Betrayer: Foreigner #12

by C. J. Cherryh

  They swerved onto pavement, headed uphill, fast.

  “Situation,” he asked. He didn’t expect them to know more than he did.

  But Banichi said quietly, “We are with Guild born to the district.”

  Born here, not Guild who had fled here. Taisigi-born. He had never in his life thought that would be comforting to hear.

  The van cornered again, righthand turn, and sped up a paved road.

  To Targai, Machigi had said.

  Good. Good. Righthand and upland was a good direction.

  His mind was racing. He couldn’t see a damned thing but Jago’s knees and Banichi’s, and the back of the seat in front of him.

  They turned, four more times, and the pitch was continually up. The whole of Tanaja sat in a stream-cut half bowl, fronting on the harbor, with the center of government midway up the hill. They were climbing, at every opportunity, headed for the heights where—God knew—he’d had a little chance to view the map—there was a road leading into the hills and off toward the main west road they’d used coming in.

  They hit gravel, not the paved road they’d come in on, and that startled him. Bren propped his shoulder against Jago’s seat, wrapped his arms around his ribs and kept his head down, telling himself if his bodyguard wasn’t objecting they must be all right. He still had a concept where they were going, onto minor roads into the uplands, and that wasn’t a bad notion: if trouble was coming, it might well come in from the northwest, or from pretty well due north, out of Senji district and across Maschi land. The whole district might light up if Geigi knew about it and called in help to stop it. They could run straight into a firefight.

  Nobody said anything. They drove and drove, on bumpy, chancily maintained road.

  Then a shot echoed. And something blew. The van swerved.

  “Tire,” the man in the front seat said, and the van was steering hard, swerving, with the shredded wreckage of a tire thumping in the front right wheelwell.

  Damn, Bren thought, trying for calm.

  A second shot broke the front side window. The van spun off violently to the side, bucking over rock and rough ground as the partner tried to steer. The van hit brush, broke through saplings, and the front end dropped with a brain-rattling jolt—that and the simultaneous impact with Banichi’s arm and Jago’s, before his chest and behind his head, so that he rebounded from one to the other. The back door opened, and Tano and Algini vacated the back seats, the hard way—the van was nose-down, and Banichi got his own door open and dived out.

  Bren started to move. Jago prevented him. “Get down,” she said.

  Down. There wasn’t much further to get down. But Jago was out of her seat, in the tilted floorboard, covering him with her own armored body.

  “Nadiin,” she asked, but there was silence from the front seats. “Bren-ji, are you hurt?”

  “No,” he said, as honestly as mattered to his ability to move. He had no questions. They were in a mess. The two in front weren’t answering, and Jago got an arm between the seats, trying to ascertain their condition, while Bren stayed still and tried to breathe with her pressing on him.

  “Both are dead,” she said in a very quiet voice.

  The same shot. Blind damned luck. And there was, around the van, except for the occasional ping of the cooling engine, no sound but their breathing.

  “Come,” she said. “This van is a target. Move carefully, Bren-ji. Can you get out Banichi’s door without a sound?”

  “One will do it, Jago-ji.” He eased to the side, feet first, and felt his way into open night air. He paused, remembering his pale trousers and coat. “I shall be visible in the dark.”

  “Get below the brush. Get low, Bren-ji. Leave the luggage for now.”

  The rest of his bodyguard was out there somewhere, and, he would bet, given that side window shot, they had some notion of the trajectory. They were not sitting still, he’d lay money on that. But Jago was, if he didn’t move. He wriggled out as quickly and quietly as he could, no matter the bruised ribs, and slid in under the brush, as compact as he could make himself, which hurt considerably.

  Jago followed. She brought her rifle, tucked low, and took up guard over his position, above a streambed. A trickle of water flowed in it, among brush and rocks, a soft sound that overrode others in the night.

  Absolute quiet for a time.

  Then a thump and a skid on rock. Two sounds, somewhat upward on the slope. He felt Jago’s hand on his shoulder. Someone ran.

  Thump. A rock rattled down the slope. Something heavier fell.

  Damn, Bren thought. He was in a cramped position. His leg was going to sleep. He wanted to move it. And daren’t.

  Then a faint, faint triple and stop green flash on Jago’s wrist. Someone reporting. Thank God.

  She didn’t move for a moment. Then she patted his knee twice, which meant Stay put.

  He did, as she eased out of the hiding place. He didn’t hear her move. He did what she asked and stayed very, very still, as Jago reached into the van and hauled out one bag and the other.

  Brush whispered. Bren stayed absolutely still. A shadow moved in and Jago didn’t react. The shadow was Banichi-sized, and Bren managed quiet, small breaths.

  Jago brought a bag. Banichi did. That was all. Jago came close and hissed, “Bren-ji. Come.”

  He didn’t ask questions. He took careful hold of the prickly brush and hauled himself to his feet, trying to stay as involved with the brush as he could. He thought about his wardrobe. He didn’t have a darker coat, damn his planning . . . he’d not brought one. And hell with it: if they were going cross-country, he was no help lugging that bag along, and his bodyguard had enough with their own gear. “Leave mine,” he whispered. “I shall manage. My notes. Just get my notes, nadiin-ji.”

  Two other shadows materialized from around the end of the van, drawing his tense attention; but atevi vision was keener in the dark, and Banichi took no alarm, only passed the luggage to the shorter one—that would be Tano—and relayed the request.

  Jago tugged, drew him away from the van. Banichi was right behind them.

  How far to the border? Immaterial, he said to himself; borders meant less now than they usually did on the mainland.

  Get to Targai if they could. If not Targai, then Najida or Kajiminda—any place where shots didn’t crash through the walls. They hadn’t even attempted to get the van out of its predicament. They just left it, committed to getting out on foot. Maybe getting to a safe spot, where they could sit it out and wait for rescue.

  He didn’t argue. He didn’t offer an opinion, whatever his bodyguard decided to do. If they were going to try to make it to Targai, he had to keep his discomfort quiet and try not to slow them down with personal problems.

  13

  They kept as much as possible to stony surfaces, in the higher areas of the hills, disturbing the ground as little as possible. “One is willing,” Bren said, at a stop where he could find breath enough for coherency, “one is willing to go a little faster. I think I can, nadiin-ji. Or find me a place to dig in and wait for you. Then you go for reinforcement and come back.”

  “No, Bren-ji,” Banichi said quietly. “Our best hope is to go, now.”

  They knew how the Guild was likeliest to proceed and what they could rely on; he didn’t. He could do nothing about his clothing: he shone in the dark, he was certain of it. And they were going slower than he was, even when he tried to forge ahead.

  And a request to shed the damned vest? They wouldn’t hear of it.

  A second shot like the last one, he thought glumly, and I’ll be dead anyway. I couldn’t stand it.

  But two hours or so on, at the same steady pace, and he swore the whole of the Tasaigin Marid was uphill. They moved, and they stopped, and sometimes either Jago or Banichi left the rest and went on ahead, scouting during their rest time. Sometimes they would come back to report, or now and again the rest of them would just barely catch up, and then the one scouting would immediately be on ahead
on another foray. Tano assigned himself to Bren, and Algini kept an eye to an occasional light-flash on his bracelet, that item of equipment like Jago’s, that Bren had only once or twice seen them wear. He couldn’t read it, no more than he could penetrate the verbal code that passed now and again, curt and infrequent; but green was good. Green was the good one. He’d observed that before.

  Finally—Bren found himself increasingly scattered in his thinking, and mostly concentrating on not breaking his neck—his concentration lapsed. He managed to hook a dragging toe on a scrub root and took a stumble; he would have gone down a human-high edge, if not for Tano’s arm.

  He looked around to nod a thanks, and that movement did it: his head went light, his vision went iffy, and his knees went to water.

  This is going to hurt, he thought calmly. He was standing on a rocky slope, or falling onto one, except Tano wrapped his arms around him and steadied him, and the fall didn’t happen. Sky replaced itself with Tano’s shadowed face.

  “Bren-ji has to catch his breath,” Tano said to his partner.

  Bren-ji had to catch a good deal more than that. A functioning sense of balance would help. “Have to take the vest off,” he said.

  “Sugar,” Algini said instead, and, Algini and Tano having all the baggage between them, got into one bag and came up with, of all things, a packeted soft drink.

  Bren took it. It went down as sweet as fruit juice and hit his system like a hammer—stimulant, among other things, probably a dose of minerals. He thought for a moment he was going to be sick, then that his breathing couldn’t possibly keep up with his heart rate, and then that it probably had helped him, once his body adjusted to it. He was not as dizzy, whether because of the stimulant or that he had had a little while to get his balance and catch his breath.

  “I can walk,” he said.

  And they did.

  An atevi border was soft for about half a day’s walk, in a vague overlap of property rights. But it got to be more the other side’s territory the closer you got to the middle. He thought if they had more of that fruit drink, and he could keep hitting it, he could keep going until morning.

  Maybe that could get them to a safer place.

  Tano kept a hand at his elbow, carrying a rifle and the baggage on the other side, hardly balanced, he told himself. They hiked down an increasingly deep ravine for a considerable distance, with Algini going ahead of them to find the way and occasionally, very occasionally, when they were stopped for a second, showing that spark of green that meant either Banichi or Jago was all right out there.

  Three or four rests later, and when his legs had ceased to report accurately what footing he was on, a shadow rose out of the brush ahead, and the fact Algini had not taken cover or opened fire on it informed him that that was probably either Banichi or Jago.

  Good, he thought, and didn’t try to ask questions. His bodyguard conferred together. Bren just half-sat against a rock and breathed for a while.

  Jago came up to him then, and asked, “How are you faring, Bren-ji?”

  She wanted, he told himself, no optimistic stupidity.

  “Accurately, Jago-ji, one has availed oneself of drink from the baggage, and perhaps another one would be helpful. One is tiring, one has no idea where one is going, and one is a little light-headed. But one is doing fairly well—with Tano’s help. Alone, I believe I would make progress, but far more slowly. I do think—if I rest too long, I shall get stiff.”

  She laid a hand on his arm, wanting to be sure he was focused, he thought. Human gestures of comfort were not likely when she was on duty. “We are one day, by foot, from the boundary, Bren-ji. We want to go until near dawn or until we find a defensible position. We are not yet in position to make contact with Guild forces. An attempt could attract unwelcome attention in numbers greater than we can deal with.”

  “Understood. We shall just keep going, then. Is there more of that drink?”

  “Best wait, Bren-ji. It could make you sick.”

  “I shall make it, Jago-ji,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, thoroughly in Guild mode, and went back into the dark, leaving him to Tano and Algini. In a moment more, a trick of the eyes, she was gone.

  He was glad they were not stopping and risking themselves because of him. Tano and Algini gathered up the baggage they were managing between them—maybe weapons, electronics, even explosives—given Tano’s and Algini’s special skills, the latter was not impossible. They had, he told himself, enough to deal with without hauling him uphill . . . and he had gotten a little second wind.

  It didn’t last beyond the next small valley and another climb. Near the top, he had to be pushed and pulled up the hill, by Tano, he supposed. In the ebbing of the boost from the juice, he was far too winded and dizzy to take account of who was ahead and who was behind him.

  But he kept going once he hit the stony flat at the top, staggering a bit, until they encountered Banichi in the starlight. Jago, Banichi said, had gone somewhat ahead, and they should rest for the while.

  That was good. Words were echoing in his ears. Details weren’t coming clear. He needed to rest.

  “We are coming into a difficult area,” Banichi said, “and we are trying to find a way around it.”

  Going around. He thoroughly agreed with that notion. If there should be gunfire at the moment, he would not have the energy left to take cover.

  He just sat down on a convenient rock. And then there was a gunshot, distant, echoing. Just one.

  For the next few moments.

  Then there were two. And one more.

  Jago was all right. Jago had to be all right. If fire was still going on, she was fighting back. And she wouldn’t be heading back to them, dragging a shooting match with her. If she was engaged with the problem, she’d settle it, and she wouldn’t come back until she had.

  Banichi stayed with them. Algini had the bracelet with the green flashes. Surely he would get some kind of signal soon.

  They waited. And waited. The gunfire had given way to a great, deep silence. And Bren didn’t ask questions to interrupt the stillness, because if Jago signaled she was in trouble, he was sure others had one try to catch that signal. That illusory green flash didn’t come. He might have been sitting among a group of statues.

  The rest were worried, too, he thought. They watched that bracelet and watched the hill around about them.

  Three fast flashes. Then one.

  Banichi gave two fast handsigns, got up, and melted into the dark.

  More waiting.

  God, he hated this. People were almost certainly dead out there—he hoped the casualties were all on the other side.

  And the only favor he could do his bodyguard was not to ask questions and let them think.

  The chill of the rock began to get into his backside and up from his feet. He was sweating under the coat, far too hot under the damned vest, and his feet in the light house boots were numb from cold. He still didn’t move, except to shift his feet and make sure, if they had to get up in a hurry, that he could do it.

  Then a couple more fast flashes came from Algini’s device. A flurry of five or six, so fast he wasn’t sure. Then three.

  Algini didn’t move. Tano shifted stance a little, then gave a fast handsign and moved off.

  That left him and Algini, who stayed still, watching that blip of a lifeline.

  They were in cover where they were. Algini shielded that tiny light with his hand, keeping its view to the two of them.

  How long had Jago been gone? He didn’t want to ask a question, which might distract Algini. But it seemed forever. His backside passed numbness, and the numbness of his feet was traveling up to his ankles. Not good if he had to move. Very, very quietly, and determined not to let the sore ribs glitch the move, he pushed himself to his feet.

  Algini rose up immediately, seized his arm, and drew him back against the rocks.

  Then Algini shot him a sign. Quiet. Atevi eyes might have made something out. He couldn�
��t. He didn’t want to ask. Staying still seemed to be the best course.

  Algini left him then. That sign had probably given him Algini’s best advice, but right now, one by one, his bodyguard had left him, and he was all alone in Taisigi territory—an unprecedented solitude. It was possible that things were, one by one, going massively wrong—in which case all he could do was burrow in, prepared to last days in concealment, and hope whatever was going on in Taisigi district ultimately favored Tabini.

  It was possible, too, that he was not as alone as he thought. Guild could disappear with amazing effectiveness and still be on the job, in which case it was the paidhi’s simple job to stay very still and tucked into the rocks, glowing in the dark as he inevitably did to atevi vision, and let Algini handle whatever came along.

  A sound. A very, very faint sound seemed located off to his right. It wasn’t the direction Algini had gone.

  Stand still, he told himself. Stand very still. Atevi had trouble realizing how blind humans were in the dark. And he was blind, in this nook where Algini had put him. At least he didn’t shine out across open spaces.

  He hadn’t thought of the gun in his pocket. Now he did, and with what he hoped was a natural motion, he eased his hand into that pocket.

  “Kindly hold fire, Bren-ji.”

  He all but had a heart attack.

  Tano was back. He hoped, instantly, for Banichi and Jago to follow.

  But he didn’t move. He saw Tano pass a shadowy sign to empty air, and Algini reappeared, answered in kind, then indicated a direction. Right.

  Bren very carefully went that direction, around the side of the rock that had sheltered him. Tano overtook him, took a gentle hold on his arm, as much to signal him when to stop as to offer help. He kept walking, trying not to make a sound, and Tano said, in a very quiet whisper, “Jago is coming back. Banichi is holding position.”

  That was two things he knew, then, two very welcome pieces of news. They were heading in the direction of the gunshots. That was another thing he was sure of.

  Tano suddenly had him stop and wait. He waited, absolutely still.