C J Cherryh - Gene Wars 1 - Hammerfall

by Hammerfall(lit)

  The priests changed off with other priests from time to time. He waked at such moments, and blinked at the priests, and wondered at the vision. Intermittently, too, the caravan suffered from the wind, which gusted, and blew red ropes of sand across his vision. The priests staggered, and sometimes jolted the litter. Lelie waked at one such jolt, frightened by the wind, hungry and out of sorts.

  "Hush," he said to her tear-stained face, and she knew his voice, and broke into a loud wail, in pain and crying for her mother. But Luz had her mother, and he could bring her to Norit, but he could not get Norit back. he failed in that, continually, and tried to comfort her.

  But Lelie cried and snuffled against him, weak and miserable.

  "Call Norit," he said to the priest at his feet, wincing as Lelie hit his wound. But before the priest could decide to obey him, Lelie fell abruptly asleep, perhaps Luz's work. Then he slid down into sleep, too, and that was the end of that.

  When he next waked it was at the shift between bearers, and Lelie was still asleep, her spritelike face shaded by the aifad. The sun warming them in a clear sky.

  It was afternoon, he decided. He tried to reckon where they were, and tried to fit an east direction into the angle of the distant ridge and the flat expanse of pitted sand. He could lift his head, he discovered. He moved a leg and a shoulder grown unbearably stiff with lying compressed between the litter poles, and found the pain of his side and his back was less, the swelling diminished.

  The war of the makers for his life and health seemed won. And where were they? And how many days had it been? He began to know fear, and to care where he was. If it was not toward Pori, he thought, then he had to do something. He had to know.

  "Where are we going?" he asked the man at his head, but, tilting his head, he saw only a back, and had no answer. Riders on beshti moved at the limits of his vision. That was as it should be.

  He looked down past his feet at the priest carrying the litter, a strong man, a patient man. "I may be able to get up," he said, under Lelie's peacefully sleeping weight. "To ride, if not to walk. Stop."

  The priest stopped, and the pair carrying him drew aside from those riders immediately to the rear. They set the litter down. They were at the heart of the column, and beshti had to move around them, a tall shadow of legs and undersides as Marak shifted Lelie aside and tried to lift himself.

  He could not quite sit up straightway. He gathered his breath and rolled onto a knee and both knees and his hands on the dusty sand, encumbered by the litter poles. Slowly then, in blood-stiffened clothing, he attempted to disengage his shirttail from under Lelie on the litter and get up. The priests' belated help impeded as much as assisted him, and he shook off the offered arm, rested hands on his knee, shoved himself to his feet.

  As he succeeded and dragged his shirttail free, Lelie waked, and sat up, too, rubbing her eyes with a bloody, grimy fist. He stood swaying on his feet in the passage of beshti on either hand-looked down at his little prize in numb curiosity, wondering what he was to do with her, and where Hati was.

  Marak, his voices said, beginning their normal litany. And the pitching feeling came, reliable as sunrise and destructive of balance. East, east, east.

  He saw Lelie catch her balance, too, and sit afterward wide-eyed, her small mouth open in dazed startlement.

  "It's all right," he told her: madness seemed to have grown in the child like a seed. "Your mama's here. You're all right."

  She cried. It was beyond him to pick her up. She reached up hands to be taken. It was the other priest who picked up the baby.

  "She's Norit's," Marak said. "My wife's. Norit. Let the baby ride with her." He had no idea where anyone was, but he wanted not to be left afoot. "Where's my wife?"

  They both, the one holding Lelie, and the other, looked at him as if they had seen the dead rise.

  And perhaps, he thought, staggering into a first step, that was very nearly the case. He knew where east was. He knew that.

  Then, arriving from behind, a rider shadowed them, and that was Hati, who slid down in a welter of windblown veils.

  "What are you doing?" she cried.

  "These men have blisters," he said, meaning the priests: he had seen their hands. But he saw her face all exhausted and worried, too, and added, "I'm all right, wife. Trust my judgment. I'm all right."

  Hati did not embrace him, not in front of strangers and priests, but she came and put an arm about him, guiding him along with the walkers, leading her besha with the other hand. Bosginde, one of the freedmen, had ridden near, too. "Get Osan," Hati ordered him, looking up. "My husband will ride now."

  Bosginde left in haste, applying the quirt, and still the riders streamed past.

  "Someone may have to put me up," he admitted to Hati, for her alone, and again, having become sane again, saw something was clearly different about the company in which they rode. Around them were more riders, dark-clothed riders. Tribesmen. He had not been dreaming that.

  And he stumbled, trying to walk.

  "I don't think I can hold on," he said.

  "Someone will help you," she said. Her voice was tense. Her hand on his arm was gentle and anxious. She had changed her clothes for the dark-striped robes of her own tribe, and her arms flashed with gold and honor. "I thought you might die in spite of the makers."

  "Or to spite them." It was a bad joke. He saw that in Hati's worried face. And among the accumulated confusion in the world he was unsure how much time had passed. "The makers won't let me die. Last night, it seemed a disadvantage. But I'm improving fast. I'll ride. Where are we?"

  "Two days from where you found us."

  "Toward Pori."

  "Toward Pori," she confirmed, and relieved his anxiety on that score, at least.

  "The tribes are here." It was assuredly the Ila's caravan. Bosginde was here. He saw beasts he knew. His memory could not account for her gold and her change of robes. He himself stood in changed clothing, a loose shirt, trousers not tucked into the boots. they tagged loose about his ankles, and blew in the wind. "The Keran have joined the camp?"

  "When you were shot. The Haga came in. They were angry because the Ila's men couldn't protect the camp. Then Aigyan heard the Haga were here, so he came, in the storm and all, and he and Menditak talked. Then they got to arguing with the Ila's captain, and they got hot, but I said they were all fools."

  He could imagine the scene. Hati would say that. And Memnanan, who was not a fool, and Aigyan and Menditak, had all been in one council, while Hati had her say.

  "Menditak gave you a gift," Hati said, and let him go to pull rolled cloth down from her saddle ties. She shook it out, a coat of Haga colors, and held it out for him, while beshti passed them and passersby, the Ila's servants, gazed at this private proceedings. He put it on, a heavy, warm coat, and was troubled about what it said, a declaration of tribal colors; but before he could half think the thought, Hati flung an aifad about his neck, a fine one, of Keran colors. "Aigyan's gift," she said.

  They marked him with both sets of colors. It was without precedent that the tribes should mix camp with each other, let alone with the Ila's men, the enemy, the lifelong enemy. But so was this journey without precedent. So was the Ila's presence among the tribes unprecedented.

  He fell to Tain's bullet, and there was power, to be had, and both the Haga and the Keran moved in on it, possessed it, guarded it from mishap, supplied him with what he needed. Could he fault them for seeing to their own? Memnanan could only be grateful to have added their force around him, with Tain threatening the caravan, but he saw abundant reason Memnanan might not be easy with the situation, too, and had an idea now why Memnanan might have come to stand over his healing carcass. to estimate the chances of his recovery, and whether he might take that power back again, and whether he could.

  He had to talk to Memnanan at the earliest opportunity-once his head stopped reeling.

  "So how long will this truce among the tribes last?" he asked.

  "They're staying,
" Hati told him. "Aigyan and Menditak have sworn water peace forever. They've merged the camps." Hati waved a gesture forward. "Aigyan's up there, leading. He insists on that." And back. "Menditak is just behind the Ila's company, next behind her men, running the camp. The servants are behind him. So are the priests, and they don't get past the tribes unless Menditak says they do."

  A lasting peace. Access to each other's wells, fiercely defended for generations. The Ila all but imprisoned in the camp and effectively deprived of her priests. He was gone one day and two, and the rules of march all changed.

  "What did the Ila say about it? What did Memnanan say?"

  "The captain took the offer for the Ila's sake. What was he going to do? I told him the Ila shouldn't give the tribes any orders, that they're too valuable to offend, if you were down, and I warned the captain they won't talk to her, so not to expect it. But they have talked to the captain, all the same, and he's talked to his men, and we're guarded on every side. They don't intend to see any more shots fired into this camp. They want you and me and Norit in tribal colors. Less of a target."

  "A damned good idea," he said. The tribal presence more than thickened the head of the column and made sniping into it more difficult. The union of Haga and Keran carried an unprecedented force of tribal will, as well. If the tribes were upset about what Tain had done, and if the Haga and the Keran now ruled the Ila's camp, then the Ila's camp became a tribal camp-if Tain violated that, there was a price on his head, on the part of every tribesman.

  Tribal unity-and around the Ila.

  And around him, and Hati, and Norit. Norit, who added in the villages, and, he saw, also in dark-striped cloth.

  "It's not been easy," he said to Hati, grateful for her levelheadedness.

  "No," Hati said. "It's been hell. Don't leave me like that. Don't ever leave me like that."

  "I won't," he said. "I was crazy. I was crazy for a few days, and you weren't. I wouldn't even listen to Luz. But I'm sane now. And won't ever be crazy again. I promise you that."

  "I hold you to it." They were within the witness of all Tofi's workers, packing the baggage. Her hand stayed steady, holding his arm, while she had the rein of her besha with the other, but her voice was a soft touch, a gentle forgiveness. "Let Tain ride up and down out there where the vermin are. Let him take his chances being eaten alive. We all need you. I need you. And the Ila won't get you either."

  "No," he agreed. He saw one of Tofi's slaves rode up with Osan in tow, saddled and ready for him. Bosginde and Mogar rode next behind that man, and got down to help him up to the mounting loops and into Osan's saddle, holding Osan from his usual step forward.

  That meant Osan swayed, taking his weight, and his head did, and he forgot all about tribesmen and dark riders and vermin mobs.

  He hit the saddle, and the feeling passed. He took the rein when they passed it to him, and being on Osan's back was good, despite the giddiness of the perch. It was far better than lying under Lelie's weight and better than the occasional jolts of the priests' handling. He saw that the priests had taken up the litter, and walked near them, still carrying Lelie.

  "Hand the baby up," he said.

  "You'll drop her," Hati said, and it was true: his side was sore, and that arm was not dependable. In the end Hati mounted up and took the baby up to her own saddle. Then she excused herself and rode up the line to Norit, where she gave Lelie to her own mother.

  Marak let Osan travel up through the moving line and met Hati halfway on her way back. There were tribesmen on either hand, as they had drifted back. The colors were Haga.

  He rode forward with Hati, and also overtook Norit, who failed to notice his presence. She rode with Lelie half in her arms, half-sitting on the padded saddlebow, and talked to her daughter.

  It was, for that moment, and rare that he was sure of it, only Norit in that Haga-robed body. Luz was silent, in his mind, in his ears and, he hoped, in Norit's.

  "Luz," he said under his breath, reeling with the strangeness of the day, but rewarded by what he saw, Norit happy, and for a moment sane. "Luz, do you see what's going on? I'm up and riding. We're on the road. The tribes have come around us to protect this camp. There's no danger at the moment. You can let Norit alone. Give her a day. A day to herself."

  He heard nothing by way of answer. But that silence was what he wanted.

  Then Tofi overtook them.

  "You're alive," Tofi crowed. "And riding! It's a miracle of the god!"

  "It's the damned tower's doing," Marak said. "If I thought it was the god, I'd complain to the priests and the Ila. It hurt like hell."

  Tofi thought that was funny at first, and having laughed, looked as if he had swallowed something questionable, and it was too late to stop swallowing.

  "I'm glad you're all right, omi. All of us are glad."

  "So am I," Marak said. He heard that omi. He saw the decent respect give way to outright fear, which he had no wish to have in those close to him.

  His father had wanted fear like that among his subordinates. fear, and worship. Tain had trusted no one who failed to be awed by him, but Tain's son trusted no one who did fear him. that was his rule. He had never wanted to be worshiped, or to become the focus of dim-visioned men who wanted to be governed by fear. He had been an outright fool to go after his father alone, knowing the quality of the men who surrounded Tain and fed him with their worship, men in whose eyes Kaptai's murder had to be justified, because everything Tain did had to be justified. He had been a fool to go by his father's rules, in his father's territory. He knew that now. He was lucky to have fallen in with the Rhonandin instead of his father's men, because it never would have been a fair fight. "I shouldn't have gone after him," he said to Tofi. "But I lived through it. Tain got away, and good riddance. It was a damned waste. His whole life is a damned waste. So are the men with him."

  "It's not good for you to kill your father," Tofi ventured to say to him. "It's not good for you, omi, no matter what your father's done. You can't. Don't go back there again."

  He could have taken offense at Tofi's meddling in his private business. But Tofi's was the courage and truth and constancy to a course that he saw Tain's teaching had never given him: Kaptai had, if anyone. "I don't plan to try again," he said to Tofi. "Be glad we're not farther back in the line. It's hell back there. Good luck if we don't lose half the caravan, if they don't just walk off the trail on a cloudy night. And there's nothing we can do about it if it happens. That's the hell of it." He looked out to the edges of the column, past the shield the Haga tribesmen posed, riding on the edges of the column. Their way lay among low dunes, over hard ground, rises too shallow at their highest to hide a rider.

  That was good. So was the Haga's added protection for the Ila's camp. He raked his memory, trying to remember how long this area lasted, or where they were on their journey. He had no idea how long he had lain on the litter.

  "It's only been two days I've been out," he said.

  "It's been two days you were gone, before that, omi," Tofi said.

  His brain had been rattled. Time had slipped away from him. Location-reckoning mingled with the trip back and forward in the line, and with the fever. For a moment of panic, he had trouble recalling even which trip this was, and which trail of the two possible routes they were following. That eye-blink lapse scared him.

  But he remembered: he was clearheaded on the facts. It was the northern route. They were approaching an area of alkali pans, where concealment was much more difficult. The open land was a protection. for a time, and if the weather held. If the water did. The pans might hold some water. He hoped so. They had not tried here, on their way to Oburan.

  Marak, the voices said, if only to let him know they were there. And dizziness assailed him with, East, east, east, so that he gripped the saddlebow.

  "Would you truly have killed your father?" Tofi asked him, out of nothing. They were all in a group, he and Hati, Norit, and Tofi, with Patya not far distant. His family. His people. Wou
ld you have killed your father? Tofi asked him, and he gazed at the horizon, trying to steady himself in that answer and Tofi's assault on his purpose.

  "Yes," he said, trying to mean it, trying to insist everything he had done had been a good idea.

  But he suddenly discovered the limit of his detestation of his father, and perhaps the limit of his love of his mother, now that he had wives, now that he had others leaning on him. Now he found he agreed with Tofi. and hoped that somehow even with blood between him and his father, that the matter of his mother's death would dwindle to a lifelong feud, with never any further action.

  Shoot Tain if he had to. yes, that he still thought he would, and after all his father had done. He thought he would do it without regret. But he knew what Tofi was saying to him, a son who lately had buried his father. He had no wish to be a parricide, at any price, mother or father, and his parents' quarrel with each other had never been his. He had no idea the roots of it, only the bitter fruit.