Moonscatter

by Jo Clayton

  Serroi nocks an arrow, carries four others in her drawing hand, moves away from the sane beasts, circles behind their stubby tails, their plump haunches, so they won’t see what she is going to do. Drawing and loosing, running in a shallow arc as they drop, she slays the five macain, kills them quickly, cleanly. And when the fifth one falls, she stands with her arms hanging, her bowstring scraping against her knee, staring silently at her dead.

  The end of the contest comes quickly after the boy knows himself outmatched. A parry falters, his arm is thrust aside and the swordpoint slides with an easy and a welcome neatness into his heart.

  Hern pulls the sword free, stabs it into the ground and stands leaning on it, the excitement of the bout gone out of him, fatigue like lead on legs, arms, shoulders. He has felt nothing during the fight, not even the cuts and bruises. Now these burn. His face burns too, about the half-healed wound from the minark’s needle ball. He stands bent over the hilt of the sword, too spent to move, too weary to keep standing, too weary to sit down, watching with dull eyes as the boy finally dies, his mouth open, his eyes rolled back in his head, his body flattening as if some plumping pneuma had leaked away with his heart’s blood.

  Serroi brings him a cup of water, touches his arm, wakes him from his haze of weariness.

  He straightens with some difficulty, takes the cup. “Thanks.”

  “Let’s get out of the sun.” She tugs at his arm.

  Hern empties the cup, looks over her shoulder at the ripped and savaged bodies, the tumbled armor, the bloody shredded blanket occupying the only bit of shade for miles around. He drops his eyes to meet Serroi’s anxious gaze, shrugs and walks away from her to lower himself into the patchy shade near the trunk of the sweethorn.

  Serroi pinches her lips together, her mind closing in on itself like fingers into a fist. She has gone beyond horror, refuses to think any more about what has happened or about anything else. She locks herself in the present moment, does what must be done, does it without overt emotion.

  With Hern unsmiling, thoughtful, his cup refilled, sipping at the water, watching her, not steadily but now and then as if he is checking to make sure she is still there, she collects their scattered gear, dumps it at Hern’s feet, starts rifling through the Sleykyn belongings. Waterskins, weapons, trail food, these she adds to the pile. When she is finished she stands by Hern’s feet, wiping at her face. Her mind aches from the tightness of her grip on it; there is a burn of tears behind dry eyes. She tries a smile but her face is too stiff.

  Black bloodsuckers are swarming over the corpses, some of them transferring their attention to the living. Serroi slaps at a sucker on her leg. “You’d think they’d be satisfied with all that.” She moves a hand in an irritated gesture that takes in the field of death.

  Hern glances at the corpses and at the dead boy. She can’t read the expression on his face. “Should I thank you for the crumb you threw me?” His voice was hard with irony. “To make me feel more like a man, I suppose.”

  “Don’t be stupid. I missed my throw, that’s all.” She shrugs. “You want honesty, I was a lot more concerned about the macain than I was with the boy.” She looks around, lifts a hand, drops it. “I forgot my knife.” She walks back to the scuffed flat, kicks around in the cream-colored dust until she finds it. She looks down at herself, clucks her tongue; she picks up her leathers, shakes them as free of the dust as she can, dresses herself. Wiping the dust off hilt and blade, she strolls back to Hern. “My turn. Thanks.” She bends and slides the knife into its sheath.

  He yawns, looks lazily at the sun then back at her. “Why?”

  “For what you haven’t said. If we’d stayed at the cave like you wanted we’d have missed all this.” She starts for the nervous, snorting macain.

  He stands, stretches. “No point. Bad luck, that’s all.”

  She glances over her shoulder, surprised into a short laugh as he echoes her words, the ones she’d chosen to ease him after the fiasco in Skup. She leads the macain across to the pile of gear, watching him as he moves his shoulders. He turns slightly and the light streams through the branches of the sweethorn onto his face, lighting up the partly healed scar from the needle ball. A trickle of dried blood runs down his cheek and dips under his chin. A Sleykyn fist had caught him there an age ago—though she remembers now noting the blow and his involuntary outcry. She pulls the weaponbelt from the saddle.

  He opens his hand, closes it into a fist, raises his forearm, winces, lowers it, closes his fingers about the cut in his arm over the sash in the black sleeve, its edges stiffened with dried blood. He runs his eyes over her. “Hadn’t you better get rid of those leathers?”

  “In a bit. Sit down a minute, will you?” She slides the weaponbelt through her fingers until she finds the proper pocket and takes out the salve jar. Slapping the belt over her shoulder, she opens the jar, wrinkles her nose at the slather of salve left. She looks around, firms her mouth and closes her mind. Slipping the knife from her boot, she kneels beside one of the corpses and cuts off a piece of his leather tunic, one relatively free of bloodstains. She stands, rubs at her nose. “Sit down,” she says again, more sharply than she intends. She swallows, presses the back of the hand holding the piece of leather against first one eye then the other. More quietly, she says, “Let me fix your face.”

  Without speaking, he settles back to the blanket. She hefts one of the waterskins from the pile close by her knees and soaks the piece of soft leather, uses it to wash around the tear on his face, working as carefully as she can but hurting him in spite of her care. He winces now and then but makes no other sign of the pain. When she is finished she takes salve on her fingertips and spreads it carefully over the lacerated flesh. She sits back on her heels. His eyes open and his tightly compressed lips spread in a relieved smile. “Feels a lot better.”

  “Good.” She leans toward him and catches hold of his right hand. There is a short but ugly scratch on the back. As she cleans it, she says, “We can’t camp here.”

  “Who’d want to. What’re you getting at?”

  “Floarin must be buying Sleykynin.”

  “An army?” He closed his fingers, opened them, closed them again. “Why? She’s got the mijloc nailed.”

  “Not the Biserica.” Serroi unbuttons his cuff and rolls the sleeve up so she can get at the cut on his forearm. “Sits there like a thorn poisoning her.” She tugs at his arm until she has it firm along his thigh. He is bending forward now, his head close to hers. She bends over the cut, spreading the lips apart, cleaning carefully inside. When she has the black threads and dirt cleaned out, she scrapes up the last of the salve and spreads it over the raw flesh. Hern has his teeth sunk into his lip, his face is pale, sweating. “And Ser Noris wants the Valley,” she says.

  “An army,” he repeats softly. He lifts his arm absently so she can roll the sleeve down and button the cuff again. She sees that the thought disturbs him. He looks at the sun, moves impatiently, frowns at her. “You keep talking about him, that Nor.”

  She wipes her hands on the bit of leather. “I lived with him from my fourth to my twelfth year. He tried to use me.…” She drew the tip of her forefinger around her eye-spot. “To open the Valley for him.”

  “You escaped?”

  “No.” She gets to her feet, starts stowing the extra supplies in the saddlebags. “He threw me away like a broken pot.”

  “Left you to die?”

  Her fingers are very busy packing Sleykyn food in with their own. “I don’t think so,” she says finally. “I don’t understand it. I’ve thought about it the seventeen years since. I don’t know.”

  He finds his swordbelt and sheath in the pile of gear. “Twenty-nine. You don’t look it.”

  She shrugs. “Who knows how a misborn ages. I’m probably the first to escape the fire.” With gloomy satisfaction, she slaps the saddlebag shut and ties the thongs.

  “Time we were out of here.” He steps around a body, over another and makes his way to the
dead macain. “It’s turning you spooky.” He kneels beside a macai and starts cutting her arrow from the cooling flesh. “He wants you back?”

  “So he says.” She moves around to the other side of the macai and continues with her stowage.

  “And you want to go back.”

  “I can’t.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “I know.” She begins rolling up a Sleykyn blanket to replace hers. The sun is setting and the air is already much colder, with the suddenness of temperature drop characteristic of high desert. A few stars are already blooming in the darkening sky. Further discussion avoided by mutual consent, they finish what they are doing and start away from the well, riding on the lamentable track the Sleykynin call a road, riding this time with their attention on the land before them, not on whatever speculations disturb their minds.

  They rode at night and holed up by day, depending on Serroi’s outreach to warn them of danger ahead or behind. The day camps were wretched—little shade, much wind and dust Hern, Serroi, the two macain were white with the omnipresent alkali dust that leached away what little moisture the sun left in their skin. On the first day, lying in the meager shade of a clump of doerwidds atop a low rise not far from the road, they watched three bands of Sleykynin ride past, heading for the Vale of Minar and probably for the mijloc beyond, all of them young, just-fledged sword fodder like the six at the well. Hern withdrew further and further into himself, brooding over a helplessness that was for him too strong an echo of the helplessness of the mijloc. He grew grimmer, more irritable; having to depend on Serroi to such an extent made him feel his helplessness all the more keenly. The brief interval of tenderness at the cave might never have happened.

  On the third night they needed water and crept down to a well about an hour before dawn when the band of young Sleykynin camping there were deep asleep—being still in their own land, they mounted no guard. While Serroi kept watch with arrow nocked and ready, Hern filled the skins. They left the well behind them without incident and rode on through land illumined by a shrinking TheDom, the radiant Dancers and the irregular sparks of the Jewels. Now and then, when they topped a higher rise in the South road, they caught glimpses of tilled land, an occasional heap of stones that might be a walled city or a Sleykyn Chapter House. Most of the time they saw only the anhydrous, lifeless earth glowing with the moonlight it sucked in.

  On the ninth night there was an armed guard at the well when they came down for water, not Sleykynin, but Assurtiles of the Prime’s elite guard. News of the slaughter at the first well had apparently reached into the North. The two guards were jumpy, twitching at every noise. They huddled close to a small fire, blankets wrapped around their shoulders, the chill of the night making noses drip, eyes fill with rheum. Four others lay wrapped in blankets on the flat around the hole that was the well.

  Serroi and Hern withdrew carefully until they were back with their macain. Serroi drew her hand along the flat water-skin, scratched gently at the warty neck of her mount. “We need water. Even if we could do without, they can’t.” The macain, used to a temperate climate with constantly available water for drinking and rolling in, were beginning to suffer from the desert heat and the stinted gulps of water.

  Hern drew a powder-laden sleeve across his face, spat. “Assurtiles,” he said. “Not Sleykynin.”

  “You said it yourself once. Sleykynin make chinjy guards. Besides, Sleykynin are probably too busy hunting us.”

  He frowned. “You know that?” His voice sharp, he laid a heavy stress on know.

  She shrugged. “Obvious, isn’t it. Why guard that well unless they know we’re coming? Count the days. Two for the first band of Sleykyn to race for Assur after finding the dead. Three more back to the well with the best pack of chini trackers they can locate, they being full assassins this time, not those hatchlings we saw on the road. Two more to send news back that we’re headed east more or less along the road. Two more to get Assurtile guards scattered out along the line of wells. I haven’t felt them yet but I’d say the Sleykynin aren’t that far behind us. They’re limited by the speed of the pack but they probably aren’t stopping much, just long enough for food and water.”

  Hern grimaced. “Almost as stupid as running into the middle of those boys, forgetting about chini trackers.”

  “I won’t argue with that.” She looked past him, narrowing her eyes and staring intently at the eastern horizon. “If we can reach the scarp there.” She pointed. “You can just about see it, a heavier darkness along the horizon. If we can reach that before they come up with us, we won’t have to worry.”

  “Why?”

  “Tell you later. Let’s get that water and get out of here.”

  By the end of the tenth night the hunt behind them was audible, the chini pack close enough for the belling of the beasts to reach them. The land was and, desolate, even emptier than before, crossed unpredictably by deep gullies that were often just too wide to leap. Twice they attempted to leave a road starting to curve toward the north and cut straight across the land toward the great scarp that lay before them as a ragged black line like a heavy brush stroke across rough paper, but each time they were forced back after losing a worrying amount of time searching for places narrow enough to jump the gullies. Behind them Serroi felt the fury of their pursuers like the effluvium from a stink shell, choking her, sickening her. Then the road swung almost straight north. She pointed at the Scarp. Hern nodded. For the third time they left the road and tried cutting across the broken lands.

  Dawn found them riding at a fast walk along the rim of a broad wash, moving almost directly south, hunting for a place where they could jump their weary mounts across. The scarp lay less than a quarter mile away on the far side. Hern was sullen, tired, angry, impatient. He wanted to stop and ambush the Sleykynin. Serroi refused. Her arrows, she told him, wouldn’t pierce velater hide unless she was almost nose to nose with the wearer and the Sleykynin wouldn’t let either of them get that close. He wouldn’t do much better with the spears he’d picked up at the well. Hern wanted her to prod the macain into attack again. She couldn’t force herself to do that, not again, never again. She tried to tell him that but he couldn’t or wouldn’t understand. This was life or death and as far as he was concerned you fought with what weapons you had. Through persistence and shouting, she convinced him it was a weapon she no longer had.

  The band of assassins kicked up dust behind them, the men visible as black dots like seed in a cottony white fruit. They were leaving the chini behind, pushing their mounts now that Serroi and Hern were in sight, closing the gap faster than was comfortable in Serroi’s eyes. And the wash stubbornly refused to narrow, though it did begin to curve toward the east just a little.

  “Serroi,” Hern called suddenly, bringing her head back around. His words spaced by short silences as he spat out the churning dust, he continued, “Look ahead. Am I dreaming or is that a neck a couple lengths ahead?”

  Serroi rubbed at her eyes, squinted ahead. “I think so. Doesn’t look much better than the last two we passed, could be it’s enough. Want to take the chance?”

  “We got a choice?”

  “No.”

  They angled out from the wash to give their macain running room. Behind them they heard shouts from their pursuers, screams from the Sleykyn macain as their riders tried to whip speed they didn’t have from the tired beasts. Bent low over macain necks, whispering encouragement to them, Serroi and Hern sent them racing at the wash. Powerful hind legs kicked against the earth; the macain flew in shallow arcs across the chasm. Serroi’s mount landed a safe distance from the lip, claws out, digging into the hard soil; he pranced a few strides farther, halted as she tugged him to a stop and turned to watch Hern’s struggles. His mount had landed on the very rim of the wash, brought down early by Hern’s weight. He flung himself up over the neck of the macai as the beast scrabbled frantically at the crumbling rim, the shift of his weight finally enough to turn the balance. The mac
ai scrambled to safety and minced delicately up to Serroi, Hern settling himself back in the saddle. Across the wash they heard a roar of frustration. There was no way the Sleykynin could emulate their feat, their mounts were exhausted and their full armor made them heavier even than Hern.

  A short spear hummed past Serroi, plunking into the crusty earth. Hern patted his trembling mount on the shoulder and set him into an easy lope, frowning at the ragged breathing of the beast. Serroi, startled, looked over her shoulder at the Sleykynin. Two of them were on the ground, throwing sticks in hand. As she looked, the second whipped his arm down. The spear hissed through the air at Hern, faster, it seemed to her, than any arrow. She kicked her macai to the side, heard the spear slice past her, heard a grunt from Hern. When she looked, he was crumpling from his mount, a spear shaft protruding from his back. She only had time for a glimpse of this before there was a terrible burning pain in her back and she was falling too.

  Mordant bite of dust in her nose and mouth. A yielding hard bulk under her body. She blinks, sits up, pushing against a resistance that is sticky like thick syrup. With almost a pop! she breaks through it and stands.

  At first she can see nothing, it is very dark. No moons—Are the clouds back?—then it seems to her she can see a form in the darkness, a long slim form looming high over her. She blinks, wishing she could see more clearly though she isn’t frightened, something that surprises her since she can vaguely remember a moment of extreme fear and pain. With the wish comes clearer sight as if all she needs is to will something and it is so. She sees a slim woman with a stern lovely face, it is like one of the Maiden carvings in the great Temple in Oras, but this vision lasts only an instant, the image fades—or changes—or was never there at all. A dark bulk is in front of her, closer to the ground. She blinks. Reiki janja sits cross-legged on the cold gritty earth. The janja beckons. Serroi glides to her at first delighted to see her, then puzzled because she is somehow not walking. She looks down at herself. She is naked. She puts her hands to her face, ashamed to be naked before her friend. She is confused. She can’t remember stripping. She holds out her hands and looks at them. She can see the ground through them. She is dreaming. As before. She is suddenly afraid. Before her is Reiki janja, her friend, she is certain of this, then not certain, she gazes painfully at Reiki, trying to see into her but she cannot. The memory of pain grows suddenly stronger, she looks back at what she left behind her.