by Timothy Zahn
Merrick had worried about repercussions over the meal bars he’d stolen for the three slave children. To his relief, there weren’t any. In fact, as far as he could tell, it was possible the Trofts hadn’t even missed them.
More importantly, they also apparently hadn’t made any connection between the slaves and the monitor crewer’s unplanned on-duty nap. That had been the much more worrisome possibility, and ever since that night Merrick had made a habit of checking every Troft who passed by for signs of suspicion, anger, or even uneasiness.
It all added an extra layer of tension and sleeplessness on top of the rest of the stress Merrick was already putting up with. But it was worth it every time he caught a glimpse of one of the children furtively taking a bite from his or her precious private food supply after the inadequacy of their meager Troft-supplied meals. The expressions of gratitude and furtive curiosity on their parents’ faces added that much more to his private satisfaction.
Of course, the Trofts’ failure to react might not have been due to negligence. It might simply have been because they decided they didn’t have time for a proper investigation. Barely two days after Merrick’s midnight raid, considerably earlier than he’d expected, the ship put down on Anya’s planet.
“Welcome to Muninn,” she said quietly as the two of them stood off to one side, away from the rest of the thirty disembarking slaves, watching as the Trofts tossed out the bags containing the humans’ small collections of personal items. “Once a joyous and peaceful place, if the legends are to be believed.” She gestured across the landing field toward the dense-looking forest encircling the landing field about half a kilometer away. “Our village of Gangari is that direction, about forty kilometers distant.”
Merrick keyed in his telescopics. There was a road leading off the field in the direction she was pointing, paved with some sort of black stone or ceramic similar to the rocktop the Qasamans used on their own roads. It looked wide enough for two Aventinian-style passenger cars or about one-and-a-half cargo trucks. On either side of the road was a wide shoulder that looked like plowed ground. The forest vegetation ran right up to the shoulders’ edges, but without any visible penetration into that zone, which suggested that some kind of sterilization or poison was at work. In the distance, a line of rugged mountains rose above the trees. “Are they sending cars for us?” he asked.
She gave him a puzzled look. “Cars?”
“You said it was forty kilometers,” he reminded her. “We’re not going to walk the whole way, are we?”
“Of course,” she said, still looking puzzled. “Is that a problem?”
Merrick looked at the rest of the slaves, now busily sorting through the pile of bags the Trofts had thrown out. Standing behind the adults, fidgeting with impatience or nervousness, were two of the three children who’d been aboard the transport. “I was thinking of the children,” he said. “Forty kilometers is a long way for someone that young to walk.”
“It’s not so bad,” Anya assured him. “Only one of them will be coming with us. The other will be going there.” She pointed the opposite direction from the blackstone road, toward a considerably wider opening in the surrounding forest and a much smoother-looking roadway. “The town of Runatyr is only five kilometers distant. That’s where most of them will be going. It’s the largest settlement in this part of the world.”
Merrick felt his lip twist. A major town, maybe even a city. Whatever the Drims were up to, a high concentration of their slaves was the logical place for them to set up shop.
Only he and Anya weren’t going there. They were going to some little backwater village multiple kilometers away.
He shook his head in frustration. With every minute, Commander Ukuthi’s simple little espionage mission got better and better.
“Ours will be only an eight-hour journey,” Anya said. She paused. “With a child, perhaps ten,” she conceded.
Merrick looked at the sky. The sun was already past the midpoint, and Anya had told him earlier that there were twenty-six hours in Muninn’s day. No chance of making Gangari before nightfall. “Are there places nearby where we can camp?” he asked. “I assume we’ll wait for tomorrow to head out.”
“No, we’ll start as soon as we’re ready,” she said. “A journey of this length is better split into two parts.”
“What about nighttime predators? Or are there safe houses along the way?”
“There are no shelters. But none of the darktime animals will be of danger to us.”
“Mm.” Merrick wrinkled his nose doubtfully. Still, this was Anya’s world. She presumably knew what she was talking about. “Any idea how many are traveling with us?”
“Not many,” she said. “A moment, and it will become clear.”
A moment later, it was. As the grav lifts flared and the ship lifted back into the sky, the majority of the slaves shouldered their bags and headed toward the road to Runatyr, a murmur of quiet but relieved-sounding conversation moving along with them. The remaining five turned and headed toward Anya and Merrick.
That group, Merrick noted, was strangely silent.
No wonder, really. Gina was one of the group, the little girl who’d been fascinated by Merrick’s unusual hair color, as were her parents, who’d been even less friendly to the stranger who’d offered their daughter some of his dinner. Two other men strode along at their sides, big men with hard faces and muscles to match. One was a slightly darker-haired man whom Merrick had seen aboard ship but never talked to.
The other was Dyre Woodsplitter.
Merrick sighed. Terrific.
The feeling was clearly mutual. “What’s he doing here?” Dyre demanded as the group approached, his eyes on Merrick.
“He travels with us,” Anya said. She gestured to Gina and her parents. “Merrick Hopekeeper—”
“I don’t want him,” Dyre interrupted. “Let him go to Runatyr with the others.”
“No,” Anya said calmly. “Merrick Hopekeeper, I present Leif and Katla Streamjumper and their daughter Gina.”
Merrick bowed his head in the low nod of first-formal that Anya had coached him in. Leif and Katla returned the gesture, though neither seemed any happier about his presence than Dyre did. “This is Ville Dreamsinger,” Anya continued, gesturing to the other man.
“Merrick,” Ville repeated, giving the greeting nod. Unlike Dyre and the Streamjumpers, he seemed more intrigued than annoyed.
“And this is Dyre Woodsplitter,” Anya concluded. She hesitated just a fraction of a second. “My betrothed.”
Merrick felt his jaw drop. Her—?
“Her betrothed,” Dyre repeated, making the word both a warning and a challenge. “If we’re going, let’s go. Where are your possessions?”
“We have none,” Anya said. “You will take lead?”
“What do you mean, you have none?” Dyre demanded. “You have my pledge.”
“Your pledge was lost,” Anya said. “We waste sunlight—”
“Lost?” Dyre’s eyes shifted to Merrick and narrowed into a glare. “How did this happen?”
“I was a slave,” Anya said, her voice chilling noticeably. “Slaves are not always permitted to do as they wish. We waste sunlight with this conversation.”
“She speaks truth, Dyre,” Ville said. “I’ll take lead. You take follow.”
Dyre muttered something vicious-sounding. “This isn’t ended,” he warned, resettling his bag violently over his shoulder. “Go.”
“Follow closely,” Ville said as he strode briskly off toward the blackstone road. “The fafirs will be especially active this time of year.”
Leif touched his wife’s shoulder and put a hand on his daughter’s back, silently nudging the two of them into line behind Ville. Anya gestured Merrick to follow them, then moved into a spot just behind Merrick and to his left. Glancing over his shoulder, Merrick saw a brooding Dyre fall into step a meter behind her.
He turned back again, his stomach churning with guilt.
&nbs
p; Because Anya had had possessions. A whole bag of them, in fact, probably twice the size of the one Dyre had bouncing against his back. Commander Ukuthi had sent one of his soldiers to get it for her after the Drim captain had ordered her and Merrick to his own slaves’ quarters for the journey home.
But Anya had refused to accept the bag, asking the Troft instead to return it to Ukuthi for safekeeping. When Merrick had asked why, she’d pointed out that he had no such trinkets or treasures, and being the only unburdened slave might draw unwelcome attention. Two impoverished slaves would be less noticeable, especially when they were the two who’d supposedly been under the ownership of a Balin ship commander.
Merrick had accepted her logic, admiring her dedication to the mission all the while. Never had it occurred to him that something in the bag might hold a particular significance for her.
Never had it occurred to him to even ask.
And now the man whose gifts had been deliberately tossed away was walking directly behind him. Apparently convinced that Merrick was the one responsible for their loss.
In a way, he was right.
The road material turned out to be pretty much as Merrick had guessed: bits of black rock of various sizes embedded in a glassy-looking black substrate. The forest pressing in around them was filled with a variety of subtle sounds and aromas, similar yet markedly different from those of the forests of Aventine and Qasama.
Most of the scents were pleasant or at least exotically neutral. One, though, was distinctly different: acidic and nose-curlingly unpleasant when the breeze came just right. Apparently, Merrick had been right about the road’s shoulders being laced with some kind of powerful herbicide. Maybe it was just as well, he mused, that the Cobras’ designers hadn’t included olfactory enhancements.
The group traveled mostly in silence. Gina was the one exception, asking questions end to end, mostly about the various plants and small animals she spotted and the twittering bird calls she could hear. Her parents were far less inclined toward conversation, and their answers were short and perfunctory.
For an hour the girl kept at it, undeterred by the curtness of her parents’ answers or the silence of the others. But after that her excitement at her new surroundings began to wane. By the start of the third hour she either ran out of questions or the energy to ask them, and fell silent as she concentrated on her walking.
They’d been at it for a full three hours, and Merrick was idly trying to match the various songbird calls with the names Leif had given Gina, when the songs and other noises on the left-hand side of the road suddenly faded away.
He looked behind him. Anya’s face was turned toward the ominous silence, her eyes darting around. Behind her, Dyre was doing the same.
Merrick scowled. Terrific. Keying in his infrareds, he scanned the trees.
Most of his Cobra service had been in Capitalia, where the most vicious animal he was likely to run into was some obnoxious person’s obnoxious pet. But his training had included a unit on wildlife, and if he remembered those lessons correctly most predators were either ground attackers or liked to jump from trees.
This group had apparently skipped that part of the manual. There were eight large-animal infrared images lurking out of sight along the side of the road, and they were evenly distributed between the ground and the lower branches of the nearest trees.
Two entirely separate types of animals, perhaps? That was certainly possible. They could either be working together, like the mojos and razorarms on Qasama, or be rivals jockeying for first grab at the tasty-looking human travelers.
“Ville?” Dyre called softly.
“I hear them,” Ville said, glancing around. “There,” he said, pointing to the right and turning off onto the shoulder.
“Yes,” Dyre confirmed, heading that same direction. “Leif, get your family to cover.”
“Get one for me,” Anya called, giving Merrick a light but insistent shove toward a bush that seemed to be made entirely of fuzzy green bamboo-like spikes clustered together. The Streamjumper family was already moving in that direction, Leif pressing his palms against his wife’s and daughter’s backs as he hurried them along, his eyes on the quiet forest behind him. “Go with them,” Anya added quietly to Merrick. “Protect them, especially the child.”
Merrick started to object, remembered in time that he was supposed to be mute, and instead pointed toward the hidden predators.
“Yes; fafirs,” Anya said, giving him another push, a more forceful one this time. “They’re not too dangerous—we can easily drive them away. But you must protect those who cannot fight.”
“What, him?” Dyre growled. There was a sudden crack of breaking wood, and Merrick saw him pull a thick section of branch as long as his arm from beneath the flowing foliage of one of the trees. At one end the branch was studded with thorns the size of razorarm fangs.
“Dyre speaks truth,” Ville agreed. Two quick wood-breaking cracks, and he strode back onto the road, swinging a thorn stick in each hand. “If you want them safe, you’ll need to protect them yourself.”
“Merrick can do it,” Anya insisted. She gestured to Ville, and he tossed her one of the sticks, giving it a midair half turn so that she could catch the non-thorny end. Glaring at Merrick, she jabbed the stick toward Leif and his family. “Go!” she ordered.
Glowering, Merrick headed toward the Streamjumpers, throwing another look at the woods on the left side of the road. More infrared images had appeared, with the total now up to nearly twenty. They were spread out over a good ten meters, too. If they all attacked together, Anya, Dyre, and Ville would be quickly outflanked.
And unless the predators were a lot tamer than anything that size had any business being, one or more of the human defenders was going to get hurt or killed.
He looked back at Leif and his family, huddled together in front of the bamboo bush. On the other hand, Leif didn’t look like much of a fighter at all. If some of the predators got past Anya and made it over here, he and his family were even more likely to die. At least Anya and the others had weapons.
Which, come to think of it, would probably be a good idea all around. Stepping over to tree where Ville and Dyre had gotten their sticks, he eased his hands into the curtain of soft leaves and found another of the thorn branches. Getting a grip at its base, he gave it a pull.
Nothing happened.
He frowned. The same sort of branch had come off in Dyre’s hand like it was a dry piece of kindling. Ville had managed to get two of them without even working up a sweat. Locking his fingers around the branch, he tried again, this time putting servo strength into the effort.
For a moment the branch continued to resist. Then, with a protesting crunch, it broke free.
Merrick backed away from the tree, staring at the stick in uneasy wonderment. It had taken a fair level of his enhanced strength to break something that Ville and Dyre had done with unassisted muscle power.
Anya had told him that many of the human slaves were used in combat together for the amusement of their owners. Apparently, some of those owners had experimented with strength-breeding among their stock. Maybe they would do all right against the fafirs, after all.
He started back toward Leif and his family, again keying his infrareds as gave the situation a quick assessment. Anya and the two men were standing in a line down the center of the road, spaced about three meters apart where they would be far enough to have freedom of movement but close enough that they could quickly go back-to-back if they started becoming overwhelmed. The predators were still holding position, but as Merrick notched his auditory enhancers up he could hear restless-sounding movements in some of the closer trees. Someone up there was impatient to get started. From somewhere behind Merrick came the soft crunch of something moving through the underbrush—
There was a sudden squeal, startlingly loud in his enhanced hearing. “Look out!” Gina’s voice boomed.
Merrick spun around, his left hand curling automatically into fin
gertip laser firing position. There was an animal there, all right, barely three meters away, its body pressed close to the ground as it gazed at him.
But it wasn’t a fafir, whatever the hell a fafir was. It was something more familiar, and far more dangerous.
It was a razorarm.
And it was definitely the Qasaman version, not a spine leopard that had been taken from the expansion regions of Aventine. Merrick could see the scarred and toughened skin on its shoulders, evidence that it had once carried a mojo raptor bird there.
For that first instant Merrick gaped at the predator in sheer frozen surprise. A heartbeat later, his brain caught up with him. Back on Qasama, he and Commander Ukuthi had both noted the curious fact that Troft ships were still capturing razorarms from the local forests despite the fact that the attackers had apparently already moved on Aventine, where they should have a ready supply of the predators. Part of the impetus for this mission, in fact, had been Ukuthi’s curiosity as to what the Drim demesne was doing with all of those animals.
Apparently, Merrick had found one of the answers to that question. And with that answer had come a sudden huge problem.
Because he couldn’t simply target one of the predator’s kill points and fire a laser at it. It was absolutely vital that he keep his true identity a deep, dark secret. That was why Anya had spent all those hours trying to teach him how to fit in with her people. That was why he was still pretending to be mute, so that even after that coaching his foreign accent wouldn’t raise eyebrows and questions. His mission—hell, his life—depended on it. So did Anya’s.
But his mission also depended on him surviving the next thirty seconds. The razorarm’s forearm quills were already fanning outward, the first indication that it was preparing to attack. Without his lasers or arcthrower, he didn’t have a chance in hell.
From somewhere behind him, dimly heard through the thudding of his heart and his single-minded focus on the razorarm, came the violent rustling of vegetation and a chorus of whooping barks. Apparently, the fafir attack had begun.
And suddenly, he remembered the stick gripped in his hand.
