C J Cherryh - Gene Wars 1 - Hammerfall

by Hammerfall(lit)

  No track went out from it: Trin's course lay within that trampled ground, on to the next camp, but all the camp was ringed and crossed by that kind of track.

  "Keep with it as best you can," Marak said, and rode into the village camp alone to ask whether any man had gone through.

  "No," they said, and this was the village of Kais Mar. "Someone rode by," a child said, and pointed.

  Marak turned Osan's head and rode back to join Antag and his brothers along the outer edge.

  "There's still the gaps between camps he might use," Antag said. Particularly in this stretch, the camps did not abut up against one another: the villages pitched their tents often in confusion, not in orderly fashion, and one would end up closer and another farther, and such trampled gaps existed. At every such gap there was the chance of losing the track.

  And now there came a stir within the camps, as somewhere far forward the Keran must have started moving, and gotten on their way, and now that movement had spread backward through the line.

  They came to a western encampment, the village of Dal Ternand, and there Marak called out a name: "Mora!" It was the lord of Dal Ternand he wanted, and when the old man came out from the shade of the tent, the last left as the young men packed up: "Mora, you know me. I'm looking for my father."

  "With no good intent," Mora judged. "You're the Ila's man now."

  "I'm the guide for this caravan, the master of this caravan, and it's my job to get it to safety, with all that's in it. Tain killed my mother just now, and ran like a coward. I want him, Mora!"

  "Killed Kaptai?"

  "Killed her with a knife in the back, with no stomach to face me and not a damned care whether this caravan lives or dies. whether all the people in the world live or die. Where is he?"

  "He went the length of the camp. That's what I know."

  "Pass the word. Tain's shed Haga blood, and from behind. They're after him. And I am."

  "The Rhonan are after him," Antag said, "for the Haga's sake. And so are the Dashingar. Spread that word. This is a dead man."

  Marak sent Osan on, along the route Mora of Dal Ternand had pointed out, and so into the next and the next village camp.

  In the next after that, he knew the lord lied, and there was a suspicious dearth of able men packing up the tents: it was Kais Vanduran, where his father had veterans, and where he had his own, men who ought to be here.

  "Where's Duran?" he asked old Munas, the lord of the village. "Where's Kura?" That was a man who had ridden with him, no older than he.

  There was no answer, only a troubled look from Munas.

  "He's killed Kaptai," Marak said in a hard, disciplined voice. "And four Haga. The tribes are after him, and I am, to the death, Munas. This isn't a war against the Ila. This is a war between us. If you hear from Kura, pull him back. Duran, too. I don't want his blood. Only Tain's."

  "They aren't here," Munas said stubbornly. "I haven't seen them."

  "You've let most of your men go with him," Marak said. "The wind's up. What are you going to do when the sand moves? What when a tent needs help? Did my father ask you that?"

  That scored. But Munas had his jaw set and his mind made up.

  "You're in danger," Marak said, and rode out with the Rhonandin, knowing that what he feared had happened: Tain had called up his veterans and declared his war against the Ila, against the caravan, and against his son.

  They kept riding down the side of the lines, in a wind that got no worse, and no better, either. Larger vermin scampered from under the beshti's feet: the smaller, less aware, died there, and vanished in the blowing dust. When they came into the line again they saw some villagers had their baggage loaded and were ready to move, waiting for the village group in front of them.

  "Have you seen men riding through?" Marak asked of them, and when they said no, lingered to wave them past. "If you're ready and your neighbors in front are not, move past! The whole line can't wait on the slowest! Camp as far forward as you can, and spread out from the line of march if you need to, to get to clean sand and keep clear of vermin."

  That might provoke arguments when it came to camping at night, and he knew it; but let the word spread: no waiting, once the line began to move. No villager would pass the tribes, but he saw how delay in these unskilled folk became a contagion, spreading from one to the next.

  They moved on, circled out among the dunes and back again, in heavy, blasting wind that made them keep the aifad up close about their eyes: they found no tracks out there, only the numerous scuttling vermin, so they went back to the villages, and on back, on tracks steadily growing obscure in the blowing dust.

  After two more villages they were moving beside a moving line, going counter to the flow, so movement had spread back along the caravan. To each of the villages Marak posed the same question: have you seen men pass you? He gained an admission from one that they had seen riders coming back, but the village took them for the Ila's men.

  Armed men, and more than one. That was no surprise.

  They passed the villages more rapidly now, the caravan's motion carrying them past as they rode toward the rear: Kais Goros, Kais Tagin, and Undar went by: the westernmost villages were not the hindmost in the line.

  They passed Kais Karas and Kais Madisar, and the wind was, if anything, fiercer, coming in gusts that reddened the air with sand. They had come into a place where a deep wash rolled down to a dry alkali bed and where there was little room on the column's right hand. By then, shadows had begun to gather, the sun dying in murk.

  But on that rock Marak saw the bright scratches in the slope where a rider had gone down, and another where he had climbed up again and onto the far side, and so toward the low stony ridges.

  "No knowing whether it's Tain himself," Antag said, and Marak said to himself that it was true. He would wager if he looked to the other side of the camp he would see other tracks, and that Tain had sent a man out to divert pursuit and himself taken another route.

  "He's gone straight through the camp," he guessed suddenly, and rode through the traveling column, dodging between riding beasts and pack train.

  It was the same story there, tracks on the far side of the line, perhaps another diversion. More, it was the village of Mortan, and two men he asked for by name in this village of the western Lakht were both missing.

  They rode on. Another and another village they searched, and heard nothing, and found nothing. The next village had seen men riding through, and had no idea who they were, except they thought they were bandits.

  Tain might have abandoned diversions, ridden straight back to Kais Tain, wherever it fell in the order of march.

  But in his doubt the voices, hitherto silent in this business, began to echo in his head, Luz's summons, Luz's urging: Marak, Marak, come back. This is too far.

  They passed new graves, walking staffs marking the place where someone of the villages, likely the old, had simply given out during the last rest. Vermin had already dug up the dead, and fought and snarled over the pits, not a good sight. But there was no longer any hint along the trampled side of the tents that a band had gone this way or that. There might by now be ten or so men weaving in and out of the camps to confuse pursuit, men going off across the sand to lay false trails and coming back again.

  Marak! the voices insisted, out of patience with his desertion, and he knew, as surely by now Antag and his men knew, that they had lost Tain's track.

  "He may double back on us," Marak said when they reined to a pause, and as the caravan had begun to move. "I can't ask more than you've done. He may double back tonight, he or some of the men with him. He's gotten away."

  "He deserves his reputation," Antag conceded, leaning on the knee of the leg tucked against his besha's neck, while the wind battered them. "Now our tribe is against him, and he may strike at us."

  "Go back. Spread the word among your allies. Spread it among all the tribes, and into the villages. He'll try to kill the caravan guides-the only ones that know where w
e're going. He'll try to stir up the old abjori, as many as he can find, to take the leadership for himself. Then he'll lead everyone away from the only safety there is. He doesn't know what's coming down on us, and what he does know, he doesn't believe." In his vision the ring of fire went out again and again, and he shivered in what had become a chill wind. "Nothing we've seen yet equals what's coming."

  "You'll go back with us, omi."

  "I want to go on. I need to find Kais Tain. It's my village, as well as his."

  "It's foolish to go on. You'll be traveling in the dark."

  "I'm a villager. I know these people. I can talk to their lords."

  Marak, Marak, Marak, the voices said, but he ignored them.

  Antag asked his brothers what they thought, and they shrugged. Antag said: "We'll stay with you a while. You're taking too much risk, for one of our guides."

  "I know I am. But my wives are up front. They know."

  "We'll still stay with you," Antag said. "We'll be sure you get back. Easy to go back in the column. Hard to catch up with it while it's moving."

  It was the truth Antag told him. The beshti had their limits, too, and almost, he surrendered to the voices, almost, he was willing to go back.

  But not with his father loose, not with harm apt to come on the whole caravan, and him with a chance to prevent it.

  They rode in on village after village, he and Antag and Antag's brothers, asking their question, naming their names and spreading their news. They rode beside the village leaders in each village only long enough to do that, and then reined back moved farther back in the line, quickly lost in dust and dusk.

  Two more of these village lords Marak knew: Kefan of Kais Kefan, and Taga of Kais Men.

  "Killed Kaptai?" Taga asked, in a tone of great indignation. "That was a good woman."

  Taga had always loved Kaptai, had always been a friend of the house, and Kaptai had always welcomed the old man.

  "He's gone madder than I was," Marak said. "Now I'm the sane one, and he's trying to kill the lot of us. Stop him if you see him. At best, persuade the rest not to follow him."

  But in all their wandering back in line they had not yet come to Kais Tain, and they had come a long way back. They rested the beshti beside the column, letting them sit a while as the dark gathered about them. Some village bands, passing them, sent to know who they were, and they told them, and advised them about Tain and the danger to all of them.

  Meanwhile the dust stayed up and the wind kept blowing, a stiff wind at the caravan's back. far better than a facing wind. The sand piled up against the beshti's feet as they stood by the wayside, and vermin prowled about, prompting an occasional stamp and threat.

  In that rest they shared a little of their provisions, that water and that food which every tribesman carried against emergency, and to increase the food and water store of their group.

  It was soon dark, a sand-choked night in which Marak saw it was folly for the villages to keep going: the weak lagged, and if not for the beshti's following, other beshti might well stray off the track and lose themselves in the dunes. If he were at the fore of it, secure in the heart of the tribes, he might not himself realize the struggle back here, the fragile contact between straggling village groups, with village-bred beshti, many of them not the swiftest, not conditioned for long treks, rather beasts of local burden, soft as their local handlers.

  As the Keran and the Haga had not realized it. As Hati had not. He tried to make Norit hear him, through Luz, but that never succeeded. Luz seemed to look through his eyes only seldom, and with difficulty, and if she spoke, it was less loud and less real than the wind rushing past him. The villages dared not stop, and the vermin got in among the beshti, quarreling over the latrine sites and the cook sites, which became a seething mass of small, unwholesome bodies.

  How long they traveled then they had no idea. There were no stars to measure time, no light at all in the heavens. The earth shuddered briefly, and people on the march cried out soft, weary alarm.

  Something mid-sized and furtive slipped up on them, encountered them, and shied away, vermin that feared the beshti. After that several others likewise shied back from the beshti, and lost themselves in the dusty dark.

  Antag and his brothers were brave men, and not stupid ones. They must long since have known what had taken him longer to admit.

  "There's no hope in this," Marak said, tugging Osan to a halt. "He's gotten away from us. The best thing we can do now is go into the line and move up gradually, and tell every camp we meet that he's outlawed. It may take us more than a day to reach our own tents, the way the weather's going."

  "As you will, omi," Antag said, and no more than that. But Antag and his brothers were relieved, Marak was sure. They rode in among the line, and passed the word to the village of Faran as they did, a Lakhtani village out of the south, where Tain would find little sympathy-it was their goods, their caravans that Tain had raided in the war, and Tain's son was little welcome: Antag did the talking. Marak was glad to ride out of their midst, bound forward, but it was only to another Lakhtani village, one he had no more knowledge of.

  Then in their moving forward they came to a village contingent they had not addressed, one that had passed during their rest.

  "What village?" Marak asked, and hearing it was Tarsa, asked after the lord, having no idea who it was.

  The lord of Tarsa turned out to be an old, old man, Agi, wrapped in the wind and the dust and the night, and drowsing as he rode.

  "Omi," Marak said to him, drawing near, and told him the matter of Tain and a rebellion within the caravan, not knowing where Agi might fall on the matter of Tain's war, and the abjori. He was a voice in the dark. So was Agi.

  "We'll keep an eye to it," Agi said as they rode.

  "Have you heard where Kais Tain might be?" Antag asked. They had asked that of every village.

  "I've no idea. Forward or back of us, it's all the same to me. This is a fool's errand, this moving to another tower. Stupidity. You're Marak, are you? Tain's son? Tain Trin Tain?"

  "The same."

  "Fool. Fool to bring us away from Oburan."

  "Oburan's dead," Marak said doggedly. "There's no other place, no other destination for caravans after this. I've been to the tower. I know it's there. I know what's there."

  "You're the prophet."

  "I'm the Ila's man. With Hati an'i Keran." He added, fully cognizant that there might be feuds: "With a woman named Norit."

  He could make out only that the elder turned his head to stare at him. The veils, the sand, the night, made their emotions invisible to each other. It was impossible to placate this man with a gesture. There was only this one chance to talk to him; and he knew Norit had not been a widow: she was a married woman, and by the law, yes, they were adulterers.

  "Norit din Karda is dead. Her mother is dead. Her father is dead. Her aunts are all dead. And she's dead."

  "To the life she had in Tarsa, yes. She is."

  The old man made no reply.

  "Is Lelie dead?"

  Still there was no reply.

  "She named that name to us," Marak said. "Is it a sister? A mother? A daughter?"

  The old man was still a while answering. But Marak waited.

  "The girl's with her father," the old man said. "As she should be."

  "A daughter, then."

  "Yes."

  "Does the father treat her well?" He as much as any man knew the situation of an unwanted child, and the fate of one dragged into the affairs of state and the angers of leaders.

  "She's alive," Agi said flatly. That was all.

  Not a good situation, then. And Marak made a quick decision, a desperate and dangerous decision, since if there was one person on whom thousands of lives relied, it was Norit, through whom Luz spoke most easily; and if there was one person whose sanity was in greatest danger, it was Norit. "If the father isn't happy, then give her to me, omi. I'll relieve the father of an obligation and take good care of her.
"

  The old man considered the proposition.

  "This is a great lord," Antag said across the wind-battered gap. "What he says he'll do, he'll do, omi."

  The old lord reined aside to one of his own men and spoke.

  Then that man, no skilled rider, managed to turn aside in the storm and the dark and the stubborn persistence of the beshti in evading the wind, and to go back into the caravan of Tarsa.

  No one spoke. The effort to converse was too great, and Agi had no great desire to speak to them, that was clear. Marak waited, thinking how he had come out into the caravan to take a life close to him and now bid to save one he had never met.

  Memnanan's messenger had never gotten here. Why that was he still had no idea, and saw no profit in asking: it was the desert at fault, the abjori, his father, or Agi himself, but it was nothing he could mend now, under present circumstances. In some measure he was a fool even to trouble what was settled, a fool to think of taking a young child back the route he had come. It was a dangerous enough ride for him and the Rhonandin, and he had no idea of Norit's frame of mind. One might: Marak, Marak, his voices raged at him. But he paid no attention. He shut his eyes. He rode without attention to anyone. He waited.