Destroyer

by C. J. Cherryh

  Not a good position, he decided, and decided, too, knowing the lay of the hedges, that he’d better go back past the live wire and back toward the drive, toward that hedge that ran along the driveway cobbles—it was low, too low to conceal an ateva, and as good a cover as he could get. It was certain he’d been too active in the last few minutes to remain safe where he was.

  He moved in that direction, wriggling along, finding and following the live wire, and trying not to make noise, never mind the volleys of shots that were going off on every hand.

  He heard whistles. That was Banichi or Jago. He thought so. Hoped it was. He didn’t want to distract them with his problems. He had the gun in hand, had counted the shots he’d made, being sure where he was in the clip. At the same time he asked himself what else there was for a weapon around the stableyard, and he tried to see what might be left of the stable wall, beyond the moving shapes of mecheiti. The herd had occupied the yard and now defended it, so far as he could tell—there was a great deal of milling about, a great bluster of snorts and head-shaking, none of which he wanted to challenge—anyone, ateva or human, who attempted the herd in that mood was taking a real chance.

  A moment to regroup, lying concealed along the driveway hedge. He remembered he had the pocket com. No one had tried that mode of communication . . . he’d gotten no signal from it. He didn’t know but what a signal just from turning it on might be picked up, if not understood, and he decided not to try it. Just staying still and undiscovered was a contribution to their side. He could do Banichi the most good just by not getting in—

  A shadow moved near him, hunkered down and creeping along the hedge. He could see the face, at least in profile, and it wasn’t one of his. He was relatively sure it wasn’t one of Deiso’s men. Someone—one, no, two of them, attempting to maneuver along the hedge, going right past him.

  Stay still? Let them pass? Let someone else handle it?

  He fired, fired once and twice more, and the two men went down, one atop the other. He scrambled among the brushy growth, further down the hedge, weaving among the roots, as riflefire cracked and richocheted off the cobbles of the drive.

  Pause to catch his breath. He didn’t know but what there were more after him, but they wouldn’t expect anyone could get underneath the spreading branches, in this small, earthy dark.

  A lengthy period of quiet. A sprinkle of rain came down. He laid his head against the ground. Cold had spread through his trousers, and now through his coat, but that was only discomfort. He wasn’t likely to be found if he just didn’t move, didn’t twitch. Except—

  He caught a gleam of fire over by the stables.

  Someone out there had lit a fire, spooking the mecheiti to move out. They squalled and bolted, trampling brush, some crossing the hedge. The fire blazed up and his skin shone like the moon through branches. He did all he could to keep his hands tucked and his face away from the light. He hated not looking. He heard movement outside his hiding-place. He heard a step come right beside him, and the urge to look was overwhelming.

  A shot. A body hit the ground right beside him, and now he did look, and saw a man down right beside him—wounded, not dead. It wasn’t one of his side; and sensible as it might be to do for him, for the safety of his own side—he scrupled to become an executioner. He scrambled to get out the other side of the hedge, eeled his way back, while, behind him, someone else tried to get to the man.

  Full circle. He’d gotten back in view of the corner of the house, not well enough covered by the hedge, and by now not sure where his own side was. He wriggled underneath the branches and found himself back near the live wire.

  Whistle. Banichi’s. Or Jago’s. He held his breath, tried to judge where it had come from, and he thought it was near him. He hunched down, face down, for a moment, to ease his position, arms under him, then looked up.

  Straight at a pair of boots.

  He didn’t move. Scarcely breathed.

  Eventually the owner of the boots crouched down and moved off. His own, or the other side, he had no idea at all. He stayed still, breathing in controlled ins and outs, listened to occasional shots, and finally, strange in the dark, heard whispers, someone discussing the situation, but faint and far. They were talking about Lord Tatiseigi, about his security arrangements.

  “The old cheapskate will never afford a wire,” one said, to his strained hearing. “And the power is down. Get in, take the dowager, take the heir and the paidhi, and what they do out here has no effect.”

  There was indeed a wire. Or two. They misjudged, and it could be messy, if the lights had been deliberately turned out and if the house still had power.

  But letting them try it—was too great a risk. He moved an elbow, eased his whole body over, and saw a knot of skulkers over beside the porch. He hated to let off a shot. He was running out of hiding places. They knew a human was in question. If they adjusted their concept of what to look for, they might suspect where he was. But he saw nothing else to do.

  “Look out!” one yelled, looking his direction and moving, and he let off one shot and two and three and four at that knot of shadows, then ducked back among the roots, catching sight of a ground-floor window opening, but no one near it.

  Then a couple of bodies dropped from the window down to the ground. Someone from inside the house.

  He had the pocket com. He was in a position to see something. He drew a deep breath and risked turning it on for a second, adjusting it with his thumb in complete dark.

  “Banichi,” he whispered. “Banichi. Someone has exited the house.”

  Tatiseigi’s men had mixed themselves into the affair.

  “Stay down,” the answer came to him. “Shut it off.”

  He turned the unit off, stuck it back into his pocket, hoped not to hear from it again until there was reason for Banichi to want to find him. He stayed there, face buried, listening, listening. A twitch started in his shoulder muscles.

  It was quiet for very, very long after that.

  He changed position, half-numb, muscles shivering from strain. He moved very, very carefully. He wiped a little mud over his face and hands and ventured a look out.

  A flurry of shots ensued, and a squall of mecheiti.

  He ducked back. Stayed absolutely still, relaxed, finally, except for shivers from the cold. Minutes turned into half hours, and half hours to an hour, at least. He heard absolutely no sound from anything but the restless mecheiti and the crackle of the ebbing fire over in the stable area.

  He moved enough, finally, to rest his cheek against his left hand, which warmed both. The Guild could be very patient. They could stay like this for hours, waiting for something to change, and what would change was the planet turning on its axis, and sunlight coming over the horizon.

  Daylight would come. At dawn things might begin to move again.

  White light flared, ran across the cobbled drive. He lifted his head, peered up through the branches, seeing a spotlight glaring from an upstairs window. It played over the hedges, and off over the lawn.

  Then it went out.

  More waiting. He relieved the stress on his neck by dropping his head to his hand again, and wondered what was going on in the house. It had gotten ungodly complicated. If Cenedi was inside, Cenedi couldn’t just shoot at whatever moved out here.

  But Cenedi could just toss pebbles into the pond, looking to raise a ripple, to force whoever hadn’t taken good cover to do so. That light might represent such thinking.

  Or possibly Cenedi did as he had done, and signalled his rescuers that they were still alive, still in control of the house upstairs and down. He hoped that was the case.

  Long, long wait. Then the spotlight flared out of another window, playing on the hedges, and running along the ground—Bren saw it through a black lattice of branches—toward the regrouped mecheiti, who disliked it, and started milling about and creating noise of their own.

  The com vibrated. Bren laid his pistol on the ground and dug the device out o
f his pocket, pressed it to his ear.

  “We are on the grounds, on your trail,” a voice said, and one he thought was Banichi’s:

  “One is advised, nadi.”

  The transmission cut off. If the enemy had intercepted it, that news could only make them more anxious. Day was coming. Help was coming in, from Taiben. The odds were beginning to shift.

  Then a voice from somewhere far to the right, Banichi’s, loud and clear.

  “Kadigidi. Our allies are moving in. Atageini forces are coming in. Clear the grounds. Guild truce. Recover your wounded and go.”

  Bren moved his hand to his gun, slipped his fingers around it, lay there, expecting a volley of shots to pursue that voice.

  “Guild truce,” a clear voice came back.

  And thereafter small movements began, one very, very close at hand. Bren lay hardly breathing as a shadow left the hedge, evergreen whispering, oh, so quietly. Small movements went on, increasing in the vicinity of the stables, and mecheiti took exception.

  Further and further away, those sounds moved. He had heard of such things, that the Guild, being a professional brotherhood, would limit damages, that there were mechanisms to prevent the waste of lives, among those who, in the Guild hall, might share a pot of tea.

  Then silence, long silence. If Banichi wanted to move out and trust it was safe, Banichi would move, but Banichi did not, nor was there any sound at all but the mecheiti milling about. Bren lay there, chilled through, his fingers no longer feeling the gun. He didn’t know if anyone ever agreed to, then violated Guild truce. A very great deal was at stake, and if no one ever had done such a thing in the history of the Guild, it still might not mean safety. There were non-Guild who sometimes mixed into these affairs—like him. It had all been stealthy—thus far.

  The next round . . . who knew? Airplanes. Bombs. He didn’t like to think what the day might bring.

  But if they went that far, if it got beyond Guild, then the farmers and the shopkeepers would take a hand. And it would be bloody war, with farmers on this side attacking farmers on the other. Utter disaster. Everything they had done last night was one thing. They never wanted it to get to the utmost.

  Long, long wait. He took up the com unit in his left hand, rested his chin on that wrist, waited.

  It vibrated, and he had it to his ear in a heartbeat.

  “Bren-ji?” Jago’s whisper, blessed sound.

  “I’m fine,” he whispered back.

  “Are you in a safe position?”

  Amazing that Jago had to ask him. He’d learned a few things in his career. One of them was not to blurt out his position on a compromised communications system. “Are they gone?” He had heard no mecheiti leaving.

  “We think so. But we shall not trust them. Work your way toward the stable path. Algini will meet you. Our allies will be here in moments.”

  He shut down, pocketed the com and wriggled forward, following the curve of the drive. He could only think of Taibeni allies inbound, and the fact that he didn’t know the sort of signals the rangers passed, or the Guild, either, for that matter. He slithered among the roots, beside another wire, another connection, and up where the stable path left. A shape crouched there, watching, the slight gleam of starlight on a rifle-barrel.

  He stopped, frozen, the instant he realized that shape.

  “Bren-ji?” it asked.

  Algini. He moved again, as far as the path that divided them.

  “Stay still, nandi,” Algini said. “Stay as you are.”

  He was no longer alone, at least. And in a moment more, another figure turned up, crouching low along the hedges. Tano, he was relatively sure.

  There was quiet, a lengthy quiet. He put the safety on the gun, at least, feeling that secure, and put it into his pocket, so as not to get dirt in it. But beyond that, he didn’t move.

  The mecheiti began to stir. One called out.

  They’re coming, he said to himself. Their help was coming in.

  He lowered his forehead against his hand and drew several even breaths, listening, listening as the mecheiti decided, unrestrained, to go wandering out along the stableyard walk, one passing right by them, but, disliking the cobbles of the drive, not going further. His position was becoming untenable not because of enemy action, but because of mecheiti.

  He eeled forward and got up as far as his knees, when Tano seized his elbow and hauled him back, as all of a sudden mecheiti poured past onto the hated cobbles, and other mecheiti came crashing through the ruined hedge on the other side of the drive.

  “Taiben!” someone called out, and from further down the path, another recognition.

  “Cajeiri got there,” Bren ventured.

  “One believes a message did,” Banichi said, appearing near them. “One hopes that he got there.”

  He was numb. He watched the mecheiti milling about, and then a tall rider drew up in front of them and slid down to the cobbled drive.

  “Bren-ji,” that man said, in a resonant voice that, once heard, was never forgotten.

  “Aiji-ma!” Bren said, with no doubt at all. One never hugged atevi, least of all one’s lord, but it was, it very much was Tabini-aiji.

  “One somehow knew Bren-nandi was at the heart of all this fire and smoke,” Tabini said. “Where is my grandmother?”

  “In the house, aiji-ma, at least one hopes she is.”

  No hesitation, no explanations. A tall figure, wide-shouldered and clad in Assassin’s black, Tabini strode off toward the house steps. A woman in ranger’s green joined him, and two other Assassins in black—Damiri and Tabini’s guard, Bren had no doubt, though he was still stunned. He watched the bodyguard stride to the fore and heard them hail the house.

  “Open to Tabini-aiji, nadiin!”

  Bren felt Banichi’s hand on his shoulder, and flinched as lights went on in the house, porch lights and all, throwing the milling, squalling crowd of mecheiti and riders on the driveway into relief.

  And lighting the several figures on the steps.

  Jago had come up beside. Bren found his legs a little uncertain. He was cold, he was filthy, but when his bodyguard moved toward the lighted porch, he walked with them, toward the handful of figures that had gone inside, into the battered hallway.

  The lilies in that foyer had, unhappily, suffered in the assault. Bits of porcelain facade lay as white and green rubble on the floor where Tabini and his lady walked. Bren came in behind them, with his guard, and Nawari came into view at the top of the steps, while a few of the Atageini guard appeared behind him in the dimly-lit upper landing hall.

  “Lord Tatiseigi?” Tabini’s voice rang out in that vacancy. “Grandmother?”

  “Grandson.” The dowager’s voice from the hall above. The fierce stamp of her cane echoed up and down in the stone stairways and shocked nerves lately acclimated to gunshots. “About damned time you showed up, young man! Have you seen your rascal of a son lately?”

  Tea, incredibly, hot tea, served to Lord Tatiseigi’s guests in the damaged sitting-room . . . while a great deal of confusion went on outside, noise of men, and, over all, the squalling complaints of irate mecheiti.

  A Taiben ranger, Keimi himself, sat taking tea in the Atageini hall with Lord Tatiseigi, not to mention Tabini-aiji, Lady Damiri, the aiji-dowager, and the just-arrived mayor of Hegian, who had rallied three other local lords and their very minor bodyguards in a brave and enterprising move to cut off the Kadigidi’s second advance without involving their towns, a little light, a little noise, well-placed rifles. The amount of racket alone, one might judge, had persuaded the intruders they had tripped a wider alarm than they had looked for.

  The driveway, meanwhile, was full of the Atageini home guard, who had arrived in several noisy farm trucks, and, precariously situated near them, a sizeable contingent of Taibeni rangers, arrived in advance of that guard, and camped with their mecheiti on what had been a manicured lawn.

  “Outlaws,” Tatiseigi complained, not, in this instance, meaning the Taiben
lord sipping tea at his elbow. “Outlaws! Renegades! And employed on my own staff! There were traitors!”

  “We will see to that matter,” Tabini said. “We have names.” He had grown thinner, and grimly sober. He wore Assassins’ leather, black, with only a thin red scarf about the right arm to betoken his house colors. The sight and sound of him was still incredibly good to have. “But we have a long way to go, nandiin, to remove Murini from Shejidan.”

  No hint of blame, Bren thought, no indication Tabini blamed the source of his advice. It by no means absolved him.

  “We shall send letters,” Tatiseigi said, “strong letters, to the Guild and to the legislature.”

  “Letters,” Ilisidi scoffed. “We shall do better than letters, this round, Tati-ji.”

  “You,” Tabini said, “should take yourself to Taiben, mani-ma, and take care of your great-grandson.”

  “Advice from my grandson, who spent his time skulking in the woods, with never a message to us when we were there!”

  “Grandmother,” Tabini interjected, reasonably. “I was in the hills, somewhat further on. You came here, doubtless to raise a furor that I would hear, and I heard, and our hosts’ foyer is, unhappily, a ruin, by no fault of his.”

  The paidhi sipped his tea, aware, at the bottom of everything, that some commotion had arrived outside, and that staff had moved, even security moving from their posts to have a look at the door.

  “I swear I would sacrifice the lilies,” Tatiseigi said, to whom that was a very bitter sacrifice indeed, “for my hands on the scoundrels that dared sit on my staff and plot against their own comrades. You believe the downstairs is a shambles, aiji-ma. You should see the upper hall! You will see it, unhappily, in your lodgings.”

  “We are by no means sure we should stay the night,” Tabini said. “We should take ourselves back to the hills.”

  “And leave us to deal with the Kadigidi?” This from Ilisidi. “No! We have every right to advance over their border and settle accounts. This is no time for retreat!”