Then he heard someone shouting, and Banichi — thank God, Banichi — shouting back they couldn't maneuver where they were, don't try to come after them, they'd hold here.
"Stay down!" Banichi yelled, then, and a strong atevi hand shoved him flat as fire spattered chips off the rocks and thumped into the other side of the burning car.
"My computer!" he protested.
"Your head, nadi." Jago kept up the pressure on his back. These was another thump from up the hill, then an explosion that hit beyond them and rained rock and dirt.
Tano said, while his ears were recovering from the shock, "Firetube. I can go up after it."
"No!" Banichi said. "Too damn much light out —"
Another shell hit beyond them, starting a minor landslide. Jago hauled him into a hollow of rocks and Tano joined them, as Banichi fired a rapid series of shots toward the height.
He had his own gun. He pulled it out of his pocket, aware when he rested his weight on the other elbow that he'd strained the shoulder enough to make his eyes water. He wasn't sure what the target was, he wasn't even sure where the attack was coming from, but the blowing smoke was headed down the road and the fire had skipped to brush in that area.
Tano and Jago stretched out in the scant cover they had and began laying down fire at the uphill as well. He tried to find a way to do the same, but he had a rock in his way and tried to get a vantage above it, but Tano jerked him down, none too gently.
"I've extra clips," he said, trying to be useful at something.
Another shell hit. Banichi and another man he thought was the ranger took shelter with them as a tree came down in a welter of branches, right on the front of the car, and caught fire, making a screen of light between them and anything they could possibly aim at.
"Steady firing," Banichi said. "All we can do. We're a roadblock. They're trying to go behind. Keep their heads down. Bren, watch our backs. Hear?"
"Yes," he said, and edged around to do that. Go behind what, he wasn't sure, but he suspected Banichi meant Tabini's group was going behind the hilclass="underline" they'd backed the cars out of the area, headed in reverse back around the curve of the ridge, the way the car in front of them seemed to have gotten away down the road. He didn't know if there was a plan, if some of them were going to go up and others were going to get Tabini out of there, or if Tabini and his security were going to try the hill; but Banichi and Jago and Tano and the ranger-driver were all firing as if they could see what they were shooting at — and as if they had more ammunition than he thought they had. He had a branch gouging his arm as he'd faced about to the downhilclass="underline" he took a hitch on one hand to shift to a more long-term position — and saw a movement in the firelit dark downhill.
"Man!" was all that came out of his mouth — he fired, and a blow knocked him back into the rock, his head hit stone, and guns fired on either side of him.
"Bren-ji!" Jago's voice.
"Vest," he managed to say, bruised in the ribs, winded, realizing there'd just been justification for the body armor. He had his gun still in hand; he braced it on his knee, his arm and leg both shaking. "I'm watching! It's all right!"
Guns were going off next to his ears, Banichi and the ranger were still shooting. Tano and Jago turned their attention back toward the hill and he sat there and shook — which tightened the muscles in his ribs, which didn't help him get his breath. Heat was rolling down the slope on gusts of wind, bringing stinging smoke.
At least they weren't landing more of the heavy shells. Their attackers might not have any more. The fire they were sending upslope might be keeping the enemy's heads down.
But they couldn't have that much ammunition left to keep up their own fire, and the attackers on the ridge had sent at least one man below them — surely not just one. His eyes weren't as good as atevi eyes in the dark: he didn't know how they were against the fire-glare, but the pitch of the slope made deep shadows interspersed with firelit branches of trees and rocks, and out beyond, grass, just — grass forever, past this stony hump of a ridge that ran a diagonal across the south range, the one exception in a flat that went on clear to the ocean bluffs —
And that antiquated space capsule was already on its way, committed beyond return: a fast push of a button on his watch and a steadying of his wrist said it wasn't the eternity he'd thought, but it wasn't that much time left, either, and they weren't where they were supposed to be, even if Tabini's people got them clear; they weren't going to make it out of here in any good order; and the question was whether they were goingto make it out, or whether, if Tabini was being his stubborn self up there, they were going to have a government left in another hour to care at all whether there was a paidhi to translate for humans. He felt sick at his stomach, partly the heat, partly the shock of the hit he'd taken, and partly the knowledge this wasn't going to work — —
"Clip, nadi," Jago said with complete calm, and he dug in his pockets with the other hand, gun still braced generally downslope, and reached around to hand her two of the three. "I've got one more, no, two, counting what's in my gun." His voice wasn't entirely reliable. He tried to keep watching where he was supposed to watch.
"Go easy, go easy," Banichi said, and the shots kept coming — Banichi's, Jago's — keeping his ears ringing. "We can't have that damn firetube back in action."
"The grass is catching fire," the ranger said, and Bren threw a glance to the ranger's side: fire hadspread down-slope, not directly below them, but where the burning line of brush had caught down the hill to their left.
It was end of season. The grass was drying. Green-gold in the view from the porch —
All that grass. All that grass, clear to the sea. The capsule coming down in a sea of flame. The heat shield was mostly on the bottom, mostly there — how hot did a grass fire get, when the flames rolled ten meters high and scoured the land black?
Gunfire broke out on the slope above them, a sudden lot of it. He felt a rush of hope and terror, resisting the temptation to turn and look toward what he couldn't hope to see anyway. Gunfire rattled above them, and suddenly a nasal, angry squeal.
Thatdidn't belong at Taiben — he heard a scream cut short, and that godawful squalling snort that, God, anyone hearing a mecheita attack a man would never, ever forget —
Mecheiti were on the ridge. Riders.
He did turn on his hip, striving to try to see through the spreading fire. Leaves on trees just over their heads were catching, a thin flicker of fire, a rain of burning ash, carried on a gust of firestorm wind. Heat was building. The trees near them could go up the way the first had.
"Trees are catching fire!" he said. "We've got to get to the clear — we're going to get caught —"
But the rattle of gunfire that came to them through the roar of the fire had stopped; atevi voices upslope were shouting at each other.
He didn't know what to think. He crouched on his knees with the gun in his good hand and everyone around him equally confused, for the instant. A sapling burst into flame, all the leaves involved at once. He felt a heart-pounding panic, no better excuse. And faintest of all was a thread of a voice from an active pocket-com,