He walked over to the area where Mitra was standing. "Any rules?" he asked.
"I think that no one would wish to be maimed or killed," Jeroen said.
"Right. Okay, then."
"You're ready?"
"Yes."
"Proceed," Jeroen said clearly.
Mitra was like a bull, all brute strength. Tebrey stood his ground, then took a step to the left and dropped the gladiator with a single strike to the temple.
"I wouldn't mind another glass of that excellent wine," Tebrey said casually as the man hit the ground. The astonishment on Jeroen's face was worth the trip.
The skimmer was loaded with supplies, and more would be available in the days to come if they could return to the village. It turned out that the chocolate bars were of the most value. They had traded six bars for ten fur-lined cloaks, two crates of dried meat, a crate of biscuits, and some slightly worn, old wool clothes. They would need the warmer clothes and furs to make it through the winter. Tebrey's demonstration had been worth a promise of more food, if he was willing to teach a few things to Lord Jeroen's men.
Tebrey was willing if it meant a steady supply of food for the refugees. He wasn't sure what it would mean for the future, and they'd have to become self-supporting if they were going to survive.
For the present, we'll be okay, he thought tiredly.
Hunter sleepily agreed.
Outside the speeder, it was getting dark again.
They lost eleven people during the first week of their ordeal on Cedeforthy.
The storms continued unabated.
The two ruins where they had first built fires were improved with stacked stone. They used tarps from the excavations to make rough roofs that they later had to prop up with poles to keep the snow off.
On the second day, five students didn't come back from a trip to gather nuts. They weren't missed until after dark. Hunter found them the next morning, huddled together only a few meters from shelter but quite dead, frozen to death. After that, they started keeping logs of traffic in and out of the site.
There was a sauroid attack on the fourth day. They lost a marine and two of the scientists. Tebrey and Hunter arrived too late to save them, but they managed to kill the beast. It had grown a thick coat of white fur and had lain in a snowdrift. It had pounced when the scientists came upon it. They never had a chance. Tebrey stayed behind, after the bodies were taken away, to skin the beast. He didn't know how to tan hide, but suspected the pelt would be worth a lot to the villagers.
Morale was low, and several people had breakdowns. The hopelessness of being stuck on an alien world was catching up to them. Three people committed suicide.
They had a difficult time burying the dead in the frozen ground, and ended up using the laser rifles to dig the holes.
The snow never stopped falling, and the nights got longer and colder.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The day dawned clear and cold with a slight breeze from the west. Tebrey struggled to pull his laden travois through the ninety-centimeter drifts of snow. He was warm enough, wrapped in layers of local wool and heavy furs over his uniform – at least as long as he kept moving. Hunter was ahead of him somewhere, scouting the trail to Renivee.
You're getting close, Hunter thought to him. You're about two kilometers north and slightly east of the village. Head to your right for a while.
Tebrey sighed and leaned his back into the work.
It had been a hard winter.
Cedeforthy lay one hundred sixty-two million kilometers from its bright main-sequence star. The orbit was roughly circular, as much as that of any other world. It had a high degree of axial tilt, however, that caused extreme variations in the seasons. None of the scientists had been prepared for the coming winter because it never occurred to anyone that they would have to worry about it; the team could spend any bad days aboard ship studying the data they had already acquired.
Unfortunately, it hadn't worked out that way.
The transition from autumn to winter took everyone by surprise. It began as a gradual cooling over two weeks, followed by two weeks of intense winter storms as the sun dipped lower toward the horizon each day. No one had noticed the days of twilight, not with the storms so bad.
Then the storms died down, and there were five days of unrelenting darkness. The temperature at the dig site dropped to thirty-seven below zero Celsius and stayed there. Fortunately, they had stockpiled a bit of food and firewood by then, but it was very difficult.
Another two weeks of severe storms had followed.
I guess we should consider ourselves lucky to have only lost forty-four people over the winter, Tebrey thought gloomily.
No, we're lucky that the idiots who tried to take off in the shuttle didn't kill more people than they did. It was bad enough to get themselves killed, but getting the people in the other shuttle and the skimmer killed was intolerable, Hunter responded. If any of them had survived, I would have killed them.
I would've been right there with you.
Six days into the second period of storms, someone had decided to take matters into their own hands aboard one of the shuttles. Tebrey never found out who it was that started the mutiny, and it didn't really matter at this point. The mutineers had murdered the two marines guarding the control cabin and tried to take off under the cover of the storm. Where they thought they were going was anyone's guess. Tebrey had made sure that everyone knew that the shuttles couldn't take off, but they tried anyway. The engines overloaded on the pad. The explosion had rocked the dig site, destroying the other shuttle and irrecoverably damaging the skimmer. Luckily, it had been just before sundown and most of the people had been in the underground instead of aboard the other shuttle. Still, sixteen additional people perished in the explosion.
Tebrey had run it through his head many times, but he didn't see how what he and the pilots had done could have caused the shuttle to explode. The mutinous scientists must have tried to bypass the primary fuel regulator and pump the fuel directly into the engines. Whatever they had done, the shuttle had gone up in an explosion that had shaken the settlement. At least the forest hadn't caught fire.
The other eighteen people to die had either frozen to death or starved because they couldn't bring themselves to eat meat. The consumption of animal products wasn't common within the Federation. Only on the Frontier did one see it, and it wasn't prevalent there. Most food was processed from soy and wheat proteins. On planets with bountiful oceans, certain types of seaweed were major staple foodstuffs. In the Fleet, most food was synthesized from the yeast and algae byproducts of the life support system.
The remaining twenty-two people, including Hunter, lived off meat, no matter how abhorrent it was to them, and the few strawberry tree fruits they had managed to gather and stockpile before the storms got bad. Dr. Bauval had encouraged them to gather the fruit because it had a high ascorbic acid content, much needed to stave off malnutrition. They doled out the fruit, one a day, to each person. The fruit lacked appealing flavor, texture or calories, but it helped.
Hunter lived up to his name and fed himself during that period. He tried at first to bring back animals for everyone else, but no one knew the proper way to gut and clean a carcass to eat. It drove a few people to give up eating entirely, and Hunter had stopped.
As soon as the storms died down, Tebrey and Hunter set off for Renivee on foot, dragging a travois loaded with the skins of sauroids and other animals. He knew he hadn't skinned them that well, and they were uncured and frozen, but he hoped they might buy some food for the desperate survivors. He was able to recall a map he had seen of the continent and knew the approximate direction, if not the exact distance of the village.
That had been four days before.
You are close, Hunter said.
Tebrey could see him ahead. He could also see smoke through the trees. He pulled with renewed strength. He was going to be warm soon.
The food was sparser this time at Lord Jeroen's
home, and there wasn't a recently slaughtered goat for Hunter to eat, but Tebrey couldn't complain. It was pleasant just to be comfortable and warm for a change.
"I must say that I was surprised to see you," Jeroen said. "I wouldn't have thought even you crazy enough to journey during winter."
Tebrey smiled with cracked and bleeding lips. "I can assure you, Lord, that I wouldn't have if we had not been so desperate. Hunter and I can find food, but we don't know what to do with what we kill, and while he can eat the meat raw, I'm afraid the rest of us cannot."
"I can have a huntsman show you the basics, if you like. It isn't that difficult. Had I realized how bad your need was, I would have had him show you before."
"Didn't know we had the need at the time," Tebrey replied.
"The furs you brought are quite fine. I'm sure the furrier here will give you a fair price for them. With the worst of the winter past, traders will begin making their way back here from the imperial lands to the southeast. Have you thought about my offer?"
"I have. There were times in the last few weeks when I wished I had taken you up on it then. As soon as the weather is better and my people are doing well, I'll be back and stay for a few weeks. I'll teach unarmed combat, and you can provide us with food."
"Excellent! I shall look forward to that. You would honor me to be my guest during your stay here in the village."
"I gratefully accept. However, today I don't want to stay any longer than necessary. We need food back."
"How about a hot bath after you've eaten? Then I will have the huntsman instruct you and take you to the local furrier. I'm sure we can have you ready to go by morning."
"Tonight," Tebrey said. "I'll leave tonight."
"What are you doing, Mason?" Bauval asked.
Mason smiled. She had noticed that most people were dropping honorifics and using Tebrey's military habit of just using the last name, even the ones who had been on a first name basis before. "I'm trying to sort out my notes on the local calendar, Pierre," she said pointedly. "I wish I'd done it before."
She explained that the Cedeforthy year was divided into twelve equal months of twenty-eight days, with an adjustment period of five days every six months. Jandakra, or Wintersol, was five days of darkness in the depths of winter. Garmakra, or Summersol, was five days of light at the height of summer. Babies born during Wintersol were said to be born on the first of the year instead. Those born in the summer were considered to be lucky.
"So we might have at least known it was coming," he said.
"Yeah, remind Anderson that he should have brought a climatologist, the next time you need to gloat about something."
He snorted. "I don't think he has much hope of ever leading another expedition."
Neither of them said what they were thinking: that they were never going to make it off this accursed world.
"Hard to keep your morale up without him around, isn't it?" Bauval said.
Mason nodded. The lieutenant commander had kept them together during the worst of the cold and kept the despair at bay with his talk of how Fleet never abandons its own. It seemed like an immutable law when he was saying it, but now that he had been gone for six days, it was beginning to sound like a desperate attempt to convince himself and anyone who would listen. It was hard to keep the faith when they looked around and saw a handful of people where there had been dozens.
"I think you made a mistake," Bauval said suddenly.
"What do you mean?"
"Your dates are off."
"No," Mason explained. "The twenty-six-hour day makes it difficult to translate directly between Federation Standard and local dates. So I had to add an adjustment in every twelve days to catch up."
"That's weird."
"I agree, but I think using the local calendar will help us in the long run. Even Tebrey at his most optimistic doesn't think we're going to be rescued in less than a year. We need to get used to living here and not think so much about what day it is off-planet."
It had been a mistake to leave Renivee at night.
Tebrey had rushed through the day, gathering the information and supplies so desperately needed back at the dig site. Lord Jeroen was right. Preparing an animal to be eaten was simple; disgusting, but simple. Fergus, the huntsman, had been a little perplexed by his orders. Everyone knew how to skin and prepare meat. It may not be something that the nobles liked to do, getting their hands dirty, but they could if they had to. Tebrey berated himself for not having figured out how to do it on his own. Nevertheless, he was quickly proficient in the proper way to skin and clean a carcass.
Afterward, they both went to a local furrier who gave Tebrey top value for the furs he had brought. Fergus told him later that it was only because he was one of the lord's men that the furrier hadn't dared to cheat Tebrey. The pelts of the sauroids, which Tebrey had brought three of, were considered quite rare and valuable to the south. They were very dangerous to acquire and only available during a deadly season of the year.
Tebrey didn't know anything about the value of goods.
He was sure Fergus thought him a complete idiot for not understanding simple things like how to prepare an animal or the monetary system. Fergus carefully explained that the coins of the realm were the gold lion, gold star, silver moon, silver hound, and the copper teeth. The value of the currency shifted depending on where one was in the realm and the availability of the currency from the imperial mints.
The copper teeth were a strip of copper with diagonal slashes made on it. It was broken into individual bits as needed, each one a tooth, but the strip originally had twenty-two. Here in the village, a single copper tooth could buy a mug of ale or a bit of food. It was the most common of the coins. There were twenty-two of them to a silver hound.
A silver hound was a small rectangle of thin silver with an image of a hound imprinted on it. A hound or two would buy a good pair of boots or a night at an inn, complete with meals. There were thirty-five hounds to a silver moon.
The silver moon was quite valuable. A person could buy a good blade or a slave for a silver moon, a horse for two. Most people never saw a moon. It took seventeen silver moons to make a gold star, and eight gold stars to make a gold lion.
Tebrey didn't really understand all that, but he was impressed by the sizable purse of coins he had received.
He was able to use the coins to buy enough food to last a couple of weeks for the few people who remained at the dig site. He also bought some old clothes off people, and some basic cooking utensils. He then loaded down the travois and headed out into the windy night despite Jeroen's protests. He simply couldn't stand to think of his friends going hungry.
A storm had rolled in early in the night. It was mostly light rain, but it made travel difficult. The clouds made navigation impossible, and he soon became lost. He and Hunter had waited out the night on the lee side of a rocky hill, shivering with cold and sitting close. Sleep wasn't even possible.
There was a thick coat of ice on everything the next morning. Hunter's metal claws conducted the cold all too well, and he was limping before noon. Tebrey tore up a pair of wool trousers he had bought and wrapped Hunter's paws. It helped with the cold, but caused problems of its own. Hunter often fell because of the lack of traction.
That night, Tebrey built a small fire, and they huddled around it. They had headed north all day, but they hadn't seen any landmarks they recognized. They weren't sure if they had drifted too far to the east or west during the storm.
All they could do was keep heading north and hope.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The aura of despair hanging over the encampment had deepened. It was almost a tangible thing now. Mason was worried, which was becoming a normal state for her since they had been marooned. Tebrey had told them that it should take him eight to ten days to get to the village and back. It had been twelve, and there was still no sign of him.
Their food was almost gone. It would only last another day or two. They had been on
half rations for so long that if they stopped eating now, they'd be losing people to starvation by the end of the week.
Mason found Lt. Christopher sleeping outside the map room. "Wake up, Lieutenant," she said, shaking her shoulder. "I need to talk to you."
Christopher pulled herself upright. Mason could tell that she was in pain. She looked terrible. She'd lost eighteen kilograms over the winter and was too thin, her bones poking out in her loose uniform. She'd had a lot of trouble eating the meat.
"What's the problem?"
"We need to do something about food. Tebrey still isn't back."
"What can we do? We know the approximate direction of the village, but not how far it is. If he is on his way back, we could miss him easily. No, our best bet is to stay here and pray that they make it back soon."
"But what if he's hurt?" Mason asked.
Christopher shrugged. "Then I would have expected his cat to show up dragging him. Really, I think he's fine. It's just taking a little longer than he expected."
"If he takes much longer, we're going to start losing people."
"I'm sure he is aware of that and doing the best he can."
"I wish I had your confidence."
"Not really confidence," Sergeant McGee said as he walked up. He had just come in from standing watch, and steam rose from his clothes. "It's more like faith at this point, I'd say."
"So what makes you have so much faith in him?" Mason asked.
"Easy. You both know that if he's still alive, he'll get to that village and bring food back here. Simple as that," he said. He settled down on the floor next to Christopher with a groan.
Christopher smiled at McGee. "What he said," she said.
Mason looked from one to the other. The old sergeant had a fatherly sense of pride in the young marine commander, and Christopher was obviously in love with Tebrey. Not that Mason could blame her. "But what if something stopped him?" she insisted.
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