"Ras-
"I leave it there, I say.
They sat still, staring alike at the shadowing land.
The beast arrived far in advance, a great warm-blooded animal, down-furred, pug-nosed and massive. Its feet turned in when it walked, its head wandered from side to side close to the ground as if it had lost something and forgotten what it was. It was probably nearsighted. Ras hissed a soft sound of distaste when it came up the rise toward them. Hlil felt a crawling at his gut whenever it was by him, for the length of those claws (venomed, the kel'anth had warned them) and the power of those sloping shoulders argued its way wherever it went, and something in the creatures set nerves on edge when they were disturbed. It came now, nosed wetly at each of them. Ras cursed it and pushed it, and Hlil set his hand at the side of its head and heaved to turn it aside, for all that those great jaws could take the hand entire. It moved, rebuffed finally. It put fear into him, and no beast Kutath had bred had ever done that; it consumed, gods, it surely must; it rolled with fat and moisture. On hungrier days Hlil had looked at it resentfully but the thought of eating warm-blooded flesh nauseated him, like cannibalism.
Another gift of the kel'anth, this creature.
"Go on," he said to Ras. And when she delayed still; "Go on back.
She muttered soft agreement and rose, slipped away down the rocks, vanished into the shadows.
The beast made to follow her, snorted and came back again, nosed about and found the sand-star with uncanny accuracy. The star had not a chance. The beast dus, its name was lay down with the tendrils wrapped about one massive paw and ate with noisy relish. The sound became a rumbling, mind-dulling, pervasive.
Contentment weighted Hlil's limbs, at odds with the distress that tugged at him from another direction. It was as if he grew two minds, one warring with the other. The dus he connected the sensations, the slow purring, felt his senses dulled.
"No!" he said.
It stopped, a silence like sudden nakedness, devoid of warmth. Small, glittering eyes lifted to him.
"Go away," he told it. It did not. He sat and watched Niun come, weary and limping more than a man should from a day's ordinary hunting. He ought to walk down to the path, signaling to the kel'anth that he might simply take the way into camp, being the last
He did not He sat still, let Niun walk up the stony way to his perch among the rocks.
'Is someone still out?" Niun asked, hard-breathing and in a manner of some concern.
The accent with which he spoke was also different; they had in common only the hal'ari, the high tongue, preserved changeless in the city-machines, and the kel'anth struggled badly in what he had learned Df the mu'ara, the tribe speech. "No," Hlil said, rising, ignoring the kel'anth's vexation. "You are last; I will walk down with you.
The beast rose up, shambled out to rub against Niun as he started down; Hlil walked as close to it as he must.
"You walked far," Hlil said.
"Ai," Niun muttered as he walked, evading him.
"So did Ras.
That stopped him. Niun turned a veiled face toward him, looking up on the shadowed slope. "Your sending?
"No.
"She wants a quarrel does she not, kel Hlil?
"Perhaps. Perhaps she is only curious where you go ... daily.
"That too, it may be. I beg you intervene.
That was not the answer he had expected to provoke. He slipped his hands into the back of his belt, far from his weapons, evidencing reluctance for quarrel. "I beg you, kel'anth bear with her.
"I do," he said. "What more can I do?
Hlil regarded him, the alien fineness of him, the familiar Honors which winked among his robes; easy to hate this too-fine, too-skilled stranger. The dus laid its ears back and rumbled an ominous sound, stilled as Niun touched it.
"Ras and I," Hlil said, "have little more to say to each other. You speak to her if you like. I cannot.
The kel'anth did not answer him turned and picked his way to the bottom, walked onto the sandy track toward camp, the great dus ambling along behind him. "Yail" he snapped at it then, and it fell back, turned aside from the trail into camp; it rarely did come in.
Hlil followed, seething with resentment, as if the kel'anth abandoned him equally with the beast followed the kel'anth's straight figure in among the shadows of overhanging cliffs, and out into light again the rim itself suddenly on the left hand, a dizzying drop to the cut which gave them refuge from the kel'anth's enemies aloft.
"Tell the sentry we are in," Niun turned to bid him. "Here, I will take your pouch.
The dismissal further angered him. He shed the pouch containing his day's take into the kel'anth's outstretched hand and left the trail, going up into the high rocks.
It was a reasonable order. Had Merai ordered, he would have felt no least resentment; he argued so with himself, through the heat of anger. To claim my hunting for yours? he wondered, a petty suspicion, when in fact the kel'anth did him great courtesy, to offer to bear his burden that little distance; rank forbade. It was always like that between them, that bitterness underlay whatever dealings they had one with the other, that they could not speak the simplest words without offense; that they could not take loyalty for granted between them, which they ought to be able to do, for the tribe's sake.
It was Has, who committed slow suicide Ras's eyes were on him too, surrogate for Merai.
It had been so when Merai was alive, that Merai's was the greater soul, the higher-tempered, the quicker a great prince of the People, kel Merai; and he was only Hlil s'Sochil, born of Kath-caste and no special father no shame, but no great distinction; no particular grace, nor handsomeness weapons-scars had not improved him in that; never quickness of tongue. Only skill, and stubborn adherence to the kel-law and what seemed right.
Those two things had never diverged, save now.
Niun hesitated at the bottom, in the shadows, staring into the camp. Ras was not waiting for him. He had thought she might be; she had, then, gone her way to Kel. Mad she was, but not enough to discommode herself, sitting out in the dark. He summoned a little of that cold-bloodedness of hers and slung the two pouches of game over his shoulder, walked his unhurried course in the shadow of the cliffs.
It was a place which offered at least the hope of concealment from humans, this deep maze of eroded overhangs ... a stream course, perhaps, while water had flowed the high plain and seas had surged from rim to rim of the great basins. The cut ran down and down the vast terraces, more and more steeply, to lose itself in the evening murk. Between these cliffs was a sandy floor, dangerous at the rimside, the seam of a sandslip running a good stone's throw up the center; farther along the sands were stable. Infrequent gusts carried clouds of sand down into the cut, making veils necessary even for children on windy days. It was no comfort, but it was shelter of a sort, a bad place in storm, on which account the seniors of the Kel had objected; but he had overridden them. They had experienced fire; they knew the theory of machines and strike from orbit; but they still did not realize how thorough an enemy's scan might be. There were deep places within the maze, decent separation for the castes, Sen to the north, with the she'pan; Kel to the south, nearest the entry, to protect it, if it were a question of enemies who dared face them; and farthest back, deepest, the Kath, the child-rearers and children; the strongest place of all for the children, of whom they had lost most in An-ehon, in the ruin of the city.