Текст книги "Destroyer "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

“We shall find them. No fault to you. Be warned: we may come back very soon, or we may come back much later, at any hour, in company with Taibeni. Or maybe even Taibeni without us. That is the young woman’s mission, under your lord’s seal. They will be allies.”

“Most of all watch out for yourself, nadi,” Banichi said. “There has been far too much com traffic.”

“We have asked the house to send out reinforcement. They are sending it.”

“Good,” Banichi said, and with a pop of the quirt set the leader in motion, which put all of them to a traveling pace uphill beyond the gate.

Tracks of the girl and the escort were plain on the road, tracks that by now involved five mechieti—and now their own mechieti, catching the notion of what they were tracking, entered hunting-mode, the leader lowering his snaky neck to snuff above the ground as they went. It was an unsettling move at a run. Bren’s mechieti followed suit, an instant in which he feared the beast would take a tumble under him. He knew exactly what it was doing, and dared not jerk the rein.

Up came the head with a rude snort and a lurch forward of the beast’s own accord, and it loped ahead, coming nearly stride for stride with Banichi’s beast, which drew a surly head-toss… mechieti were not averse to hunting others of their kind, with malice aforethought, and this sudden taking of a scent was not a happy situation, not safe, and not good for the ones being tracked.

And, my God, Bren thought, recalling where they had borrowed these creatures… these were hunters of more than game. Mechieti were stubborn creatures, and these with uncapped tusks, that they had gotten from Taiben, from the rangers peculiarly charged with Tabini’s security—what would this band do, he wondered, when they overtook their Atageini-bred quarry?

“One fears they are hunting,” he said to Banichi.

“That they are, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, “and they will need a hard hand once we come in range.”

Last night’s rain had left a lingering moisture in the grass, particularly on the shaded side of hills, where the track showed clear even to human eyes. Mechieti snatched mouthfuls of grass on the run, rocked along at that rolling gait they could adopt on the hunt, trailing grassy bits. They clumped up together, the herd-leader foremost, along with the young female

Bren rode, and the unridden retired matriarch who had been their trouble back at the stables, all bunched in the lead. Low brush stood not a chance where the herd wanted to pass. When the leader moved, hell itself could not stop the rest… willingly headed, Bren began to add it up from the mechieti’s point of view, for their own territory, for Taiben itself, now on the trail of the others that their dim mechieti brains might reasonably think of as interlopers in that territory.

Trouble, he had no doubt. Trouble, and Lord Tatiseigi’s prize stock, those likely with tusks capped… and what can I do to hold this creature?

Banichi reined back as they reached a trampled spot, a space where a handful of mechieti had waited and milled about, grass flattened. Algini pointed to the side, and sure enough, even to a less skilled eye, a small track came in there, a line coming across the hill as one track, then diverging into two, and coming right up on their location.

“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 mechieti back,” Jago said.

Their own mechieti, 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 mechieti’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 mechieti 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 mechieti 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 mechieti.

Only other mechieti 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 mechieti 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 mechieti’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 mechieti’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 mechieti 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 mechieti ran in the lead, one on each side of her, and suddenly they veered, plunged into a ravine. Mechieti stood in the dusk ahead of them, whose mechieti or how situated he had no time to reckon. The mechieti 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 mechieti 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 mechieti 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 mechieti and driven off animals they needed. But his mechieti 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 mechieti 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 mechieti 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 mechieti 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 mechieti 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 mechieti 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 mechieti, silhouettes against the dark, he because he was helpless afoot, endangered by the mechieti 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 mechieti’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 mechieti 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 mechieti’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 mechieti 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 mechieti 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 mechieti 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 mechieti’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.”

Mechieti 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 mechieti 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 myself,” 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 mechieti 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.

“Consult. Consult Banichi and Cenedi, young sir. Consult me. If your young staff had reason for misgivings about the mission, you should have told us, not gone off, stealing mechieti, lying to the stable staff—”

“Grandmother would never have let me go.”

“And do you think there was no reason for us to refuse such a request, nadi? And was there an excuse for lying to us?”

“When asking does no good!”

“Except that Antaro is Taibeni and might have accomplished this mission with a certain finesse which one does not see evident in our current circumstance, young sir.”

“Except if Antaro was ambushed. And she was. And the escort would never listen to her opinions, or take her as important. And Cenedi thinks there are spies in the house. If I tell Banichi, Banichi tells you, you tell grandmother, grandmother tells Lord Tatiseigi and he tells his staff, and then the Kadigidi know everything you do, nandi. Maybe they can overhear the com units, but maybe, too, someone just told them.”

It was a very sharp young wit, and a certain command of language. One saw his father.

“That may be, young sir, but there are always ways to consult in secret.”

“No one uses them with me! No one takes us seriously! The Atageini would not listen even to me when I said we should keep going. They said we would sleep til dawn and I said they were fools! Now the Kadigidi are at the house attacking my grandmother, and it will be another day before we can even get to Taiben, let alone back again!”

“You are certainly right in that,” he had to admit. “But mechieti are not machines. They have to rest, and sooner or later, we will have to.”

“One does regret very much that the guards are dead,” Cajeiri said after a moment—a boy who had just shot at a man, killed him, and seen two decent men go down protecting him… never mind they had not done wisely.

“As one should always regret such an event,” Bren said, and let it go. The boy had passed from deep shock to a reasonable, shaken outrage at the situation. Only eight. Only eight, with physical strength exceeding an adult human’s and with two followers who had served only as a slight anchor on his high and wide decisions—an especially slight restraint in an Atageini hall whose lord radiated detestation of his Taibeni escort, and Ilisidi herself had maneuvered for advantage with that very powerful lord’s opinions.

Had that been Cajeiri’s inner conclusion as to why Ilisidi had sent Antaro away from him?

Not an accurate assessment of his great-grandmother, if that was the case, and Tatiseigi himself knew his old feuds with the Taibeni counted for nothing with Ilisidi. But he kept his mouth shut on further argument with the boy on that score.

“Well put, with the boy, Bren-ji,” Jago found the opportunity to say when they did dismount and take a breather. They were shifting saddles about, his bodyguard trading their gear to others of the herd, except only the herd leader, who constantly carried, at least, Jago’s lighter weight. She slid down to stretch her legs, keeping the herd leader at very short rein.

“One never knows, Jago-ji, what to say to him.”

“Someone should listen to these young people,” Jago said, uncommon criticism of, Bren thought, the dowager’s dealings with her grandson. “Tano has tried.”

“How should I advise them?”

“Exactly as you have.”

“I gave them no advice at all, nadi.”

“You listened to him as if he were a man, Bren-ji. That, in itself, makes a point.”

It did, perhaps. Perhaps he had done that. His acquaintance with children in his whole adult life had been, precisely, Cajeiri, whose developing mind was rapidly turning in unpredictable directions, and he worried. The boy had killed—a child who had been very far from his own kind, in a situation rife with violence, a child far too exposed to human culture, a child who, given present circumstances, might soon be aiji over three quarters of the world, and who had not been on his own planet long enough to know instinctively which was east and which was west.

“I hardly know that a human has any business at all advising him. He may have read far too many of our books.”

“He learned from the kyo as well, Bren-ji.”

Odd to think that, in instincts if not experience, he might be as alien to the boy’s hardwiring as were the kyo. Scary, to think that. They at least had shared a planet.

“Bren-ji.” Tano walked up in the dark and pressed a paper-wrapped object into his hand, one of those concentrate bars they had gotten from the escort, as it proved. He realized he had not eaten since breakfast, and the slight definition he began to see in figures and shapes advised him that dawn was not far off, a new day coming.

They had gone straight through till morning. A morning in which, if the defense of Tirnamardi had failed, every power in the world he knew might have changed, and everything he relied on might have gone down in defeat.

In that cheerful thought, he wasn’t sure he could get the food down, but he soberly unwrapped it and tried, a mostly dry mouthful. For the mechieti’s sake, they had stopped by a stream—perhaps the same one they had crossed before. He walked over past the herd, to drink upstream of the mechieti’s wading and drinking.

He squatted down on the soft margin, cupped up water in his hands.

Mechieti moved, heads lifting. He froze, looked up, and saw a man standing on the slight rise across the brook.

He let fall the water, thrust his hand into his pocket and settled his hand around the pistol grip. But a man bent on mischief would have lain flat on that rise and fired at them. It hardly seemed an attack.

“Papa!” Antaro exclaimed, a clear high voice in the night. But commendably from cover.

“Taro-ji.” From the figure that was, indisputably, Deiso. “Is the dowager here?”

“No, nadi,” Banichi said, from their side of the brook, and stepping into the clear. “But the paidhi’s guard is.”

“Banichi-nadi. We saw the fire in the east. Is that my son?”

“Papa,” Jegari said from somewhere beyond the wall of alert mechieti. “It is. With nand’ Cajeiri and the paidhi-aiji.”

“Your daughter was sent to find nand’ Keimi,” Banichi said, “with a message from the dowager. The fire in the dark is likely a Kadigidi attack on Tirnamardi.”

“Kadigidi Assassins killed the men with us,” Antaro said. “And the paidhi and his guard came. And I have the message, papa, with Lord Tatiseigi’s seal and the dowager’s both. They need help.”

“My great-grandmother,” Cajeiri said in a clear, young voice that carried through the dark, “asked me to write the letter. And great-uncle signed it and put his seal on it with hers. He asks politely.”

A small space of silence.

“One knew there would be inconvenient entanglements,” Deiso said, “when the aiji took an Atageini consort.”

“My mother!” Cajeiri declared in his father’s tone. “And you are my cousin, once removed!”

“That I am,” Deiso said.

“I will go back and rescue my great-grandmother,” Cajeiri said. “And we will go back.” That familiar we, that we-myself-and-my-house—including, now, the man’s own son and daughter. “Come with us, nandi.”

God. It was his father, top to bottom.

“The heir should not go back,” Deiso said. “These young people should none of them go into a firefight.”

“And where will the mechieti go?” Cajeiri asked, standing his ground. “I am not a good rider, nandiin. I am sure he would break away and go with you.”

“He is a Taiben mechieti,” Jago said, “and going to his home range. Failing that, the young gentleman can safely walk to Taiben.”

“No,” Cajeiri said flatly. “We shall go with you, Jago-nadi. We will go back to my great-grandmother, and nand’ Deiso will bring his people to rescue her and my great-uncle, and we cannot stand here wasting time and arguing the way the Atageini did!”

“Time,” Banichi said, “is already running against us. Transmissions have fallen silent.”

Had there been any? Banichi had not said.

“An appeal from the aiji-dowager,” Deiso said, and gave a warbling whistle, which brought a number of others over the rise in the gray hint of a dawn. “We have mechieti.”

None were in evidence at the moment. The rangers had made a silent, careful approach. Very many things had turned up in their path that the paidhi’s human ears had never caught. He felt a little lost, and exhausted, and they seemed to be losing the argument with Cajeiri. He didn’t like that aspect of things, didn’t know whether he could gain anything at all by objecting, or whether the boy would at all regard a protest from him.

“There are nine of us,” Deiso said. “By no means all the force we can raise. Nand’ Cajeiri, here is one job well suited to young people. Get to a relay and advise Keimi we need help, and that we need it soon.”

“Nandi,” Cajeiri protested.

“Young sir,” Banichi said, “do it. This is necessary.”

“Yes,” Cajeiri said. “But when they come, we are coming with them!”

“As may be,” Deiso conceded, and walked among them, touching his son and his daughter, a brief contact, a bow from the young people, a goodbye. “You know the situation. Nand’ Keimi will ask your authority. Say the wind has shifted. Remember it. Go.”