A pop of Banichi’s quirt and the leader lurched into a flat-out run, a pace the Atageini would not reasonably have adopted on their way. They were using up their own mechieti’s strength, and even considering the beasts were willing now, that would fade quickly.
We have a slim chance of finding them before dark, Bren reasoned to himself, yielding to the rock and snap of the gait, less sore now: numbness had cut in, and nothing mattered at the moment but the hope of seeing five mechieti somewhere in the distant rolls of the pastureland.
The sun sank, and sank toward the horizon. The Atageini and the youngsters would almost certainly stop for the night. They entered dusk, and the trail grew dim, but the scent would not.
“Nadiin.”Algini rode to the fore and pointed toward the hill. Bren saw nothing. He hoped it was the youngsters and their escort, but their mechieti gave no sign of having spotted their quarry.
“Converging with their trail,” Algini said ominously.
“What?” Bren was constrained to ask.
“Another track, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “Game, maybe, but one fears not.”
Something had moved along that hill and veered toward the party they were tracking. Either it was an older game track, that the youngsters’ party had crossed, or something was following them… and no four-legged predator in its right senses would stalk several mechieti.
Only other mechieti would come in like that. And none that they knew would be here just running loose around the landscape.
Not good, Bren thought, and said nothing. His bodyguard knew the score better than he did. Banichi used the quirt and took them up the hillside, veered over onto the intersecting trail and there reined to a slower pace and to a stop, letting the herd leader get that scent clear before it joined the other trail.
Tusked head came up, nostrils flared, head swinging to that new trail like a needle to the magnetic pole.
And they started to move again, fast, with several pops of the quirt.
We could just as well run into ambush at this pace, Bren thought, but he no longer led this expedition: Banichi did, and the paidhi dropped way, way back in the hierarchy of decision-making. Jago had moved up beside Banichi, in front of him, pressing her mount to defy the ordinary order of proceeding, and Tano and Algini moved up on either side to keep the paidhi in their close company, leaving Banichi and Jago free to make more aggressive decisions.
Up and over the ridge, Tano riding athwart Bren’s path to prevent his mechieti following Banichi’s too closely at this point… they pressed along the trail that now was merged with the youngsters, or overlay that track, moving as hard as they could go, across a brook and up the other bank. The incoming riders had taken no pains to disguise their track.
Dark was falling fast now. And Banichi reined in just short of the next rise of the land, slid down and handed the herd-leader’s rein across to Jago, but the creature pulled at the restraint, wanting to be let loose, eyes rolling, nostrils flared, and the rest of the herd trembled with eagerness, not that even the unridden matriarch would go past the leader. Banichi said something to Jago too low for Bren’s ears, passed her his mechieti’s rein and suddenly moved, slipping off along the top of the ridge with eye-tricking speed. He didn’t crest the hill—he melted over it, and was gone. And Jago had clambered down and up to the other saddle, taking the herd leader for herself, her own left riderless with the rein looped up for safety.
Bren sat still and kept the rein wrapped desperately around his fist, giving up no slack. He felt a skin-twitch shake the mechieti’s shoulder under his foot, as it gave a soft, explosive snort of sheer lust for combat.
He dared ask nothing. He guessed too much already. The herd leader was trying to break Jago’s control, and she hauled back with all her strength, pulling its head away from the direction it wanted to go, forcing it in a circle. It stopped, stood rock-steady.
Not a sound, except the small movements and breathing of the mechieti under them and around them, the whole herd held with Jago’s grip on the leader.
A gunshot, a single, horrendous pop and echo.
“Head down, Bren-ji!” Jago drove the leader forward and the whole herd lunged after her, up over the hill, down the other side in the dusk.
Bren ducked as low to the saddle as possible, tried to see where he was going. More shots echoed off the hills. Jago and two unsaddled mechieti ran in the lead, one on each side of her, and suddenly they veered, plunged into a ravine. Mechieti stood in the dusk ahead of them, whose mechieti or how situated he had no time to reckon. The mechieti he was on gave a squalling challenge and charged through prickly brush, raking his leg, catching his jacket, breaking off bits against his trousers on its way to murder. They hit, another mechieti ripped a head-butt at his, and he plied the quirt desperately, getting it away. Two surges of the body under him and they were in the clear again, charging uphill after mechieti in retreat.
He reined aside, to bring the beast slightly across the hill face without pulling it over. The heart of the fight was no place for him, whatever was going on. He had no idea whether they had just scattered the escort’s mechieti and driven off animals they needed. But his mechieti paid no attention, just ran blindly, crashed through other brush and kept going, defying his pull on the rein.
Someone rode near him, headed his mechieti off from pursuit. Tano. Again. Behind him, a volley of gunfire exploded in the dark.
“Hold here, Bren-ji,” Tano said. “Hold!”
He had no breath to object that he was trying to do just that. He hauled, the mechieti hauled back and he thought the rein might snap or the cantankerous creature, lunging ahead crosswise of the slope, would break both their necks before he could get it to stop at the bottom. He risked one hand to reach back and lay in hard with the quirt on the rump, which caused the rump end to shy off, and the whole beast finally to turn in the direction he wanted.
But now the rest of the herd was coming back toward them, Jago in the saddle, and the whole lot, riderless and ridden, shouldered past him and Tano. Their two mechieti swung about, fell into the herd, and they charged back down the draw, toward the origin of the gunfire.
A whistle, a very welcome whistle, came out of the brushy dark, and Bren drew a whole breath. Banichi was all right.
Their mechieti meanwhile settled to a determined walk, and broke brush as they went. “Keep down,” Tano said, reining back near him.
Then Banichi’s voice, out in the dark: “We are the paidhi-aiji’s guard. Identify yourselves.”
“Banichi?” asked a very shaky young voice. “Where are you?”
A gunshot. A whisper of brush. And from Banichi, distant, “Stay where you are.”
A long, long wait, then. Jago reined in and all the mechieti slowed to a stop, waiting, with occasionally a snort at the information wafted on the air.
“They are moving!” The same high young voice.
“Damn,” Jago hissed. “Tano!”
Tano and Algini both leapt off, instantly vanishing into the brush and the dark, in silence.
“Bren-ji,” Jago said. “If things go wrong, use the quirt and use it so hard it can’t think.”
Ride away, she meant. Get back to the gate. Get to Taiben. Go anywhere else. A young gentleman calling out instructions to his bodyguard had made himself a target and now his protectors had no choice but to go after his attackers.
Gunshot, flash in the dark. A brief scuffle somewhere, followed by a thump.