About sixteen persons were there, talking, reading, thinking, idling, doing minor chores. The chamber dwarfed them. Most of the hundreds who dwelt in the hall were at work, or in their private apartments. His wife came to meet him.
Meroa was a large female, which made her the size of her short husband. She had the Yakulen features, big gray eyes, curved muzzle, pointed chin. Age showed in dried and darkened complexion, the thinning down of hump and haunches that had once been rounded enough to make a male bay at the moons. But the embrace she gave him wasn’t the dignified gesture of her relatives, it was the hug of a soldier’s wench.
From across two and a half centuries, flashed through him the awe of miracle when she agreed to marry him. He’d been brash toward her, and they’d had fun together.
However, she’d turned down two earlier proposals of his (following a proposition—which she’d had the sense not to be offended by, recognizing that a legionary was almost expected to make a pass at every attractive female). He’d never dared imagine she found more in him than the yams he could spin about his fifty footloose years prior to enlistment.
Her yes turned out to be only the gold before the dawn. He had sworn, “I, I’m not a fortune hunter, believe me I’m not. I could almost wish you were poor.”
She had widened those beautiful eyes, where she nestled against him so close that they felt the tendrils of each other’s manes. “What do you mean? I’m not rich.”
“Your kin—the Yakulens have one of the biggest ranches in the country—”
“Chu-ha! I see.” She laughed, “Silly, you’ve forgotten you’re not back in Haelen. A ranch isn’t a wretched little stead that a single houshold owns. It belongs to the family—the land, the waters. But members work for themselves.”
“Yai. I had forgotten. You make me forget everything except you.” Larreka braced his will. “My term in the legion has another three years to run, you know, and next year we’re due for an overseas post. Well, I’ll be back, and… and by the Thunderer”—he had not yet taken the Triadic faith, though he invoked the gods of his youth out of habit rather than belief—“I’ll make us a fortune!”
She drew away from him. “What is this nonsense? Do you suppose I want you nailed down here? No, you’re going to re-up, and I’ll be there to watch.”
That was when the Sun sprang over the world-rim.
Today she whispered a lusty suggestion in his ear, adding. “We’ll have to wait a while, confound it. Still, I’ll have you here a tad longer than you figured.”
“What?” He decided she’d explain when she was ready. They disengaged and he exchanged proper greetings with the others. Presently he was sprawled on a mattress beside Meroa, his pipe alight, a mug of hot spiced jackfruit cider to hand. A couple of family elders lay nearby. The rest of the folk gathered around his troopers in different parts of the room, since these would have things to relate from Sehala less depressing than Larreka’s word. He had, of course, used his walkie-talkie, via radio relays to keep his wife informed; and she had passed the news on—
(They had already settled it between them: When he returned to Valennen, she would stay behind. It would not be the first time; they had erstwhile many reasons, like undue hazard or shortage of transport or a small child, why she could not accompany him. She had protested: “The youngsters are grown. And if the barbarians do overrun you, I want them to know they’ve been in a fight with me, too.”
(He answered starkly, “I can’t be both places. Foul years are coming to South Beronnen also, and nobody else around the ranch has the kind of military knowledge you’ve picked up. For the family—the whole futtering future—we’d better get the spread property organized. You’re tapped, soldier.”)
“Who’s our human guest?” he asked.
“Jill Conway,” Meroa said. “She grew restless and went out with Rafik. They’ll doubtless draggle in pretty soon.”
“Gr’m.” Larreka told himself not to worry. His youngest son should be able to last out even as vicious a storm as howled and drummed outside. But Jill—
Well, they died, they died, the poor all-powerful starfarers. If you started caring for them, you had to make it a bond to a bloodline more than to a single person. And thus it had been between him and the Conways. Yet there had always been something special about Jill, maybe because she used to stump across the yard before she could talk, laughing for joy, whenever he called. Chaos! Why hadn’t she bred and given him a new little girl to uncle?
Meroa chuckled and patted his hand. “Stop fretting,” she said, “Your pet’s an adult. She knows what to do in worse weathers than this.” Businesslike: “It’s due to her that you won’t simply overnight here, you’ll stay a few days.”
Larreka sucked smoke and waited.
“She heard about the vote against you, and called me, since you’d left Sehala,” his wife said. “She was either bleeding or snorting live steam on your account—I’m not sure which; I don’t know humans that well—and she wanted to help. It seems that new boss or whatever he is in Primavera won’t let her fly you north. Sometime you must explain to me why in destruction’s name they listen to such a creature. Anyhow, I had an idea. You know those dried rations humans carry in the field, the food they must have that natural soil doesn’t bear. I asked if she could make the same kind of thing for you. Meat, that is. You can forage along the way all right, but you need meat for the strength to move fast. If instead of hunting, you stir powder into a dish of water—You see?”
“I blazing well do!” Larreka slapped her rump almost as loudly as the thunder went. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“You doubtless did in the past, but never felt this urgency before,” said an in-law. “And of late you’ve had a great deal else on your mind.”
Larreka scarcely heard. His attention clung to Meroa. By the Three, he rejoiced, I’ve got a soldier’s wife, if ever a male did. The sixty-fours of females he had mounted when she wasn’t around were as if they had never been. (They’d always been incidental, maybe more of a habit than a need. Noncoms in the legions seldom married. Meroa used to purr when he happened to mention an encounter and tell her how much better she was.) He couldn’t think of words, but, catching her eye, he snapped his tail in salute.
“Jill put the apparatus together—she wheedled a friend out of it—and brought it here,” Meroa went on. “It’ll take two or three days to make an ample supply, she says. You’ll save more than that on the trail.”
And I will have you meanwhile, said her look.
This was the thing that humans might come to know about, but never to know: What it meant when someone who had been a part of you for two or three hundred years was gone. Larreka and Meroa would bid each other farewell, and though the blessed radio carry their words after he reached Port Rua, they could not be sure they would ever touch again.
Well, she was a soldier’s wife; and he was a soldier’s husband.
(It wasn’t that simple. The legions had learned to do everything possible which made for lessened sorrow. They did not accept enlistments of close kin into the same one of them; rather, they kept the companies and regiments wildly diverse, a practice that Hanshaw had remarked would be unthinkable for his race. They discouraged marriage and, through their traditional standards of maleness, encouraged promiscuity; but the very camp followers were made to shift among them from time to time. They exchanged stations every octad, and two successive stations were always far apart. And even so, even so, there had to be rituals, customs, tokens, help, to keep a trooper going after his long-term sword brother was dead… Larreka dismissed the passing thought. He and Meroa had the Triad and their work; the survivor would survive.