Riders Of The Winds

by Jack L. Chalker

  The girls stared at her sullenly, but said nothing.

  "All right, then," Sam said firmly. "We go both ways. North and towards the border first chance if it's a trail that looks like it has even half a chance of being able to take horses. Let's pack up and get moving. No matter what, I think we got to stop at midday and find some shade, for our sake and the horses', so the earlier the start the better."

  As they rode along, Charley eased up close to Sam. "Sam—-just in case, I think we oughta make clear that we're all heading for Boolean. If, somehow, we get split up and can't find each other, that's where we head."

  Sam nodded. "Okay by me. I'm not so sure, though, that we're likely to get split up. Killed, maybe, but not split."

  After only a few hours it was as if someone had turned up the thermostat to "broil." If anything, it seemed worse than before, and shade more nebulous and not much help when they could find it. Still, they covered quite a good distance before it was clearly time to stop and take some kind of a break. It was hard even to think under these conditions.

  Suddenly Boday called out, "Look, loves! The trail splits, and one of it goes down into a canyon. We dare not hope for water but it looks deep enough for cool shade."

  They made for it, feeling in no condition to argue, although Sam noticed almost casually that the. fork into the shade was going in the wrong direction. Anything right now for relief, she decided.

  It was clear very quickly that this was no ordinary canyon, but a long and relatively straight side break to a much larger formation. The ground seemed to drop away to their left, leaving them with a very narrow trail to navigate through many switchbacks on their somewhat nervous and very tired and thirsty horses. Charley couldn't see much past the edge but she could see to it, and what she saw made her almost glad she couldn't see just how far a drop it was.

  But it was all in the shade, at least for now, and as they descended it really did seem to be getting just a little bit cooler, with a slight breeze hitting them from the side.

  "This trail's well maintained," Sam noted; "There's a spot we went over a few minutes ago that you can now see up and in back of us. Some kind of rock slide took it out and now it's back, reinforced with rocks and timber. And there have been animal turds, maybe horses', on and off along the path. They aren't fresh, but they don't look all that old, either."

  "We approach the main canyon," Boday announced. "See? It looks almost like a river down there. Small, yes, but water! We shall live if but briefly! There are even some trees and bushes along it."

  The horses and narga seemed to smell it, too, and gained some confidence and quickness. Charley decided just to hang on loosely and let the horse do the work, and hoped that the others had the sense to do the same.

  It took perhaps two hours to fully descend, and the canyon floor was surprisingly narrow, but there was no mistaking the feel and smell of life and the water that brought it. The animals had no hesitation in heading straight for the river and drinking from it, and neither did the riders. The river was fairly wide, perhaps a few hundred yards right here, and it was fast. This was white water, and treacherous, but there were points at which it slowed as it was forced to turn and at one such place they just let loose.

  The water felt cool but not cold, and it was wonderful. They took off their gunbelts and blankets and just waded in, sitting in it, splashing it on both themselves and each other, and generally acting like little kids at the beach. They finally got out, in ones and twos, exhausted but happy, and settled on the sandy silt bar caused by the river's bend. "God! All I need is a comb and I can feel almost human again!" Charley exclaimed. "Wow! Did we pick the right turn!"

  Boday's head suddenly jerked up and she grew serious, intent. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. Boday thinks she hears thunder far off, and she remembers the last time we were in a canyon in the rain in this cursed land."

  The hilarity suddenly stopped and they all strained to hear. "That's not thunder," Sam muttered at last. "That's—horses, or something like 'em. A fair number, too. Too fast to be comin' down the mountain one at a time. They got to be already down here! Shit! And us trapped in a squeeze like this!"

  "I knew it was too good to last," Charley responded. "At least we never unsaddled the animals. Get the weapons and horses and let's move ahead as fast as we can. Maybe there's someplace up ahead we can make a better stand than here!"

  Boday looked around. "They have moved too far upstream in their grazing! Boday can barely see them, and the riders come from that direction! Get the guns and run downstream as fast as you can! Perhaps we will see places to hide out there! The sight of the horses may stop them and buy us some time!"

  The sounds left no room for argument. They grabbed their guns and began running as fast as possible along the river trail. They were quickly out of sight around the bend from the silt bar, but things didn't look much better up ahead and there seemed no choice but to keep running for the next bend well ahead and hope they made it before the riders.

  It wasn't until they had made it, and stopped, gasping for breath, that they realized that the rumble of horses had ceased, leaving only the loud river noise.

  "I'd say they found the horses," Charley managed. "What's it look like ahead?"

  "Not good," Sam managed. Her weight was really telling on her now and she was gasping and coughing and sounding almost like she was going to die. Clearly she wasn't going to be able to take this for much longer.

  "Sheer rock walls and darker and deeper," Sam told her, through coughs and gags. "And what do we have? Four pistols and the shotgun. Maybe enough if every shot counted and we were under cover, but let's not kid ourselves."

  Charley thought furiously. "Everybody can swim or we wouldn't be here."

  Sam managed to stop coughing for a moment. "In that! It's white water, Charley! There's rocks and stuff out there, too!"

  "Yeah, I know it's dumb, but you got a better idea? We shoot and give up or we just give up or we jump in and try and make it to the other side. There is another side, isn't there?"

  Sam nodded. "Yeah, but it's not like a continuous trail."

  "The hell with it! If we make it over mere we'll figure out how to get back when they're gone! They could be here any minute now, too! They won't be ridin' so fast lookin' for us!"

  Sam told the others what Charley was suggesting.

  "We'll try it,"Rani responded. "I would rather drown than be caught and we made it through worse."

  "All right," Sam sighed. "Then everybody throw the guns and gunbelts in the water so they won't know we went in here. The trail's hard rock, there won't be prints. Maybe I'll get dashed against a rock but with these tits I sure ain't gonna sink. Boday, you stick close to Charley. She ain't seein' so good lately. I'll try and stick close to the kids. Aim for that bar over there, but if you miss keep goin' down and hide as soon as you can. We'll regroup on the other side of the bend after they're gone."

  Slipping into the water now was no longer the fun and luxury it was only a few minutes before, but at least the idea wasn't completely crazy. This was still part of a bend, where the river was forced to slow, and it was less rough and shallower than at many other parts of the canyon. Still, the water was surprisingly deep not too far out, and soon they were all floating at the mercy of the currents.

  Charley felt suddenly weighted down by her waterlogged hair and swore to herself she was going to cut it shorter than Sam's if she ever lived to get the chance. She was also disoriented, and suddenly felt Boday's strong hand take her. The tall woman was much stronger than Charley and had little trouble handling her, although getting to the other side while the current picked up speed was more of a trick. Still, after what seemed like an eternity in wet semidarkness, Charley felt herself being pulled from the water onto sandy silt.

  "Down and quiet!" Boday whispered firmly in her ear so she would be heard over the roar of the water. "They come."

  They flattened out next to each other, and Charley thought that with their sun-dark
ened skins and the designs of Boday on both herself and Charley they were probably expertly camouflaged to an observer on the other side of the river. She aligned her head more closely with Boday's and whispered, "Sam? Rani? Sheka?" She cursed herself for her inability to speak this language, even though at least she could understand it.

  "Can't see 'em," Boday responded tersely. "Perhaps still in the water, perhaps farther down. Boday sees the riders, though. Five of them. They have our horses, curse their souls! The narga, too. Big, tough-looking men in dark uniforms. Not the local army and not thieves. Well organized. They have the cut of those pigs we killed."

  They lay there in silence for quite some time, and finally Boday signed and sat up. "They are gone, or at least they seem to be. We shall wait here awhile before trying any more things, though. Best to be certain that they will not double back when they do not find us. Boday sits patiently and hopes that her wonderful mate is now doing what she is doing and is safe."

  Yeah, safe, Charley thought glumly. Even if we stay away from those guys and link back up, we're up this damned creek without a paddle or a stitch. Stark naked,.no weapons, no food, no horses or trade goods. Nothing. Every time we think we hit bottom we fall into a damned mineshaft!

  Sam had slipped into the water and tried to stick as close as possible to the two girls. In the swift current it was impossible for them all to link together, so it was mostly a matter of using her strength to keep up with them and catch them if they lost control.

  Little Sheka proved an excellent swimmer, while Rani had real problems keeping control. Allowing the smaller girl to swim free, Sam managed to grab on to Rani and keep her from being carried well away, but at the expense of losing sight of the destination on the opposite shore. By the time Sam was able to get hold of and help guide Rani, with Sheka keeping them close, they were already well past the destination and speeding up through the canyon near the center of the current.

  Disoriented, Sam saw a number of rocks jutting up just to their left out of the water and at first she was afraid they would be dashed against them. Thinking fast, though, and realizing that they all had only so much strength, she managed to shout to Rani to grab on and, with a near-supreme effort, got hold of a jagged black spire and stopped both of them. She looked around and saw Sheka had managed not only to hold on but to have something of a protected spot on the other side of the larger outcrop.

  It had been Sam's purpose only to slow or stop them so that she could get her bearings, but as she looked around through the white water bubbling and hissing and splashing all around she caught a glimpse of the trail side and saw the horsemen and realized that there was nothing to do now but hang on and stay where they were.

  The men seemed to deliberate, looking down at the trail for signs of them and occasionally out at the water itself, but they maintained a slow and steady progress through the canyon, not seeing them and not inclined to stop. Whoever they were, they had their priorities, and perhaps if they'd taken any time at all to see what other man casks the narga was carrying they didn't really care if they found the riders or not. The lead and trailing rider had rifles ready, in case of some ambush or trap, but they didn't look too worried.

  Sam let them go on until they were well out of sight down the trail and men some. Oddly, it wasn't all that bad clinging to the rocks right there, although getting safely away from them again might well be a problem. She managed to wriggle herself around so that she was facing downstream, seeing now that the narrow canyon opened up considerably a quarter mile or so farther down and that there was another river bend at that point. The shore, more like a rock ledge, opposite the trail side was closer but the way the river was running it wasn't nearly as accessible. Providing they had enough strength to keep out of the center current, it was almost certainly easier to return to the shore they'd left, and it began to look as if the men were not coming back.

  "Put your arms around my neck and hold on!" she told Rani. "Sheka—do you think you can swim towards the trail?"

  The girl looked, then nodded. "I will make it!"

  "All right, then. Three, two, one, now!"

  Satisfied that Rani was clinging well to her, Sam let go of the rocks and was back out into the main stream again. It was tough and awkward with the girl, but she managed with a supreme effort to get over and beyond the main current and allowed the water to take her down towards the next curve and out of the canyon. She hadn't expected the rocks and silt to have built up to such a level there and almost got hurt when she suddenly struck bottom, but she managed to grab hold of some protrusions out of the water, steady herself, and slowly make it to the shore. Sheka climbed out a few yards down, and they all collapsed for a while.

  Sam suddenly was seized by fits of coughing and gagging once more and felt very sick and very sore, and it was some time before she recovered enough to think straight. She was very near total exhaustion, and knew it, but she also knew that her impulse to just stay there was impossible. Somehow they all had to make it out into the wider canyon where they could find some son of hiding place to collapse and regroup.

  Hardly able to stand but urging the two girls up, she managed to get to the trail and look around at the widened canyon. This, at least, showed promise; there were other side canyons going off here now and lots of uneven ground. Not too far off the trail was a rocky prominence that would provide some cover from the trail and shade from the sun. She urged them towards it, her mind only able to focus on getting to that spot and nothing beyond. She wasn't at all sure she could make it, but not only she but the other two did as well. It wasn't great—hard, rusty-red rock—but their spot would not be visible from the trail itself and it provided a bit of relief. They collapsed there, all of them, and Sam simply passed out.

  Farther upstream, Charley was wringing the water out of her long hair as best she coutd while Boday was studying the land and water. Finally she said, "We cannot stay here. It looks as if this side has a narrow ledge going the length of the canyon, so we will try and use it as our trail and not slip and fall in. They must have been carried farther on. Keep your eyes and ears open, pretty butterfly, and we shall see if we can find them."

  Both were in much better shape, both physically and in the amount of effort they had exerted to get to safety, and it was not as much of a struggle for them to press on. This shore, however, was not exactly the nice, wide trail area of the other. In places the ledge above the river narrowed to but a few inches, and was never more than two or three feet wide. It was slow going.

  Charley was frustrated most of all by the language barrier, which kept her from even sharing her concerns with her companion. The Akhbreed tongue was complex and poly tonal; the same thing said in just slightly different intonations could mean something totally different, or turn nouns into verbs and verbs into adjectives, and the rules for what type of word followed what seemed more intuitive than true rules as in English or Spanish, the two tongues she spoke well. Sam was so linked to her counterpart in this world that she had known the language from the start; Charley had no such advantages. The only version of Akhbreed she could use with confidence was the soft singsong of the Short Speech, taught to the unlucky girls who wound up in the red-light districts of the Akhbreed cities as prostitutes or worse; and its inadequate, submissive, slavelike vocabulary contained only a few hundred words at best. Still, it was better than nothing, and any Akhbreed speaker could understand it.

  "Does Mistress think the men saw them?" she asked in it.

  The artist shrugged. "Boday thinks slowly today, little one. For now we can but follow this shore and see what we can see. If we do not find them soon, then we might assume that they are caught and then we might have to track them." She sighed. "Boday was made to create delicate and beautiful works of art. She was not meant to be an adventurer!"

  They made it out of the narrows and to die major new bend in the river where the canyon opened up. The bend was significant enough and slowed the river enough that clearly anyone swept
up in the current, or even the body of such a one, would be washed up at this point. Just the lack of bodies against the silt bar on the opposite bank provided them both with some feeling of relief, but it also deepened the mystery.

  Boday was thinking furiously. "We know that they could not have made it to our side, as surely we would have come across them by now or at least at this point. They are not hiding and looking for us around here or we would have been hailed. It is a good bet, then, that the children were not up to the crossing and were caught in the current, which would wash them . . . here. Sam, my darling Susama, would stick with them out of duty. Boday fears the worst, little butterfly. If they are not here, and they are not before here, then they must have been captured." She sighed. "We will wait a little while for them just to make certain, but if we wait too long we shall be here all night with empty bellies and a cold trail to follow."

  Charley nodded. The logic was impeccable. It seemed like they were always chasing after and rescuing each other. It didn't seem fair, somehow. They were naked and defenseless, lost in a strange and hostile land, and, damn it, they needed rescuing.

  They sat there and waited as the shadows lengthened, until finally Boday sighed and got up. "We should be able to cross here. They are not coming, that is clear. Come, little butterfly. Let us go and see what if anything we can do for them."

  Charley sighed and nodded. The crossing wasn't as easy as it looked, but Boday was right; it was here or a long way farther down. They took one last look around and even risked a few shouts of the names of the missing members, but there was no response but echoes.

  Sadly, they turned and started down the trail after the men and horses, not realizing that they were less than five hundred yards from those they sought, passed out in exhaustion just beyond their sight and too deep in slumber to hear their cries.