The Last Hour of Gann (47 page)

She brought them out and held them, staring until rainbows and kitten
s and sunflowers and letters all blurred together. They were just things, like the books. They couldn’t help her. They weren’t sacred. They were just things.

The only things she
had left from that whole life. Two lousy coffee cups.

* * *

Meoraq counted them three times before he convinced himself that, yes, he’d lost a human. The very morning after he’d told them all to be ready to move out at sunrise, one of them had wandered off. Well, the sun was up, and he’d had time enough to wake every still-sleeping human and make them take their camp down and herd them all together and then count them three damned times, and he was of a mind to leave anyway and let that be a lesson to the rest of them. But he counted a fourth time, just to be sure, and on that fourth count, he realized just who was missing.

Meoraq stopped mid-stride and rubbed hard at his brow-ridges, counting his breaths. A slow-count of six and then another, and when he was calm, he opened his eyes and walked back to
Scott, standing close to Nicci. “If you sent her out of my camp again, I’ll kill you.”

Scott
’s flat face showed him no obvious alarm. “Miss Bierce?” he called. “Can someone find Miss Bierce? I have no idea what this th…what he’s saying.”

“He’s looking for Amber,” said Nicci. “She’ll be back soon.”

“Back? Where did she go?” Meoraq demanded. A thought struck him. “Did she take her spear? O my Father, restrain my hand. If she’s gone hunting—”

“She hasn’t.”

“No one interrupts a Sheulek!” Meoraq snapped, then paused and looked down at Nicci again. “You know where she is?”

Nicci
cowered and Scott stepped forward to take her against his side. The man started to speak; Meoraq shoved him away and took Nicci by the chin, leaning in aggressively close.

“Answer me at once,” he ordered. “Where is she?”

“Down by the water, I think,” she whispered, trembling in his grip. “I don’t know. She…She left without me.”

He released her with a grunt of disgust and started away, snapping, “Stay here and be ready to
travel on my return,” over his shoulder as he went.

“Hey!”

Meoraq stopped and looked up at the sky. “Why?” he said, conversationally.

“Because I want to talk to you!”
Scott answered, coming to face off against him.

“I was not speaking to you.” Meoraq rubbed at his brow-ridges again, then folded his arms
in a warning any dumaq would understand. “But since you’re here, what do you want?”

“I want you to understand that
in my camp, it is not acceptable for you to get physical with us.”

Meoraq felt his spines shifting slowly
forward and back again. “Go on.”

“I am in charge of these people,” said
Scott, oblivious. “I’m responsible for their safety. And while I appreciate your efforts in acting as our guide—”

Meoraq tipped back his head and began another slow-count of six.

“—I am not going to tolerate all this hostility!”

Meoraq opened his eyes and leaned close. “I am going to give you the opportunity to amend those words,” he said
mildly. “Because I think even you know that I have not yet been nearly as hostile as I could be.”

“Um…”
Scott’s fur-striped forehead wrinkled with something that might have been uncertainty. He glanced behind him at his watching people. “Did, ah, did anyone catch that? Nichole?”

Meoraq gripped his brow-ridges again and this time
hissed a little. “Father, I beg You to let me kill just one of them,” he said, then dropped his hand and bellowed, “
Stay here
!” right in the human’s flat, ugly face.

Scott
let out a reedy shriek and threw himself backward, tripping over his own boots and falling on his backside.

“And be quiet!” spat Meoraq and stalked off. This time, he was not followed.

By the water, Nicci had said, and the humans had left a trail broad enough to lead him there even after only a single night. He had almost reached the greenbelt when Amber came out of it, carrying her pack over her shoulder. She’d changed her clothes; her clean ones were so white and loose they made her look like a candle-ward, which almost made him smile even as annoyed as he was. And if she had looked even the least bit repentant, he might have let her apologize and come back with him and have it all over and forgotten. Instead, she saw him and scowled.

So be it.

“Where have you been?” he demanded, advancing on her with two fingers pointed right at her throat. “I told you when I wanted to leave and you run off alone? No, do not dare open that mouth! I gave you an order and unlike the rest of your idiot kind, you understood it! You…” His spines flicked upright. His pointing hand lowered somewhat. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

She swiped her sleeve across them at once
and pushed past him on her way up the trail. “Nothing!”

He caught her by the arm and swung her around, peering closely at her face. Her eyes were indeed swollen and red, as if she’d been s
itting in smoke.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, concerned.

“I took a bath!” she snapped, yanking against his grip. “Is that all right with you? Jesus!”

“
A bath,” he said, keeping an easy hold on her despite her struggles. “This is the second time you have forced me to chase you down and you know how pressing time is! A
bath
? Where do you think you are, human?”

“I stank.”

“I don’t care! I care that you disobeyed my spoken will and ran off on your own when all the rest of your herd is waiting on my word to move on! You—”

“I’m hungry, Meoraq!” she shouted. “I’m cold! I’m tired and I’m hurt and I’m…scared…” Some of the fire faded from her eyes. She rubbed at them and backed away, keeping her gaze averted and her arm stiff in his grip. “And I stank. And I thought I could do something about the smell.
But I still stink. So…So do what you’re going to do and then leave me alone.”

The wind gusted
, sweeping dead leaves out of the trees and over their feet. Meoraq watched them blow away in eddies. He did not release her.

“You are not to
leave my camp alone,” he said at last. “Take N’ki with you if you must go. And tell me when you do. I want to know where you are.”

She laughed—a shrill, humorless sound. “
I
don’t even know where I am.”

“
Damn it, stop arguing with me! If you don’t give me your obedience right now, you’ll never bathe again!”

She put her free hand up and covered her eyes. Her body was very stiff. Her breaths were short and shallow…and shook.

She was crying.

‘Oh, well done, Uyane,’ he thought, and looked up at the sky. He let go of her. “Go
,” he said gruffly. “I am going to fill my flasks and once I have done that, we are moving whether your people are prepared or not.”

She turned her back on him at once and walked away, her head bent and both hands gripping the s
trap of her shoulder-pack. Meoraq watched her pick her way through the trees until he couldn’t see her anymore. He scratched at the side of his snout, sighed, and started walking down to the water. The first thing he saw coming out of the bracken was the damp heap of her old clothing lying on the bank. Strange that she hadn’t bothered to keep them. They were filthy and not new, but they still had some good days of wear left in them to his eye.

‘Perhaps she didn’t think she had time to wash them,’ he thought to himself, hunkering down to prod at them. ‘And seeing as you came down to
whip her back to camp like wandering cattle, perhaps she was right to think so.’

If they weren’t lying in the mud like this, he could take them himself, but he didn’t have a spare satchel to put them in and didn’t want to get everything he owned wet
and dirty. He felt a little sorry that Amber had managed to get her feelings bruised, but she could have taken her bath last night and washed her clothes then so they’d be dry and she ready to march this morning. She had instead made the choice to wait and he refused to help her feel like more of a victim because of it. She had other clothes, clearly.

He straightened up, turned around, gave the two colorful objec
ts perched atop the stone an idle glance, started walking, and then halted and looked back at them. Amber’s bootprints, the only ones fresh enough to hold a little water at the heels, made a clear trail from the water to the stone and onward to the trail. She had to have been sitting there, right where the objects now sat, which meant she’d put them there. She hadn’t dropped them by the bank, as with her discarded clothing, and she hadn’t thrown them into the bushes. She’d set them down carefully. And she’d left crying.

Meoraq rubbed at his brow-ridges and scratched the side of his snout. He glanced at the trail, which was still clear for now, and then turned away from it with a sigh and went to see what the hell he’d bullied her into giving up.

He realized what they were after just a few steps. It startled him at first, although he didn’t know why it should, really. They wore boots and slept in tents; why shouldn’t they drink from cups?

“Fuck,”
muttered Meoraq, picking one up. Two cups, each with single handles sized for human hands and narrow bowls to accommodate human mouths. They were made of fired clay, or something similar, garishly painted and glazed to a high shine, and as ugly as they were, to judge by their symmetry and the craftsmanship of their nonsensical coloring, they had to be tremendously expensive. He had never seen her drinking from them. She’d been saving them. Perhaps treasuring them. And now she was leaving them.

Meoraq
sighed, then unbuckled his travel-harness and slid out from under his pack. “This is not my doing,” he announced. “If she wants to crawl off and run water out of her eyes over a pair of cups, that is entirely her decision. I would have let her bring the damned things.”

I will not carry sentiment
.

“She didn’t even ask me.”

Why can’t just one of you do what you’re told without whining at me
?

“Fuck,” Meoraq said again, wrapping the cups, one in his spa
re tunic and the other in his spare breeches, and shoving them down deep in his pack. He felt thoroughly disgusted—with himself, with Amber, with the whole of Gann. Cocking an eye at the rolling face of Sheul’s heavens, he said, “Tell me just one thing, my Father, I beg. Is there ever a right answer?”

Sheul listened, but said nothing.

Meoraq filled his damned flasks and sat down on the stone, kicking dourly at Amber’s bootprints until he’d rubbed out all he could reach. He did not hurry back to start the day’s march. When Amber looked back to see if she was clear of him and free to do the rest of her crying, he wanted her to think she was alone. He wasn’t completely insensitive.

3

S
o followed several days of travel and, with compromise on both sides (Meoraq took a savage pleasure in this, that he was able to compromise with these creatures rather than beat them into obedience, and if that wasn’t proof of his humility and therefore his worthiness to enter Xi’Matezh, nothing was), they forged a tolerable routine. Meoraq allowed the humans to wake in their own time and to eat whatever was left of the previous night’s meal. Then they walked, scattered widely after their habit while Meoraq prowled around them, trying to take point, foot and both flanks along their careless line. They made frequent stops for resting, but managed, he thought, at least three spans each day and that was acceptable. Toward evening, they made their camp and Meoraq hunted. Thus far, Sheul had rewarded his efforts at herding human cattle with fair game and sweet water, gifts he acknowledged each night in his meditations and which the humans seemed to think was only their due.

After three days, they finally came out of the muddy lowlands and began the long, slow trek across the stony fields of middle Yroq. Tempting as it might have been to find a road and lead the humans across it as far east as could be managed, Meoraq
forged his own path. There weren’t many roads and there were always eyes upon them; worse than the risk of encountering messengers or merchants or even a Sheulek about his circuit, a caravan of near fifty moving bodies would certainly attract whatever raiders were about. Better by far to keep to the wildlands, keep moving, and keep quiet.

But the first day in the plains was even
slower than it had been when the humans insisted on carrying their machines with them. The ground was marginally more level, but riddled with broken rock and thorny overgrowth that made passage difficult even for an experienced Sheulek. The humans tripped and staggered like children just learning to walk, tearing their soft flesh and bruising their soft bodies with shocking ease. When he finally called for camp and took inspection of them, he found himself amazed only that no one had managed to break a bone yet. How he was going to get them over the mountains into Gedai loomed in his mind, more and more of an impossibility the longer he pondered it, but he would just have to trust that Sheul would provide the means when the time came. There were problems enough for him to solve right now.