Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  “What? Oh what is it?” The girl was hard to wake up; she must have been in deep sleep. “Oh, Kati, it’s you—“.

  Abruptly Sany came to completely, and rolled into a sitting position.

  “They’re here,” Kati told her. “The kidnappers are here. They’ve got me tied up and gagged.” She did a quick reconnoitre outside; it only took a split-second to do that in her disembodied state. “They’ve started dragging me off; I just heard one of them tell the guy who’s dragging me that they can’t get our mounts loose without making a lot of noise. So they’re going to forget about moving our Narra and just take off with me. Count to twenty, Sany, and then run and alert Yarm and Mikal.”

  She left Sany to it and did a quick sweep of the campground. The Narra were still where they had left them the night before, well-tethered and hobbled by Jocan, using the sailor’s knots that he had learned from the crew of The Seabird. There was a broken knife lying near Ceta’s feet; testimony to the fact that one of the kidnappers had tried to cut the off-world rope. Kati was glad that no herder would consider killing Narra; her granda, she was aware, would have chosen that solution had it been faced with the particular problem. It would have been, she had to acknowledge, an effective, if a bloody and wasteful, a solution. The Caravanners were asleep—she vaguely remembered having heard that the hours before sunrise were the best sleeping time for the human creature—with only Mikal tossing restlessly, although even he was not fully awake.

  She returned to where two hard-faced young men were hurriedly latching her body onto a sluggish Narra: she decided against returning to the body quite yet, although the granda was reminding her that she could not stay out too long. Even with the node’s presence in her brain and nerves, her body would soon start suffering if her consciousness was not around to look after it. Instead, she counted the kidnappers; there were eight of them, better odds than they had dared to hope for. Two were now leading and encouraging the Narra loaded with her body, towards the eight other riding Narra which were standing, looking dejected, a short distance towards GreenWater, guarded by two more young men. The four that had shared the duties of keeping watch while Kati was taken, and trying to lead away the travellers’ Narra, were now watching the backs of the two hauling the trussed-up female.

  Sany was peeking out of her tent, checking to see if there was anyone to see her when she gave the warning. Kati swooped down to her, contacting her even as the girl momentarily hesitated.

  “Tell Mikal and Yarm that they’re heading south towards GreenWater and there are only eight of them. Right now their Narra are very sluggish, and they’re still on foot, except for me. I’m tied to a Narra, face down, gagged, ugh! You can come out and give the alarm; they’re past the first trees and not looking back any more!”

  It was time to return to her body to mind the store. It would be a while yet before the rescuers could get going. The kidnappers’ Narra might be sluggish, but so would be those of the chasers. And when the sun rose and the Narra had sucked in its warmth into their bodies, they would all be alive and ready to move fast, including the one that her body was hanging across.

  She tried to slip into that hanging body carefully, but even with the granda’s help that turned out to be impossible. She felt like she slammed into it, overwhelmed by all the unpleasant sensations that she suddenly had to face. Her head was pounding from blood rushing into it, as she lay on her stomach over the Narra’s back, her eyes staring—when she dared to open them for a second—at the trunks of the trailside trees. Her mouth, gagged with a cloth that she suspected was none too clean, was dry as dust. The muscles on her arms, legs, and mid-body, were already tensed up from the unnatural position she was in; determinedly she declined to worry about how they would feel in the near future, never mind if her ordeal went on for long. Her node was doing what it could, relaxing a really tense muscle here and there, keeping the blood moving through her arteries and veins as evenly as possible under the circumstances, and reminding her to stay calm, because that was the best thing that she could do for herself at the moment.

  A part of her was sorry that the lout who had tied her up had not clouted her to unconsciousness at the same time, while another part was grateful to have the granda’s help. She wondered grimly how unpleasant this event would have been to its intended victim, Chrys, who did not have her resources to call upon. She also was smaller, more delicate of build, and younger than Kati. Kati felt a flash of anger at the kidnappers, felt her body tightening up with the rage, and experienced searing pain as her muscles fought the ropes and her jaws clamped down on the gag. For a few moments she saw stars, and expected to find her consciousness tossed out of her body; then sanity prevailed and she began to let go of her fury, allowing the granda once again to ease the tension built up in her physical systems. Moments later she lay like a limp rag on the animal’s back, just glad that she was tied to it and needed to make no effort to stay on.

  “What the blazes do you mean that you couldn’t lead their Narra away?” one of the two men who were escorting the beast that Kati was on, snarled to the men following them. “What was so frigging difficult about that?”

  “As it happens, everything,” a young voice from the back answered, in a tone pitched to be inaudible beyond a few steps. He laughed shortly, mirthlessly. “Couldn’t get the knots undone; Cas and me both tried—I don’t know what kind of knots they’d used to tie up those animals, but we sure couldn’t loosen them.”

  “So you should’ve cut them, you fool! Don’t you have knives?” snarled the first voice.

  “We did,” the laugher replied, not laughing now. “I don’t anymore. I tried to cut the ropes. And broke my knife.”

  “You have got to be joking,” The first speaker had raised his voice a touch, sounding exasperated. “Whoever heard of a rope that breaks a knife?”

  “Maybe no-one has,” said a third voice, this one coming from behind the Narra, like the second one had. “But Lek and I have just seen it. I watched Lek try to cut that rope, saw how the knife didn’t make a dent in it, just got duller and duller, and finally the hilt broke off because Lek was sawing so hard.”

  “That’s when we gave up,” added the second voice, that of Lek, clearly. “I thought, what the devil is going on here? What sort of magic is this? I wanted to get away from there before something attacked me out of the thin air.”

  “My, my, my,” sneered the first voice. “I sent a child on a man’s errand, obviously. Frightened of ghosts, are you not?”

  “Duk, that’s not fair and you know it.” The third speaker, Cas, this had to be, had raised his voice a little bit, too. “Fact is, you couldn’t have done any better than Lek and I did. Besides you didn’t want to deal with the animals anyway, you wanted to be the one to grab the woman, so’s you could be the one to paw her first.”

  The Narra came to a sudden halt.

  “You watch your friggin’ filthy mouth, Cas,” Kati heard Duk say with real anger in his voice now. “You want some benefits out of this caper, you play by my rules and you don’t make no dirty suggestions—you don’t even think them, you damn kid. You hear?”

  Nothing more was said but since the Narra started moving again after a moment, Kati assumed that Cas must have nodded assent. Dissension in the ranks, she thought to herself with glee. “How can I make use of it?” she asked the granda, not expecting an immediate answer, just for it to consider the matter.

  *****

  Mikal awakened immediately to Sany’s hail. His sleep had been restless all night; when he had crawled into his blankets he had had the premonition that the attack would take place this morning, and worry is not a sleep-potion. He had not gladly gone along with Kati’s plan in the first place—in fact he had argued against it on several occasions—but when Yarm had agreed with Kati that it was the only one that they had come up with that had a good chance of succeeding, he had reluctantly gone along with the majority opinion. He intensely disliked the fact that Kati was knowingly putting her
self at risk, but he did realize that she was much more capable of handling whatever the louts were going to throw at her than Chrys was. Kati was also right in her notion that it was easier and safer to stun the men as they were fleeing with their captive, rather than trying to stage a fight at the campground. On Narra-back the Caravanners had the advantage of their three stunners; in a face-to-face melee, the louts had the advantage of numbers and knives, and the willingness to use those knives.

  At least the louts were not cold-blooded killers like Guzi and Dakra were. The louts might kill a man in a fight, but they were doing all they could, to avoid such an eventuality. Mikal gave mental thanks to the ethics of The Children of the Survivors who considered human life sacred, and killing a healthy Narra worse than murdering a person; such scruples were going to make recapturing and freeing Kati considerably easier than it would have been had they had to deal with true degenerates. Mind you, were they dealing with true degenerates, he would never have gone along with this charade, and he was certain that Kati would not have suggested it.

  Mikal crawled out of his blankets and from the tent, feeling surprisingly groggy, considering that he had been only in shallow sleep. Chrys, awakened also by Sany’s call to Mikal, crawled out behind him and set about heating water for tea in the very efficient camp stove that Jocan usually used, and the secrets of which he had shared with the nightlady. It was Mikal’s groggy appearance that prompted her tea-making efforts; she thought that if he needed something to wake him up, so would the others who were to go chasing after the kidnappers.

  “Kati said to tell you that they’re headed south towards GreenWater,” Sany reported to Mikal. “They’re still on foot except they’ve got Kati tied to a Narra, a sluggish one at the moment, and there are only eight of them. They haven’t got very far yet.”

  “Thank you Sany,” Mikal replied, rubbing his face with his hands. “If you could wake Yarm also, and tell him what you just told me, that would be great. It’s all we expect of you, for now, anyway.

  “I’m going to get Matto, Cay and Jess up. Chrys, if you can drag Jocan up, tell him to go untie the Narra. He’s the only one of us who can deal with those sailors’ knots.”

  “Of course,” Chrys said, filling a pot with water and setting it on the stove.

  She went back into the three-person tent to shake Jocan awake, even as Sany and Mikal went off in opposite directions to perform their tasks.

  Sany’s job was the easiest. Yarm was primed to be awakened. He had not spent as restless a night as Mikal had, but he had not slept like a log, either. He responded quickly to Sany’s summons, and crawled out of his tent promptly, and was immediately alert. Sany gave him Kati’s message and added the information about what the others were up to; he thanked her, and told her that she could go back to sleep if she wanted. The Caravan would not be heading in the direction of the grasslands first thing in the morning; that was a certainty. Those who would not be riding with the rescue team were going to have time on their hands.

  Jocan was much harder to wake up. When gentle shaking failed to bring him to consciousness Chrys took a solid hold of his nearest shoulder and kneaded it vigorously. At first even that did not get a response out of him, and she was contemplating filling a mug with water and tossing it on his face, when finally the youth started groaning.

  “What? What’s going on? Lemme sleep,” Jocan mumbled, trying to push Chrys’ hands away.

  “Jocan, Jocan, Jocan,” the nightlady entreated. “You have to get up, Jocan. The plan worked; Kati’s been kidnapped. You are needed.”

  “What?” Jocan struggled into a sitting position, staring out the tent opening into the starlit campground. “Kati kidnapped?

  “So they did come after all.” He was awake at last. “They took the bait, and we’ll have to get her out of this.”

  He started creeping towards the tent entrance; Chrys was already heading in that direction. She was keen to check the tea water and the stove under it. The twigs that the stove used burned quickly; the stove user had to keep replenishing the supply.

  Mikal’s task with the threesome from Oasis City was also tiresome. The young men did not awaken easily, but, finally, after Mikal had done some yelling, and grabbed the blankets off his body, Matto sat up, groaning pitifully.

  “Were you joining the chase for Kati’s kidnappers?” Mikal asked him, a touch testily.

  “Shit, yes,” Matto replied immediately. “They came, did they?”

  “Yeah. They got Kati as planned and, she passed the word to Sany. She was able to give some information, too. They’re heading south towards GreenWater even as we figured they would, and there are only eight of them, which is a bit of luck.”

  “Yeah, eight’s easier to deal with than twice that,” Matto agreed. “I’ll get my rascally friends up if you’d rather do something else. We’ll be at your campsite pronto.”

  “Sure, come there. Chrys is making some tea and we’ll grab something dry to eat before heading out. Jocan should be unhobbling and untying the Narra about right now.”

  *****

  It would be six against eight. Rober and Seb were not coming; Sany’s contribution was all that the herders were willing to add to an effort against people who also were descendants of the Children of the Survivors. Whatever Rober and Kaina thought about men kidnapping women, they were not going to join outsiders in what amounted to a chastising of some of their own. Taxom was too middle-aged, and too plump to ride a chase, Mikal and Yarm had decided when they had discussed Kati’s plan. Mikal had figured that he would likely be more trouble than help, and Yarm, although likely just as old as Taxom was, had agreed wholeheartedly. He had seen enough men such as Taxom in his travels; they were fine on runnerbeast back when they had to travel from place to place, but he knew better than to rely on such in tight spots.

  “People have different uses in life,” he had told Mikal, “and someone like Taxom isn’t much use in an operation such as the one we’re planning. He doesn’t have the body or the mentality for it. He’d be better off counting coins.

  “Now, I wouldn’t mind having Rober with us, but that isn’t going to happen. He’s a tough fellow but he’s just as tough at sticking to his beliefs as in anything else.”

  “I guess we should be grateful that Sany’s going to be running messages for Kati,” Mikal had answered. “If Rober had told her that she couldn’t do it, I really wonder if she would have.”

  “Actually,” Yarm had said thoughtfully, “I think that he did not deny her permission because he was worried that if he did, she might defy him. That girl is not happy with the life that she has to lead; she is keen on a bit of excitement. There’s not much of that in a herder existence; life revolves around the land and the beasts. She desperately wants this small chance to be a part of something that to her is interesting and different. If Papa had said ‘No’, he might have found himself putting down a full-blown, adolescent rebellion. It is our good fortune that he wanted to avoid that.”

  Still, six against eight were better odds than they had expected, and the six had three stunners among them. Those stunners should improve their chances considerably; they would be able to use them once they came close enough to the kidnappers. The “desert louts” had no way to defend themselves against them, and since they did not know of their existence, they would not prepared for them. Moreover, the louts were herding along a Narra carrying a prisoner; that would certainly slow them down, at least somewhat.

  All in all, Mikal was pretty hopeful of their chances of catching the louts and freeing Kati soon. As long as there was no hidden shortcut to MuddyWater or YellowWater, that the louts could turn on to, thereby riding across the dunes to get home, instead of following the worn trail along the river bottom.

  Yarm was already at the campsite eating handfuls of dried fruit and nuts, out of a large bowl that Chrys had set out, and drinking tea, when Mikal returned there.

  “Jocan’s with the animals,” he said to Mikal between chews. �
�I’m off there as soon as I’ve fortified myself. Better have a bite to eat yourself, and a bit of liquid. I’ll send Jocan to do the same as soon as he gets all those knots untied. It could be a long day although I’m definitely hoping not.”

  Mikal dug into the bowl and accepted a hot mugful from Chrys with a nod of thanks.

  “The thought just occurred to me,” he said to Yarm, “are there any shortcuts to YellowWater and MuddyWater across the desert? If there are we should be keeping an eye out for tracks. It’s possible that they’ve planned to use such, so as to avoid having to ride by GreenWater.”

  “There is a trail,” Yarm replied with a nod. “I expect that that is why they chose this campground for their snatch, rather than doing it at one of the others. I got Rober to point it out for me when we rode by on our way from GreenWater, just in case, so I know where it is. It’s about two, two-and-a-half hours ride from here, shorter if we’re riding fast, which we will be.

  We better take some water and even a little bit of nourishment with us. There won’t be anything except what we carry on that short-cut.”

  Chrys immediately took the three waterskins that were beside the fire-pit to fill at the artesian well.

  “Tell Matto, Cay and Jess to fetch their waterskins, too, when they come to eat,” she said as she left. “I’ll fill them, and I’ll pack some nutritious bars, too, in case it takes you a while to get back.”

  “Well, I must admit it’s nice having someone around taking care of such little tasks,” Mikal said, drinking his tea and chewing on a mouthful of fruit and nuts.

  “I’m sure Chrys is only too happy to do whatever she can,” Yarm said. “She’s quite aware of the debt she owes Kati.”

  Mikal looked up suddenly.

  “It’s probably just as well Kati took the role that she did. I don’t think there is any way we could have kept her from riding with us on this chase, if she was here now,” he commented.

  “No doubt you’re right about that,” replied Yarm, smiling. “What’s more, she would have acquitted herself as well as any of us men.”