The Ships of Earth: Homecoming: Volume 3 (34 page)

“I would have killed you myself,” said Elemak. “With my bare hands.”

Vas whirled on him, furious and, for once, unable to contain his rage. Why
should
he contain it? He was as good as dead now, with Elemak here—so why not speak his contempt openly? “Would you!” he cried. “Do you think you’re a match for me! You’ve never been a match for me! I’ve thwarted you at every turn! And you never guessed, you never
suspected
. You fool, strutting and bragging about how only you know how to lead our caravan—who was it who did what you couldn’t do, and turned us back?”

“Turned us back? It wasn’t
you
that ...” But then Elemak paused, and Vas could see understanding come to
his eyes.
Now
Elya knew who had destroyed the pulses. “Yes,” said Elemak. “Like the coward and sneak you are, you endangered us all, you put
my
wife and
my
son at risk, and we didn’t catch you because it never occurred to any of us that anyone in our company could be so slimy and vile as to deliberately—”

“Enough,” said Luet. “Say no more, or there’ll be accusations that must be dealt with openly, which can still be handled in silence.”

Vas understood at once. Luet didn’t want Elemak to say outright that Vas had destroyed the pulses, not in front of Obring and Sevet, or there’d have to be a punishment. And she didn’t want him punished. She didn’t want him killed. Luet was the waterseer; she spoke for the Oversoul; and that meant that the Oversoul wanted him alive.

〈That’s right.〉

The thought was as clear as a voice inside his head.

〈I want you alive. I want Luet alive. I want Sevet and Obring alive. Do not force me to choose which of you will die.〉

“Come back up the mountain,” said Elemak. “All three of you.”

“I don’t want to go back,” said Obring. “There’s nothing for me here. The city’s where I belong.”

“Yes,” said Elemak, “in a city your weakness and laziness and cowardice and stupidity can be concealed behind fine clothing and a few jests and people will think you’re a man. But don’t worry—there’s plenty of time for that. When Nafai fails and we return to the city—”

“But
she
says that he’s made his bow,” said Obring.

Elemak looked over at Luet and seemed to see the confirmation in her eyes. “Making a bow is not the same thing as knowing how to use it,” he said. “If he brings home meat, then I’ll know the Oversoul is truly with him, and more powerful than I ever thought. But it won’t happen, Waterseer. Your husband will do his best, but he’ll fail, not because he wasn’t good enough but because it can’t be done. And when he fads, we’ll turn north and return
to the city. There’s no need for you to have done this.”

Vas listened and understood the real message. Whether or not Elemak actually believed Nafai would fail, he was speaking in such a way that Sevet and Obring would think that nothing more had been going on here than an attempted escape to the city. He did not intend to tell them that Vas had been meaning to kill them.

Or perhaps he didn’t know. Perhaps Luet didn’t know. Perhaps when she spoke of the three of them dying if they went down onto the ledge, she meant that Elemak would kill them to prevent their escape. Perhaps it was all still a secret.

“Go back up the way you came,” said Elemak. “Agree to that, and there’ll be no punishment. We still have time enough before morning that no one beyond the five of us will need to know what happened.”

“Yes,” said Obring. “I will, I’m sorry, thank you.”

He is so
weak,
though Vas.

Obring passed Elemak and began to scramble back up the path. Sevet silently followed him.

“Go on ahead, Luet,” said Elemak. “You’ve done good work here tonight. I won’t bother asking the waterseer how she knew to be here before them. I’ll only say that if you hadn’t delayed them, there would have been killing here tonight.”

Were the others out of earshot? Vas wondered. Or was Elemak still thinking only of his
own
killing—that he would have caught them and punished them for trying to escape?

Luet passed them by, and followed the others up the mountain. Vas and Elemak were alone.

“What was the plan?” asked Elemak. “To push them as you lowered them down onto the ledge?”

So he knew.

“If you had harmed either one of them, I would have torn you apart.”

“Would you?” asked Vas.

Elemak’s hand snaked out and took him by the throat,
jamming him back against the rock wall behind him. Vas clutched at Elemak’s arm, then at his hand, trying to pry the fingers away. He couldn’t breathe, and it
hurt,
Elemak wasn’t just pretending, wasn’t just demonstrating his power, he meant to kill him, and Vas filled with panic. Just as he was about to claw at Elemak’s eyes—anything to get him to let go—Elemak’s other hand seized Vas’s crotch and squeezed. The pain was indescribable, and yet he couldn’t scream or even gasp because his throat was closed. He gagged and retched, and some of his stomach bile
did
manage to force its way past the constriction in his throat; he could taste it in his mouth. This is death, he thought.

Elemak gave a final squeeze, both to Vas’s throat and to his testicles, as if to prove that he hadn’t been using his full strength all along, and then released him.

Vas gasped and whimpered. The pain in his crotch was, if anything, worse, a throbbing ache, and his throat also ached as he sucked in air.

“I didn’t do this in front of the others,” said Elemak, “because I want you to be useful. I don’t want you to be broken or humiliated in front of the others. But I want you to remember this. When you start plotting your next murder, remember that Luet is watching you, and the Oversoul is watching you, and, more to the point,
I’m
watching you. I won’t give you a millimeter of slack from now on, Vasya, my friend. If I see any hint that you’re planning any more sabotage or any more subtle little murders, I won’t wait to see how things turn out, I’ll simply come to you in the middle of the night and break your neck. You know I can do it. You know you can’t stop me. As long as I live, you will take no vengeance against Sevet or Obring.
Or
me. I won’t ask for your oath, because your word is piss from your mouth. I simply expect to be obeyed, because you’re a sneaky coward who is terrified of pain, and you will never, never stand against me again because you will remember how you feel right now, at this moment.”

Vas heard all this and knew that Elemak was right, he
would never stand against him, because he could never bear to feel the fear and pain he had just gone through, was still going through.

But I
will
hate you, Elemak. And someday. Someday. When you’re old and feeble and helpless, I will put things back in balance. I’ll kill Sevet and Obring and you won’t be able to stop me. You won’t even know that I did it. And then one day I’ll come to you and say, I did it in spite of you. And you’ll rage at me and I’ll only laugh, because you’ll be helpless then and in your helplessness I will make you feel what you made
me
feel, the pain of it, the fear, the
panic
as you can’t breathe even enough to scream out your agony—oh, you’ll feel it. And as you lie there dying, I’ll tell you the rest of my vengeance—that I will kill all your children, too, and your wife, and everything and everyone you love, and you can’t stop me. Then you’ll die, and only then will I be satisfied, knowing that your death was the most terrible death that can be imagined.

But there’s no hurry, Elemak. I will dream of this every night. I will never forget.
You
will forget. Until the day that I make you remember, however many years it is before that day comes.

When Vas was able to walk, Elemak dragged him to his feet and shoved him up the trail leading to the camp.

At dawn, everyone was back in place, and no one but the participants knew of the scene that had played itself out in the moonlight, halfway down the mountain.

The sun was scarcely up when Nafai strode across the meadow toward the camp. Luet was awake—though barely so—nursing Chveya as Zdorab passed around biscuits smeared with sugary preserves of breakfast. She looked up and there he was, coming toward them, the first sunlight catching in his hair. She thought of how he had looked in her strange dream, sparking and sparkling with the light of his invisible metal armor. What did that mean? she wondered. And then she thought, What does it matter what it meant?

“Why are you back?” cried Issib, who was holding
Dazya on his lap on his chair while Hushidh was off peeing or whatever.

In answer, Nafai held up the bow in one hand, five arrows in the other.

She leapt to her feet and ran to him, still holding the baby—though Chveya soon lost her grip on Luet’s breast and began to protest at all this bouncing when she was trying to eat. The baby was fussing rather loudly, but Luet paid no attention to her as she kissed her husband, clung to him with her free hand.

“You have the bow,” she said.

“What is a bow?” he asked. “The Oversoul taught me how to make it—it took no skill of mine. But what
you
accomplished . . .”

“You know, then?”

“The Oversoul showed me in a dream—I woke when it ended and came back at once.”

“So you know that we’re saying nothing about it.”

“Yes,” he said. “Except to each other. Except for me to tell you that you are a magnificent woman, the strongest, bravest person that I know.”

She loved to hear those words from him, even though she knew they weren’t true—that she had not been brave at all, but terrified that Vas would kill her right along with the others. That she had been so relieved when Elemak came that she almost wept. Soon enough she’d tell him all of that. But for now she loved to hear his words of love and honor, and to feel his arm around her as they walked together back to camp.

“I see you have the bow, but no meat,” said Issib, when they got nearer.

“So you’ve given up?” asked Mebbekew, hopefully.

“I have until sundown,” said Nafai.

“Then why are you here?” asked Elemak.

Everyone had come out of the tents now, and were gathered, watching.

“I came because having the bow is nothing—the Oversoul could have taught any of us how to do that. What I
need now is for Father to tell me where to go to find game.”

Volemak was surprised. “And how should I know that, Nyef? I’m not a hunter.”

“I have to know where to find game that is so tame that I can creep up on it very close,” said Nafai. “And where it’s so plentiful that I can find more when I miss my first attempts.”

“Take Vas with you, then, to track,” said Volemak.

“No,” said Elemak quickly. “No, Nafai is right. Neither Vas nor Obring will go with him this morning as trackers.”

Luet knew perfectly well why Elemak insisted on
that
—but it still left Volemak nonplussed. “Then let Elemak tell you where to go to find game like that.”

“Elemak doesn’t know this country any better than I do,” said Nafai.

“And I don’t know it at all,” said Volemak.

“Nevertheless,” said Nafai, “I will only hunt where you tell me to. This is too important to leave it up to chance. Everything depends on this, Father. Tell me where to hunt, or I’ll have no hope.”

Volemak stood in silence, looking at his son. Luet didn’t really understand why Nafai was doing this—he had never needed Volemak to tell him where to search for game before. And yet she sensed that it was very important—that for some reason the success of the expedition hinged on its being Volemak who decided where the hunt would take place.

“I will ask the Index,” said Volemak.

“Thank you, Father,” said Nafai. He followed his father into his tent.

Luet looked around the company as they waited. What do they make of this? Her eyes met Elemak’s. He smiled a tight little smile. She smiled back, not understanding what it was
he
thought was going on.

It was Hushidh who clarified it for her. “Your husband is the clever one,” she whispered.

Luet turned in surprise—she hadn’t noticed Hushidh coming to her.

“When he came back with the bow and arrows, it weakened
Volemak. It weakened him yesterday, in fact, when it was Nafai who insisted on trying to continue. All the bonds that held this company together weakened then. I could see it when I got up this morning—fracture. Chaos verging. And something worse, between Vas and Elemak—a terrible hatred that I don’t understand. But Nafai has now handed the authority back to his father. He could have snatched it for himself and torn us all apart, but he didn’t—he gave it back, and already I can see us settling back into old patterns.”

“Sometimes, Shuya, I wish I had
your
gift instead of mine.”

“Mine is more comfortable and practical sometimes,” said Hushidh. “But you are the waterseer.”

Since Chveya was tugging away on Luet’s breast, slurping obscenely, as if passionately eager to get all she could before Luet took off running somewhere again, it was hard for Luet to take her noble calling all that seriously. She answered Hushidh with a laugh. Her laugh was heard by those who could not have heard their hushed conversation; many turned to look at her. What could possibly be amusing, they seemed to be wondering, on a morning like this, where our whole future is being decided?

Nafai and Volemak emerged from the tent. Volemak’s air of puzzlement was gone. He was firmly in command now; he embraced his son, pointed toward the southeast, and said, “You’ll find game there, Nafai. Come back soon enough and I’ll allow the meat to be cooked. Let the Dorovyets wonder why there’s a new column of smoke coming from across the bay! By the time they can come and investigate, we’ll be on our way south again.”

Luet knew that many heard those confident words with more despair than hope—but their longing for the city was a weakness in them, nothing to be proud of, not a desire to be indulged. Vas’s sabotage might have turned them back, but that would have made all their lives meaningless, at least compared to what they were going to accomplish when Nafai succeeded.