Something closed on her wrist. “Boss?”
She jerked awake. Her squeak was intended as a scream. She rolled away and sat up and-it was only Kaywerbrimmis.
“Boss, what have you been telling the Bull?”
She was still groggy. She needed a drink and a bath or-that rattle, was it rain? And a flash and boom that was certainly thunder.
She’d pulled off her filthy clothing before she slept. She slid out of the blankets, out of the payload shell, into the cool rain. Kay watched from the gun room as she danced in the rain.
Consequences. Traders didn’t mate. They shared rishathra with the species they met, but mating was something else. You didn’t get a business partner pregnant, and you didn’t engage in sexual dominance games, and you didn’t fall in love.
But in far realms, among strange hominids, you couldn’t shun each other, either.
She beckoned and shouted, “Wash with me. What time is it?”
“Coming on dusk. We slept a long time.” Kay was pulling off his clothes in something like relief. “I thought we’d need this time to arm against vampires.”
“We’ll do that. How’s Barok?”
“Don’t know.”
They drank, washed each other, dried each other, and were reassured: the mating urge could be resisted.
The rain stopped. You could see wind driving the last flurries across the stubble. Swaths of navy-blue sky showed through blowing broken clouds, and a sudden narrow vertical line of blue-white dashes.
Vala gaped. She hadn’t seen the Arch in four rotations.
By glow of Archlight she could see patterns in the grass stubble. An arc of pale rectangles. A tent erected within the arc. Grass Giants moved back and forth, and a handful of much smaller hominids moved with them. On the rectangles… sheets? They were laying out bodies.
“Did you tell them to do that?”
“No. Not a bad idea, though,” Vala said.
In Anthrantillin’s deserted cruiser they found Barok with a woman twice his size. He seemed abnormally subdued, but he was smiling. “Wemb, my partners Valavirgillin and Kaywerbrimmis. Folk, this is Wemb.”
Kay started to say, “I would have thought—”
Barok’s laugh was not quite sane. “Yes, and you would’ve been right, if you would have thought we slept!”
Wemb cut in. “Sleeping here, together, protects each against intent of the rest, against yet more rishathra. We were lucky in each other.”
Groping through his exhausted mind, Barok found another thought. “Forn. You never found Foranayeedli?”
Vala said, “She’s gone.”
Barok’s body rippled, an uncontrollable shudder. His hand closed on Vala’s wrist. “I shouted down at her. ‘Load!’ Nothing. She was gone. I stepped out to look for her, to stop her if she followed the singing. Stepped out and my mind turned off. I was at the foot of the wall and the rain was hammering me into the ground. Someone stumbled into me. Knocked me in the mud. Wemb. We, rishathra isn’t a strong enough word.”
Wemb took him by the shoulder and turned him toward her. “Shared love, or even mated, but we must say rishathra, Barok. Truly we must.”
“-Tore our clothes away and rished and rished, and our minds seeped back to us with not a heartbeat to spare. A half circle of those pale things was closing on us. The rain must have washed away some of the scent. I saw crossbows lying all around us. Grass Giant warriors have been stumbling down the wall all night long, dropping crossbows and anything else they’re carrying—”
“We picked up crossbows,” the Grass Giant woman cut in. “I saw Makee lying dead with a vampire in his arms and a bolt through both of them, and his quiver dropped beside him. Picked up the quiver and dumped it and pushed a handful of bolts at Barok and shot the nearest vampire. Then the next.”
“At first I couldn’t cock the crossbow.”
“Then the next. Is that why you were screaming? We never talked till after.”
“Scream and pull. Scream for strength,” Barok said. “Your cursed tools aren’t built for tiny little Machine People.”
Vala asked, “You were out there all night?”
Wemb nodded. Barok said, “When the rain started to slack off, I got us towels. There were heaps of towels.” His grip was painful. “Kay, Vala, we saw why.”
“Warriors walked past us,” Wemb said. “I shot Heerst in the leg, but he just kept walking, following the singing. Vampires came up to him and pulled the towel off his face and led him away. He’s my son.”
“If something is covering your face, they pull it off! Heerst was using fuel in his towel. Rain washes it out. We looked for towels that had-Wemb?”
“Pepperleek. Minch.”
“Yes, those kept their scent. They kept us alive, the towels and the rishathra. Any time it was too much for us, we rished. And crossbow bolts. The guards were dropping their swords and crossbows but not their quivers. We had to go looking. Rob the dead.”
“I saw what I didn’t understand,” Wemb said. “I should tell the Thurl. Vampires rished with some of us, then led them away into the high grass and farther. Why keep them alive? Are they still alive?”
Vala said, “The Ghouls might know.”
“Ghouls keep Ghoul secrets,” Wemb said.
The clouds had closed again. In the dark Barok said, “I shot the vampire who was leading Anth away. It took two bolts. Another picked up the song, and I shot her. Anth followed a third woman, and by that time he was out of range. They led him into the grass. I never saw him again. Should I have shot him?”
They only looked at him.
“I can’t keep vigil with you,” Barok said. “I can’t face rishathra now. My head is too-I don’t know if I can make you see—”
They squeezed his arms and tried to assure him that they understood. They left him there.
CHAPTER THREE — THE GATHERING STORM
The tent huddled beneath the walk but faced outward into an arc of gray sheets.
The corpses were laid head-to-head, two giants to a sheet, or four vampires. Giants had found Anthrantillin and his crewman Himapertharee and laid them out on one sheet. Taratarafasht and Foranayeedli must be still missing. Another sheet held six tiny Gleaner dead.
The giants had nearly finished making their patterns. Tiny hominids moved about them, not helping much, but carrying food or light loads. All wore sheets with holes in them for the head to poke through.
A Grass Giant could lift a vampire with no difficulty. It took two to carry a dead giant.
But Beedj was carrying a dead Grass Giant woman across his back. He rolled the woman off his shoulders to slump across a sheet, perfectly placed. He took her hand and spoke to her sadly. Vala changed her mind about disturbing him.
Two women finished laying out more vampire dead. One approached. “We rubbed pepperleek along the rims of the sheets. Stop small scavengers,” Moonwa said to the three Machine People. “Big scavengers we can crossbow. Ghouls won’t have to fight for what’s theirs.”
“A polite notion,” Valavirgillin said. Tables would have raised the dead out of a scavenger’s reach; but where would Grass Giants find wood?
“What can I do for you?” Moonwa asked.
“We’ve come to keep vigil with you.”
“The battle cost you too much. No Ghouls come on the first night. Rest.”
Vala said, “But it was my idea, after all.”
“Thurl’s idea,” Moonwa informed her.
Vala nodded and carefully didn’t smile. It was a social convention, as in Louis Wu helped the Thurl boil a sea. She waved toward the little hominids. “Who are these?”