C J Cherryh - Gene Wars 1 - Hammerfall

by Hammerfall(lit)

  "I feared you wouldn't kill him," Hati said under her breath, an'i Keran, and far harder than Tofi, from birth. "That was my greatest worry, all the time you were gone."

  "It was a question I asked myself," he said. His time among the abjori, the killing-marks on his fingers, those had changed him in one direction-but Kaptai had changed him in another, reshaped all his father's work in him year by year. And that, he decided, was his father's ultimate and personal defeat. It was Kaptai who held all debts, now, forever; his father had nothing from him or in him, not even the desire to shoot him dead. "I know I would, now, if I had to, but I won't look for him, not even for this. I don't give a damn whether he lives or dies; that's all it's come down to. I don't give a damn for him, not before the duty I have up here. I won't take that chance again."

  That satisfied Hati, he thought. He wanted to set himself back where he had been, in the post he had deserted-not with a right to have it back, but understanding the way his obligations balanced, now, better than he ever had done. He was fit to lead, he said to himself, now. He was fit to lead: he understood things better than he ever had.

  But the thought of riding forward, of reporting to the Ila, daunted him. He saw the red robes in the distance ahead of him, but he still felt a certain dizziness and unsteadiness, effects of the fever, and doubted whether he could deal with her subtleties and her threats. He felt a queasiness, too, in the voices that dinned in his ears, distracting him, as if to say he had deserted that duty, too, and earned trouble for himself and everyone under him. Fool, he imagined Luz saying, and he was put to asking Hati and young Tofi how the supplies stood, and how far they thought Pori might be. he knew they were on the track, but he had come loose from all his reckonings, and lost the threads of information that were life itself.

  A ridge lay due east of them, uncrossable. East, the inner voices cried, but east was impossible, and Pori, south, was essential. they could not cut cross-country as they had on the journey from the tower: they had to reach Pori, had to, had to, no matter what the voices clamored. The sweet well there was life. He had seen the fragility of the camps behind them. He had a grasp now how very far that line stretched, how endangered, how little the skill of the village lords in the deep Lakht.

  Pori was two, three days from this plain of stones, at the pace they had traveled on their way to Oburan. He knew that ridge. He began to know where the rim of the Lakht was, just beyond that horizon line, that implacable, uncrossable ridge.

  Memnanan, meanwhile, dropped back in the line, reining in his besha until he fell in beside him and Hati and the rest. the Ila's voice, it might be, the Ila's curiosity personified.

  Or Memnanan's own.

  "Faring better," Memnanan observed. "No end of miracles, it seems."

  "Better than I expected," Marak said.

  "The Ila was not pleased," Memnanan said.

  "My apologies," Marak said, not contritely enough; but his own stubborn will would not admit to her what he had learned about himself. "Well enough that the tribes stepped in where I wasn't.-How does the Ila view our escort?"

  "She knows," Memnanan said. "Where they ride is nothing to her."

  It was the Ila's sort of answer. That meant the Ila knew she had no practical way to stop them, and would not try.

  "She wishes to speak to you," Memnanan said.

  "I've no doubt," Marak said. He was sore and entirely unwilling to deal with the Ila today. His head spun. But he valued Memnanan's goodwill, and he knew he had tested it to its limits in the last several days.

  "He's not recovered," Hati said. "He needs his rest."

  Useless excuses with the Ila. "No, I'll go," Marak said.

  "Then I'll go with you," Hati said.

  "Best not." Hati and the Ila alike had hot tempers, and Hati's, like the Ila's, had been sorely tried. "Do me the favor: stay here."

  Hati frowned. He fixed that dusky stare in his heart and rode off with Memnanan, alone, and straight up through the column, among the red robes.

  The head of that group was the Ila herself, veiled in red, gloved against the sun.

  "Ila," Memnanan said. "I've brought him, at your order."

  Marak drew alongside. "I'm here."

  "I sent last night!" the Ila said peevishly. "And where were you?"

  "Dying."

  "Deservedly! You left against my order!"

  "I'm here now." It was the old give-and-take with her, not unreasoning anger. He was reassured in her purposes, her demeanor, her control of her anger. "You wanted something?"

  "What is this baby?"

  "My wife's baby," he said. "Mine. I take it for mine."

  The Ila did not look at him, rather sniffed and stared straight ahead, thinking what, he could not guess, until she asked: "And Tain? Tain shot you. Tain got the best of you, Marak Trin."

  "He did." There was no denying it. "The Haga lost four men on the trail, shot from ambush, and I don't think he was alone. The Rhonandin helped me search back along the track as far as I was willing to go, but he wove back and forth through the column. We lost them in the storm."

  "Those helping him."

  "I know he gathered certain followers. Not an army, I think. If I thought that. I'd be concerned."

  "Water is running short among the villages," the Ila said, still in a prickly mood, and waved a red-gloved hand, an elegant spiral of evanescence toward the heavens. "Even for drinking. So I am told. But in your travels you may have discovered it."

  "We'll come to water at Pori. As we planned. There's the well, the only good well we'll meet."

  "You need not inform me where the springs are," the Ila said in all hauteur. "I'm aware of Pori."

  "We're on schedule," he said. "More or less. Some villages may have drunk more than they ought. They're not experienced in the Lakht. But what can we do, but shorten our own supply?" He spoke to the woman who had her baths, daily, whose daily tea delayed the column. "Luxury for one may be life and death for a village, Ila."

  "Luxury, you say."

  "I say go unwashed, Ila! It's not that long to water. A little dust is bearable."

  A flutter of red fingers. "Is it bearable for you?"

  "And for all of us, Ila. Give up your noon tea. Make some sacrifice!"

  "To what end? Will it bring water to the hindmost? Will you ride back and carry it there? Leave it for the vermin? Oh, I know your villages. Some may take to robbing their neighbors, and Tain Trin Tain is back there fomenting trouble. Certain villages have decided to squabble, when even the unlettered tribes band together to defend us."

  "And the tribes will not respect a leader who washes her body in water people might drink," he retorted. "There's the truth for you, Ila."

  "And do they respect a man who leaves off guiding the caravan on a whim and a fit of anger?"

  "My wives know the way," he said. "They know it. We were never lost. Trust Norit, if no one."

  "Trust Luz," the Ila scoffed. "Trust the all-seeing Luz, who prepares a shelter for us, who mediates for the ondat and lies to them. Tell me why you should live."

  It came to him like one of his visions, a dizzying perspective that came so clearly, so absolutely: he ought to fear the threat and failed to, utterly.

  "Because, Ila, no one else serves you and Luz at the same time and very few tell you the truth. You know and I know that I could have led the people away from you days ago and left you to travel at odds with the tribes; you know I could have left that very first day with my own tent and a handful of friends-but I didn't do that. I didn't do it because you have importance to the world, and what do I know else? Only what Luz tells me, and I don't think that's enough to go through the rest of our lives with-so I want you to get there alive. I want you and Luz both to settle the ondat and save what's left of us. So I stay and I tell you the truth. Stop taking baths with our water and pay attention to what the tribes tell you and, most of all, win their loyalty, Ila!-which you damned well won't do by bathing in the drinking water. Win their loyalty, s
ince you created us, and be the god on earth. You know us as our mother and our god. You made the makers that made this world, and apart from you we can't hope to know who we are and what's right and wrong for us to do. Call in the au'it if you want to know the secrets I tell my wives, and have Memnanan shoot me dead if you think I threaten your life or your authority. But I think I support it. I think you want someone to say what I say, and tell you the unpleasant truth, or you wouldn't call me in to talk to me. You're not mad, and I'm not mad. We're both terribly, unhealthily sane, and we're going to go on living, because we have no illusions and shooting us doesn't kill us, does it?"

  There was a lengthy silence, and the red gauze veil obscured the nuances of her expression. He saw her in profile, considering all he had said.

  "Oh, we have a great many illusions," she said. "We shape them and make them, and now one of them has risen up to call himself my equal."

  "Equal to you and to Luz," he said. He was utterly reckless at the moment, whether Luz possessed him or whether it was his dive toward death and back, but he saw all life hanging by a thread, and tired of this woman threatening it. "Because without me, and without Hati, you and she would sit still, and most of the world would die. You don't know how to be loved. I can tell you: save these people's lives. Do something with your makers, if you can do it: make them strong enough to get to the tower, and then what you and Luz do with each other is your affair. Until we get there, it's mine."

  "Marak," Memnanan said quietly, a late, a desperate warning. "Be still."

  "Dare you order him be still?" the Ila asked. "Dare you?"

  "He's our guide, Ila. We need to keep him safe."

  "Then see to it he doesn't leave," the Ila said sharply. "See to it he's not twice a fool."

  "I will," Memnanan said.

  "Tain knows which tent is mine," Marak said, seeing dismissal coming. "He was lying in wait. That means he's watching. He knows the layout of this camp, and that means he knows which is your tent." He saw he had the Ila's attention a second time. He knew he would have Memnanan's. "Tain may be near there to this hour, likely stalking us and wondering what he can do about the Haga and the Keran moving in to guard you. If the men with him are sensible, they've seen the tribes in this camp and they know-"

  "I'm not a fool!"

  "Then you'll listen to advice."

  "How many men do you think he has?"

  "Twenty, perhaps, perhaps more. He rarely likes to move with more. How many may be loyal to him. reliably so. perhaps a hundred. I doubt he'll gain more who have the strength to ride with him."

  "Do you know their names?"

  Suddenly, knowing the Ila's ruthlessness, he knew what direction this was going. And refused it. "Folly to go back there and deal with them. Make one mistake, one innocent man, and there is a war, where right now there isn't."

  "Captain!"

  "Ila," Memnanan said, as au'it all around them wrote zealously.

  "Hear me instruct him! Don't ride out again, Marak Trin Tain. You will not leave this camp without my direct permission. Write it!"

  "I don't intend to," Marak said. "Unless I see an immediate way to end the threat to the Ila."

  "Did I say not? I think I said not!"

  "He would have shot you instead of me, if he could get so far into the camp and be sure of getting out again! He's not a fool. He wants to rule, not die. I'm not sure you care which."

  "Marak," Memnanan said again.

  "No, let him say what he wishes. And let him hear! I saved the lives of everyone alive in the world. I've preserved the lives of their children's children, and for my comfort and long life, it was a sensible transaction. Now after all this time, it seems I offend enemies I never met, that I never fought. Luz blames me that these enemies rain destruction down on the world. Tain Trin Tain blames me that I take tax. Yet a farmer comes to me if a windstorm flattens his fields and say, `Ila, we have no food.' And what should I say? We have no warehouses? Will Luz have warehouses? And wherein is she virtuous, above me? Wherein is Tain, and what will he do for the world, in my place?"

  "I can't talk about Tain," he said in a faint voice. "I don't understand Luz. I only know where water is, and where safety is. That's all I know, but it makes me your match, out here. Once I've gotten you to Luz, my job is ended, and I lose all importance. It's my greatest ambition, to lose all importance."

  "No, it isn't."

  "What is, then?"

  "To escape alive," the Ila said. "How dear will you hold that ambition, in a hundred, in two hundred, in three hundred years? How dear will you hold it, when you've watched the whole world die, twice and three times? And how tempted will you be, to eliminate the fumbling and the foolishness and the damnable waste of stupid creatures that repeat the same mistakes and die and feed the next generation of makers, and the next and the next and the next after that. I provoke you and you do nothing! I tread on you and you bleat that you need me! I save your world for you and you never learn! Do you want my power? Take it, and you'll bathe in the drinking water in half my life span."

  The Ila rode beside him, veiled, a riddle of intentions, in command of armed men, on her way to an enemy's refuge, an enemy whose deeper motives he also did not know.

  And all his experience told him that nothing was as fatal as lying to the Ila, that her sanity, like his, was precarious, and that he, and Memnanan, and all he loved were in danger at every moment he failed to keep her wondering.

  "Are you mine?" the Ila asked him.

  "I am not hers," he answered.

  "What if I said to you that she is the enemy of the ondat?"

  "Why would they save her tower and ruin yours, if that were true?"

  The Ila cast back her veil, precisely, with red-gloved hands: exposed her face to the wind and her eyes to his curiosity.

  "Indeed?" she said. "Do you know they do things as reasonable men would do them? And are these ondat your friends?"

  "No," he said. "They're not likely to be. We agree on that."

  "Ah," the Ila said. "Indeed. Is she the enemy of the ondat, who destroy us to carry out their law. and the rest of our kind-and there are others, Marak Trin!-allow it, in their lax-handed way? But only so you think on it, Marak Trin, I tell you something I believe Memnanan understands, too. If he doesn't, explain it to him. I trust nothing but a man's own best interests. And I believe you've discovered yours, and mine. You've made yourself safe in my company. You've made yourself essential, personally essential. Go on amusing me, Marak Trin. On that thread your life hangs, and will continue to hang. I've not had a husband in a hundred years. Do you feel lucky?"

  Marak, his voices said, outraged. Marak, Marak, Marak, as if they would not let him think deeper, ask deeper, act on those thoughts and those questions, or countenance sanely the Ila's outrageous proposition. The world swung east, east! with a vengeance. He swayed in the saddle, all but fainted in the dizziness, and caught at the saddlebow to save himself.

  Memnanan also caught at him, riding close on his left.

  "I've annoyed Luz," the Ila said to Marak. "Poor Luz. Go console her. And don't leave the column again."

  "Ila," he said, and had no idea what Luz thought, or what the Ila thought, or what either of them meant. He talked about the safety of every living soul in the world, and the Ila reduced it to a personal argument.

  It was like bathing in the drinking water. It took the question of survival to an individual one.

  But did they refuse to drink the water? None of them refused.

  He reined back. He understood her conditions, and the points of her argument. She did what they allowed her to do, and they allowed her, because she was the god on earth. because without her they had no god, no devil, either, except the ondat, and no man in the caravan wanted to contemplate dealing with them: most failed even to understand the ondat existed. For them it was all the Ila, and not even Luz was real.

  "Memnanan," the Ila said as he retreated. "Watch him. On your life, watch him. Don't let him disobe
y."

  Nothing protected Memnanan. And she threatened her own captain. Where there was leverage, she found it.

  And she was right: those who destroyed so many lives were no friends. Those who would destroy this many lives were no fit rulers. That was all his battered wits came up with for an answer: that their fit ruler was madder than the mad, and had been saner in her long life, but she was still-for reasons most of them never understood-their god, their precious ruler, the definition of what they were. Was it virtue in her, some last remnant of sanity, that she bent every effort to make them hate her, and spared them when they failed to kill her?

  He, on the other hand, held Luz's makers. And what had he just tried to do? He had ridden after Tain, and now he defied the Ila.