Kutath fs-3

by C. J. Cherryh

  "If Hlil wills," she said likewise quietly; but in the silence of the Kel it surely carried. It was more reasonable in her than he had expected, which itself made him suspect some tangled motive.

  "Thank you," he said, and started away, through their midst.

  "Kel'anth," Hlil called out; and when he stopped and looked back; "Will you take nothing with you?”

  "Kath and Sen will be short of hunters. The dus and I will manage.”

  "That beast-”

  "cares for me," he said, knowing their disapproval of it "Life and honors.”

  Hlil omitted any wish to him in return. Only Ras came and with irony watched him out onto the path. She did not follow. He looked back to be sure, and once again; and then put her from his concerns and walked on, the long corridor outward.

  He alarmed the sentry, coming out at such an hour. He gave the signal, a low whistle, and passed, hearing the kel'en high in the rocks settle back to his place. Dus, he called when he had reached the outside, the level of the plain.

  It was there. He kept walking and felt it before he heard it, a heavy shape moving among the rocks, a whuff of breath suddenly at his heels as he passed a boulder. He sensed disturbance in it, an echo of his own troubled mind, and tried to calm himself, as a man must who walked with dusei. He took the way he had taken daily, from which he had come this same evening. He was footsore even in starting out; day after day he had pushed himself farther than he ought. Sense said he should rest now; but he could do that on the journey, when he must. Time was precious life itself, if one ran out of it.

  And anxiously as he walked he scanned all the heavens, to be sure that they were empty of watchers, gazed over all the flat horizons, the rounded hills. The night-bound desolation dismayed him, starker than it was by day. Dead stars above. And enemies.

  A soft surge of strength came into him then, beast-blank; dus mind, offered to his need. It wished to comfort, brushing against him in its waddling stride.

  He took the gift, bearing eastward.

  The place where their own ship had landed; that was surely where Duncan had gone, to the first place humans would have come in trying to locate them. He walked steadily did not dismiss the dus from his side to hunt, not now; he needed it by him to find a safe way, exhausted as he was, for the open sands held ugly surprises.

  It made him no complaints. Dusei were night walkers by preference. It tossed its massive head and ranged either at his side or a little ahead of him, snuffing the wind, panting a little at times from the pace he set.

  Duncan… had never been able to match his stride. Always he had had to shorten his steps when Duncan was by him; and the very air of Kutath was hostile to a human's lungs. It was madness that Duncan had ventured this desert alone.

  The chance was he admitted it to himself that the odds had overtaken Duncan, coming back, if not going. Only one thing Duncan had had in his favor, that he might have been mri enough to handle; the company of his dus.

  Find it, he willed his own, casting it the image. Dusei, it was said, had no memory for events, only for persons and places. He shaped Duncan for it; he shaped the other dus, so long its companion. Find them; hunt.

  Whether it understood clearly or not he could not tell; on the following day it began to radiate something in answer, which prickled at the nape and tightened the skin behind his ears.

  Friend, he shaped.

  It tossed its head and kept casting about anxiously, making occasional puffs of breath. Its general tendency was eastward, but it had no track, no more than in all the other treks they had made, only a vague, persistent nervousness.

  He slept by snatches, day or night, whenever he could go no farther, curled up against the dus's warmth until he could regain his strength. He was by now out onto the wide flat, where the land went on forever, save for the rim and the void beyond, world's edge. He drove himself, not madly, as one who did not know his limits, but as one who did, and thought he might pass them by a margin.

  He caught a darter or two in his path, and for all he hated raw flesh, he ate, and shared with the dus, which persisted in its distress.

  And finally he looked back, at the west, where the sun set with a shadow on it, amber and red and darker tones.

  Not moisture-bearing cloud, not on Kutath.

  Dust across the sun.

  He stared at it, and beside him the dus flicked its ears uneasily and moaned.

  Chapter Three

  The weather had held steady for days, out of Kutath's eternally cloudless sky, but the west bore a murkiness this dawn which boded trouble.

  And the back trail… daylight showed nothing, no hint of movement.

  Duncan kept moving, looking frequently over his shoulder; it was the land's deceptive roll, a trick of the eye on his side for once. He made what time he could, looking to the storm with hope.

  Cover, he desperately needed.

  And again and again he sought the presence of his dus. The beast ranged out at times, hunting, perhaps, exercising a little fear-warding on those who followed, kel'ein, strangers. He was full of dread whenever it was parted from him, that it might try to attack his pursuers, that they might loll it.

  Here, he ordered it, but it did not touch his mind, so that he went alone, blind in that sense he needed. He walked steadily… cut off a bit of the blue pipe which he carried among his other supplies, and slipped it into his mouth beneath the veils. Doubled, he wore them, like the robes, for although he had become acclimated, he had no business carrying the smallish pack he bore, no business doing anything that taxed his breathing. We are not bearers of burdens, mri were wont to say, disdaining manual labor and any who would perform it; and he had long since understood the common sense in that attitude, in which a mri kel'en walked the land with no more burden than his weapons, often taking not so much as a canteen, where no free water existed. He pushed himself too hard. He knew it, in the rawness of his throat the headaches which half blinded him. He played just beyond the convenient reach of his mri shadows curious, he reckoned them, keeping an eye on a stranger, and it was not to his advantage to increase the pace. He kept himself constantly alert to the horizons and the sand underfoot, stayed to sandstone shelves and domes where he could, not alone to avoid leaving tracks, but to avoid the dangers of the sand. Mez and zaidhe, veil and visored headcloth, and the several layers of the kel-robes; these be had chosen, although others had been offered; and a pistol and the ancient yinein, the weapons-of-honor… these he had by similar choice. He reckoned he might try a shot to dissuade his followers, but firing at them ... all the kel-law abhorred such a thing; he had more than the robes to mark him mri, and he would not.

  The dust began to lack up in discernible clouds, wave fronts borne on the wind. The sand ran in moving serpentines like water across the broad shelf of sandstone which he followed.

  He turned his head yet again, half-blinded by the sand, lowered his visor against the dust.

  And when he looked back again before him there was a black figure on the northwest horizon, nearer by far than he had expected, and in a different quarter.

  Panic tugged at him, bidding him swing away south, and perhaps that was what they wanted him to do. He glanced to that horizon and saw nothing but naked land and naked, sand-fouled sky. There was an incline; his eye had learned to pick variations out of the vast sameness, the incredible flat expanses. Ambush was possible there.

  He bore west, summoning his dus with all his might, apprehensive now of every quarter of the horizon. They might cut him off to question him; and even a stone's-throw sight of him would tell them he did not belong here, that some connection might be made between ships and destroyed cities and a stranger-kel'en.

  Only the dusei, if they had not killed them, his own and the wild ones which were its offspring, might set fear enough into them, sendings of nameless dread. But time would come when that fear itself drove them to attack, for kel'ein were trained to caution, not cowardice. They would fight the fear as readily as they
would an enemy.

  His heartbeat hammered in his temples; there came times when he walked bund, sight blurred, numbed by want of air. He dared not, as he wanted desperately to do abandon the pack. They would come on it, know by the alien things of it that here was a mystery they could not leave unsolved. A sand-laden gust rocked him, rattled off his lowered visor, stinging his hands, the only part of his flesh exposed. He leaned into it, hands tucked into the wide sleeves of his robes. The battering gusts made him stagger, and after a time he was less and less sure that he remained true to west. The rock underfoot was uneven, and dipped and rose, misguiding him when he needed to catch his balance.

  Dus, he sent, desperate, cursing it for its tendency to be elsewhere when it was most needed. The wind blasted body heat away from him, weakened his limbs. He began to be afraid, wondering whether to take shelter for fear of the wind itself, or to keep walking, trying to lose his pursuers while the wind erased tracks and obscured vision.

  He slipped suddenly, rock peeling under his feet; he hit soft sand, caught his balance, tried to retreat onto the sandstone shelf, but it had run out. He tried vision without the visor, a mistake; he lowered it again, and in that little time he stopped to clear his eyes bis limbs were chilled to the bone, shaking so that it tore his joints.

  He was blind, and out on open sand; and of a sudden he began to be very much afraid, that he was making wrong choices, that he should have stayed on the rock surface. It was not panic fear, only deep dread; he kept moving, into the wind, the only means he had of determining west

  Fear grew. He looked behind him and the bleared eye of Na'i'in showed through the storm and the visor like the ghost of a sun, wan and sickly hued. In all the world there was neither up nor down, neither horizon nor sand underfoot, only the sun strong enough to penetrate the murk. He swung about again, sucked dusty air through the veils, weary with the battering. If he went down, he thought, he would die.

  "Dus," he muttered aloud, wishing, pleading it back to him. The wind drowned all sound, the demon voice becoming an element in itself. His knees tottered under him, his joints wearied from the slipping sand and the force of the gusts, until at last he slipped to his knees and hunched away from the wind, fumbling with shaking hands after the bit of pipe he carried. His fingers were stiff; he bit the piece instead of using the knife, stuffed the rest back. His mouth was so dry it stuck, and his eyes stung with the dryness. "Dus," he murmured again, despairing.

  A curious paralysis had settled on him, the cessation of pain. The wind vibrated into his very bones, masked every other sound, and became no-sound. He had no more force at his back; sand was piling up there, sheltering him, making an arc about him, drifting into his lap.

  And fear grew. Sweat prickled on his skin, sucked dry before it could run. He began to think of something creeping up on him, something better adapted than he to the wind and storm-it seeped into him, so that slowly he moved, stirred himself, thrust himself to his feet and staggered farther against the wind. Panic drove him, a dread so strong he tore his knees with his driving strides.

  Dus-fear, not his own; he recognized it suddenly; not his own beast, but another, and near. It drew on the images of the rational mind, shaped itself. Ha-dus, wild one, wild-born, of the tame pair the mri had brought here… and dangerous without his own to fend it back.

  He moved; it was all he could do.

  And suddenly a shadow came at him on the other side.

  He snatched at the shortsword, staggering aside knew suddenly, recognized it

  His dus. It materialized out of the murk, pressed against him, and he sank down with its great body between him and the wind. It wove this way and that between him and the gusts; and another shape and another joined it, slope-shouldered, massive, weaving him a circle of protection. He knew his own, flung his arms about its hot, fat-rolled neck, and the beast heaved itself down beside him, five hundred kilos of velvet-furred devotion, venom-clawed, radiating a ward-impulse that meant business.

  The other dusei, the wild ones, settled about him so that among the three he was warm and sheltered from the wind. Sand built up about them too, but each time they rose and shook it off, their great strength untroubled by the effort He lay against the shoulder of his own, breathing in great gasps found strength enough finally to shrug out of the pack, to fumble out packets of dried food. He put bits in his mouth, sipped at the canteen, holding water there to moisten them, and finally gained control enough to chew and swallow.

  His dus nudged at him, begging; he offered it a piece of dried meat The massive head pushed at his hand, flat face inclined; the prehensile upper lip picked the tidbit off so delicately he felt nothing but the hot breath on his hand. The other dusei crowded him, and for one and then the other he offered the remainder, in either hand, fingers carefully out of the way, for the jaws could crush bone. The bits vanished as daintily as the other. He tucked down again, hands within sleeves, conscious of vibration, first from his own dus and then from the others, pleasure-sound, inaudible in the shriek of the wind. Eyes shut, ears down, nostrils opening only slightly, filtering through fringed internal hairs and membranes, the dusei were not suffering in the least

  Duncan snugged down between, wiped what he reckoned was a trace of blood from his nose and bit himself off another bit of pipe, as safe as any man could be in Kutath's wild, companioned by such as these.

  Chapter Four

  The younglings huddled, muttered in hissing whispers. Occasionally one looked up, shifted weight uncomfortably.

  Suth loathed them, once companions. They came near the bed when they must, offering food rich and elaborate. They trembled until it was accepted. They mourned one elder on the ship; another was in the making. Suth Horag-gi clenched degh's bony lips and groaned in the agony of Change.

  Suth; it, neuter until the hormonal shifts had begun to course hot and cold through degh's body, until appetite increased and temper shortened to the verge of madness. The ship Shirug moved far apart from human ships orbiting Kutath, and ignored inquiries. There was the Wrapping of the departed elder; there was mourning; there was ag-arhd, the Consuming. These were secret things, in which Suth felt an instinctive vulnerability. Degh was not capable of full function in degh's hormone-tormented state, moving toward Change. Humans inquired, offered help, doubtless deviously motivated, hoping to learn enough to gain control… offered regret, soliciting information in the process. Degh commanded degh's attendants to silence.

  Degh ate. Already the pallor of youngling skin was diminishing, and each move freed tissue-thin sheets of former skin, exposing elder-dark new skin beneath, a complete skin change twice since the Consuming. Suth was sore, sensitive new skin like a bleeding wound. The joints of degh's facial plates ached, aggravated by the need to eat, to drink, constantly. Degh burned with fever, heightened metabolism, and most of all those parts which had not yet determined function burned, swollen, maddening with pain.

  A youngling ventured near with mul, water-soaked, to ease the skin. Suth sugered it, sucking on a straw from a mug of soi, occasionally reaching to a platter for a sweet

  Suddenly there was pain, and Suth screamed and flung the platter and struck. Something cracked, and when the grayness cleared, other younglings were bearing away the dead one and cleaning up the spilled sweetmeats. Suth hissed satisfaction, annoyance departed. Another took up the washing, more carefully.

  "Report," Suth breathed, clenching degh's hand about a new mug of soi. Degh sucked at it, looked at the frightened younglings. "Witless, the news; report.”

  "Favor, Honored, there is no report available; storm is covering the land.”

  "Storm.”

  "A vast and violent storm, Honored, 687.78 koingh across. We attempted to penetrate it, but at this range, and with the dust “

  Suth breathed a sigh of weary pleasure. "Perhaps the human Duncan will die.”

  "Perhaps, Honored.”

  Degh wished this earnestly. This human had killed the reverence bai Sharn, in command
of Shirug. Human elders on Saber had then dismissed this Duncan as if this act were inconsiderable to them. Degh had been only youngling then, neuter, confused, horrified by the death as all the younglings had been horrified.

  Now degh yearned toward the death of this human; it was anomaly, perverted; it no longer knew what it was, this Sten Duncan. It had killed younglings, it and its mri allies, and now it killed an elder. Its kind excused this… threatened now even to treat with mri, through this mri-imprinted youngling. The very thought set Suth's hearts to hammering and made deghn short of breath.

  Forty-three years the mercenary Kel had served regul against humans, and now at war's end came a new arrangement to trouble regulkind; mri, intriguing with humans.

  Adult authority was desperately needed in this crisis, a mind to make decisions on which the survival of other elders might rest, back at Kesrith, even on homeworld itself. Sharn was dead; elder Hulagh was years removed, on Kesrith. Someone had to make the decisions.

  The pain…

  "Honored, Honored, be easy," a youngling murmured, sponging gently with the mul. Suth panted and strove to rise, fell back again, amazed at the feel of degh's own body, the increase in girth. The bony carapace which covered the face ached maddeningly. Degh closed degh's eyes and breathed in great gasps, aching in degh's lower belly until the pain was intolerable.

  "Degh is in crisis," a youngling moaned. "Days, days of this; it must end, it must end, or degh will die.”

  "Silence!" degh shouted, and shouting helped; the pain ebbed somewhat. Muscles contracted. The hearts sped and the temperature rose.

  It was true. Degh was in deep trouble. Degh had served bai Hulagh, male, and approached Impression; degh had looked to the time of Change, knowing degh's future gender with smug certainty, female to Hulagh's male… ambition, to mate the Eldest of great doch Alagn; security, and vast power.