Destroyer

by C. J. Cherryh

  “The boys joined them here,” Tano said, but even the paidhi had figured that out—knowing the boy in question, if not how to read a trail.

  “And got their mecheiti back,” Jago said.

  Their own mecheiti, milling about and getting the scent from the ground, had obliterated any finer tracks. Banichi started them moving again, and by now the whole herd had the scent clear, and moved with unanimity . . . willing to run, willing to spend energy they had not used on their way toward Atageini land.

  A pop of Banichi’s quirt and the leader lurched into a flat-out run, a pace the Atageini would not reasonably have adopted on their way. They were using up their own mecheiti’s strength, and even considering the beasts were willing now, that would fade quickly.

  We have a slim chance of finding them before dark, Bren reasoned to himself, yielding to the rock and snap of the gait, less sore now: numbness had cut in, and nothing mattered at the moment but the hope of seeing five mecheiti somewhere in the distant rolls of the pastureland.

  The sun sank, and sank toward the horizon. The Atageini and the youngsters would almost certainly stop for the night. They entered dusk, and the trail grew dim, but the scent would not.

  “Nadiin.”Algini rode to the fore and pointed toward the hill. Bren saw nothing. He hoped it was the youngsters and their escort, but their mecheiti gave no sign of having spotted their quarry.

  “Converging with their trail,” Algini said ominously.

  “What?” Bren was constrained to ask.

  “Another track, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “Game, maybe, but one fears not.”

  Something had moved along that hill and veered toward the party they were tracking. Either it was an older game track, that the youngsters’ party had crossed, or something was following them . . . and no four-legged predator in its right senses would stalk several mecheiti.

  Only other mecheiti would come in like that. And none that they knew would be here just running loose around the landscape.

  Not good, Bren thought, and said nothing. His bodyguard knew the score better than he did. Banichi used the quirt and took them up the hillside, veered over onto the intersecting trail and there reined to a slower pace and to a stop, letting the herd leader get that scent clear before it joined the other trail.

  Tusked head came up, nostrils flared, head swinging to that new trail like a needle to the magnetic pole.

  And they started to move again, fast, with several pops of the quirt.

  We could just as well run into ambush at this pace, Bren thought, but he no longer led this expedition: Banichi did, and the paidhi dropped way, way back in the hierarchy of decision-making. Jago had moved up beside Banichi, in front of him, pressing her mount to defy the ordinary order of proceeding, and Tano and Algini moved up on either side to keep the paidhi in their close company, leaving Banichi and Jago free to make more aggressive decisions.

  Up and over the ridge, Tano riding athwart Bren’s path to prevent his mecheita following Banichi’s too closely at this point . . . they pressed along the trail that now was merged with the youngsters, or overlay that track, moving as hard as they could go, across a brook and up the other bank. The incoming riders had taken no pains to disguise their track.

  Dark was falling fast now. And Banichi reined in just short of the next rise of the land, slid down and handed the herd-leader’s rein across to Jago, but the creature pulled at the restraint, wanting to be let loose, eyes rolling, nostrils flared, and the rest of the herd trembled with eagerness, not that even the unridden matriarch would go past the leader. Banichi said something to Jago too low for Bren’s ears, passed her his mecheita’s rein and suddenly moved, slipping off along the top of the ridge with eye-tricking speed. He didn’t crest the hill—he melted over it, and was gone. And Jago had clambered down and up to the other saddle, taking the herd leader for herself, her own left riderless with the rein looped up for safety.

  Bren sat still and kept the rein wrapped desperately around his fist, giving up no slack. He felt a skin-twitch shake the mecheita’s shoulder under his foot, as it gave a soft, explosive snort of sheer lust for combat.

  He dared ask nothing. He guessed too much already. The herd leader was trying to break Jago’s control, and she hauled back with all her strength, pulling its head away from the direction it wanted to go, forcing it in a circle. It stopped, stood rock-steady.

  Not a sound, except the small movements and breathing of the mecheiti under them and around them, the whole herd held with Jago’s grip on the leader.

  A gunshot, a single, horrendous pop and echo.

  “Head down, Bren-ji!” Jago drove the leader forward and the whole herd lunged after her, up over the hill, down the other side in the dusk.

  Bren ducked as low to the saddle as possible, tried to see where he was going. More shots echoed off the hills. Jago and two unsaddled mecheiti ran in the lead, one on each side of her, and suddenly they veered, plunged into a ravine. Mecheiti stood in the dusk ahead of them, whose mecheiti or how situated he had no time to reckon. The mecheita he was on gave a squalling challenge and charged through prickly brush, raking his leg, catching his jacket, breaking off bits against his trousers on its way to murder. They hit, another mecheita ripped a head-butt at his, and he plied the quirt desperately, getting it away. Two surges of the body under him and they were in the clear again, charging uphill after mecheiti in retreat.

  He reined aside, to bring the beast slightly across the hill face without pulling it over. The heart of the fight was no place for him, whatever was going on. He had no idea whether they had just scattered the escort’s mecheiti and driven off animals they needed. But his mecheita paid no attention, just ran blindly, crashed through other brush and kept going, defying his pull on the rein.

  Someone rode near him, headed his mecheita off from pursuit. Tano. Again. Behind him, a volley of gunfire exploded in the dark.

  “Hold here, Bren-ji,” Tano said. “Hold!”

  He had no breath to object that he was trying to do just that. He hauled, the mecheita hauled back and he thought the rein might snap or the cantankerous creature, lunging ahead crosswise of the slope, would break both their necks before he could get it to stop at the bottom. He risked one hand to reach back and lay in hard with the quirt on the rump, which caused the rump end to shy off, and the whole beast finally to turn in the direction he wanted.

  But now the rest of the herd was coming back toward them, Jago in the saddle, and the whole lot, riderless and ridden, shouldered past him and Tano. Their two mecheiti swung about, fell into the herd, and they charged back down the draw, toward the origin of the gunfire.

  A whistle, a very welcome whistle, came out of the brushy dark, and Bren drew a whole breath. Banichi was all right.

  Their mecheiti meanwhile settled to a determined walk, and broke brush as they went. “Keep down,” Tano said, reining back near him.

  Then Banichi’s voice, out in the dark: “We are the paidhi-aiji’s guard. Identify yourselves.”

  “Banichi?” asked a very shaky young voice. “Where are you?”

  A gunshot. A whisper of brush. And from Banichi, distant, “Stay where you are.”

  A long, long wait, then. Jago reined in and all the mecheiti slowed to a stop, waiting, with occasionally a snort at the information wafted on the air.

  “They are moving!” The same high young voice.

  “Damn,” Jago hissed. “Tano!”

  Tano and Algini both leapt off, instantly vanishing into the brush and the dark, in silence.

  “Bren-ji,” Jago said. “If things go wrong, use the quirt and use it so hard it can’t think.”

  Ride away, she meant. Get back to the gate. Get to Taiben. Go anywhere else. A young gentleman calling out instructions to his bodyguard had made himself a target and now his protectors had no choice but to go after his attackers.

  Gunshot, flash in the dark. A brief scuffle somewhere, followed by a thump.

  “Keep your head down.
” Banichi’s voice came softly, ever so welcome, out in the distance. Meanwhile, Bren thought, he and Jago sat on mecheiti, silhouettes against the dark, he because he was helpless afoot, endangered by the mecheiti themselves, and Jago because if the herd leader slipped control they would all be afoot and trapped out here. That made them targets, no question, and all he could do was press as flat to his own knees as he could get, trying not to be shot by some ateva who could see far, far better than he could in this murk.

  Gunfire. Gunfire responded, and something skidded on gravel.

  “I shot him.” A quavering young voice piped up in the darkness the other side of the brush. “I think I shot him, Banichi.”

  “You may well have, young aiji. Are you injured?”

  Banichi had used the indefinite-number in that address, baji-naji, the whole future of the planet on a knife’s edge. Bren held his breath, lifted his head, trying to hear, and hearing nothing but his mecheita’s movements and the creak of the saddle.

  “I am not. But they killed our escort.” That same young voice, a young gentleman who, at least was still alive. And so was Banichi. But they had heard nothing from Tano and Algini.

  Then a different whistle from out of the dark.

  “Come ahead,” Banichi said, and suddenly Jago shot ahead, and Bren’s mecheita went with her and all the rest, down a gravelly draw, across a little brook, up another bank. A breeze caught them there, a chill little breeze, bringing a shiver.

  “There were three,” Tano said quietly out of the dark, “that we have accounted for. One may have escaped afoot. Keep low.”

  Bad position. One Guildsman unseen represented a major problem.

  “Bren-ji,” Jago said, “get down.”

  “Yes,” he said, moved his leg from across the mecheita’s shoulder, secured the rein, gripped the saddle and slid down, wary of the creature’s tusks, expecting its head would swing toward him, and it did. He was ready for it. He popped it gently on the nose with the quirt and it swung that massive head back up, veered off indignantly and stood, as fixed by its leader’s staying as if it had been tethered there.

  Shadows, meanwhile, moved on the slope, softly disturbing the gravel of a little eroded outcrop.

  “Nadiin,” he heard a young female voice say: Antaro. “Nadiin, one regrets, the two Atageini are dead, down there.”

  More movement. “Dead, indeed,” Algini said from their vicinity.

  “The mecheiti ran away,” Cajeiri’s voice said.

  “As they would, young sir.”

  “Did nand’ Bren send you?”

  “Nand’ Bren is with us, young sir, and by no means pleased with your actions, no more than your great-grandmother.”

  “We have to go on, Banichi!”

  “How do you propose to ride, young sir, with no tack?”

  “We have our tack, nadi.” That, from Jegari. “We had unsaddled for the night.”

  “We told them we should not stop.” From Cajeiri.

  The boy happened to be right. Even the paidhi knew that. They could well have kept going. They should have kept going to the border, given the urgency of the message, and without the escort’s adult advice, the youngsters, schooled in a more desperate experience, would have.

  “The tack and the supplies are right here.” Antaro’s young voice. A slide on gravel. “We were down here, nadi.”

  Atevi could see clearly in this darkness. It was all shadows to human eyes.

  But suddenly: “Down!” Tano yelled.

  Bren dropped to his haunches, behind the thin cover of the brush, and reached to his pocket, seeking his gun.

  “Keep low!” Banichi’s voice.

  Someone must be moving nearby, sounds too faint for human ears. Bren sat holding his pistol, virtually blind, knowing his vision posed a hazard to his own people, and declined even to have his finger on the trigger until he could confirm a target. Somewhere out there, Guild were stalking each other. Some Kadigidi Assassin had let his mecheita go after its fellows, staying to carry out his mission, and the best the paidhi could do was stay very, very quiet, as wary of keen atevi hearing as of atevi nightsight.

  Small movements within his hearing. He could not tell the distance. His heart was in his throat. And for a long, long time, there was no sound at all.

  Scrape of brush from down the ravine.

  More furtive movements, barely discernible. Their mecheiti shifted about. Jago had never gotten down, as he recalled. He feared she remained dangerously exposed. One of the most classic moves was to get the one rider holding the leader, encouraging the herd to bolt. But Jago was a good rider. She might be over on the mecheita’s shoulder, shielded between two beasts.

  Brush broke. Splash in the little brook, crack of a quirt, and all of a sudden the whole herd moved, crashed past Bren on two sides, rushed past like a living wall, down the stream-course, up the slope, and all he could do was duck. Gunfire broke out. Two shots. Then silence.

  Bren sat still, blind in the dark, sure that his was the only piece of brush on the slope that had not been crushed flat. They might have taken him for a rock, dodged around him. They had no compunction at all about running over a man.

  A calf muscle began to twitch uncomfortably. A thigh muscle followed. It became a shiver. He settled his finger onto the trigger of his gun. It was all he had, if any enemy circled back trying to get to the young people. He thought that Jago had ridden that charge, deliberately sent the whole herd down the throat of the ravine and up the slope, likely in pursuit of someone, or to flush a man out.

  Not a sound from the young people, not a question from Cajeiri, not a twitch.

  Then a rustle of someone moving along the bank. “Nandi.”

  Tano.

  “Tano-ji?”

  “We have gotten one of them, nandi, who may well be the last.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “No injury, nandi. Put the weapons down, nadiin.” This, to the children tucked down in the dark. “Come down, but keep low.”

  A pale glimmer. The two Taibeni wore dark clothing. Cajeiri had come out on this venture in light trousers, his beige human-style jacket that was the warmest thing he had—and an absolute liability in the dark.

  “Nadiin.” From Algini, whose approach Bren had not heard, a realization that set his heart pounding. “Gather the tack and supplies.”

  Mecheiti were coming back down, brush crackling under that shadow-flood of bodies. Bren judged it safe to stand up, and did, on legs strained from the unnatural position and just a little inclined to shiver, whether from the cold of the earth or the reckoning of their situation. He put the safety back on his pistol and slipped it back into his pocket as Cajeiri and Jegari came skidding down the gravelly slope together to join Antaro.

  Then:

  “Gunfire,” Jago said from somewhere above him.

  Bren could hear nothing at all. It must be distant.

  “Tirnamardi?” he asked, a leaden chill settling about his heart.

  “Yes,” Jago said. “Whether at the gate or further east, I cannot tell.”

  “Saddle our spares,” Banichi said. “We have no time to sit here.”

  General movement. It took perhaps a quarter-hour more to pick out three mecheiti from the herd and saddle them.

  “Antaro-nadi,” Banichi said.

  “Nadi.” Antaro’s young voice, in the dark.

  “Have you that gun, young woman?”

  “Yes, nadi, I have one, and nand’ Cajeiri has the other. And I have the com unit.”

  “Put them all away. They betray your position. Rely on your guard. Ride at all times to the paidhi’s left, never otherwise. He knows where to ride relative to our weapons. Do not make a mistake in that regard, any of you. Someone could die for it.”

  “I shall try, Banichi-nadi.” From Cajeiri, with a certain dignity.

  “Never mind trying,” Banichi said sternly. “Do, young sir. Do. Get up. Do you need help getting up?”

  “I shall do it my
self,” Cajeiri said. “I have done it.”

  Bren worked his own way close to the herd, located Jago’s shadow against the sky and located a mecheita with an empty saddle. He thought it was his, and by the scrollwork on the saddle, it seemed to be. He got it to extend a leg and bow down, and he heaved himself, stiff and sore, belly down across the saddle, then straightened around, got his left foot in position at the curve of the neck and unsecured the guiding rein. Everyone else was up, by then, and without another word, they started moving, climbing the other slope, passing through the greatest likelihood of further ambush. Bren’s heart beat like a hammer while they passed that zone.

  “Are we going to Taiben?” Cajeiri asked.

  “Hush!” Jago’s voice, sharply, to a boy, who, if he was not shot in the next hour, might be aiji.

  And who, having spent so much time away from geographic referents, away from any subtle sense of the land, or the clues of the heavens, had trouble telling what direction they were riding. Cajeiri was lost. Terrible things had happened to so much bright enthusiasm. The maneuver the boys had believed would be a grand adventure and a great success had turned very dark indeed, and there was no mending it, only staying alive.

  But after they had passed that region, after Banichi and Jago had exchanged a few quiet words, Bren found Cajeiri and the Taibeni riding next to him.

  “Young gentleman?”

  “Nand’ Bren?”

  “We are riding toward Taiben. The Kadigidi have attacked your great-uncle’s house, and those of us who might help defend it are out here.”

  “Finding help!”

  “Finding help, yes. But you should know it is well possible, young gentleman, that your encounter was not chance. Your enemies found you by means of your great-uncle’s unsecured com system. Messages flew back and forth, unsecured, trying to prevent your going out here. It was not well done, young gentleman.”

  “And they might have ambushed Antaro and the escort all the same, nandi!”

  Oh, the heir was not as beaten down as one might expect. He was his father’s son. And his mother’s. And that burgeoning arrogance, if unchecked, could get others killed.