Beyond the house, through a veil of light snowfall— Beyond, toward the front yard of the house, was the damnedest thing, as if there had already been a battle there, ruined trees where the orchard abutted the yard, and a structure that might have been some round bin, maybe a water tower, all down in a welter of girders— The men on the porch went back inside, and others appeared at the edge of the front porch, just visible.
Damn. Swarming with people. And no clue about Cajeiri. No movement from Banichi and Jago, either. He could not have outpaced them, no way in hell, and there had been no shots fired.
They were out there, seeing what he was seeing, laying plans of their own, he had no doubt in the world.
What he had, while those men were in the house, was a modicum of cover, which might let him get a vantage here, from the edge of the lakeshore, that Banichi and Jago were not going to have, to set up a crossfire, and maybe convince the southerners that there were two forces, and that it was time to run for it.
He edged along, downright crawling on his belly, under the cover of the log and its neighbor, to the small gap that allowed shore access, and a worn path out to that flimsy dock and the rowboat.
God, if only—if only Cajeiri had gotten this farc There was, edging the yard on the other side, screening it off from brush, a drainage channel, that let out right onto the shore, with an eroded, snow-filled gully, at the base of a low stone wall that edged the yard—he could see it, a low, inconsiderable wall that mostly blocked the brush that grew there, and just beyond that, a huge rock face, that ran right out onto the beach, the start of the cliffs that rose to Malguri’s height.
The rowboat was only one place a person his size could hide. A brushy ditch was another.
He made a fast crossing of that eroded path, and crawled on along the line of logs toward that ditch.
Footprints there, men’s footprints. They’d been down this way, searching. They’d been all the way up and down the shallow, stony ditch. And with the overgrowth of brush, the last thing he needed was to disturb the brush overhead and have it seen from the house.
Just— Mechanical whine. A sound from the ship. An out of place sound that scared hell out of him and froze him in mid-move. It went on, from the far front corner of the house, and imagination replayed the wreckage up there, the destruction. What in hell? he asked himself, and then memory sorted out the lines of that collapsed tower, and replayed Lord Caiti at dinner, arguing about— —landings.
God only knew. Something was going on. The occupants of that house were likely distracted—it was a chance to move, was all, whatever else was going on, and he crawled up into the ditch and kept crawling, while the hydraulic whine went on and shots broke out, wholesale firing.
Crawl like mad, trying not to disturb the brush. He was out of breath. And the hydraulics reached a rhythmic, interrupted regularity, thump, thump-thump, as he hung up on a branch and tried to free it.
Hell with it, they had to be busy. He forced his way past, never mind the shaking of a branch, and moved faster, faster.
Crash, splintering of wood, firing like crazy, and he could hardly stand it, but he kept crawling, his elbows sore and his knees and feet frozen, face scratched from branches. He was hopeless if they came back this way—he was trapped between the rock and brush of the cliff and the rock of the stone wall. It was a stupid thing he had done, but it might lead him up to the road, where if they had Cajeiri, he might get a vantage to pin them back into that house until help could get here—there must be help coming. The dowager would see to it—she would turn out the whole of Malguri Township to help them. It was not just himself and Banichi and Jagoc Hydraulics kept up. Thump, thump-thump—interspersed with fire and voices. He reached a nook in the cliff on his left, a snowed-over spot where brush was thick, and there was not even storm-light to see farther down the ditch. He took advantage of the dark area and an overhang of brush to put his head up and try to get a look at the house and what was going on.
A whisper of movement behind him. He spun flat against the wall and made a foolish grab for the gun in his pocket.
“Nand’Bren!”
Boyish whisper. His heart thumped, heavy as the thing in the yard.
“Cajeiri? Damn, Cajeiri?”
“One is very glad to be rescued, nandi.”
Rescued. Rescued, in a ditch, pinned against a cliff, with a firefight going on and something on the loose out there.
He managed to breathe. “Get over here,” he said, rude outright command, and the brush moved, and a figure no bigger than he was came wriggling out from the roots and the rocks.
His immediate impulse was to grab the boy and hug him; he restrained it, contented himself with laying a firm grip on the boy’s parka-clad shoulder to be sure that young head stayed down.
“Banichi and Jago are out there on the other side of the house,”
he said, and thought of that boat, down at the other end of the ditch and along the shore. “Go ahead of me. Hurry. Down the ditch.”
Probably, he thought, no damned oars. People took that sort of thing into storage for the winter. That was a flaw.
But the boy moved, crawling along in front of him. And the shooting came their way, and that thing, going thump, thump-thump. The boy crawled for all he was worth, and he did, never minding disturbance of the brush.
Now the thing was closer, and the shooting was. It came right up against the wall, a towering dark shape flashing with lights, blotting out the sky.
Lander, hell! he said to himself, and Cajeiri reversed course as stones fell off the wall, a tumble of the first tier of mason-work, before the thing made its turn and simply limped away, thump, thump-thump. Bren levered himself up for a hair’s breadth glance over the wall as it lumbered on its way, and Cajeiri got up beside him. He put a hand on Cajeiri’s head and shoved him down, seeing, God, a monster, a mechanical monster, a cylindrical tower on three legs, a fourth one clanking and bent askew as it headed past the house. It misjudged, lurched, and took the corner of the front porch, which came crashing down in a crack of broken carpentry.
Stay put? Make a break for it down the ditch? He had no idea what to do.
His pocket com vibrated, like electric shock.
He grabbed it out of his pocket, flipped it open, and ducked low, back against the wall. “Who?” he asked.
“Btayi! Aeit eiga posii!”
It took him half a second to realize that sharp, clear tone was Jago’s voice and a heartbeat more to recognize and translate the out-of-context language. Kyo. Uncrackable by the southerners.
“Aeit makki.” Vocabulary eluded him. Wall. What the hell was wall? And how was she coming through that clear? “Topik! Aeit topik! Punjo’kui. Uwe aik haeit!”
“Kaie.”
She knew now where they were. We’re all right, he’d said. And: Don’t come here! because he and Cajeiri were safe where they were and man’chi would surely pull her and Banichi to risk their necks to get to him—Guild-instilled discipline might dictate something else, which was why they’d kept going when they had gotten separated, but come to him, they would, if he called, and he didn’t have any such— Something exploded, out beyond the front yard, an eruption of fire through the trees, illumining the orchard, highlighting the damned lander that was still thumping about in the wreckage of the porch as if it had gotten completely confused. That was their relay. That might even be driven by the station.
Then something major blew, and a fireball the size of a bus ballooned up, casting the far end of the yard in light, illumining the trees, and the wreckage. Pieces of metal began to come down, one heavy lump slamming down like the fist of God, right in front of their position.