IronStar (8 page)

“These are really quite impressive
predators you keep here,” she mused, wondering how a nearly-naked boy had
managed to survive hidden in the reeds for so long.
Or had he? How long had
he been here? And why was he hiding, and what was an eight year old boy doing
out here by himself, anyway?
“Don’t you have a tribe or something?” she
wondered aloud.

The subject of her speculation gave
a small tug on one hand, looking up earnestly at her:

“Or’eeyu snath, marathlauma, ma” he
said, and when she looked at him in puzzlement, he added “Gaelae, gaelae ma.”
She stared a moment longer, resisting his tugging on one hand. Exasperated, he
dropped the hand and crouched on the not-grass on all fours. Growling back in
his throat, he mimed a four-legged run and pounce on the body of the Grass
Weasel.

“You’re attacking the dead
monster?”, she asked uncertainly. This reminded her too much of sorority
word-guessing games, which she had never been very good at. Not because she’d
been too slow to think of words to go with her teammate’s mimed actions, but
because a hundred possible interpretations competed in her mind for each one.
Akaray stopped, rolled his eyes exactly as her sorority partner had done, and
formed his hands into claws, swooping and thrusting them again and again at the
dead beast. The rubbery flesh bounced and joggled under his miniature siege.
Suddenly the penny dropped, and a cold shiver ran down Kirrah’s back as she
considered what kinds of scavengers might be attracted to a thirty-five meter
long corpse, and how soon, and decided that her day could be rich and
fulfilling
without
meeting a ‘snath’, whatever that was.

“Ok, ok, you’ve convinced me!” she
said, kneeling beside the increasingly anxious boy. “One last item” she said,
holding up one finger and pointing to herself. “Kirrah”, and then at him,
“Akaray”, and then at the carcass - she couldn’t go on calling it ‘Grass
Weasel’ when it had a perfectly good local name - and raising her eyebrows in
query.

“Eesa tso’ckhai,” he said, the
“ckh” sound catching a little in the back of his throat.

“Tsoh-ckhaii” she essayed, pointing
again at the, the
tso’ckhai
? Akaray nodded vigorously, and again tugged
on her hand, a look of pleading coming into his eyes. She stood, and made a
show of scanning the horizon. After a quick glance at her wristcomp, she said
“Malame’thsha?”, simultaneously sweeping her hand in an arc that ended with her
finger pointed southeast, as near as she could remember to the direction Akaray
had indicated earlier. Light flickered briefly in his eyes, and as quickly
clouded over, with pain or grief or
something
that caused a single slow
tear to wash a clear path down through the grime over one cheek.
Oh-oh,
she
thought,
I guess we all have our troubles
.

He stepped tentatively to her right
side and very carefully placed the tip of two fingers on the butt of her
sidearm, that strange-to-him tool that had been in her hand as she spat bright
yellow death at the
tso’ckhai
. He looked up with that unnervingly open,
direct eye contact, nodded slightly, and said:

“Malame’thsha.”

“From suffering I have learned
this: that whoever is sore wounded by love will never be made whole, unless she
embraces the very same love which wounded her.” - Mechtild of Magdeburg -
op.cit.

After just a bit of hand-waving
negotiation, Akaray allowed her to feed him a tiny white tablet containing a
broad-spectrum anti-infective, more out of haste to get moving, Kirrah
suspected, than any implicit trust in her medical skills.
Whatever works
,
she thought –
I know you’re tough, I just don’t feel good about you walking
ten or twenty klicks with that obvious blood poisoning taking hold unchecked.
And while we’re walking, you can tell me just what makes an eight millimeter
hole in a young boy’s leg, and why he isn’t resting in whatever passes for
medical care, wherever you came from. Oh well…
With the sun looking like early-mid-afternoon,
they set out, the sky clear with a high haze to the west, a fresh breeze at
their backs, and the boy obviously relieved at the prospect of being somewhere
else.

Not Fair
, Kirrah
thought for the fourth time that hour.
Your weight doesn’t sink into the
not-grass like mine does. I must be expending
triple
normal walking
energy. When we negotiate a Regnum presence on this planet, I’m going to
recommend your folks open a physical conditioning resort. I am going to ache
all over tonight
. A couple of klicks behind them, dark spots wheeled in the
air, suggesting the arrival of the ‘snaths’. (‘
Assurance ten: more data will
increase accuracy’, I know!
) thought Kirrah peevishly. By her last reading
(
was that really only twenty minutes ago?
) they were making about four
kph. Still no sign of any human dwelling. The dark line of the forest’s edge
had paralleled their course at first, but was now veering eastward as they
diverged southeast into the monotonous savanna.

They passed several more of the loose
herds of mastodon-analogs, which according to Akaray were called “
mu’uthn
”.
He walked unconcernedly right through their herd, passing several times within
four or five meters of one of the immense beasts. Kirrah followed a little more
circumspectly, her sidearm drawn, for all the good it would do against a
twenty-ton charging grazer.

At one point, they detoured
slightly to inspect the bare skeletal remains of one of the huge creatures.
Even in death, the pile of yellowish bones was impressive. The massive horn
ring measured two hundred eighty-six centimeters across.
Interesting
,
Kirrah thought.
The rib cage extends all the way from shoulder to hip, no
soft underbelly or flank on these things for a predator to attack
. Just
then Akaray pointed to missing sections in two adjacent ribs and said “
tso’ckhai
”
…
Oh
.

Several times they came across
another “herd” of the spiky gray stick-creatures which had first looked to
Kirrah like weeds
. Akaray pointed and called them “
honak
”,
and when Kirrah showed interest, he pulled up a small tuft of not-grass, and
tossed it between the six spindly legs of the nearest creature. It reacted
instantly, one of the legs stabbing in a blur and impaling the small decoy
neatly. Kirrah was left to wonder what sort of creature as long as her thumb
might serve as natural prey for the stick-things.

The occasional clumps of trees
seemed to become more frequent as they progressed, and Kirrah noticed that her
diminutive guide avoided some of the clumps by a scrupulously consistent twenty
meter minimum, yet walked unconcerned directly past the boundaries of others.
At one such copse, he even stopped briefly to pick a few fruit: lemon-sized
ovoids, pale green with tiny brown freckles, double lobed and very good,
judging from the way the juice dribbled down Akaray’s chin. On the advice of
her wristcomp, Kirrah reluctantly declined. “Digestible, contains unknown
alkaloids, probably safe” was not exactly the bioanalytic reassurance she had
hoped for. Life was already interesting enough without adding gratuitous
digestive challenges, she sighed.

The next time Akaray detoured a
clump of a dozen trees with slender gray-barked trunks and wide layers of small
round leaves, Kirrah stopped and gestured toward the trees, and made as though
to approach the fruit growing from a waist-high bush.

“
Eeyu, honak
”, he repeated,
and pointed. Kirrah stared, saw nothing but trees and bushes in a loose 6-meter
group. She gestured widely, raised her eyebrows. The lad pointed again, finally
seeing that she wasn’t getting it, pulled up a head-sized clump of
not-grass
and tossed it among the trees, from as far back as he could. Kirrah started
violently as one of the slender five-meter tall trunks seemed to divide
lengthwise, and one section snapped up and down, skewering the bundle before it
bounced once. When the “prey” turned out to be nothing but
not-grass
,
the leg of the
honak
slowly withdrew to its camouflage beside the real
tree trunk.
Taking notes, Lieutenant? There will be questions, later…

Twice her young escort also made
wide detours around half a hectare of
not-grass
that to her eyes looked
exactly like all the rest of the
not-grass
.
Or like a dozen perfectly
camouflaged tso’ckhai
, Kirrah reflected ruefully.
When I build up a
little more vocabulary, I want to know how he does that. Meanwhile, stay with
the tour!

The sun sank slowly lower in the
sky behind them, and the sky itself became increasingly overcast, a thin, high
veil of cloud spreading eastward. After four hours of increasingly weary
trudging during which Akaray became more and more subdued, they came upon the
town of Malame’thsha. What
had been
the town of Malame’thsha. It took
Kirrah several moments to realize that she was in fact coming upon a town: no
building stood higher than low stone foundations; blackened, charred pieces of
wood and ashes and bits of debris were scattered everywhere. It had obviously
rained since the burning, no trace of smoke lingered in the still evening air.
But the sickly-sour smell of decay did linger. Clenching her teeth against
bile, Kirrah knelt beside one of the bodies (so
many
to choose from),
gently turned it over… him, turned
him
over, there was a beard above the
massive wound that had opened the man’s throat from ear to opposite shoulder.
And another, an older woman, a short, thin arrow penetrating her upper chest,
back to front. And another, and another… clearly this town had been attacked,
its occupants indiscriminately and brutally killed. Not yesterday, nor as long
as a week ago; Kirrah estimated perhaps three days. The attack seemed to have
been carried out with near-total surprise. The closest thing to a weapon she
saw among the corpses was a half-meter blunt-ended blade on a two-meter wood
handle, more like an agricultural instrument than a killing tool.
And they
did this on
my
planet
, Kirrah thought angrily… (
where did
that
come from?
)

A larger building in the center of
the village looked to have been the final, futile refuge of the desperate
defenders. Kirrah counted fifteen bodies outside its charred foundation, clustered
around what had been the door, all adult; armed with staves, stones, a heavy
cooking utensil, a kitchen knife… all laced with short, slender arrows, or laid
open by those enormous slashes. With a shock, Kirrah imagined one of the arrows
placed across Akaray’s leg wound - a perfect match.

Please no more bodies
, someone
thought;
floating bodies, bloating bodies, surely I’ve had my quota of
bodies…
She counted twenty-six more inside the foundation’s perimeter,
burned beyond hope of determining even gender, half of them as small as Akaray,
some smaller.

Akaray, where was
Akaray
…
there, in the jumbled center of that ruin across the… what had been the road.
He stood, stock-still, tears streaming down his face, a singed garment hanging
forlornly from one hand, a small black-stained bag in the other. Gods, it hurt
just to look at his small frame and imagine what he must be bearing.
Not
fair, not fair at all.
Slowly, deliberately, he knelt in the ashes. His
arms extended out from his sides, palms upwards. A low moan escaped his lips,
no,
not a moan, the first note of a haunting chant:

“Ayyyy… yyya… luuuuaaaa… tha!” his
light, clear soprano voice sang. His small hands began to swing slowly upward.

“Ayyyy… yyyah… luuuuaaaa… Maaa…
lafoth… shuah” The small hairs were rising on Kirrah’s arms and nape, as she
recognized his father’s name in the eerie, powerful song pouring from this
child into the gray, desolate evening.
Angela would know …would have known…
exactly what to do now
. She ached to comfort him with a hug, to wipe his
tears, anything. But it would be wrong, she sensed, to intervene in what was
clearly his intention.

“Ayyyy… yyya… luuuuaaaa…
Meeeh…schahhh naaa… shuah.” Somehow Kirrah knew she had just heard his mother’s
name.
(Enough! I will break if I hear any more grief! Look at his arms,
they’re raising as he sings, they’re only halfway up…)

“Ayyyy… yahhh… luuaaaahhh… Muuu…
taaaa…
 
raeee… shuah” …was that his
brother’s name? …his arms were nearly vertical now…

“Ayyyy… yyya… luuuuaaaa… Malaa…
me’thsha… shuahsha” and with the town’s name, his palms came together, directly
over Akaray’s head, and dropped before his knees onto the ashy floor. Two
fingers brought a pinch of ash to his lips, and he was silent.

Somehow Kirrah found herself
kneeling in the blackened debris beside the grieving child, feeling like a dam
was bursting inside her, hot tears flooding down her face.
I can’t do this!
I Can’t!
someone wailed in her mind.
Stop me, then
, someone else
dared: a darker, stronger someone who was holding Kirrah’s arms out at her
sides, palms upward, and drawing in a deep, deep breath…