Fire Time (25 page)

‘Your help. I have heard how you will help the Gathering through the next sixty-four. Are my folk less worthy of life?’

‘I … am not sure … what we could best do for you.’

‘Aye,’ said Arnanak bleakly, ‘no tales have reached me of almighty works or even of promised miracles in Beronnen.’

Ian Sparling considered, before he won quick respect from the Tassu by saying: ‘I could swear every kind of reward, but why? You’re too intelligent. Let’s discuss instead, today, the female’s ransom. Ask the impossible, and you will get nothing – no, worse than nothing: attack on your country, the ruin of your plans. Ask something reasonable, and I can likely arrange it for you.’

Nevertheless Arnanak must pounce. ‘If you are able to lay South Valennen waste, why have you not struck erenow? We’ve given the Gathering ample woe, the Gathering you are supposed to rescue. Why have you held back your military aid? Is it because you have none to bring?’

‘We … we did not come here seeking quarrels–’ Ian Sparling collected himself. ‘Now is too early for threats. Name a ransom.’

‘What can you offer?’

‘Our good will, first and foremost. Then tools, materials, advice, to help you outlast the bad years. For example, instead of this heavy tent cloth, stuff that’s much lighter and stronger, rotproof and flame-proof. That would let you range more freely in search of wild food.’

‘Ng-ng, I would rather have a supply of those weapons you’ve given the soldiery a few of.’ Arnanak stared at Larreka. ‘Also, you must withdraw help from the Gathering.’

The commandant uttered a rough chuckle and jerked a demi-thumb at the goblet of ale before him. ‘This doesn’t taste very good either,’ he said.

‘I know you two spoke together beforehand.’ Arnanak had settled into a steely calm. ‘I did not truly believe the humans would or could abandon their long-held purpose for the sake of one of their number. Indeed, she whom I hold warned me of that. Honored be her pride.’

‘Then let’s talk of what may be done in reality,’ Ian Sparling urged.

‘Aye,’ Arnanak agreed. ‘Let us do that, Larreka. Will the Zera leave Valennen freely, with
our
good will, or must we destroy you? Dead bones are oracles here, but of no use to Beronnen. It is not too late to bargain about what Fiery Sea Islands you may keep,’
until we’re ready to cast you off them,
‘though best for your cause would be that you returned the whole way home.’

‘Stop spilling time,’ the legionary snapped. ‘I thought we might dicker out a few meaningful things. If you leave our hunters and fishers alone, they’ll keep their parties small and stop putting the torch to areas where they know you have homesteads. Like that.’

‘We might accord so far,’ Arnanak said. This was not unawaited either.

‘Hold on!’ exclaimed the human. ‘What about Jill?’

Arnanak sighed. ‘You have offered nothing to match her hostage value in staying whatever hand your people may raise to uphold Zera. Can you? If not, we will keep her till after our victory. Meanwhile we can talk about her price from time to time – her price and much else.

‘Do you not understand, Ian Sparling? My aim is that the Tassui shall live, not as a few starvelings but in power and fortune. Have you thought that we may become those whom it can best pay you to deal with?

‘If naught else, her is the first real chance for us to swap knowledge of each other, which could well be worth more than a fleetload of goods. Therefore be not afraid for her. Think rather how we can arrange to have brought to her whatever she needs for health while she abides among my folk.’

Ian Sparling stared long at him. The sounds of soldiers and warriors moving about, talking a little, came distantly. The air beneath the tent simmered. It smelled almost charred.

Larreka broke silence: ‘I knew the Valennener leader must be shrewd as well as strong. I didn’t see till today that he’s also wise. Too bad we must kill you, Arnanak. You should have stayed in your legion.’

‘I’m sorry that you do not surrender,’ the Overling returned in like courtesy.

Ian Sparling stirred. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I foresaw this outcome. Take me to her, then.’

‘What?’ asked Arnanak, surprised.

‘She’s all alone among wild strangers. They may mean well, but they aren’t her kind, nor do they know how to look after her should … harm befall. Let me join her. Why not? You’ll have two of us.’

Arnanak studied not the face which was alien as a daur’s, but Larreka’s. The commandant looked stark. He and his guest had surely wrestled together with this thought.

Decision surged forward. What was life but the taking of risks? ‘I can make no promises,’ Arnanak warned. ‘It is hard travel for days to reach her. Nor have they an easy time there.’

‘The more reason for me to go,’ Ian Sparling said.

‘I will first want to see everything you bring along, garb, food, everything, handle each piece myself and make you show me what it’s for, till I am sure you plot no treachery.’

‘Of course.’

Jill had barely arrived at Ulu when Arnanak got a message that sent him off again. ‘They want to parley in Port Rua,’ he told her. ‘I make no doubt your presence among us has to do with that. Raise not your hopes too high. The odds
are you must stay here for – maybe till fall or early winter.’

She thought his advice was kindly intended. But then, the big black-skinned barbarian was not evil by any means. From the viewpoint of his people he was a hero, and might become a savior.

He and she had spoken together at great length and in growing intimacy, first aboard his galley and later on the overland trip from the fjord where he left it. He had done everything he could to help her across those high mountains. Often she had ridden on him or a warrior of his, as she used to ride on Larreka. And this was despite her having killed his son, with not so much as a bone brought home to call the soul back in dreams.

While he was gone, she found her captivity light except for being captivity. She got a room to herself, which none entered without her leave. She could walk abroad freely. Since her supply of amino acids and vitamins was sequestered between meals, she had no possibility of escape.

‘Best you not fare beyond sight of the close,’ Innukrat said. ‘You could well get lost.’

‘I know woodcraft better than that,’ Jill answered, ‘and I don’t believe any animals in Valennen are dangerous to me.’

Innukrat pondered, then decided: ‘First, go out twice or thrice in company and see if you can find your way back.’ When this had been done she made no further objection.

She was a wife of Arnanak’s and, after he left, the sole native in the compound who knew Sehalan. That was due to her being a trader who, before the war on civilization began, had ranged as far as its outposts in the Esali Valley. The sexual equality found in most Ishtarian societies – exceptions were as apt to be matriarchal as patriarchal – prevailed here too; but under hard primitive conditions, there was necessarily more specialization of jobs than elsewhere. As a rule, males did the trading and raiding abroad, while among other skilled tasks, females took goods for barter across the home country. ‘They feared no assault. While they stayed on the marked routes, their persons and burdens were sacred. Jill asked if that law was ever violated. ‘I have heard of it, very rarely,’ Innukrat said. ‘The neighborhoods tracked
down the doers, slew them, and pickled them in brine.’

Initially Jill, fascinated by her surroundings, enjoyed herself, until in abrupt guilt she would remember how those who cared for her must be worrying, and how she had become a high card in the hand of Larreka’s enemy. The steading alone was worth days of exploration. Its basic layout resembled that of a southland ranch, but everything else was quite foreign. A hall formed one side of an adobe-paved courtyard, a great single-storied building of undressed stone, massive logs, sod roof, half of it a chamber where the household gathered for meals or sociability, the rest given over to service rooms and private cubicles. When she had grown used to their angular style, she deemed the carvings on roof pillars and wainscots as good as she had ever seen. The remainder of the court was defined by smaller, plainer structures: sheds, workshops, housing for subordinates and a few domestic animals. It always brawled with activity here, a hundred individuals going about their labor or their pleasures; Jill found the little ones as irresistible as they were at home. But without a common language, she was barred from doing much more than watch. The Valenneners soon came to take her for granted.

Ulu lay in the eastern foothills of the Worldwall range. Forest all around gave some shielding from the suns, though most trees were scrubby and this year their red or yellow leaves drooped, curled, withered. The occasional blue T-plants looked better, and in places a phoenix loomed magnificent. The household held frequent fire drills, and Jill recollected that the phoenix had its name, translated from a native equivalent, because its reproduction depended on the conflagrations which devastated these lands every millennium.

A trail into the woods soon ended at a cabin. Two armed guards waved her off. She asked Innukrat why and got an Uneasy response: ‘Best not talk of that till the Overling comes back, if he then chooses.’ Jill decided probably it was a shrine or a magical site. And yet nobody minded her inspecting the family dolmens, though oracular dreams were supposed to come from them.

This was the single restriction on her freedom of movement. Every other path she could follow as long as hunger or weariness allowed. Ten kilometers southeast the forest came to a halt and she looked widely from mountain peaks sheer in the west, across umber hills and down over a remote veldt, ashimmer in the heat which billowed from the two suns.

Here and there she saw crofts. The social system appeared to rest on a kind of voluntary feudalism. An Overling dominated a region, led its fighters in battle or its workers in civil emergency, tried lawsuits upon request, officiated at the major religious rites. Lesser families could stay independent of him if they chose, but most found it preferable to become his ‘oathgivers’, pledge him certain services and obedience in exchange for the protection of his household troops and a share in his food stores when times got hard. Either party could annul the contract for cause, and it was not binding on the next generation – after the latter had passed that sixty-fourth birthday before which the power of the parents was absolute.

Innukrat spoke of killings, especially among the young. Both sexes were raised haughty and quarrelsome. ‘They must be ready to fight, and know how, when raiders come or when we ourselves go raiding; for you see what a niggard land ours is.’ Nevertheless Overlings and oldsters kept bloodshed within bounds and eventually got unfriends reconciled.
Well
Jill thought,
Ishtarians aren’t human.

Her loneliness began to press in on her. She craved language lessons from Innukrat, and the female obliged as much as possible. That was no large amount, a wife’s duties being countless. Jill offered to help, but soon discovered she was merely in the way. Beside lacking the strength to use these crude implements, she hadn’t the skill.

She took to spending most of her daytimes outdoors. The open country threatened sunstroke; and besides, the woods held more nature to study. It was sparse compared to that in the southern hemisphere, but as she gained a little familiarity, she found herself just as captivated, and frequently stayed out late.

Thus it was that she had her encounter.

She was returning after both suns, now close companions, had set. Tropical twilight was brief. However, the moons sufficed through this scanty foliage. Often her trail went through what she would have called a meadow were it less parched. Entering one such, the path curved sharply around a canebrake, to bring her out in a single stride.

Low, gnarly trees made shadow masses around. Behind them on her right, the battlements of the Worldwall glimmered gray into a black-purple sky where stars burned fewer than usual. For Caelestia was rising near the full, and Urania at the half hung close by. No longer did either have two clear phases at once or avoid regular eclipse. Apart from a thin edging of silver, they shone pale red. Their glow upon dead lia and dry thornbushes made the air feel more hot than it was. Silence lay like a weight.

Jill stopped noticing, stopped moving. Her pulse alone jumped, a knock-knock-knock through head and throat, as she and the creature stood confronted. It had been crossing the meadow when she surprised it.

No
–
can’t be
–
trick of moonlight
–
I’m hungry, heat-exhausted, my brain’s gone into free fall–

The shape bounded from her.

‘Wait!’ she cried, and stumbled after. But already it had disappeared among the trees.

A moment’s dread made her grip the dagger Arnanak had given her.
No, it fled, not I. … Regardless, I’d better get on back.

While she strode, faster and faster, she tried to conjure the shape forth as it had stood in the red beams. A T-beast, beyond a doubt. Whatever life had been like on Tammuz a billion years ago, when it started anew from microbes on Ishtar it did not follow the same course as ortho-life, or Earth’s. There were three sexes. There was no elaborate symbiosis, nor hair or milk; and instead of plant chemistry or perspiration, the homeothermic animals, like many plants, controlled temperature by changing color. There were vertebrates of a sort, but none descended from an ancient worm, rather from a thing like a starfish – no true head but a
branch, the fifth limb changed into a carrier of mouth and sensory organs. There were a few bipeds–

But they were small. This had been a giant of its kind. The petals atop its branch would have reached to her chest. On the abdomen she thought she had made out three eyes above the central bulge of the genital sheath. Legs had been long and powerful for the size; it was more a leaper than a strider. Yet the boneless-looking arms were well developed also, ending in a hand of five fingers arranged in a star.

Hands? Fingers?