C J Cherryh - Gene Wars 1 - Hammerfall Read online

  Came more hands then than he had counted, and a second, softer presence. He was dismayed, thinking Norit had grown afraid in the storm. She sought comfort and clearly found something more than she had bargained for: she drew back at once.

  But Hati. he was sure it was Hati. flung arms about them both, so Norit stayed, shivering and holding him fiercely.

  He had no intention of forcing himself on an honest wife. He comforted her with a one-armed though naked embrace, and found her shoulder, as he thought, half-clothed, too. He did not know who was to blame, Hati or Norit, but the leg that lay across him was bare, and then one arrived from the other side, tangled with cloth. Bare breasts too ample to be Hati's moved against his skin and pressed urgently.

  More than one woman was not his custom. But it was Hati's custom, the custom of the an'i Keran, and whether she shoved Norit at him, or whether Norit had her own plan, Norit's clothes went the way of the others.

  If Norit spoke, he could not hear it, but Norit's body moved about him. Her demands were, in her way, as fierce as Hati's. He thought to make his hands and his lips her satisfaction. so he thought, but the hot wind battering against the tent and the twisting fever-warmth of bodies set the whole night to throbbing. The fever was on him, as it came on him after wounds. He found his way into her body, or perhaps into Hati's; and then gave himself over to both of them, while the fever burned and throbbed in his brain. It would not abate, not for life, not for breath. He began to fear for himself, that it was a new dimension to the madness, that it would burst his heart. He feared the others might share it, and set on all of them in a frenzy like the beasts in heat; but what the others did with each other or to themselves around about, he had no clear idea.

  No one troubled them, not for hours, and as the hours passed without a dawn they joined whenever the urge came on one of them. The others obliged, himself with Hati and Norit, the lean an'i Keran and the soft village wife with him in turn. He broke all the moral laws in the roaring dark, but found himself taken between times into quiet rest between them, a sweet haven. There, though voices spoke their names and the vision-objects came and went, tower and star and cave, he was sheltered from the storm. The whole world whirled away toward the east. The wind outraced them, sweeping them along in its wake; but he was safe. He was safe and protected as he had never been, no secrets, no guilt, no regret, no fear.

  They slept, one naked, fevered lump, sweating precious moisture toward each other's bodies, until came someone, a consensus of several of the tent's occupants, came pleading for water, and asking, in a shout above the storm, when the storm should end and whether it had already been dawn.

  "I am no prophet," he shouted back, holding the man's shoulder to make himself heard clearly. "Probably it's dawn. This is a bad storm. Drink as little as you possibly can. Eat even more sparingly. You may be hungry, but if it goes on for five days you will not starve, do you hear me?" His madness informed him he could guess the duration of the storm and with abandon he leaned on that understanding. "Two more days and it will be past us," he promised them. He was uncommonly sure of it, and: "Two days," one shouted to the next, until they all agreed, and asked for their drink.

  They numbered ten in this tent. There were five tents. The beasts took care of themselves, outside, bred to the storm and capable of surviving: they neither ate nor drank nor required attention while the wind blew, nor would stir from the shadow of the tents. There they would sit, nostrils mostly shut, eyes shut, ears folded, legs folded, to all useful purposes asleep, but capable of rousing whenever the wind shifted.

  He wrapped his blanket about him and doled out from the personal waterskins a little water for each into the measured copper cap, in which he felt the level with his finger, and spilled not a drop. He likewise gave out small measures of dry cake, and instructed the villagers to eat it very, very slowly. "Where is the au'it?" he asked, and Hati found her, and he saw she, too, silent in the dark, had her ration. They had been days on the Lakht, had measured their water to reach Pori without resort to the wells, and now faced a lengthy delay that could become a serious matter if they were stalled here too long. They had divided all the water, placed a certain portion of it with each tent for safety, and he knew they were down on their supply, that they were not desperate, but that they were going to be scant on rations when they reached Pori.

  After the others had gone back to their places, he shared the same measures of food and water with Norit and Hati, then slept. By now they made one bundle, their hands resting comfortably on one another, while the storm continued outside.

  There were needs of nature: there was the latrine in the tent, the sand pit in the back left corner. Since the flaps were down; it was not possible to go outside, and the utter dark, more than the curtain, gave a general modesty.

  At one point the potter told a bawdy story, and the orchardman told another.

  He listened, and Hati jabbed him in the ribs, laughing, and began to trouble him again, which he did not refuse. Norit settled against him, soft and gentle, as different from Hati as night from dark; and in time Norit had her pleasure, too. no difference to her, it seemed, how it came, only that it came, and she kissed him and proved her gratitude.

  He feared the other men in the tent might think he had too much of a good thing, and they had nothing but the potter's stories. What they had started, the others had to know, and must be jealous. Still, he was omi, lord, and it was the nature of the world that lords had, and common men lacked.

  Was it not the Ila's law? Was it not the world the Ila had made, since the First Descended?

  "Is it not evening?" one asked, wanting water, and he said no until three and four came asking. He thought he was right about the time, and held to it, and no one defied him.

  After that, Norit claimed her turn first.

  He came to know for certain in the dark that there was every virtue in Norit, except sanity. She sang against his ear. She spoke of a star to guide them east, when there was nothing but dark outside.

  Finally she slept a true, sweet sleep, and after she slept he was very glad to have Hati's safe arms about him and Hati's strong body against his. Into Norit's madness a man could sink and lose himself, bit by bit. Hati was the storm wind itself, a force, a demand for movement and resourcefulness. But in Norit the demons lived and had full possession.

  Both of them still drew from him the best of his nature, Norit, that patience and compassion he had had only for what he protected, and Hati, that sense of life and challenge for its own sake that he had lost somewhere on the Lakht, in his father's wars. He felt sorry for Norit; but he felt wholly alive when he held Hati. She was a match for him, completely unlike any match the ambitious villages had tried to send him when he was Tain's son. No, he had said, rejecting some, and no, his father had said, never suspecting that any of those very sane girls would think him a bad bargain, never suspecting he said no for fear of discovery.

  But now he owned himself met, matched, mated with a creature that would never give back a step from his most outrageous actions, never fear his madness, never hesitate.

  Hati, he said to himself, but there was no speech in the howling thunder above them.

  On the next day, that day he had been so sure the storm would pass, a pole tore loose and they had to go out, the four or five among them who understood how to pitch a tent, and secure the ropes. The air had chilled. The sun had been cut off from the sand so long the air and the sand itself had turned bitter cold. With fingernails broken to the quick by the dry sand they dug for the eye of the deep-stake bolt and found it by the ragged scrap of rope left to it, still warm from the heat of days ago. They dug down to it and rigged a new line.

  Then they retreated, shivering and coughing and wiping grit from their eyes and their noses and the edges of their mouths.

  The storm continued to batter them, and his two days bid now to be a lie. He was ashamed of having promised those who trusted him a relief he could not deliver; but at least they had s
aved the tent.

  Within hours, however, the wind was quieter. A look out the flap proved there was something like light beyond the walls, a transparent red promising the storm had indeed eased, but there was no view of anything farther than the tent stake nearest the door, and a man dared not expose the eyes or any more of the skin than he must.

  Marak ducked his head back inside, and answered anxious questions with, "It's a little quieter."

  One could hear it. The thunder of the canvas was muted: it had boomed and racketed so he thought he would lose what he had left of his reason, and now it was an occasional spate of wind.

  But, chilled, he was doubly glad to find his mat and his comfort again, and find Hati's arms and Norit's to comfort him and to brush the dust from his hair and his clothing.

  His throat was dry as the dust he had breathed. He was keeper of the food and water and could have had more; he could have given more to the men who had helped with the rope, but he honestly had no notion who they were and wished to open no doors to dispute. He simply advised himself and all of them to the same ration.

  He slept, exhausted, the whole world seeming to spin about and fall to the east.

  And after that short sleep, he waked to a near silence in the wind.

  He stirred, drew on his robe against the chill, and pulled up his aifad against the dust that must still be moving. He unlaced the flap as others of their tentmates stirred, and he peered out at the other tents through the reddened, dust-choked air.

  There had been four tents in his field of view when the storm began. Now there were only three. He tried to figure their positions, thinking one might still be veiled in dust. But there was a gap, right next to them.

  Ropes had failed. The tent nearest them had gone.

  He took a lap of the aifad about his head to shield his eyes from the grit and dust, went out and scanned nearer the ground, looking for any lump of canvas where survivors might have secured a secondary hold against the wind.

  Hati had come out behind him, so had the au'it, and so had the several who had helped him save their own tent.

  "Stay here!" he said to Hati, not wishing to leave the water and food to chance or the desires of villagers, and most of all wanting someone sensible who could shout him back to his own tent if the wind rose up again, as it might, in the few moments he meant to be away from shelter.

  Hati raised no objection, well understanding. "Stay here," she said to the others. "The wind may come up. Stay close!"

  The beasts had survived. Rare the storm that could wear them down. They were lumps of sand, tucked noses to the wind, in the lee of their own tent and the other, and roused as they saw movement, standing up to stretch cramped limbs.

  Obidhen's tent was still standing, past the place where the other had stood. He went to that tent, and shouted outside it until, within, someone unlaced the flap.

  Two slaves were there. No one else. Not Obidhen, not his son Rom, not the freedmen or the four other slaves.

  "Where is master Obidhen?" Marak asked.

  "Give us water," the slaves there begged, and he knew that tale instantly, without the caravan master to govern the water, these two fools had fallen to the whole tent's water stores and consumed them. Their suffering was deserved, and far from fatal.

  "Out and dig!" he said. "Or die!" He threatened a blow of his fist to the foremost, and the pair moved, ducking after gear.

  Marak, Marak, the voices cried, and the whole world was threat and danger.

  He left them immediately, went to the fourth tent in the blowing dust, careful not to lose his bearings, for intermittently the fifth and farther tent vanished in the sand red haze.

  There, too, he got a man to unlace the flap, and expected Obidhen's son Rom, but the two ex-soldiers roused out to do the job, and light poured past them onto stark, frightened faces. among the rest, he saw three women disheveled, half-clothed, terrified. He began to form a notion of utter disaster. He imagined someone from the tent in difficulty making it as far as the caravan master, who attempted to help, and then engaged his other sons.

  "Ontari." Marak ignored the disheveled soldiers and addressed the man he knew best, the stonecutter, who had good sense. "Take charge here." What had gone on for three days between these women and the soldiers and perhaps several others, he suspected and deplored, but there were still their lives to lose if this was only an abate merit of the storm. "Turn out and dig, all of you. We have to recover the supplies. The fool slaves have eaten and drunk for three days!"

  "Omi," Ontari said, and rallied the rest. Ontari was a big man. Marak gave the three women a long look that told them he knew, while he asked himself what he could possibly do about their difficulty. He found no answer except to set Hati to find out the truth. In the meanwhile all their lives were at risk.

  "The storm may have force left," he said to the women. "Whatever happened here, we don't know how much time we have and we've lost a good portion of our water, buried in that tent. Out and dig! Everyone!"

  Marak! The voices assumed a tone of panic, and his heart beat like something trapped.

  He went to the fifth tent, and there found the youngest of Obidhen's sons, Tofi, alive, and a company larger by two than he had left it.

  "Your father and your brothers are gone," Marak said, rendered blunt in the hammering of the voices and the threat of the wind. "Get out and direct the slaves! We've lost them, and we've lost a tent!"

  That a tent might be gone was no news to the boy. Two had escaped the ruined tent, and come here, and the boy might hope that his father and brothers had gotten to some other shelter. The report that dashed that hope was clearly a shock.

  "Have you looked in the other tents?" the boy asked.

  "Gone, I say! We need hands to dig. Turn out!"

  There was no time for grief, none for assessing what had happened. They took shovels such as they had and used bare hands. Obidhen's son.

  It was the old, old story on the Lakht. Someone from the missing tent, Landhi's tent, had straggled across to Obidhen during a lull to request help with an increasing problem. Obidhen, the slaves, and the two traders who had been in his tent had gone out to help, and whether or not they had ever even reached Landhi's tent in time, or been carried away by the next gust when it blew loose, they had run a high risk in a storm and lost their wager. Perhaps some survivor had gone over to Rom in the fourth tent, fatal mistake, and now he was gone. Meanwhile two complete novices from Landhi's tent, having made it clear and having lost their bearings, had run into Tofi's tent downwind and told him as much as he knew, but by then the storm was fierce, making it folly to go out looking, and Tofi had wisely stayed put, refusing to go when he could not see.

  As for the others, there was no question where survivors might be, if there were to be any survivors. When that tent had gone, it had become a mass of half-anchored canvas and cordage in the blinding sand, a lethal monster of canvas and whipping rope, and unless one side of the tent had remained anchored and unless that heap of sand concealed a canvas shelter between elements of the baggage and water stores, there was no hope for the rest at all.

  Deep as the sand had accumulated where the tent had been, Marak had doubted from the beginning that anyone could survive, and nine men had been in that tent with Landhi, not counting Obidhen, the freedmen, his older son Rom, and the four slaves who had come to their aid.

  Obidhen's tent had had its share of their remaining water and its share of their supplies, most of it gone, and Marak had no mercy, no more than Tofi, who railed on the well-fed slaves, beating them when they lagged.

  "The storm may have force left," Tofi shouted, flinging sand with a shovel. "Dig faster. All of you."

  They abandoned shovels and dug with their bare hands as they came near the supplies, and found the first of the dead, Tofi sobbing and swearing the while. The fifteen beasts that had belonged to the lost tent had sought shelter behind another tent, and they had survived. The supplies, bundled in canvas, turned up knee de
ep under sand. One corner of the bundle, wrapped solidly, had abraded to threads, but had not spoiled. The water, buried deepest in the stack, had survived, and that was a relief.

  They found the bodies of most of the lost up against those bundles, the caravan master and his sons among the rest, a lump of sand and cloth, where all in the tent who had not wandered to safety or to their deaths had attempted to protect themselves. The sand had come over and smothered them, in the outermost bodies blasting skin from flesh and flesh from bone.

  Tofi was beside himself with grief. "Murderers!" he cried when they found his brothers and his father. He ran and took a rope's end to the slaves. They ran screaming, with Tofi chasing them through the remnant of the storm. He caught the slowest, and beat him with his fists; but Marak ran after and pulled him off the slave.

  "They are slaves," he reasoned with the boy. "They had no orders. They had no idea what to do!"

  "They're fools!" the boy wept.