C J Cherryh - Gene Wars 1 - Hammerfall

by Hammerfall(lit)

  "Is everything all right?" Tofi asked.

  "Well enough," he said, and the au'it, closely attending them, wrote.

  They rode through the morning. There was a minor shaking, and toward noon a star fell on the horizon, a bright stuttered trail beneath the scattered clouds, then a loud boom. It frightened Tofi's slaves. The two freedmen and Tofi had grown accustomed to such sights.

  Noon came with the sun a white spot in gray cloud, and the sand was hotter than the air as the column stopped, the decision of Aigyan, far ahead of them.

  The Haga stopped, and they stopped. All down the column, camps would set themselves where they could, in whatever circumstances they might manage, all the way back to the city, it might be: the line might still stretch to there.

  The air was cool. It was a question whether they even needed use the tents, and the tribes might choose not; but it was better to work out the hesitations of a new party in quiet air rather than in a rising gale, which tomorrow's camp might bring: better, too, to let new tentmates find their places and settle in. He gave Tofi the order, and they unpacked the tents and pitched them as the soldiers did.

  Memnanan came to their tent and brought his pregnant wife and four old women: the wife's name was Elagan, and the old women were Memnanan's mother and three widowed sisters.

  Those were the additions to their tent, suffering as new riders did, and Elagan six months pregnant. The women wanted to do little but sleep, the old women were already miserable and would wake unable to walk, Marak was sure. He urged them to use liniments and use them abundantly before they slept.

  He lay down on his own mat. The warm sand and the cool air and freedom from the city combined made a strange sort of luxury; and having Hati and Norit close by him was better still. For the first time in days he slept like the dead-waked once as the earth gave a little shiver, then wondered whether it was that illusion of movement that exhaustion brought.

  It was their first sleep on the road, and so many unaccustomed riders and so many that had worked feverishly to get them under way were equally abandoned in rest. In all the camp there was no sound but the restless grumble of a besha, and one answering far away.

  In late afternoon Marak waked, roused up off his mat, and went out. The Haga had stirred forth. Hati and Tofi joined him outside, and the two slaves and a couple of the hired men.

  "Pack up," Marak said. "We'll move. In this, we order the Ila."

  Tofi gave him an uncertain look, but ordered his men to work, and the beshti began their usual complaint. Soldiers stirred forth from their open-sided shelter, and so did a handful of priests. The Ila had not stirred yet, but before the first tent, their own, billowed down, the Ila had sent an au'it to complain.

  "Tell the Ila we are behind, and running late," Marak said, when the au'it posed the objection. "There's no leisure to sleep. This is for her own safety."

  The au'it went into the Ila's tent. In a few moments, back came the au'it. Now their own au'it was on her feet, and the two of them put their heads together and talked in voices so soft as to be inaudible in the flap and shake of the nearby canvas as the slaves rolled it.

  The Ila's au'it went back inside.

  In a matter of moments Memnanan came out to report the Ila was not pleased.

  "But I have advised her that this move is necessary," Memnanan reported. "I trust that it is."

  "Necessary now," Marak said, prepared to be utterly obdurate, "and it will be necessary, every day for the next thirty to fifty days, regular as can be, and after that if we haven't come to the tower, we may die out here, so there will be no further requests. Tell her she has to learn to sleep in the saddle. We all do. She may rule in Oburan, but she doesn't rule the Lakht, or the heavens."

  "I certainly don't want to bring her that advisement," Memnanan said.

  Marak was amused. "Then save it for a better moment. But we have to pack the tent. Good luck to you."

  "Long life to you," Memnanan said dourly, and went back to bear unwelcome news.

  The villages behind would doubtless learn, too, at what hour to be up and moving, or lose their priority in line.

  Certain individuals, however, had been moving during the rest: a number of priests had found their way up the line, without tents or guides. They simply lay on their mats, and rested outside the Ila's tent, exhausted, men afoot, traversing the line at need, mostly the Ila's needs.

  Marak regarded them uneasily. Since their chief priest had fallen dead beside the distribution of the au'it's books, they had no leader, so far as Marak was aware. The priests had waked, too, and were rolling up their mats, with no water, no food, no provision for the desert. And whether they followed the Ila, now, or had some way of consulting their own god for more obscure and divine messages, and immaterial sustenance, he was unwilling to have them underfoot.

  More to the point, he was unwilling to have them taking up rations in the Ila's camp.

  Memnanan had come out again. "She will move," Memnanan said.

  "And the priests," Marak said. "They should fall back and find some village who wants them. What do they intend to drink? Prayers?"

  "Prayers," Memnanan said. "And the Ila's charity. Like the au'it, they have their uses."

  "And their water needs." Marak was far less convinced. "They'll drink up half their weight in water and endanger the Ila. They have to be under someone's authority."

  "I'll speak to them," Memnanan said.

  Before they were under way, and before all was said and done, the priests went under the Ila's remaining awning for an audience: Marak saw them kneeling and bowing and speaking at some length. He wished them to the vermin of the desert: bad enough the several they already had, now there were twice that number, and he wondered how many more of this white-robed lot were loose among the tents of the caravan.

  They were parasites, every one of them, in his estimation.

  But the Ila called him, next, having dismissed the priests. Her tent remained uncollapsed. Its veils were down. But while the Haga were well toward finishing their packing, the Ila sat on her chair, the only chair in the desert, unless some villagers were equally fool enough to pack furniture instead of food. and sipped tea under the only tent still standing.

  Marak went under it and sat down. His au'it went with him and sat, and her au'it sat cross-legged at her feet, with her open book and her pen in hand.

  "The captain has told you we should be moving," Marak said before the Ila said a thing. He made up his mind then and there not to pay abject courtesies or to play the courtier to the Ila's whims. It would not serve her, him, or the people in their threatened thousands. He measured his retreat, if he had to, and he knew that not all the Ila's men could or would prevent him and Hati and Norit riding up among the tribes at the lead, ignoring the Ila, and ruling from there. Their lives, and hers, were too precarious.

  He did not intend it should come to that. But he did not intend to have the Ila delaying them in daily argument, either. Or to have other appurtenances taking up their supplies.

  "The priests," he said, "are a waste of water. They can pack canvas."

  "The priests will go back to the villages with my word," the Ila said, likewise in the serenity of absolute power, and joined her gloved hands primly before her lips. "And keep me apprised of matters behind us.-How is your mother?"

  "Well enough."

  "I hear you've sheltered Memnanan's wife."

  "A matter of gratitude." He was cautious. Lives ended, on the Ila's whim. He might be secure, but others were not.

  "And a matter of personal favor," the Ila said, behind joined fingertips. "Are you corrupting him?"

  "He pays you the favor," Marak said. "The captain is devoted to you. For me, it's a personal debt, and I'm paying what I owe him."

  "For what?"

  "For not being jealous of me. He might have been, seeing you gave me command of this caravan. But he's an honest man."

  "I know he is. A hundred have fallen, and Memnanan stands.-Do
you still hear your voices?"

  "Sometimes."

  "And the fever?"

  He was not sure he had ever told her about the fever. Instinct waked instantly and warned him. He was on his guard, in a heartbeat retracing everything he had said, and asked himself again whether the Ila would be fool enough to threaten his life or that of someone near him.

  "The fever from the wound?" he asked. "Gone. I'm quite well."

  The Ila regarded him curiously and in silence for a moment. She had protected her white, white skin, even beneath the clouded sky. It was as white as ever. If anyone in the camp washed with water instead of sand, it would be the Ila. The smell of the Beykaskh went about her still, perfume, or incense. Even in the oily, sun-warmed musk of the air under the tent, he smelled it, like a taint of holiness.

  "And the wound itself?"

  He pushed up his sleeve. The wound was entirely gone, leaving no scar. He had no idea what she thought, having seen that, but she seemed not entirely pleased with the sight. She lifted her hand.

  "You may go," she said, having asked nothing about their destination, their schedule, or their pace.

  He gathered himself up and left, with his au'it, who never said a word.

  And having escaped the tent and the interview, and saying no word to Memnanan, he gathered up Hati and Norit.

  Tofi came over. Beyond them, the Haga were starting their beasts to their feet, ready to move, in the breakup of that last conference.

  "I think you can pack the tent now," Marak said. "Speak to the captain."

  "What did she ask?" Norit asked him, when Tofi went off to do that.

  "I asked her about the priests, and she asked me about Memnanan's wife."

  "Nothing else?"

  "The voices, the wound, the fever."

  Norit said nothing, but frowned at the last.

  "Why?" he asked her, as they three stood in the dissolution of their camp, the au'it at some distance, writing.

  Norit was a moment answering. He had all but given up on her answering at all, no infrequent thing that Norit remained completely absorbed in her musings. But she said, faintly, "The makers."

  "What about the makers?"

  "That was her question to you," Norit said. "About the wound."

  He and Hati looked at her in dismay, silent. It was clearly not Norit speaking to them. It was not Norit who had asked that question, as he had the strong suspicion it had not been Norit for days. "She wished to know about the makers, that was the intent of her question. Whether the strange makers still work in your blood. That's why she asked you about the fever."

  "She asked whether I'm cured of the madness."

  "Exactly that?"

  "Whether I still hear the voices," he amended it.

  "Yes."

  "Did she think not?" he asked. "As if, when we reached Oburan, the madness would just let us go?"

  "Perhaps she poisoned you," Norit said, "with her knife."

  He was appalled, and asked himself had Norit been there to see the attack. She had not. "To test whether Luz's makers cure poison, too?"

  "They can," Norit's lips said, while Norit gazed blindly at the horizon. "She knows that."

  "Would she take such a stupid risk?" Hati demanded angrily. "Would she poison the only ones who know the way?"

  "It depends on the poison," Norit said in that same distracted tone.

  "What do you mean it depends on the poison?"

  "She set her makers into you. But you still hear the tower's voice. You still hear me. You still see your visions. She asked about the fever, and you reported it fallen. So she knows her makers were defeated and ceased fighting the makers from the tower. She knows she's failed."

  "What, to have her makers give me voices in my head?"

  "I frankly doubt she has that ability. The First Descended had the skill, but not the resources here. We, on the other hand, do. Yes, she tried a small contest against you, and now she knows she's beaten. Now we can prove to the ondat that we can defeat her, and we can show them how. It also proves there's no need for the star-fall, but they won't stop: they wouldn't even hear our protestations that we could prevent the need for it. They're reshaping the world because they have the power, and frankly, too, it's simply politics. Their people have to see their enemy utterly defeated, ever to feel safe. But she's beaten, face-to-face and at her best."

  "Because your makers fought a war in me. And they won."

  "With the fever, they won, yes. It's a very good thing she tried. She's proven our surmise, that we can overcome her. We've also proven it to her, and she's not happy about it."

  "You mean-" It was probably useless to look at Norit, but he did it instinctively, in outrage. "You mean you invite her into your refuge knowing she has these makers in her, and she's going to try some other way to get them into all of us."

  "She may try several times. But she'll lose-again. Oh, make no mistake. This will be a series of battles. She sent you out to us in the first place with makers that didn't survive. as everyone in the world has her makers in them. She just now tried it again, with a direct effort, with the best she can create, and she's lost again and her makers lost."

  He found there was a limit to what he wanted to know about this war in which his soul and his body were the battleground.

  "You mean she'll go on doing this, and you'll try, and she will."

  "I've no doubt that she has something yet to try, and will. We're equally determined it won't work."

  "An attack on us. In us. Again."

  "I fear so."

  Anger welled up in him, a distracting, overwhelming anger. "You listen to me. Your voices can damned well let me alone when I have something to do. There's no need to be chattering at me the way you do. You're sitting in the tower. You can tell your damned voices that while you're at it. And you can let Norit go! Let her be! She's not yours!"

  "She's an excellent viewpoint. You're far too inclined to turn and twist things into what you want to say. And you grow distracted and don't listen. I need to know where you are."

  "You know damned well where we are! Let her alone! Give her her nights free of you, at least!"

  "It's too important," Luz said. "I won't lose all of you just for her comfort."

  "Then talk to me a while!" Hati said.

  "You won't do, any more than he will."

  "Give her some rest!" All this talk of makers fighting makers had disturbed him. He saw nothing to do about that, but Norit's plight, at least, seemed within their reach, a point on which they could reason with Luz. "You'll make her sick if you go on at her like this."

  "I'll let her rest," Luz said quietly.

  Immediately Norit blinked several times and seemed herself again, a little distressed, a little lost, a little confused. Marak put his arms about her, and Hati did, and Norit shivered, and shed tears, then simply sat down on the sand and sobbed.

  "Everybody," Norit kept saying. "Everybody," but they made no sense of it.

  "What can we do?" Hati asked him in dismay.

  "I don't know," he said. He had no idea now whether it was worse for Norit to be awake and to know what she might know, or whether during those times of Luz's possession Norit simply took refuge somewhere Luz failed to bother her, and Norit only realized the nature of what had flowed through her once she waked. but whatever Norit saw that they failed to, it seemed terrible. He squatted down and wiped Norit's tears, and all the while Norit's tears kept flowing, tears for what she saw in Luz's visions, tears for what had happened to her, tears simply of exhaustion: he had no idea what caused them.

  "Find Lelie," she said once.

  He remembered Norit had shouted that name once, in her greatest distress.

  "Please find Lelie for me."

  "Where shall I look?" he asked, but of course it was Tarsa he should search. In those days before their march to the tower, Tarsa was all Norit had ever known.

  "Who is Lelie?" he asked, but Norit failed to answer him.

  In a m
oment he got up and exchanged a glance with Hati. "I'm going to try," he said.

  "If this goes on," Hati said, "she will go crazy, crazier than we ever were. I think it's a sister she's lost. Maybe someone she knows from her village can reason with her."

  When Tofi and his men had packed down the Ila's tent and when Memnanan and his men had seen the Ila and the au'it mounted and ready, they got up on their own beasts. Norit seemed calmer by then, though whether it was the calm Luz imposed in her reign he had no idea. The Keran had already begun to move, and opened an interval on them.

  There must be gaps all along the line of march now, similar disparities in readiness. Some afoot might even turn back after their first or second camp on the road, losing courage for the hardship. He decided he had no wish to know the personal stories of those behind him in the line. He wanted no faces for those that were bound to die, no situations to haunt his sleep and his waking.