"The curse of Du be on you," Duwan said. "The agony you have given me will be returned to you in multiples."
"Take the fool's lips," Elnice snarled, leaping from the chair, her skirts swirling as she walked regally away.
Night. A light rain came, cold, not a great hardship to the camped enemy, but new horror for the peeled Drinker, with each drop striking like acid fire. He could no longer moan, for his throat was swollen closed with his screaming, and his breathing was difficult. There was no time. The rain stopped and he knew that death was near. He did not know how long the night had gone on, whether for an eternity or for an hour. He determined to live until Du came, to look upon Du's kind face just once more.
His sight was blurred by the blood that ran over the lidless balls, but he saw a lightening in the east. He lifted his head to agony. He had been in a semiconscious state of shock, and the movement seemed to awaken his mutilated body to fire. But there was Du. He could not blink to protect his eyes from the brightness.
"Du," he tried to say, and managed only a croak, "take me. I can stand no more."
And then the red, fiery circle was fully exposed above the hills and he set his lidless eyes on it and prayed until the rays began to burn his sight and blackness came slowly, slowly.
Elnice was in her uniform. Around her the conqforce was making preparations to move out. She stood and looked down upon the raw, bleeding body. His head was hanging on his bloody chest. His lungs had ceased to function.
"I had hoped," she told Hata, "that he would last at least until the heat of midday began to cook him."
"He died just after dawn," Hata said, "with one last prayer to his du."
"So much for dus," Elnice said. "I am ready." She did not look back. The last of the conqforce was out of the canyon by midday, leaving behind a feast for the scavengers of the earth and the air, and a weeping female who knelt before the dead one. In her nostrils was the stench of the newly dead and the long dead, for the enemy did not bury his own, much less dead pongs.
"You could have come with us," Jai whispered to dead ears. "You could have left during the night, and we would now be marching to the west and you would be alive. You could have, you could have."
Chapter Seven
Sema, mother of Duwan the Drinker, put fresh, dry wood on the fire. The cave was an ideal place, for there was a small vent at the very rear that allowed the smoke to be drawn straight up and out. She looked up as her mate entered.
"More have come," he said.
"Is there word?"
"None," he said. "Save that the enemy marches south and does not pursue any toward the west."
"And of Jai?" she asked.
Duwan the Elder shook his head. "There is one of the newcomers who has an infected wound."
Sema rose, reached for her bag of dried healing herbs.
"I will tell you immediately if there is word of either of them," Duwan the Elder said. "Go now, for the warrior is in pain." They had joined Tambol and a growing group of Drinkers who had found their way into the hills of the west. The last stages of the journey had been made in snow and sleet and cold. Many wounded died. A few of the old valley Drinkers had chosen a pleasant valley in the foothills to go back to the earth. Now the cadre of valley Drinkers had been reduced to less than ten, and Dagner, as if the defeat in the canyon had taken away his seemingly newfound youth, was hardening and had spent the first few days in the hills looking for his chosen place to return to the earth. There were, counting females and the few young, just over three hundred of them in the valley they'd chosen when a band of free runners came. Duwan the Elder went out to meet the runners, marveling at their wasted condition in the midst of plenty. There were evergreens and plenty of dried fodder, enough food to make a Drinker sleek and fat.
"If you must make your presence so blatant, with fires and noise," said the skinny spokesman of the runners, "you will leave this area and go further west, lest you draw the masters down on us."
"Who gives me orders?" Duwan the Elder asked.
"Farnee, Eldest of the free runners."
"I see only a fool who starves with Du shining and good food everywhere," Duwan the Elder said.
The group of runners, thirty strong, reached for weapons. Duwan the Elder clapped his hands and the group of runners were quickly surrounded by swordsmen, healthy, fat swordsmen who, except for their ragged dress, looked like masters. Farnee yelped and tried to run and two strong Drinkers seized him by the arms and brought him back to face Duwan the Elder.
At that moment Tambol appeared and Farnee, seeing him, cried out,
"Traitor, you have led them to us."
"Be quiet, old one," Tambol said. "We are Drinkers, all. We have killed the enemy, and we give you one more chance to join us."
"I see the new mounds of earth where you have buried dead," Farnee said. "If you have killed the enemy, why are you here, hiding as we hide?" All during the march to the west Tambol had been trying to come up with an answer to just that question, and others like it. There had been long days and night when he walked in miserable muteness, when he knew the blackest despair. From the beginning Duwan, the Master, had been the heart of it.
He had come from the earth to fulfill the ancient prophesy, that coming witnessed by his mate, Jai, and he had killed the enemy and taught others how not only to kill, but to live. Tambol could not delude himself into believing that things would be the same with Duwan gone. During those first grim days, when everyone was fearful that the Enemy was just behind them, he could not muster enough faith to believe that Duwan could escape the canyon of death. He knew that Duwan had accepted death, in exchange for a greater chance of escape for his followers. Try as he might, Tambol had never been able to hear the whispers from the trees, trees that Duwan called brothers, trees that, said Duwan, were the spirits of Drinkers. His entire faith was based on the Master. He had seen the evil in the pens, and he had heard others weep and pray to many dus. Emotionally, the concept of one Du, an all-powerful, merciful Du who was the Du of the Drinkers, appealed to him. Intellectually, he doubted during those days when it became apparent that Duwan had died in the canyon and would never rejoin them. He felt hypocritical when he told others, "This is the way of the Master. He left us once before, to attend to the business of Du. He has left us once again, but only temporarily. It is up to us to honor him and what he has done for us by carrying on his work. In the days of final crisis he will return to lead us into the last battles." As for the freed slaves, never having had anything in which to believe save some nebulous dus who seemed always to favor the stronger, the Devourers, they seized on Tambol's teachings and spread them. So, although Tambol, himself, knew doubt, he also knew the worthiness of the cause, and he still had some small hope that Duwan's ultimate goal, freedom for all, could be achieved under the leadership of the Master's father. So he was ready for Farnee's question.
"We will not regain the lands of our ancestors and rid ourselves of the Devourers without loss," he said. "The Master guides us, speaking to us through the spirits of our ancestors. He calls out to all to join in the battle." He drew himself up and looked at the free runners, his face majestic, grim. "And these are the words of the Master. All who are not with us are against us."
Duwan the Elder seized upon that thought. He had been told that there were hundreds of male runners, and that number would partially replace the losses to the army.
"We will waste no time on those who equivocate," he said, "but we will shove them aside, treating them as we would treat the enemy, lest they stand in our way or betray us to the enemy."
"The choice is yours, Farnee my father," Tambol said. "Join us, accept the ways of Du, live a good live eating and drinking of the bounty of Du, or risk our wrath. The sight of you reminds us of what we were before the Master taught us to be Drinkers, and that we cannot abide." Farnee looked around nervously at the bared blades of the swordsmen.