C J Cherryh - Gene Wars 1 - Hammerfall

by Hammerfall(lit)

  "No. The Ila's gone sane. She wants to live. I ask you: lead. You'll go first, the other tribes, then the Ila with my company."

  "That white whore! In her billowing white canvas!"

  "None of the big tents: small ones, fit for the desert. It's our only chance."

  "And what's at the other end? There's no oasis beyond Pori!"

  "Have you been beyond Pori? I have."

  "My father was there. And there's nothing there."

  Pieces came together. Made sense. "Thirty years ago. This began thirty years ago. There was another Descent. And I've seen the tower. I've seen the river. A green oasis, past Pori and off the Lakht a few days." He had only the eyes to reason with, above the veil, dark and fierce as Hati's, but they were attentive, and he took a chance. "I tell you this well knowing you could find your own way there and leave the villages to die. You came here because you hoped the Ila had an answer for the star-fall. You came because you know how bad it is out there. Well, so do we. We just crossed the Lakht. And we know that a skill like yours is the best help we could get."

  The eyes narrowed above the veil. For the first time they swept across Hati, acknowledging her existence. "This is Marak Trin Tain." That was a question, flatly stated.

  "Marak Trin, no longer Trin Tain," Hati said, "because Tain is a fool. Be patient. He'll make you an honest grandfather yet."

  What had he just heard?

  The an'i Keran swept aside his veil and spat to the side. It was a superstition, ridding the place of devils, and Aigyan stared across at them, unveiled, a man the sun had weathered about the eyes, a man whose face showed deep scars and an unforgiving mouth.

  "Daughter of a devil. So now I'm to follow you, is it?"

  "Join me," Marak said urgently, before things flew out of hand. "Lead the caravan. Take the place of honor across the edge of the Lakht. Can a man ask more?"

  "Your mother is Haga."

  Aigyan might as well have spat as said that word. There was an old feud, old as water boundaries.

  "Damned right his mother is Haga!" rang up from below, where other tribesmen had had forced a way toward them, brown and green, Haga riders, six or seven of them.

  One rider suddenly drove his besha up toward them.

  "My enemy," Aigyan said, unveiled, and Menditak, lord of the Haga, likewise unveiled himself as he arrived.

  "Water thief!" Menditak hissed.

  "Hold off," Marak said, and drove Osan between the two. "To you, omi, the lead." This he said to Aigyan. "And Hati goes with me.-And you, omi, mother's cousin." The last was for Menditak of the Haga, heartfelt. "I've reserved a place of honor for you. I hope you have my mother and my sister. I knew if there was any safety for them, it was with you, and I know if anyone will bring all his tribe through, you will. That's why I want you on the one side and the Keran on the other, because you're the wisest, the canniest, and the quickest leaders alive, and I need you both, not one, not the other, but both of you in your right minds and your good judgment! Your peoples' lives, all our lives depend on it!"

  "New land, you say! Paradise!" The last was mockery from Menditak of the Haga. Few of the tribes believed in the god behind the Ila. They had their own ways, their own paradise, their own devils, and one of the latter was the Ila.

  "To each his own!" They could all but hear one another normally, with the sudden ebb of the crowd from around the ridge. Tribesmen had drawn swords and villagers and priests alike scrambled out of the vicinity, not that they were targets, but that a tribesman had as soon ride over them as around them. "Water and safety is what I offer! I came back to save as many as I could! It was beyond my hope to get word out to the tribes, but here you are, and now I see a chance for the rest of the lives out here under this unfortunate sky! It's gotten worse, and it will get worse than that, rapidly, trust me that I know. Paradise of water, of shade, of everything material, and honor!

  Not forgetting honor, and the respect of all the villages as well as the tribes. They were both there, they were both listening, and neither had ridden at the other. "Will you ride away from honor? Will you ride away from renown greater than any man has ever had? Or will you ride at the front of the greatest caravan the world has ever seen?"

  "We go first," Aigyan declared.

  "And you next the Ila's men," Marak said before Menditak could take umbrage at that, "and not less in honor. It takes two of you, setting aside water feud, to demonstrate to all the tribes how great-souled men can behave! One isn't without the other! It takes you both, and both of you will have that reputation. Ever after this, whenever men talk about wise agreements, they'll say, Like Aigyan and Menditak, after their example. You'll become a proverb for wise men. You'll put all the rest to shame, never yourselves."

  They hesitated. If the wind blew contrary, if a besha sneezed, if anything tipped the balance the other way, it was calamity. But the wind stayed still.

  "My fathers," Marak said, in the way of the tribes with other men, paying his respect. "We need you."

  "To Pori," Aigyan reminded him. "And how do we move these city-bred fools?"

  "As the tribes move. If men fall behind, they fall behind. Take the south road tonight and wait for me by the Besh Karat, do you know it?"

  "As I know my own backside," Menditak said.

  "I trust you to know," Marak said-whatever and any flattery to keep the peace. "I have to gather the Ila's beshti. If anything should happen to me, leave, lead as many as you can keep alive and go to the village of Pori. Do you know a northern route? It's safer."

  "It's reputed there's a northern track," Aigyan said. "Our oldest may remember. If not, I can still find my way."

  "Ha!" Menditak said.

  "Go for Pori, then east, down off the Lakht, east still, and ten marks off east to the south. There's the refuge!"

  "There's nothing out there!" Menditak protested. He resisted the voices' cry for haste. Resistance was all that gave him sanity.

  "There is now. A second Descent."

  "And another Ila?" This was no good thing to the tribes. "Hell with that, sister's weanling!"

  "A rich land. Water. Palms thick as you please. It's Oburan, before the city rose. It's the heart of a new land, uncle, the heart of the people the tribes will supply with goods and trade. What have you left here? What will you have left, if the Lakht becomes a smoking waste-as it will! As it will, uncle! More than the mad have seen it now. All of you have seen what we warned you would come down, and now we tell you there's a way to live, and live well, rich as the Ila, every one of you, if only you get there with the people's gratitude. The people's gratitude is better than gold, far more powerful. Live! Don't despise what I tell you. The people need you now. Who else can we look to save us?"

  "Flatterer!"

  "I've become a prophet, uncle. And I tell you both the truth. Keep the peace, and be there, by the Besh Karat!"

  He kept nothing from them. If he had resources, he poured them out to those that knew how to use them.

  But he believed his own urging, and delayed no longer. "Hati!" he shouted. "Norit!" He gave Osan a whack of the quirt, trusting him to find its way down from the ridge, trusting the two feuding lords to find their way to their own tribes, Memnanan to find the Ila, and the two women with him to stay behind him.

  But another rider barred his path. He saw his sister among the Haga riders, and his sister saw him, there at the very foot of the ridge.

  "Patya!" In utter astonishment he reined Osan to a halt and dropped to the ground by the mounting loops. His sister slid down, her feet within knee height of the ground, but Patya, silly girl, failed to know it, and held on.

  He simply swept her up in both his arms like a child, flung her rightwise about to look at her, and hugged her breathless.

  "Marak!" His mother, Kaptai, dismounted beside them, a plummeting of brown veils and a clash of bracelets. He caught her, too, and swung them both around, veils flying. He pressed their faces against his, and he smelled the smells of home and hearth
about them, everything that had kept him alive on the trek to Oburan.

  "You're safe," he said. "The Ila kept her promise!"

  "They said you were back," Patya said, still hugging him. "No one believed you'd come back, but we believed."

  "I love you," he said to her. "I love you," to his mother. As far as he remembered he had never said that word to either of them, and least of all to his father, but now it had become a word he owned; and when he said it he knew he had forgotten Hati in a moment in which he was home again, before Hati, before everything had changed.

  "You came back," his mother said. "You said you would come back, and you did."

  What had he said? He had made a hundred promises when he left them, all lies; but unlikely as they were, he had kept them all, every one.

  Hati had gotten down. He felt her familiar arm slip around him. He took her hand, and put it in his mother's. "This is Hati," he said in utter, untrammeled joy-then saw the dismay, the look from head to foot.

  An'i Keran, tribal enemy under this foreign sky.

  But his mother, of the Haga, hesitated only for a heartbeat, and gave her an embrace, his mother rattling with the wealth of a lord's daughter, a lord's wife: she had come away with everything, and Hati with only the bracelets he had given her.

  Patya embraced Hati, too. "For Marak," Patya said. "For him."

  There was another rider near them. Norit was there, and her, too, he showed to his mother. "This is Norit, from Tarsa. I have two wives."

  "Two?" said Patya, a child of the west. But his mother never blinked. "Daughter," Kaptai said, while the earth shivered. She reached up a hand, the token of an embrace, but Norit for whatever reason did not get down, and Menditak had come down, urgent to be away.

  "Damn this shaking!" Menditak said. "Bargains with the omi Keran! Come on, there! Will you delay for a damned festival?"

  "Up." Marak heaved his sister up to her saddle. His mother, like Hati, needed no help. He made Osan extend a foreleg, and caught the strap and got up, recklessly, pridefully mounting like a tribesman in front of this arrogant old man, and Hati did the same.

  "Away!" Menditak shouted, above the rumble from the skies and the earth, and the earth shuddered as Menditak took his company toward the north and east and Marak rode ahead of Hati and Norit toward the north and west.

  "The god's vengeance on the Ila's enemies!" some lingering priest cried from the side of the ridge. "Salvation for the righteous! Pray for the Ila! Pray for our salvation!"

  Tents were already beginning to collapse on the edge of the camp, adding to the confusion an unintended consequence. Essential landmarks were disappearing. Confusion multiplied. He rode through the diminishing crowd, past a camp edge that itself was blurred by so many, many people milling about trying to find the lost, the strayed, the ones who had to know what they had just heard. People shouted at one another, waved arms, cursed or pleaded. The noise of their confusion went up to the heavens.

  Someone recognized them as they rode. People ran at them. Hands caught at their legs, at their beasts' harness. People shouted questions, what they were to do, what the Ila might do. The lifesaving frenzy he had helped create threatened to overwhelm them.

  "Pack and get to the south road!" Marak shouted, and brought his quirt down sharply on his beast's hindquarters.

  Osan leapt forward, scattering men who were closing in ahead of them, and Marak took that gift, rode after, trusting Hati to keep Norit with her and both of them behind him. A man went down, knocked aside: it was not his concern. He had held the visions at bay, he had spilled out everything he knew to two tribes of twenty, and now that the need to speak was past, he could no longer think, or see anything but the ring of fire.

  Marak, the voices cried, wanting, demanding something more of him, urgent with this new, this ill-timed vision. Marak!

  He and Memnanan had created this panic. They had primed the people with fear and uncertainty and the sense of one essential escape from their plight, one door by which they might exit, and it to the south. He had used every tactic, every wile he had, he had said he knew not what in the urgency of saying something, promising something to get the people to move. He had abandoned his own mother and his sister to the safety they could find, and now his only companions were companions in the madness: he was through with dealing with sane people, ignorant people, desperate people.

  Tofi, who had seen the tower, Tofi, who had the tents, was the missing piece, of all the structure he still had to assemble, and he knew where Tofi had said he would be, one young man and a handful of beasts and two slaves, on whom he depended, out across the flat, to the southwest of the city and imperiled by men desperate for tents and transport.

  Leave me alone! he raged at the voices and the visions, and rubbed his eyes until they were shot full of dark and red stars. Let me alone! Let us alone! Let me see and hear!

  "There's Tofi!" Hati cried, riding up even with him and pointing ahead, on the flat where Tofi had said they would be.

  There, through a haze of dust and the running figures of men bound for the tents, Marak saw beasts, all seated, all ready for their packs, and Tofi, who was waiting for them, waving them in while confused and desperate men ran past his goods and his beasts.

  "Omi!" Tofi cried, as they rode in. "Omi, we're here. We have everything. What are we to do?"

  "Stay where we are," Marak said, though Tofi was clearly ready to load on the instant. The ex-slaves, Mogar and Bosginde, were with him; so were older, hard-faced men, caravanners who might know their trade, and more slaves, young and strong ones as anxious in this confusion and the threat of the heavens as any free man. All this Marak saw with a glance. "The captain's on his way back to the Ila. He'll manage that part. She'll arrive with her tents." He reined Osan about before leaving the vantage of Osan's high back, with Hati by him, but Norit was nowhere in sight, and Hati was looking anxiously behind them, scanning all the way they had come, through a milling crowd.

  He did not immediately see Norit, but he knew her coming, knew her presence as a magnet knew iron. He saw her riding through a gust-borne cloud of dust and waved to her, signaling her.

  She rode toward them, and priests labored in her wake, white-clad men afoot, crying out after her, but a surge of running people poured between and cut them off.

  Norit reached them, her besha wild-eyed and still trembling from fright. But they were made whole, the three of them together again, and safe for the moment. Their madness had become linked, one to the other, and where one was, the others would come, and where Luz was, they would know Luz's intentions, all three of them: there had been no chance they would lose her while she was free to ride, Marak was sure of that now.

  "Everyone's gone mad," Tofi lamented, standing on the ground beside him. "We can be robbed if we stand still!"

  "Far worse than that can happen," Marak said, conscious of the lead-colored heavens over their heads and the crowd seething back into the camp on the edge of outright panic, a narrow margin between the urge it took to move this number of people and the fear it might set off an utter panic. "Stay mounted," he said to Hati and Norit. "All the rest of you, mount up. Let no one cross here. Use the quirts. Make stragglers go around us and the baggage!"

  Luz was satisfied, exhausted. The voices and the visions dimmed in his head and ceased to drive him.

  In the gray sky above them a shooting star streaked beneath the clouds, sputtering fire as it fell. Tofi's men cried out and pointed, and priests, in the chaos of the crowd, pointed aloft and raised their hands in prayer.

  "The priests may come into our camp," Marak said. "They're useful. But for the rest, don't pity anyone. We know the way. Our resources are for us and the Ila to stay alive. Without us all the rest will die." He felt a chill as he made that pronouncement, facing the scene in front of him, the ruin of a city ringed with tents as far as the eye could see. He made an exception for the priests. With all his heart he hoped his mother and his sister were safe, but he knew his mother c
ould ride, and knew they were safer with the Haga, come what might: the Ila's close company had dangers of a kind he had to be free to deal with.

  Most of all they would be happier not seeing him as he was, prey to madness and harried at times beyond love for anyone.

  For the rest, there was one, only one alive who could hold this mass of people together, and she, red-robed, their lifelong enemy, amid that tangle of canvas and ropes and panicked crowds.

  If no one else in the city escaped, she must come down, soon, very soon, because if this mass became a mob, it was no more rational than any other mobbing in the desert, no mind, no wit, only desperation and self-seeking, devouring its own to satisfy the panic hunger, and they would have to take to the road and get ahead of it or die.

  The ex-slaves had gotten up on their beasts. Tofi's common sense for convenience, never knowing this would happen, had set them out of the convenient track for traffic going back and forth along the edge of the camp, and well toward their road. So when men took a notion to go far out of their way to encroach on their stacks of baggage, or to cast desperate, covetous eyes on their beasts, they could be sure it was no innocent encounter: they took their quirts and beat them off time and again. The would-be thieves were not brave, and went to plunder more helpless prey.