“Look, forget the questions,” Elrabin broke in impatiently. “We’re busy, see? We got no time to stand here jawing with you. Ain’t you supposed to be hunting with Harthril? Yeah, you are. So what’s the news? You find game? You got something to contribute to the pot tonight? Or ain’t you doing whatever Harthril told you to do?”
The last question hit its mark. A dull blush of red darkened Nashmarl’s facial skin. His green eyes grew bright with anger.
Elrabin nodded, not giving the cub time to answer. “Thought so. You ain’t never going to learn nothing, you keep slipping off from your lessons.”
“I don’t have to do what Harthril tells me,” Nashmarl said, lifting his head very high. “He’s just a stupid Reject.”
“He ain’t no Reject with us,” Elrabin said angrily. “You know that. Your mother done made that clear to everyone.”
Nashmarl’s thin nostrils flared, but he said nothing.
“So what are you supposed to be doing?” Elrabin asked.
Nashmarl didn’t answer.
Elrabin grimly reminded himself that Ampris had given birth to this green-eyed brat and tried to be patient. “I asked you a question.”
Nashmarl’s gaze shifted away. Sullenly he said, “Harthril told me to watch the mouth of the top canyon. He was going to flush out some grassens, and I was supposed to hold the net.”
Paket growled, very softly.
Elrabin thought of plump grassen, a fowl with tasty white flesh, and his mouth started watering. He thought of the folks in the camp, hungry and waiting. He glared at this spoiled youth who couldn’t seem to get the concept of responsibility through his bony head.
“You and Harthril found grassens,” he said, keeping his voice low and quiet. Inside, his heart was thumping hard and violently, shooting his pulse through his veins.
Nashmarl shrugged. “We found them, a whole flock. Have you ever realized how stupid they are? Harthril couldn’t drive them anywhere. They just panic and start running in circles.”
“Defense mechanism,” Paket said with a growl.
“Stupid,” Nashmarl said. “I could hear Harthril in the brush, but he never got them herded to the nets, so I left. It was boring anyway. At least when Mother goes hunting, she takes a sling and brings them down on the wing with one good shot. Boom!” He smacked his fist into his palm.
Elrabin’s anger was pumping red into his vision. He felt almost nauseous at the thought of Harthril’s hard work wasted because of this careless, heedless cub.
“Harthril can’t use a sling,” Elrabin said in the Reject’s defense. “He has a crippled shoulder.”
“Yeah, the same old excuse,” Nashmarl said, tipping his head back to look at the sky. “Is something burning?”
Both Elrabin and Paket ignored his question. Paket’s teeth were bared, and Elrabin wanted to bite Nashmarl so bad he almost didn’t dare trust himself.
“So you left Harthril,” Elrabin said. “You left the net.”
“Sure. I heard you go up to the camp, puffing like you were going to pass out.” Nashmarl tipped back his head and laughed. “You’re getting old, Elrabin. Old and out of shape. So I followed you. I wanted to show you I can track and stalk, as good as anyone in the camp. Proved it too. Tackled you before you knew I was coming.”
“Shut up,” Elrabin snapped.
Nashmarl’s laughter died away, but he stared at Elrabin with devilment still dancing in his eyes.
Elrabin glared back. “Harthril has spent how long hunting those grassens?”
Nashmarl shrugged. “Who cares? It was boring. It was taking too long.”
“You little fool! It takes time and skill to drive grassens into a trap. Harthril is a master at that. No one else among us can do it.”
“So?”
“So we would have had a whole flock held captive. We could have eaten them for several days. Instead, you just walked away. You got tired and bored, and you quit. We could starve because of you—”
“No way,” Nashmarl said, although his green eyes grew wider. “You and Mother were supposed to bring home lots of food. So where’s yours? I don’t see any. You goof up, Elrabin? You think you can blame your failure on me? It was your responsibility to get food today, not mine.”
Elrabin’s temper got away from him. Before he could stop himself, he stepped forward and cuffed Nashmarl hard where his ear should have been.
The cub squalled and cowered down, putting his arms over his head. “You hit me!” he said, his voice raw with fury and disbelief. “That hurt!”
“Shut up. You ain’t been hurt. You don’t know what hurt is.”
Nashmarl glared at him. “You’d no right to do that.”
“When your mother isn’t here, I’m in charge,” Elrabin said harshly. He wanted to hit the cub again, wanted it so much the emotion scared him inside. “Everyone in our band has a responsibility to bring home food, every day. You know that! It’s the cardinal rule of the camp.”
“Rules,” Nashmarl said scornfully, still rubbing his face where Elrabin had smacked him. “Your rules, maybe, but I don’t—”
“Our rules, you little fool!” Elrabin said, wanting to shake some sense into him. “Don’t give me any more of that. You’ve known the rules since you were crawling. They go equal for everyone. You deliberately blew ’em off. When Ampris hears about this, she’ll—”
“I was getting too hot,” Nashmarl said, switching his defiance into a whine. “My skin was burning. I’m not supposed to be outside when the sun is this hot.”
“Then what you be doing out here right now?” Elrabin asked him through gritted teeth.
Nashmarl blinked. “I thought you’d be proud of me. I wanted to sneak up on you and show you how much I’ve learned.”
Elrabin could barely listen to him. The cub’s insincere flattery annoyed him even more than he already was. “Yeah, you showed me. You showed me you ain’t willing to think about anyone but yourself. Now you go back to camp and apologize to Harthril, then maybe you’ll learn something.”
Again, Nashmarl’s face reddened. “Apologize?” he echoed. “Never! I don’t owe that Reject any—”
Elrabin came at him again with his hand upraised, and with a cry Nashmarl cringed away from him.
“Shut up,” Elrabin said in disgust. “Get back to camp and lie in the shade. You be spoiled and lazy—”
“I am not!”
“You be useless.”
Outrage flared in Nashmarl’s eyes. “You can’t talk to me like this—calling me names, insulting me. You aren’t my—”
“I’ll talk to you like I want,” Elrabin said. “You done put the camp at risk, see? You got to be punished.”
“No one’s going to punish me,” Nashmarl said. His green eyes narrowed with all the arrogance of a Viis. “Certainly not you.”
Elrabin pointed up the hill. “Get out of here. Go!”
“I will not go. I will not do anything you say. You can’t make me.”
Elrabin bared his teeth, tempted to seize the cub by his scruff and drag him back into the camp. But there wasn’t time. He’d wasted enough of it with this young fool already.
“Fine,” he said shortly. “When your mother gets back, we’ll deal with it. Now, get out of my way.”
“I’ll tell her,” Nashmarl said, making it a threat. “I’ll tell her what you said to me. I’ll tell her you hit me.”
“I’ll hit you again if you don’t get out of my way,” Elrabin growled. He pushed past Nashmarl, who scurried out of reach, and strode on down the hill with Paket at his heels.
“Street trash!” Nashmarl called after him. “You think you’re someone important because Mother likes you, but you’re really—”
With an oath, Elrabin swung around, but Nashmarl vanished from sight into the underbrush. Seconds later, a rock came sailing out of the thicket and struck Elrabin on the shoulder.
His temper snapped completely. Growling, he started into the brush, but Paket grabbed him by his
coattail and held him back.
“Let him go,” Paket said.
Elrabin panted with anger. “He needs his hide skinned.”
“Later,” Paket said. He yanked harder on Elrabin’s coat. “Later.”
Growling, Elrabin bared his teeth. Slowly he pulled his emotions under control. Giving himself a shake, he moved away from Paket’s restraining hand and rubbed his muzzle. He hated losing his temper. Only Nashmarl could make him go crazy like this, where he lost track of everything except the desire to attack and punish. The cub had a talent for irritating him. Elrabin knew he ought to stay iced, not let Nashmarl get to him. but every time he looked at the cub he could see so much potential, so much promise. And it infuriated him to see what Nashmarl was growing into.
The faint echo of the cub’s jeering laughter carried down the hill on the hot breeze. Elrabin heard the noisy progress as Nashmarl pushed through the thicket, and he sighed to himself. He knew Nashmarl was making the noise on purpose, just to irritate him even more.
With a shrug, Elrabin turned around and resumed walking.
Paket puffed and struggled along beside him. “That cub is getting too full of himself. Has no manners. Has no brain. Someone’s got to tell Ampris.”
Elrabin’s exasperation boiled over. “Tell her what?” he demanded. “You want to get in her face with criticism of her son? He’s got the prettiest manners in the world when his mother’s around. Gah!” Elrabin slapped a branch out of his way, letting it whip viciously behind him. “She got a lot of smarts. Paket, but when it comes to her cubs she’s blind, blind!”
“The mother love of Aarouns,” Paket said with a sigh. “We Kelths are much smarter.”
Elrabin thought of his own mother, stressed and thin, working too hard to support her lits, too tired to share much affection. Twitching his ears, he angrily slammed old memories away. Time to think of the here and now.
He shot Paket a glance. “Nashmarl ain’t my problem, see?”
“You get mad like he is.”
Elrabin fumed. “Going to get his mother out of trouble, I am,” he muttered. “Then she can deal with him.”
“You know we got another rule in camp,” Paket said quietly, ducking a branch that Elrabin had heedlessly let whip back. “Anyone who gets to be a problem can be shunned.”
Elrabin snorted to himself. “Yeah, sure. You going to shun Ampris’s cubs—”
“Not both of them. Foloth’s all right.”
Elrabin looked over his shoulder and met Paket’s gaze. “Foloth ain’t all right. One cub’s as bad as the other. Just in different ways. Which don’t mean they can’t be straightened out.”
“Who’s going to do that?” Paket asked him.
Elrabin shrugged. “So you going to shun them, and you think Ampris won’t fight it. I want to see that.”
“I’m not saying we will,” Paket said earnestly. “I’m saying we can.”
“We need her,” Elrabin said, getting angry again. “We be nothing without her. Don’t you forget that.”
“I know what I owe Ampris,” Paket said in a low voice. “I wouldn’t be following you here and now if I’d forgotten.”
The rebuke made Elrabin flatten his ears. “Yeah, yeah,” he said and squinted ahead where the hill began to flatten out. The fire had already burned up the field and was now dying out with huge billows of black smoke. He saw that the shed where Ampris had concealed their cache of stolen food had also burned. His spirits plummeted. All that hope and risk for nothing.
He slowed down and glanced at Paket, then decided not to mention the grain they’d never eat. It seemed to be a bad omen, but he shook the thought off.
Feeling bleak, he coughed as the smoke gusted their way.
“So what do you think?” Paket asked him. “How far to the compound from here?”
“Another hour, maybe more if you can’t keep the pace.”
Paket bared his teeth. “I can keep up. I ain’t slowing us down.”
“Got to have something left when we get there.”
Growling, Paket shouldered past him and moved out into the open between the underbrush and the charred edge of the field. “Let’s can the gab and save our breath for being heroes.” He shot Elrabin an impatient glare. “Come on.”
Elrabin hesitated, reluctant to leave the safety of cover. “We better go around—”
“The long way won’t help us.” Paket waved at the empty, smoke-filled sky. “We’ll take the road. No one’s going to pay any attention to us.”
“If we get buzzed by a patroller—”
“They’re busy burning stelf,” Paket said. “My legs be too old to take the long way. You go whichever way you want. I’m taking the road.”
He marched off, and Elrabin groaned to himself. If he wasn’t having to deal with Ampris getting greedy and staying in the field until she got caught, he was busy trying to knock some sense into her offspring. Now Paket had thrown caution to the winds. The old one had to be losing his mind.
Elrabin hadn’t lived this long by being reckless and crazy.
Except once in a while. This seemed to be one of those times. Sighing to himself, he left the safety of the thicket and trotted into the open, following the old Kelth, who had set his muzzle grimly to the south.
Together, they headed for the compound.
CHAPTER•THREE
The sun was setting, spreading huge rays of copper and gold across a sky smudged indigo and charcoal. The air smelled of smoke. With twilight, the breeze had shifted directions, bringing coolness for the first time all day.
Within the farm compound of a Viis landowner whose name Ampris did not know, she waited with the other field slaves inside a circular holding pen located between the barns and the ramshackle quarters which housed the slaves. It had been a long time since Ampris had found herself pushed down a loading chute and held prisoner inside a pen of wire mesh. The pen was fitted with a security field that delivered stinging electric shocks to anyone who touched the wire.
“Prisoner” . . . the very word conjured up old memories of hurt and cruelty that Ampris did not want to relive. She fought to hold back the panic that kept rising inside her. She was not someone who lost her head in a crisis. She was too experienced for that. Fear had to be held down and controlled. But no matter how hard she tried, it kept getting away from her and filling her with cold surges of worry that made the fur around her neck bristle.
Most of the other slaves had clustered in the center of the pen. They crouched on their haunches, murmuring softly among themselves and pointedly ignoring the heated conference going on among the Viis standing in the garden. The garden’s wall was no more than waist-high and served not as a barrier within the taller walls of the compound but instead as a demarcation of private space reserved for use by the landowner’s family only. Right now, the landowner himself stood among his shrubs and flowers, with his wife wailing softly behind her veil and the fat Gorlican overseer standing a short distance away. A delegation of patrollers in black uniforms, helmets tucked beneath their arms, faced the landowner. Arguments in Viis flew back and forth, furious and heated, but too far away for the words to be clearly overheard.
Ampris stayed at the perimeter, continually circling the pen. She was unable to keep still, unable to remain passive. All her instincts warned her to stay alert, to seize the smallest chance to escape.
She watched the argument, wishing she were close enough to hear better. She had managed to retain her fluency with the Viis language and had taught as much of it as she could to her sons. The other members of the group disliked her doing that, saying she was teaching her sons to become Viis, to become the enemy. Only Elrabin understood her reasons and gave her his approval. Many Myals of course understood Viis, especially those who worked in areas of research and historical preservation, but Ampris knew of no Aaroun besides herself who was fluent in Viis. She could even read and write it. In an age when so many of the abiru folk could not always speak their own native language
and instead knew only the multilingual abiru patois, Ampris’s level of education was both unique and remarkable. She wanted Foloth and Nashmarl to have the same advantages and knowledge base she had, so that when they grew up they could deal with the Viis both intelligently and resourcefully. But teaching them was difficult at best. Foloth was willing but slow to pick up abstract concepts. Nashmarl had a brilliant mind, but he was too impatient to work hard.
Thinking of her sons, growing so tall yet with so much still to learn, Ampris’s sense of urgency increased. She had to get out of here.
Panting, Ampris halted and leaned as close to the wire fence as she dared. The current in it crackled in warning, but she went on peering intently across the compound at the landowner and the patrollers. She believed that everything depended on the outcome of their discussion. Not just the landowner’s fate, but hers as well.
The Viis wife wailed again, more loudly than before, and staggered away with her hands pressed to her face.
Ampris strained her ears and heard the word “taxes,” then “enforced sale of all assets now under confiscation.”
The landowner was ruined. Growling, Ampris drew back. She was not concerned about him or his family, but his ruin meant serious trouble for her too. If the patrollers had been satisfied to simply burn the fields and leave, Ampris figured she could have gotten away the next time the slaves were taken out to work. But if the government confiscated not just the harvest, but also the land, equipment, and slaves, then she had to get out of here before she found herself shipped to Vir’s slave auction.
Her growl grew louder, and determination hardened inside her. Never again would she go through that humiliation. She was a person, free, not an object to be possessed or purchased.
“What is it?” asked a deep, rumbling voice from behind her.
Ampris jumped and spun around to find herself looking at the striped Aaroun male. He had not been friendly earlier that day when they were all crammed inside the broiling interior of a transport and hauled here. But now he looked at her in open inquiry, and worry filled his eyes.
She hesitated, not certain what to answer. Not all Aarouns could be trusted. She’d learned that the hard way.
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