Skeen's Return

by Clayton, Jo;

  ‘No doubt,” Lipitero said. “But they’ve lived all their lives with the Hunger waiting for them. That must count for something. It’s not so hard to believe, is it? Ykx penned the beast. Isn’t it reasonable that an Ykx can release it?”

  Skeen wriggled along the cart bottom until her head caught on the low side; she stared into the sky watching the dark shapes form and dissolve as they flew in and out of open patches. Her smile was unpleasantly like a smirk. “First catch your hare.”

  Timka snorted. “If you’re going to be like that, Pass-Through, I’m sure we both prefer your silence.” She glanced at the Min, then at Lipitero. “I could go up and challenge them?”

  “You could. No. They’ll be more apt to listen if I go.”

  Skeen stirred. “Keep your batteries at full charge, you’re going to need them. No thermals to ease the drain, not on a day like this.”

  Lipitero fidgeted with the ties to her robe, staring past the horses at the mountains hazily visible ahead of them. Finally she nodded, two short sharp jerks of her head. She got carefully to her feet, took off the robe of concealment and let it fall. She smiled. “I have missed soaring,” she said and shot Skeen a glance full of mischief, “Lovely to have a splendidly ethical excuse to do what one wants.” She chuckled at the grimace Skeen contrived, then powered the lift field and went soaring up.

  The fliers retreated, consternation and agitation visible in every feather.

  Lipitero didn’t attempt to pursue them, simply rose until the glow globe about her touched cloud. “Min of these Mountains,” she cried, and her voice was a giant’s shout that boomed across the Plain.

  Timka gaped. Skeen sighed. “More waste of energy. She’s done something to the shunt field that makes it amplify her voice.” She moved uneasily, scanned the pastures about them and saw far too many Pallah in them for her comfort. “We stick out like warts here.”

  “Hush, I want to hear this.”

  “How can you miss it?”

  “See me,” the great voice continued, “I am Ykx. Hear me. You have attacked me and died for it, yet I have been merciful. I am merciful still; my honor commands me to give warning. If I am attacked again by one or one thousand, I will not hold my hand. Behold, I am Ykx. Believe me and beware. If I am attacked again by one or one thousand, I cry doom on the Min of the Mountains. If I am attacked again, I will loose the Ever-Hunger. I swear it by Gather and by Blood. I will loose the Hunger on you and you will know terror all your days and horror all your nights. I am Ykx. Hear me.” She spread her flight skins; the cold gray light of the sun, the warm gold light of the lift field shone on her shimmering silver-gray fur. For one last breath, she hung there under the clouds, then she dropped swiftly into the cart.

  As soon as she was down, Timka slapped the reins on the team’s haunches and gave them a needle that sent them into a long lope which made things highly uncomfortable for everyone in the cart.

  Sometime later when the team had settled back to a steady walk and talking was possible, Lipitero smiled with satisfaction. “Am I right, Ti? Two of them have left us. At least I got that much reaction from them. Do you think it means anything?”

  Timka twisted round. “Can you loose the Hunger from here?”

  “Why?”

  “If you can’t, you’ve just issued a call for Telka and the Holavish to take you out before you do get close enough.”

  “Ungh. I didn’t think of that. Yes, Ti, I can loose it from here. Matter of fact, given proper atmospherics, the Sydo Ykx could loose it from Sydo Gather. They couldn’t corral it again from there. That’s why they sent the others. Mmmh, I can prod the Hunger a bit without actually loosing it. They’ll feel it stirring. That help?

  “It might keep them off our necks for a while longer, might even start some arguments. Will it stop them? No. Because it’s not just Telka, though she’s one of the drivers. The Holavish want the old days back, the old ways. The weaker converts might hold back, but the true believers don’t care how much destruction they cause. Death or glory, death and glory, it’s the same thing. I don’t understand that. I don’t want to understand that.”

  Skeen stirred, stretched. “It happens,” she said drowsily. “You Min’ve got no monopoly on airheads.”

  “That’s a very helpful comment, Skeen. Got any more of them?”

  “My, we’re snappish today.”

  Timka clamped her teeth on her lip, holding back the words crowding her tongue. She focused on the bobbing heads of the horses and settled for interior monologue. So you’re the only one allowed unreasonable irritation; so you’re the only one allowed to scratch at whoever’s nearest you; so you’re the only one who can get edgy and show it. The litany went on and on until she’d worked through her anger and was merely tired and disheartened.

  Around an hour after Lipitero’s speech, a small swarm of Min came winging from the west. They were agitated and angry, fear hanging round them like a bitter fog; Timka probed with as much energy as she could spare, but she got nothing more definite from them. She thought about warning Skeen that the newcomers might try some sort of attack, but they continued their agitated loops with no sign they intended anything more intrusive than a stringent watch with possibilities of a raid to snatch the Ykx if she and Skeen gave them the slightest chance of bringing it off. She glanced over her shoulder. Lipitero was curled in a tight knot and seemed to be sleeping, Skeen was definitely asleep, her face Slack, her mouth dropped open. Ah, well, time to make a fuss when the Holavish showed signs of doing something drastic.

  Later still, it started raining, a cold steady drizzle.

  The horses plodded on, the cart creaked along, lurching over ruts and sinking perilously in the glutinous red mud; Skeen and Lipitero huddled under an old sail Skeen bought from Brampon, Timka took off her blouse and skirt and grew a coat of sleek fur. The talent she’d discovered in herself was proving useful for more than battles and rescue missions. On and on, deep into the night, deep into the Mountains. When the track got so rough it was dangerous to continue without more light, Timka tied the team to a stout tree, taking no chances the watching Min would try to spook them; she joined Skeen and Lipitero under the sail which Skeen had converted into a crude tent. Lipitero was building a small fire with the last of the dry wood. She fanned the smoke out of her face, nodded to Timka and moved aside to let her help with the meal.

  They ate, then sat huddled in blankets watching the fire die, listening to the patter of rain on the canvas.

  Lipitero cleared her throat but it was a moment before she spoke. “How far is the Gate from here?”

  Skeen scratched at the film over her stump. “Three, four hours. No more than that.”

  “The Gate will take about half an hour to power up. When do you want me to activate it?”

  “Does the Gate have to be working when you release the Hunger?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ti, what about your Holavish army? If they’re here, they’re hiding.”

  “They’re all around us now. I almost can’t think for them pressing on me. The main body is ahead, though.”

  “What the hell they waiting for? By the way, how many?”

  “Like leaves on the trees, mmmm, I can’t say exactly, maybe four to five hundred. What are they waiting for? The Ever-Hunger is raging, you can’t feel it? Ah, I remember, you’re not as attuned to it as us. Petro? No? I can feel the barrier creaking as it lunges against it. That’s … terrifying. You don’t know how hard it is to keep going toward that thing, even when I know Petro will protect us from it. Them out there, they don’t have a hope of avoiding it. They’re working themselves up to the attack, but they’re not ready yet. Another thing, not that it counts for much except as another stone in the balance pan, it’s raining. Hard to fly in the rain. They’re waiting for it to stop.” She passed a hand over the short plushy fur on her face. “I could give you maybe a minute’s warning before they come at us.”

  “Every little bit helps. Petro, if they hav
en’t attacked by morning, and we’d better keep watch to make sure they don’t try surprising us, activate the Gate as soon as we move out of camp. Let me think … um … there’s a recent burn-over about an hour from the Fountain Glade. Flattish land, some sapling thickets, a lot of open space. Were I their warleader that’s the place I’d choose; their numbers will count for a lot more in that kind of terrain. Can’t be sure that’s the place—it might be, that’s all. Ti gives the word, you turn the Hunger loose. Be a good idea to have the excavator ready. Will the rain damage it?”

  “No. Now?”

  “Out in the rain again, sorry.” Skeen sighed, looked up at the sagging canvas over them. “And it’s time I got my slicer ready. I should have done it before but I didn’t want to cut off a foot or something.” She shrugged off the blanket and crawled into the rain.

  The morning came dull and gray, the drizzle diminished to a light mist. Timka gave the horses more grain, helped Lipitero fold the canvas and tuck it down tightly over the gear; there was a curdle of despair in her stomach, her hands were unsteady, sounds roared in her ears as the Holavish pressed their hate at her, raptor and predator, the many-shaped Min army—out there, around them, hating Lipitero, hating Skeen, most of all hating her, that hatred hardened and sharpened by their own terrors. And behind them, beyond them, the Ever-Hunger silent-howled its need. As her fumbling hands worked, she cried silently—believe Lipitero, Holavish, believe the Ykx, sister. Believe the Hunger will be loosed on you. Let us go, let us leave. You’ll be rid of me that way, rid of me as surely as if you ripped out my S’yer and burned it. Over and over she flung the silent plea to them as if by will alone she could drive the truth through their malice, through the complex of needs that impelled them to their own destruction, maybe the destruction of all life here.

  Skeen returned from her prowl through the trees. “They’re keeping back.” She moved her shoulders. “I can feel them out there.” She looked up at the thin mist shrouding the treetops. “This should burn off before long. We’d better get started.”

  Timka stripped and shifted to the Pallah cat-weasel; she had to freeze the horses several times before they’d accept her anywhere near them, but she finally got them started. Skeen stood in the body of the cart behind her, holding onto the back of the driver’s seat. The whippy knife that looked like flexible glass was bound into a slot in the end of a staff of polished hardwood, she held the staff securely in the elbow crease of her right arm; the flap on the darter’s holster was tucked behind the belt, the lanyard was clipped in place, the slide on spray, not singleshot. There weren’t even ruts to follow now, they were threading through trees and brush, picking a route around the bulge of the last mountain before they reached the narrow rambling valley where the Gate was. Timka fought her discomfort and struggled to keep track of the Min around them, like following an ocean current, water flowing in water, an ocean of Min flowing and flooding around her. A bit over two hours after dawn when they were close to the burnoff Skeen remembered, she felt the flow surge forward, the blast of determination from the dominants. “Skeen,” she whispered, “it’s starting.”

  “Petro, turn the beast loose. Now!”

  “Ti, you’re sure they’re going to do it?”

  “Yes, yes, the fools, yes, if you could feel them like I could, Lifefire, yes.”

  Lipitero squeezed gently at the lock, tightening and releasing it in the code pattern that would reduce to almost nothing the field that kept the Hunger penned. “It’s done. Ten minutes and it’s here.”

  Timka glared at the swaying grass ahead of them. The Pallah cat’s pale blood was burning. She pulled her tongue over her lips and felt herself salivating; her enlarged, mobile ears twitched, not that she heard any physical sounds.…

  The Min will crystallized.…

  “IT COMES,” she cried. She stood, slapped the reins hard on the team’s haunches, yowled a hunting cry that sent them into a blind panic. They ran full out, eyes wild, the cart bounding behind them. Petro braced the excavator on the cart’s side, touched on the light blade; it was a meter wide, ten meters long and barely more than an atom thick. She swung it in a great arc, slicing through vegetation, stone, flesh. She felt no resistance beyond the weight of the instrument, but saplings fell and beast Min shrieked. On the other side of the cart, Skeen set herself to ride its leaps and lurches like a surfer in rough water. She swung the darter in a matching arc, her aim point about a meter off the ground, pulsing out sprays of darts whenever she saw something to shoot at. Timka leaped about between them, plucking fliers like ripe plums whenever they got close enough to be dangerous.

  The team began to slow. Three times, someone among the Holavish with a little more sense than the others tried to stop the careering of the cart by freezing the horses, but Timka undid their efforts the moment they acted and the run went on; she even found time to steer the groaning beasts around the worst obstacles, pricking them right, turning them left as the terrain demanded. She danced on the seat and yowled, had to restrain herself from leaping down among the Min and slashing with handclaws and feetclaws until she drowned in Min flesh and Min fluids.

  She heard a deep thrumming like horses running, coming out of the West, a great herd of them spread horizon to horizon, running wild. From her precarious perch on the seat she saw Min at the rear of the horde break and run.

  Earth and sky throbbed with the beat of the beast.

  The darter ran dry. Skeen shoved it into the holster and reached for the bladed staff.

  The horses screamed and dropped. The cart rocked wildly, then settled as the weight of the beasts anchored it. In the next instant the flesh began melting off their bones until the harness straps held a set of bones and a few wisps of hair.

  Everywhere Min screamed.

  Lipitero shut off the excavator and set it down. “Skeen, Ti, get over here. Close to me. You’re all right for a few minutes but no more.”

  Life emptied out of the Min around them, then their flesh spun away. The SOUND filled the space between earth and heaven, it vibrated in their various bloods and bones. Timka shuddered with loathing and terror and guilt. The SOUND wasn’t eating her, but it was inside her, she’d never be free of it, never clean again.…

  After an eternity that might have been five breaths or ten, the sound diminished, flowed away from them moving south and west, lapping up the life that had run from it.

  Lipitero closed down the shunt, fiddled with her harness again. “There,” she said. “The Ykx at Fellarax will begin herding the Hunger back into its pen.”

  Skeen stood slowly, looked around. “The thing’s thorough, you’ll have to give it that.” She vaulted over the side and went to look at the heaps of horse bones. “So much for horsepower. Come on, Ti, shift and help me cut the harness loose.”

  Timka snarled, a soft deadly sound.

  Skeen set her hand on her hip, waved her stump. “Come on, use your head, Ti. We’ve got to get out of here and we need the cart, or can you turn yourself into a mule and haul the gear for us?”

  It took several minutes of interior struggle, but Timka finally threw off the Pallah cat-weasel and reverted to the standard Pallah form. Listlessly she dragged on her robe, pulled the tie tight and tumbled herself over the side. “You should have left me cat,” she muttered. “I’m about as much use as a sick cow this way.”

  “You’ll manage. Get a move on, I need your hands. Djabo’s nimble digits, I’ll be biting my elbows before I get to the Tank Farm.”

  With a lot of grunting and cursing but no real difficulties, Skeen and Timka pulled the cart through the drying smears of dead Min, Lipitero walking beside them with Skeen’s darter, its reservoir refilled from the water bag. In less than an hour they reached the eerie motionless glade where the Gate was. Skeen retrieved the cached swords and other items from the hollow in the tree, and dug the Min jewelry from the rodent nest in the rockpile beside one of the Gate posts. She set these things in the cart, then scowled at the swirls of dus
t that filled the space between the posts. “I think it’s wide enough,” she said finally. “Ti?”

  Timka blinked at her, but didn’t seem to see her. The bright green gaze was absent, turned inward. She pulled the ties loose; with a kind of whole body shrug she threw the robe off, shifted to her earlier, simpler form, the cat-weasel, and loped toward the Gate. She gathered herself and leaped through the dustclouds.

  “Oh, fuck.” Skeen snatched the darter from Lipitero and ran after the Min.

  Two cats were kicking up more dust in a snarling vicious battle, banging from ruin to ruin, wrestling, clawing, heads striking like serpents. They were covered with that cream-yellow dust; impossible to tell who was which. Skeen swore and darted them both, darted them again when they looked like they were starting to shift.

  She heard a scraping noise behind her, whirled, went to help Lipitero ease the cart through the Gate and wheel it into a rutted pot-holed street. The Ykx looked round the ruins and the dry-bones valley. “Wonderful.”

  “Patience, my friend. Things get more interesting after we get out of here.” Taking Timka’s shabby robe, she went to the cats and flicked some of the dust off them. Now that they were lying still, it was easier to tell the difference between them. Telka-cat was a shade or two darker, had a blunter muzzle (more cat than weasel), and small round ears; she was chunkier than Ti-cat and somehow not so lethal. Skeen wrapped her hand in the loose skin at her nape and began dragging her toward the Gate. Lipitero started to help, but Skeen waved her away. “Keep watch,” she said. “No telling what’s hanging about here.”

  She muscled the cat through the Gate, took a last look around. Nothing had changed. The air hung still and silent, not a leaf was moving. No insect or bird noises. Trees like painted images. Short thick grass, not a blade moving. From the west the faint sound of water falling. “Well, Mistommerk, it’s been interesting.” With a flourish of her single hand, she stepped back through the Gate. “Any problems, Petro?”