C J Cherryh - Gene Wars 1 - Hammerfall Read online

  The Ila's lips rested against those bridged fingers. Her eyes burned, dark and deep.

  "I have your mother, Marak Trin, and your sister. And your father."

  So. He had steeled himself against caring. Against anything that could be a weapon in her hands.

  "So you promised," he answered quietly. And suspected everything she said, every motive in her heart. "So I kept my promise to you."

  "Virtuous of us."

  She prodded at him, wanting an answer. He could think of none. He simply kept still.

  "Suppose I said to lead all these people to the tower, Marak Trin. What would you do? How would you manage it?"

  He drew a deep breath, a fleeting chance to think of first things, and second. "Do you want me to answer in specific?"

  "Do."

  "First, put in charge of each unit those who led them here. If a unit has beasts, they keep them. If they have tents, they keep them. If they have waterskins, they keep them. It's only fair. They have foresight. It makes them the likelier to live. Have the order of march and camp understood. Set the tribes to the fore: they would move quickest. Whoever moves slowest, falls behind, and who falls behind. there's nothing anyone can do. They'll die."

  "It's that simple."

  "Nothing can be simpler. The Lakht is the Lakht. It's never different, no matter who asks."

  The Ila lowered her joined hands to her lap. "Captain."

  "Ila," Memnanan said from back near the curtains.

  "Assist him in this undertaking."

  Marak blinked, thinking, Surely not, not that easily, not that quickly.

  Not me, not over all this.

  But silence followed. He understood dismissal, with that, and began to back away.

  "Marak!"

  He stopped. "Ila," he said, as Memnanan did.

  "When will this people set out?"

  When did not rest in his hands. When rested in the star-fall and the calamity in the earth.

  Marak, Marak, the voices clamored, suddenly riotous with urgency. Norit knew what was agreed. He was sure she knew. And then he was sure that Hati did.

  "Tonight," he said, and took his life in his hands, for what had to be said. "I would advise, Ila, that you yourself use a common tent, one that two men can raise and pack, for your own safety. That you carry more food and water than weapons."

  An implacable face met that judgment. "You would leave each segment of the caravan to its own decisions."

  He had not asked himself why he chose as he did. It had seemed evident. Now he did ask. "The line of march will stretch too long. The leaders can't be everywhere along the line. The fastest have to go first. I will, however, give them advice, such as I have. Shelter, water, food, and then weapons. Beshti won't take the Ila's orders: they limit their loads."

  The au'it stopped writing. Everything stopped.

  The Ila lifted a hand and made a gesture toward the second au'it, a command to rise, a second command less apparent.

  The au'it went to the curtain behind the Ila's seat, and drew it back, and there sat, pile after pile, books, books of the au'it's recording, hundreds, thousands of books, leather covers, canvas covers, stained books, ornate ones tattered with age and use.

  "This is the knowledge," the Ila said. "And what will this Luz give to have it? And how will you move these, Marak Trin? Tell me how you will do it."

  He was stunned. A village house could scarcely contain that pile. His voices clamored at him, Marak, Marak, Marak, and he had no idea what their desire was, or if Luz understood what he saw, or what it meant. They were the books of the au'it, all the knowledge, all the recorded history there was.

  "This is my condition," the Ila said as the earth shuddered, a small thump, like a heartbeat. "Not the tent, not this piece of furniture. They can go to hell. Where I go, this goes. Can you find beasts enough?"

  "I'll find a way," he said on a deep breath.

  The Ila regarded him thoughtfully. "Do that," she said, and moved her fingers in dismissal. "Do it by tonight."

  That was all.

  Marak, the voices said. He tried to manage his retreat. Memnanan guided him, held the curtain aside for him, took him by the arm. He saw fire, and ruin.

  By tonight.

  "I need the two women," he said to Memnanan.

  "Not your father?" Memnanan asked. "Not your mother?"

  "I have no time," he said. He remembered his father's parting with him and had no desire to see him. And for his mother and his sister there was no time.

  Marak, Marak, Marak, the voices said, let loose, given sudden free rein. In his vision the rings of fire spread again and again: pools glowed red as iron in a forge, and he could all but smell the smoke.

  He struggled to think and make lists. "I need Tofi. I need Hati and Norit. I need every leader of every tribe and village to meet me on the edge of the camp, on the caravan road to the south, inside an hour."

  Memnanan looked at him, then passed the order to a subordinate who waited nearby. "See to the meeting," Memnanan said, with a wave of his hand, and that man gathered two others.

  So the matter would spread, without their help. But Memnanan stood fast. "The two women. Luz's eyes and voice."

  "One is Luz's voice," Marak said. "The other is an'i Keran. That tribe of all tribes will survive to reach the tower. If my mother and sister are here, let them go to the Haga. If they're there, that's all I need to know. They'll be safer than I can make them."

  "And Tofi for his skills? He's a boy."

  "Not since his father died. I want him, and his two men. He of all the masters understands exactly what's out there. I want him to manage the Ila's tents. Our tents."

  "Beasts to carry the books?"

  The captain might have his own estimate how many that was, a massive caravan unto itself, able to carry neither food nor tents.

  "In the deep desert," Marak said, "we lost a besha on a slide and it started a mobbing. The mob left not a bone, not a scrap of leather. The besha was taller than either of us. The largest of the vermin in it didn't top a man's knee. We didn't wait to watch, but I'll imagine a man could watch it vanish."

  "A remarkable sight," Memnanan said. "The god's wonder you lived. What do you mean?"

  "That you don't need beasts to carry the books. You need the strongest, the likeliest men to live, of every village, every tribe."

  Memnanan said nothing for a moment, frowning, but with thoughts sparking within his eyes. "Allow the books into the hands of the tribes?"

  "Do you want these books to come through?" Marak asked, and saw that Memnanan listened to him intently. "Will these books pitch tents and manage a half a hundred beshti? Men do that far better. The books will have thousands of feet, and if one is lost, they won't all be lost." He drew a breath, space to think. "This caravan can't camp in a ring. They'll be strung out like beads on a necklace. We can't help that. If fools drink all their water, we can't help that. Water the beasts to the full. Feed them. Fill every waterskin in camp. Even the bitter wells are uncertain."

  "That saves the villages. Oburan itself has few tents at all. few beasts, except the breeding herd. They're city folk. They don't know the desert."

  "Apportion the important ones like the books, a few to every band. If there are too many walkers, they go last, enough strong hands to drive stakes, a besha to carry the canvas and keep them headed right if they drop behind." The beasts would smell the way to those in front, given any breath of an east wind or a lingering scent above the trail. A caravan this large would assuredly leave scent. It would leave a trail of waste, breakage, vermin, and all too many lives.

  Memnanan, like him, was a man in authority, one who saw bitter necessities when they were laid in front of him, who knew how to make a rule for the good of the many. Individual compassion, for the two of them, was a vice secretly practiced.

  "It's a chance," Memnanan said. That Memnanan knew the desert, Marak suspected, as the Ila's men generally knew enough of it to live. knew it as a place w
here they were strangers, being on their way to a place, on their way from a place, never at home in it. The villages existed within the desert: they had never quite lost their skills. When the big winds blew and ten men could die going out to secure an orchard netting, when sand could choke an unprotected well, when hunters caught in the open could easily die, if they failed to take the right steps. the knowledge of the desert was not that far removed.

  "If you have a household," Marak said to the Ila's captain, "put them with the tribes. Or in my tent, with Tofi and his men. I trust you'll be busy with the Ila's company, and I'll have room."

  Memnanan gave him a look. "Too many old, who can't walk. A wife six months pregnant. The city has far too many."

  "Put them with me," Marak said. "Get beshti for them. We'll get them up and down. Save your worry for the Ila. Be selfish, man. Give yourself this one gift. You're due it. I've asked several. We'll need to get the books down to the gathering. Give them to the leaders. Leaders survive. They have a duty to do that."

  Memnanan said not a thing to that. He walked, and led him back through the veils, where he found another subordinate, in the chamber with his desk. "Bring the an'i Keran," Memnanan said, "and the village woman, the prophet."

  But Hati came on her own, through the other curtain, expecting him and Memnanan, trailing an embarrassed guard. Madness had its advantage, in that regard, that no one had struck her; Hati reached him unhindered, seized his arm, wound his fingers into hers as Memnanan dismissed the confounded guard. In a moment more, Norit followed her, guard-led, with that calm, still face that told him Luz was entirely in the ascendant. Memnanan dismissed that man, too.

  "We're going outside the camp," Marak said to Hati and Norit, "to talk with the leaders. We'll be moving this evening, with the Ila, with the tribes."

  They did not question what he said. The three of them walked out of the tent with Memnanan, under a sky slate-colored and menacing. The water-gatherers at the Mercy of the Ila moved about their business. A handful of wretched people carried bundles out of the gates of the city, bent beneath their load. It was all useless, that gathering of resources.

  Memnanan sent men for beshti and for wheeled carts to carry the precious books to the edge of the camp. "The priests moved them here," he said. "They can bring the books down. We'll rest here until they're ready. The god knows there'll be no rest tonight."

  There was a little shaking as they waited. They sat on mats, under an awning, as wealthy folk passed time, while filling of the Ila's household waterskins and the watering of the Ila's herds took precedence at the Mercy of the Ila.

  Servants brought them food and drink during a second tremor. The poles of all the tents shook, and the canvas shook. Behind his eyes, Marak saw a lake of fire spreading outward and flowing over desert rock. He saw the falling stars. But he ate and drank, and took his ease, the last that any of them might see in their lives. Memnanan went aside now and again to pass particular orders to his men, then came back to join them.

  A rider came up, perched like a boy, bareback. Welcome sight, Tofi came riding up, clearly not expecting to see them disposed as they were, like a handful of wealthy enjoying the afternoon breezes, with the Ila's Mercy pouring out its abundance of water nearby and the searchers still busy in the rubble of the city beyond the ruined wall.

  A flash of recognition preceded an immediate solemnity and formality in Memnanan's presence, and Tofi dropped from his saddle to stand the ground, light and quick as he was, wide-eyed and anxious.

  "Men said to come, omi."

  "That they did," Memnanan said.

  "This camp will move tonight." Marak rose from his seat under the awning and came out into the wan, clouded sun. "You're to go among the first in a caravan of all these camps. You're to go in among the tribes. You can spread the word to the other caravan masters in the camp: if it gets out to the tribes, no harm done. There'll be no hire given but the lives of all of us, and you know the truth as well as I do: tell it to them. Rumors can fly, for all I care. Gather up all your tents, every beast, every man."

  "Where shall we go, omi? Back?"

  "Back, as fast as we can. You'll carry those persons the Ila bids you carry: the au'it, the Ila herself, her servants and her men. Have you kept the freedmen?"

  "I paid them wages," Tofi said, "and I don't know how they found it. There's not a tavern working, but they're drunk."

  "Hire them or not, but get skilled help, first, before the rest of the masters get wind of it. Where are you camped?"

  "To the southwest edge," Tofi said. "On the flat. There's no other out there. Some have let their beasts go forage. I haven't. I waited."

  "Good. We'll use our tent, the same we have used. It was a good size. Give the best one to the Ila and the au'it. Her men will camp with us, with their households, I take it, in tents they will provide." Memnanan, standing close by, failed to contradict him, so he supposed the instruction stood. The Ila would move from this white grandeur into ordinary brown tents two men could have up and down again in haste, and her men would have the tents the Ila's men used in the desert. "Go see to it."

  Tofi bowed, and bowed again. "Omi," he said. "Captain," he said to Memnanan, and ran to scramble up to the saddle of the waiting besha, making him extend a leg.

  In an instant more Tofi was off down the street, vigorously plying the quirt.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The book of an au'it may not be opened except by an au'it and it may not be read to the people except an au'it read it. If a village wishes to know what is in an au'it's book, let them ask the au'it.

  -The Book of Priests

  The priests came to the ila's tent with their besha-drawn carts, and the chief priest, a haughty old man, strode angrily past Memnanan, went into the Ila's tent and came out again with his hauteur aimed solely at the junior priests and with a very chastened demeanor toward Memnanan.

  "We are," the chief priest said, every word labored, "to take the library in our charge. Where shall we dispose it?"

  "Men of mine will guide you down," Memnanan told him, and with a nod of his head toward Marak: "He has the Ila's authority in this matter."

  The priest looked at Marak in dismay, and turned to the junior priests to give orders. Au'it came out, bearing books; and so priests went in, and servants, so that it became a hand-to-hand stream, loading the leather-bound books into their arms, one to the next past the veils and curtains of the interior, and servants passed books on to priests and soldiers outside, and they laid them carefully onto carts which would have fared very well on the pavings of the city. Now, with the increasing loads, they bogged in the wet sand around the Ila's Mercy, and required the beshti to labor to move them. "Not so many in a load," Memnanan said, and added under his breath, "fools."

  "To the outside," officers shouted as they filled each cart. Memnanan sent an officer down with precise instructions, while Marak and his companions sat on mats in the shade of the awning and rested, truly rested in the bawling confusion. Norit slept longest, curled up in a knot. Hati waked and sat sharpening a knife. Neither of them had use in what proceeded. Marak himself let his head down and catnapped in what should have been the heat of the day, but was in fact cool and pleasant.

  Important men and women arrived at the tent, and Marak lifted his head, overhearing that rumors were suddenly rife in the camp, regarding caravans leaving. "Caravans may indeed leave," Memnanan told them. "And if I were you I'd see to my herds, and have the beasts watered before the Mercy grows crowded."

  Priests' white robes were now brown-edged with soil from the spring, dusty and stained by the moldering dye of the books; but on they worked, better men than they looked, in Marak's estimation.

  The au'it labored with them so far as loading the last carts, and two of them in their red robes went with the carts, down the sole straight road that led from the Mercy through the camp, and if rumor was not now running the circuit of the camps, nothing less than a star-fall in their midst would rouse curiosity
.

  Servants hung about in the doorway of the Ila's tent with worried looks on their faces. They had sent all their treasure out, at the Ila's order, under a sky leaden and disheartening. The guards themselves looked desperate, expecting further calamity, and looked about them as the ground shook, as if they now realized that cataclysm had reached the heart of their lives.

  Traffic around the fountain increased to a point of panic, slaves of the caravans restoring their supplies, servants of households taking up water in jars, jostling with common folk and villagers: if one house was watering, then all would. Beshti moved in and out, with their handlers, snarling and grumbling.