Inheritor (43 page)

Prudence might have said to go for the steps. He stood his ground and Nokhada shoved and butted him in the chest, smelled him over and then rubbed her poll against his shoulder, prompting a human who'd been laid out flat and stunned once to step to the side and jerk smartly on the single rein to get that huge, tusked, and devoted head out of the way of his face.

The head came up, which indeed would have knocked him a body-length away if not sent him to the hospital, and then as the whole herd shifted, he was in danger of being squeezed between Nokhada and Cenedi's mount. He instantly lifted his riding crop, putting it end-on between Nokhada's shoulder and the oncoming mass. The steel-centered, braided leather crop stood the impact and shied the two apart again: it was a trick he'd learned his last trip out, it worked; and he jerked on the long, loose rein, which had one end fastened on Nokhada's jaw-piece and the other end slip-tied to a ring on the saddle, to get Nokhada to lower her body for a mount-up in the bawling chaos that was their setting-forth.

They were working out an agreement, he and she, or he was getting better at it. Nokhada extended a foreleg, and the other side of that
getting better at it
was his speed in tugging the rein's slipknot free of the restraining ring, getting hold of the saddle and being ready when Nokhada heaved upward with a powerful snap that pitched her rider up with the same force.

The stopping of said force allowed the rider, at apogee, to subside into the saddle if the rider had aimed himself appropriately at the seat and not to the side.

He had. Jase — was making the mount he'd made when he'd begun, being boosted up and into the saddle of a standing animal. Banichi was up; so was Jago, and the boy, last, who made a mount like Jase's, and made a wild snatch after the rein.

At that point Nokhada made an unsignaled full about turn and used that momentary inattention to get more rein and start her way toward the front of the column.

Ilisidi was on the steps, and came down to her mechieta, Babsidi, who held sole possession of the area around him: mechiet'-aiji, herd-leader. Babsidi came to the steps, and at a genteel tap of Ilisidi's riding crop extended a leg as Ilisidi tucked her cane into a holster made for it and stepped aboard, coordinating her step and Babsidi's rise with a grandeur no machimi actor he had ever seen achieved. This
was
a rider. This
was
the rider of this animal, for all the years of his dominance over the herd and hers over her followers. This was real; and a human found his breath stuck in his throat as Ilisidi brought Babsidi about, every other mechieta following and adjusting position, and tons of muscle moving as one creature.

Bren took tight grip on the single rein and held Nokhada hard from advancing, twisting her head as much as her long neck permitted. He pulled her full about and let her straighten out. He could see Jase, whose mechieta Jarani was one of the lower-rank mechieti, a quieter beast which wouldn't put him to a contest for the lead and which wouldn't lose him, either; the boy from Dur had a similarly quiet beast, so he trusted. But Cenedi's mechieta, who was second in the herd, and Nokhada, who thought she should be, were the two principle difficulties in the whole herd. Cenedi, used to being by Ilisidi, stayed with her. But Nokhada, if ridden, would try to get next to Babs if it killed her rider. He kept a tight rein.

Jase struggled just to keep his balance. He'd been chancy half a year ago and he seemed no abler at balance in the saddle after half a year on the world's surface. He held on with both hands; and Bren reined Nokhada in that direction, able to do so, and, he admitted it, showing off and fiercely proud of it.

Jase was not happy.

"If I die on this ride," Jase said, "I hope you can handle the manuals."

"You won't die. — Foot! Watch it."

Jase tucked it out of convenient reach of Jarani, who, frustrated in his aim, sidled over and bared teeth at Nokhada.

Nokhada ripped upward with the tusks at Jarani's shoulder, who returned the favor half-heartedly, and for a moment there was a sort-out all around them; but Jarani gave ground and ducked and bobbed his head as mechieti would who'd just been outmuscled by one of their kind.

"Damn it!" Jase said, shaken and mistakenly trying to prevent that head movement.

Meanwhile Banichi and Jago had moved to be near both of them,
their
security in a cluster of Ilisidi's young men.

"Where's Tano and Algini?" he asked finally, having something like privacy in the squalling confusion.

"On duty," was all Banichi said, meaning ask no further.

So presumably they were staying behind to guard the gear, or the premises, or were catching sleep in preparation for going on a round the clock alternation with Banichi and Jago.

Which sometimes happened. And from which he might take warning. All hell might break loose here before they got back — and their leaving might be a ploy to get the paidhiin to safety. They
might
have learned something from the boy that Banichi wasn't saying.

Ilisidi started them moving, not at a walk, but at least not at a breakneck run, toward the gap in the low fence by which the vans had come in. At that moderate pace Nokhada had no difficulty reaching the front; but even with Jase and the boy from Dur trailing them there was no chance of losing them. Putting a prisoner or a guest atop an associated mechieta was the best way in the world to guarantee that individual stayed in sight and placed himself wherever the herd-status of that particular mechieta encouraged it to travel. You couldn't leave unridden ones behind, either; they'd follow at the expense of any structure that confined them, breaking down rails or battering through gates, and injuring themselves if they couldn't.

Man'chi. In its most primitive evocation.

At Malguri he'd seen his first primitive model of the behavior and as a human being achieved his first gut-level understanding, with Nokhada under him battling to keep up, risking life and limb — primal need that had roused enough primal fear of falling and enough personal response to that ton of desperate muscle and bone carrying him at a frantic pace that he'd had no trouble
feeling
the emotional pitch. His heart still beat harder when he recalled that first chase.
He'd
been damned glad to have caught up to Ilisidi and not to have broken his neck; all through that long ride he'd been glad to catch up to Ilisidi, and he'd learned to think, gut-level, of the niche Nokhada wanted as the safest place he could be without even realizing the mechanics of what was going on in either the mechieta or in him: the mechieta going to its leader and the primate finding a safe limb, thank you, both at the same destination.

They still had some unridden mechieti with them today; but they were carrying equipment, canvas bundles.

What's that for? he asked himself.

But he had no answer, and didn't figure the paidhi was going to find out from his own security, not without bringing him into play, where
his
security didn't want him to be.

So they maintained his ignorance for his protection and Jase's, he feared. And they held their sedate gait, good enough riders to keep Jarani and Nokhada together, by urging Jarani and getting in Nokhada's path, while he was getting good enough at least that he wouldn't let Nokhada have the piece of Jarani's hide that Nokhada, by her little tensions and shiftings under his legs, wanted. The single rein always seemed to him small restraint to the mountain of an animal she was, but taps of the riding crop for some reason distracted her from mayhem, possibly because earlier in her life an ateva arm had wielded it, or just that she paid attention to her rider naturally.

And he was getting better at doing it at the precise instant it had most effect, too, which he had discovered to be right before she started to do something overt.
That
required a rider reading those little muscle twitches and the set of her ears and tapping her hard enough to get her attention.

Jase, however, who had ridden once, from the landing site to Taiben, was clinging with both hands to the saddle, not doing much with the rein, which was a good thing. He bumped about like a sack of laundry, and was probably annoying hell out of Jarani.

But this was the man who found a window-seat on an airplane a challenge to his sense of balance.

"Relax the spine," he said to Jase. "You won't fall. Relax."

Jase tried. It was difficult for him, but he tried.

And at this speed there wasn't a tendency for the herd to form into hierarchical order: individual mechieti dipped heads unexpectedly, snatched bits of green. Which scared Jase when it happened.

"Relax."

Jase's hands were, in fact, white-knuckled, and Jase's mouth was a thin, straight line as Jarani took a snap at another mechieta moving up on them from the rear. That mechieta nipped back, and Jarani bumped Nokhada in sheer surprise.

The boy from Dur drew close, or his mechieta did: he was clearly another non-rider. He appeared to have notions what to do, but he wasn't winning the argument; and his mechieta shied into Banichi's, who gave it a head toss that was audible on impact.

"I'm sorry, nandi, I'm sorry."

"Rein!" Banichi said, and the boy tried, to the inconvenience of all around him as he mis-signaled and sent the well-trained creature off to the side.

He
was better than that, Bren thought, with perhaps too much pride; but he patted Nokhada's hard shoulder and quietly gave Jase instruction what to do with the rein and with his feet.

And his spine. "Sit easy — easier than that," he said. "Dammit, Jase —
try
to fall off!"

Jase looked at him as if he'd misunderstood.

"Try," he said syllable by syllable, "to fall off. You can't. You're balanced. Relax, dammit. Rock. Sway. Do it!"

Jase sucked in a breath and let go his death-grip on the saddle. And leaned a little one way, and then the other. And gave another deep breath.

Banichi, damn him, crooked an easy leg across the saddle front, watched the performance, and grinned.

"Better," Banichi said. There was nothing in the entire universe that Banichi, who stood solid and square as a wall, could not do, and do gracefully. And Banichi laughed, waved his riding crop at the boy from Dur. "You listen to the paidhi, nadi. Sit like a living creature, not like a load of baggage."

Then — then for some reason unannounced — the pace increased.

And increased, until mechieti were moving together, almost in unison, stride for stride. Bren looked back as the old fortress fell behind them.

He saw, from the angle they'd achieved in their riding away, the back of the building and vans parked there, maybe six, seven of them.

Damn, he thought. He shortened his focus to Jago riding close behind him, and knew she knew and no one was talking. They were headed upslope, now, up the general pitch of the rolling, fragile sod, on which a little brush grew, but not much, and never a tree. They were out here in an area reminiscent of riding the ridge at Malguri, climbing, and climbing.

He thought of the bluffs that overlooked the sea, and the installation of Mogari-nai that sat atop them.

He thought of the boundary out there beyond the horizon, that invisible demarcation of sea and air that marked where Mospheira began. They were moving toward it. He didn't think by the direction they were going they'd come in view of it. But they would come close.

And the speed and smoothness with which the mechieti traveled even walking in this grassy, open land was something he'd never felt in the rough land around Malguri. It was wonderful, a traveling pace that let even Jase find his sense of the rhythm in the movement. The boy from Dur gave up holding on and rode easily in the saddle.

And slowly, inexorably, predictibly, Nokhada lengthened stride and came closer and closer to Ilisidi and Cenedi. Banichi and Jago moved with him, up through the herd.

There was never a word said. Ilisidi, a competition rider, rode with that easy grace that put them all to shame, and Babsidi's long strides challenged all of them that followed her, reminding them that Babsidi
was
quality, from his finely shaped head to his powerful rump. No one got ahead of Babsidi. And Nokhada's joy was dampened only by the presence of Cenedi's mechieta, her chief rival, who
always
had a rider, an entitlement of some kind Bren had never figured out. Unridden, Nokhada hung back and caused no trouble; with him aboard, she aspired, that was all, she aspired to the front line — and made her rider feel guilty that he was so seldom there.

But he had no idea, absolutely no idea what drove her, or whether she'd been glad to see him when she recognized him after an absence or whether her fierce mechieta heart just saw justification for raising hell. He patted her shoulder. It got a flick of the ears; but no understanding of her. He said to himself he had to arrange to ride more often, somehow.

Among other dreams.

The mind could grow quiet, watching that motion, hearing the noise of mechieti at that comfortable pace all about them. Watching that horizon. Watching the shadows that had been in front of them slowly, slowly overtake them until the sun beat down on their heads.

Then Ilisidi took the group to a slower pace, and to a stop. Jase caught up to him for the first time in over an hour, and Jase had done it — had stayed on, had even, with encouragement from the riding crop and his feet and the rein, gotten Jarani to move through the crowd.

"Good for you," Bren said as they sat on the hard-breathing mechieti. "How are you doing?"

"Alive," Jase said, and seemed to be in pain.

Jago and Banichi moved up close. Meanwhile two of the men had slid down and were getting one of the mechieti to kneel, to let them reach the pack it carried.

"Do we go back now?" Jase asked.

"Not yet," Banichi said; and the men hastily getting into the pack had come out with a bag of sandwiches, which they passed about, beginning with the dowager.

They ate the sandwiches, and the mechieti under them grazed the sparse vegetation, and wandered as they grazed, taking them in whatever direction or association the mechieti chose. They never got down. Canteens were an ordinary part of their equipment, and they drank. After that, the men afoot adjusted the canvas on the one pack they'd gotten into, remounted, and Ilisidi started moving again.