Asimov's Science Fiction 12/01/10

by Dell Magazines

  The three itiji who had been pulling the oversized sled were arguing with each other. Two wanted to escape, the third was moaning about whippings and recapture. A warfriend was pleading with them, but they didn’t seem to hear him.

  Vigdal stopped beside the sled. “Chew the hesitater free. Help the other two pull. Get them off the road. The Drovils are concentrating on the fight in the trees. Get them off the road before the situation changes.”

  They left one of the single-yoke sleds on the road. Its slave had scrunched up on the ground, with his face pressed between his forepaws. The slave who had been released from the big sled sat down beside him.

  Vigdal joined forces with three warfriends who had wrapped their jaws around any hold they could find and began to help the two itiji who were still yoked to the big sled. Tree roots and low-lying bushes forced them into tedious twists and detours. His warfriends couldn’t talk with their mouths full, but their grunts and tail whips told him everything he needed to know. They were hunters, not haulers. Their teeth were made to rip flesh, not grip loads.

  The two freed slaves were working just as hard as everybody else, but they were using their shoulders, not their mouths, and they couldn’t stop the flood of words their rescue had unlocked.

  “How far do we have to go?”

  “How many Imetens are fighting in the trees? The Drovils have reinforcements standing by at every camp on the road.”

  “We should have made Lenalva come with us. He just needed time.”

  “Wouldn’t we move faster if we left the iron behind?”

  Vigdal released the bit of leather strap he had been clutching with his grinders.

  “Just keep moving. The further we go, the better.”

  “Then why not release us? Why are we still pulling this load?”

  Most of the itiji who roamed the area in huntbands had edged away from the battle zone, but the commotion had attracted its quota of curiosity seekers and news tellers. The Drovils had apparently set up an ambush of their own. Reinforcements attacked Nama-Nanat’s Double Eight just as he thought he had scattered his adversaries.

  “They must have been following the ore party,” one of the observers sang. “None of us saw them. They must have been spread out. Or scattered through the highest branches.”

  The news teller’s voice deepened. He shifted into the measured rhythms of the fourth mode of the Agalav epic tradition. “Hear the orders of Nama-Nanat. He will fight as long as he can breathe. Carry the ore to Imeten. Obey the will of the Goddess.”

  Vigdal let go of his hold. He threw back his head and sent the cry of an itiji calling for help ringing through the trees.

  “Hear me. Hear my plea. Help us pull the load we have captured. Help us free your friends and kin. Tell our friends and kin in Imeten we need their help. Nama-Nanat and his Warriors are dying so we can escape with our loads. Give them the response they deserve.”

  A voice took up the cry somewhere ahead of him. Another voice sang faintly on his right. No itiji could hear a message like that without passing it on.

  Whether they would actually come to his aid was, under the circumstances, a different matter. You could, after all, appease your conscience by noting that Nama-Nanat was really trying to increase his city’s iron supply and weaken its major enemy.

  Vigdal wasn’t completely certain he would have responded to the call himself. Under the circumstances.

  The itiji who were sending reports couldn’t follow the battle in the trees in any detail but what did you need to know? Nama-Nanat’s Double Eight had taken casualties during the initial attack and the enemy had counterattacked with a force that outnumbered the Warriors he had left. The outcome was as predictable as the path of a well-aimed dart.

  Vigdal’s warfriends couldn’t talk with their mouths full but they all grunted when the freed slaves voiced the obvious. Tails beat on the ground. “The Imetens are outnumbered. How long can they hold? The Drovils will be on us and we’ll all be whipped back to the road.”

  “Cut us free. Leave the iron. Does all this dirt mean more than us?”

  “The Warriors of Imeten are the best fighters on the Great River,” Vigdal said. “Half the Drovil army comes from weak cities the Drovils have conquered. Save your breath. Pull. Don’t make me stop to talk.”

  The noise from the battle faded. The observers became their only source of information. Then their ears picked up the faint hint of battle shrieks. Nama-Nanat was fighting for every branch, but the battle was creeping steadily closer.

  Vigdal had already decided they would abandon the load when the situation became hopeless. But what if he waited too long? And the Drovils overwhelmed them before they could free the itiji who were still yoked to the sleds?

  Four itiji had trotted out of the trees and grabbed holds. The gadabouts prowling around the flanks of their little caravan could have filled a marriage feast huntband, judging by the voices he could distinguish.

  A voice from somewhere ahead of them snagged Vigdal’s attention. “Help is coming. Two Eights of Warriors were patrolling near you. They’re on their way. Huntbands have been asked to help. Itiji are leaving the camps near Imeten. Your friends and kin have heard your call.”

  Vigdal pointed his face at the treetops. The rhythms of one of the oldest itiji hunting songs rolled across his tongue. “Hear the words of your huntfriends. You are not alone. You are never alone.”

  “But how many are near here, Vigdal? And how many more are the Drovils sending?”

  * * *

  A voice yelled a warning. Vigdal turned his head and realized one of the small sleds had stopped moving. The captive who had been pulling it was staring at the air with his mouth hanging open.

  Vigdal broke into a run. His eyes searched the trees. “Get down. Cower. Make yourself small.”

  The captives attached to the pole flattened themselves against the ground and made a determined attempt to huddle under their packs. The itiji who were bound to the other sleds contorted themselves into the tightest balls they could achieve.

  “Stop hauling,” Vigdal yelled. “Cover the captives with your armor. Unarmored take cover.”

  Dark bodies sped across the ground. Armored itiji threw themselves on the unprotected captives. Vigdal stopped in front of the sled puller who had already been hit and tried to look reassuring.

  “We’ll get you out of here. We won’t leave you behind.”

  The tree people used darts tipped with a lethal poison when they fought each other but they usually attacked itiji with a poison that induced temporary paralysis. Dead itiji made poor slaves.

  Vigdal’s teeth dug into the hide bonds tied to the cross bar. The dartblower in the trees seemed to be intelligent. He could have hit them with more darts but why bother? He had already forced a halt.

  The hide was tough and thick and it was hard to gain a good purchase. Every itiji knew the tree people took some of their hides from the bodies of dead slaves.

  The captive’s rigid form dropped away from the bar. Vigdal gripped a loose strap and dragged him across the ground without worrying about scratches and bruises. Two armored itiji answered his call and they managed to coordinate their drags and pushes and wrestle him onto the top of his load.

  “I’ll haul the sled,” Vigdal said. “Give everybody the best protection you can. Try to do some work while you’re at it.”

  The captives who had been attached to the pole had been gnawed free. Two of them crowded close to Vigdal so they could get some extra protection from the bulk of his sled. He pushed onward with his jaws and back muscles straining against the load and sheltered them with his armor when he felt he could honorably stop for a break.

  “Do you understand the situation in Imeten?” Vigdal said.

  “We will be free if we get there. The Warriors will help us defend ourselves.”

  “I want you to go on ahead of us. Carrying your loads. Just head straight south. Your pouches will give you some protection from darts.”
<
br />   “We could move faster if we emptied them.”

  “We can use the iron. The Warriors have their own mine but every extra load helps. Get your load to Imeten if you can. Show the Warriors they can depend on us.”

  “Are they capable of gratitude?”

  “They know a useful relationship when they see it. They are fighting with us now because they believe their Goddess has commanded it. We should give them more practical reasons.”

  “And what will you do, helpfriend?”

  “I and my warfriends will pull the loads. With the help of any unarmored volunteers who wish to join us.”

  The taste of twisted hide dominated Vigdal’s senses. Was this what the captives endured day after day?

  And they had no hope it could end.

  The itiji lurking on the fringes had worked out a way to help. Two or three lurkers would run out of the trees and grab holds. The stalking dartblower would harry them with well-aimed shots, a dart would penetrate an unarmored muscle, rescuers would drag the victim to safety, and another volunteer would take up the burden.

  There was nothing they could do to fight back. They had to slink along the ground, tormented by the helpless rage of hunters who were being hunted.

  Voices sang on all sides. Reinforcements were hurrying to the aid of the Drovils. The two Imeten Eights were drawing closer.

  “Nama-Nanat has fallen from the trees. His Eights have been broken. His Warriors fight isolated and alone.”

  Images raced through Vigdal’s mind. The Drovils could contain the remnant of Nama-Nanat’s Warriors with a portion of their force. The rest would press the pursuit and overtake the sleds....

  He yanked his mouth from the strap and threw back his head. “Stop advancing! Pull the sleds together! Form a triangle with the big sled.”

  Voices shrieked above them while they were still pulling the sleds into place. “That’s good enough,” Vigdal yelled. “Get inside. Make yourself small.”

  The itiji huddled inside the impromptu fort. There were big gaps at the corners but that didn’t matter. Their armor would protect them from attacks from above and the sleds would hamper missile attacks from the sides.

  “They’ll have to come get us,” Vigdal said. “In our element. One on one.”

  “There are more of them coming. Have you considered that?”

  “They’ve got help coming from their nearest camp.”

  “And our help is further away.”

  A voice screamed above them. “Your guardians have been scattered, itiji. You are now defenseless. The Warriors who were protecting you have all been killed or shattered.”

  Vigdal’s companions stirred under their armor. In a moment every voice in the warband would probably be shouting a reply.

  “Let me talk to him,” Vigdal said. “Please.”

  “What are you going to do? Bargain?”

  Vigdal’s tail thrashed. He pressed himself against the ground as if he was making a stalk and let his fatigue and anxiety color his voice.

  “We still have teeth and claws, fruit eater. We can still give ourselves a good meal when creatures like your fat king waddle our way.”

  It wasn’t the best insult he had ever phrased but it touched the same sore spot that had inflamed Nama-Nanat and Jila-Jen. And it insulted their king in an area in which he was conspicuously vulnerable. It had been a long time since anyone had seen Lidris of Drovil leap between a pair of branches.

  Voices screamed. Something heavy crashed into a warfriend’s armor. The warfriend jumped and an iron hammer slipped off his back.

  The leader in the trees shrieked a threat at the subordinate who had lost control. The hammer thrower would be facing a painful future, apparently, if he didn’t recover his weapon before he returned to his base.

  “I’m all right,” the warfriend who had been hit with the hammer murmured. “My back hurts. But I can still fight.”

  There was a song celebrating the haunches of the velagar—the fat, tusked creature that lived on roots and fallen fruits and formed one of the staples of the itiji diet. It popped into Vigdal’s head and he realized he could translate it into the language of the Drovils without doing too much damage to the match between the words and the music. And substitute King Lidris for the velagar.

  “Listen to me. Join in. Sound tired.”

  “Don’t you think we are?”

  He kept it to a single stanza. The band joined in on the repeat and he let his tail thrash in time with the music. Eyes glistened. They might be fatigued but they weren’t daunted.

  He had tried to look at the situation from the viewpoint of the tree people when he had arranged their impromptu barricades. There were no heavy branches directly overhead. The major weakness in their position would be two bottom branches that were located an easy jump from the sleds.

  Every warband had one or two clowns. Theirs was a good-natured dance leader named Laga Duvo Ludac who had developed a perfect imitation of an over-excited tree dweller. On the third repetition, Ludac counterpointed the song with a good imitation of a tree dweller chattering like a frightened prey animal. Three voices shifted the rhythm to an over-emphasized rise and fall, in one of those moments of collective inspiration that characterized good songfests, and they all took up the new variation.

  Fat, fat haunches. Glorious haunches. Thank all the gods for fat King Lidris.

  Eight bodies landed on one of the bottom branches. Four lined up on the other branch. Their leader shrieked an order and they leaped onto the sleds and hurled themselves on the warband.

  It was the kind of fracas Vigdal had been trying to provoke, but that didn’t make it any easier. They were crowded into a space that was so small the itiji were just as hampered as their awkward adversaries. The Drovil who swung his upraised hammer at Vigdal’s skull had to balance himself with his other hand, but Vigdal couldn’t dodge the blow by moving right or left. He pushed himself forward, into the arc of the falling arm, and realized the Drovil was holding a thick iron knife in the fist that was resting on the ground.

  A paw raked the knife hand. The warfriend on his right had seen he was in danger and reacted. Vigdal reared up and slashed at his adversary’s face with both front paws. He turned his head and closed his jaws around the arm that held the hammer.

  His teeth dug into the Drovil’s padded armor. It was made out of a tough, woody material he knew he couldn’t bite through. But now that he had the arm immobilized, he could jerk his head and bite into the exposed flesh near the Drovil’s wrist. Bone crunched. Blood flowed. He pulled back his mouth as soon as he was certain the arm had been crippled and turned to his left in response to the snatches of information he was picking up.

  “Killed one.”

  “Blinded with my claws.”

  “Stabbed by a sword.”

  “My rear left paw is crushed.”

  “On my right. Help me.”

  He added his own voice to the clamor as he threw his weight on another sword wielder. “Kill them or maim them. They must not follow us. Let no one escape your fury!”

  Bodies sprawled across the ground in strange positions. Wounded enemies moaned in pain or stared at them with angry eyes. Three of the enemy wounded had stumbled away from the sleds and Vigdal had assessed their wounds and let them go.

  Two itiji were dead, two wounded. One of the wounded had a rear paw broken by a hammer. The other one was lying on his side staring at a mangled tear in his stomach.

  Vigdal stepped around three dead Drovils and took his place behind the bar of the sled he had been hauling.

  “We need to start moving. We’ve gained some time but it won’t do us any good if we don’t start now.”

  Exhausted faces stared at him.

  “You want us to keep hauling? After this?”

  “We’ll be lucky if we manage to save ourselves.”

  “We’ve hurt them. They won’t forget this.”

  Vigdal fought back the urge to lie down. How could he offer them words afte
r the shock and strain they had just endured?

  They weren’t fighting just to kill their enemies. They were creating an alliance—a bond with the Imetens. Their battles were a means, not an end.

  “We have something our friends and kin need,” Vigdal said. “We can still save it. Help is on the way. We should try to save it if we can.”

  He tipped back his head. His voice sang across the forest.

  “Tell them in Imeten. Tell all who can hear. We have defeated the Drovils. More are coming but they are well behind. We are pulling our loads and our wounded. We are dragging the iron to our mindkin. Come to us as we come to you. Come to us before they catch us again.”

  A voice rose in the trees ahead of them. Another voice took up the call on their right.

  Ludac was lying against a sled. He raised his head and Vigdal realized he was looking at the self Ludac covered with his clowning.

  “You have committed us, Vigdal. You have committed us without our consent.”

  “We have to try,” Vigdal said. “We can abandon the loads if they overtake us.”

  Words flew at him from all sides.

  “And try to run when we’re tired?”

  “We’ve fought. We’ve killed. We’ve freed slaves.”

  “You spoke for the band. Without our consent.”

  “It’s just a few extra loads of iron.”

  Ludac stood up. He stalked toward the big sled and Vigdal waited for him to say something funny.

  “The message has been sent,” Ludac said. “Our friends and kin have heard our promise.”

  “It was the only thing we could do,” Jila-Jen said. “There were too many guards.”

  “And the captives were already dying....” Vigdal said.

  A noisy stream crashed over a rocky incline a short leap from Vigdal’s forepaws. They were meeting alone, in the most isolated place Vigdal could select. Every itiji in Imeten knew they were talking but Jila-Jen’s scouts had assured him there were no ears within three hundred paces.