Текст книги "Forty Thousand in Gehenna"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

Din said nothing, but bowed his head and stood aside for her to pass.

“Din–are you all right?” she asked.

Notes, coded journal Dr. E. McGee

I talked with Din today. I don’t think he understood. He’s seven. He’s wiry, all elbows; you want to give his face a washing and comb his hair; and then you look into his eyes and you wouldn’t dare. He’s a boy that’s thinking hard right now, how to stay alive. That’s the way it is. He’s not mature, not in all ways. He’s growing and awkward and he took a stone when I was trying to talk with him and threw it. Like a child. He cried, trying not to let me see.

I don’t want to die. That’s what that meant. He just threw the stone and it bounced off the wall and hit me. I never let on it did. I just stared at him the way you have to do with that boy to let him know he doesn’t impress you; and he just broke into tears then and turned his face out of the light.

“Jin scare you?” I asked.

“No,” he said, and sniffed and wiped his eyes and tried to pretend he hadn’t ever cried, all sullen and arrogant. “Not scared.”

“Look at the sea,” I said. That puzzled him, us being inside, in the dark. “Look at the sea next time you’re out.”

“Why?” He’s a little boy, always ready to suspect someone’s playing tricks on him.

“You just do that.” I started to talk about boats, which we had talked about before. He just made that stone‑dropping move. I don’t want to talk.

“You be smart,” I said. “You want to live to be a man?”

That got his attention. So that was what he was thinking about.

“Just be smart,” I said, not knowing how to advise him, because it’s not my world; it’s his. “Your mother wants you alive, you know that? That’s why she’s got that Taem around; because what’s coming up that river is mean and it’s coming here, you know that?”

He squatted there thinking about that, and then I figured out that scene on the roof, where he defied his mother; where his little caliban took on Scar, who makes ten of him. Scared. Just scared and full of fight, this boy. Elai’s son. I tousled his hair; no one touches him much: it’s not Cloudsider way. He set his jaw and ducked, but he looked pleased as that sullen little face of his does these days. Poor boy. Your mother loves you. I do.

“I like you,” I said then. He looked pleased. If he were a caliban his crest would have settled. That kind of look. His caliban moved up and nearly knocked him off his haunches, putting its head in our way. They know where the sunlight is. The attention. I don’t know how they know, or how much they understand. “Fight,” I said, “but be smart.”

“Elai say that?” he asked.

I lied about that, but I thought she would if she were not busy; but she said I should take care of her sons for her, so I guess it was in a way the truth.

I talked to Cloud too, but that’s nothing. Cloud’s too young to know much. And Taem knows–who knows what a Weird knows, but too much for any five year old, and too different to hear anything I could say. Scar talks to him. All the grays and ariels do. Presumably that’s enough.

We’re running out of time. We have to move. I won’t take this book when we do. I’m burying it. In case.

They’ll lend me a spear to use. Dain showed me how to hold it. I’m supposed to ride–one of the free Calibans the Weirds have come up with on this side of the river, the kind that don’t let themselves belong to anyone. I’ve seen it; we’ve looked each other in the eye. It’s not particularly big. I patterned to it and it nosed my pattern but it wouldn’t give me anything back. This is not a friendly one. But it’s born to the Cloud River pattern, Dain says; and so I trust it doesn’t hate me in particular, just the idea of being beast of burden.

That’s a human thought. And then I remember that I’m sitting in a house they made, in a land they own. I’m sitting in a word of the Statement they’ve made about Cloud River, one of the folk who write in squares and angles, no less; and it’s going to go where it pleases while I’m on its back, because I can’t stop it; I can’t defend it either, not with that spear. And it knows.

xlviii

205 CR, day 97

Upper Cloud

They rested, the sun lost among the trees, and cooked what they had of supper at the hunters’ fires, mealcakes and boiled dried meat, and a bit of starchy root that grew wild. “I’m going off that stuff,” Mannin said. He sat bent over, had gotten thin–some bowel complaint. “Maybe it’s allergy.”

“Come on,” Genley said, “you’ve got to eat, man.”

“It’s the water,” Kim said. “Told you. Man’s been here long enough, letting sewage in the rivers, on the land. Mannin drinks the water–”

“Shut up,” Mannin said. He stayed bent over. His lips were clamped.

“Weak,” a hunter said, and nudged him with his elbow. This was Hes, who had had Mannin to carry, behind him on his caliban. “The Cloudsiders, they feed you to the calibans, starman.”

Mannin got up and went beyond the firelight, riverward.

“Huh,” Genley said. That was nothing unusual, not the last two days. He ate his meal, watched the hunters about the fire. It was a man’s community, this. All hunters. Jin’s own, scattered wide in many camps along the streamside.

How many? he had asked of Jin. Jin had shrugged, but he had added it himself, from the number that he could see, that it was a great number: thousands upon thousands. The station would have seen them move; the station would spot the fires tonight and count them; the station could sense their presence virtually everywhere. But it would do nothing. This barbarian lord, this Caesar on the Styx, had gambled–no, not gambled: had calculated what he could do. Would take the world while the Base and the station watched. Would deal with Base and station then, himself, literal master of the world.

Poor McGee, Genley thought. Poor bastards. He made a dry grimace, swallowed down the brew. It had gone sour in the skins, taken on flavors somewhere between old leather and corruption, but it was safe. Kim was right. Boil the water. Drink from skins. Man had loosed his plagues in Gehenna. Now it went the rest of the way.

Now the weak went under, that was all.

“Mannin,” someone said. Men went off into the brush. “Hey,” Kim said, anxious, and got to his feet, “hey, let him alone.”

“He’s all right,” Genley said, and stood up. Suspicion. They were still the strangers. He pointed, waved at Kim. “Get him–get him before there’s trouble.”

“Stop them,” Kim said, hesitating this way and that, pushed aside by the hunters. His eyes were wild. “ You, you do something–”

There was laughter from the brush. A crashing of branches. Laughter and quiet then, but for breaking branches. So they brought Mannin back and set him down by the fireside.

“You,” Kim said, “you talk to them, you’ve got the means–”

“Shut up.” Genley squatted down, gave a scowling stare at the hunters, put a hand on Mannin’s shoulder. Mannin was white. Sweat glistened on his face in the firelight. He shook at Mannin. “All right?”

Mannin’s teeth were chattering. He sat hunched over, shook his head.

“Get the skin,” Genley said.

“I’m not your bloody servant,” Kim hissed. “You don’t give me orders.”

“ Get the skin. You take care of him, you bloody take care of him, hear me?” Jin had come; Genley saw it, gathered himself up in haste, drew a deep breath.

Jin stared at the hunter‑leader; at him, at one and the other, hands on his hips. It was not a moment for arguing. Not an audience that would appreciate it. After a moment Jin gave a nod of his, head toward the second, the smaller circle of hunters. “Genley,” he said.

Genley came aside, hands in his belt, walked easily beside Jin, silent as Jin walked, on soft hide soles, crouched down by the fireside as Jin sat, one of them, a leader with his own band, however poor it was. He had his beads, had his braids, had his knife at his side. Like the rest. Moved like them, silent as they. He had learned these things.

“This Mannin,” Jin said with displeasure.

“Sick,” Genley said. “Bad gut.”

Jin thrust out his jaw, reached out and clapped a hand on his knee. “Too much patience. All starmen have this patience?”

“Mannin’s got his uses.”

“What? What, my father?” Jin reached to the fire’s edge and broke off a bit of a cake baking on a stone. “For this bad gut, no cure. It’s his mind, Gen‑ley. It’s his mind wants to be sick. It’s fear.”

“So he’s not a hunter. He’s other things. Like Weirds.”

Jin looked up from under his brow. “So. A Weird.”

“We’re a lot of things.”

“Yes,” Jin said in that curious flat way of his, while the eyes were alive with thoughts. “So I give him to you. This Kim; this Mannin. You take care of them… Lord Gen‑ley.”

He drew in a breath, a long, slow one. Perhaps it was Jin’s humor at work. Perhaps it meant something else.

“You know weapons, Gen‑ley?”

Genley shrugged. “Starman weapons. Don’t have any. They don’t let them outside the Wire.”

Jin’s eyes lightened with interest.

Mistake. Genley looked into that gaze and knew it. “All right,” he said, “yes, they’ve got them. But the secret to it is up there. Up.”He made a motion of his eyes skyward and down again; it was not only Jin listening, it was Blue and others. It was the Tower‑lords. “First steps first, lord Jin. None before its time.”

“MaGee.”

“She’s got none.”

Jin’s lips compacted into a narrow grimace something like a smile.

“You put McGee in my keeping,” Genley said. He had worked for this, worked hard. It was close to getting, close to it, to get this concession. Save what he could. Do what he could, all rivalries aside. “You want Cloudside in your hand, hear, that woman knows what there is to know. You give her to me.”

“No.” There was no light of reason there, none at all in the look Jin turned on him. “Not that one.”

He felt a tightening of the gut. So, McGee, I tried. There was nothing more to do. No interference. Just ride out the storm. Gather pieces if there were pieces left. No place for a woman. She might get common sense at the last, run for it, get back to the Wire. It was the best to hope for now.

If Elai let her run.

205 CR, day 98

Cloud Towers

They gathered in the dawn, in the first pale light along the Cloud, and McGee clutched her spear and hurried along the shore. The leathers felt strange, like a second, unfamiliar skin at once binding and easy; she felt embarrassed by the spear, kept the head canted up out of likelihood of sticking anyone with it as calibans brushed by her carrying riders on their backs, tall, disdainful men and women who knew their business and were going to it in this dusty murk. God help me, she kept thinking over and over, God help me. What am I doing here?–as a scaly body shouldered her and its tail rasped against her leg in its passing, weight of muscle and bone enough to break a back in a halfhearted swing.

A Weird found her, among the thousands on the move, waved her arm at her. She followed through the press of moving bodies, of calibans hissing like venting steam, of claw‑footed giants and insistent grays that could as easily knock a human down, of ariels skittering in haste. She lost her guide, but the Weird waited on the shore where she had known to go, where her caliban waited, indistinct in the dusty dawn. Hers, the only one unridden, the only one which would be waiting on the shore.

It hissed at her, swung its head. Weirds calmed it with their hands. The tail swept the sand, impatient with her, with them. She tapped the leg with her spear; it dipped its shoulder, and her knees went to water. Enough of that, McGee. She planted her foot, heaved herself up and astride, caught the collar as it surged up under her and began to move, powerful steps, a creature at once out of control, never under it–the while she got the spear across to its right side, out of the way, got the kit that was slung at her shoulder settled so it stopped swinging. Scaly hide slid loosely under her thighs, over thick muscle and bony shoulders: buttocks on the shoulder‑hollow, legs about the neck, the soft place behind the collar. They’ve learned to carry humans, she thought, to protect their necks– O God, the tails, the jaws in a fight: that’s what the spear is for. Get the rider off, Dain had said, showing her how to couch it. Go for the gut of a human, the underthroat of a caliban. O God.

The movement became a streaming outward, leisurely in the dawn. The Weird was left behind. She joined other riders of other towers, of every tower mingled. There was no order. Elai was up there somewhere, far ahead. So were Taem and Paeia, Dain and his sisters–all, all the ones she knew. As for herself, she clung, desperately, as they shouldered others on their way; she moved her legs out of the way when offended calibans swung their heads and snapped.

There were days of this to face. And war. Some horrid dawn to find themselves facing other calibans, men with spears and venomed darts. How did I get into this?

But she knew. She shivered, for none of them had had breakfast and the wind blew cold. She comforted herself with the thought of days to go, of distance between themselves and the enemy.

Time to get used to it, she thought, and the itin her mind encompassed all manner of horrors. She hated being rushed; she had a compulsion to plan things: she wanted time to think, and this sudden madness of Elai’s that had brought them out of bed as if the enemy were at their door instead of far upriver–this was no way to wake, stumbling across the town in the dark, shoulder‑deep in proddish calibans… The shore, MaGee, a Weird had signed to her, in the last of torchlight. That was all.

But of course, she thought suddenly, weaving along within the press. Of course. The Patterns. It confounds the Patterns–

The Patterns could not foretell this madness of Elai’s, this sudden wild move. The news that they were coming could travel no faster than the calibans they rode, the great, long‑striding calibans; was nothing for ariel gossip, up and down the Cloud.

Elai, she thought, not without pride. Elai, you bastard. And on another level it was raw fear: This is your world, not mine. I’m going to get killed in it. She suffered a vision of battle, herself run through by some Styxside spear; or falling off, more likely, to be trampled under clawed feet, unnoticed in the moment; or meeting some even less romantic accident along the way–War. She remembered how fast old Scar could snap those jaws of his on an offending gray and shuddered in the wind. I’m going to die like that.

It was at least days remote. There was something left to see.

There was Elai up there. Friend. There was Dain. There were others that she knew.

For the Cloud, she thought. She was shocked at herself, that her blood stirred, that she came not to observe but to fight a war. For the Cloud. For Elai. For the First.

No one shouted. There were no slogans, no banners. Elai yesterday had given her a thong on which a bone ornament was tied: so, Elai had said, so you have some prettiness, MaGee.

Prettiness. She had it about her neck. For friendship’s sake.

Do they love? she had written once, naive.

xlix

205, day 107

Memo, Base Director to all staff

Orbiting survey shows the Styxside column advancing under cover of the woods headed toward the Cloud 200 km east of the Cloudside settlement. The Cloudsiders have advanced 75 km at a very leisurely pace and appear to have stopped in a place where the river offers some natural defense…

Message: Base director to Station

Negative on query regarding whereabouts of four observers. Com is inactive. We suspect the presence of observers with the columns but we are not able to confirm this without risking other personnel and possibly risking the lives of the observers themselves in the warlike movements of both groups.

Request round the clock monitoring of base environs. We are presently discovering increased caliban activity on our own perimeters, both along the riverside and in burrowing. This, combined with the sudden massive aggression we are witnessing outside, is, in the consensus of the staff, a matter of some concern.

205 CR, day 109, 0233 hours

Engineering to Base Director

We have an attempt at undermining in progress, passing the fence at marker 30.

0236 hours Base Director to Security

…Stage one defense perimeter marker 30…

0340 hours Message, Base Director to Station

The defense systems were effective at primary level in turning back the intrusion. We are maintaining round the clock surveillance. We are advising agents still in the field of this move. Since caliban violence seems generally directed toward structures and not toward individuals some staff members have suggested that those agents in open country are not likely to be the objects of aggression, and may be safer where they are than attempting to approach the base. Agents are being advised to use their own discretion in this matter but to tend at once toward high stony ground where feasible.

More extensive report will follow.

l

205 CR, day 112

Cloud River

“Calibans,” Elai said, “have tried the Base.”

“Yes,” McGee said, sitting crosslegged in their camp, among others who sat near Elai and Scar, but her brown had deserted her when she dismounted. It always did, moving off alone to the river though other calibans stayed by their riders; and she was downcast, having read what she had read in the stones this morning, the small things ariels did, copying the greater Patterns current in the world. The little messengers. Mindless. Making miniature the world. They said the Base had held. They said that too.

They said that Jin was near.

“What do they do,” Elai asked, “to turn back calibans?”

McGee worked numb hands, her heart beating fast with notions of heroism, of refusing to say, but it was Elai asking, friend, First, her First, who had made her one of them.

There was a great silence about her. Elai simply waited, Gehennan‑fashion, would wait long as a caliban could wait for that answer.

“They put a thing into the ground; it smells bad; it goes in under pressure. Calibans won’t like it. But there’s worse that they could do. A lot worse. There’s ships.”

Some looked skyward. Elai did not. She looked frail in the firelight, looked gaunt, her beaded braids hanging by her face. There was Paeia by her, Paeia’s son, a man full grown. On Elai’s other side sat Taem, silent, as Taem usually was.

“They won’t,” said Elai.

McGee shook her head.

“Why?” Taem asked.

“To see what Pattern we make,” Elai said quietly. “So we’ll show them.”

“Huh,” said Taem, and stared into the fire. He was methodically seeing to his darts, to the tiny wrappings of thread, in case the rain had gotten at them.

Something splashed in the river, a diving caliban. Sometimes there were other sounds, the scrape of claws on earth. The Pattern went on about them. There was no fear of ambush, of something breaking through. McGee understood this Word in which they travelled. Cloud, it said; and nothing alien got into it. A mound was between them and the Stygians. It would not be breached quietly.

McGee went back to her notes.

…It’s quiet tonight. It’s a strange way to fight a war. We know where they are. And it’s just as sure they’re not moving yet. Tomorrow, maybe. We heard about an assault on the Wire. That’s Styxside calibans, I think, not Cloud. They’re a different kind; and not different. I wish I understood that point…why two ways exist, so different, even among calibans.

Nations? But that’s thinking human‑style again.

Are wethe difference?

I don’t even know who’s at war out here…us or the calibans. Mine puts up with me. I don’t know why. A wild caliban takes a human onto his back. No training. Nothing. It’s all its idea. I don’t even pretend to control it.

As for order in the march, as for any sense of discipline–there’s none. Calibans wander when and where they like and we sit around the fire with no sentries posted.

But there are. Calibans.

She looked up. Close by her couples moved through the camp, going the way couples went these last few evenings while they had leisure, while this strange peace obtained.

Taem took Elai’s hand. Looked at her. So they had passed the night before. They rose, went off together. Paeia got up in pique, dusted herself, found one of her own riders. So did her son.

There are pairings in the camp. It’s a strange thing, as if all the barriers of Tower loyalty were down. As if there were a sense of time being short. There’s a fondness among these people–the way they’ve left everything behind, the way calibans that normally won’t tolerate each other have gotten unnaturally patient.

But it’s territory: the Cloud. Maybe they see it that way, that all of a sudden they all belong to the same territory.

Elai and Taem have paired up. I don’t know why. I don’t know if it portends any longer bond. If we get out of this alive–

Maybe it’s only politic. Maybe it’s something else. I’m sitting here alone. They’ve all left, as if. there were nothing else–

A shadow fell. Dain sat down by her, just sat on his haunches as she looked up. The fire shadowed his face. His long hair hung about his leathered shoulders. He wore beads hanging from a braid at the side of his head, among the rest of his locks. He was very fine, she thought, very fine. Any woman had to notice when Dain sat down that close to her: a lot had, so that Dain was never without partners. She had Dain in her notes, how this was; how the women courted him as he courted them, so it was a joke in the camp, one Dain liked as well as the tellers of it.

He just sat there looking at her. Nodded his head finally toward the dark. Toward what others did. He wanted her hand, holding his out.

He’s crazy, she thought. What is this? Me?

Still the outheld hand. She put her papers down, thinking she was mistaken and might embarrass herself. He took her hand–friendship, she reckoned; he just wanted to talk to her, and she was wrong.

But he pulled her to her feet and kept drawing her along, going off to the dark.

She was afraid, then, putting this together with the attack on the Base, with Elai’s questions. She thought of betrayal, of factions, of Elai off with Taem.

But outside the firelight he pulled her down with him, this best of Elai’s riders, this Dain Flanahan–“Why?” she asked late, “why me?”–preparing herself for wounds.

He laughed as if that question surprised him, and they stayed that way till dawn, wrapped up in each other, the way she had had the Weird in the dark, in the depths, the same terms.

For friendship, then; she reckoned how she had been by the fire night after night; and no one had asked, and finally Dain took it on himself. He was kind, this young man. She had always known that.

li

205 CR, day 113

Cloud River

There was no coherency about it; the Cloudside patterns were confused–sudden advance and then this dawdling along the banks–“They’re crazy,” Blue said, with shaking of his head. “They’re farmers,” said Parm.

“Cloudsiders,” Jin muttered, still anxious, scowling, because he saw his men making light of it, because he saw his own camp less ordered than he liked. His men grew quiet, reading his mood. They were wise, the men nearest him, at least to duck their heads. But he suspected–in the least, niggling way suspected, that he was too cautious in their eyes, that there would be whispers if they dared. “This Elai,” he said, not for the first time, “this Elai’s nothing. But this isn’t one tower. There’s numbers. You keep thinking on that. Hear?”

They faced him across the fire, men he had won, tower by tower, themselves. He had his starman by him. Genley. Genley sat at his left hand, to do what he wanted, to tell him what he asked. The Cloud Towers…that had waited settling too long; there was MaGee; and that woman; and women worth the having; workers for the fields; these caliban‑riders to deal with at his leisure, to teach the others what defying him was worth, any of them they got alive…far from the sight of the Wire. These women that played at war. There would be scores settled. Indeed, scores settled.

“Tomorrow,” he said, having thought it out, “we go by them.”

“Past?” echoed Blue.

“We go out from the shore.” He signed it as he spoke, frowning to himself, to no one in particular, satisfied, well‑satisfied now he had mapped it out. “We come at them from the south. Let these Cloudsiders have the water at their backs. We drive them off the shore. Caliban matter then. All caliban.”

There were grins, figuring how it would be, darts for what riders remained astride, Calibans coming up from below, seizing legs, embattled calibans lashing the water to froth–it was not a way to get caught, in that kind of action. This woman, gullible, continued on the shore, going where calibans wanted to go–of course wanted to go, where the ground was soft, where they could throw up mounds to ring their camps, where there was fish abundant to satisfy caliban appetites.

Fish. On so small a thing, to lose a war.

There were voices, too loud, at the edge of the camp.

“What’s that?” he asked, vexed. He stood up. Genley started off from him. “What is that?”

“I’ll see,” Genley said.

Mannin. The starmen were in that direction; another matter with the starmen. Genley was running, crossing the ground. He went more slowly, overtook Genley where Genley came up against Vil and his lot: it was the starmen. Voices were raised. Genley shoved; Vil shoved back, and Vil’s band had weapons.

“Where?” Jin asked directly, thrusting an arm between Vil and Genley, levering them apart. Blue moved in, got Vil’s attention with a spearshaft. “ Where?”

“Don’t know where,” someone said.

Genley ran, riverward. The spear was quick, coming from the side.

Jin stood there a moment, seeing this, seeing Genley down, writhing on the spear. The hunter pulled it out. Jin drew a breath, just held out his hand.

Blue gave him what he asked for. The smooth wood filled his hand. He walked forward and swung the spear up; the hunter blocked it, instinct, but this was a dead man. He whirled the spear and thrust it up, under the jaw, whipped round with it ready for Vil, for the rest of them. One looked apt to try, but did nothing.

“Gen‑ley,” he said, not looking at him, watching kinsmen’s eyes. There was no answer. He had expected none, not the way that spear had hit. He stood there the space of several breaths. “I want Mannin,” he said very quietly, “I want Kim– Blue,”he said, “where’s Parm?” They were Parm’s men, these.

Parm came. Stood quietly. Jin saw him unfocused, to the side; his eyes were all for Vil, who had not yet said a word. All about the camp, everywhere, men were on their feet, weapons ready. He found himself shaking, voiceless in the vastness of his suspicions: Parm Tower, Parm, which had harbored a grudge of which the starmen were the center. Parm, defying him.

Parm, who was allied with Green Tower, had a Green Tower woman; Green had Parm’s.

The silence went on. It was Vil’s to speak. Or Parm’s himself. The calibans were off at hunt. From the river came splashes, grunts. There would be one already to deal with, its rider dead, when it discovered it.

“I’ll settle it,” Parm said.

It would not be safe. There would be Parm to watch. Parm knew that. They all did. But the structure was too fragile.

“Want those starmen back,” Jin said quietly. “Want this settled with Vil.”

“He’ll get them.”

“You be careful,” Jin said. He spared a slight shift of his eye to Parm. “You get this man out of my way. Hear?”

There was a slow sorting‑out, slow movements everywhere. Already an ariel had come to investigate the bodies. It tugged at one of Genley’s fingers.

Jin drove his spear through it, pinned it wriggling to the ground. Genley’s face still had its look of shock. “River,” Jin said. Burying was too much work. There was war to fight. He flung the spear down uncleaned, walked away to the fire, took up the skin of drink and had enough to settle his belly. He took a bit more. Tears welled up in his eyes, dammed up there, unsheddable.

Men came and went around him, moving softfooted. He sat there still, with his mind busy, ignoring the rage that had him near to trembling. There was Parm to reckon round now. This man would have to be killed. There were the calibans. When the dead man’s came in, that was to settle; kill the beast, before it spread. Let Vil make amends if he would; kill this man too, like killing infection, before it spread.

A tower had to fall over this. No, there was no stopping it. Unless Parm could die in battle. He considered this, more and more thinking of it.

“This Parm,” he said to Blue, who sat close by him. “Tomorrow.” He made a tiny sign.

Blue’s eyes lighted with satisfaction. He closed his fingers in a circle: band.

Jin met Blue’s gaze and smiled with the eyes only. Yes. Decimate the band. Blue would find a way, tomorrow, in battle: put Parm and his lads–Vil too–where they could die.

It would save a tower. Save the unity of the towers.

Thorn came in. So other calibans came, to the scent of blood, to the rumor of ariels. Thorn swung his head, swept the ground with his tail. “Hsss,” Jin said, leaning back when that great head thrust itself into his way. He grasped the soft wattle skin and pulled, distracting the caliban, but it wandered off, to walk stifflegged about the camp, just in case.

So he was whole again. Blue’s came. The pattern took shape again, men shifting to his side, gathering all about hisfire and not to Parm’s, not joining the search that Parm and his men made.

And when Parm brought the starmen back, he was obliged to cross the camp with his prisoners, to bring them to him, like an offering…offering it was. A placation. The starmen–muddy, wet, bedraggled–“Genley,” Mannin kept asking, looking about. “Genley?”–with fear in his voice. This was a nuisance, this man. To all of them. A small voice, while Parm looked at him and reckoned his chances, how much time this bought.

“Vil will pay for his mistake,” Parm said, having added up, it seemed, this silence in the camp.

Jin looked elsewhere, not willing to be appeased. The bands had made their judgement, silently, ranged themselves with him. The calibans were at hand, quiet on the fringes of the light.