Hammerfall

by C. J. Cherryh

  “She wants her husband,” Marak said. “If she wants her husband, he’s not that far.”

  “Omi, ” Tofi began to protest, but his voice trailed off under a series of gasping cries from the lady.

  “If I can see the tent, I’ll make it.”

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  “Take a rope,” Tofi pleaded with him, Tofi, who had lost a father and brothers to an ill-advised venture out in a storm less than this one.

  He had no need of a rope: he could find Hati blind and across the width of the Lakht . . . he had become convinced of that. But Tofi gave him a coil of cord otherwise set aside for repair, and he gave one end to Tofi to hold.

  Then he took a tight wrap of his aifad, unlaced the storm flap and escaped the pain and anguish inside the tent into a hell on earth outside.

  It had begun to be daylight. The air outside was all red dust, beshti half-buried and with windburn so bad the wounds were caked and plastered with the same red as the air.

  He had lied. He could not see the Ila’s tent, but he remembered where it had been when they set up camp; he ached with the need to do something more than sit waiting—and if it were Hati, he knew he would want to know; and there were debts, to the lady, to Memnanan. There were debts that asked a risk. There was, below it all, a need to know what the state of affairs was in the camp, a need to reach someone outside their tightly clenched world and reassure himself there were other living souls.

  He walked out from the lee of the tent, staggering in the gusts—there was the hard part, maintaining his orientation when he was blown half off his feet and blinded by dust, but the wind itself was a direction marker, and he walked, with the wind battering his left shoulder.

  He counted two intervening tents, the Ila’s servants or her guards had crowded up their tents between: he had not marked who was in the tents, but he had remembered they were there.

  He made his way past two groups of beshti in no better and no worse condition than their own, sandy, wind-scoured ghosts in the red murk that passed for daylight.

  Now the way was straight out of that wind-shadow across a narrow gap of blowing sand, and to the Ila’s tent, with two others pitched up against it.

  He was blind for a moment, then found the ropes, and followed the side of the main tent around to the sheltered east end, where the storm flap was laced tight. The wind gusted: canvas shook to a wind so hard and sand-edged it abraded his exposed hands. He saw fray-

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  ing on a taut edge of the canvas itself, and bones— bones, scoured white, that had blown up against the tent wall, along with minute scraps of cloth tattered to rags, buried in sand.

  “Memnanan!” he called out. “Captain!”

  He could cut his way in, ruining precious cordage, risking the tent, but he waited at the door, and shouted twice more before a voice answered him and someone began to work at the lacings inside. In a moment more the storm flap lifted slightly, and one of the Ila’s servants looked at him, wide-eyed at the apparition that came to them out of the storm.

  The servant did not release the flap or widen the opening. Marak thrust his arm in, to prevent the servant sealing it up again.

  “I’m Marak Trin,” he said, pulling the aifad down, “and I’m here for Memnanan. His wife’s in labor. Bring him.”

  “Stay there!” the servant told him, and disappeared.

  Stay outside, in a storm that burned the skin, by bones the wind had scoured and dropped at the door.

  Marak shoved the flap wider, tearing at the lacings he could reach, and widened it enough to step inside, into a canvas foyer lit with a brass lamp. He had brought the last of his cord-coil in with him, his link with Tofi. He cast it down there, brushed off enough sand from his robes to leave a haze on the figured carpet, and waited, fighting a dry cough and a mouth so dusty his tongue had stopped sticking to his teeth.

  Memnanan came through to meet him, Memnanan—clean, well fed, showing none of the desperate condition of the rest of the camp, no more than the servant.

  “Your wife,” Marak began, and coughed with the dryness of his throat: his voice shredded with it. “Your wife is in labor. She’s having some difficulty. I’ve rigged a guide rope. You can follow it over there.”

  Memnanan’s worry was evident, but he made no move toward the door, rather had his hand on the curtain through which he had entered, as if at any instant he would go back to his duty. “I can’t,”

  Memnanan said. “I can’t go. Go back!”

  Go back. A man dismissed his wife’s possible death with that go back. A man stood with his hand on that curtain as if it concealed the secrets of heaven and earth.

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  wrong, give or take a man’s natural embarrassment at having water enough, and food enough.

  “Is something the matter with the Ila?” he asked.

  “For your own safety—” Memnanan’s voice dropped. “Go. ”

  He was ready to. He believed the captain. He had no reason to doubt Memnanan’s loyalty to the Ila had just met the edge of his personal debt, and Memnanan warned him the Ila was in no good mood.

  But he stood there . . . on the edge of his own debt to this man, even to the Ila, he hesitated to wonder what was behind Memnanan’s refusal.

  And it was one heartbeat too long. An au’it brushed aside the curtain the captain held: the au’it, with her book, stopped, looking steadily at Memnanan, and retreated.

  “She’ll tell the Ila I’m here,” Marak said. “She’ll tell the Ila we talked. But the Ila doesn’t care, man. Get to your wife, while you have a wife!”

  “Get out,” Memnanan said to him. “Go. Now.”

  They had survived the hammerfall. They had not yet survived the storm, and the Ila kept secrets, or the Ila’s staff did. Memnanan was afraid of something here besides the sky that roared destruction against the tent walls.

  And suddenly came a sound of a tent wide curtain singing back on its rings.

  “Get out!” Memnanan repeated.

  Their own parted in the same abrupt way and opened the tent all the way to where the Ila sat. A man stood by her, a man indistinct of origin, aifad wrapped up to the eyes, neither quite tribesman, not quite villager in what he wore.

  But Marak stood stock-still, with no attention to the Ila, seated on her chair: his vision was all the man beside her, that figure dislocated from here and the Ila’s presence in memory of his own home, his own hearth. That man, that same figure, identical in the wrap of the aifad and the pitch of the shoulders, the stance of the feet . . . could not possibly be his father. It could not be, standing by the Ila, before the aui’it, free, and armed.

  But the companion reached up a hand and pulled down the aifad; and it was his father’s face. It was Tain, armed, and free, and in the Ila’s close company.

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  “Father,” Marak said. His thoughts skittered this way and that, helpless between surmise that the Ila was a prisoner and surmise that this improbable conjunction was a vision, like the star-fall, like the ring of fire and the pillar of cloud—or that the Ila had no idea who this man was.

  “I said I might take a husband,” the Ila said with a wave of her hand. “Have I offended you, Marak Trin? Do you object?”

  He pulled down his own aifad, and tried to find any advantage, even any sanity, on either side of this maneuver.

  “You’re both mad,” he said, he said . . . the madman, in the presence of Tain Trin Tain, the arbiter of sanity.

  “He has all your advantages,” the Ila said, “a leader, and desert-wise, and one more. He’s not Luz’s creature.”

  “Whatever you say to me,” he reminded the Ila, appalled, thinking even then
that the Ila might damn them all, “Luz knows.”

  “Oh, I know she knows. But you don’t know as much as you think. Neither does she.” The Ila rose from her chair and stood, red-robed, not a tall woman, a figure of flame red silk, with that white, white skin unmarred by the desert. “Memnanan has a new commander.”

  There had been the instant in which thought simply failed him.

  But rational thought came back, began to assess the ground, the conditions, the hazards. There were curtains to either side of the Ila’s chair. He knew the configuration of the Ila’s tent from outside, how servants’ tents abutted. He knew his father’s tactics, he knew that curtain might never have gone back if his father was unwilling to have this confrontation, even if the Ila willed it.

  There might be ten, twenty men behind those side curtains. Or aui’it. Or simply servants.

  Go back, Memnanan had warned him with all his might, and that had said everything about Memnanan’s situation . . . and the danger.

  “My mother would warn you against your choice,” he said to the Ila, with all possible meaning. “You’re being a fool.”

  Did that score on his father? Tain’s face, image of his own as it might someday be, held no expression for an enemy, and he had become that. Kaptai’s son, the madman, the embarrassment, had necessarily become the enemy.

  “More,” he said, chasing whatever quarry he might have started in the Ila’s mind, “did I mention that he’d killed four other Haga?

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  Did he mention Menditak and Aigyan have sworn water peace on his account, and mean to kill him? Your ally brings you every tribesman alive for enemies.”

  “I’m aware of their opinion,” the Ila said. “But you take Luz’s orders. Is that better? You can take his orders, now . . . or you can decide not to. Luz may have other intentions. What will those be?”

  Prudence told him to lie, but the business between him and his father said his father would never believe a soft answer. “Common sense says he’s a dead man. And he knows it. He won’t say a word to me, will he? Will he?”

  There was, in fact, only a stony stare, a stony, unpleasant stare; and he knew what his father had come to do, and what his father had had to accept, and the conditions he had had to take . . . the Ila’s outrageous offer: life, and the unlikeliest, most fragile alliance.

  “He’s ashamed. He’s disgraced himself with Kais Tain, he’s alienated the tribes, he’s sold out his own village, and he’s sold himself to you to seal the bargain because he has nowhere else to go. Like me, like me, father, just the same. Don’t tell me otherwise.”

  The curtains at either hand stirred. He was not surprised. He assailed Tain and four more of Tain’s men showed up, men whose names he knew, every one: killers, men with machai in their hands—able to kill the Ila, but bent instead on silencing an unpleasant, unwelcome voice.

  And was Tain stronger for their backing? Marak looked his father in the eyes, and they both knew the truth.

  “Give up,” Marak said. “The Haga won’t trust you. And I won’t.

  There is no bargaining.”

  Tain drew his pistol, wanting to make him flinch: Marak knew the moment, knew the gesture, knew when his father had done that to other men, knew his father wanted, needed that moment of fear before he pulled the trigger.

  Marak jumped for the wind-stretched side of the tent and the shot burned through his side and through the tent wall as he moved, letting loose a shriek of wind—and off that wall, he lunged not at the men who drew knives, but beyond them, through them, at Tain himself, and his gun.

  A machai caught in his coat and raked his ribs. Another sliced across his back as he seized hold of his father’s left sleeve and wrestled for a grip on the trigger hand.

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  The gun went off. Went off twice and three times as they struggled for grip and balance: a man swung a machai at his back and he swung his father into the glancing blade as a fourth shot creased his shoulder. He grasped the gun in Tain’s hand and tried to force his finger into the trigger guard. Fifth shot: it hit something metal and fragile, and he would not turn his back to his father’s men, would not give up, no matter his father had one hand on his face, trying to get a thumb into his eye or a grip on his ear, trying to swing his back to his allies. They had fought a thousand mock fights; they had fought mock fights that turned real, fights he had to lose or have his father’s spite; but not this fight, not this one, not now.

  They staggered together into an obstacle, a tent pole, and Tain tried to bash his hand off the gun, tried to break his finger in the process, and kneed him and brought a foot down on his instep, all of which he gave back with a blow to Tain’s head—where his father’s men were in this, what they waited for, he had no idea: he turned, jerked Tain around, looking for enemies in the process.

  Tain fell and dragged him down, leaving Marak’s back exposed.

  Marak rolled, put himself underneath and in the process gave Tain the heel of his hand under his chin with everything he had in his arm. He saw Tain dazed for a moment. Men hacked at the rolling knot of their bodies, and in one moment a machai hacked down into his back, but he had a deathlock on the gun and meant to batter Tain loose from the one weapon that equalized the odds.

  “Marak!” someone shouted, a shot exploded near his ear, two shots that had not come from the pistol. In the same moment Tain butted him in the face, but he regarded neither—got his best grip on the gun and twisted, and rolled, turning Tain’s arm under him, seeing in his blurred vision that Tain could not let go the gun, but had no command of it either. He had a leverage: he had a hand free: he seized Tain’s wrist and rolled loose.

  He gained his feet, soaked in blood. He faced his father, half-winded, with the contested gun in hand.

  Then he saw Memnanan with a rifle, and three of his father’s men down, and the fourth wounded. The Ila sat on her chair amid all of it, in the most incredible attitude of calm.

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  to a two-handed grip, and Tain returned him that hell with you glare that he turned on any infraction against his authority . . . that old, old implication of threat and disdain for the odds.

  Not beaten, not Tain. Not until he was dead. And it was on him to do it.

  “Get out of here!” he yelled at Tain, last chance, last try. “Get out of here! ”

  He knew he was a fool when he gave Tain the chance. Tain’s expression changed to that cocksure confidence his enemies dreaded.

  Tain backed a step and turned.

  Memnanan fired, and took Tain dead in the middle, and twice more to be sure. Tain died at his feet, and he stood there, numb.

  And after that it was themselves, and the aui’it, and the red-robed Ila, who sat on her throne with her hand pressed to her side and dark blood leaking over her fingers.

  The Ila looked over the corpses of Tain and three of his men, and then at him and Memnanan. “I still rule this camp,” she said.

  A shot had hit her in the stomach. She was still sitting upright.

  She was still on her throne. The aui’it clustered around her as if they foresaw and dreaded her fall.

  What was there for them to say? That the Ila was the one name that tribes and villages alike knew as authority?

  That no one outside these canvas walls knew what had transpired in this tent?

  His own blood was leaking fast from a dozen wounds. The fever was coming on him, the healing fever. He wanted to go lie down. He wanted Hati, and to lie still under a friendly roof and let the makers work, if they could heal so many wounds, with such scant resources left.

  Marak, Mara
k, Marak, his voices said: and they wanted the Ila, they wanted her life as they wanted the east.

  Memnanan had made his own choice, and stood now with the rifle aimed at the floor, deaf to voices, not knowing now what to do.

  “Go to your wife,” Marak said. “She needs you. You have an obligation.”

  Memnanan hesitated, perhaps weighing his choices, and asking himself where right was, or what he intended. Memnanan to this hour had not left the Ila, had not left the authority he had served, and defended, and obeyed all his life. And the storm still raged beyond the walls.

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  “Tell him to go,” Marak said to the Ila. “His wife is in labor. She needs him. There’s a guide rope still at the door.” Came a crash in the heavens, and a battering blast beat against the tent. “Ila, tell him that.

  The sky’s getting worse. Send him! You owe him that!”

  The Ila lifted her hand, red glove stained dark with blood, signaled Memnanan’s dismissal. That was all. The hand fell.

  A breath more Memnanan hesitated, then turned and, hesitating for a last look, went back to the outer door.

  Marak, the voices said. Marak.

  And Marak reached down and drew the Ila to her feet and into his embrace, close, closer, body against body, blood into blood. He knew what the voices wanted. He knew what he had done with Lelie, and why Lelie had lived.

  The Ila, no fool, must know. They stood that way for a long time, they stood there while the fever came, and the blood beat in Marak’s ears.

  “This is war,” the Ila said in their long standing there, so that only he could hear. “This is war, Trin Tain.” Her lips met his and opened, and her mouth was moist, water-rich as his was dry. Blood mixed. Incredibly, there was passion in the kiss.

  Aui’it and servants moved around them, and Marak, his voices said, Marak, Marak. It was war. His hands and arms and back took fever-fire. Pain enveloped him, enveloped her, a shared environment, and the ache in his side and his skull fed her hurts.