C J Cherryh - Gene Wars 1 - Hammerfall

by Hammerfall(lit)

  "We should do that," he agreed, and passed the order. "We'll move on. Two hours."

  There were complaints, a general murmur from the inexperienced, loudest from Malin.

  He mounted up; Hati did; and likewise Norit. He saw Malin demanding the ex-soldiers lift her up to her saddle.

  In her he saw a woman grown reckless and demanding of her two chief debtors.

  He saw a sign of death in her extravagance, too, but did not know whether it was Malin's.

  Chapter Eight

  In the beginning of days the Ila gave the tribes the secrets of water, where it might lie and how they might render bitter water into sweet. Likewise she appointed them their districts and their wells, which they maintain as their own, provided only that caravans may pass through their territories without hindrance and provided that only villages may levy a water-charge.

  -The Book of Priests

  In the conduct of a caravan there is one master, and the word of the master when he is in the desert is like the word of a priest. The Ila has given the master this authority.

  -The Book of the Ila

  In the next night they arrived on a road of sorts: and by dawn even a villager could see it. The caravans had traveled this way so often and so long they had worn a depression on the earth, a trench that the great storms both covered and uncovered. At times they rode in this depressed line for hours.

  On the next afternoon they went over deep dunes, but Tofi found the road again, and it led east.

  Other roads converged with it at a low spot, a small pile of stones that marked where, if one dug, one might find water. for it was not villages that determined the route of the caravans: it was water, trickles of it too small to sustain a village, but enough for a caravan. Wherever a highland loomed up, whenever the land generally tended down from that, springs might exist, often hidden in sand like this one, or making mere wet spots in the rocks, or again, crusts of white on the sand, where minerals had leached. The caravan roads met at such places. At such places the beshti could drink. So could the vermin, and there was some danger in approaching the center of the place, but they went, the beshti's feet cracking the white crust, the beshti's voices making a loud threat, clearing the vicinity.

  There they gathered, sucking up the water that might kill a man, drinking so fast and so deep they drained the shallow pool and waited for more.

  This water they might distill if they were desperate, using the sun ovens. They were at a place that could save them if they were out of resources. But the stale remnant of sweet water in their skins would last long enough, so Tofi said, by all he knew: this well was the marker, and the village was indeed that close.

  That was the ninth day since the storm, and some of the mad felt of their diminished waterskins and uncertainly looked at the muddy soup, wondering whether they ought, perhaps, to pour their good water together in a few skins and take what bitter water they could.

  Tofi said not, and there was worry and recrimination in the camp when they rested. They were at the end of their food and their water: only the beshti, well watered, bringing up their cuds, appeared content.

  But when on the tenth day the trail went down beside a great wide shelf of layered rock, all broken and rubbled, and when they began generally, if scarcely perceptibly, to descend, then Hati said they were surely nearing an end; then Marak recognized in the high rocks and the presence of the bitter spring higher up the source of water that might sustain a village, and he was encouraged. By all visible evidence, Tofi was not wrong in his estimations.

  By the third day Tofi was certain enough that, after they had ridden all morning, and as an uncommonly hot sun beat down like a hammer, he gave no order to pitch the tents.

  The caravan track, already broad, joined with two others and made a wide, wind-scoured depression as high as the beasts' shoulders.

  Now their course veered a little south, following that line. All of them, all the mad, grew anxious, just by that veering off their eastward course, knowing better, as they did.

  East, their voices said.

  And the voices clamored at Marak, too: Haste, haste, haste. Move on. Don't stop.

  Patience, Marak told his demons. Be patient. The dead are no use to anyone. Rest and water. Rest and water. We can't be cheated of that.

  East, they argued. Marak, Marak, Marak. Move on. There is no time.

  The collective roads made a centuries-used trail down beside another ragged shelf of crumbling rock.

  And from that trail they rode along a rocky ridge, and they began to descend again.

  They came between two tall rocks and saw below them a broad double circle of dune-choked buildings and bright awnings, and a black netting that stretched over a garden the equal in size of the village itself.

  "Pori," Tofi said, as if he himself had doubted. A smile spread over his face and cracked the dust, and it spread to other faces. "Pori," they said. "Pori!"

  It was the end or the beginning of the Lakht, however one came to it, and for a Lakht village it was rich in water, if not in trade of caravans seeking water and rest. The caravans that came were out of the south: Marak remotely knew of it as a navigation point, one of several in the Lakht; and knew that the few caravans out of the remote south lowlands used this place, climbing the Lakht toward Oburan, and bending then toward Keish-an-Dei. There the tribes of the Lakht declared twice-annual peace, and met to trade and marry and plan their mischief on their brothers of the western Lakht, Hati's tribe among them.

  But the tribes of the eastern Lakht were fallible allies, so Tain had learned, and Marak remembered. We cannot come this year: the wells have failed. We cannot meet you; the westerners have offended us. We cannot send reinforcements: our priest is uneasy.

  As for Pori, like any entity on the Lakht, it valued commerce and took it where it could, barring feuds or weather. And it kept its neutrality. Promising everything, it had not joined Tain, either.

  Clearly the village had suffered from the recent storm, and was still digging out. Tall dunes stood against walls, rising up to the eaves of some houses. Sand choked the streets. Roofs were missing patches of tile. But the black netting was intact. That said everything. Pori would safeguard that so long as the village lived.

  And as they rode down among the rocks, they at last saw villagers, tiles or shovels in hand, who stopped their work on the far side of a house, and at the first sight of them, shouted: "A caravan, a caravan!" so that the whole village poured out to see.

  Tofi brought his caravan to a halt at the well, at the opening of the double crescent of houses, where they surrounded a wide, sandy commons.

  Here stood a stone-covered well, with troughs for animals. Even water as abundant as fed a village could not be allowed to stand under the sun and be half-drunk up by the heat: it was too precious for that. Pori-in the lowlands it would have been Kais Pori-had built a fine stone vault above ground for its well, with walls thicker than the stretch of a man's arms. That well house protected the water, and likely fed a great amount into a deep cistern. It ran out into troughs for the beasts only when a strong man pulled a lever and let it flow out.

  Already there was no holding the beasts, who knew what was their due and who liked sweet water better than foul. They crowded up to the trough, where as yet there was no water, and pushed and shoved for dominance.

  Meanwhile the authorities of the village had come out from a house nearest the well, many-walled and rich.

  "I have a letter!" Tofi said, having gotten down with the agility of his years, and waved it for all to see, a crumpled paper they had saved from Obidhen's death, bearing the Ila's red seal.

  The lord of the village came to Tofi, took the offered letter, and read it.

  "A caravan from Oburan! The Ila's charge!" the village lord cried with a wave of his hand. "The Ila's charge, all they desire in water or in supplies! Open up the pipes!"

  The water master had moved to his post, either to guard or to loose the precious commodity, and at th
at word, turned and hammered the tap open, letting the water flow from the stone mouth. It ran along the dry stone troughs. The stronger beasts, shouldering one another, trailing and treading on the reins that should have held them, moved in.

  They drank with grunts of satisfaction and a great deal of jostling side to side to bully lesser animals, who tried to reach their long necks past. There was no charity among them, no more than among men on the Lakht: the strongest drank first.

  The well continued to pour out water, abundant enough for all the beasts, and young girls came bringing cups full of water for them in the caravan, water they could drink freely, sweet water, cool from its underground cistern, in good brass cups.

  In the end every beast had its fill, and Tofi's slaves recovered their charges by the trailing leads.

  Kais Tain, Marak thought, looking around him, was such a village as this. more prosperous by far; but the wonder was that any village survived here on the edge of the caravan routes, while the village spread an awning and they sat at their ease to enjoy the air from the veiled garden leaves.

  At Kais Tain, beside the water house, was such a garden as stood here; in every village with a well there was such a garden. The remaining water from the troughs went out by a drain hole, and into a stone-lined pit where waste and wastewater of the whole village collected.

  Nothing was wasted.

  And from that rich, moist pit the gardeners hauled up a treasure that, gathered over centuries, enriched the pit of sand and carefully hoarded earth, deep pit floored and walled about with stone, roofed with wide-meshed woven nets against the vermin of the air.

  In Pori the garden was so old and so deep it stretched on behind the best houses, a source of wealth and pride. Twenty-four tall palms ringed that stone wall on the side nearest the well, drinking with their slighter need any moisture that reached through cracks in the stone floor of the garden, and returning the gift in the form of fruits in their season and fiber for weaving.

  Ruling all, even the official who governed the flow, a water-au'it sat guard by the drain, an old woman with a knotted cord in her hands, not a pen such as the Ila's au'it used. She told the charge for the water. She chanted and counted the knots as they flowed through the fingers. It was so many knots of flow by a chant as old as the Lakht. It was so many dippers of water for the men. The caravan must pay, even at the Ila's charge, and the water-au'it's eyes missed nothing in the milling confusion.

  More, with a caravan to feed and the Ila's charge, the sellers spread out their wares under the palms. It might take them a season to collect their goods in pay, but they would be city goods, and the haste to show what they had to trade became a frenzy of voices.

  "Come help our guide," Marak said, and Hati and Norit and the au'it came with him, and walked beside their young caravan master, for even at the Ila's charge, they were not anxious to be cheated. When a merchant proposed an outrageous price for palm-fiber cord, Hati sniffed, examined it minutely, and the price came down. Norit sniffed when the price of salve seemed high; and the word flowed by scarcely perceptible signals: the prices revised themselves to reason.

  At the Ila's charge Tofi bought a few dried fruits for the journey, per head, and dry-bread, and salt, and all these things were bundled up to stores.

  But Marak, at the Ila's charge, asked four silver rings from the trade master and gave them two each to Norit and to Hati, his one indiscretion. He was not surprised when Norit, exchanging them, came back with a fine striped aifad of the eastern Lakht pattern and a pot of cinnabar rouge.

  Hati bought two silver bracelets, redemption for her honor. It was the bracelets he had intended, jewelry for Hati; but out of fairness he asked a gift for Norit as well. And Tofi, once he heard, bought bracelets each for his women, for Maol and Jurid. Then the ex-soldiers had grief from Malin, and Malin turned up with two bracelets. How had that happened? Marak asked himself with suspicion, and set the au'it to finding out where the money had come from, but to no avail. Even fear of the Ila could not unravel that mystery.

  At such a spreading of coin and charges about, however, the whole of Kais Pori laid out a feast, dried and fresh fruit, and delicately spiced peas, with baked roots swimming in rare grease, a delicacy which some of the poor of the northwest had never sampled.

  They all sat on the ground, farmer-style, and sucked grease from their fingers and dipped them in salt until they had had enough of both. Their au'it and the water-au'it had put their heads together, and talked, and talked, all through the meal. The villagers danced. Even they, the madmen, danced, and the prostitute and the women with Tofi danced, while the antheiri hummed their notes and the drums thumped a rapid rhythm.

  The drums became a voice, however, and the voices called out of the east. They drank beer while the voices dinned names into their ears. The vision of the tower built itself out of the dung fire.

  Afterward, shamelessly, in the open-sided tent, their own, and ignoring the roofs of the village, Marak lay down with two women of very different kind. Hati, with new bracelets shining in the dim light, silver against dark skin, let her skilled hands go wandering, and drew his where she wished them. Norit was shy, but cried out scandalously until Hati stopped her with her hand across her mouth, laughing, with embarrassed glances toward the nearby houses.

  Norit's eyes remained eloquent, and her whole body trembled and sweated with passion. Norit made love amid her madness, and said she saw a shining hall, and lights, and people walked there.

  Marak himself saw the cave of suns; and Hati swore the same. The voices cried at them together, each in their own names, and the visions were the same vision and the whole world slid away toward the east under their backs.

  They lay in each other's arms all night.

  Malin and a certain woman of the village, the au'it reported, obliged various of the men, and the soldiers were out of sorts, so perhaps the mystery of Malin's bracelets was solved; but Marak let it go.

  There was this to surviving the desert together, that life was worth celebrating, and those who had been wise could turn foolish and those who had been fools came out wise men; and if that was the source of Malin's bracelets, Marak decided that was Malin's business.

  But in the night the visions increased, and the two ex-soldiers who had survived the Lakht, Malin's lovers, walked away from the village toward the east, simply walking.

  Marak found it out in the morning, when they gathered for a generous breakfast of flatbread and milk. They were two men short, Malin was smug in her collection of bracelets, and those two, once he knew the tale, he could all but feel, walking, walking, walking, waterless and foolish, put out with Malin, having had far too much drink last night, and having perhaps grown fonder of Malin than she of them.

  "We should break camp and overtake them," Marak said. The visions and voices troubled him more by the moment.

  "Let them go," Malin said: she had mistaken popularity for authority, and spoke out her opinions as she pleased.

  "We have another day here," Tofi protested.

  "The men will die of thirst out there," Marak said. He saw the hall and figures, as Norit had said. He saw men walking, and he had lost two men to those visions: Hati had said all visions were the same, and had they not seen what he had been seeing all night? "Unless we break camp now, they're dead men. They have the visions we have. The calling is east. For once, Kassan and Foragi are right."

  Tofi looked unhappy, but even Maol murmured, "East," and the look was in their eyes.

  So they struck the tents, the slaves both moping through their task, mourning the rich tables of the village, and bundled up the gear a day ahead of their plan. They roused out the beasts, who were no more ready to leave than the slaves, and who put up a great protest of lamenting and moaning. The beasts fled the reach of the slaves, and predictably the whole village of Pori turned out to watch and laugh.

  Hati frowned, but Norit thought it funny, and laughed, too. "A'ip!" Hati said sharply, the command to halt, and stalked
out into the circling pursuit, seized her own reluctant beast by the halter lead, and brought him back. Then she snagged Marak's, and brought him back, to the cheers of the onlookers, who mocked the slaves and cheered the other beasts on.

  The au'it solemnly wrote her account, perched primly on a pile of their baggage awaiting beasts to carry it.

  The beasts tired, the slaves put out a great effort, and caught one after another of the rebel animals. They had traded two of the beasts to the lord of Pori, and by refitting the saddles with side poles, made their other excess animals into pack beasts, but those complained about the loading, and hated the poles. It was all a swirl of bawling beasts and complaints and calls for this and that item in the most possible confusion.