Foreigner: (10th Anniversary Edition) (48 page)

He didn’t think it would drop its bombs. He watched it make its pass in the narrow sky above them.

Then an explosion went off right over them, and Nokhada jumped. A sharp impact hit his shoulder, and the rider next to him went down—he didn’t see why—brush came at his face and he put up a hand to protect himself as Nokhada ran him up the hill and stopped close to Babs.

He was half-deaf from the blast, but not so he couldn’t hear mecheiti screaming in fright or pain. He looked back, saw riders down where he’d been, and tried to turn back. Nokhada had other ideas and fought him on the slope, until other riders went back.

But Banichi was still in sight; he saw Jago among those afoot, heard a single gunshot. The screaming stopped abruptly, leaving the silence and the ringing of his ears; then, after a moment of milling about, and another of Nokhada’s unwilling turn-abouts on the slope, he saw people mounting up again, the column reorganizing itself.

A rider came forward in the line, and reported to Cenedi and Ilisidi three men dead, and one of the names was Giri.

He felt—he didn’t know what, then. An impact to the gut. The loss of someone he knew, a known quantity when so much was changing around him—he felt it personally; but he was glad at the same time it wasn’t Banichi or Jago, and he supposed in a vague, dazed way, that his sense of loss was a selfish judgement, on selfish human standards that had nothing to do with
man’chi
, or what atevi felt or didn’t feel.

He didn’t know right and wrong any longer. His head ached. His ears were still ringing and there was a stink of smoke and gunpowder in every breath he drew. Dirt had spattered him and Nokhada, even this far up the column, dirt and bits of leaves—he wasn’t sure what else had, and he didn’t want to know. He only kept remembering the shock of the bomb bursting, a wall of air and fragments
that made itself one with the explosions on the road—recalled the shock of something hitting his arm with an impact that still ached. It was a fluke, that single accurate bomb. It might not happen again.

Or it might on the next such strike—he didn’t know how much farther they had to ride or how long their enemies could keep putting up planes from Maidingi Airport and hitting at them over and over again, with nothing, nothing they could do about it.

But the second plane didn’t come back, whether it had crashed in the mountains or made it back to the airport, and in the meantime the rumbling of thunder grew louder.

In a while more, clouds swept in, bringing cold air, first, then a spatter of rain, a crack of thunder. The riders around him delved into packs without getting down, pulled out black plastic rain-cloaks and began to settle them on as the drops began to fall. He hoped for the same in his gear, and discovered it in the pack beside his knee, someone’s providence in this season of cold mountain rains. He sorted it out in the early moments of the rain, settled it over his head and over as much of him and the riding-pad as he could, latching it up about his throat as the chill deluge began, blinding him with its gusts and trickling down his neck.

The plastic kept body heat in, his and Nokhada’s, the turbulence and the cloud cover up above the hills was a shield from aircraft, and if he froze where the stiff gusts plastered the plastic against his body or whipped up the edges of it on a shirt and coat beginning to be soaked from the trickle down his neck, any discomfort the storm brought on them was better than being hammered from the air.

For the most part he trusted Nokhada to follow Babs, tucked his hands under his arms and asked himself where Ilisidi’s strength possibly came from, because the more he let himself relax, the more his own was giving way, and the more the shivers did get through. Thin bodies
chill faster, Giri had said that, he was sure it had been Giri, who was dead, now, spattered all over a hillside.

His brain kept re-hearing the explosions.

Kept falling into black patches, when he shut his eyes, kept being back in that cellar, listening to the thunder, feeling a gun against his head and knowing Cenedi would do it again and for real, because Cenedi’s anger with humans was tied up with Ilisidi’s ambition and what had and hadn’t been possible for atevi to achieve even before that ship appeared in the skies, he read that much. Cenedi’s
man’chi
was with Ilisidi, the rebels offered Ilisidi association with them, Ilisidi had told Cenedi find out what the paidhi was, and in Cenedi’s eyes, it was his fault he’d convinced her not to take that rebel offer.

Hence Cenedi’s anger—at him, at Ilisidi’s surrendering her fight for the seat in Shejidan—to age, to time, to God knew what motive. The paidhi had no confidence he could interpret anything, not even himself, lately. He’d become a commodity for trade among atevi factions. He didn’t even know who owned him at the moment—didn’t know why Cenedi had waited on the hill for Banichi.

Didn’t know why Jago had been angry at him, for going after Banichi.

Jago … make a deal with Cenedi? Betray Tabini
and
Banichi? He didn’t think so.

He refused to think so, for no logical reason, only a human one—which didn’t at all apply to her. He knew that, if he knew nothing else, in the confusion of his thoughts. But he didn’t change his opinion.

Hill after hill after hill in the blinding rain.

Then another deeply cut ravine, where a tall growth of ironheart sheltered them from the blasts, and the thready leaves streamed and clumped with water, dumping it, when they chanced to brush against them, in small, icy floods that found their way down necks, more often than not.

But that cover of brush was the first relief from the wind they’d found, and Ilisidi called a rest and bunched
them up, the twelve of them—only twelve surviving riders, he was dismayed to realize, and six mecheiti on their own, trailing them through brush and along the stony hillsides. He hadn’t realized the losses, he hadn’t counted … he didn’t know where they might have lost the others, or whether, at some silent signal he’d missed, the party had divided itself.

He held on to the mounting-straps and slid down Nokhada’s wet side, not sure he could get up again unaided, but glad enough to rest. For the first moment he had to stand holding to Nokhada’s harness just to keep his feet, his legs were so rubbery from riding. Lightning flickered and the thunder muttered over their heads. He could scarcely walk on the rain-slick hillside without grabbing onto branches and leaning on one rock and the next. He wandered like a drunken man along the steep slope, seeking a warm spot and a place a little more out of the wind. He saw that Banichi had gotten down—and he worked his way in that direction, where four other men had gathered, with Jago, one of them squatting down beside her and holding Banichi’s ankle. The water-soaked boot was stretched painfully tight over the joint.

“Is it broken, Jago-ji?” he asked, getting down beside her.

“Probably,” she said darkly, not looking at him. By the stablehands’ foresight, she and Banichi both had rain-cloaks, and she huddled in hers, not looking at him, not speaking, not willing to speak; he read that in the shoulder she kept toward him. But it was no place to argue with her, when Banichi was in pain, and everything seemed short-fused.

The man who was dealing with Banichi at least seemed sure of what he was doing—might even be a real medic, Bren thought. Tabini had one in his guard. It made sense the aiji-dowager might take such a precaution, considering her breakneck rides and considering the politics she had a finger in.

“The boot stays
on
,” Banichi said, to a suggestion they cut it off. “It’s holding it together. I can at least—”

At which the man made a tentative probe that sent Banichi’s head back and his breath hissing through his teeth.

“Sorry,” the man said, and spoke to another of the guards kneeling by him. “Cut me a couple or three splints.”

One more of their company walked up to watch, steps whispering over sodden leaves, disturbing the occasional rock. Jago squatted, blowing on her clasped hands to warm them. Banichi wasn’t enjoying being the center of attention. He ebbed backward onto the ground and lay there staring up into the drizzle, ignoring all of it. The ground chill had to come through the plastic rain-cloak. But the staff’s providence hadn’t extended to blankets, or to tents.

Ilisidi limped over, using her cane, and Cenedi’s arm, on the uneven ground. There ensued another discussion between Ilisidi and the perhaps-medic as to whether Banichi’s ankle was broken; and Banichi, propping himself glumly on his elbows, entered the argument to say it had gone numb when the truck blew up and he’d finished the job when he’d jumped out under fire and hit a rock.

Which was more detail of what had happened in the ambush than he’d yet heard from Banichi.

“Can you walk on it?” Cenedi asked.

“In an emergency,” Banichi said, which proved nothing at all about how bad it was. It
was
broken, Bren thought. The ankle didn’t rest straight. “Not what I’d choose, nadi. What walking did you have in mind?”

“Outside Maidingi Airport, which seems unavailable, there are two, remotely three ways we can go from here.” Thunder rumbled, and Cenedi waited for it, while the rain fell steadily. “We’d confirmed Wigairiin as reliable, with its airstrip—hence the feints we asked for lakeward and southwest. But our schedule is blown to hell now. The rebels in Maidingi township have no doubt now that our
answer to their association is no and that we’re going west. They can’t be so stupid as to forget our association with Wigairiin.”

“North of here,” Banichi said.

“North and west. On the edge of the hills. The rebels are bound to move to take Wigairiin’s airstrip—or to take it out.”

“Foolish to strike at Wigairiin,” Ilisidi said, “until they’re sure both Malguri
and
Wigairiin aren’t going with them. And they won’t have known that until we went out the stable gate.”

“Not an easy field to take from the air,” Cenedi said. “Expensive to take.”

“Unless they moved in forces overland, in advance of Malguri’s refusal,” Banichi said.

“Possible,” Cenedi said. “But let me tell you our other choices. There’s the border. Fagioni province, just at the foot of Wigairiin height. But it could be a soft border. Damned soft in a matter of hours if Wigairiin falls, and we’re left with the same guess where the border into loyal territory firms up after that if Wigairiin falls. There’s also the open country, if we ignore both Wigairiin and Fagioni township and head into the reserve there. That’s three hundred miles of wilderness, plenty of game. But no cover.”

“More air attacks,” Ilisidi said.

“We might as well resign the fight if we take that route.” Banichi shifted higher, to sit up, winced, and settled on an elbow. “Railhead at Fagioni. They’ll have infiltrated, if they’ve got any sense. Major force is already launched. Rainstorm won’t have stopped the trains. They know we didn’t take the lake crossing. They know the politics on this side. You were the only question, nand’ dowager.”

“So it’s Wigairiin,” Cenedi said.

“There’s south,” Banichi said. “Maidingi.”

“With twelve of us? They’d hunt us out in an hour. We’ve got this storm until dark, if the weather reports
hold. That long we’ve got cover. We can make Wigairiin. We can get out of there.”

“In
what?
” Banichi asked. “Forgive me. A plane that’s a low-flying target?”

“A jet,” Cenedi said.

Banichi frowned and drew in a slow breath, seeming to think about it then. “But what is it,” Banichi asked, “since they took Maidingi? Four, five hours? Tabini has commercial aircraft at his disposal. He might
be
in Maidingi by now. He could have landed a force at the airport.”

“And the whole rebellion could be over,” Ilisidi said, “but I wouldn’t bet our lives on it, nadiin. The Association is hanging together by a thread of public confidence in Tabini’s priorities. To answer a rising against him with brutal force instead of negotiation, while the axe hangs over atevi heads, visibly? No. Tabini’s made his move, in sending Bren-paidhi to
me.
If that plane goes out of Wigairiin, if I personally, with my known opposition to the Treaty, deliver the paidhi back to him—the wind is out of their sails, then and there. This is a political war, nadiin.”

“Explosives falling on our heads, nand’ dowager, were not a sudden inspiration. They were made in advance. The preparation to drop them from aircraft was made in advance. Surely they informed you the extent of their preparations.”

“Surely my grandson informed you,” Ilisidi said, “nadi, the extent of his own.”

What are we suddenly talking about? Bren asked himself. What are they asking each other?

About betrayal?

“As happens,” Banichi said, “he informed us very little. In case you should ask.”

My God.

“We go to Wigairiin,” Cenedi said. “I refuse, with ‘Sidi’s life, to bet on Maidingi, or what Tabini may or may not have done.”

“I have to leave it to you,” Banichi said with a grimace and a shift on the elbow. “You know this area. You know your people.”

“No question, then,” Ilisidi said, and punctuated it with a stab of her walking-stick at the sodden ground. “Tonight. If this rain keeps up—it’s not an easy airfield in turbulence, Cenedi assures me. Not at all easy when they’re shooting at you from the ground. If we get there we can hold the airstrip with two rifles, take the rest of the night off, and radio my lazy grandson to come get us.”

“I’ve flown in there,” Cenedi said. “Myself. It’s a narrow field, short, single runway, takeoffs and landings right out over a cliff, past a steep rock where snipers can sit. The house is a seventeenth-century villa, with a gravel road down to Fagioni. The previous aiji was too aristocratic to fly over to Maidingi to catch the scheduled flights. She had the airstrip built, knocked down a fourteenth century defense wall to do it.”

“Hell of a howl from the Preservation Commission,” Ilisidi said. “Her son maintains the jet and uses it. It seats ten. It can easily handle our twelve, Cenedi’s rated for it, and it’s going to be fueled.”

“If,” Cenedi said, “if the rebels haven’t gotten somebody in there. Or sent them down, as you say, into Fagioni, to come up overland. If we have to scramble to take that field, nadiin, will you be with us?
That’s
the walk that could be necessary.”