“Keep your head down.” Banichi’s voice came softly, ever so welcome, out in the distance. Meanwhile, Bren thought, he and Jago sat on mechieti, silhouettes against the dark, he because he was helpless afoot, endangered by the mechieti themselves, and Jago because if the herd leader slipped control they would all be afoot and trapped out here. That made them targets, no question, and all he could do was press as flat to his own knees as he could get, trying not to be shot by some ateva who could see far, far better than he could in this murk.
Gunfire. Gunfire responded, and something skidded on gravel.
“I shot him.” A quavering young voice piped up in the darkness the other side of the brush. “I think I shot him, Banichi.”
“You may well have, young aiji. Are you injured?”
Banichi had used the indefinite-number in that address, baji-naji, the whole future of the planet on a knife’s edge. Bren held his breath, lifted his head, trying to hear, and hearing nothing but his mechieti’s movements and the creak of the saddle.
“I am not. But they killed our escort.” That same young voice, a young gentleman who, at least was still alive. And so was Banichi. But they had heard nothing from Tano and Algini.
Then a different whistle from out of the dark.
“Come ahead,” Banichi said, and suddenly Jago shot ahead, and Bren’s mechieti went with her and all the rest, down a gravelly draw, across a little brook, up another bank. A breeze caught them there, a chill little breeze, bringing a shiver.
“There were three,” Tano said quietly out of the dark, “that we have accounted for. One may have escaped afoot. Keep low.”
Bad position. One Guildsman unseen represented a major problem.
“Bren-ji,” Jago said, “get down.”
“Yes,” he said, moved his leg from across the mechieti’s shoulder, secured the rein, gripped the saddle and slid down, wary of the creature’s tusks, expecting its head would swing toward him, and it did. He was ready for it. He popped it gently on the nose with the quirt and it swung that massive head back up, veered off indignantly and stood, as fixed by its leader’s staying as if it had been tethered there.
Shadows, meanwhile, moved on the slope, softly disturbing the gravel of a little eroded outcrop.
“Nadiin,” he heard a young female voice say: Antaro. “Nadiin, one regrets, the two Atageini are dead, down there.”
More movement. “Dead, indeed,” Algini said from their vicinity.
“The mechieti ran away,” Cajeiri’s voice said.
“As they would, young sir.”
“Did nand’ Bren send you?”
“Nand’ Bren is with us, young sir, and by no means pleased with your actions, no more than your great-grandmother.”
“We have to go on, Banichi!”
“How do you propose to ride, young sir, with no tack?”
“We have our tack, nadi.” That, from Jegari. “We had unsaddled for the night.”
“We told them we should not stop.” From Cajeiri.
The boy happened to be right. Even the paidhi knew that. They could well have kept going. They should have kept going to the border, given the urgency of the message, and without the escort’s adult advice, the youngsters, schooled in a more desperate experience, would have.
“The tack and the supplies are right here.” Antaro’s young voice. A slide on gravel. “We were down here, nadi.”
Atevi could see clearly in this darkness. It was all shadows to human eyes.
But suddenly: “Down!” Tano yelled.
Bren dropped to his haunches, behind the thin cover of the brush, and reached to his pocket, seeking his gun.
“Keep low!” Banichi’s voice.
Someone must be moving nearby, sounds too faint for human ears. Bren sat holding his pistol, virtually blind, knowing his vision posed a hazard to his own people, and declined even to have his finger on the trigger until he could confirm a target. Somewhere out there, Guild were stalking each other. Some Kadigidi Assassin had let his mechieti go after its fellows, staying to carry out his mission, and the best the paidhi could do was stay very, very quiet, as wary of keen atevi hearing as of atevi nightsight.
Small movements within his hearing. He could not tell the distance. His heart was in his throat. And for a long, long time, there was no sound at all.
Scrape of brush from down the ravine.
More furtive movements, barely discernible. Their mechieti shifted about. Jago had never gotten down, as he recalled. He feared she remained dangerously exposed. One of the most classic moves was to get the one rider holding the leader, encouraging the herd to bolt. But Jago was a good rider. She might be over on the mechieti’s shoulder, shielded between two beasts.
Brush broke. Splash in the little brook, crack of a quirt, and all of a sudden the whole herd moved, crashed past Bren on two sides, rushed past like a living wall, down the stream-course, up the slope, and all he could do was duck. Gunfire broke out. Two shots. Then silence.
Bren sat still, blind in the dark, sure that his was the only piece of brush on the slope that had not been crushed flat. They might have taken him for a rock, dodged around him. They had no compunction at all about running over a man.
A calf muscle began to twitch uncomfortably. A thigh muscle followed. It became a shiver. He settled his finger onto the trigger of his gun. It was all he had, if any enemy circled back trying to get to the young people. He thought that Jago had ridden that charge, deliberately sent the whole herd down the throat of the ravine and up the slope, likely in pursuit of someone, or to flush a man out.
Not a sound from the young people, not a question from Cajeiri, not a twitch.
Then a rustle of someone moving along the bank. “Nandi.”
Tano.
“Tano-ji?”
“We have gotten one of them, nandi, who may well be the last.”
“Are you all right?”
“No injury, nandi. Put the weapons down, nadiin.” This, to the children tucked down in the dark. “Come down, but keep low.”
A pale glimmer. The two Taibeni wore dark clothing. Cajeiri had come out on this venture in light trousers, his beige human-style jacket that was the warmest thing he had—and an absolute liability in the dark.
“Nadiin.” From Algini, whose approach Bren had not heard, a realization that set his heart pounding. “Gather the tack and supplies.”
Mechieti were coming back down, brush crackling under that shadow-flood of bodies. Bren judged it safe to stand up, and did, on legs strained from the unnatural position and just a little inclined to shiver, whether from the cold of the earth or the reckoning of their situation. He put the safety back on his pistol and slipped it back into his pocket as Cajeiri and Jegari came skidding down the gravelly slope together to join Antaro.
Then:
“Gunfire,” Jago said from somewhere above him.
Bren could hear nothing at all. It must be distant.
“Tirnamardi?” he asked, a leaden chill settling about his heart.
“Yes,” Jago said. “Whether at the gate or further east, I cannot tell.”
“Saddle our spares,” Banichi said. “We have no time to sit here.”
General movement. It took perhaps a quarter-hour more to pick out three mechieti from the herd and saddle them.
“Antaro-nadi,” Banichi said.
“Nadi.” Antaro’s young voice, in the dark.
“Have you that gun, young woman?”
“Yes, nadi, I have one, and nand’ Cajeiri has the other. And I have the com unit.”
“Put them all away. They betray your position. Rely on your guard. Ride at all times to the paidhi’s left, never otherwise. He knows where to ride relative to our weapons. Do not make a mistake in that regard, any of you. Someone could die for it.”