“Want advice?”
Jim looked about, back to the wall, at Pol Hald. The gaunt Kontrin stood between his guards, without threat.
“I’ve some interest in the management of this,” Pol said. “The man’s right; but occupy those windows with vantage, front and back for screening fire if you need it. And get your own Warriors behind you; your men can’t tell blues from reds in the dark.”
“It’s sense,” Max said.
A sound began…started with the feeling of pressure in the ears, so that many pressed their hands to them; and then became pain, a shrilling that grated in the bones.
It was all around them. The Warriors in the house retreated into a knot, grouping, booming to each other in panic.
“Warrior!” Jim cried. “Stay!”
They clicked and shrilled in reply, flicking palps this way and that, and majat-azi who had come with them scampered from their vicinity, faces stark with fright. Jim started forward.
“No,” Pol exclaimed, reached out to grip his arm. “No, blast it, you’re not Meth-maren. Stay back from them.”
That too was good advice. He retreated outside with Max, settled in the. rocks with a Kontrin of Hald beside them, and shook his head to clear his ears, pressure that would not go away.
We’re going to die, he thought, and panicked entirely, for it was a born-man thought, a born-man fear: the tapes had done it to him, prepared him only for this, this sick dread. Max’s face was calm. The Kontrin gave him a twisted smile, as if he had read his mind, and mocked him in the fear they shared.
Sound rose about them, madness.
vii
The truck jolted, badly. Raen caught at the door, rubbed her blurred eyes, looked askance at the azi who, however indifferent a driver, kept the pace, tailing Merry.
“How’s the fuel holding?” she asked, leaning to see. It was reserve tank, half full. They were still all right.
And the odometer: ten kilometres from their goal. The lights of the city should have been visible, but she expected none. She folded her arms and sat regarding the sweep of the horizon, finding yet no sight of their goal, nothing in the faint glimmering of dawn, which began to fade the stars.
But there were no stars northward.
She sat up, her heart beating hard against her ribs. She had slept. There was no drowsiness in her now.
“Merry,” she said into the com. “Merry. Are you awake up there?”
“Sera?”
“Smoke. Smoke over the city.”
“Yes. I see it, sera.”
“We’re going to pass. Turn’s coming up. Stand by. Go round him, Will. We’ve a little space yet.”
Five kilometres. The truck accelerated; Merry dropped back. Four. She started watching on the right, closely, wondering in agony about the accuracy of the maps.
The kilometres ticked off. “Slow down,” she said. The driver eased down. There was a stake with an illegible number, a spur, a mere eroded place off the paved road, but trucks had passed it: crushed weeds showed in the dawning.
“Take it,” she said. The driver did so, eased them onto it, carefully, while the truck swayed and lurched and weeds whispered against the doors.
They were blind in this place. She would have given much then for Warrior’s sight and hearing. Turn after turn took them out of sight of the road, and the only comfort was Merry’s vehicle showing in the mirror by her window.
A turning, a descent of the road, a brief climb around the curve of a hilclass="underline" a weathered cluster of buildings showed before them, a desolate place…but someone had been cutting weeds.
Itavvy,she thought, prosperity on your house.
Doors opened; men came out, sunsuited, rifles levelled, to meet the trucks. Beside her, Will reached for his own rifle. She gathered up hers, opened the door.
“Isan Tel,” she said. “Come code 579-4645-687.”
One man nodded to the others, his rifle lifted out of the line of fire; other weapons were turned away. Sunmasks and visors came off. There were several among them female; several of more clerical look than guard-type, some unarmed.
“I’m your contract,” she said. “I can’t clear it on comp; you know that. Ask your azi-in-charge: did you not find orders in comp to keep to these buildings and fight only majat that attacked you?”
“That’s truth,” a man said, quiet voice, quiet manner, minding her of Jim. Faces all about took on a look of great relief, as if their entire world had suddenly settled into order: it had asked much of them until now, that azi alone hold the place. She saw their eyes fixed on her, with that deep calm that did not belong in the situation: contract-loyalty.
“The hives are moving,” she said. “Have you had trouble here?”
The manager-azi lifted an arm toward the south, the open fields. “Majat came in. We took a few. They went back again.”
She indicated the north-east. “Nothing from that direction.”
“No, sera.”
She nodded. “You’re on blue-hive’s doorstep; but they’re not human-killers. The others were golds, more than likely. You’ve already done your proper service, sitting here, guarding blue-hive. I have your contract. We go further now, but only azi that won’t freeze or panic.”
Their calm was disturbed by talk of blue-hive. She saw the ripple of dismay, turned and waved at Merry. “Out! We’re going afoot from here. Any who’ll come, any who are able.”
Her own azi climbed out, none hesitating, with rifles and what gear they had; weary as they were, she looked on them with some hope. “We’re going to fight fora hive,” she said. “For blue-hive, our own, back in the city. We have to go among them; into it, if we can. Stay, if that’s too much for you.”
She started walking…knew Merry, at least, would join her. He was there, at once, and hardly slower, the others, filthy, sorry-looking men; she looked back, and not one had stayed. The Tel estate azi were on their heels, plain by their clean clothing and their energy. In the rear, the managers and the domestics trailed along, perhaps reckoning now they were safer not to be left in the deserted buildings.
They climbed, pushing aside the high weeds, finding trails overgrown and forgotten in the hills. “Majat trails,” she said to Merry. “Abandoned ones.”
“Blue-hive?”
“Better be.”
Something urged at her hearing. She kept her eyes to the high rocks, the folds of the land.
A majat warning boomed out. She spun left; rifles jerked about, hovered unfired on the person of a Warrior, testament to azi discipline. She turned her fist to it, that stood against the sky.
“Meth-maren,” it intoned.
“Warrior, you’re too far for my eyes. Come closer.”
It shifted forward, a blue beyond doubt. Others appeared out of the rocks, jaws clicking with excitement.
“Here are azi of my-hive,” she said. “They’ve held the valley till now; now they’ll fight where needed.”
It lowered itself, offered touch and taste, and she took and gave it, moving carefully lest some new azi take alarm. “Good, good,” it pronounced then. “Mother sends. Come, come quick, Kethiuy-queen. Bring, bring, bring.”
She looked back; none who followed had fled; none offered to go back now. Warrior danced with impatience and she touched Merry’s arm and started after it, following the devious ways it led, over stone and through brush.
Suddenly the hive gaped before them, a dark pit, seeming void of defense; but Warriors materialised out of the weeds, the stones of the hills, boiled out from the darkness. She hesitated not at all, hearing their guide boom a response to them; and one Warrior touched her—by that move, one who knew her personally.
“Warrior?” she asked it.
“This-unit guides. Come. Come, bring azi.”
Blue lights bobbed in the pit. She went without question toward them, Merry beside her, others close at her heels. The darkness enveloped them, and majat-azi scampered just ahead, wretched creatures who no longer laughed, but stumbled and faltered with exhaustion. Blue light ran chaotically over the walls, showing them the way. Warrior-song shrilled in the dark.