Текст книги "The Last Hour of Gann"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

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Текущая страница: 66 (всего у книги 80 страниц)

“Perhaps you will stop again on your return,” she said hopefully. “I could have more garments set aside and even have them altered for a better—oh! Oh, we could order a tailor in! Jaza!” She clasped her hands and sent a wide-eyed stare at her husband, her short spines quivering at their highest point.

He went back to looking at the bells, the coward.

“I haven’t had a gowning party since my little Semrrqi was a child,” the woman told Meoraq.

“She was twenty-two,” Lord Uyane remarked, scratching at the top frame of the bell-house and examining his fingertip.

“And a child.”

“The gown in question was for the wedding feast.”

“It was deep red all over,” the woman sighed. “With a white underdress and blackweave girdle and sleeves, all gilt with gold, and a hood to match. It took all day to make and we sat by the window for hours and ate little blue cakes.” She was quiet for a moment, her gaze far-off even as it rested on the crownet in her hands. “They were horrible cakes,” she said at last, dreamily. “I should very much like to have a gowning party again.”

“Wife,” Lord Uyane murmured again, just as indulgently as he had before.

“It isn’t the same when it’s just for me!” she insisted, then gave Meoraq an imploring stare. “Won’t you come to stay on your return, sir?”

“We may,” Meoraq said, because he could see no other way out of this house within the hour save to appear to consider. And knowing that Amber may indeed be amenable to a night or three out of the wildlands, he grudgingly added, “She will not be what you expect.”

“Oh yes, someone told me she didn’t have a proper face,” she said, waving one hand dismissively. At a sharp glance from her husband, she vaguely added, “I don’t recall who. Certainly none of the servants of this House would ever engage in gossip, but one…one hears things, you know. Through the wind-ways. One hears such dreadful gossip through the wind-ways. They let anyone at all wander out in the streets.”

Lord Uyane grunted and glared at her while she packed Amber’s things fastidiously away again and pretended not to notice.

“We may stop in,” Meoraq said, and this time, he meant it. “But now I will demand the gates open to me.”

“I have a carriage to take you as far as the Prophet’s Gate,” Lord Uyane said, opening the inner doors himself. “I’ll make you the offer of my table before you go, but I know you’ll refuse so I put a hot bit of something in your pack, there.”

Meoraq acknowledged this with a grunt, taking his pack and the second, holding Amber’s things. “Thank you.”

“Never heard thanks from a Sheulek before,” Uyane remarked, nodding at the watchmen outside who ran ahead to open the gates. “I’ll tell you something, son, which you’d find out on your own soon enough anyway. Women are like handfuls of sand. They all rub up under your scales now and then, but the finest ones do put a polish on a man. That’s far enough,” he said once they’d reached the other gate, and to the watchmen posted there—one of them, none other than Onahi—he brusquely added, “Leave us.”

Meoraq waited restlessly by the gate as the reception courtyard was cleared. Lord Uyane shut the inner doors, held his open hand on the latchplate a moment more, then turned around and faced him.

“I don’t listen at wind-ways,” he said. “I went to the governor’s seat and asked my questions there. Am I to understand that your woman is one of these…humans?”

“Yes.”

Uyane grunted and rubbed at his throat, inspecting the lamp that hung over Meoraq’s shoulder. “I saw a lot of things in my striding years that no other man would believe, and I think that may be the only reason I can believe what they told me you said about the creatures you brought with you out of Praxas. And it is speaking to you as the Sheulek I was that I ask you now to tell me His truth.” Uyane looked directly at him and leaned close. “If you do not, I will judge you for it.”

“I hear you,” Meoraq said mildly.

Uyane sent a swift, brooding glance over his shoulder at the sealed doors of his House…and above it at the vented wind-way. He took Meoraq by the shoulder, moved him right up against the gate and leaned in so close it put Meoraq uncomfortably in mind of humans kissing. In a low voice, low enough that a man could not overhear it if he were hanging out the nearest wind-way by his ankles, Uyane calmly said, “Are there others?”

It was not the question he expected. With the word ‘creatures’ spoken and the city of Praxas named, Meoraq had been preparing himself to make a defense of the humans as a true race of people and as children of Sheul, not this.

“There are a few,” he said, shrugging. “I’ll not call them untroublesome, but I know them and they are, for the moment, grateful so I can keep them easily in hand.”

“You do not mark me. You told the tribunal that these creatures came on a ship from another land. You may be able to keep your handful penned up and well-behaved all the rest of their lives, but I ask again, will there be more?”

“They didn’t intend to come here. That was Sheul’s will and if it is His will, there will be other ships.”

The steward of Uyane-Chalh uttered a caustic laugh and leaned back. “You’d best pray there are not, son. By your account, there are twelve of these things, these humans, and still the tribunal set three Sheulteb against you. If there were a thousand—ha! If there were even only fifty, you would see no end to battle, and while our Father moved in you in the arena, I do believe the tribunal’s men would be putting their blades in human necks just as fast as they could.”

“You don’t believe this.”

“Don’t I, eh?” Uyane eyed him, thinly smiling. “When even the true and natural children of Sheul are capable of such evil as you and I have seen, you can’t present the world with a real, breathing monster and expect it to be embraced.”

“They are people.”

“They may well be, but with no face, no scales, fur in thatches all over and Gann alone knows what else, they are monstrous people.” Uyane looked at him, head canted but spines all the way forward. “And you married one. Why?”

“I had to,” Meoraq said.

Lord Uyane snorted. “There had to be other ways to prove these things were children of Sheul. You’re a young man. You have the fame of your bloodline, the favor of God and the face of your father. Why bind yourself to a…a creature?”

“I had to,” Meoraq said again. “We were married before I even met her. We were married before I was ever born.”

Uyane took the tilt out of his stare and leaned back a little. The sense of judgment was again very strong, stronger even than it had been in the arena.

At the end of it, Uyane reached out and pressed his palm to Meoraq’s chest. Meoraq returned the touch. Their hearts came into rhythm.

“You’re a bit of a fool, but I’m proud to call you kin,” said Uyane, dropping his arm. “Bring her by, son. My Nraqi will probably chatter a hole in her scale-less head, but love her all the same. She hasn’t had anyone to coddle over in eight years. So.” He opened the gate and stood aside. The carriage was just without, two masked bulls harnessed and pecking at the street, the young boy who drove them waiting by the open door. “Go in the sight of Sheul and serve him well.”

“I release you, steward. Await my return and be ready to receive my wife.”

“It won’t be this easy when it’s your own House,” Uyane called as Meoraq boarded. “I hope you know that.”

“Then our Father has prepared me well,” Meoraq replied as the carriage lurched forward. “Nothing is ever easy with that woman, but the worst is behind us now.”

Rash words, but perhaps he could be forgiven for them. He was Sheulek. Not a prophet.

4

It was harder than she thought it would be, being left behind. Even at the worst of times, before they’d ever been physical, Meoraq had been an anchor to a sense of stability she found nowhere else on this world. Without him, weird noises in the night belonged to creatures without names and any plant she saw might be poisonous. Suddenly, Amber was lost again.

She wished Meoraq would get back or at least that she had some idea of when to expect him. She didn’t even have anything to do while she waited. Oh, there were always fires to tend and water to carry, but it still left her with a lot of time to sit with Nicci and pretend she didn’t care what Scott was muttering about on his side of the fire.

She let him talk. Not everyone was in his corner, but she was still outnumbered and Meoraq wasn’t here to scare them off. Basic mathematics, as Crandall would say. One loud-mouthed dick plus five or six true believers minus one badass lizardman equaled a very quiet Amber Bierce. She made some of Meoraq’s tea whenever anyone asked. She let them help themselves to the meat that was supposed to last until he got back. She shared everything except Meoraq’s tent and his sword, and because they were so obviously his, no one but Scott even asked.

Too cold, not enough tents, Scott passing out the food. It was all the same old shit on a smaller scale, with the added fun of Praxas perched on the horizon like a tombstone and the threat of raiders in every shadow at night. And just to put the frosting on the shit-cake, Amber didn’t feel well—tired and oddly disoriented, as if she were running a low fever, heavy and achy and oh yes, nauseous.

She couldn’t be sick and she refused to be pregnant, but she felt like shit all the same. It was purely psychological. She knew that. She’d undergone a traumatic event—hell, a whole chain of traumatic events—and the only thing she was suffering from was survivor’s shock. She’d suck it up, life would go on, and everyone would know Amber Bierce was the tough one.

So tough she threw up almost every morning. So tough she cried nearly every night after Meoraq didn’t come back. So tough she hid in Meoraq’s tent whenever Scott started in with one of his speeches and sometimes fell asleep, taking naps in the middle of the day like an old lady.

Like now.

Amber woke up, thought about it for several minutes, and decided she had successfully slept away the vague nausea that had plagued her all morning only to replace it with a headache. She was probably dehydrated. As soon as she’d dredged up the energy, she’d go out there and make tea. Maybe even brew the stuff Meoraq called nai, just because he liked it, even though Amber herself thought it tasted exactly like burnt roots in a cup. And if today was the day he came back and he found a hot cup of nai waiting for him…

“Please come home,” she whispered. “Please.”

No answer, not even from her mother’s drunk ghost.

She got up, crawling stiffly out of the tent into the stark grey light of another alien afternoon. The first thing she noticed, when she had it in her to notice anything, was the quiet. Nicci sat by the fire, drawing in the ashes with the blackened end of a stick. Crandall was stretched out nearby, one arm crooked over his eyes. Apart from them, the camp was clearly empty.

This was not alarming, not at first. Amber hadn’t been awake long enough to feel very strongly about anything, except maybe how much she wanted Meoraq back.

“Where is everyone?” she mumbled, trying to rub some life into her body face-first.

“Out,” Nicci replied.

“How helpful. Where’d they go? We’re really not supposed to wander around.”

“Doesn’t bother you when you want to sneak off for a skinny-dip in the middle of the night,” Crandall remarked without raising his arm.

Irritation woke her up a little more. “I forgot my swimsuit. And how the hell would you know what I was doing last night? Were you spying on me?”

“I was taking a piss when you barged in and got naked. So technically, you were the rude one.”

“Did you watch, you perv?”

“And whacked off,” he agreed, raising his arm to give her a friendly leer. “Twice. You look pretty good, you know. In spite of…all that.”

Amber managed not to say anything for maybe a whole three seconds. Then, gritting her teeth in self-disgust, she said, “In spite of what?”

He shrugged and dropped his arm over his eyes again. “It ain’t an easy life, that’s all I’m saying. You’re a bit banged up.”

She looked away.

“But you still look pretty damn good to me. Toned, you know? I think muscles can look hot on a chick if she doesn’t overdo it. You’re walking that line, but you’re walking it well.”

“You have no idea how many nights I lay awake worrying about that.”

“Don’t be a bitch, Bierce. I’m trying to pay you a compliment. Like, you’ve always had pretty good tits, but now they really stand out. Best tits on the planet.”

“Fuck you,” said Nicci, scratching out her drawing and beginning a new one.

“Okay, look, I don’t even care. Back to the original question: Where is everyone?”

“Out,” said Nicci again.

“They went hunting. I’m protecting the women,” Crandall added.

“Hunting?” Amber looked over at the mound of kipwe meat Meoraq had left them, but it didn’t appear to have gone anywhere. “What for? And with what?” she asked, ducking back into the tent to make sure Meoraq’s kzung was still where she’d left it. It wasn’t.

“That son of a bitch!” she exploded, and burst back out.

“Don’t get your panties in a knot. He’ll bring it right back.”

“What the hell does he think he’s doing? He can’t walk up and stab something!”

“Chill out, would you? He made spears too.” Crandall pointed without stirring himself, and sure enough, there was a spear stabbed ingloriously into the center of a pile of shavings over by the rock where Scott held court.

Amber went over and pulled it out. It was light in her hand, way too light. “Out of this?”

“Oh let it go, Bierce,” sighed Crandall, at last sitting up. “He’s bored, that’s all. Let him break a couple sticks and run off some steam so people see him being all commanding and forget what he looked like sitting naked in a cage.”

Amber knocked the spear against the ground a few times, not trying to break it, but unable to help hearing the dull sound of dead, brittle wood. She shook her head and turned on Crandall. “How long do we wait?” she demanded.

“He’ll be back. I’m sure he hasn’t gone far. He’s not a complete idiot.”

“Yes, he is! Damn it, does someone have to die before it’s enough to stop him? Is that what it’s going to take?”

“People already have died,” remarked Nicci, utterly absorbed in her drawings. “But they still follow him.”

“If they find anything out there, it’s going to go bad. And honestly, the very best scenario is them getting gored to death by an animal because the most likely thing to bump into is a raider or someone from Praxas. I had a spear,” Amber said furiously. “I had a damned good spear and I knew how to use it and they took me like that.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to them,” said Crandall, but he wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Because everything’s gone so well up till now,” murmured Nicci.

Crandall heaved a sigh and got to his feet. “If you’re going to freak out, let’s just go find them. But I want it on record that you’re acting like a—”

And then, reedy as a birdcall behind the ever-present wind, the scream.

Amber froze. After all that tough talk, after all that stomping around and swearing and what Scott would surely call her Bierce-knows-best bullshit, Amber froze. It was Crandall who jumped up, Crandall who started running, and if that was all he’d done, things might have gone very differently, but Crandall was there to ‘protect the women’ and so his parting words as he bolted around the leather wall were, “Stay here.”

What toughness failed to provoke, defiance finally did: Clutching the spear, she ran after him, but Crandall ran ahead of her the whole way and he’d been in a cage all winter so what did that say? She’d recognized that it was a human scream, a man’s scream, even if she couldn’t tell who’d made it. The fact that it was not repeated only made things worse. Something had found them. Something had maybe taken them. And was she really going to let herself be taken too? For Scott?

‘Just go back,’ Bo Peep suggested. ‘Nicci needs you, right? Nicci always needs you. You can say it was for Nicci while you hide.’

Shame became anger and anger, as it so often did, became strength. “God damn it,” she snarled, running faster, passing Crandall at last. It became her mantra: “God damn it, God damn it, God fucking damn it!”

She reached the bottom of a rocky hill just as the first Manifestors spilled over the top. They didn’t see her, didn’t see each other, didn’t see the trees. When two of them inevitably collided and went sprawling, the others trampled right over them. It was Dag, badly out of breath, who lurched over to help them up.

“Run!” he shouted. Gasped, really. “It’s coming!”

Eric appeared, pulling Scott along with him. “I think we lost it,” Scott was babbling, hugging onto Meoraq’s sword with both hands. His eyes were eating up his face. “I really think we did. I don’t think it’s still—hey! That’s mine!”

Amber had snatched the kzung out of his grip and now shook it at him. “It’s not yours, it’s Meoraq’s! And if he caught you with it, he’d kill you!” But the rest of that promising fight was forgotten when the kipwe came crashing through the trees.

It was a big one, a male in its prime, and it was breathing almost as hard as Dag after its run. There were a few broken spears still stuck in its side, quivering along with the rest of its quills as it raked a paw over the ground, tearing up roots and winter-hard earth with ridiculous ease. It stared them down and in its eyes, she could see the ponderous weight of its animal thought: People running was one thing. People standing, challenging…that was something else.

Amber’s instinct was to run, but she made herself stand her ground. This wasn’t a hungry predator, just a big, mean animal that handled being startled and stabbed at badly. It was dangerous, yes; it would chase whatever ran and kill whatever it could, but it wouldn’t die trying. If the odds weren’t in its favor, it would go.

“Get up,” said Amber, moving closer to Dag and the Manifestors. “Everybody, come together. Don’t r—”

“Run!” Scott shouted and the two Manifestors with Dag immediately bolted for camp.

The kipwe roared and charged them.

There wasn’t time to think about it and if there had been time, she’d have only thought what a stupid thing she was about to do. She dropped the useless spear and ran to meet it, screaming in perfectly mingled fear and frustration as she swung the heavy kzung and hit the kipwe square in the throat. Her moment of surprised triumph was damned short; the blade skated harmlessly over the creature’s quills and drove itself in somewhere in the chest. Suddenly the hilt in her hands was shoving back at her. Amber flew back, hit the ground, caught a glimpse of half a kzung with two tons of kipwe behind it coming right at her, and rolled. The hilt hit the ground where she’d been and the rest of the blade vanished into the beast’s body. The kipwe bellowed, backed up, then saw her on the ground. Amber lunged out to grab the spear, which she knew damned well was nothing but a pointed piece of dead wood. She scrambled up, turned around right as the kipwe stood up on its hind legs, and stabbed as it swung.

She missed its eye, missed its nose, even missed the gaping open target of its mouth, but the stick went in somewhere. She felt it puncture flesh in the split-second before its paw connected with her side. There was no sense of flying, only the second, immediate-seeming impact as she hit the ground and slid across it. Damp earth sluiced up over her arms and into her face, clogging her nose, filling her mouth with the taste of the grave she wouldn’t even get. She rolled over, spitting and swiping at herself with one hand and digging frantically for another weapon—a stick, a rock, one of the Ancients’ plasma cannons, anything!—before climbing to her feet again. She had nothing but her bare hands, but she ran at it again, because it was just a kipwe for God’s sake, and maybe it would turn around if she charged it, maybe it would run.

The kipwe reared again…then listed, swatted drunkenly at its face. It bellowed, shook its head hard, grunted, and then toppled over.

Amber slowed her run to a stagger and then to a stop. The beast stayed down. It did not appear to be breathing. She stared at it for a while, still breathing hard, alert enough that she knew she was winded, not so much that she knew she was hurt, and finally took the last three steps and gave it a cautious kick.

It did not move.

“No way I killed it,” she said to herself in a remarkably calm and conversational tone.

The kipwe did not reply. It was very dead.

Amber started to bend over for a better look, but pain washed out from her side enough to prevent that. She clapped a hand over the hurt (wet hurt, not a great indicator of things to come) and knelt instead, prodding at the beast’s body.

She found fragments of her spear imbedded harmlessly in its cheek, beneath the spiky tuft of its hilarious muttonchops where it had done no good at all. It took a little longer to find the kzung, buried to its hilt in the thick, prickly quills. Getting it out meant tugging, shaking, and finally planting a foot on its head and heaving back in spite of the hell in her side. The kipwe’s wound wheezed at her, blowing a foul slip of air in her face with a wet, farting sound. Swimmer’s air, they called that. She’d stabbed the kipwe through the lung.

And it had still taken it that long to die.

“Jesus,” said Crandall behind her.

She turned around, holding Meoraq’s sword limply in one hand, trying to think of what to do next. People saved, check. Dead kipwe, double check. Moving on.

“I’m going to need your help cutting it up,” she announced. “There’s no reason it should go to waste, you know? Oh. And I may have a few splinters.” She held a hand up and sure enough, there were half a dozen kipwe quills sticking out of her arm at various points. “So if you think you can grow up just long enough to take them out without masturbating all over me…”

The rest of that bitchy comment lost itself in Crandall’s silence. He was still staring, not at the kipwe, but at her.

Amber looked down, past another half-dozen broken quills all down her side to her left hip. “Goodness, that’s a lot of blood,” she remarked, watching it stream down over her thigh.

And then the world turned white.

* * *

She came around slowly, not to the pain, which was tremendous, but to the relatively innocuous sound of laughter. She’d been tucked beneath a blanket, which was hot and scratchy and unbelievably heavy on her right side, where the pain lived. Her skin felt far too tight over the swollen, throbbing hell of her side, threatening to split whatever bandage had been tied over her. It hurt to breathe, it hurt not to breathe, and she was reasonably certain it would hurt to open her eyes, so she just lay there and concentrated on not embarrassing herself with a lot of loud moaning. The laughter came and went, curiously high-pitched for a camp mostly filled with men…and slightly crazed.