Diplomats and Fugitives (The Emperor's Edge Book 9) (28 page)

A branch snagged Mahliki’s cumbersome pack, and she tripped, tumbling to the ground. Ashara spun, an arrow already nocked. The pair of shaggy grimbals surged forward, as if driven by seeing their prey fall. Ashara forced herself to take a breath, to steady her hands, and to aim carefully.

As her arrow sprang away, Mahliki found her feet. She hesitated, turning and lifting her gun.

“Just go,” Ashara barked. “Tree.” She couldn’t find the breath for longer sentences.

Her arrow struck the lead grimbal in the eye. It reared up, stumbling against a tree and swatting at the shaft. An angry yowl rolled up the mountainside. As it broke the arrow shaft, hardly seeming to care that metal was embedded in its eye, the second grimbal, a slightly smaller one that might have been its mate, raced past it.

Ashara fired another arrow, but didn’t wait to see if it landed. Mahliki had gained ground and was nearing the top of the slope. She veered to the side, toward a thick cedar that must have been hundreds of years old. It was the stoutest tree in sight, but it didn’t have any branches near the bottom and would not be an easy climb.

Ashara opened her mouth to yell a warning, but the yowls of the male grimbal drowned her words. Despite the pained cries, she could hear both animals thundering up the slope and knew it had not given up. She risked a glance backward, then wished she hadn’t. The female grimbal was only ten or twelve feet behind her. If Ashara tripped, it would be on her, smothering her and slashing her with those deadly claws.

“How are you supposed to climb these trees?” Mahliki yelled, looking up at the tall trunk and glancing around at other trees, also with a great deal of trunk before any boughs stretched outward.

Ashara shook her head. She didn’t have time or air for words. She would only hope she could demonstrate, if she had any strength left in her limbs. She ducked her head between her bow and the string, lodging it on her back so she could climb. Mahliki stood at the base of the tree, staring up it, a daunted expression on her face.

“Use your legs,” Ashara managed to advise, her words barely intelligible, more like gasps.

She ran around a boulder and leaped for the tree, catching the trunk a few feet up. The thick bark was ridged, almost corrugated, and she dug her fingers into the creases at the same time as she clamped on with her legs, her inner thighs flexing. The thickness of the trunk almost thwarted her—it was almost too wide for her to wrap her legs around—but her momentum helped.

A rifle cracked at the base of the tree. Ashara paused, frowning down. She couldn’t shoot from up here. If Mahliki hadn’t started climbing, she would have to jump back down, pull out her knife, and hope for wild luck. With one grimbal, she might have risked tangling with it, but the male wasn’t that far behind. He still had one good eye, and he looked angry about the missing one.

But Mahliki was also climbing. Her rifle hung from her back on its strap, so she must have fired with the pistol now clenched in her mouth. The female grimbal had paused, less than five feet from the tree, and it was swatting all about its head. At first, Ashara assumed Mahliki had managed to hit it in the eye, but then something buzzed past her ear. A wasp. A broken hive lay at the grimbal’s feet.

“Good idea,” Ashara said. Maybe that had been what Mahliki had been staring at when Ashara had assumed she was too daunted to climb.

Her eyes wide and the pistol in her mouth, Mahliki could not answer. She had chosen a different method of climbing. She had a knife in one hand and a dagger in the other, and she was alternating driving one and then the other into the bark, each placement higher than the last. That had to be an incredible strain on her arms and shoulders, and if one blade wasn’t anchored well, she risked falling.

“Use your legs more,” Ashara advised, then continued to climb. She had rope in her pack, and she could lower it down if she reached a branch first.

The wasps might irritate the grimbals, but she doubted the insects would drive them away fully. Those thick hides would not feel a sting, so it was only the irritation of having them around their faces that would be bothering the animals.

Ashara reached the lowest branch and straddled it. The tremble in Mahliki’s forearms was visible even from the perch ten feet above. She was gripping the trunk with her legs, but that grip appeared tenuous. The male grimbal had caught up and was less bothered by the wasps. He reached up, one paw swatting for Mahliki. Ashara caught her breath. The claws slashed through the air only inches from Mahliki’s boot. Even a glancing blow might upset her balance and knock her from the tree.

Careful not to lose her weapons or gear—or fall out of the tree herself—Ashara nocked an arrow. She aimed past Mahliki, trying to find the grimbal’s other eye. It kept moving about, and the trunk itself got in the way. Ashara settled for aiming at the creature’s neck. The arrow landed, sinking in, but the grimbal was not slowed down. It backed away, clearly intending to run and leap for Mahliki. She was making progress, but it was slow progress.

Afraid the arrows weren’t doing enough damage quickly enough, Ashara risked removing her pack, a challenging task with the bow in hand and the arrows in her quiver threatening to fall out, but she managed to swing it around. She dug inside for the compact rope, hurried to tie it off, then lowered the other end toward Mahliki.

“Grab onto—”

A shudder ran through the tree. The male had jumped. It hadn’t caught Mahliki, but its mass was so great that even the old cedar shivered under the impact. One of Mahliki’s daggers slipped, metal scraping against bark, and she almost dropped it. She gasped, her cheeks flushed red and sweat gleaming on her face. She dropped it and tried to reach for the rope, but it was difficult when she dangled by one hand from the other knife.

“Mahliki,” Ashara warned, watching the fingers around the remaining dagger. They must have been damp with sweat or simply tired. They were slipping.

“Working on it,” Mahliki said through gritted teeth.

Ashara wished she had thought to tell her to leave her pack at the bottom. No wonder she was having trouble climbing. Mahliki had all those tools and glass dishes, notebooks, and who knew what else.

Despite all the weight pulling at her shoulders, she managed to swing up and grip the dangling rope. The thin braided grass was lightweight and compact, making it ideal to store in a pack, but it wasn’t the easiest thing to climb. Her hand slipped as soon as she tried to put weight on it.

Ashara was about to try and stick her pack and weapons somewhere so she could climb back down to help, but Mahliki found a better way to hold it on her second try. Her hand locked around it. She let go of the knife to grab hold with her second hand, her body lurching as she made the lunge.

That lurch excited the grimbals, both of whom were jumping at the base of the tree, trying to reach her. Snarls of frustration and the snaps of teeth punctuated their movements. Mahliki did not look down.

“Just gonna leave that there,” she panted, glancing at the dagger still embedded in the trunk.

“We can get it on the way back down.”

Slowly, Mahliki pulled herself up the rope until Ashara could finally reach her. Even though they were near the trunk, the branch creaked under their combined weight. As soon as she was certain Mahliki had made it, Ashara climbed to a higher one on the opposite side of the trunk.

For several moments, neither of them spoke. They caught their breath and stared down at the grimbals, who were now circling the tree. The wasps’ nest had been smashed under their heavy feet, and a few insects buzzed here and there, but most had abandoned the fight.

“I’m not enjoying this research trip to Mangdoria as much as I thought I might.” Mahliki dragged a sleeve across her damp face.

“The scenery has been nice,” Ashara said, “but the summers are short and the winters are deadly and harsh for at least six months of the year. It’s not a friendly region.” She did not point out that this was the reason her ancestors had let the Mangdorians have it when the religious differences had caused too much friction for the peoples to remain under one flag.

“Scenery. Right.” Mahliki maneuvered her rifle off her back, careful to keep one hand on the trunk for support. “Any chance that we can convince them to go away?”

“I hope so. Otherwise it’s going to be a long night.”

Ashara pulled her bow onto her lap. Since there weren’t any branches underneath her, she could see the grimbals well. But she did not have a view of the eyes, except for the instances where the creatures reared up. She did not know if she could drive an arrow through those thick skulls from above, but she picked out her sturdiest arrows and tried.

Mahliki fired more indiscriminately.

“How much ammunition do you have?” Ashara asked.

“Two boxes. About sixty shots left, I think. I haven’t been counting.”

Ashara hated the noise of firearms, along with the stink of the burning powder, but the bullets
were
far more compact than arrows. And they were just as powerful, if not more powerful than her shafts. Mahliki caught the female in the top of the skull, and it staggered back. Blood appeared in the thick white fur. The creature looked upward, confused, and Ashara fired. The grimbal cooperated, staying still for an instant, and the arrow landed in the eye. The creature stumbled again, bumped into a nearby tree, then toppled to the ground.

The male walked over, sniffed the female, and glowered back up at Ashara.

“
You’re
the one trying to kill us, buddy,” she muttered. She refused to feel bad about denying it its mate, not when that mate had been trying to catch and eat them.

The remaining grimbal shook himself, then loped back down the slope.

“Is it dead?” Mahliki asked. “Or are they trying to trick us into coming down?”

“I don’t think they’re that smart.”

“I’ll let you go down and check then.”

“Or we could stay here for a while. Rest. Check our gear.”

Mahliki snorted. “Fine with me.”

Before Ashara could relax, that sensation of being watched returned to her. The other grimbal had disappeared from sight, but there was enough undergrowth on the slope that it could be hiding. The female wasn’t moving, but Ashara was too high up to tell if she was breathing or not.

A shadow moved at the edge of her vision, down on the forest floor, behind the trees. She tensed, reaching for another arrow. It was not a grimbal that strode into view, but a man. The first of several. A group of young buckskin-clad hunters with braided blond or light brown hair walked toward the bottom of Ashara and Mahliki’s tree. They carried spears or bows, and the knives in arm or calf sheaths had bone handles.

“Mangdorians?” Mahliki guessed.

“I think so. They do more intricate beadwork and dyes on their buckskins than my people usually do.”

“Do you know their language?” Mahliki asked.

“You don’t? I thought you were a genius.”

Mahliki blinked and peered around the trunk at her, as if to ask who had been telling such lies. “I’m a student. A student who has never met a Mangdorian aside from Basilard. Oh. Hm.” She waved down at the men, who by now were ringing the tree and staring up at them, then tried a few signs from his hand code. “I have no idea which ones he made up. Everything not related to hunting, I’m guessing.”

“I hope that works, because I only know a couple of words of Mangdorian.” Languages had never come easily for Ashara, and she had not encountered Mangdorians that often in her homeland. Learning Turgonian had been painful and born of necessity, since she had been surrounded by people who spoke nothing but it.

“Maybe you can try them. They’re either not impressed with my hand signs, or they have no idea what I’m saying. Signing.”

“I only know how to say thank you and ask where the toilet is.”

“I’m guessing they’ll point to the nearest bush if you ask the latter. I’m going to climb down. With less trouble than I climbed up, I hope. Thank you for that rope, by the way.”

“You’re welcome. Next time you’re fleeing from monsters, you might want to drop your pack.”

“And have animals trampling my samples? I don’t think so.”

The men spoke among themselves, backing up as Mahliki lowered herself. None of them reached out a hand to assist her, but she did not look imploringly down at them for help, either. A couple of them pointed at her back—no, at the rifle slung across her back. The word Turgonian floated up. Ashara did not know whether to hope they mistook her for a Turgonian or not. With her blonde hair, it wasn’t likely.

Even though the Mangdorians were supposed to be pacifists, she climbed down slowly while watching over her shoulder. A couple of the men were glaring at her. They were ignoring Mahliki, but she hadn’t done anything except reach the ground, adjust her pack, and look around.

Do you understand me?
Mahliki asked with the hand signs.

They didn’t look at her. There were seven men in total, and by the time Ashara landed and faced them, they were
all
staring at her.

“I’ll bet Kendorians aren’t popular this week,” she muttered.

The oldest of the young men—he couldn’t have been more than twenty-five—pointed at Ashara with his spear, then pointed up the hill. It was probably the direction of the trail, but it might have been to a nice cliff that he could push her off too. The fellow didn’t
look
very pacifistic.

“Mind if I get my arrows first?” Ashara pointed at the grimbal and walked slowly in that direction.

A number of grips tightened around spears and bows. She had not expected that reaction from pacifists.

Ashara pulled out the arrows, only managing to retrieve one that wasn’t broken. The male had taken off with a couple more in his hide—and his skull. This mission was not being good to her supply of arrows.

The hunters waited for her, but they did not back away or give her a feeling that they trusted her, not one bit. Maybe she should have tried thanking them after all. Or asking which bush was the most appropriate lavatory.

“I’m going, I’m going,” Mahliki said.