“One is glad to see you, Wari-ji,” Bren said, “one is very glad. This is no safe venture. We have to get to the crossroads, next after the Kajiminda road—” His voice cracked. Banichi took over and gave orders with more precision, he was sure, and Jago pulled him around to the other door of the truck.
“Tano should ride in the cab,” he said. “One can manage back there.”
“Hush, Bren-ji,” Jago said, opened the door, and shoved him inside. “Is there water, nadi?”
she asked the driver.
“A can in the back,” the answer came, and Bren thought to himself, Just hurry. But he could hear everybody climbing aboard behind, and then Jago came back immediately with somebody’s canteen and gave it to him.
He didn’t argue. He drank two good gulps and a third, and was going to pass it back, but she was gone, climbing aboard, as the driver took off the brake.
The truck rolled forward, accelerated.
Bren had another sip of water and wiped his mouth. His hand came away smeared and gritty, and he rubbed his face. No razor. Stubble he never let show. His clothes had taken on the color of the landscape and were stuck together with burrs here and therec he presented no sane-looking figure, he was sure. He had another, more conservative drink, dehydrated, lips cracked, sunburned, he could feel it, and too rattled, now that he sat on a padded seat with a canteen in his hand, to manage a coherent thought or lay any sort of plan for how he was going to approach the situation ahead.
Najida truck. The Edi at least knew the truck.
The Taisigi didn’t.
“We shall go to the Edi side,” he told the driver, one of the dowager’s men. And asked, “How were things at the house?”
“Holding, nandi,” was all the man could tell him.
19
« ^ »
The driver asked for all the speed the old truck could muster, raising dust from the graveled area and traveling brushy meadow road at the risk of its suspension. Bren had no way to communicate with his bodyguard. They were back there laying their own plans; he had no idea what those plans were or whether they were able to communicate with Najida and with Machigi.
He grew light-headed from sheer exhaustion. He was braced bolt upright in his seat by the cursed vest, without which he would not be coming home at all, and he could feel the foot in the split boot swelling. His body wanted just to shut down for a few hours, and he couldn’t afford that. He had to be mentally sharp. Had to talk to the Edi, for starters, and there was no guarantee the Edi had any sort of unified command.
God, he had to get his wits about him.
Fuel was going to hold out. They had enough. That was a positive.
But the brain was going.
Parts scattered when he tried to analyze them, irretrievable.
But out the windows, the land looked familiar. He began to know when they were nearing the Kajiminda intersection by the shape of a solitary evergreen, the grass, and the pale color of the stone. They were getting near. The gunfire—he couldn’t hear. The truck rattled and thumped.
The intersection came in view, where trees were in greater evidence, a small woods in the distance, which here covered both sides of the road.
And now the driver was talking to someone on short-range.
Then gunfire was audible, even over the racket of the truck. The driver made the turn on a track through the woods and suddenly blew the horn. Repeatedly. It scared the hell out of him—he wasn’t expecting that. But it wasn’t the kind of move enemies would make, blowing the horn like fury while blazing down the middle of the road.
People came out of the woods onto the road ahead of them, carrying rifles pointed aloft, not aiming at them, thank God. The driver pulled up short of them, and Bren opened his door.
Banichi was faster, reaching him before he had to jump to the ground; and Jago was right there.
So were Lord Geigi’s men. They came up even with the door, and one of them shouted out in another language—the Edi language, Bren realized suddenly. It must be. The attitude changed, visible surprise. And he walked out near them.
“Nadiin, neighbors! Cease fire! Cease fire! We have news!”
He was unmistakable on the mainland. He traded on that. He was their neighbor. And Lord Geigi’s men spoke the language. That was beyond an asset. It shocked the four Edi and got the rifles aimed at the ground. It got them face to face in a far calmer mode.
Talk was hot and heavy for a moment between the Edi and Lord Geigi’s bodyguard. Bren heard his own title referenced, and the dowager. And Lord Geigi.
There was objection, and Machigi’s name figured in it, angrily.
Geigi’s men answered, in strong terms.
“Neighbors,” Bren said. “Neighbors, listen to me. There is more than one forces involved.
One is a renegade Guild force, one you see here, and there is, yes, Machigi, who is here to stop the renegade Guild.”
“Who are these renegades?” they wanted to know.
“Murini’s men.” He had a succinct answer for that one, that ought to tell them everything.
“They have committed crimes. They have laid the bloody knife at Machigi’s door, but of recent offenses, he is not guilty. At the dowager’s request, he is attacking them, with Guild regulars at his command.”
“He is in our territory!”
“He is killing yourenemies. He is killing the people who bombed the road and kidnapped one of your children, nadiin-ji! Let the Grandmother of the Edi and the Grandmother of the Ragi solve it. This business has too many sides. Let the Grandmothers have the say! You have to stop shooting!”
“We will not let him on our land!” one shouted.
Geigi’s men said something in the Edi language, then, that involved the Grandmother, and heated words went back and forth, not one of which he could understand.
The guns here stayed still, but the firing beyond the curve of the road, farther into the encroaching woods, was still going on, echoing off the rocky heights to the left.
“Nandi,” Geigi’s Guild senior said then, in a low voice, “go. They will not be persuaded. Get back to the truck.”
“Bren-ji,” Banichi said, meaning business.
Damn, he thought. His bodyguard wanted him out of here. Geigi’s did. He took a step toward the men, hit a sore angle with his foot and limped inelegantly.
It hurt, damn it. Several things did.
Not least, the prospect of seeing the whole situation gone to hell. “Neighbors,” he shouted in Ragi, and pointed toward the road. “Off in that direction you have the sort of Guild who has done you immeasurable harm over two hundred years, the same element who backed Murini, the same element who fled Tabini-aiji, ran into the Marid and encouraged the Senji and the Dojisigi to actions against you. At their backs, beyond that woods, you have one Marid lord who is as angry with them as you are and who, if you stop shooting for an hour, will obligingly push these renegades right into your laps, after which time you can open fire to your hearts’ content. If you want to settle with your realenemies, listen to your neighbor, who has talked with the lord of the Taisigi and gotten his cooperation. You have heard the facts from me, you have heard them from Lord Geigi’s guard, and you four do not have the authority to decide life or death for the Edi people! Go as fast as you can and tell the elders in charge exactlywhat I said, and we will hold this road for you. Tell the elders come back here and defend thisplace, and let the Guild with Lord Machigi drive your enemies this way, do you understand me? Does this make sense to you? And then you will kindly oblige me by notshooting the Taisigi, while your elders and the aiji-dowager work out an agreement that will save your land! Do you hear me?”