Jane Carver of Waar (6 page)

“The Tae?”

“The Tae. My people.” He closed his eyes again. “The Aarurrh religion is pure superstition of course. We Tae have been here since the Seven created the world and placed us upon it to serve as their custodians.”

“Custodians? You gotta mop the floors and fix the plumbing?”

“Pardon?”

“Nothin’. Never mind. Just bein’ a jerk.”

Sai lay back, but I had something else on my mind. I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Listen, Sai, I know you ain’t feelin’ so good right now, but shouldn’t we be thinkin’ about bustin’ outta this joint and hightailin’ it after your fiancée? You got a wedding to stop.”

He shook his head without opening his eyes. “There is no escape from the Aarurrh. It is hopeless. We are dead.”

“No escape? What are you talkin’ about? We’re not even chained up. We get down to that creek, I can get us up to the plains in twenty minutes. As long as you know your way home from there...”

“Unfortunately, I do not.” He opened his eyes and looked directly at me for the first time since we were taken. “Mistress Jae-En, your enthusiasm is admirable, but useless. Even if I did know my way home we would not survive the journey. If by some miracle we managed to elude the Aarurrh, who are only the greatest trackers and hunters on Waar, we would not escape the savage packs of Shikes, capable of stripping us to our bones in the blink of an eye, nor the dreadful Vurlak, the jaw of which can crush stone, nor the wild Skelsha, which can—-”

“Okay okay okay. I get the picture. But does that mean you’re just going to give up? Are you gonna let that four-armed teenybopper play dollies with you ’til you grow old and die?”

Sai shuddered. “No. That I will not do. I am praying to the Seven for the courage to find a way out. An honorable man would rather die than submit to such indignities.”

I squeezed his shoulder. “That’s the spirit.”

I lay back, feeling better. Sure, Sai said it was impossible, but at least he wasn’t giving up. That was half the battle. If I had to drag him around like a sack of potatoes we’d get nowhere fast.

There were two moons overhead. Well, if nothing else was going to convince me this wasn’t all some big prank Steven Spielberg had decided to pull on me, that would. I don’t care how big your special effects budget is, nobody launches another moon just to make a fool out of some big, dumb biker chick. There was a fat blue moon peeking over the sawtooth skyline of the tents, and a little bright one that zipped across the sky so fast you could see it move. They gave everything around me two shadows. Kind of pretty, but all I could think was that all that light made making a break for it that much harder.

Beyond the moons were stars I’d never seen. Riding cross country on my bike and sleeping rough all those years, I’d gotten pretty good at picking out the constellations. They were all gone. I got hit with another wave of homesickness. Not even the stars were right. Where was I? Where was Earth? I started wondering if any of those little pinpricks out there was the Sun. My sun. Man, I sure went from happy to depressed awful fast, huh? Being stranded on another planet’ll do that to you.

***

From then on things slipped into a routine; not exactly comfortable or happy, but not torture either, at least not for me. Queenie gave Sai about three days to get back on his feet. After that we’d either go up to the plains to dig for the tubers, or along the creek upstream from the camp to hunt in the shallows and under rocks for snails with finned shells and emerald green crawdad things.

The crawdads only had four legs. I began to notice that all the bugs, from winged biters to crawly collectors to hopping blood-suckers, had only four legs. Maybe One-Eye wasn’t just being an asshole when he called me and Sai insects.

Once I got into the rhythm of the life I actually didn’t mind it. I’ve always been more physical than mental, and heavy labor makes me feel useful. It toughened me up too. They didn’t let us wear anything more than loincloths—just another way to remind us we were animals—so after a bad week of pink peeling, I ended up covered in so many freckles I looked like a drop-cloth—which is as close as I ever come to getting a tan. After two weeks, I’d built up and thinned down enough that you could see my abs and biceps, even when I wasn’t flexing. I felt better and stronger than I had in years. I even stopped craving Marlboros, mostly.

But I made sure I didn’t show my true strength. I held back; digging and lifting just a little bit more than the others, just enough for Queenie to appreciate me, but not enough for anyone to take me for a threat. I was a “good girl” and a happy little worker, and I kept an eye out for the main chance.

Sai didn’t take to it like I did. Even though physically he recovered pretty quickly, mentally he was about as lively as a sloth with a barbiturate problem.

After what he’d said I kept expecting him to snap out of it, but he never did. I didn’t know what to think. Was he playing possum like me? If he was, he had an Oscar coming his way. He stumbled through each day in a sleepwalk fog, shuffling and staring at his feet and harvesting about half what the rest of us did. Not that he was allowed to work that much anyway. Kitten, who seemed to spend more time gossiping with her girlfriends than she did working, led him around like a lap dog, petting him, dressing him up in cast-offs that must have come from other slaves, both male and female, tying colorful strings and ribbons in his hair. He took it all with the same rag doll stupor he showed for everything else. He didn’t eat. He didn’t clean himself. He hardly noticed when I tried to cheer him up.

The only thing that woke him up was once when Kitten tried to take off this thin silver chain he wore around his waist. It had a medallion dangling from it that I hadn’t noticed before, probably because he kept it tucked down in his loincloth. When she grabbed it he started fighting like a wild animal. She decked him when he chomped down on her thumb and threw him into a corner, but she let him keep the chain.

I helped him up. “What was that all about?”

“She tried to take my Balurra. ’Tis the token of a man’s love for his lady. He makes it with his own hands in the shape of her family crest, and only reveals it to his beloved or at his death.”

I got a look at it before he put it away. It was a silver circle with a design of green and black diamonds inside. I’d seen the same mark inlaid on some of the luggage from Sai’s coach. Must have been his sweetheart’s stuff.

***

After a while I noticed that there were some intra-camp rivalries going on. There was another clique of Aarurrh chicks who gave our gang the cold shoulder. We’d always make sure we did our gathering as far from them as possible. Queenie sneered at them, “They from One-Eye’s clan. Too good to dig ’cause their men best hunters. Hrrn! They steal kills from other men.”

“So how come nobody says something, Hur-Hranan?”

“Best hunters protect chief. Nobody can talk to him.”

Yup, just like trying to see the boss when his secretary hates you. Not gonna happen.

One-Eye’s clan had most of the top spots in the tribe, and lorded it over everybody. One-Eye was the worst. We used to pass him and his men most mornings on the way out of camp. He always gave Handsome, who was part of his squad, the shit detail, sometimes literally. The Aarurrh used the stream as one big combined dumpster and toilet, and sometimes they threw in so much stuff that somebody had to go dredge it out. Handsome was always the guy, and One-Eye made sure to let Kitten see. It was a funny way to try to impress her, but hell, I’d seen bikers pull the same shit back home.

One day after Kitten had been moping all morning, I asked Queenie why she didn’t dump One-Eye’s ass for good. Queenie grunted, angry. “Can’t do. Chief give her to Hruthar.” Hruthar was One-Eye’s real name. “They join at pregnant moon festival, next moon. Too soon.”

“The chief’s giving her to Hruthar, Hur-Hranan? You don’t get a say in it?”

She sighed. “When I girl, I leave Hirrarah tribe and join warrior from Yurrahah tribe. Yurrahah wiped out by Unrarach Clan and my man die, so I come back here. But too old to have babies now. No use they say. Won’t feed me. Har! I best digger here, but they want warriors. Chief say he take me back if I promise daughter to him to do what he want. I got no place to go so I say okay.” She ripped a tuber out of the ground, angry. “When cheater Hruthar make top man, chief promise Murrah to him when she joining age. Now she is.”

Man, and I thought chicks had it tough back home. I saw how One-Eye treated Kitten. I couldn’t see him changing when they tied the knot. I felt sorry for her and Queenie. But then something happened that made me put their troubles on the back burner.

***

One night Queenie and Kitten left us alone at the tent to go do some secret tribal women stuff. No slaves allowed. Sai was his usual talkative self, so I’d gone down to the creek to rinse the grain for the next day’s breakfast. When I got back to the tent Sai was teetering on top of Queenie’s cooking tripod, the tallest piece of furniture in the tent. Getting up there must have been the most athletic thing he’d done since we got here.

“Sai? What the hell...” Then I noticed the rope around his neck, knotted to one of the tent’s cross poles. “Sai! Don’t!”

He looked down at me. The smeared mess of Kitten’s last rouge and eye make-up experiment made him look like an abused doll. “At last I find hope of escape.”

And with that he pitched forward, tipping over the cooking tripod and falling free. The rope jerked tight and swung as he reached its limit. The whole tent shook.

“Sai!” I leaped up to the cross pole and tore at the knot as Sai made hideous dying fish noises below me. Thank god he hadn’t dropped far enough to break his neck, but if I didn’t untie that knot he was going to choke to death.

It was too tight, and my fingernails were worn to the quick from digging tubers. I looked around, desperate. Queenie’s cooking blade hung “out of reach” on the center pole just below my feet. I snatched it up and chopped down on the knot. The blade bit through the rope and Sai hit the ground like a sack of shark bait. I was next to him in a second, digging my finger under the rope and tugging it lose none too gently. “You stupid butt-smack! What the fuck do you think you were doing?”

It took a minute for him to stop retching enough to answer. When he did it wasn’t to thank me. “How dare you? After shaming myself for these long days, too much the coward to do what must be done, I finally summon the strength and do the deed, and... and you ruin it!”

“Ruin it? I saved your life!” Then it hit me. “Wait a minute. Hope of escape? Is this what you meant by ‘finding a way out?’ You sorry-ass loser!”

He pouted. “And now you make it doubly hard. Now that I know the pain and fear of it first hand, how much more difficult will it be to find the courage a second time?”

I’m sorry to say I bitch-slapped him. Somebody had to. “You whiny little puke. You think you’re being brave by committing suicide? All that crap about honor and courage. You’re just giving up. Sure your life sucks right now, but you’re alive. You’ve got all your arms and legs. They work. As long as you’ve got all that there’s still a chance.”

Sai tried to push me away. I grabbed his jaw and forced him to look at me. “Can you save your fiancée from that dumb jock when you’re dead? Can you fix things with your dad? And what about me? You’re gonna leave me here to fend for myself?”

He flushed at that, turning from lavender to magenta. “Mistress Jae-En, I am ashamed that an outlander should show me the path of honor. You are correct. I have strayed, forgetting in my misery your plight and that of my beloved Wen-Jhai. Ending my own wretched life is a luxury I can not indulge in until I have done my all to deliver you both from your fates. I crave your forgiveness.”

Man, I hated when he got all gushy on me. “Forget it.”

From outside the tent we heard Queenie’s alto purr and Kitten’s soprano whine. They were coming back. I leaped up.

“Quick! The hibachi!” Good thing I pointed too. I had a tendency to mix my old dictionary with my new one when I got excited and half the time Sai didn’t know what I was talking about. He righted the cooking tripod as I shoved the rope under a trunk and leaped for the cross pole, yanked the chopper out of the wood, hung it back on its hook, and was down again sweeping the rug with a straw broom just as the tent flap started to open.

Sai, in a flash of inspiration that made me hope he’d gotten over his suicidal funk, tied one of kitten’s brightly colored scarves over the raw rope marks on his neck. It make him look like a sixties stereotype of an interior decorator, but it hid the evidence. Queenie and Kitten were busy talking and paid even less attention to us than usual. Probably more Hatfield and McCoy stuff.

After we finished making and serving our mistresses their vittles and cleaning up, we were finally allowed to lie down on our straw to sleep.

Sai whispered in my ear, “Again I apologize, Mistress Jae-En. I have been so long absorbed in my own despair that I have ignored you. Have you a plan?”

I hated to disappoint him. “Sorry, Sai, not yet. But stay strong and stay ready. Something will happen.”

And something did.

CHAPTER FIVE

SNEAK ATTACK!

F
or about half a big moon... Now, wait. I guess I gotta explain about that first. I already said about the two moons—the big slow one and the little fast one. Well, the Aarurrh used them to tell time and keep track of the days. I picked it up just being around them.

The little moon went by so fast it lapped the big one twice a night—and twice a day too—you just couldn’t see it so well then. The Aarurrh called the time that the little guy was in the sky a crossing, and the time it was on the other side of the planet a dark, so the day was cut up into First Crossing, First Dark—sunrise to noon—Second Crossing, Second Dark—noon to sunset—Third Crossing, Third Dark—sunset to midnight—and Fourth Crossing, Fourth Dark —midnight to sunrise.

They kept track of the passing days by the quarters of the big moon, which went from full to dark to full in about twenty days by my count, so each quarter was five days long. Got it? Okay. Where was I?