C J Cherryh - Gene Wars 1 - Hammerfall Read online

  "Take charge of them. Take charge, or lose all that you have from your father. What can your father pass to you, but this caravan, and these two slaves? They are your skilled workers! We need their work! Don't kill them!"

  The strength went out of the boy, and his hand fell, and he kicked the slave at his feet. "Get up! Get to work!"

  The slave gathered himself up, still protecting his head, and backed away, preferring to run away into the desert, while the wind battered at all of them, while the voices insisted, Marak, Marak, Marak, and a tower built, and built and built.

  The sand still blew so that farther figures were shadows, and invaded the eyes so a man only dared look out and breathe through the gauze headcloth. It was no time to be beating those who knew how to rig the tents and tend the beasts.

  "You are your father's heir," Marak shouted at the boy, above the flap and thunder of the nearby tent, the wind momentarily gusting. He held the boy's arm in a tight grip, compelling his attention. "Take charge of the caravan. The an'i Keran and I can ride on alone, and likely survive, but these other lives are all in your hand. Your father's legacy is yours to keep or lose! What did he teach you?"

  There still were sobs, but dry ones.

  "Come back," Marak shouted at the distant shadows that were the two slaves. "He will not kill you. You'll die out there!"

  Cautiously, shadows still, the slaves came closer.

  "Get to work!" Tofi shouted in a broken voice still boyish in its pitch. "Get to work, you water-fat layabouts, or I'll have the hide off you! I have all the water, now, you sons of devils! I have all the food, I have the tents, and damn your lazy souls, you'll work for food and shelter!"

  They came slinking back, avoiding the boy, but setting to work at the digging with might and main. The boy continued his sobs as he worked, and his headcloth was soaked with sweat and tears that gathered dust and blinded him. The only recourse was to tug the cloth and shift it about and try to stop the tears and the exertion that left a mouth taking in the raw, dry wind. Marak knew. He felt the boy's grief with the memory of his own, every sting of frustration and self-blame: but in no wise was it Tofi's fault. The Lakht killed, and it killed for small mistakes, which even Obidhen had made.

  Some of the dead they could not find. They might have run for shelter in another tent and not been as lucky as the two who had reached Tofi, or they might simply have gotten turned around from the men they were trying to help. The battering of sand-laden wind disoriented even the experienced traveler. There was all the desert around them to search, and they had no resources to risk.

  The entire toll, they found by counting heads, was twenty-one dead, and the water and supplies the two slaves had gorged themselves on.

  Of resources, they had the two slaves, four tents secure, the irons and snarled cordage from the fifth, and all the beasts.

  By the evening the storm blew past, so that the stars began to appear in the heavens, the brightest first, then a wealth of them, like jewels scattered through the heavens. It was never so clear as after a blow.

  The twenty-one dead meant that number would not be eating and drinking. That meant they were not short of water or food. Amid other pieces of good news, the boy Tofi thought he knew the way to Pori village, and recited the stars that guided them, Kop and Luta, which were clear and cold above them. He had been there. He thought he could go back accurately, and they would have no shortage of food or water, or canvas, which was well: Hati avowed Pori was within the range of the Keran, but she had never been there.

  But of skilled hands. there was a marked shortage.

  "Give the order," Marak said to the boy, and Tofi said, "Break camp." Tofi said it louder, for the slaves. "Get up! Strike the tents!"

  It was no small labor, when the deep-irons were driven. They had to be dug out; and it was brutal work. In the absence of the freedmen and the other, more senior slaves, near their freedom, all of them, men and women, dug with whatever they could, all of them anxious to be on their way out of this ill-omened place. The slaves who had eaten and drunk so well were obedient, now, and by no means weak from hunger. One might hope those two had grown wiser and learned from all their mistakes, but Marak doubted it. Once the wind blew, and men began thinking that other men were going to take more than their share, the impulses that governed were not always wise. In the case of the slaves who, alone of the work party, had gotten back to their tent alive, they had thought they were dead anyway. So they grabbed and consumed in panic, vying with each other for the last scrap and thought nothing about the next day.

  They learned now or both of them were dead, in Marak's reckoning. The boy could think of mercy, once he realized the slaves had likely had nothing to do with his father's death, and were guilty of nothing but surviving. But the Lakht was merciless even to the skilled, like Obidhen, let alone to fools who drank their water up for fear of dying, and there were few second chances.

  The dead they had laid out decently, covering them under with the sand they dug out from around their supplies. They spent no extra labor at it, however. It was a burial only for the boy's comfort, and the boy knew as a matter of course that vermin of the sand, like the vermin of the air, were clever and persistent. The company simply said the names of the lost a last time, and were done with ceremony.

  One seemed apt to be the next casualty, Proffa the tailor. Until the storm he had been strong enough, but when they had packed, and the time came, in the mid of the night, to get up on a beast and ride, Proffa was scarcely able to sit the saddle.

  So they set him on like baggage, well padded with their mats, and cared for him on the march. It seemed to Marak that the tailor's heart had failed him, perhaps as he understood the cost it was simply to go on living. The mad healed, but Proffa did not.

  All these things the au'it wrote in her book the next day.

  The caravan master, though rich by the desert's standards, had never been written down in his life, and now an au'it from the holy city had written down his death.

  "Have you written his name?" the boy asked earnestly. "It's Obidhen Anfatin."

  The au'it wrote, and the boy gave her one of his treasures, one of his father's bracelets.

  Common folk had become uncommon, Marak thought, as they set up camp. Even the slaves had begun to grudge their own deaths, and now they had names: Mogar was the one Tofi had beaten, the least agile, but the strongest. The other slave was Bosginde.

  They had begun to take note of one another. Friendships and enmities had formed. Certain ones rode together, like sisters, like brothers. Two women of the last tent, having suffered from rough men in their last camp, had armed themselves with knives and clung to Hati and Norit.

  More, there had been a lengthy, angry conversation among the women the nature of which Marak did not inquire.

  But once they camped, in consideration of possible violence, he suggested to Tofi they pitch only two tents for shade, and close to one another. The women who had suffered were out of the northwest lowlands and certainly had no idea how to manage in the desert. He suggested the women join Tofi and the two slaves, and keep Tofi comforted, while the two ex-soldiers went to Ontori's tent.

  The Lakht brought out the best or the worst in men, and men who had abused their tentmates for three days while they all were in danger of dying were fools. Likewise the women, who had lived through it all and still were on their feet, were not fools, and had gathered the means to defend themselves.

  "If these women complain after this," Marak said to Kassan, senior of the two ex-soldiers, the most likely instigators, in his opinion. "If they complain, you'll never see the east."

  A suitable fear went across the man's face. "It wasn't me," Kassan said. "It was Foragi."

  "Then change his mind," Marak said, "or kill him. I've set the stonemason over you: Ontari. If either of you ever offends these women, I've given him authority to kill you both."

  "Omi," Kassan said. Kassan was the one of the two soldiers with the wit to understand
the proposition; and he hoped Kassan had the wit to be afraid. Kassan went away, doubtless to warn the other man they were in danger, and if his threat produced mutiny in the ex-soldiers, he was sure their looks would show it: they were not men for deep intrigue.

  After noon, they broke camp, and the two soldiers avoided his gaze and ducked their heads.

  It was, over all, the women who looked different. Hati had been talking to them, and one of them, Maol the farmwife, glowered and fingered something beneath her belt when she looked at those men.

  As for Tofi, still mourning his father and his brothers, Maol and her friend among the three women took him as their special charge, a handsome, quick young lad, and in need of comfort. The third woman, whose name was Malin, seemed to have had a falling-out with the other two. She approached the soldiers, who tried to have nothing to do with her.

  They broke camp at sunset and moved on, following the stars Tofi named.

  Marak, the voices said, Marak, Marak, but they did not seem displeased. The voices still whispered-hourly now-and the visions still came, and he knew that Tofi's guide stars were the same stars they had followed, the bright ones, to the east.

  And if the morning and the evening pitched him east so reliably he never could have lost his way, so with all of them: they were not lost, nor dissuaded, and needed not have worried about knowing the way. The boy Tofi, who owned the beasts and the tents, was increasingly confident of their direction.

  So was Hati, who with Norit shared his mat at night. Since the storm, he had no shame left in that regard, only hung a robe for a curtain, and so he heard two of the three women did, with Tofi, and together they got along.

  But one of the three, on the outs with the women from the start, had set up to content various other men, and had them, two and three an evening, outside near the beasts, before they would get under way for the night, so he wondered whether the soldiers had been entirely at fault in the tent and who had started the business during the storm.

  "Malin takes pay," Hati said when he asked her opinion.

  "What do they pay?" Marak asked, feeling like an innocent. There was none of the men rich in coin or bracelets.

  "Food," Hati said.

  "They will not." He was outraged. Taking part of a man's ration weakened the man and strengthened a woman who by now had made her choice, and who, if prostitution was not her trade, might have revenge on her mind. or who, if it was, might become the object of revenge from the other women. "The hell! Tell them they may not use force. But they can't use their rations, either. Let Malin choose what to do. Tell her let them win her favors."

  Marak, Marak, Marak, his inner voice said, impatient with him. He had more and greater worries than Malin.

  But after Hati had a talk with them, the men who courted Malin, the prostitute, vied with small favors, helping her down from her beast, carrying her mat, unrolling it as if she ruled the camp. Malin flourished, better served than many a wife, and Norit and Maol and the other woman, Jurid, frowned daggers at her, but Hati shrugged and carried her own mat and hauled her own saddle with a wry and amused look.

  They had cooked meals with the sun-mirrors in clear weather. But they had lost their cook, among the dead slaves, give or take Hati's occasional merciful intervention, and now the cooking changed: it was Tofi's two women, Maol and Jurid, who provided the skill. They were profligate with the spices; and Marak thought it a great improvement.

  He found leisure for such thoughts. In Hati's arms and in Norit's he was happy, and that, too, was a new thought. He discovered he had seldom been happy, in his life. He had never been free in his life. But now. he had no idea whether he was, or not.

  He found himself looking at Hati during their rides simply for the pleasure the sight gave him. Norit was a fine woman, and a comfortable one, and he liked her despite her other qualities: if he had met her alone, in such circumstances, he might have declared he loved her. But Hati stirred something in him that had never waked to anyone. He found all her movements a fascination. He found every expression memorable, and she had so many. If Hati should leave their journey, he thought he would follow Hati rather than the visions. it was that potent a lure.

  But because they shared the visions, they went together, and wondered together what they might come to.

  "Do you suppose there is a tower?" Hati asked. "Or is it a spire of rock?"

  "If it's a tower, men built it," he said. "And the stars are clearly the stars we follow. And what shall we find?"

  "Great treasure," Hati said expansively, with the wave of a hand toward the dark, "and we won't go back to the Ila. We'll be rich, and have fifty white beshti and lie on dyed cloth, under tents with gold fittings. We'll have a hundred slaves to do the work, and we'll eat melons twice a day."

  The au'it slept, gently snoring. It was safe to talk treason.

  "We'll grow fat," he said, and asked Norit, who lay at his other side, "What would you have if you were rich?"

  "A house with a vineyard," Norit said, "and a fine bed with a mattress."

  "No slaves?" asked Hati.

  "Oh, four. They can work in the vineyard," Norit said, "and every one of them will have a house and a good soft bed and wine with supper."

  "You're too kind," Hati said. "They'll cut your throat if you don't beat them."

  "I was wishing," Norit defended herself. "If I'm wishing, I can wish them to be honest workers."

  "If we're wishing," Marak said, entranced with this folly, "we can wish for peace between the Lakht and the lowlands, and sane minds for all of us."

  "Perhaps the visions will stop when we see this high place," Hati said, putting an arm over him and snuggling close. "Most of us hope so. Those of us who have hope. And I do."

  "I hope so," Marak said. He had not put it in words before, but that was the promise in the madness, that there was something to find, something to do, something to see that they must see, and once they had found it and done it and seen it they would be sane, and at peace, and free forever.

  There was a flaw in this notion, of which he was keenly aware. He had promised the Ila his return, and a report. More, on the Lakht and around it for as far as the lands stretched, he knew nowhere else to go to postpone that report, especially since he had the au'it in his care.

  Live as an'i Keran? He could, but he would reject the tribal life. He had no wish to fight their battles, when he had had his belly full of his father's.

  Besides, he had made a pledge, and still kept it, and knew that this freedom of his lasted as long as the journey. at least, he had had it clear in his mind until there was Hati; and now his pledge left him a tangled maze of choices.

  The Ila had promised him his mother's life, and his sister's, and he had bargained for that.

  What had he bargained?

  "And what would you have?" Norit asked him. "What would you have if you could have anything in the world?"

  "My freedom," he said.

  "Nothing else?" Norit asked, disappointed. Her father had owned her; then a husband did. He supposed now he owned, in some measure, in Norit's sight. He tried to set her free, but freedom was not even within her imagination. When she was free to do what she wished, she sang to herself, and looked at no one, and was maddest of the mad.

  But Hati, he thought, well understood what he meant. They understood each other; and were both free; and that was what he loved in her.

  "If I were rich," he said, "I think I would be Tofi, with a good number of beasts and tents, and the whole desert in front of me."

  "A good wish," Hati said, with her fingers laced in his, and gave a sigh, and clearly intended to sleep.

  He shut his eyes. They had three days to go before the village, so Tofi thought, and the concern they had lest they miss their trail, at least, was done. They would not die of the storm, and it had taken them seven days since to be sure of it.

  The sick man, Proffa the tailor, died on the next day, and they laid him out on the sand where he had fallen from his beas
t. He had been dead before he hit the ground, so Marak judged, two days short of Pori village, where they all might rest.

  The Lakht had no mercy on the weak. That was always the truth. The vermin of the air were already circling, waiting for them to leave the body. After they left, the larger vermin would come, and when they gave up, the insects would move in, and the creepers that preyed on those.

  Still they laid out Proffa and gave him that small respect. It was a hot day, and most stood in the shadow of their beasts. But some made it a chance to walk about and stretch their legs, and others to take a rationed drink. The prostitute, Malin, moistened her scarf from her waterskin and wiped the dust from her face and neck.

  Two days to the village, and some thought their arrival was that sure. or perhaps, contrary to his orders, she thought her water supply was that sure.

  Tofi walked to his side, grimacing in the sun reflecting off the alkali of a crusted pan. "We should camp farther on," Tofi said, although it was about the time they should have stopped. It begged trouble to stay near the dead, however, and the distance they ought to keep meant another hour or two of riding. It was in the high heat of the day, but Marak himself raised no objection.