by Ron Collins
“To who?”
“Galen of the outer north. Her quadars are coming now to drive them home.”
Taranth had dealt with Galen, and had no great love or happy memory of the process. She was a free-range quadar of similar stature as L’rdent, but less open and less willing to find common places. She came upon her lack of flexibility honestly, having come from the Festia Family before taking her independence from the Terilamat clan. Her control of the outer north was made as much by intimidation as anything else.
Taranth fought the urge to ask what Galen had paid for something more than fifty tal beasts, and what she planned to use them for. The answers wouldn’t have made a difference, but he was interested. He wanted to know how a quadar like her could afford payment for such a quantity of animals as well as for a party big enough to drive them back. It was a long travel.
“We’ll pay you double,” Hateri said.
L’rdent’s back stiffened, and Taranth was so surprised that all he could do was to grunt his disagreement loudly.
The whelp’s primaries were dialed into a focus made sharper by the fact that his hood was pulled back to reveal the skin on his face burned dark from the heats. The curve of his plates rose from his shoulders under the fabric.
Taranth gave the whelp a glare that he wished could burn. “You are here only to observe,” he said.
“We need those beasts,” Hateri replied.
“That is not how we do it.”
Taranth looked at M’ran, who, in return, showed the exact amount of spine Taranth expected of the good council executive—meaning exactly none.
“I do not sell items that are already sold,” L’rdent said to Hateri with a tone to his voice that told Taranth the conversation was over.
“Everything has its price,” Hateri said. “Name yours and the Families will make it appear.”
L’rdent gave a click from the back of his throat that reminded Taranth of a poisonous lizard ready to strike.
“That is enough,” Taranth said, rising. “I apologize for taking your time, L’rdent. We will find other ways.”
“No,” Hateri said firmly.
Taranth’s chest constricted.
“We cannot leave here without those beasts,” Hateri said, turning to face Taranth. “You know it as well as I do.”
Taranth grabbed Hateri by the arm and wrenched him to a standing position. The motion was awkward enough and strong enough that only Hateri’s youthful balance kept them from falling over.
“Are your ears as melted as your mind?” Taranth said, spittle splashing as he spoke. “We will not disrespect our host by insinuating his word can be bought out.”
Louder noise came from outside.
The door to L’rdent’s chamber crashed open, and a volume of yelping voices spilled in. One of the sentries who had met Taranth and the rest of the party put her head into the room.
“Attackers!” she said.
She held a bow in one bony fist, and the sight of quadars scurrying over the beaten ground came from behind her. The light of early Eldoro put the vivid red tinge that was particular to this time of the heat on everything in the background.
Taranth let go of Hateri’s arm and stepped to the door.
“Who is it?” L’rdent grabbed a walking staff and struggled to get around the table.
“They carry Festia property,” the sentry said.
“Galen,” Taranth said, seeing L’rdent’s face darken at the same time the answer came to him.
“Call the settlement to their defensive positions,” L’rdent said as he shuffled forward.
The sentry blinked her primaries.
“Now!” L’rdent yelled, pounding his staff on the stone floor.
The sentry ran so quickly she left the door gaping open.
“How can I help?” Hateri said.
L’rdent grimaced, then, not responding, stepped out the door to lead the defense.
“We should take cover,” M’ran said. “Get to the rest of the group, and drive deeper into the caves until it’s over.”
Taranth scowled, torn between the need to protect his charges, and the desire to stand with L’rdent and the rest of Harshish Point.
“I’ll handle the team,” Hateri E’Lar said.
Then he was gone and, without even checking to see if he was out of arrow range, scampered over the open pavilion at the bottom of the depression that served as Harshish Point’s central focus.
“The whelp is going to get himself killed,” Taranth said.
But inside he was happy as he watched Hateri make it safely through the current of traffic pouring out of the caves, then disappear underground.
M’ran stood with Taranth just outside the door.
Voices were calling, and the cry of tal beasts and neantha came from the field below and above. Galen had trained neantha—if such a thing was possible, anyway. What other depths could she sink to?
“Come on,” Taranth said.
He pulled his knife from its sheath along his leg, and ran toward the fray. The blade was all he had, but as a free-ranger he knew he had to take a side—run or fight, either would have its ramifications, and in Taranth’s hearts he knew he would never run from L’rdent.
M’ran seemed to be frozen in place as Taranth left the chamber.
Eldoro’s heat fell on Taranth’s bare head as he crossed out of the shadows. The point rose behind him like a brown tower. The sky was a hazy mass above.
The flat plane of the Harshish Point depression opened out to the west where the ground rose to a ridged lip. After that feature, the terrain forward fell away as if it were a single slab that had just hinged itself downward all at once, leaving cliffs and high ridges that radiated to the northwest and southwest to make a huge funnel that led to the settlement proper. It also meant the natural approach to defending Harshish Point was to take positions on the high ridges and force the opposition to fight uphill. It was why Taranth and the team had come up the pipe, and it was why Galen’s party had worked their way up both hills early in the siege.
They wanted the ridges.
The Harshish Point quadars carried whatever weapons they could—knives, swords, and clubs—as they raced forward along those ridges. A few, like the sentry, carried bows, and an even fewer number scurried along carrying handfuls of the explosives that were sometimes used to remove chunks of rock for construction purposes or to clear passages underground. The compounds were dangerous material. Just the sight made him cringe.
Taranth used a series of rocks as shields to get closer to the field.
The wind brought him a whiff of blood. The sound of clashing metal rang out. By the time Taranth came to a position where he could take in the field Galen’s party had already made it halfway up the rise.
As he took in the field, two things became clear to him.
This wasn’t an even fight. Galen’s party far outnumbered the Harshish Point defenders.
And most of her quadars were mounted on tal beasts.
Galen didn’t need tal beasts at all.
Their proposed purchase had been a complete ruse.
Anger filled Taranth as the realization settled.
The end was already clear, and that meant from this point forward everything that happened was just senseless killing.
Just as he pivoted away from a rock, an explosion filled the air with debris and threw Taranth to his knees. When the ground stopped shaking, Taranth struggled to rise, but was pleased he still grasped his knife. A shadow rose over him, and he turned to find a thick-chested tal beast rise up before him, the sharp hooves of its front legs churning as it prepared to kick.
Time seemed to stop, then.
The image filled his brain: the animal, raised up on its haunches to three times Taranth’s height, its hind feet levered up like an insect’s, its broad face looking at the sky as its rider reined it back. All Taranth could see of the quadarti rider was the bottoms of its feet in the skin stirrups and a pants-covered leg ben
t at the knee.
Then came a noise like none Taranth had ever heard.
A blast—like the explosive, but sharper or crisper—more of a pop or the cracking of a thick bone than a rumble and a shake.
The tal beast rider gave a sound like all the air in the sky had left its gut at the same time, and fell away to land in a bloody mess at Taranth’s feet.
The beast screamed, but came down without pounding him.
It stood as if unsure what to do next, then it trumpeted and turned away.
Another pop filled the air, this one echoing off the mountainous side of Harshish Point.
Taranth had gathered enough of his wits that he could trace the sound back to the central ridge. There, he saw Hateri standing with his arm extended, pointing a strange device out into the direction of the battle. Pietha stood beside him, carrying a second one of the devices. She handed it to him and took the first from his grasp, then appeared to work some lever as Hateri pointed the new device toward the battlefield again.
Hateri took measure with the thing as if it were a bow. Then another crack came, complete with fire and smoke that spewed from the end of the thing.
Another of the raiding quadars fell.
Hateri waited until Pietha was finished with her work, then they exchanged weapons again. Weapons, Taranth thought, because that’s what they were. His memory flashed to when they had come upon the pride of rela, and Hateri had grabbed his pack. Taranth assumed he had a large knife inside, but he had been wrong.
The weapon roared again, and another of Galen’s raiders grabbed its side, then fell to a knee before being cut down by a Harshish quadar.
Harshish Point defenders roared louder than the explosions then, and louder than the cracks of Hateri’s new weapon. Galen’s raiders gathered themselves and retreated, slowly at first, but then more rapidly when the weapon cracked again and another of their number fell.
The sound of tal beast hooves rumbled in the distance, and a cloud of dust rose up behind them.
Taranth stepped toward the quadar who writhed on the ground at his feet. It was a female. A moment ago she had been prepared to cave Taranth’s head in with the hoof of her tal beast. Now she gasped for air as if unable to take it in. Her primaries blinked, and her central was clamped closed in pain. She clutched at a bloody patch that colored the front of her red and black shirts. They were wet, all six fingers of her hand now blazing with crimson blood as Eldoro’s light crossed into the upper sky.
Taranth understood.
Her primary heart had been pierced.
If it had been the second or third, then maybe she would survive, but it was her primary. She was going to die, and her death would be long and painful.
Taranth knelt beside her, raised his knife, and waited.
The quadar swallowed, her throat giving a dry click of resignation. She focused her primaries on Taranth and her central up to Eldoro, took a breath, and then nodded.
“Do it,” she whispered through the spaces of her teeth.
Taranth bent down with his knife and performed the only task that could help her.
When he stood up, he was numb.
The quadars of Harshish Point took care of the raiders who had been left behind.
The two living prisoners were staked to the punishment block, where the community would argue over them and assess their fates sometime after Katon rose. The dead were stripped of anything useful, then left facedown on the rock, with arms and legs spread as the old gods had declared was right. Satrak, the Waganat, helped lay them out. Of the expedition’s whelps, his blade was the only one bloodstained, his sandals the only ones dirtied with dust from the ridges. When the collective returned to the settlement, the whelp went to the caves while the rest went to drink.
In the distance, the bodies lay in rows.
The desert would take them away before Eldoro came up next.
“Let me see,” L’rdent said.
L’rdent and Taranth had arrived at the ridge at the same time and with the same questions: What was the weapon that Hateri E’Lar used, and how did it work?
Hateri raised his device, then handed it to L’rdent.
Pietha held the other in front of her, but did not proffer it.
L’rdent turned the weapon over in his hands.
The device was made of darkened metal, and consisted of a handle similar to the handle of a knife, a middle section as big as Taranth’s fist, and a longer barrel from which the fire and smoke had come. Its smell was foul enough it made Taranth’s stomachs clench.
“What is it?” Taranth said.
“We call it a gun,” Hateri replied. “It was built by our Tegra Family.”
“Of the Terilamat?”
“Of course.”
Taranth pursed his lips and clicked his throat. “Of course.”
“How does it work?” L’rdent said.
Hateri opened his fist to reveal metal pebbles. “These are bullets. The gun shoots them.”
“As the bow shoots bolts,” L’rdent said, his eyes widening with understanding.
M’ran appeared out of the cave passages and strode through the open pavilion to join them. “What happened?”
“This young quadar saved our lives,” L’rdent replied.
Taranth wanted to argue, but he knew better. His hearts were still stuttering over the memory of the tal beast ready to strike him.
M’ran’s smile was broad and bright. He put his chunky hand on Hateri’s shoulder. “This young quadar can be a little pushy, but he’s got his mind right.”
L’rdent put the barrel to his nose and sniffed it with the same expression on his face as he had when he inhaled smoke from the burning root. He looked at the bullets in Hateri’s hand, and then at the bodies of Galen’s raiders that had been carefully arranged in Eldoro’s heat.
“I believe we can discuss the tal beasts now,” L’rdent said, his gaze returning to the weapon. “I’m sure we can find an appropriate price.”
CHAPTER 10
They rested for two more heats, slipping into the caverns to avoid the peak of Eldoro’s highpoint.
Taranth watched the whelps.
He saw them speaking. Sharing. Working together in ways they hadn’t worked together before and, in fact, in ways he had never seen in the Families before.
The dogmatic clutching of the old ways had always given Taranth a sense of purpose—a sense that what he was holding onto had value of its own sake. A quadar used Eldoro to tell time because that is how you did it, after all. It had always worked for Taranth. Until now, he had been content enough, or at least comfortable enough that he was living life as it was meant to be lived. Until now, he had never truly felt obsolete.
But seeing the whelps working together so freely set him back. Was the intensity of his commitment to the old ways tied more to the price he had paid for his choices than it was to their actual value?
The gun would change everything, he thought, as he watched the young quadars talk with each other that second night. He didn’t know how it would change everything, but he didn’t question that it would. The Tegra Family who made it would rise in stature. Under the council way, that Family would control these weapons. They would decide how much to charge, and who to sell them to.
So, yes, the gun would change everything, including these young quadars who were gathered with him.
Taranth was certain that no amount of fraternizing they did here would be powerful enough to stop what was coming. He wondered how it would change them. How would they break ties? What pains would they suffer as their people and their clans moved ahead?
Thinking about the future in this way made his head hurt.
Taranth found himself staying above the caves more often than not, preferring to spend time trading stories with L’rdent and the rest of the older, free-range quadars of Harshish Point. Quadars who, like him, lived in a desert that was constantly prepared to kill them, because, when it was all tallied, they didn’t belong anywhere else.
They laughed about the heats in the way only a desert quadar can. They swapped stories about how the lack of water could make your central read pure black. They exchanged tales about the raw terror an outsider feels when they hear the sounds of a neantha pack on the hunt in the middle of the darkest nights of Absolute Convergence. They commiserated with a lone quadar who lost his water, and discussed the way the coarse grit of sulfur turns into the burning water when the infrequent rain actually fell all the way to the desert rock in the wrong places.
They asked him questions, too.
“Who are the whelps?”
“What is that gun?”
“Must be a cluster mess to get a dozen of them here alive.”
They were interested in the whelps in ways that justified Taranth’s own sense of confusion. He explained how the young ones spoke differently. Dressed differently. Thought differently. He did his best to pretend he understood what the gun did, but found it really didn’t matter. The quadars here treated him as if he was the expert when it came to all things whelp, and not a one of them could counter his viewpoints. It was, he thought, an odd thing to have a sense of expertise about.
He wondered if this was what it was like to be a philosopher or a priest.
They argued about L’rdent, though, and what it meant that he would now have one of these weapons.
Taranth had visited Harshish Point before, but this was the first time he had let himself be a true part of the gathering. He was surprised to find that sitting with these free-rangers made him feel like he had a home. Not a really a place, but an unusual sense of fitting into something. A sense of belonging. For the first time since Alena died, he almost did not feel like he was strange.
He wondered if this might be his last expedition, or if he might come back. And if he did come back, was he getting old enough that he might decide to just stay here forever?
Taranth watched the weather, too, trying to judge if the squalls that had delayed their way in had been random storms, or whether they were the first calls of a burning wind—one of the massive storms that made the time of Convergence so dangerous, but were rare with the heats so far apart.
