrupulous paracops from moving in on a few unexploited Kholghoor time lines, buying captives from the Croutha, and shipping them to the Esaron Sector?" "Then why would they let a thing like this get out?" Salgath Trod inquired. "Somebody slipped up and moved a lot of slaves onto an exploited Esaron time line.
For that matter, so does the speed with which they moved in to exploit this Croutha invasion of Kholghoor Sector India. "Well, I've studied illegal and subversive organizations all over paratime, and among the really successful ones, there are a few uniform principles.
Their procedure is to establish camps in the forest near recently conquered Kharanda cities; then they appear to the Croutha, impress them with their magical powers, and trade manufactured goods for Kharanda captives. They mainly trade firearms, apparently some kind of flintlocks, and powder."
So far, we have ten or fifteen pictures of the main square at Sohram showing Croutha with firearms, and pictures of Wizard Trader camps and conveyer heads on the same time lines. Here, let me show you; this is from an airboat over the forest outside the equivalent of Sohram."
Krador Arv shook his head. "We still have about forty to go," he said. "Nothing new in their stories; still the same two time lines." "These people," Skordran Kirv explained, "were all peons on the estate of a Kharanda noble just above the big bend of the Ganges. The Croutha hit their master's estate about a ten-days ago, elapsed time.
"Did you have hand in the fighting?" "No, lord. We were peasant folk, not fighting people. We had no weapons, nor weapon-skill. Those who fought were all killed; we held up empty hands, and were spared to be captives of the Croutha." "What happened to your master, the Lord Ghromdour, and to his lady?"
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