The Last Hour of Gann (35 page)

She must think he was an idiot. That a ship had sailed, Meoraq did not doubt, and perhaps it had even come across the sky if it were some relic from the time of the Ancients or a machine made after that fashion. That it had come to some disaster seemed equally plausible. That they were all there were in the world, as helpless as newborns and meaning no harm to anyone, was patently absurd.

And yet…

And yet, there was Amber, grimacing at him happily as she told her tale. He liked to think that his years in service to Sheul had given him some power to see lies when they were told to his face, and even though hers was a strange one, it could still be read. When he gazed on Amber, when he looked past the cold and hunger and other hardships of travel in the wildlands, he saw no evil. He saw sorrow and he saw loss. He saw anger sometimes and sometimes guilt. He saw strength and determination and so much tenacity that he often questioned his odd certainty that she was female, but he had never seen deceit in her. Not when she looked at him. Not when she looked at anyone. There were things she did not say, perhaps, but what she said was honest.

We built a ship…and it flew through the sky
…

Meoraq took the stick from her hands and swept the ash flat. He looked at her, frowned, then looked past her to the other creatures, all of whom had gathered by now and were watching him with
unreadable emotion across their grotesque faces. He thought of the dream, but it was a glancing tap at best; dreams were of no value in the waking world. He was not easy about what he was about to propose, but he felt Sheul’s hand upon his shoulder and, although His ultimate plan was not clear, His immediate will seemed obvious.

Meoraq sketched out a few creatures—round heads atop line-bodies; he was not a great artist—and then, not without a moment’s misgiving, drew himself among them. He tapped the image, saying, “Sheul has put you in my path for a reason. I will stay until I know what it is.”

“Wutz’i sa’en?” Scott asked.

“Do’ispeeklzzrd?” Amber replied, tossing the words crossly over her shoulder before reaching out to try and take the stick from Meoraq.

He wasn’t done with it. He took her wrist with a stern look and moved her hand back to her knee. He captured his drawings within a circle, making it clear they were bound together, and then leaned out to sketch the shrine at Xi’Matezh. He’d never seen it, but he’d seen enough of them to know they all pretty much looked alike: a round, walled courtyard and tall, central tower. “But I see no reason to interrupt my journey,” he went on, tapping first the ash-creatures and then the ash-shrine. “So we will go together.”

“Wutztht?”

“Stldntno, Scott. Stldntspeeklzzrd.” Amber leaned forward, reaching across him to point at the ash-shrine. “Wutzthz Mee’orrak?”

“Meoraq,” he corrected, and then shook that away irritably. She was never going to say his name properly and it didn’t matter at the moment. He touched the ash-shrine and said, “This is Xi’Matezh, the holiest shrine remaining from the age of the Ancients. We will go there—” He emphasized this with several lines between ash-creatures and ash-shrine. “—and I will ask Sheul what is to be done with you.”

“Ithnkeewntz t’tak’uzther.” Frowning, Amber patted her chest with one hand, gesturing at the other creatures as she did so, then pointed at Meoraq and made wiggling, walking movements with her fingers. “Wergo’in t’gthr? Yutu?”

“We all go together,” he told her, pointing at
his drawings. “If His will is not made known to me upon the journey, Sheul shall surely tell me what to do in Xi’Matezh when I stand before Him.”

“Wut izthtpls?”
Scott asked.

Amber threw up her hands, slapped her thighs,
and swung around. “Frfkz’sk Scott i’dntno! I’dntspeek fkknlzzrd!”

Meoraq hissed at
the creatures to silence them, then poked Amber irritably with his stick to take back her attention. When he had it, he swiftly made some sketched animals to fill the empty space between the ash-creatures and the ash-shrine. “The journey is long and dangerous. The prairie is filled with wild beasts and godless men and we are very near to winter. I will protect you—” Ash-Meoraq received a few ash-knives and the very badly-drawn ash-tachuqi nearest him was rubbed out. “—at least until I know whether or not I am meant to kill you. That you are to be a test of my faith is clear to me,” he mused, once more gazing into Amber’s unsettling eyes. “But I am Sheulek and my faith is as enduring as the wind. I shall not fail my Father.”

Amber’s pliant little
brow-ridges drew together as she listened. Her eyes were green and she had felt warm and soft and disturbingly real in his dream when he held her.

“But if it is His will that I
stand with you,” Meoraq said, now speaking just to Amber, “I shall not fail you either.”

“Wutz’i sa’en?”
Scott wanted to know.

This time, Amber answered without taking her eyes from Meoraq’s. Her mouthparts curved upwards. She said, softly, “Eezcm’mn wthuz. Eezgnna hlpuz.”

And she held out her empty hand, just held it out, open in the air. After a moment, Meoraq put down his stick and held his out the same way. She huffed and moved to take his hand in hers. Joined.

Behind his loin-plate, some hot urge of Gann flared and throbbed. Meoraq willed it back. He released Amber and stood
up. “Enjoy these last hours,” he told her. “When the sun rises, you and all your kind belong to me.”

“Mee
or’ak,” she said.

“
Just so,” he agreed, and gave her a tap on the top of her freakish, furry head.

8

A
nd just like that, the lizardman apparently considered the matter settled. He rose from the fire, said a few words while pointing sternly at the tents, and then walked away into the tall grass without looking back.

“Grab it!”
Scott shouted, backing out of Meoraq’s path.

No one moved.

Meoraq kept walking and was soon swallowed up by darkness.

“You let it get away,” said
Scott, and for a change, the accusation wasn’t aimed at Amber.

“We’re not set up to take prisoners,”
Eric told him. He pointed back at the lizardman’s teepee. “He’ll be back. He left his stuff.”

There just wasn’t a whole lot to do at that point.
Scott hustled the Fleetmen into his tent for an emergency debriefing (all but Mr. Yao, who went back to his bivy in spite of Scott’s threats to consider that insubordinate behavior). Everyone else drew off at first to sit and talk in low worried voices about if and how this changed things, but it was early and not entirely dry, and one by one, people drifted back to bed. Amber sat up until the fire died and even dared to interrupt the debriefing to ask for a flashlight, but Scott said no and it was just too dark to move around without one. She paced around the edge of camp for a while, banging into crates and tripping over bags of concrete while she strained her eyes trying to see shapes in the black. There was nothing, only the endless wind and a few icy pellets of rain, so in the end even she gave up.

Nicci was already sleeping soundly. Amber pulled out her blanket and wrapped up to stay dry. She lay down, but only to huddle close to her sister and share as much warmth as she could. She was way too wired to sleep now, couldn’t even if she’d wanted to. She was only keeping Nicci warm while she waited for the lizard
man to come back.

The next thing she heard was a heavy, squishy, thumping sound, like someone falling over in the mud
close by. Amber pushed her blanket back and dragged her head up into the light of late morning.

“I fell asleep,” she croaked and dropped back to the ground, slapping both hands to her face.

A low grunt answered her. The lizardman walked around the scaly deer he had just deposited on the ground in front of her and hunkered down to investigate his firepit. His little leather stewing pouch was slung over one shoulder like a ladies purse, bulging and heavy-looking, which had to have some connection to the dead deer, which was slit wide open and was all shiny and pink and empty inside.

‘Gross,’ thought Amber sleepily, trying to rub her face
awake. Then she thought, ‘Food,’ but that wasn’t quite right, was it? No, it was
Meoraq’s
food and that was a very different thing.

She looked back into
Scott’s side of the camp and saw dozens of people watching, looking like nothing so much as a horde of hungry prairie dogs, motionless and staring. At their center, Scott slowly stood up, towering over the rest of them for a few seconds before Eric and Dag popped up too.

She started to say something to Meoraq—just what, she didn’t know, especially since he wouldn’t understand it anyway—but then saw that he
was making a fire. Amber sat all the way up, trying to pay attention to how he did it, but there wasn’t time. He just cleared the ground, laid out some branches and a few bundles of grass, put something from his pack up next to the kindling and then there was fire.

“Nicci, look at this,” said Amber, reaching out to pat her sister’s hip. “Look what he’s doing.”

Nicci rolled away from her. “Is he building a starship?” she mumbled.

“No, but—”

“Then I don’t care. Leave me alone. I’m sleeping.”

“Oh come on!” There was now a roaring fire where nothing but
ash and mud had been less than a minute ago. Amber found Nicci through the crinkly blanket and shook her. “Look at this!”

Nicci heaved a sigh and raised her head just as the lizardman
pulled the long sword off his belt and hacked the head off the deer. It rolled over, tongue lolling and sightless eyes staring. Meoraq picked it up and set it over the fire, carefully balanced on rocks to keep it out of the forming coals. The deer’s scaly lips shrank back, steaming, into a dead, idiot leer.

Nicci looked at this, then at Amber, open-mouthed.

“That’s not what I wanted you to see,” Amber said.

Meoraq grabbed both sides of the dead deer’s ribs and broke them well apart, forming a meaty platter where he upended his stewing pouch. Lots of shiny organs came tumbling out—heart, liver, kidneys…other things—along with a small splash of blood.

Amber slapped her hands over her face again.

“Thanks so much for sharing that
!” Nicci punched her blanket into her duffel bag and stormed off through the mud to the other fire, where just about everyone else was already up and sitting together. They let her in, listened to whatever she had to say to accompany those angry arm gestures. A few of them looked at Amber.

Damn it.

Meoraq watched Nicci go without obvious interest as he cut up his assortment of organs and impaled them on sticks. He put these gut-kabobs over the fire, licked his fingers, then started cutting the deer out of its scaly hide.

“Looks like i
t’s going to be another great day,” she muttered, taking Nicci’s blanket back out and rolling it up neater. “Thanks for coming back, Meoraq.”

He covered his eyes with the back of his least bloody hand and muttered, “Meoraq,” under his breat
h. His spines twitched up and down as he thought. Then he pointed the tip of his knife at the half-butchered animal and said something.

“
Meat,” she said. He hadn’t needed any help to catch it, either. He hadn’t even needed a spear. “And I, on the other hand,” sighed Amber, turning back to watch Nicci at the other fire,” never tried so hard to do something in my whole life as I tried to run that goddamn limping thing down. Take a note, lizardman: That was the best I could do. Amber Bierce’s very best was a miserable fucking failure.”

He caught her by the chin and pinched, not hard enough to hurt (although it was impossible not to feel the tremendous strength in that grip), but enough to shut her up. He pointed his knife down at the dead thing. He spoke again, just one word.

Did he want her to repeat him? Amber tried. “Soo—”

He pinched harder
. Spoke.

“Saw…ow. Ak. Saw-ow
k.”

“S
aoq,” he corrected, but released her. With the tip of his finger, he quickly drew a deer-shape in the wet dirt. “Saoq,” he said again, and stabbed his knife into its muddy heart. He said something else, pointed at the dead animal and said it again.

“What does
that mean?” Amber asked. “Is it ‘dead’ or ‘meat’ or ‘hunt’ or—”

He caught her chin and pinched. He said his word.

“You know, I realize we’re the aliens here, but Scott wants you to learn English, not for us to learn lizardish.”

Pinch. He leaned close. He spoke once.

She repeated him., then crossly added, “Meat.
Meat
.”

He grunted, released her, and went back to butchering the animal…the saoq. He cut away a chunk of meat and held it up. He said a word.

“You should also know that I took Spanish from the second grade on up to the seventh and I flunked every single year.”

Meoraq cocked his head. He reached for her chin.

She pulled back out of his reach and said the stupid word.