Forty Thousand in Gehenna (45 page)

There were voices, too loud, at the edge of the camp.

“What’s that?” he asked, vexed. He stood up. Genley started off from him. “What is that?”

“I’ll see,” Genley said.

Mannin
. The starmen were in that direction; another matter with the starmen. Genley was running, crossing the ground. He went more slowly, overtook Genley where Genley came up against Vil and his lot: it was the starmen. Voices were raised. Genley shoved; Vil shoved back, and Vil’s band had weapons.

“Where?” Jin asked directly, thrusting an arm between Vil and Genley, levering them apart. Blue moved in, got Vil’s attention with a spearshaft. “
Where
?”

“Don’t know where,” someone said.

Genley ran, riverward. The spear was quick, coming from the side.

Jin stood there a moment, seeing this, seeing Genley down, writhing on the spear. The hunter pulled it out. Jin drew a breath, just held out his hand.

Blue gave him what he asked for. The smooth wood filled his hand. He walked forward and swung the spear up; the hunter blocked it, instinct, but this was a dead man. He whirled the spear and thrust it up, under the jaw, whipped round with it ready for Vil, for the rest of them. One looked apt to try, but did nothing.

“Gen-ley,” he said, not looking at him, watching kinsmen’s eyes. There was no answer. He had expected none, not the way that spear had hit. He stood there the space of several breaths. “I want Mannin,” he said very quietly, “I want Kim—
Blue,”
he said, “where’s Parm?” They were Parm’s men, these.

Parm came. Stood quietly. Jin saw him unfocused, to the side; his eyes were all for Vil, who had not yet said a word. All about the camp, everywhere, men were on their feet, weapons ready. He found himself shaking, voiceless in the vastness of his suspicions: Parm Tower, Parm, which had harbored a grudge of which the starmen were the center. Parm, defying him.

Parm, who was allied with Green Tower, had a Green Tower woman; Green had Parm’s.

The silence went on. It was Vil’s to speak. Or Parm’s himself. The calibans were off at hunt. From the river came splashes, grunts. There would be one already to deal with, its rider dead, when it discovered it.

“I’ll settle it,” Parm said.

It would not be safe. There would be Parm to watch. Parm knew that. They all did. But the structure was too fragile.

“Want those starmen back,” Jin said quietly. “Want this settled with Vil.”

“He’ll get them.”

“You be careful,” Jin said. He spared a slight shift of his eye to Parm. “You get this man out of my way. Hear?”

There was a slow sorting-out, slow movements everywhere. Already an ariel had come to investigate the bodies. It tugged at one of Genley’s fingers.

Jin drove his spear through it, pinned it wriggling to the ground. Genley’s face still had its look of shock. “River,” Jin said. Burying was too much work. There was war to fight. He flung the spear down uncleaned, walked away to the fire, took up the skin of drink and had enough to settle his belly. He took a bit more. Tears welled up in his eyes, dammed up there, unsheddable.

Men came and went around him, moving softfooted. He sat there still, with his mind busy, ignoring the rage that had him near to trembling. There was Parm to reckon round now. This man would have to be killed. There were the calibans. When the dead man’s came in, that was to settle; kill the beast, before it spread. Let Vil make amends if he would; kill this man too, like killing infection, before it spread.

A tower had to fall over this. No, there was no stopping it. Unless Parm could die in battle. He considered this, more and more thinking of it.

“This Parm,” he said to Blue, who sat close by him. “Tomorrow.” He made a tiny sign.

Blue’s eyes lighted with satisfaction. He closed his fingers in a circle:
band
.

Jin met Blue’s gaze and smiled with the eyes only.
Yes
. Decimate the band. Blue would find a way, tomorrow, in battle: put Parm and his lads—Vil too—where they could die.

It would save a tower. Save the unity of the towers.

Thorn came in. So other calibans came, to the scent of blood, to the rumor of ariels. Thorn swung his head, swept the ground with his tail. “Hsss,” Jin said, leaning back when that great head thrust itself into his way. He grasped the soft wattle skin and pulled, distracting the caliban, but it wandered off, to walk stifflegged about the camp, just in case.

So he was whole again. Blue’s came. The pattern took shape again, men shifting to his side, gathering all about
his
fire and not to Parm’s, not joining the search that Parm and his men made.

And when Parm brought the starmen back, he was obliged to cross the camp with his prisoners, to bring them to him, like an offering…offering it was. A placation. The starmen—muddy, wet, bedraggled—“Genley,” Mannin kept asking, looking about. “Genley?”—with fear in his voice. This was a nuisance, this man. To all of them. A small voice, while Parm looked at him and reckoned his chances, how much time this bought.

“Vil will pay for his mistake,” Parm said, having added up, it seemed, this silence in the camp.

Jin looked elsewhere, not willing to be appeased. The bands had made their judgement, silently, ranged themselves with him. The calibans were at hand, quiet on the fringes of the light.

“I will see to it,” Parm persisted, further abasement.

“Do that.” Jin looked at him. There was no reprieve. The man had lost his usefulness; now he lost his threat as well. Jin breathed easier still, assumed an easier expression; but Parm knew him. This was a frightened man. And would die before he recovered from it. Jin rose and dusted off his breeches, looked at the starmen.

Mannin snuffled. Kim stared, with dark, measuring eyes.

“These caused the trouble,” Jin said, snapped his fingers and pointed at Kim. “Kill that one.”

Kim started to his feet. A knife was in his back before he made it. He tumbled backward, and hit the ground the while Mannin simply stared, on his knees, stared and hugged himself and trembled.

“Now you see how it is,” Jin said, squatting down, face to face with Mannin. “Genley’s dead. Now you’re what I have.” He stood up again, looked round him at the hunters. “This man’s sick. Don’t you see? Keep him warm, put him near the fire. He’ll want something to eat. He’ll know not to run again. And you’ll know how to treat what’s mine.”

Faces met his, settled faces, things secure again, men certain they had taken the stronger side. He walked away to the other fire, to let Blue deal with smaller things, like being rid of Kim.

A waste, that. And not a waste. They did not mistake him now. Perhaps the killing of Genley was no accident. Perhaps Parm misjudged, how important starmen were to him, or where in matters they fitted.

There was respect around him. He was sure of it again.

“In the morning,” he muttered, for those who stood by to hear. “
In the morning,”
others echoed, and it went through the camp—enough delay, enough of waiting on Elai’s coyness.

In the morning, revenge, blood, promises kept: no real opposition. He would not sleep this night; he wanted to see this thing done at last, Cloud put under his feet, Parm most deftly scotched.

Genley my father.

He mourned. His mourning confounded itself with his rage. He clenched his hands and thought on killing, on killing so thorough none of Cloudside would survive. They would tell tales of him, the things that he had done.

“Jin,” a man said, bringing him a thing, a sodden mass of pages. Genley’s. He had seen it often. He looked at it, the crawling marks that made no sense to him, dim in firelight and in the fading. His history.

“Give this to Mannin,” he said. “Tell him it’s his.”

205 CR, day 114
Cloudside

Calibans moved, running through the camp in the dark before the dawn, a sound of heavy tread, of whispering of scales through brush. “
Hai, hey,”
a voice yelled.

Riders scrambled for weapons. McGee collected her spear, her kit.

“Up!” Elai was calling to them; “up!”

They ran, confused in the dark; calibans nosed past riders. Dain doused the embers of the nightfire: the tumult ran down and down the shore, a murmur of voices in the night, the hisses of calibans as if some strange sea were breaking at their backs. “Hup, hai!” someone cried, near at hand, a man’s voice. “Up, up, up!” There were splashes from the river—not attack: McGee had gained a sense of this—it was another sudden move. But something was close. She clutched at her clothes, hurried for the shore in the dark, skipped as ariels flowed like water about her feet, avoided stepping on one somehow.

“Brown,” she called; it was all the name it had.
Brown, don’t leave me here
! She whistled as best she could in panic. Riders were moving out, in the dark, no sense or order in it. “Hey!”

A shape came toward her, a tongue quested, found her. A head-butt followed, and that was Brown, all slick with water—had to be Brown. McGee clambered doggedly up with a ruthless spring onto Brown’s foreleg the way the riders did it, her spear in her hand and her bag of belongings slung about her with her precious notes. Brown started to move along with the others, confused as the others, shouldering others in haste—

Going where
? McGee wondered, clinging in the dark, clinging to the spear, the casual way the riders carried it: she had learned to ride with it, balanced herself with it when Brown was in a hurry, with that sinuous rocking fore and back, side to side in a rhythm that had its highs and lows, its pitches into which the riders settled as if they were born to it.

But this was real. This was the last move, the last plunge into dark and war and no one was ordering this thing, except that Elai was up ahead with Taem, with Paeia by her side, no less her enemies in potential… Dain would go to Elai’s side: Dain’s caliban went where Dain told it, and he would get himself to the fore, while Brown—

I’m scared, I’m scared, I’m scared
, she told herself to the rhythm of their moving.
This is no way to fight a war. There ought to be lines, generals, orders; someone ought to set this thing up. We’ll all be killed
.

They climbed through brush, making noise, breaking branches, caring nothing that they were heard. Treelimbs raked her; she fended with a leathered arm, kept the spear along Brown’s side.

I’m going to use this thing
. She flexed her fingers on it, the smooth wood: the head was venomed; an ugly thing, to counter other weapons bound to come her way. Panic gave way to certainty, like some long, long dive which had its own logic, its own morality. Life seemed precious and trifling at once.
Dain. Elai sent him. Her messenger, after all
. She laid her heels to Brown, clutching the spear the tighter, half crazed, drawing great breaths and anxious only to get on with it.

Life
, she kept thinking, like a talisman, to keep herself alive.

Dain
—
Hardly started in his life. The rest of us
—
all caliban-bait
. The thought enraged her, and the spear was like her arm, an extension of herself. The sky was going lighter, the shapes of calibans more definite, the rhythm of Brown’s strides more certain.

Kill them, kill them, kill them. That’s what’s left to do.

Message Alliance HQ to Gehenna Station
Couriered by
AS Phoenix

…inform you that pursuant to the agreement worked out in the commercial exchange treaty a limited access will be extended Union observers for several worlds of the Gehenna Reach, specifically to the reserve on Gehenna and the study program there. Gehenna is required and requested to provide such documented personnel access to quarantined areas, specific operations to be approved by the Base Director. Union observers will at all times be accompanied by Bureau personnel.

In the spirit of detente and in pursuit of mutual interests, a reciprocity has been arranged in the opening of Union records…

205 CR, day 114
Cloudside

The morning came up gold and placid as they moved among the trees, beside the river, in the changes calibans had made in the land. Ridges hove up, freshly dug and showing the roots of overturned trees, the hollows between them pocked with seepage from the river, and Elai read the patterns through which they moved, shaped them with her mind.

Jin is this way
, they said. So she knew the time they would meet.
Ahead lies the alien. We surround you, go beneath you in harmony
,

Cloud-towers-clustered-Hillers

well-ordered toward the

Green-nest-aggression

It spiralled off into gilded distances, the wreckage, the patterns building about them for days.

Where
? she had tried to ask of Scar last night; but Scar ignored the stones, ignored her, as if he had said it all.
When
?

They moved when it was time; and calibans knew that time when they saw it, when the Pattern shaped itself, that was all.

Cloud against Styx.

One way against another.

There was logic in it. It had compelled Paeia, brought Taem to her side. Perhaps Weirds on both sides had shaped this confrontation: there were hints of this in the patterns…that Weirds knew no tower-loyalty.

There was herself; there was Jin.

Two kinds; and calibans brought them both, here, to this place, long-appointed. She had her spear in hand, her darts slung to her side. Her mates, her rivals were by her, joined with her, like Taem, who had said nothing of why he came, not the deep reasons: only he was there, and the pattern agreed with that, shaping no other way for him to go. They were Cloudside; and the whole Cloudside pattern was being shoved at now.

Not a matter now of driving them off a time. She read that too, the way she read the land. Jin took the high ground, to push. She knew what he would do, and by that what they would do, surely as the sun came up—if flesh was strong enough.

She put forward her spear in the dim dawn, in the quickening of Scar’s pace. There was no time now to order things. She gave a fleeting thought to MaGee and wished that she had had Dain put her somewhere, but MaGee would fare as they all fared, and there was no helping it. Pattern against pattern. The calibans had made MaGee part of it: part of her; that was the way of it. Grays joined them, plowed the earth like the currents of the sea. Their powerful claws found places to probe in the mounds: they dived in earth and surfaced again, hissing and whistling, but the long-striding browns scrambled across soft ground, four-footed and stable, bridging the gaps with the reach of their limbs, treading the grays down with grand disdain, in silent haste.