Текст книги "The Last Hour of Gann"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 80 страниц)

She lay there while the sun crawled higher behind the clouds, wondering if it was supposed to feel like this. She’d had the implant since she was ten—God bless Measure 34 and Zero Tolerance—and at the moment, she felt like she could cheerfully give up anything, even her place on a lifeboat back to Earth, to get the stupid thing back. Second-grade sex-ed was a long time ago; she couldn’t remember how long this was supposed to last, only that it would happen again about once a month for the rest of her miserable fucking life. Was it normal to hurt like this? How much blood was she going to lose? Was there something she should be doing besides just packing her panties with grass and waiting for it to be over? She’d gone to so many stupid seminars preparing her for life in a colony that were about as useful now as that solar generator they were lugging around, and she’d never even thought about reading up on what was going to happen to her own damn body!

Naturally, it had been later that morning, when she could not have cared less, that Scott gave the speech Amber had been waiting for—the ration bars were almost gone and it was time to learn how to catch dinner. “Miss Bierce has volunteered to make spears,” he’d said at the end of it, and there she sat, hugging her cramping stomach in one arm and Nicci in the other, wishing he’d take that pocketknife he was holding out to her so gallantly and pound it right up his ass.

She made the spears. It wasn’t as easy as she’d thought it would be. The first set of sticks she was able to break off the trees were way too small once they’d had their points cut. The next set—deadfall branches she’d picked off the ground—seemed okay as she did the carving and heating, but every one of them broke when Scott sauntered over to give them a practice throw, and as much as she’d wanted to sock him for doing that, even she had to admit he was right when he pointed out that if they’d break that easy, they’d be no good as a weapon. But three seemed to be the charm and the day was only half-over. The deer drifted back and forth across the plains as they had for days now, but never went far. It was almost like they were waiting for them.

“How are we doing on those spears, Miss Bierce?”

“I’m doing fine, Everly,” said Amber, testing the point of a hot spear before setting it aside in the Finished pile with the other six. “How many have you made?”

It didn’t seem to embarrass him. If anything, his officious little smirk widened. “You asked for this job, remember? You practically begged for it.”

“I remember. That was the day you called me a pig.”

“I did not.” But he looked to see if anyone else was close enough to hear. When he saw a few frowns pointed their way, he blushed. “Miss Bierce, if you can’t do what you promised to do, that’s all right. I’ll understand if your physical limitations—”

“Godammit, I am not too fat to make spears!”

“I never said that either, Miss Bierce, but you are clearly having difficulty. Instead of getting angry with me, why don’t you tell me what the problem is?”

‘At the moment, it’s the jackass breathing down my neck,’ Amber thought. Aloud, she said, “I’m just trying to finish this. What are you trying to do?”

“Have a civil conversation with someone who is determined to cause trouble in this colony.” Scott heaved a sigh. “There is absolutely no reason for this, you know.”

“For what?”

“This.” Scott waved irritably at the sky, as if her question were a distracting fly. “I get it, okay? I understand.”

Amber felt her eyes narrowing. “You understand what?”

“Why you’re like this.”

Had he found her pants? Amber made herself pick up another spear, even as she told herself that this was probably not a good time to fill her hands with weapons. Fat jokes she could handle, if not entirely with good grace. If he pulled out a period joke, she was clubbing him.

“I understand that you feel like you have to be a bitch because you think that people will take you more seriously if they think you’re strong.”

She let out a laugh before she could help herself. He hadn’t found her pants. He was just being his usual dicky self. “I think we’re done with this conversation.”

“No, we’re not. This is something we should have said a long time ago. Amber.” He came and put his hand on her shoulder, did it like he was knighting her. His expression was that of a bold and rugged space adventurer comforting his distressed damsel—noble and determined, with just the right degree of pity. “We’re going to take care of you, Amber. You and all the other girls. You’re our most precious resource.”

“What?” she said flatly.

“This is still a colony,” said Scott. His hand was still on her shoulder. “Only we’re not in it for the five-year contract anymore and you are one of only eleven wombs. We’ve been talking about this.”

“Wombs.”

“And we’ve made some difficult decisions regarding our duty here.” Scott ran his commanding eyes across his gallant colonists. “It may be our immediate goal to persevere, but our ultimate goal hasn’t changed from the day we boarded the Pioneer. It’s not just about living, surviving. It’s about preserving our lives, yes, and our way of life, our very future. Yes, Miss Bierce, we have a duty…and we’re going to have to be mature about this.”

“Says the man about to order people to fuck,” said Amber, and quite a few people flinched, just like that wasn’t where that little speech was going. “Were you planning to pass us out like the tents or let everyone draw straws? Let me guess: Your lieutenants get the first pick?”

Maria looked at Eric. He did not look back at her.

“You’re right, Scott,” Amber said, removing his hand from her shoulder. “This is a conversation we should have had before now. Because it seems that someone actually has to point out to you that eleven wombs plus one or two hundred years equals so much inbreeding that it ain’t even funny. This is not a colony.”

“And what is it, then? What is it you expect all these people—” A sweep of his arm included the whole camp, quite a few of whom stood quietly up and moved a little closer to him. Taking sides. “—to do, Miss Bierce? Just stand around waiting to die?”

“No, Everly, I expect us to stop standing around and start finding a way to live! Picking out who to screw ought to be dead last on our list of priorities, right after building a goddamn musical theater and casting for The King and I! Clean water! Food! Shelter from this constant cold, windy piss we’re stuck in! That ought to be where your head is at, not in my pants!”

“Oh believe me, nobody here is looking forward to getting in your pants.” Scott gave that a dramatic pause, then added, “Although God knows there’s room for two or three in there once you’re out of them.”

“Another fat joke,” said Amber, rolling her eyes. “If you can’t quit the name-calling, can you at least pick a new name?”

Several female voices called agreement and a few of the men standing behind Scott slunk off and sat down again.

Scott noticed. He glanced around, flustered and trying not to show it.

“You’re losing your crew, Commander,” said Amber.

“No one ever taught you when to shut up, did they?” He looked at her again, almost but not quite sneering, and dropped his voice until it was just for the two of them. “You want to call this a win, you go right ahead. But there is no future in all your self-righteous talk about what we eat and where we sleep. There’s a future in fucking. So you give it a week. Give it two. And then you get ready to spread that butter because things are going to change.”

He waited, just in case she wanted to get the punches started, but she turned her back on him instead, since that had always been the best way to chap Nicci’s ass when they fought. They both walked away, but it sure didn’t feel over.

“All right, people.” Commander Everly Scott, in charge once more, clapped his hands to get people’s attention just like the argument itself hadn’t done that. “Volunteer hunters, front and center. Miss Bierce will be in charge—”

So it could be all her fault when it failed.

“Dick,” Amber muttered, picking up her last spear and throwing it down again on top of the Finished pile without bothering to test it.

Nicci came and sat down beside her, but she was looking back at Scott. “What are you going to do?”

“Get a deer.” Amber clapped a hand to her cramping belly and rubbed hard, giving herself something painful to feel to try and avoid throwing up out of sheer, messy misery. “Or die trying.”

* * *

Amber had made twelve spears altogether. Of these, Scott judged eight acceptable; the other four, he said, were good for nothing but firewood and he proved it by tossing them on the fire. Then he picked out the hunters, in spite of the fact that this was allegedly her hunt. It was impossible not to notice that he did not permit any of the Fleetmen, all of whom had volunteered, to join them. If he could have smeared her with fresh blood and honey and tied her hands behind her back too, he probably would have.

Still, Amber managed not to instigate another argument she couldn’t possibly win. She took what little she was given and limited all the outrage seething in her stomach to one small stabbing: She invited Scott to come along.

She did it solely to keep him from stealing any time alone with Nicci and she really didn’t think it would work. She’d been ready to bully Nicci into coming with her once Scott brushed her off, but to her surprise, her, “And of course, you’ll be hiding way back here,” really seemed to get to him. He’d replaced one of his Manifestors on the spot, although he was just as quick to declare he was only there in a supervisory position. The success of the hunt (or more accurately, she was sure, its failure) rested squarely with her.

They finally set off sometime in the early afternoon, which Scott just had to point out was probably the worst time to go hunting. Deer came out at dawn and at dusk.

“Yeah, well, I couldn’t exactly pull these spears out of my ass at dawn this morning,” Amber told him. “I had to make them. If you’ll recall, I asked for your permission to do that days ago and you called me a pig.”

“Miss Bierce, it is deeply troubling to me that you perceive every attempt to educate you as a personal attack.”

She wanted to go on, maybe give him a real personal attack so he’d know the difference the next time they got to talking, but his Manifestor friends were listening and ready to repeat whatever they heard back at camp. She wasn’t afraid to speak her mind, but she was beginning to realize she’d better have more on her mind when she did than ‘fuck you’. So she kept quiet and focused on not letting her cramps or the fact that she hadn’t eaten since the previous morning keep her from walking at the front of the line and not the end. Her failure on this hunt might be unavoidable, but she wasn’t going to give Scott any help burning her at the stake.

The herd had been drifting further from camp all morning, but now that they were finally on the hunt, the scaly deer-things abruptly wandered out into the open plains and drew together into a beautifully obvious target. Watching them, Amber hesitated, knowing this was her chance but unsure how to begin. The spear that had seemed so crucial and so solid upon its making now seemed woefully inadequate, a splinter in her hands. Could she really hope to use this thing? And not just use it, but actually stab it into something alive and moving and do enough damage to kill it?

And what if the deer-things fought back? They fought all the time. A handful of them were fighting even now, balanced on their long hind legs so they could slash and butt away at their rival. These blows did not appear to be very effective against their scaly hides, but Amber was pretty sure they could tear through human skin just fine.

Scott was smart enough to recognize a golden opportunity when he saw it. She could almost see the gears of his mind turning as he realized that bringing home the first kill after Amber had not only failed to hunt but actually failed to act was immeasurably better than just letting her fall on her face. He stepped up.

“I’ve got this, Scott,” she said tightly.

“You don’t seem too sure about that. Okay, people, why don’t you two go around that way—”

“I said, I’ve got this! Come on!”

They started forward, spread out and low to the ground, with no specific idea of what to do or which animal to target. The scaly deer-things kicked sullenly at each other and gored the ground for roots, as oblivious to the humans creeping clumsily toward them as the humans themselves were to the dumaq prowling unseen in their own wake. They were close—close enough to see the golden rings of color around their huge dark eyes, close enough to count all three craggy claws at the end of each delicate foot—when Scott whispered, “Should we do it now?”

“No, get closer. We have to get—”

“Now!” Scott shouted, and all six of the Manifestors in the party jumped up with ridiculous cries of attack and threw their spears while they were still at least twenty-five meters away.

“No, dammit!” Amber shouted, running forward, but it was too late.

The deer quit fighting for one miraculous, motionless instant to gape at the aliens who had just popped up beside them and then the solid mass of the herd exploded into a hundred running animals, all going in different directions. One of them came right at Amber and she, thrown into a thought-free mode of adrenaline and panic, swung her spear like a baseball bat. Naturally, it jumped, but she still managed not to miss it completely. If she had, it would have sprinted away and left her staring after it, defeated.

But no. She swung. It leaped. Her spear connected, not with its fragile-looking deer-like head, but with its bounding hindquarters.

And that changed everything.

It landed and fell, dragging its body behind its kicking forelegs for a few stunning seconds while Amber gaped at her good luck. Then it was up and running again (but limping) and Amber lunged after it with a scream that was only half-defeated and the chase began.

They tumbled through the grass together—wounded animal and winded human—the distance between them heaving long and staggering short. Twice, she got close enough to swing her spear again, but missed both times. The only other chance she had to hit it came when it unexpectedly doubled back on its trail and when it did, she forgot the spear entirely and grabbed at it instead. She caught it (and if you’d used the spear you dumb bitch you’d have hit it lamed it up some more or even killed it what’s wrong with you) and was dragged along for a few violent seconds only before it kicked her off. She fell, lungs on fire and head spinning, and thought it ran off without her, but when she finally got up, there it was, not even five meters away, head down, gasping.

It saw her about the same time as she saw it. With a high, bleating cry, it threw itself at her. She swung her spear, missing it completely and throwing herself so far off balance that she fell on her face in the thorny grass. It fled right over the top of her, its clawed feet trampling at her back and butt. She kicked in a blind panic, connecting only once but connecting solidly with its other hind leg, so that it fell all the way over and lay on its side for one glorious second.

Then it bolted, bawling over and over, aiming for a thicket. She took off after it, lurching more than running at this point and scarcely able to see past the pulse pounding in her head, and knowing the only thing worse than missing your only chance at dinner at the very start of the hunt was following it all this way…and losing it at the end.

It bounded through the outer ring of stiff, dead vines and thickening thorns, leaving Amber further behind as she fought to follow after, and when it reached a thick copse of wind-twisted trees and broad-leafed bushes, it staggered. And stopped.

And there it stayed, while Amber fought and failed to get any closer. There was no walking through the tangle of underbrush it had passed so effortlessly, and the harder she tried, the more damage she did to herself. Her clothes tore and her boots got caught and she cut the living hell out of her arms and hands and face, but she didn’t gain a fucking step on it and finally, in a fit of frustration that was nearly orgasmic in its entirety, she let out a howl and threw her spear from the impossible distance of four or five measly meters away.

It leapt aside and was swiftly lost in the deeper shadows of the thicket.

It leapt aside…and something else was there.

She never saw it until it moved, and it had to move or her spear would have gone right into its scaly chest. It whipped aside, pivoting at the hips, and suddenly her spear was suspended and quivering at both ends with its fist wrapped around it in the middle.

It looked at the spear.

And then it looked at her.

* * *

The creature let out an exhausted whoop that probably could have been a scream if it had more air and then fell over. It was not the faint Meoraq thought it was at first, because it was struggling almost at once. Its boots were tangled in dried thorns. More thorns snagged on its clothes, pulling its top-wrap half off and scratching up its pale skin with terrible ease. It fought to free itself, but it was trapped and, by the look in its eerie eyes, it knew it.

It would have been a simple thing to kill the creature. It certainly seemed like the most prudent thing to do, particularly since allowing it to live would alert all the others to his presence. And yet, Meoraq found himself strangely disinclined to strike.

There never should have been a reason for this encounter. The thicket where he had settled in to watch the creatures hunt was well out of the way, and yet the injured saoq had aimed itself directly at him. The will of Sheul could make itself known in many things, perhaps even this.

So then, what was Sheul’s will? Meoraq looked at the creature’s weapon again. Weapon, ha. A young tree, its branches torn away, made sharp at one end and tempered over a campfire. And what had the creature done with its fine pointed weapon? What, but swing at the saoq as if it held instead a club.

Meoraq had indeed watched the hunt, from its disastrous commencement to this unforeseen ending. It would have been easy to laugh at what he saw, except that, no matter how stupidly played out, it was still a coordinated attack. But as the hunt limped on, Meoraq’s derisive humor faded. It was trying. And no matter that it hadn’t a hope of success, it kept right on trying, until Meoraq actually thought it might take the saoq after all. He had, in fact, been sorely tempted while the saoq stood gasping before him in the thicket to put an end to the chase himself. One swift cut across the right tendon…it wouldn’t even bleed that much…the creature might think it had done it all itself.

But he never had the chance. The spear was thrown. The saoq fled. And now here he stood with the creature’s eyes wide open and full upon him.

“Sheul, my Father, I feel Your hand,” mused Meoraq, studying the burnt point of the creature’s weapon. “But I do not hear Your voice. Speak, I pray, and tell me what I am to do.”

The creature spoke.

Meoraq looked at it. It was watching him closely, its hand still clutched around the torn edges of its caught clothing, yet it had ceased its attempts to free itself. Its eyes, so curiously like that of a dumaq, shone with intelligence in its flat, ugly face.

More than animal intelligence, perhaps.

Meoraq regarded it with growing unease as it became inescapably clear that he was not merely being seen by this creature, he was being measured.

The thought of killing it came back, stronger than before. Meoraq’s hand tightened on the creature’s spear—

‘If it is a man,’ thought Meoraq suddenly, ‘that would be murder.’

Ridiculous. A Sheulek, by very definition, could not commit a murder. A Sheulek was the Sword of God and the arbiter of His true Word. He could kill anyone or anything he wanted and he did not necessarily need a reason.

But he really ought to have one. Meoraq hissed, annoyed (the creature immediately renewed its struggles to escape the thorns), and looked again at the spear. Just a pointed stick, without an open blade to stand in defiance of Sheul’s laws.

Never mind, there had to be some other law it had broken.

There was a fine thought for a Sheulek to have. Just kill it; everyone is guilty of something. If that was what his years of service had done, perhaps it was time he retired.

Scowling, Meoraq picked his way forward out of the thicket. With every step, the creature fought the brambles harder, tearing its hands and arms and even its face, until Meoraq drew a sabk and knelt beside it.

Then, shockingly, it lunged and caught his wrist.

And Meoraq found himself trapped, not by its grip, which was a flimsy shackle indeed, but by its eyes. They were frightened but not wild, and in them was all the strength and fire its feeble hand could not possess.

‘This is a person,’ thought Meoraq, motionless as a man in thrall to phesok smoke. ‘This is a person with a soul hammered at Sheul’s forge just the same as mine.’

“Easy,” he heard himself say—speaking to it!—just before he did something even more incomprehensible.

He gave it its spear.

It looked at it, then released Meoraq’s arm to take it, but it did not raise it again as a weapon. It merely held the thing limply in its grasp, now staring at him with its queasily soft-looking fur-striped brows drawn together. It made sounds at him. Words.

“I do not know Your will, my Father,” said Meoraq, cutting the thorns that held the creature. “But as it seems You have gone to some effort to put us in one another’s path, I will walk with them awhile and see if I can learn what You wish for me to know.”

Freed, the creature gained its feet and immediately adjusted its torn clothing, as if Meoraq had any inclination to ogle its repulsive body. But it looked at him…studying him…and so, almost against his will, Meoraq examined it in return.

Being this close to one of them made him somehow stop seeing all the obvious differences there were between their kinds and see instead the very few similarities: not just its eyes (which were the green of new leaves), but the basic lines of its body, the shape of its slender arms and legs, and every subtle thing that marked it as a child of Sheul’s design. He had no idea what horrific sin of its bloodline could have bred such malformation into its face, its skin, its very bones, but when he stood this close and saw it looking back at him with such eyes, he could not be repulsed.

Like a man in a dream, Meoraq watched his hand rise and brush the backs of his curled fingers across its high, smooth brow. The creature flinched, tearing its eyes off his boots (which it had been staring at so raptly, one wouldn’t ever imagine the thing was wearing a pair of its own) to look at him. And Meoraq, who could hardly believe he’d done that much, now found himself stroking his fingertips along the flat plane of the creature’s cheek. The thing’s skin dimpled even at the lightest touch, like drawing his hand across water. Meoraq followed the curve of its face down its jaw to its pointed chin, and then, as if he hadn’t done enough, moved to touch the ridiculous nub of a nose it wore above its flat mouth.

Its brow furrowed, but it let him touch. And then it raised its own hand and touched his face in return.

Meoraq stiffened and withdrew his hand as a fist, fighting the urge to knock the creature back into the brambles only with the aid of many long years’ training. A Sheulek is the master of his impulses, always.

Truth, but then, no man may freely touch a Sheulek. If Meoraq sought just cause to cut his blades across the soft throat offered to him, there it was.

Meoraq did nothing. He stood, tense and oversensitive to the slight feel of weight and warmth as the creature rubbed its fingerpads along his snout, up to his brow-ridges and right to the base of his first spine (he felt it twitch, not slapping flatter to his skull but actually relaxing outward, pressing into the creature’s touch), before slipping down over the side of his face toward his neck.

That was too much. Meoraq swiftly stepped back, catching the creature by the wrist before it could touch the sensitive scales over his throat. He should have pushed it away; he should have, but instead he turned its hand over. His thumb moved, tracing a circle against its palm. He looked up and saw its eyes fixed on his hand and its own, joined.

Joined.

A bolt of something hot and bright and not as deeply unpleasant as it probably ought to be struck Meoraq right in the soul. He released the creature and took a step back for good measure.

“I know Your ways are many and mysterious,” said Meoraq to Sheul, his heart racing, “but that cannot be what You intended.”

Sheul gave him no answer.

But the creature did.

It spoke, waggling its mouthparts to make its sounds. Then it waited, watching him, and said the same sounds again, this time patting itself on the chest. Mmbr. Mmbrrrbrs.

It had a name.

Meoraq recoiled, but the creature was adamant. It came a half-step closer, canting its head to an angle Meoraq could not help but see as intrigued and tinged with humor, saying its sounds over again, but with such impossible variation that he could not begin to imitate them.

Instead, and not without a faint sense of surrender, he gave his chest a half-hearted knock and said his own name in return. Not the whole thing, of course. He may or may not be killing the creature later; he wasn’t getting too informal with it now. “Uyane Meoraq.”

The creature’s mouthparts flattened and opened around jaws tightly clenched, exposing its teeth, which were small and white and largely blunt, and which filled its mouth with no space at all between them. Yet it wasn’t snapping or growling or anything beast-like.

He thought it was smiling.

“Uyane Meoraq,” it said, or rather, those were the sounds it chewed up and regurgitated in ways that rendered the name itself only just discernible and deeply insulting. Oo’yanee, with no effort at all made to match the honorifics in pitch or tone. No, it was just Oo’yanee, meaningless sound, and Mee’orrak, which was actually worse because the creature put all the stress on the first syllable and bit off the rest in a such a way that it came uncomfortably close to making his name a derivative of male genitalia. He hadn’t heard his name spoken quite that way since he’d been twelve.

“Meoraq,” he said clearly, and knocked his chest again.

“Mee’orrak,” it babbled back. This time, it put the stress on the last syllable.

He tried a third time, leaning forward to put his eyes on a level with its own, as if his stare alone could help the fool thing understand him: “Meoraq.”

“Mee’orrak!”

It had to be trying to mangle his name. How else could it manage to such a spectacular degree?

It was knocking its own chest again: “Mmbr! Thtzmi. Ef’uqantok yu’af t’bi’ablt’sa minam. Mmbrrr!”

“I do not mark,” said Meoraq, openly showing the thing his confusion with the flexing of his spines, even though he had no reason to think the spineless creature would know the gesture’s meaning. “Do you mark me at all? Eh? Do you know speech?”

“Mbr. Imambr! Dam’mt donjst’sterritmi sa’a somthn! Mmbrr!”

“Gtdon!”

Meoraq recoiled for a second time, looking past Mmbr to the second creature who had come boldly across the prairie without him noticing. This creature also had a stick, which it held as if it were nerving itself up to point it at someone and just hadn’t decided yet whether it should be Meoraq or Mmbr.

“Gtdon,” it said again, waving one arm. “Imgnna killit.”

“R’rufukkn ntz?” Mmbr demanded and after that, the words between them were too many and too heated to sort out.

Meoraq’s eyes darted from one to the other, but otherwise he did not move. He knew that he could kill two creatures as easily as one—for that matter, he knew that he could kill all of them, especially now that he had seen the way the creatures hunted—but something stayed his hand, something more than he could fathom. Sheul spoke into his heart…but like Mmbr’s words, it was sound without meaning. He knew only that his fate was tied to them.

The creatures were still barking at each other, neither one bending its neck to the other, and eventually the second creature abandoned words entirely. It shoved Mmbr aside, still barking, and raised its spear—not pointing it, but only wanting to make sure Meoraq saw it.

So Meoraq let him know he’d seen it by plucking it out of the creature’s pink little hand and snapping it over his knee. The creature let out a shrill sort of shout and leapt back, tangling its boots in the same thorns that had caught Mmbr, and fell over.

“Wut’thfuk,” said Mmbr, raising its arms to heaven and dropping them with a slap to its sides. “Skt wut’thfukz rong wth’u?”

The second creature pointed a shaking hand at Meoraq. “Tht’theng trid t’kilmi!”

Mmbr snorted. It was a perfectly recognizable sound, so much so that Meoraq had to look around and see the humor in its eyes for himself. And it was there, by Sheul, of a contemptuous sort, but there.

“F’thatwertru uudbi’ded,” said Mmbr. It looked up at Meoraq and its mouthparts curled, grotesquely pliant. It put its hand on his arm and took a step backwards, into the prairie. “Cm’n Meoraq. Donlzzn to’m. Eezadik.”

It wanted him to follow it, he realized.

And out of nowhere, for no reason whatsoever, thought, ‘She. She wants me to follow her.’

He looked from one creature to the other, stunned and not a little disgusted, and saw that Mmbr’s face indeed had more delicate features and although its clothes obscured much, its body as a whole was both smaller and rounder. Its chest in particular was as full as a milking mother’s, which it could very well be.

‘So then,’ he told himself brusquely. ‘It’s female. What of it?’

Her hand upon his arm felt warmer.

She grimaced at him, then turned around and started walking, picking her way back through the brambles past her sullen companion, trusting Meoraq to follow.