“So we fight your war for you.”
“It’s one way of saying it.”
“Get ourselves killed for a crann of mesuch?”
“No. For yourselves. We don’t want this world, just its metals. We’ll leave you alone when we’ve got what we came, for.”
“You say it. Do your folks back home say it?”
“Either your accept what I say or you don’t. I’m not going to play stupid games with you.” He lifted a section of the top tray from the weapons cache, six cutters in their velvet niches, set the section on the sand, closed the lid and palmed the lock shut. He took hold of the handles, grunted to his feet and hauled the cache to the drag trailer, popped the lid, and slid the cache into the place he’d left for it.
“Ihoi! You’re not going to leave me tied here. Hoy! Let me loose.”
Kurz turned and gazed at him. There was panic in the hoarse voice. He was really terrified of whatever haunted this islet. “I slept here last night. I was not disturbed.”
“Maybe they don’t like the way you taste. Come on, let me loose. My word on it, all I want to do is get away from here.”
“They? What are they?”
“The melmot. They hang round here. It’s the water and the fruit from those caor trees that pulls them. And the salt lick there next to the spring. They don’t need salt, they get all they need from your blood, but it draws critters here.”
“Describe the melmot.”
The chorek was calmer now, his brain engaged. He was using his voice and information to hold Kurz there, to persuade where pleading hadn’t worked. Kurz was pleased. That quickness to grasp a situation would make him a dangerous enemy to the Yaraka.
“They are like the Eolt, but no bigger than the palm of an open hand. They move mostly at night and in herds, twenty, thirty at a time.” The tip of the chorek’s tongue flickered across his bottom lip. He looked nervously upward, a tic pulsing by one eye. “They sting you till you can’t move, then dissolve your flesh and suck it up through their eating tubes.”
“At night? It is my understanding that Keteng go dormant at night.”
His shoulders hunched, the chorek tried another of his impossibly guileless smiles. “They store sunlight. And there’s energy from the food.” He spoke slowly, trying to hold Kurz’s eyes as the muscles tensed and shifted under his filthy hide. He was rubbing the wrist knots against the tree’s rough bark. He didn’t know about polymer fibers and how futile his actions were and Kurz wasn’t about to enlighten him. “Most Keteng can, though they don’t do it much. They don’t like the way they feel after. One of ‘em told me once it was like a hangover without the fun of getting drunk.”
“You know a lot about this.”
The chorek managed a shrug. “I spent a few years studying at Chuta Meredel.” A rustle in the leaves brought his head up, but it was only an angi carrying off a stem of caor berries. “I don’t like Eolt much. Got on my nerves. So I left.”
Kurz stared at him, watched his eyes shift, his face pucker into a scowl. Kicked out, most likely. I’m going to leave him another sixpack. He’s a better choice than I knew. Nothing like the spite of a failed academic.
After he’d set a second section of cutters on the first and locked down the drag trailer, Kurz moved behind the chorek and cut his hands loose. The strain the chorek had put on the filament had tightened it so his hands were red and swollen, falling uselessly at his side when they were released.
Kurz walked back around the tree and thrust the knife into the ground a short distance away. If he stretched the chorek could reach it with one of his feet.
“Ihoi! I can’t do you anything. Cut this stuff. Hoy!”
Kurz straddled the miniskip, bent, and tapped on the lift field, settling himself in the saddle as it rose. Ignoring the shouts from the chorek, he rode the skip into the open, took it and the drag trailer to canopy level and started for the second of his chosen drop sites.
4
Hewn sat in his corner, hands moving gently, calmingly over the living wood of his harp as he watched the mountains burn.
The wall was a single screen now. In it, he could see bits of six fliers in addition to the one that was making the pictures; they flew parallel paths along both sides of the mountains, burning the forest and any structures that came into view, sparing only the Sleeping Grounds when they came across them.
Ilaцrn was beyond tears, beyond rage. It was too much to take in, too much destruction, too much greed, too much grief. And nothing he could do would change anything he saw. All our little schemes, he thought, they’re worth nothing against this. Caida bites that raise a momentary rash until they’re squashed and washed away.
Hunnar worked at his desk, glancing up now and again to watch the progress of the burning and make sure the Sleeping Grounds and their cocooned Eolt were left untouched. Then he went back to his reports and his plotting.
10. Scrambling to Stay in Place
It was still raining when Shadith woke.
The beat of the rain was lighter, but just as steady. The heat from the throway pac was way down and the warning light was flashing. She’d slept for over five hours. The crease on her head had scabbed over, the scab dry and pulling a little, but the pain was gone, even when she touched the wound. When she lifted her arm, there was still some soreness in her shoulder, though not enough to restrict movement.
Afraid of what she’d find, she bent over Maorgan, touched his forehead, jerked her fingers away. Hot. Well, at least he’s still alive. She checked Danor and relaxed enough to start thinking again.
“Com. Where’s the com? I’ve got to call in help. I can’t handle this.” Eyes closed, she tried to remember where she’d put the handcom, swore softly when the image came to mind of a hand tucking the black rectangle into the bag attached to her saddle.
She listened to the rain for a moment longer, shivering at the thought of going out in that, then she gathered herself, dug out a raincape, pulled it round her, hung the glowbulb to the collar and crawled from the tent.
The bulb was a feeble gesture against a night as black as the inside of a coal sac. She’d grown so-accustomed to the bright glare from the cluster stars, she’d almost forgotten what such darkness was like, how difficult something as simple as walking could be when she couldn’t see her feet. The wind was down to a teasing breeze that flipped about the flaps of the cape as she trudged through the mud and water puddles to the road and the dead ponies.
Sokli was a lump in the middle of a pool of water dimpling under the beat of the rain-and he’d come down on the bag she wanted. She sloshed over to him, knelt in the muck, and began the nauseating business of working the saddle bag from under all that stiff meat.
The icy water complicated the job, made the leather swell, and turned her fingers stiff as she tried to work buckles she couldn’t see, but it also helped once the bag was free of its tethers. She rocked it back and forth, the washing of the water carrying off some of the dirt under it, eventually giving her enough room to jerk it loose.
Back in the tent, the raincape hung on a branch stub outside, she stuck the glowbulb back on the tent pole, dried her hands and feet on a blanket, found another throway heater and started it going. Then she worked loose the leather straps and dumped the contents of the bag on the canvas floor of the tent. Everything was soaked. She wiped off the foil containers of the trail bars, set them aside, tossed sodden underwear out through the door slit, and found the handcom under a pile of disintegrating paper.