by R. Lee Smith
“Jesus,” said Maria, and shivered. “Okay, you two can fight now. I don’t want to hear any more.”
“Kuaq fought tirelessly to remove the invaders, but in vain. Eventually, it was decided that they should send their plea for reinforcements to Xeqor. Our governors at once dispatched two forces: one, a legion of warriors capable of making the march to Kuaq in just six days, and the other, my father, who went alone and was there in three.
“He waited, hidden in the prairie, until night fell. And then he scaled the wall, here.” Meoraq tapped the burnt tip of his stick against his sketch. “Not to the rooftop, but to one of the outer wind-ways which Szadt had not thought to guard, it being set the height of ten men in a sheer wall and sized for the children whose task it was to keep them clear. How my father made that crawl must have been its own story, but he made it and once inside, my father hunted down every last raider of Szadt’s band and killed them all. One hundred and eleven men at final count,” Meoraq said proudly.
“No way,” said Eric, his brows rising. “That’s seriously bad ass, lizardman.”
Meoraq grunted, deciding to take that as praise, and went on. “My father’s attack must have begun soon after dark and was swiftly discovered. All of Kuaq saw the erupting fires of Szadt’s machines and heard the cries of battle, although the gates remained impervious to assault. At the striking of dawn’s hour, the Raider-Lord’s headless body fell from the rooftop where he had thrown so many others to their deaths. The fighting continued, but the core of Szadt’s band had broken and by nightfall, it was silent.
“The governors prudently waited some time to be certain of my father’s victory before they hailed the gate-house, but received no answer. No answer, but no killing machines from Szadt’s raiders, either. And as time passed and the silence continued, it was decided that my father had received some mortal wound and succumbed to it. Attempts were made to break the gates, but they held. A locksman was brought, but he hadn’t yet managed to craft a new key when the legion from Xeqor finally arrived and my father let them in.”
“Why didn’t he open the inner door?” Amber asked. “There had to have been enough noise…I mean, he had to know someone was out there.”
Meoraq shrugged his spines. “Perhaps he was at prayers. In any case, he opened the outer gate, gave the keeping of the gate-house to the legion’s commander and came home.”
Amber’s eyes narrowed slightly. Her head tipped, but he knew better than to think that meant the degree of sarcasm which it would mean on a dumaq. “He just left? He never opened the other door?”
“My father had little enough patience when dealing with the governors of his own city. As it was, the legion who’d had nothing to do with the retaking of the gate-house were detained three days by a grateful council. After killing a hundred men and bearing a witness to the remains of the women Szadt had given to his band, I doubt he was in any mood to celebrate.”
“The remains,” she echoed, frowning.
“My father never spoke of any of these things,” said Meoraq. “But I have heard from many of those who were part of the legion that went to Kuaq and saw the gate-house in those first hours. It has been supposed that Szadt meant to return to the wildlands that same night, as he had assembled certain supplies and bound what few of the women and children he had not already murdered for travel. But when he knew that it was over for him, it is said that he butchered them, even as they were tied and helpless at his feet. He left no survivors.”
He did not tell them all of what he had been told—that even with his men being cut down in the rooms above him, in the madness of his great evil, Szadt had not only hacked his bound victims to death, but had also engaged some of them sexually. Some before their murders and some clearly after. Bootmarks in blood proved that Rasozul had gone in and out of this room many times, and Meoraq knew that was where his father had been during those days that the governors of Kuaq had been bashing away on the inner-city gate, preparing the bodies for their pyres or searching in vain for life among the dead or perhaps only bearing that terrible scene his witness for however long he could manage. He’d asked once, years later, when he was Sheulek himself and his father had seemed in an open sort of mood, but Rasozul’s face had closed before the question had even come fully from his mouth. “I’ve told all there is in that tale once to your mother,” he’d said. “And I’ll tell it again to Sheul, but not to you, son. Not to anyone.”
“My father returned to Xeqor a hero. His name is known in every city I have ever passed through. His name is known,” he repeated meaningfully. “Mine is not.”
“Then why don’t you want to go home?” Amber asked.
“I go where Sheul sends me,” he said. “That is enough talk for tonight. Finish eating and bank the fire. I’m going on patrol.”
Amber stopped with her hand half-raised, a lump of marrow quivering on her fingertips. Her mouth opened.
“No,” said Meoraq.
Dag laughed. Waving off Amber’s glare, he excused himself, heading back across camp toward his little tent. No one hailed him. It was early as the bells would have rung it, but night in the wildlands kept its own hours. All the other humans were sleeping.
“You didn’t even let me say anything,” Amber said.
“You were going to ask if you could come with me.” Meoraq stood up, stretching the stiffness out of his limbs. “And the answer is no. You rest.”
“I’ve rested all frigging day!”
“You could barely walk a few hours ago,” Eric remarked, grinning.
His woman looked at him, at Amber, and then took his sleeve and towed him to his feet. They left, whispering and laughing.
“I get the first watch,” Amber insisted, reaching for her spear. “I always—”
She stopped there. Meoraq was smiling and holding out his open hand.
She looked at it while her blood-kin heaved a noisy sigh and tromped away, muttering something about being back in a few minutes to untie her. Amber closed her eyes and rubbed them, then crooked up the corner of her mouth and put her hand in his.
He pulled her to her feet and released her. “I found a dead tachuqi where I found our meat.”
Her gaze sharpened at once. “More of those things that attacked us?”
“Not more, but the same group, or so I believe. We are still in easy distance of our previous camp.”
She dropped her eyes. He waited until she dragged them up again.
“But if I am wrong, there are tachuqis very close to us tonight. If you come with me, if we find them, can you stand with me and fight?”
She did not answer.
“Rest,” he said. “Sleep, if you can. I’ll wake you for your watch.”
She looked away again, staring hard into the fire at their feet. She nodded once.
He gave her a pat on the shoulder and left her there, passing Nicci on his way out of camp. She tossed her hair at him and sniffed in answer to his (admittedly terse) grunt of acknowledgement, but that was fine. He’d rather she give him a brief rudeness and move on than stand around and chirp at him as she did with her human friends.
But there was another light ahead of him, which meant another human wandering in the wildlands. Scott, he soon saw, slouching by himself on a jut of stone beside the stream. He didn’t have time to slip away unnoticed; Scott shone his lamp right at him.
There was no one else around to see them, no one to intimidate or impress. Alone, they eyed one another with undisguised mutual dislike. Meoraq was first to speak. “What are you doing out of camp?”
He was so proud of his self-restraint.
“Thinking,” said Scott. “When you’re in charge, you have a lot to think about.”
There was a challenge in his words, naked as a sword’s edge.
“Truth,” said Meoraq. Such self-restraint. Surely Sheul was with him. “Now go back to your den. I want you all together.”
“Where are you going?”
“Patrolling. There is tachuq
i-sign nearby.” Sheul’s hand slipped; Gann’s gripped him. “Join me, S’kot. We’ll hunt them down together.”
The human’s eyes narrowed. His smile was a cold gash across his face.
“No? Ah well. I suppose you are too important to your people to risk.”
“They need someone to be able to make decisions without waiting for a sign from God first.”
Meoraq laughed scornfully. “And you do that very well. In fact, I think that’s about all you do. But I note that even you don’t call them good decisions.”
And he walked on, taking a low pleasure in imagining the look on Scott’s ugly face as he was left behind to steep in hate. As he circled his camp, he warmed himself with thoughts of Scott sulking on his rock, maybe for an hour, maybe even all night. He supposed he’d ought to ask Sheul to heal him of his spite, which was a poison and a shameful thing to live in the heart of a Sheulek…but he’d already asked Sheul for so much tonight.
In reality, Everly Scott left right after Meoraq did, and while he did sit in his tent for about twenty minutes, he wasn’t sulking. He was thinking. And when he was decided, when everyone was sleeping, he slipped out again.
Amber was a light sleeper, but she didn’t hear him. It was the cold that woke her—the cold that blew down her back as a careful hand pulled her blanket away from her neck. Even then, there was no prescient leap of fear, only a sleepy annoyance. “I’m up, I’m up,” she mumbled, rolling over. “Back off, liz—”
She saw the medikit, oddly. Just the kit, which she had last seen the day Mr. Yao placed it in Scott’s hands. The medikit, open, and a blurry field of dirty crimson behind it that she never had time to recognize as the uniform jacket of a crewman for the Pioneer.
Then there was a hand in her hair, shoving her head back so that all she saw was night sky and a few sparks from the fire riding smoke out on the wind. She took a breath and something bit her on the neck. It was her last conscious thought: Snakebite. She heard it hissing again and again, hissing as it bit and bit, and she tried to scream, but her lungs were full of lead and the black got so much blacker and there wasn’t time to think Nicci’s name even once and that was it for Amber.
Elsewhere, not far, Meoraq walked, a bit too spiteful in his Sheulek’s heart, but ever vigilant against the beasts that hunt by night.
8
There were no tachuqis. Meoraq knew it before that first hour was out, but he made himself stand a full watch. When the night was half-gone, Meoraq returned to wake Amber so that he could have a few hours’ rest before moving on. He’d ought to meditate before he slept—he had indulged plenty of flaws to meditate over tonight—but he wasn’t used to staying up this late anymore and he was tired.
The fires had been banked, giving him little light, but the humans’ blankets caught all there was and reflected it back like mirrors. He picked his way carefully through them, searching for Amber and trying not to step on anyone. Ever since waking up in his tent, she had been fairly obnoxious about not bedding down too near him. No, it was always right in the thick of her people, where she was all but invisible, and he could do nothing but creep along and peer at each protruding head while praying for patience.
Patience had become little more than a word in prayer to him these days and it troubled him. Neither the late hour nor the cold wind was Amber’s fault, but she had made herself damned difficult to find tonight. Usually she slept as light as any true warrior, rousing at the slightest disturbance, and until this night, his tromping boots had always been enough to at least provoke a shift or a murmur. Ah, there. Two pale tufts of hair, like summer-thick fronds of hillgrass, sprouting out of two silvery lumps on the ground—Amber and her Nicci.
Meoraq stomped loudly over. Nicci slept on, as usual. So did Amber, which was not. Her sleeping breaths were equally uncharacteristic—wet and heavy, as if labored. He circled her uncertainly until he saw the pale stripe of her arm lying over the edge of her mat onto the trampled grass. It was surely Amber’s arm; that was her saoq-hide pack close to her hand, with his spare tunic stubbornly folded up inside so she could pretend she didn’t have to wear it in the morning.
“Up,” Meoraq said. “It is half-past late enough and well on to later still. Come stand your watch.”
Amber did not stir.
He’d started to walk away, so much did he expect her grumbling obedience, but at this…this nothing…he paused. She’d done this before, when they were at cross-wills, but they weren’t fighting tonight, or at least he didn’t know they were. Cautiously, he turned back. “Soft-skin? I say waken.”
Nicci muttered something and lifted her head out of her bedding, giving him a bleary and blameful look before shifting her eyes to Amber. “Get up,” she mumbled, prodding at the bulk of her blood-kin’s form.
Amber rocked without waking. Her wet breaths made a brief bubbling noise as she rolled onto her face and back again, but otherwise she made no sound. Her fingers twitched, but her hand wasn’t moving.
She…wasn’t moving.
Meoraq’s spines flexed forward and slapped back hard and fast enough to hurt. He was at her side in one step and ripping away the silver nothing-skin to expose her in a splay that might well have been only sleep…save that she did not waken. Her mouth yawned when he rolled her over (and oh great Father, it was like moving meat. Only her upper body twisted toward him until he pulled on her thigh as well) emitting the same laboring sucks and gusts of air as strings of drool hung from her slack lips. She’d been lying in a great pool of her own salivations, so that one half of her face was pink and wrinkled. The eye on that side had swelled and was partially opened, so bloodshot and so dilated that it seemed a black slick upon a red sea. She had urinated on herself some time ago; the stain covered her entire left side from the sleeve of her arm to the cuff of her breeches.
“What happened?” Nicci asked shrilly. She grabbed at him and he shook her off without thought, pressing his palm to Amber’s chest, first atop her shirt and then beneath it in an effort to catch the echoes of her life’s pulse. If she lived.
“My God!” said Scott, appearing out of the dark as white and welcome as a strike of lightning. “She’s dead!”
A great storm of shock followed as humans bolted out of their beds to either crowd around him or hover away.
“Be quiet!” Meoraq roared, and while they did not obey precisely, they quieted enough that he could detect Amber’s heart beating at last. The feel of it brought him no relief, only more dread. Too heavy and too slow. Far too slow. He tried to make a count between beats, but there was no rhythm, only torpid shudders and infrequent slams, as inconsistent as the kicking leg of a dying saoq.
He told himself the freezing hand that gripped his own chest was premature. Her heart might beat this way all the time. How would he know?
His eye flicked to Nicci. He lunged out and caught her, dragged her squealing to him, and put his hand roughly between her swelled teats. Her heart hammered, rapid and strong, until she yanked herself away. He let her go, searching again for Amber’s life-beat and finding it exactly as he’d left it, indisputably wrong.
“What happened?” someone asked.
“Is she dead?” Nicci cried, already in tears. She stumbled away and Scott took her in, clutching Nicci against his chest.
“It’s going to be all right, Miss Bierce,” he declared. “We’ll all miss Amber. She had so much of the pioneering spirit and I know we will never forget her.”
Meoraq gaped, then hissed at him with such violence that it was nearly a shriek.
“Back off, man,” Dag said in a low voice. “There goes his neck.”
“I think she’s breathing,” said another human. “I mean, she’s looking really bad, but she’s not dead yet.”
“When did this happen?” Meoraq demanded.
They all looked at each other. “She looked all right when she went to bed,” Eric said at length. “Maybe this is some kind of, I don’t know, infection or something. From when she got…uh,
hurt.”
Scott flushed and glared at him.
Yao came to kneel beside Amber and Meoraq reluctantly gave her up to his inspection. The first thing he did was to take her wrist and just hold it for a short time, frowning. Then he pulled up Amber’s shirt and felt at her soft belly. The bruise, now several days old, had lost its glossy purple-black color, gained some greenish smudges, and separated into three distinct marks rather than one massive one. “I see no inflammation…no sign of internal bleeding…pulse is weak and thready…she’s extremely hypothermic. It could be sepsis, but she’s shown no symptoms until now and her breathing is very slow and arrhythmic. This looks pharmacological to me,” said Yao, prying open one of Amber’s slack, glazed eyes.
“It’s not drugs!” Scott interrupted. “Where would she get drugs?”
“I didn’t say…” Yao paused, his narrow eyes narrowing further as he gazed into nothing. “Drugs,” he murmured. He looked at Amber. “It could well be. Bring me the medical kit.”
Scott stared for a moment and then suddenly, forcefully said, “I lost it. Back when we had to leave our infrastructure behind to avoid upsetting God. What does it matter? You can’t fix this with aspirin and bandages! And you’re not a real doctor anyway! You don’t know anything!”
Yao merely nodded, unaffected by these insults. “Then it must be something else,” he said, looking around at the dark plains. “She might have exposed herself to any number of toxic plants.”