Smada, of course, saving my butt once more. Gruffle was there with him, his sword already red and flashing in the air. It was Gruffle who gathered Cri and me together and got us to the exit, stopping twice to behead ghouls grasping at us. It was Gruffle who got us through the exit and who led the two of us, now numbed and wasted and following like children, down the long dark passage and out of the Keep.
But it was Smada who saved our lives. I was worthless, standing there swaying and staring. But even though I could do nothing to help, I knew what I was seeing. Never in my life had I imagined, much less seen, such a spectacular display of power swordsmanship. I lost count of the number of ghouls he carved up, and after the first three or four I watched only him, his movement, his sureness, his balance. It was the first dozen or so to reach us that would have gotten us. Gruffle got two of those. But Smada, standing astride that shiny black platform in front of the throne like a colossus, saved the day. Even in my dazed state, I knew what I was seeing.
And then I’d been dragged out of sight through the exit and down the passage. The night air was cool and made me shiver. From the Keep came more screams from the upper floors and especially from the inner courtyard wall. The feeding frenzy was just beginning.
We were in a wagon and about to move before Smada appeared beside us. Old Orman, whom I hadn’t even noticed, helped him aboard. We rode perhaps three miles before stopping to camp and tend our wounds. When the river breeze was just right, we could still hear faint echoes of massacre.
I hadn’t realized I was asleep until someone bandaging my temple woke me up. It was Cri, smiling down at me. I smiled back and rolled out of her lap into a sitting position.
“I wouldn’t try to stand just yet, lad,” said a voice.
I looked over. It was Smada, sitting across the campfire from me looking concerned. I stared at him a moment, then nodded.
Around me Orman and his boys were lounging about or, in Gruffle’s case, worrying over wounds. Temblar was cooking something sweet-smelling and looking worried.
It seemed he was worried about the Dead in the Keep coming out again tomorrow night. But that was foolish, and I told him so. The Dead would, come morning without Gor, be really dead at last.
Temblar wanted to know how I knew that, and I started to answer before I realized I didn’t know how I knew. I looked at Cri, who tried smiling at me again. But it didn’t help. I felt a stab of fear and vertigo.
I stood up, knowing what was coming. I backed away from the campfire, the people there seeming menacing all of a sudden. Then I just stood, staring, feeling panic starting to swell from within.
“Do not fear, my two-leg friend,” beamed the prairiecat I hadn’t noticed from his spot on the ground at Smada’s feet.
Curiously, his thoughts calmed me down a bit. But when Cri approached me a few seconds later, it was good she did so slowly.
When she was but a foot away, it burst from my mouth at last:
“I know this about the Dead ... I feel this, because . . . because I am from this Place. I was born here. Wasn’t I?”
Cri nodded sympathetically. “There was much danger when you were born. You were sent Over to spare your life.”
I knew she was telling the truth. I could fee! it. I could feel much more as well.
“I was brought back because I had to return,” I said aloud. “Isn’t that so?”
Cri nodded again.
“Who sent me?” I asked, and during the moment she hesitated, the answer came to me. “Smada!” I cried out angrily.
“Yes.” She nodded gently to me. “He—”
“Why?” I demanded, still mysteriously furious somehow. “Why did he do this to me? Why?”
“Because,” said a gentle deep voice from behind me, “I could not bear to lose my wife and my only child.” I spun around and stared at him, and I knew but still I blurted my confusion. “What. . . what do you . , . ?” And then his great hands were on my shoulders and he said:
“One means Firstborn.”
Goodbye, Earth.
Goodbye, forever.
I am home.
Traitors
by Susan Shwartz
SUSAN SHWARTZ was a 1987 Nebula finalist for her story “Temple to a Minor Goddess.” She lives in New York, where, when her eat Merlin allows her to, she is working on an anthology, Arabesques.
Look what the cat dragged in, Milo Morai thought, then lifted his cup in ironic, reminiscent tribute to the ancient observation. Besides, he never knew just what a prairiecat would decide to drag in.
This time, it had been a woman.
The Ahrmehnee girl with her arm splinted, the one whom Steeltooth had brought in from his last scouting trip, might keep a wary distance from the prairiecat’s steel battle spurs and long fangs, but that was the only fear she displayed. Once or twice, she even leaned against the big cat’s flank, steadying herself against his back with her uninjured hand. Milo did not know which was stranger: that the girl dared to lean on Steeltooth or that the big cat permitted it.
Did she, perhaps, have mindspeech? He sent out a tentative probe, but it turned up only exhaustion, guilt, confusion, and—strangest of all—pride. Even as he intensified his mental investigation, she shook her head as if a mosquito buzzed in her ear.
The girl had need of her pride in the next moment as Vahrtahn Panosyuhn, nakharar of the battered tribe of refugees that had joined up not two weeks earlier with Milo’s army, entered the tent.
“Where is my Rohzah?” he demanded before even greeting Milo himself. Milo allowed himself a bleak nod of understanding. Panosyuhn had turned heaven and earth upside down trying to find his daughter, Rohzah, and his niece, Shahron, who had disappeared— captured and feared dead. Judging from the girl’s headshake, this must be the niece.
“Dead, uncle,” Shahron said without raising her head. Her voice was soft and would have been gentle if she had not been so hoarse from the autumn rains.
The old nakharar drew himself up. The white hair stippling his brows and beard seemed to quiver as if he were a cat scenting something foul. “Yes,” the girl put in before the old warrior could launch into a display of the fabulously volatile and fierce Ahrmehnee temper, “I do wish that I had died in her stead. I should have, I know that.” She watched hopelessly as the old man’s eyes grew bleak and distant and his mouth curled in disdain. Ahrmehnee had strong family ties; old Panosyuhn had been her uncle as well as her lord. And now, clearly, she expected him to cast her off.
“There is worse to come,” she added. Reaching into her sling, she pulled out what looked like a well-kept— and certainly well-used—revolver, and offered it butt-first to Milo. Two guards pushed at her. Not bothering to spare her broken arm, they forced her down onto the rugs that lay on the ground about Milo’s chair (not that the revolver could harm him, even if the girl could aim and fire it). She cried out sharply, but only once as her arm was jostled, then fell silent, her eyes steadily regarding Milo.
Cool-headed despite her breeding and whatever it is that she’s been through, Milo thought, and Steeltooth purred approval. He examined the revolver, of a type that he himself had taken from the bodies of the so-called Witchmen. Had they started to recruit Ahrmehnee, too? Then another, more insidious question gnawed into his consciousness. Perhaps this girl, who looked as if she had lost so much—perhaps she was a spy.
To the surprise of most of the men in the tent, the girl attacked, not with a concealed weapon, which would have won her only a quick death, but with words.