He let fall the water, thrust his hand into his pocket and settled his hand around the pistol grip. But a man bent on mischief would have lain flat on that rise and fired at them. It hardly seemed an attack.
“Papa!” Antaro exclaimed, a clear high voice in the night. But commendably from cover.
“Taro-ji.” From the figure that was, indisputably, Deiso. “Is the dowager here?”
“No, nadi,” Banichi said, from their side of the brook, and stepping into the clear. “But the paidhi’s guard is.”
“Banichi-nadi. We saw the fire in the east. Is that my son?”
“Papa,” Jegari said from somewhere beyond the wall of alert mechieti. “It is. With nand’ Cajeiri and the paidhi-aiji.”
“Your daughter was sent to find nand’ Keimi,” Banichi said, “with a message from the dowager. The fire in the dark is likely a Kadigidi attack on Tirnamardi.”
“Kadigidi Assassins killed the men with us,” Antaro said. “And the paidhi and his guard came. And I have the message, papa, with Lord Tatiseigi’s seal and the dowager’s both. They need help.”
“My great-grandmother,” Cajeiri said in a clear, young voice that carried through the dark, “asked me to write the letter. And great-uncle signed it and put his seal on it with hers. He asks politely.”
A small space of silence.
“One knew there would be inconvenient entanglements,” Deiso said, “when the aiji took an Atageini consort.”
“My mother!” Cajeiri declared in his father’s tone. “And you are my cousin, once removed!”
“That I am,” Deiso said.
“I will go back and rescue my great-grandmother,” Cajeiri said. “And we will go back.” That familiar we, that we-myself-and-my-house—including, now, the man’s own son and daughter. “Come with us, nandi.”
God. It was his father, top to bottom.
“The heir should not go back,” Deiso said. “These young people should none of them go into a firefight.”
“And where will the mechieti go?” Cajeiri asked, standing his ground. “I am not a good rider, nandiin. I am sure he would break away and go with you.”
“He is a Taiben mechieti,” Jago said, “and going to his home range. Failing that, the young gentleman can safely walk to Taiben.”
“No,” Cajeiri said flatly. “We shall go with you, Jago-nadi. We will go back to my great-grandmother, and nand’ Deiso will bring his people to rescue her and my great-uncle, and we cannot stand here wasting time and arguing the way the Atageini did!”
“Time,” Banichi said, “is already running against us. Transmissions have fallen silent.”
Had there been any? Banichi had not said.
“An appeal from the aiji-dowager,” Deiso said, and gave a warbling whistle, which brought a number of others over the rise in the gray hint of a dawn. “We have mechieti.”
None were in evidence at the moment. The rangers had made a silent, careful approach. Very many things had turned up in their path that the paidhi’s human ears had never caught. He felt a little lost, and exhausted, and they seemed to be losing the argument with Cajeiri. He didn’t like that aspect of things, didn’t know whether he could gain anything at all by objecting, or whether the boy would at all regard a protest from him.
“There are nine of us,” Deiso said. “By no means all the force we can raise. Nand’ Cajeiri, here is one job well suited to young people. Get to a relay and advise Keimi we need help, and that we need it soon.”
“Nandi,” Cajeiri protested.
“Young sir,” Banichi said, “do it. This is necessary.”
“Yes,” Cajeiri said. “But when they come, we are coming with them!”
“As may be,” Deiso conceded, and walked among them, touching his son and his daughter, a brief contact, a bow from the young people, a goodbye. “You know the situation. Nand’ Keimi will ask your authority. Say the wind has shifted. Remember it. Go.”
“Go, indeed.” Banichi lost no time in escorting Cajeiri to his mount and boosting him up to the saddle. The Taibeni youngsters hurried to reach their own mechieti, and with their agile skill, were up before Cajeiri had gotten the quirt and the rein straightened away.
The youngsters departed at a run, headed back to this herd’s home territory, under strong persuasion and use of the quirts—the three would part with the others. It was the herd leader who had to be fought back and held—Jago had scrambled up beforehand and gotten him under restraint, and while two of the unsaddled mechieti decided to go with the departing youngsters, Tano and Algini showed up between them and the three outbound, turning them with mere broken branches, moving them back to the herd, remounts, Bren said to himself, that they were going to need to make any speed at all.
And in that moment of argument, his own mechieti relatively still, if weaving in confusion, Bren thought he should get its attention and get up while he had his chance. He grabbed the saddle leather, hauled himself up as the beast turned in place, the best and chanciest mount he had ever executed in his life. He snatched the rein unsecured, got the quirt properly back against the hindquarters, to steer it straight—damned proud of himself, that he was not lying in the dirt being rescued. Tano and Algini, who had come to rescue him, went to their own mechieti.
Other mechieti were arriving over the low rise, the two herd-leaders squalling at each other, and more rangers, some mounted, some afoot like Deiso, brought them. The youngsters’ mother was likely with them, Bren thought, not to mention cousins and uncles and aunts, all keeping a weather-eye toward Atageini territory and not hesitating to ride well into it, when they’d caught wind of trouble… without that message, they might have come in, a whole lineage set at risk for the sake of a son and daughter involved in this chancy business, and never, so far as he had observed, had a word to that effect passed between father and children, nor had their mother come in to wish them on their way. But they were headed in a safe direction, the best and safest direction Cajeiri could take. In Taiben there were unquestioned allies, people to support and protect the heir if the worst happened and the paidhi and his great-grandmother and all the rest perished in this foolishness. Worry was wasted in that direction, he decided.
But he had no choice. If Taibeni were going to the heart of Atageini territory at his urging, he had to go with them, he had no question of that at all—no way out of this, no real desire for one—only an urge to get back to Tirnamardi as fast as this weary beast could carry his aching bones. He was ever so sorry to have involved his bodyguard in this mess, and ever to have mentioned the word Taiben in that message, and wished he and they had better choices, or that he had made better ones years ago, when there had been a chance to dissuade Tatiseigi from his flirtation with Kadigidi rebels.
Power-seeking. Political games. The old, old reason.
Hell of a mess, was what it was.
He held his mechieti still beside Tano’s. The rangers sorted themselves onto their mechieti, with few words exchanged in the process. The two bands had stayed somewhat apart, the herd-leaders having come to a tusk-brandishing statement of dominance, so that there was a primary and a secondary leader—even possible that the mechieti had been one herd before this… such thoughts drifted through a dazed human brain. He only knew this batch wanted to clump together, and that put him with his own bodyguard, and meant they would react that way in a fracas, which he much preferred. And now that they moved, they headed cross-country, as directly toward Tirnamardi’s distant fence as they could dead-reckon it, by what he could tell. He settled himself to the even gait, trying not to wonder what might have happened back at the estate, but he could not help it. The Kadigidi might have gotten in. The dowager might have perished. He detected Banichi at least trying to get information by tuning in the pocket-com, but only briefly. “Can you tell anything?” he heard Jago ask him, and Banichi: