Snare

by Katharine Kerr

  I never thought to look that closely before, she thought. Well, now I know.

  Just as the sun touched the western horizon, she took her crystals back to camp. By the twilight glow in the sky she hobbled the horses as well as tethered them on short ropes between the circle of fire stones and the river. Water Woman had assured her that the yap-packers couldn’t swim. Loy was already splitting spongy yellow wood with a hatchet.

  ‘I was lucky,’ Loy said. ‘I found a whole downed tree.’ She gestured at a stack of wood. ‘We’ll probably need to keep the fire going all night.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Ammadin said. ‘Predators usually have a territory that they defend from other predators. I’m hoping that there’s only one pack of these creatures around. If so, and if we scare them off a couple of times, they’ll give up.’

  ‘We should be so lucky. Hope is lovely, but let’s not douse the fire too soon.’

  Ammadin went down to the stream and gathered an armload of stones, which she stacked near the fire-pit. Loy had finished laying the fire. She took a metal box of matches out of her pocket, knelt down, and lit the tinder while Ammadin watched. The tinder took, the kindling glowed, the fire caught, all on one match.

  ‘Good job,’ Ammadin said.

  ‘Thanks,’ Loy said. ‘My family used to go camping when I was a kid. My father was a great one for hiking, the bastard. Tramp tramp tramp, no matter how much our feet hurt. My poor mother’s idea of a vacation was lounging around reading, not that he ever listened to her. But anyway, let’s have dinner, such as it is.’

  Loy’s guild had given them packs of dried flatbread and cheese, little bags of a dried fruit that Loy called grapes, oil beans, jerky, and the like – all of it edible and to Ammadin’s taste, not bad at all. Loy, however, complained. Apparently, like so many people in the Cantons, she had high standards when it came to food. By the time they’d finished eating, the Herd had risen, and a faint silver light lay over the wild pasture. Ammadin got up and walked a few steps, turning her back on the firelight. Nothing moved beyond the camp but a breeze, rustling the leaves of the Midas trees by the stream.

  ‘If they’ve got a name like yap-packers,’ Loy said, ‘we should be able to hear them coming.’

  ‘The horses will warn us long before then,’ Ammadin said. ‘They can smell things that are too far away for me to pick up.’

  ‘All right. That’s reassuring.’

  ‘Here’s something that isn’t. I spotted Soutan’s camp.’

  Loy said something so foul that Ammadin was honestly startled.

  ‘Well, sorry,’ Loy went on. ‘He affects me that way.’

  ‘I can understand. I’m surprised Warkannan let his nephew go off with him.’

  ‘I don’t know who Warkannan is, but he may not have had any choice. Soutan’s particularly good at getting young men to follow him. He needs someone to wait on him, after all. He’s not the kind to take care of his own horses or split his own firewood.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I saw Arkazo doing, all right, taking care of the horses. I wonder why they’re riding east? I hope it doesn’t mean that Zayn’s dead. It might.’

  ‘You must be worried sick.’

  ‘No. It might also mean that Zayn’s alive, but the man he was hunting is dead.’

  ‘He was what?’

  ‘It’s too complicated to explain. I am worried, I guess.’

  ‘I’d be, in your position. Though I’ll bet you won’t go all to pieces like I did, if something’s happened to him. When Oskar drowned, I mean, I hardly knew where I was for months.’

  ‘And Rozi?’

  ‘What energy I had went to her, of course. There wasn’t much left over. She was really devastated. I wonder if that’s why Soutan meant so much to her? Sort of a substitute father.’

  Ammadin’s grey suddenly tossed up its head and snuffled at the evening breeze. All three horses moved with a little hop of hobbled forelegs; the chestnut stamped a hind leg and snorted. Loy scrambled to her feet.

  ‘You’d better get that weapon,’ Ammadin said. ‘I’ll put another log on the fire.’

  In a few minutes they understood why the ChaMeech had named these predators yap-packers. Yap they did, and loudly, continually, a stutter of sound against the quiet night like the clapping of a dozen pairs of hands. Most likely they deliberately panicked their prey, as the sabre lizards did, in order to cut the weak and aged members out of a herd. Ammadin stood by the blazing fire with a stone in each hand, Loy stood on the other side with her weapon at the ready and the pack slung from her back. The silver tube looked so flimsy that Ammadin doubted if it would do much good. Death spirits! she thought. As if I’d believe that! The yapping came closer, louder. The black gelding whinnied and tried to dance, pulling at the tether rope, but the hobbles kept him in place. Her grey snorted; the chestnut merely trembled in abject terror.

  ‘A dozen of them, maybe,’ Loy said.

  ‘That sounds about right, yes.’

  The yapping sounded again, quite close; then suddenly the pack fell silent. Ammadin could hear them rustling through the grass; they were coming straight for camp. She could smell them now, a sour beast-stink like spoiled keese. All at once something gleamed at the edge of the circle of firelight. Eyes appeared, gleaming red, and the glistening blue-grey skin of an animal’s head. It yapped, the mouth opened to reveal teeth, a lot of teeth. The horses whinnied, danced, huddled as close together as they could get. Other eyes appeared, gleaming; other skins glistened. One bold reptile stepped forward, fully in the light.

  ‘Small?’ Loy whispered. ‘Maybe to a ChaMeech.’

  Ammadin nodded and hefted stones that suddenly seemed useless. The creatures stood a good three feet at the shoulder on six agile-looking legs. The yap-packer snuffled open-mouthed and took a step forward, its flat tail lashing. The others followed with one cautious step, a pause, a glance at the creature in the lead.

  ‘Lock,’ Loy said. ‘Fire.’

  Something slithered like a noiseless rope, a flash, a gleam, light that was not firelight. The leader’s head exploded before it could even scream. The force knocked it back, jerked it around. Blood and grey matter spewed everywhere. Legs scrabbled, and it fell. The rest of the creatures squealed and cowered, shoving one another as they burst out yapping.

  ‘Lock,’ Loy said. ‘Fire.’

  Another head burst, spattering blood and bone over the pack members nearest by. The beasts reared up, leapt back, turned on their middle legs with a kick of the back pair. The yapping turned to howls as they fled, screeching and scrabbling through the grass. Ammadin suddenly remembered the stones she held and let them fall to the ground. For a long time the two women could hear the pack, howling in terror, farther and farther away, until at last they heard nothing but the wind in high grass. The horses quieted as the howls died, and the wind scoured the last of the stink.

  ‘I owe you an apology,’ Ammadin said. ‘Those really are death spirits, aren’t they?’

  ‘To tell you the truth,’ Loy said, ‘I honestly don’t know how this thing works. But it does. Think they’ll be back?’

  ‘I doubt it. They acted like they had some intelligence, not much, maybe, but enough to follow a leader. They’re probably thinking, oh well, I bet they weren’t tasty anyway.’

  Loy laughed, but it was an odd sound that hovered on the edge of a sob. ‘I’ve never killed anything before but bugs,’ she said. ‘And it’s disgusting. Really fucking disgusting.’

  Ammadin turned to look at her face and saw firelight dancing across dead-pale skin. The hand holding the weapon hung at her side; Loy suddenly raised the other one to her mouth.

  ‘Are you going to throw up?’ Ammadin said.

  She shook her head in a violent no, then turned and rushed for the latrine ditch beyond the camp. Ammadin could hear her vomiting. Ammadin walked over to the first dead yap-packer and squatted down next to it. It looked meaty, tough most likely, but meaty. As the leader it would have had first feed on all the ki
lls. Beyond that, she had no idea what to do with it. She’d never cooked an animal in her life, and the only one she’d ever skinned was the saur for her cloak. She’d done a messy enough job on that, too.

  In a few minutes Loy came back in full control of herself. She joined Ammadin, took her knife from her belt, and poked it experimentally into the dead yap-packer’s middle shoulder.

  ‘We’ll have to stew this to eat it,’ Loy said. ‘If I gut and clean it, though, we can take at least part of the carcass with us and cook it while we wait for Water Woman. We might as well use that kettle the guild bursar foisted off on me. Or will the pack horse rebel if we make it carry a dead animal?’

  ‘If you drain the carcass and wrap it in grass, I don’t see why it would. But can you do that?’

  ‘Yes. It’s done dying. I’ve cleaned plenty of game. It was seeing the heads – oh merde –’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘Don’t think about it! Should I go haul in the other one?’

  ‘Let’s see how smart they are. Leave it out there as a warning. We won’t even be able to eat all of this one.’ She snorted like a horse. ‘Small! You better tell Water Woman about that.’

  Had it not been for his watch, Warkannan would have lost not merely track of time but Time itself, or so he felt. The constant clatter of wheels on tracks made it impossible to speak and hard to think, and while it was loud, it was also oddly soothing. In a little pool of dim light the cart kept hurtling through the tunnel. The ChaMeech kept loping and booming, sending waves of thunder ahead of them into the darkness. The H’mai men took turns standing with the horses and sitting to rest. Standing in the jouncing cart pained Jezro’s twisted leg so badly that eventually Warkannan and Zayn insisted he stay sitting. On and on, rattling and lurching – Warkannan had no idea of how fast they were going or how many miles they’d travelled. From bitter experience he knew that ChaMeech males could keep up this pace for an entire day.

  Every now and then Warkannan would take out his watch and call out the hours like a sentry on fort duty. Thirteen hundred came and went; fourteen hundred, fifteen, eighteen followed. Up on the surface the sun would be hanging low in the sky, but still the ChaMeech ran in their easy lope. Although Zayn seemed calm, Warkannan dismissed the appearance. Discipline would keep a man together on the outside even when his mind was half-torn to pieces. He could remember the ordeal they had shared, and how, at the very end, when they were safe with the regiment around them, he had suddenly realized how young Sergeant Benumar was, from a joke Zahir made, and the look in his eyes when he’d made it. He was no more than twenty then, Warkannan thought. He must have lied about his age to enlist.

  Warkannan was just taking out his watch again when the ChaMeech in harness suddenly let out a burst of high-pitched sounds, clearly audible as words. All six began to slow down, and the cart jerked and swung until at last they walked in unison. The lavender female got to her feet and pointed down the tunnel, where another stone platform was emerging from the darkness. With one last jerk and wrench, the barge stopped.

  ‘Up!’ the female said. ‘Food. Rest.’

  She climbed out of the cart and onto the platform, then gestured at the H’mai to follow her. The ChaMeech males in front began unharnessing themselves. She tossed her head back, filled her throat sac, and thrummed long and hard. From somewhere above Warkannan heard creaks and scrapes. A thin crescent of sunlight appeared and slowly waxed, revealing a ramp leading up to a circle of light and air.

  ‘Thank God,’ Zayn muttered.

  This time the horses showed no fear of the ramp. They walked up quickly, switching their tails, as if they knew that real ground and grass waited ahead of them. Getting them off the ramp and onto solid ground took some manoeuvring, but at last all the H’mai, horses, and ChaMeech stood in a wild meadow. While the female thrummed the entrance shut, the H’mai led their horses a few paces away. The spear-carrying males followed, scowling. Warkannan turned slowly around, scanning their location – bluish grass and sunset sky as far as he could see. The jagged horizon of hills seemed a little closer, a little darker.

  ‘What’s that, I wonder?’ Jezro was pointing off to the west.

  Warkannan could just make out something tall glittering in the sunset. ‘Flexstone, I suppose. I wonder where we are?’

  The female came up beside them and pointed at the gleam.

  ‘Pillars,’ she said. ‘We meet there.’

  ‘Meet whom?’ Jezro said.

  ‘More us. Rest, food, all. Horses need-now eat lots. New Chur pull-next, push-next.’

  ‘I think I understand her,’ Jezro said. ‘We all get to eat and rest, and they’ll let the horses graze. Then it’s back in the cart.’

  Two white pillars stood close together, and at their bases over a dozen ChaMeech males stood waiting, some wearing yellow kilts, others naked except for yellow scarves around their necks. Behind them a meadow stretched to a shallow river, running east and west, bordered by Midas trees. The little female allowed the H’mai to tend their horses and take food from their saddlebags, then made them sit between two armed guards while she talked with the largest male present. Warkannan could hear only the occasional burst of their conversation, not that he understood any of it. Warkannan laid a hand on Zayn’s shoulder and found he’d stopped trembling.

  ‘Things are different now,’ Warkannan said. ‘Dead hostages won’t do them any good.’

  ‘Yes, I figured that out.’ Zayn managed a smile. ‘I’m sorry. I feel like the biggest coward in the world.’

  ‘Don’t! It’s that memory of yours, isn’t it?’

  One of their guards made an audible thrumming noise and poked his spear in their direction.

  ‘No talking in Kazraki,’ Jezro said in Hirl-Onglay. ‘It upsets our hosts.’

  ‘Apparently so,’ Warkannan said, also in Hirl-Onglay. ‘They seem to understand this language well enough.’

  ‘Better than they can speak it, much better. Huh. I wonder why?’

  Neither of their guards deigned to answer.

  The Spider was just rising when the female chose a new set of males to propel the cart. By the glow of two lightwands she herded everyone onto the road and started moving them back to the white sphere marking the tunnel entrance. The men walked, leading their horses, and decided to risk some conversation.

  ‘Idres?’ Zayn said in Hirl-Onglay. ‘For a while there I couldn’t make my mind stop remembering. From something I heard in Sarla, I’d guess that the Inborn got some kind of special training. I’ve never had it.’

  ‘Stands to reason you wouldn’t, yes.’ Warkannan switched to Kazraki and dropped his voice. ‘Wait a minute. I’ve got an idea. Can you frighten yourself again?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can you work up that cold sweat kind of terror? Maybe we can get –’

  One of the males grunted and waved a spear in Warkannan’s face, a bare few inches from his skin. Warkannan stopped talking, but he’d said enough. Zayn nodded to show he’d understood, then took a deep breath. Warkannan could see Zayn’s eyes move as if he were studying a picture until he caught his breath with a choking sound. He began to shiver, but sweat ran down his face as well. In a few seconds the sweat began soaking through his shirt.

  Up ahead the female stood ready to thrum and open the way down. Warkannan handed a startled Jezro the reins of his horse, then strode up to her. When he tapped her on the shoulder, she swung her head around, and the males moved closer, raising spears.

  ‘My friend is sick,’ Warkannan said, pointing to Zayn. ‘Two hostages are enough. Let him go. He is sick. Maybe we all get sick if he is here.’

  The female lowered her head to look him in the face with her doubled blue eyes. Warkannan cleared his throat and repeated everything a good bit louder. ‘Two hostages good,’ he finished, bellowing. ‘Three sick hostages no good.’

  She raised her head and glanced at a male who wore a twist of yellow trade cloth around his middle. He inflated his throat sac, his long mobi
le lips moved, but Warkannan heard nothing. She walked over to Zayn, then swung her head close and seemed to be sniffing his clothing. For a moment Zayn staggered as if he would faint, then recovered himself.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Very sick.’

  The same male stepped closer and spoke, again far too low for Warkannan to hear.

  ‘Yes,’ the female said. ‘Know-now us hurt-not.’ She pointed at Zayn with a lightwand. ‘No down. Go home.’

  Zayn turned to Warkannan. ‘I can’t desert you,’ he stammered in Hirl-Onglay. ‘It’s bad enough that I’m a coward –’

  ‘Shut up!’ Warkannan barked. ‘It’s not cowardice. You’re ill.’

  ‘Captain Hassan, I’m giving you a direct order,’ Jezro said in Hirl-Onglay. ‘The border fever you’ve got is dangerous. Why, it could even infect the ChaMeech.’

  The female turned sharply to her group of males; throat sacs fluttered as they all spoke at once, though silently to Warkannan’s ears.

  Jezro switched to Kazraki. ‘Get back to Burgunee and bring help. You idiot, this is our chance. Now go!’

  ‘Yes sir.’ Zayn saluted him. ‘At your orders, sir.’

  The female escorted Zayn part of the way back to the pillars. Warkannan could just barely hear her calling to the other ChaMeech – telling them that Zayn was being released, he supposed, because when Zayn mounted up and rode back west, none of them did a thing but watch him go. The female stayed out in the road, waiting until Zayn had ridden a fair ways off; then she turned and trotted back to the white sphere.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘Hurt-not sick friend.’

  ‘You’re a good little ChaMeech,’ Warkannan said. ‘Thank you.’