by Jo Clayton
He walked along the line of red-faced, angry men, shouting at him to untie them. They were bound with thin tough cord. Not filament. Must be some local fiber. When he reached a face he remembered, he stopped. “What happened?”
The man glared at him, then looked away, shamed to be found so helpless. “Mesuch,” he said after a moment. His voice was hoarse and full of a violence he couldn’t let out any other way. “That thing you call a stunner. They took the cutters.” He wriggled closer to Kurz. “Turn us loose. They said they coming back for us. Turn us loose.”
“Before I do, explain him.” He pointed at a man who lay in a huddle next to some bushes, his face contorted, drying foam on his mouth and chin.
The chorek’s throat twitched. He still wouldn’t look at Kurz. He didn’t say anything until Kurz turned and made as if he were going to walk away. “They wanted to know about you.” The words came out in a hurried mumble. “The woman wanted to know why we were here, where we got the cutters, where you’d got to.”
“I see.”
“Garv din’t tell her nothing. She put some kind of poison in him, but he din’t tell. He’s dead, in’t he.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. And you’re a liar. Babble of some kind, he talked his fool head off before it got him. He unclipped the cutter and sliced through the chorek’s neck. Ignoring their struggles, screams, and pleading, he killed the rest of the bound men, then trudged off for the miniskip. Put any one of these grubs under a verifier and what they’d say would be very bad for Chandava. Which meant he had to follow the flier and do the same with the rest of the choreks the woman stunned. It wasn’t pleasant work, but it had to be done.
His plan for the multiple invasion of the Vale was as dead now as those choreks were going to be. Underneath his calm mask he was angry, he wanted that Harp player dead. He was impatient with the need to finish the choreks, he wanted to start the stalk now, but he didn’t dare. If he failed, Hunnar and Jilet would fall, his family with them. He couldn’t afford anger at Hunnar or any High Jilet, so he channeled it all onto the Harper’s head.
3
“When we found out there were six different bands getting set to raid the Vale, we couldn’t ignore that.” Shadith nodded to Daizil. “Marrin can give you the general locations where we found them. We stunned them, tied them into neat parcels for you and left them to be collected later. You’ll find a few of them rather dead. The babble drug has unfortunate side effects in some Fior.”
She waited until Marrin had left with the Speaker, sighed, and turned to Aslan. “We collected over seventy cutters, Scholar.” She laid three of the weapons on the table. “In case you need them. We have the others locked in a cache in the flikit, didn’t think it was a very good idea to have them floating loose. Too much temptation.”
“I agree. Did you get enough information to go after the spy?”
“Enough to know he’s probably about somewhere. We’ll spiral out looking for whatever we can find.” She wrinkled her nose. “And try not to get shot down. You be careful, Lan. I mean it. You didn’t hear what they told me. I don’t want you thinking you’re safe, just because you’re here surrounded by people.”
4
Kurz whirled the bolas over his head, the weights at the end whistling loud enough to bring up the heads of the grazers. They were domesticated beasts so they didn’t panic, but they did move away from it, scattering as was their habit, to give a stalking predator a number of targets. He let the bolas go and grunted with satisfaction as it tangled round the legs of a female with a calf. He ran forward a few steps, slipped a second bolas off his arm and brought it up to speed, downing a second beast not far from the first.
He slipped his improvised halter onto the first, drove the tether’s holding peg into the ground with a powerful blow of his fist. As soon as he’d dealt with the second, he cut them free and let them get to their feet. Then he backed off and squatted next to a bush where his silhouette would be camouflaged.
They pulled at the tethers for a moment, blatting their distress, but when nothing more alarming happened, they forgot about the intruder and went back to grazing.
He waited patiently. Grazers were grazers on every world he’d visited, the same narrow acuteness and the same stupidity. When he thought the time was right, he moved slowly, a step at a time, away from the bush. They retreated as far as they could, but he didn’t chase them, just dumped two small heaps of grain on the ground beside the pegs, then went back to his bush.
They nosed at the grain, then began eating it.
He took some more.
They shied a little, but only retreated a few steps.
After about a hour, they were used to him and after a little practice on lead, ambled contentedly along behind him, the calf trotting at its mother’s flank. They were his shield against the devices in the flier, large warm bodies that would camouflage his warmth. It wouldn’t work against a military filter, but a clutch of Scholars wouldn’t have that kind of equipment. For one thing, they wouldn’t need it.
He set up camp near the last of the killing places, climbed a tree and watch the flier hunt. It was in the air on the far side of the Vale, casting about, shifting from side to side to cover the forested area between the floor and the peaks. Looking for him and being very thorough about it. He watched with calm approval, he would have done much the same, sweeping the ground to make sure he missed nothing on that first circle, widening the circle to the far side of the mountains on the second round. It would have caught him on foot or riding. Using the miniskip would be like shouting here I am, come get me.
Another thing he approved of. The flier barely missed the tops of the trees. It was in easy range of his cutter.
He left the tree and took a shovel into the small meadow where his animals grazed. He dug out rectangles of sod and set them aside, then settled to deepening the hole until there was room for him to lie down in it. He trimmed thin branches, used them as supports and replaced the sod so that all but a small opening at the end was covered. The flier was equipped with a stunner, but he knew those clunkers, they were energy gluttons and the Harper wouldn’t use it until she spotted him.
That was what he had to prevent. He needed them close enough to let him disable the lifters.
He dropped the last sod pieces into the hole and went back to his tree to watch the progress of the flier.
5
The telltale bonged softly. Shadith closed her eyes, extended the mind touch.
“You can relax, Shadow. It’s only a couple of grazers.”
She sighed and sat up. “This has been one of life’s more tedious days. Wonder if we’re wasting our time.”
“Fivescore dead choreks say he’s out here somewhere. And there’s been no energy output from the skip.”
She shivered. “If I ever had qualms about going after him…”
“He’s a thorough cattif, give him…”
The flikit screamed as the cutterbeam gouged through the lifters, broke through into the cabin, grazing Shadith’s thigh. The flier turned into a rock and went plunging down, not much forward movement because they were going so slow. Marrin slapped in the lever for the emergency rockets. This triggered the crash belts. They came slapping around both of them, locking them into the seats.
For a moment Shadith thought the rockets weren’t going to blow, then they roared awake, slowed the fall, the flikit trembling and shaking and threatening to veer onto its side and go slicing down again. She clung to the seat with both hands and stared at the trees rushing toward them.
They slammed into a tree top, bounced, hit another, tilted crazily, bounced from tree to tree, metal screeching, the stench of hot sap as the trees started to smokier, the snap, groan, creak of the mangled trunks. The motion stopped.
Silence.
Tilted at an acute angle, the flikit was wedged into a thicket of thornbush that grew up against a large squat tree that was still shuddering under the impact of the crash.
Shadith unc
lipped the crash belt. Marrin was bent over, his belt loose, his head against the readouts, a trickle of blood wandering down the side of his face. “Tsa! It would happen…” She stuffed two of the cached cutters down her shirtfront, climbed onto the seat, reached for the stub of a branch and used it to swing clear of the thorns. After a quick scan of the area, she raced for a pile of boulders where the cliff looming over this strip of forest had crumbled in some long past earthshift.
She’d barely got settled in a niche between two boulders with a bit of scrub as a screen when the spy burst from the trees, heading toward the wrecked flikit with a velocity that startled her so much he’d vanished into the trees before she could turn the stunner on him.
She left her plans in the dust behind the boulders and went across the scree as fast as she could, slipped into the trees away uphill from where the Chav had entered them and ran to reach the spy before he found Marrin, cursing her own stupidity because she’d forgotten he was heavyworld, a hunter.
She tried a sweep as she ran, hunting for the hunter, but her foot slipped on a patch of fungus, her ankle turned under her and she fell hard. When she stood, pain shot up her leg. She took a step, the pain was bearable if she went down heel first and didn’t bend the ankle, so she went ahead, walking more carefully. Stopping at intervals to do a sweep because she didn’t want that Chav coming at her out of nowhere.
She heard the humbbbzzapp of a cutter. She stopped, probed.
Frustrated fury. That was the Spy.
Pain, cold anger. That was Marrin.
She tracked the Spy for a moment. He was shifting continually, moving too fast for Marrin as he’d moved too fast for her. She followed him for a moment, hunting for a pattern. When she thought she’d found it, she began limping forward, pain sweat streaming down her face, her stomach knotting as she kept hearing the cutters go off. Marrin would be pinned in the crashed flikit with cutter beams coming at him from a dozen different places. Must feel like he was under siege from half the world. Still, he had the cutter cache at hand and was keeping the Chav away. For the moment.
She pushed through the lichen and molds and fungus, footing treacherous, trying to move as silently as possible. From the intensity of the Spy’s focus on the crashed flikit, she suspected he didn’t know she was out, that he perhaps thought she’d been injured in the crash.
She heard him crashing across the mycoflorid forest floor, mashing and tearing mushrooms, mildews, slimes, lichens, and all the rest of the fungal forms. With a sigh of disgust, she lowered herself to the mucky ground and crawled forward. It was easier to move on knees and elbows, the weight off her injured ankle, but the smell was indescribable. She slid along, flicking out the mind touch every other breath to keep track of the Chav.
She flattened herself behind a pulpy growth as he came charging past, still maintaining that terrible speed and power, an ogre in seven-league boots. A
moment later she caught a glimpse as he stopped, fired, flung himself aside as Marrin answered the blip with a sweep from his own cutter, moving it side to side around knee level. It missed the Chav only because there was a hollow there that gave him a kind of shelter. Obvious that he’d planned it that way. Not just powerful meat, but a hunter’s brain.
She eased the stunner from the holster in the middle of her back, sighted on him. She had to hit him full on the first time; it would take a large and protracted jolt to put him down. Before she was ready, he was up and gone.
She edged forward until she was close to a tree, hidden by the lichen webs that dropped thickly from the lower branches, settled herself to wait, praying as she did so that Marrin’s present luck would hold.
Once again she heard the crash of the Chav’s feet, got herself set.
He circled behind her this time, flashing through the trees, choosing an alternate route to keep Marrin confused. She froze, but he ran on without even a stutter in the pound of his feet. He was already out of sight before she recovered enough to start breathing again. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen her, though she was fairly well concealed by the lacy drape of the gray-green lichen, yet it had to be true because a tap on the firing sensor and she’d be in two pieces right now. He wouldn’t even have had to break stride.
Stick to your pattern, Chav. Stop trying to be clever. Come on. Come on, stomp right past Give me a shot O gods, Marrin must be half crazy wondering what happened to me. No, Shadow. Keep your mind on what you’re doing. This is no time to measure the whichness of the why.
She eased a little forward and tore a hole in the lichen veil.
The flikit had settled more since she’d left it, it was almost invisible down in the thornbush. The bush was
. lo Clayton too damp to catch fire, but it was smoldering as were a number of the trees around. There were no flames, just smears of stinking smoke that for the moment tended to give additional protection to Marrin since the thornbush thicket and the huge tree it grew around were for some reason at the center of a large glade. There was little shelter for the Chav. As she watched, Marrin followed the Spy’s beam pulse with one of his own.
For several moments the play was on the far side of the clearing, then she could hear the Chav heading her way. She drew in a long breath, held it, then let it trickle out slowly, counting as she did so, steadying the stunner on her forearm, waiting…
He came bounding through the trees, his head turned away; he was watching the thorn patch.
Shadith centered the stunner on him, swore in frustration as he flung himself back and to one side as a pulse from the thorns came at him. He retreated farther into the trees-Shadith stiffened, wondering if her luck would hold again-and turned back on his path, moving more silently this time, more slowly. Marrin had ears like a bat-she’d noticed more than once how acute his hearing was-that was probably the reason he’d kept the Chav off.
A moment later the Spy’s cutter pulsed, this time cutting at the thorns rather than the flikit.
A pause. Another cut.
Marrin answered, took a chance this time and held the beam longer than a pulse.
No response.
Shadith chewed her lip. What are you up to now?
Nothing and nothing. Not a sound from the Chav.
She heard the foof as a puff ball exploded, then a faint brushing sound. A moment later a dark solidity undulated swiftly along the ground. The Chav. Crawling.
Marrin, don’t you dare fire, I don’t care what you hear. That’s right, sweet spy, just a little closer, little little little…
She touched the trigger sensor, held her finger on it.
The Chav roared, fought to his feet and leaped toward her. She didn’t move. She kept the stunner full on him and prayed the power would last long enough. By the third step he was falling, he moved his foot clumsily for another step, tumbled onto his face.
She got to her feet, backed away several steps to put more distance between them. “Marrin,” she called. “He’s stunned. I don’t know how long it’ll last. Bring the come-alongs. If you can. I don’t want to take the stunner off him.”
“Shadow.” The relief his voice was almost a sob. “Don’t think I can do that. Something wrong with my legs.”
“Oh, kortch!” She edged around the Chav, keeping as far from him as she dared. She gave him a last shot from the stunner, ran limping toward the thorn patch trying to ignore the pain that shot up her leg. The ankle was badly swollen, she was going to have to cut the boot off her foot. What a clutch of ‘cripples. When she reached the edge of the thorn thicket, she said, “Weight them with something and toss me the ties. I want to turn our Spy into a package soon as I can. Oy! he’s fast. And I can see him pulling trees up by the roots and using them as quarterstaffs.”
When Marrin’s face showed above the thorns, it had a greenish undertone and his eyes a feverish glitter. His hand was shaking as he swung the bundle until he had some momentum then released it rather than threw it.
The comealongs were straps woven from Menaviddan mono
filament inside a sheath of graal cloth to keep the filament from cutting to bone. With metal closures that could be shifted at need, then locked in place. And even a Chav’s full strength wouldn’t break the closures once they were in contact and activated.
She bound his wrists in front, used a second strap to link his elbows so he couldn’t move them from his sides. The third strap she used on his ankles, giving him enough play so he could shuffle along, but not enough for a full stride.
He showed no sign of coming round, but she didn’t trust that and got away from him as soon as she was finished with the tethering.
She limped back to the thorns and stood looking at the tree and remembering how easily she’d jumped, caught the limb and swung down. “Marrin, you still with us?”
“Just about.”
“Think you can get a line over that limb?” She pointed. “I can’t make it by myself.”
“What happened to your leg?” She could hear him shifting about, moving with a painful slowness.
“Stupidity. Stepped wrong on a slime patch and twisted my ankle.”
“Wondering what that smell was.”
“You should meet it up close and personal like I did.”
The rope came over the limb and snaking down to meet her hands. She got her hands set, began pulling herself up.
6
Kurz came to awareness slowly, head throbbing, inner eyelids half lowered, his body twitching. When his vision cleared enough, he found himself on his back, staring up at a sky full of dark clouds threatening rain. No, he thought as several drops splatted onto his face and arms. Not threatening. Doing it. His mouth twitched. What an odd thing to be thinking about. Rain. What…
He tried to move, but there was something holding his arms close to his sides, pinning his hands together.