At The Edge Of Space (Hanan Rebellion) (22 page)

There was no chance to discuss matters. Kta seemed to sense it, for he said nothing. Someone stood not far from the hut, visible through the matting.

Quite probably, Kurt thought, the nemet had added things up for himself. Whether he had then reached the right conclusion was another matter.

Eventually first light began to bring a little detail to the hut. Kta finally slept. Kurt did not.

Then a stir was made in the camp, men running in the direction of Renols’ hut. Distant voices were discussing something urgently. The commotion spread, until people were stirring about in some alarm.

And Renols’ lieutenants came to fetch them both, handling them both harshly as they hurried them toward Renols’ shelter.

“We found Garet’s brothers,” Renols said, confronting Kurt.

Kurt stared at him, neither comforted nor alarmed by that news. “Garet’s brothers are nothing to me.”

“We found them dead. All of them. Throats cut. There were tracks of nemet—sandal-wearing.”

Kurt glanced at Kta, not needing to feign shock.

“Two of our searchers haven’t come back,” said Renols. “You say this one is a chief among the nemet. A lord. Probably they’re his. Ask him.”

“You understood,” Kurt said in Nechai. “Say something.”

Kta set his jaw. “If you think to buy time by giving them anything from me, you are mistaken.”

“He has nothing to say,” said Kurt to Renols.

Renols did not look surprised. “He will find something to say,” he promised. “Astin, get a guard doubled out there. No women to go out of camp today. Raf, bring the nemet to the main circle.”

It would be possible, Kurt realized with a cold sickness at the heart, it would be possible to play out the game to the end. Kta would not betray him any more than he would betray the men of
Tavi.
To let Kta die might buy him the hour or so needed to hope for rescue. Possibly Kta would not even blame him. It was always hard to know what Kta would consider a reasonable action.

He followed along after those who took Kta—Kta with his spine stiff and every line of him braced to resist, but making not a sound. Kurt himself went docilely, his eyes scanning the hostile crowd that gathered in ominous silence.

He let it continue to the very circle, where the sand was still dark-spotted with the blood of the night before. He feared he would not have the courage to commit so senseless an act, giving up both their lives. But when they tried to put Kta to the ground, he scarcely thought. He tore loose, hit one man, stooped, jerked the ax from his startled hand and swung it toward those who held Kta.

The nemet reacted with amazing agility, swung one man into the path of the ax, kneed the other, snatched a dagger and applied it with the blinding speed he could use with the
ypan.
The men clutched spurting wounds and went down howling and writhing.

“Archers!” Renols bellowed. There was a great clear space about the area. Kurt and Kta stood back to back, men crowding each other to get out of the way. Renols was closest.

Kurt charged him, ax swinging. Renols went down with his side open, rolling in the dust. Other men scrambled out of the way as he kept swinging. Kta stayed with him. Their area changed. People fled from them screaming.

“Shoot them!” someone else shrieked.

Then all chaos broke loose, a hoarse cry from the rear of the crowd. Some of the Tamurlin turned screaming in panic, their cries swiftly drowned in the sounds of battle in the center of the crowd.

Kta jerked at Kurt’s arm and pointed—both of them for the moment stunned by the appearance of nemet among the Tamurlin, the flash of bright-edged swords in the sunlight. No Tamurlin offered them fight anymore: the humans were trying more to escape than to fight, and soon there were only nemet around them. The humans had vanished into the brush.

Now with Kurt behind him, Kta stood in the clear, with dagger in hand and the dead at his feet, and the nemet band raised a cheer.

“Lord Kta!” they cried over and over. “Lord Kta!” And they came to him, bloody swords in hand, and knelt down in the dust before their almost-naked and much-battered lord. Kta held out his hand to them, dropping the blade, and turned palm upward to heaven, to the cleansing light of the sun.

“
Ei,
my friends,” he said, “my friends, well done.”

Val t’Ran, the officer next in command after Bel t’Osanef, rose from his knees and looked as if he would gladly have embraced Kta, if such impulses belonged to nemet. Tears shone in his eyes. “I thank heaven we were in time, Kta-ifhan, and I would have reckoned we could not be.”

“It was you who killed the humans outside the camp, was it not?”

“Aye, my lord, and we feared they had spoiled our ambush. We thought we might have been discovered by that. We were very careful stalking the camp, after that.”

“It was well done,” said Kta again, with great feeling, and held out his hand to the boy Pan, who had come with the rescuers. “Pan, it was you who brought them?”

“Yes, sir,” said the youth. “I had to run, sir, I had to. I hated to leave you. Tas and I—we thought we could do more by getting to the ship—but he died of his wound on the way.”

Kta swallowed heavily. “I am sorry, Pan. May the Guardians of your house receive him kindly.—Let us go. Let us be out of this foul place.”

Kurt saw them prepare to move out, looked down at what weight was clenched in his numb hand, saw the ax and his arm bloodstained to the shoulder. He let it fall, suddenly shaking in every limb. He stumbled aside from all of them, bent over in the lee of a hut and was sick for some few minutes until everything had emptied out of his belly—drugs, Tamurlin food. But the sights that stayed in his mind were something over which he had no such power. He took dust and rubbed at the blood until his skin stung with the sandy dirt and the spots were gone. In a deserted hut he found a gourd of water and drank and washed his face. The place stank of leaf. He stumbled out again into the sunlight.

“Lord Kurt,” said one of the seamen, astonished to find him. “Kta-ifhan is frantic. Come. Hurry. Come, please.”

The nemet looked strange to him, alien, the language jarring on his ears. Human dead lay around. The nemet were leaving. He felt no urge to go among them.

“Sir.”

Fire roared near him; a wave of heat brought him to alertness. They were setting fire to the village. He stared about him like a man waking from a dream.

He had pulled a trigger, pressed a button and killed, remotely, instantly. He had helped to fire a world, though his post was noncombat. They had been minute, statistical targets.

Renols’ astonished look hung before him. It had been Mim’s.

He lay in the dust, with its taste in his mouth and his lips cut and his cheek bruised. He did not remember falling. Gentle alien hands lifted him, turned him, smoothed his face.

“He is fevered,” Pan’s clear voice said out of the blaze of the sun. “The burns, sir—the sun, the long walk—”

“Help him,” said Kta’s voice. “Carry him if you must. We must get clear of this place. There are other tribes.”

The journey was a haze of brown and green, of sometime drafts of skin-stale water. At times he walked, hardly knowing anything but to follow the man in front of him. Toward the last, as their way began to descend to the sea and the day cooled, he began to take note of his surroundings again. Losing the contents of his stomach a second time, beside the trail, made him weak, but he was free of the nausea and his head was clearer afterwards. He drank
telise,
the kindly seaman who offered it bidding him keep the flask; it only occurred to him later that using something a sick human had used would be repugnant to the man. It did not matter; he was touched that the man had given it up for his sake.

He shook off their offered help thereafter. He had his legs again, though they shook under him, and he was self-possessed enough to remember his ship and the equipment they had abandoned; he had been too dazed and the nemet, the nemet with their distrust of machines, had abandoned everything.

“We have to go back,” he told Kta, trying to reason with him.

“No,” said the nemet. “No. No more lives of my men. We are already racing the chance that other tribes may be alerted by now.”

It was the end of the matter.

And toward evening, with the coast before them and
Tavi
lying off-shore, most welcome of sights—there came a seaman racing up across the sand, stumbling and hard-breathing.

He saw Kta and his eyes widened, and he sketched a staggering bow before his lord and gasped out his message.

“Methi’s ship,” he said, “upcoast. Lookout saw them from the point there. They are searching every inlet on this shore—almost—almost we would have had to pull away—but without enough rowers. Thank heaven you made it, sir.”

“Let us hurry,” said Kta, and they began to plunge down the sandy slope to the beach itself.

“My lord,” hissed the seaman. “I think the ship is
Edrif.
The sail is green.”

“
Edrif.
” Kta gazed toward the point with fury in every line of him. “Yeknis take them!—Kurt, t’Tefur’s
Edrif,
do you hear?”

“I hear,” Kurt echoed. The longing for revenge churned inside him, when a few moments before he would never have looked to fight again. He shivered in the cold sea wind, wrapped his borrowed
ctan
about him and followed Kta downslope as fast as his trembling legs would take him.

“We have not crew enough to take him now,” Kta muttered beneath his breath. “Would that I did! We would send that son of Yr’s abominations down to Kalyt’s green halls—amusement for Kalyt’s scaly daughters. Light of heaven! If I had the whole of us this moment,—”

He did not, and fell silent with a grimness that had the pain of tears behind it. Kurt heard the nemet’s voice shake, and feared for him before the witness of the men.

16

Tavi
’s dark blue sail billowed out and filled with the night wind, and Val t’Ran called out a hoarse order to the rowers to hold oars. The rhythm of wood and water cadenced to a halt, forty oars poised level over the water. Then with a direction from Val they came inboard with a single grate of wood, locked into place by the sweating rowers who rested at the benches.

Somewhere
Edrif
still prowled the coast, but the Sufaki vessel had the disadvantage of having to seek, and the lower coast was rough, with many inlets that were possible for
Tavi,
a sleek, shallow-drafted longship—while
Edrif,
greater in oarage, must keep to slightly deeper waters.

Now
Tavi
caught the wind, with the water sloughing rapidly under her hull. On her starboard side rose a great jagged spire against the night sky, sea-worn rock, warning of other rocks in the black waters. The waves lapped audibly at the crag, but they skimmed past and skirted one on the left by a similarly scant margin.

These were waters Kta knew. The crew stayed at the benches, ready but unfrightened by the closeness of the channel they ran.

“Get below,” Kta told Kurt. “You have been on your feet too long. I do not want to have to pull you a second time out of the sea. Get back from the rail.”

“Are we clear now?”

“There is a straight course through these rocks and the wind is bearing us well down the center of it. Heaven favors us. Here, you are getting the spray where you are standing. Lun, take this man below before he perishes.”

The cabin was warm and close, and there was light, well-shielded from outside view. The old seaman guided him to the cot and bade him lie down. The heaving of the ship disoriented him in a way the sea had never done before. He fell into the cot, rousing himself only when Lun propped him up to set a mug of soup to his lips. He could not even manage it without shaking. Lun held it patiently, and the warmth of the soup filled his belly and spread to his limbs, pouring strength into him.

He bade Lun prop his shoulders with blankets and give him a second cup. He was able to sit then partially erect, his hands cradling the steaming mug. He did not particularly want to drink it; it was the warmth he cherished, and the knowledge that it was there. He was careful not to fall asleep and spill it. From time to time he sipped at it. Lun sat nodding in the corner.

The door opened with a gust of cold wind and Kta came in, shook the salt water from his cloak and gave it to Lun.

“Soup here, sir,” said Lun, prepared and gave him a cup of it, and Kta thanked him and sank down on the cot on the opposite side of the little cabin. Lun departed and closed the door quietly.

Kurt stared for a long time at the wall, without the will left to face another round with Kta. At last Kta moved enough to drink, and let go his breath in a soft sigh of weariness.

“Are you all right?” Kta asked him finally. He put gentleness in his question, which had been long absent from his voice.

“I am all right.”

“The night is in our favor. I think we can clear this shore before
Edrif
realizes it.”

“Do we still go north?”

“Yes. And with t’Tefur no doubt hard behind us.”

“Is there any chance we could take him?”

“We have ten benches empty and no reliefs. Or do you expect me to kill the rest of my men?”

Kurt flinched, a lowering of his eyes. He could not face an accounting now. He did not want the fight. He stared off elsewhere and took a sip of the soup to cover it.

“I did not mean that against you,” Kta said. “Kurt, these men left everything for my sake, left families and hearths with no hope of returning. They came to me in the night and begged me—begged me—to let them take me from Nephane, or I would have ended my life that night in spite of my father’s wishes. Now I have left twelve of them dead on this shore.—I am responsible for them, Kurt. My men are dead and I am alive. Of all of them,
I
survived.”