by Don McQuinn
“Yes.” He made a three-sign. “You’re sure you can follow the instructions? You memorized the landmarks?”
“You made it very clear. We’ll be all right.”
Nalatan looked to Tate. He held her eyes for a moment, waiting. Sylah held her breath, wishing one of them would speak, hoping one would find the courage to tell the other what everyone already knew. Under the weight of Nalatan’s proud near-hopeless gaze, Tate sagged in her saddle. Yet neither said a word. In a flurry of hooves, Nalatan was gone.
Tate half rose in her stirrups. Her hand lifted at the wrist, a wave that wilted to nothing as Nalatan never looked back. The expression she sent Sylah was poisonous. “No time, you said. Ready?”
Sylah said, “Donnacee, we—”
Tate jerked her horse around, the action cutting off Sylah. The others had to hurry to keep up.
As they rode, the sky heated to a silver-blue that made Sylah think of overheated steel keening on a grindstone. Scrub growth reached for her ankles, her knees. Hard, tough leaves and wiry little branches clawed at her. The unending harsh whisper of the foliage was even worse. Sometimes she heard it as mocking laughter, other times as muffled weeping. The truly bad moments were when she thought she heard the voice, the mind-words that drove her, led her, insisted on her quest.
She looked back at the crib lashed behind her saddle. After tugging the underlying blanket free of a wrinkle, she lifted the tented cloth top to peek in at Jessak. He smiled, and the familiar melting sensation roiled through her midsection. She told herself it was sinfully proud to believe he recognized her, or smiled more readily for her. At the same time, she decided there was no reason to avoid the truth. He certainly seemed to smile more when she tended him.
Wrapped in a diaper stuffed with the last of the soft mull leaves, he kicked and wiggled pleased excitement. Sylah reflected yet again that the boy bore the heat with an almost eerie complacency. He jounced along with hardly any complaint, slept at night like a hibernating bear. He fussed when hungry, took his milk with unfailing eagerness.
Flicking sweat off her brow and turning back to the front, Sylah remembered Helstar’s reaction to the boy’s name, and his superstitious tale of its significance. She smiled. If he could be present to see how wondrously well Jessak behaved, he’d have to take back his words. Or, more likely, he’d bluster some foolishness about mysterious powers.
Lanta’s call distracted her. Sylah looked back. Lanta was gesturing, fear twisting her features. Dodoy, beside her, caught the movement. He looked back, too.
In the far distance, a buzzard moved earthward in its sinister coil. Another, closer, flapped lazily, going to investigate. Between themselves and the birds, Lanta had observed someone riding out of a draw Sylah recognized as one they’d passed through some time ago. Dodoy hurried past her to be near Tate and the protection of her weapons.
The rider was alone. Sylah relayed the news to Tate, just as Dodoy arrived at her side. Tate slowed, letting Sylah and Lanta close on her. “I think it’s Nalatan,” Tate said. She opened the sniper rifle case, holding it open in her lap. Looking through the sight, she nodded. “It’s him. We’ll walk the horses, rest them a bit. He’ll catch up pretty soon. Watch close, be sure no one’s behind him.”
Watching Tate move out to her point position, Sylah let her mind drift back to the desperate ride they’d taken together across the Enemy Mountains of the north. Snow and ice threatened there. Now it was heat and thirst. The major change wasn’t climate, though. It was Tate. There was a confidence in her work now unlike anything that earlier woman could manage.
Hidden in the pride of accomplishment was the sad truth that Tate’s fighting skills were necessary. Sylah wondered if her friend would ever have the opportunity to learn anything different.
Sweat ran in gleaming rivulets across Nalatan’s skin, painted dark splotches on his clothing. His sleeveless vest, open for ventilation, revealed a wedge of black hair chained with droplets. He was on foot, leading his horse. When he released the reins, letting his hand fall to his side, sweat cut paths in the accumulated dust on his forearm, curved and deflected off the raised welts of scars.
Tate handed him the waterskin. After a large swallow, he said, “We’re not being followed.” His expression was peculiar. Sylah felt he wanted to accuse her of something. He went on. “The main body of the raiders is moving toward the spring, as I thought they would. They left three men to trail us.”
Before Sylah could speak, Tate said, “Did you…?” She let the sentence fall away.
Nalatan continued to watch Sylah. “I found them. They were all dead.” He reached into a saddlebag, drew out the feathered half of a broken arrow. It was white.
“Protectors.” Sylah and Lanta breathed the word simultaneously.
Quietly, Nalatan said, “Conway told me of the man who tried to steal Dodoy. He told of the white arrow and the protectors you just named. Those men wouldn’t be here, in the Dry. Even if they were, they have no reason to help us. I will only ask this once: Is there anything anyone wants to tell me?” He examined the faces of the three women slowly, individually.
Sylah thought of Helstar and immediately dismissed the notion as ludicrous. If he’d intended to follow them into the Dry, he’d have at least intimated it. But who else could it possibly be? The idea that it was actually a protector was even more insane than considering Helstar.
It was all insane.
Sylah wanted to draw away, think. Or forget. Forget everything, not worry or puzzle or suspect.
Nalatan was watching, patient. Sylah thought, deadly patient, then looked to the other women. They waited, as well.
When she finally spoke her words were as if from a stranger. Quick, almost blurred. “There’s nothing to tell you. There can’t be any connection. That’s ridiculous. You said yourself the people of the Dry are in constant conflict with each other. It’s one of them, that’s all.”
Nalatan’s tight smile expressed his skepticism eloquently. He took another mouthful of water, then, “That’s no Dry arrow, Sylah. Those dead men ask more questions than I can answer, and that makes me very uncomfortable. I don’t know who’s following us now, or why.” To Tate, he continued, “Stay on point, please. I’ll take rear guard.”
Tate nodded. “I’m glad…” She coughed, tried again. “I’m glad there wasn’t any trouble. For you.”
He smiled. Her relief at having him back was suddenly almost overwhelming. It made her lighthearted. She called Tanno and practically leapt onto her horse to escape.
Riding to her position, thinking more clearly, she wondered why Sylah was so upset when Nalatan asked if anyone had anything to tell him. Very little frightened Sylah, and she’d looked terrified. Her answer was almost babble. There was something else, too.
A word popped into Tate’s mind. Furtive. That was it. The last thing to show on Sylah’s face was furtiveness.
Still and all, it was Lanta who reacted most strongly. Nalatan’s question made her jerk as if she’d been stabbed, her eyes bulging almost comically and her hand flying to her breast.
Hanging off the saddle to ruffle Tanno’s ears, Tate said, “Turns out our ladies of the black threads have been holding out on the troops, big dog. What d’you know about that?”
Tanno looked up, panting, grinning thirstily, wagging her tail. Tate accused. “Ah-hah. Won’t talk, huh? Think you’re tough.” She swatted the dog’s hindquarters and sat upright again, talking to herself. “Better be tough, old buddy. Look at that country ahead. Hungry looking.” She shook her head.
None of it did any good. The notion that Sylah and Lanta knew something they weren’t willing to share wouldn’t go away.
It was very disquieting.
* * *
It took only two days for Dry scouts to reestablish contact. For the next week Nalatan led the war party through a chess game played on the sere mountains and baked valleys of the Dry. The pursuit made no attempt to close. They approached at night to shout taunts
and curses, always at such a distance that any attempt to come to grips with them was an exercise in triggering an ambush. During the day, they were an unnerving presence, perched on faraway overlooks in plain view, launching arrows or sling-stones from closer, but always hidden, positions.
The path to Church Home was always disputed. Tate’s firepower allowed them to force their way, but under galling, incessant sniping. Every horse had suffered at least one wound. Because the ranges were great, injuries were minor. Nevertheless, it was nerve-racking to march all day, every day, never knowing when a hissing missile, striking from no identifiable location, might send one’s mount into a rearing, bucking fit of pain and fury. So far, none of the humans were hit, nor was Tanno.
One afternoon, Tate broke out the sniper rifle. A Dry warrior, confident in his distance from the small party dragging itself across a sweltering valley, perched on a dramatic overlook to watch them. In an act born more of frustration than of any hope of altering the situation, Tate exposed the arrayed solar cells, and settled into a solid sitting position. Through the powerful telescopic sight, she put the fine cross hairs on the man’s chest.
Her finger stalled on the trigger. She remembered Conway, so ashamed of being seduced by the godlike qualities conferred by the weapon. She wondered what the man was like.
He smiled at her. It was impossible for him to imagine anything that would enable Tate to see his facial expression. Nevertheless, he looked directly into the tube and he smiled, a superior, cruel grin that anticipated torment and destruction for the people he watched. He gestured, an obscene suggestion. Laughing, he partially turned to speak to someone hidden behind his watch station.
In the sullen quiet of the midday heat, the report of the rifle was like an unexpected shout of repressed rage. A moment later the heavy slug slammed the warrior back against the mountainside. Limp, disjointed, he paused on the steep slope for a moment, then slowly moved downhill. Faster and faster he fell, twirling, arms and legs whipping like reeds. Soon he was leaving the ground, flying from contact to contact, exploding clouds of dust at every touch.
When the echoes ceased, Sylah’s group was still watching the empty space. There was nothing to indicate that a man had ever existed, much less died.
Voice cracked by thirst, Nalatan ordered them to move again.
That night they camped near a hot spring. Sure they were observed, the women managed circumspect bathing. The spring water was drinkable, once cooled, but far too chemically saturated for making tea. Later, there were more threats than ever. Even though they’d moved to sleeping positions under cover of darkness, as they always did, arrows fell among them all night. Coming almost vertically, each one plunged into the ground with a sound like a fist.
On the morning of the eighth day, Sylah looked up from a routine wetting of Jessak’s parched lips and saw a smudge on a distant mountainside. Or thought she did. It was too faint to be sure. She called to Nalatan. Squinting, he shaded his eyes and studied the distance. “A large group, moving fast,” he said.
Tate set up the sniper rifle, offering it to Nalatan. He handled it reverently, clearly apprehensive about putting his eye to the scope. He almost dropped it when he looked through it, exclaiming aloud. He executed a three-sign heretofore unseen by any of his companions, a matter of kissing the knuckle of his right thumb, then touching it to forehead, lips, and both eyes. Then he peered through the scope again. “Forty men. Kossiars. The Harvester.” He handed the piece back to Tate, his hand lingering lovingly on the stock. He licked his lips, swallowed to make sure his words would come clearly. Looking at Sylah, he said, “We can’t go back to the hot spring; it’s indefensible. If we go forward, we may not reach water before they’re on us.”
Sylah dampened her lips with Jessak’s wet cloth. The tiny cracks in her flesh burned like sparks. She said, “Is there any chance they’ll fight each other?”
Nalatan shook his head. “These coyotes have been waiting for the Harvester to arrive. We have to run, Sylah.”
Chapter 6
Excited by the sounds of battle and the choking billows of smoke from the burning fortified village, Stormracer shivered under Conway’s soothing hands. Nomads circled the walls like wolves slashing at crippled prey. Occasionally one of the fort’s inhabitants leapt into view at a fighting port to shout defiance. There were fewer incidents of that since Conway blasted three in rapid succession. The war cries from within the wall were now shrill with the knowledge of defeat. Conversely, the shouts of the nomad warriors degenerated to taunts and threats.
The thought of the impending climax to the battle pulled Conway’s attention to the grove of pines off to the right. Varnalal’s war-painted assault units sat their horses easily, poised to strike at their young leader’s command.
Varnalal was Fox’s creation, as was the assault unit, made up of men from every component of Windband. As a unifying measure, all were initiated into Mountain tradition as much as possible. The Mountain People were unorthodox believers, mixing Church with their own mystic beliefs. Even now, totally converted to Moondance, they clung to some of the old ways. One example was their war paint. A Mountain warrior believed he appeared in the next world as he left this one. They painted their faces in anticipation of death, believing that a warrior fought his way out of a state of nothingness into the Land Above. Or, conversely, was killed again, and became a lost spirit destined to haunt the world of men.
The design was a stark white death’s head, the eyes black holes. The mouth was painted red, a gaping, toothed maw with descending red streaks at the corners. Conway thought how chilling it must be to discover that face an arm’s length away, the black-circled eyes inflamed with combat madness.
A warrior of the unit caught Conway’s gaze. Across the intervening distance, he saluted, raising and lowering his ma, the Mountain short fighting sword.
Conway duplicated the move with the wipe.
Before the afternoon shadows lengthened much more, one or both of them might be dead. The idea touched Conway with a sad excitement. He wondered about the other man. For himself, he didn’t want to die. He didn’t expect to. That brought a smile: not many men did. The human mind was capable of infinite dissembling. Every warrior who saw his companions killed accepted their death as proof of their bad luck or mistakes. It also confirmed his own immortality.
That was particularly true of Varnalal and his unit. Blizzardmen, they called themselves, laughing about it, telling everyone that, behind their advance, even the ground was left dead. Throughout Windband, Blizzard was extravagantly admired. Fox and his warriors taught the men individual combat. Conway taught them how to support each other, how to maneuver by unit, small unit control, and effective communications. Iron discipline and constant training, imposed on men who’d fought since childhood, created a fearsome shock team.
The old Conway considered battles a part of history, war a social psychosis. The new Conway remembered details that had never consciously registered before.
A nomad war drum crashed into life.
That was part of the Blizzard assault plan. Each drum—there were seven on this campaign—roared individually, in sequence. The eastern drum always sounded first; the rotation went north around the perimeter, ending at the starter. Conway watched the one nearest him, a short distance to his left. Mounted on a cart, it was a man’s reach across and perhaps half again that deep. Suspended by leather straps, it was a uniform tube of vertical wooden slats glued together and bound with braided leather. The leather striking surface was hauled tight by an intricate web of lines. Waxed and polished to the color of honey, the instrument rode perhaps five feet off the ground. The drummer perched on the cart, armed with unpadded sticks. When it was his turn to sound off, the drummer struck as hard and fast as he could. When he stopped, the next one rolled.
Thunder circled through the valley. Thick, ominous silence followed the last solo. As soon as the eastern drum set the new rhythm, all joined. The chorus hammered the village.
>
Conway next looked to the distant hill from which Katallon commanded his units. The pre-assault flag was still flying.
The flags were Conway’s idea, as were the signal mirrors. The nomads had fought the Kossiars for years, yet not once had any nomad suggested using mirrors as their enemies did. During the argument over adopting the system, the obstinate resistance to change of some of the nomad leaders triggered a nostalgia attack that kept Conway in his tent for two days.
Varnalal galloped up, war paint spangled with pearls of sweat. Karda and Mikka tensed at the sight of him, watching Conway closely for signals. Varnalal’s eyes were circles of excitement; he blinked continually. “Katallon’s being too cautious,” he said. The words were breathy. “I… my men tire of waiting.”
Conway glanced back at the wooded draw. Horses shuffled and tiptoed. Many men had mas out, swinging them, loosening muscles. Smiling easily, he said, “Not even Blizzard can go through a wall. Patience. Look, there’s a break already.”
The palisade of vertical pine trunks was burning in several places. A thin, hungry smile split Varnalal’s face as sparks cascaded upward from a collapsing section. Too small to allow a charge, the gap would widen as the fire consumed more logs. Varnalal turned back to Conway. “You’re riding with us?”
“Of course. There’ll be no more lightning weapons, though.”
Varnalal sobered. “We all know you must conserve your strength.”
Moonpriest told the nomads that he and Conway used lightning drawn from spiritual powers within themselves, that using those powers was dangerously draining. All had seen Moonpriest’s moon altar kill. They saw the wipe and the boop kill. Moonpriest’s assertions went unquestioned. It was just as well, Conway thought at the time. Every morning he woke with growing concern over his ammunition supply. It was still healthy, but there was no replacement.
