Destroyer

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Consult. Consult Banichi and Cenedi, young sir. Consult me. If your young staff had reason for misgivings about the mission, you should have told us, not gone off, stealing mecheiti, lying to the stable staff—”

  “Grandmother would never have let me go.”

  “And do you think there was no reason for us to refuse such a request, nadi? And was there an excuse for lying to us?”

  “When asking does no good!”

  “Except that Antaro is Taibeni and might have accomplished this mission with a certain finesse which one does not see evident in our current circumstance, young sir.”

  “Except if Antaro was ambushed. And she was. And the escort would never listen to her opinions, or take her as important. And Cenedi thinks there are spies in the house. If I tell Banichi, Banichi tells you, you tell grandmother, grandmother tells Lord Tatiseigi and he tells his staff, and then the Kadigidi know everything you do, nandi. Maybe they can overhear the com units, but maybe, too, someone just told them.”

  It was a very sharp young wit, and a certain command of language. One saw his father.

  “That may be, young sir, but there are always ways to consult in secret.”

  “No one uses them with me! No one takes us seriously! The Atageini would not listen even to me when I said we should keep going. They said we would sleep til dawn and I said they were fools! Now the Kadigidi are at the house attacking my grandmother, and it will be another day before we can even get to Taiben, let alone back again!”

  “You are certainly right in that,” he had to admit. “But mecheiti are not machines. They have to rest, and sooner or later, we will have to.”

  “One does regret very much that the guards are dead,” Cajeiri said after a moment—a boy who had just shot at a man, killed him, and seen two decent men go down protecting him . . . never mind they had not done wisely.

  “As one should always regret such an event,” Bren said, and let it go. The boy had passed from deep shock to a reasonable, shaken outrage at the situation. Only eight. Only eight, with physical strength exceeding an adult human’s and with two followers who had served only as a slight anchor on his high and wide decisions—an especially slight restraint in an Atageini hall whose lord radiated detestation of his Taibeni escort, and Ilisidi herself had maneuvered for advantage with that very powerful lord’s opinions.

  Had that been Cajeiri’s inner conclusion as to why Ilisidi had sent Antaro away from him?

  Not an accurate assessment of his great-grandmother, if that was the case, and Tatiseigi himself knew his old feuds with the Taibeni counted for nothing with Ilisidi. But he kept his mouth shut on further argument with the boy on that score.

  “Well put, with the boy, Bren-ji,” Jago found the opportunity to say when they did dismount and take a breather. They were shifting saddles about, his bodyguard trading their gear to others of the herd, except only the herd leader, who constantly carried, at least, Jago’s lighter weight. She slid down to stretch her legs, keeping the herd leader at very short rein.

  “One never knows, Jago-ji, what to say to him.”

  “Someone should listen to these young people,” Jago said, uncommon criticism of, Bren thought, the dowager’s dealings with her grandson. “Tano has tried.”

  “How should I advise them?”

  “Exactly as you have.”

  “I gave them no advice at all, nadi.”

  “You listened to him as if he were a man, Bren-ji. That, in itself, makes a point.”

  It did, perhaps. Perhaps he had done that. His acquaintance with children in his whole adult life had been, precisely, Cajeiri, whose developing mind was rapidly turning in unpredictible directions, and he worried. The boy had killed—a child who had been very far from his own kind, in a situation rife with violence, a child far too exposed to human culture, a child who, given present circumstances, might soon be aiji over three quarters of the world, and who had not been on his own planet long enough to know instinctively which was east and which was west.

  “I hardly know that a human has any business at all advising him. He may have read far too many of our books.”

  “He learned from the kyo as well, Bren-ji.”

  Odd to think that, in instincts if not experience, he might be as alien to the boy’s hardwiring as were the kyo. Scary, to think that. They at least had shared a planet.

  “Bren-ji.” Tano walked up in the dark and pressed a paper-wrapped object into his hand, one of those concentrate bars they had gotten from the escort, as it proved. He realized he had not eaten since breakfast, and the slight definition he began to see in figures and shapes advised him that dawn was not far off, a new day coming.

  They had gone straight through till morning. A morning in which, if the defense of Tirnamardi had failed, every power in the world he knew might have changed, and everything he relied on might have gone down in defeat.

  In that cheerful thought, he wasn’t sure he could get the food down, but he soberly unwrapped it and tried, a mostly dry mouthful. For the mecheiti’s sake, they had stopped by a stream—perhaps the same one they had crossed before. He walked over past the herd, to drink upstream of the mecheiti’s wading and drinking.

  He squatted down on the soft margin, cupped up water in his hands.

  Mecheiti moved, heads lifting. He froze, looked up, and saw a man standing on the slight rise across the brook.

  He let fall the water, thrust his hand into his pocket and settled his hand around the pistol grip. But a man bent on mischief would have lain flat on that rise and fired at them. It hardly seemed an attack.

  “Papa!” Antaro exclaimed, a clear high voice in the night. But commendably from cover.

  “Taro-ji.” From the figure that was, indisputably, Deiso. “Is the dowager here?”

  “No, nadi,” Banichi said, from their side of the brook, and stepping into the clear. “But the paidhi’s guard is.”

  “Banichi-nadi. We saw the fire in the east. Is that my son?”

  “Papa,” Jegari said from somewhere beyond the wall of alert mecheiti. “It is. With nand’ Cajeiri and the paidhi-aiji.”

  “Your daughter was sent to find nand’ Keimi,” Banichi said, “with a message from the dowager. The fire in the dark is likely a Kadigidi attack on Tirnamardi.”

  “Kadigidi Assassins killed the men with us,” Antaro said. “And the paidhi and his guard came. And I have the message, papa, with Lord Tatiseigi’s seal and the dowager’s both. They need help.”

  “My great-grandmother,” Cajeiri said in a clear, young voice that carried through the dark, “asked me to write the letter. And great-uncle signed it and put his seal on it with hers. He asks politely.”

  A small space of silence.

  “One knew there would be inconvenient entanglements,” Deiso said, “when the aiji took an Atageini consort.”

  “My mother!” Cajeiri declared in his father’s tone. “And you are my cousin, once removed!”

  “That I am,” Deiso said.

  “I will go back and rescue my great-grandmother,” Cajeiri said. “And we will go back.” That familiar we, that we-myself-and-my-house—including, now, the man’s own son and daughter. “Come with us, nandi.”

  God. It was his father, top to bottom.

  “The heir should not go back,” Deiso said. “These young people should none of them go into a firefight.”

  “And where will the mecheiti go?” Cajeiri asked, standing his ground. “I am not a good rider, nandiin. I am sure he would break away and go with you.”

  “He is a Taiben mecheita,” Jago said, “and going to his home range. Failing that, the young gentleman can safely walk to Taiben.”

  “No,” Cajeiri said flatly. “We shall go with you, Jagonadi. We will go back to my great-grandmother, and nand’ Deiso will bring his people to rescue her and my great-uncle, and we cannot stand here wasting time and arguing the way the Atageini did!”

  “Time,” Banichi said, “is already running against us. Trans
missions have fallen silent.”

  Had there been any? Banichi had not said.

  “An appeal from the aiji-dowager,” Deiso said, and gave a warbling whistle, which brought a number of others over the rise in the gray hint of a dawn. “We have mecheiti.”

  None were in evidence at the moment. The rangers had made a silent, careful approach. Very many things had turned up in their path that the paidhi’s human ears had never caught. He felt a little lost, and exhausted, and they seemed to be losing the argument with Cajeiri. He didn’t like that aspect of things, didn’t know whether he could gain anything at all by objecting, or whether the boy would at all regard a protest from him.

  “There are nine of us,” Deiso said. “By no means all the force we can raise. Nand’ Cajeiri, here is one job well suited to young people. Get to a relay and advise Keimi we need help, and that we need it soon.”

  “Nandi,” Cajeiri protested.

  “Young sir,” Banichi said, “do it. This is necessary.”

  “Yes,” Cajeiri said. “But when they come, we are coming with them!”

  “As may be,” Deiso conceded, and walked among them, touching his son and his daughter, a brief contact, a bow from the young people, a goodbye. “You know the situation. Nand’ Keimi will ask your authority. Say the wind has shifted. Remember it. Go.”

  “Go, indeed.” Banichi lost no time in escorting Cajeiri to his mount and boosting him up to the saddle. The Taibeni youngsters hurried to reach their own mecheiti, and with their agile skill, were up before Cajeiri had gotten the quirt and the rein straightened away.

  The youngsters departed at a run, headed back to this herd’s home territory, under strong persuasion and use of the quirts—the three would part with the others. It was the herd leader who had to be fought back and held—Jago had scrambled up beforehand and gotten him under restraint, and while two of the unsaddled mecheiti decided to go with the departing youngsters, Tano and Algini showed up between them and the three outbound, turning them with mere broken branches, moving them back to the herd, remounts, Bren said to himself, that they were going to need to make any speed at all.

  And in that moment of argument, his own mecheita relatively still, if weaving in confusion, Bren thought he should get its attention and get up while he had his chance. He grabbed the saddle leather, hauled himself up as the beast turned in place, the best and chanciest mount he had ever executed in his life. He snatched the rein unsecured, got the quirt properly back against the hindquarters, to steer it straight—damned proud of himself, that he was not lying in the dirt being rescued. Tano and Algini, who had come to rescue him, went to their own mecheiti.

  Other mecheiti were arriving over the low rise, the two herd-leaders squalling at each other, and more rangers, some mounted, some afoot like Deiso, brought them. The youngsters’ mother was likely with them, Bren thought, not to mention cousins and uncles and aunts, all keeping a weather-eye toward Atageini territory and not hesitating to ride well into it, when they’d caught wind of trouble . . . without that message, they might have come in, a whole lineage set at risk for the sake of a son and daughter involved in this chancy business, and never, so far as he had observed, had a word to that effect passed between father and children, nor had their mother come in to wish them on their way. But they were headed in a safe direction, the best and safest direction Cajeiri could take. In Taiben there were unquestioned allies, people to support and protect the heir if the worst happened and the paidhi and his great-grandmother and all the rest perished in this foolishness. Worry was wasted in that direction, he decided.

  But he had no choice. If Taibeni were going to the heart of Atageini territory at his urging, he had to go with them, he had no question of that at all—no way out of this, no real desire for one—only an urge to get back to Tirnamardi as fast as this weary beast could carry his aching bones. He was ever so sorry to have involved his bodyguard in this mess, and ever to have mentioned the word Taiben in that message, and wished he and they had better choices, or that he had made better ones years ago, when there had been a chance to dissuade Tatiseigi from his flirtation with Kadigidi rebels.

  Power-seeking. Political games. The old, old reason.

  Hell of a mess, was what it was.

  He held his mecheita still beside Tano’s. The rangers sorted themselves onto their mecheiti, with few words exchanged in the process. The two bands had stayed somewhat apart, the herd-leaders having come to a tusk-brandishing statement of dominance, so that there was a primary and a secondary leader—even possible that the mecheiti had been one herd before this . . . such thoughts drifted through a dazed human brain. He only knew this batch wanted to clump together, and that put him with his own bodyguard, and meant they would react that way in a fracas, which he much preferred. And now that they moved, they headed cross-country, as directly toward Tirnamardi’s distant fence as they could dead-reckon it, by what he could tell. He settled himself to the even gait, trying not to wonder what might have happened back at the estate, but he could not help it. The Kadigidi might have gotten in. The dowager might have perished. He detected Banichi at least trying to get information by tuning in the pocket-com, but only briefly. “Can you tell anything?” he heard Jago ask him, and Banichi:

  “No transmissions.”

  It did nothing to comfort any of them. He would have gone all out. But mecheiti who had been run all night had self-protection enough not to kill themselves, and as the day dawned, clouded and dim, the mecheiti of their party slowed, and slowed further. The rangers, in the lead, dropped the pace, until finally they stopped for water at one of the loops of their meandering brook.

  “Rest an hour,” Deiso decreed. “Keep under saddle, nadiin, nandi.”

  An hour. An hour of delay. He wanted to be there. He wanted that hour to be past, but there was no choice. He slid down his mecheita’s rock-hard side, the creature so bone-weary it was already in the process of sitting down. It folded its legs and settled and his feet hit the ground. He sank down to sit leaning against its sweaty warmth, rested there, propped up, eyes shut, deliberately, concentratedly relaxing muscles that had been tense for hours, one at a time, starting with the toes and fingers.

  Bodies gathered around him, one and the other, atevi, warm and as bent as he on rest, no talk, not a word out of any of them, a mortal comfort. Safety, in an unsafe world.

  Silence for a space and inner dark. A mecheita snorted: that was the wake-up. His companions moved at once, and the mecheita Bren was leaning on suddenly decided to get up. Hands reached. Jago pulled him to his feet.

  All the mecheiti were getting up. Time to be under way, Bren thought, and wordlessly turned to grab the saddle, but Jago’s hand fell on his shoulder and caught his attention. Mecheiti had gone on the alert.

  Riders were coming in, riders in dark green and brown, more rangers—and bringing in a sizeable herd of mecheiti with them. Bren gazed at them with rising hope that they could now make speed—and indeed, with hardly a dozen words of discussion with Deiso, the rangers started shifting saddles about, theirs and everyone’s, in an economy of motion and fuss that argued this must have been the order that had gone back to Taiben, and that the youngsters had gotten there safely, or somehow delivered their message and reached another band of Keimi’s men. He counted. They were no longer fourteen; they were thirty-three, a sizeable force, and armed, and Jago saddled him a mecheita that had not carried weight all night, a creature herd-bound to the rangers’ mounts.

  He stood there with his legs shivering under him, exhausted, and knowing his own staff, including Jago, who handled that saddle as if it were a feather, must be feeling it in their bones. She secured the girth. He reached and touched Jago’s arm, that human-primate move, and she set a hand on his shoulder, that atevi instinct, bunching closer, group-made-solid.

  “Can you do it, Bren-ji?”

  “No question,” he said, and she took hold of him and lifted him up to the saddle, while Deiso and his people saw to the det
ails, and exchanged rapidfire briefings the gist of which he caught in a half-sleeping haze. Yes, the youngsters had met up with them, yes, Cajeiri and his young bodyguard were safely on their way to Taiben—did he dream that? He fought mental drifting, brought his head up sharply and caught his balance as a strange mecheita moved under him. Stupid, he chided himself, to be falling off to sleep—he was apt to fall right out of the saddle; but he had been roused up out of a dark spot and handed information none of which was fitting together, not all of which made clear sense. The children were safe. This party was the aggregate of Deiso’s party, that had been out probing Atageini land for trouble since the gunfire. The other had been hunting trouble that might try to come around the Atageini flank—defending an old curmudgeon who didn’t want to be defended by Taibeni, but doing it all unasked, as their own best defense, only common sense, he heard Tano say.

  Yes, they had seen the fire last night, and they had come across the children, heard the story, and sent them on to Keimi.

  Thank God, Bren thought, in his private darkness, behind closed lids. Thank God. He could let go his worry for the youngsters.

  “They will be safe, nandi,” he heard from Tano, and from Banichi himself:

  “Keimi thinks the Atageini will be only a first step, that the Kadigidi will probe into Taiben as far as they can. They intend to stop that.”

  “Wise of him.” More than wise. Necessary. He rubbed his eyes, making them stay open . . . his mind spiraled off into one of those fugues, those desperate quests after disconnected information, looking for hooks to tie things together. Woodland and meadow. The long stretch of Atageini hunting land, long in dispute, rolling away to Tirnamardi, the source of game for Atageini tables, a no-man’s-land between two associations long in contention—

  Contention in which the Taibeni, closely bound to Tabini-aiji, had looked suspiciously on the Atageini’s dalliance with the Kadigidi, that old lowlander, central province association that had coveted Taiben’s woods, cut down trees, intruded into the highlands in countless raids, before the modern age.