Moonscatter (24 page)

“Self defense. I want you bright and awake when those bastards come over a hill at us.”

She wrinkled her nose. “And I was beginning to think you liked me.”

The land began to roll more steeply upward toward the ancient mountains; her head began to roll with it. The plantings on the left stopped and there were no more farms, only the hills and knee-length moon-silvered grass with scattered herds of hauhaus, rambuts, woolly linats. They pulsed, growing and shrinking, flicking in and out, visible at the corner of her eyes, gone when she looked directly at them, there when she looked at them, rippling into nothing when she looked away, until she couldn't be certain the herds were really there. It was the drug, she knew, it didn't sit well on an empty stomach. She looked back as she topped one of the hills and saw the band of armored men topping a hill a lot farther behind than she'd expected. She brought her macai to a stop and sat gazing back at them, watching them waver and shift, ballooning into transparent giants, shrinking again.

Hern's voice sounded suddenly at her ear. “The fools, they've overridden those beasts. Look at them wobble.” He stroked his macai's neck, chuckling at the beast's groan of pleasure. “Give me a macai any day. Rambuts are all flash and no stay.”

The moonlight caught a breastplate and flashed fire at her. She winced, gave a sharp, frightened gasp. White fire from halberds and helmets stabbed at her. She squeezed her eyes shut, opened them, saw nothing at all on the hill and gasped again.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing there. All gone.” Forgetting about the mirage on the hill—maybe a mirage, Hern saw them too—she stared at his face, at the savagely torn cheek, dried blood black in the moons' light. “Let me fix that.”

He touched his cheek and winced. “Must be a sight to frighten children.” He turned his mount and started down the slight slope toward the next and steeper ascent.

Serroi caught up with him. “No,” she said. The word was a black bubble. She blinked at it. “No,” she said experimentally, giggled at the drifting black bubble. “No. No. No.” The bubbles danced in front of her, went pop! pop! pop! She blinked again and tried to concentrate, having momentarily forgotten what she'd been talking about. “No, you won't scar if I can just tend to your face. I'm good at tending. The Silent Ones, they wanted me to learn healing. My gift, don't deny your gift, only brings trouble, besides you're too little to be a meie. Little. Skinny. Green. Be a nice little healer. Magic. Too much magic in it. Too much like the Noris. No. I'm going to be a meie. Sword and bow and fist. Real things. No magic. Not ever. No and no and no.” She giggled again. “I'm stubborn.”

“You're also flying high. Can you hear me, Serroi?”

“Uh-huh.”

“No time for tending now, we have to get through the pass.”

“Uh-huh.”

“How long you going to be like this?”

Serroi blinked slowly, spoke even more slowly. “Because no food, I mean Tarr on empty stomach, works too hard. Too fast.” She pressed her hand against her eyes. “Don't know.”

“Hold up.” Hand still on her eyes she heard him breathing hard close to her, felt a tugging on her gear. She would have protested but it didn't seem worth the effort. A moment later a strong hand pulled hers down from her eyes, put a trail bar in it. “Eat that.”

She was still nibbling on the bar when they rode into the trees and began the climb to the pass.

High on a mountain slope, stopping a moment to rest her mount, Serroi looked back. “Hern!”

“What is it?”

“Look. They must have switched mounts.” The minarka were coming fast out of the band of trees, riding up the steep grade almost at a gallop. “I wasn't dreaming the herds on the hills.”

“You can stop the rambuts, turn them around.”

She grimaced. “To be honest, I'd rather stop the riders.” She unclipped her bow, urged her macai forward at a steady walk, slipped the reins under her knee and rode by balance and thigh-grip alone. Setting the stave on her instep, she strung the bow, tested the pull, drew two arrows from the case by her knee. She frowned at the road ahead, pleased to see several bends as it hugged the side of one mountain and curved against the next. “When they get close enough, if they do, I'll pick off two of them and damp their enthusiasm a bit.”

“Thought you didn't like killing.”

“I don't.” She shrugged. “Mad minarks, no loss to anyone.” She sounded flippant, looked miserable. “Maiden bless, Hern, I've killed men before when I had to. And to be honest, I don't know if I could control the rambuts right now.” She looked down at the arrows in her hand, sighed, dropped them back in their case. “Maybe they won't catch up.”

The pursuing minarks drew inexorably closer. The steep grades of the road were hard on the already weary macain. They started shuffling, stumbling, gulping in air, wheezing it out, letting their heads hang low. Serroi slid off her mount and was quietly pleased when Hern did the same. They started walking, leading their macain, hearing behind them shouts of triumph from the minarka. They went around one bend then another, then started laboriously up a triply looping switchback. On the third and shortest loop Serroi stopped. She took two arrows from the case by her shoulder then handed the reins to Hern. “Go on ahead, Hern.”

He touched the side of her face. “You sure?”

“Very.” She pointed. “When they come around that bend I'll have a good clear shot at the leaders. And I can be around there before they can shoot back—if they even have bows. I didn't see any.” She nodded at the curve behind her.

Hern closed one hand on her shoulder, squeezed it in a wordless expression of fellowship, then began walking away, the macain plodding after him. He was taking short cramped steps, his own strength drained by the long, long day.

Serroi got set, arrow nocked, then eased off stance. She walked back and forth along the short level stretch, afraid her muscles would grow stiff if she stood still too long.

She heard the hooves of the beasts before she saw the riders. Nocking one arrow, holding the other between the last two fingers of her drawing hand, she waited, breathing slowly, steadily, sinking herself into the mindless receptive state she'd labored long to achieve.

Two men came round the bend riding side by side. She pulled, loosed, flipped the second arrow into place, pulled, loosed, then lowered her bow and smiled. The minarks were collapsing off their mounts, arrows lodged in the narrow space between the two sections of chest armor, having sliced neatly through its leather backing. She watched a man crawl hurriedly, nervously, to the bodies and start hauling them back around the bend, then she turned and began walking after Hern.

He was waiting for her around that first turn in the road, sitting on a rock. He got to his feet slowly and stiffly. “Do you ever miss?”

“Not often.” She took the reins of her macai and walked on in silence, unwilling right then to say anything more.

The minarka hung back for over an hour though she knew they were coming still, feeling them like a black fog behind her, stubborn in their malice. Again she chose a place of vantage and waited. This time she dropped only one of them because they were riding in single file and more cautious about coming around bends. Hern and Serroi plodded on, winding up and up through the mountains, reaching the saddle of the pass at the end of another hour.

Hern wiped at his neck with a sodden rag. “Still behind?”

“They expect to catch us at the wall.”

“Wall?”

“There is a wall of sorts up ahead.” She looked back along the trail. The minarka weren't visible yet but they were creeping up again; she picked up a rising expectation and a touch of anticipation. “I didn't tell you about the wall?” She frowned, tried to remember but found recent events too hazy to sort out. “About a mile past the saddle. Road goes through a long narrow canyon. Guardhouse with a well. Gate's usually not barred, they don't try stopping the Sleykynin, just beat the gong once they're through.” She started down the long straight incline, stepping carefully over and around the ruts, slanting a glance at Hern. The elegant boots were scuffed, stretched, and beginning to sag at the ankles—far less elegant and far more comfortable than before. But the soles were still thin and slippery; his feet had to be sore and burning. She sighed. Once again she looked back.

A minark stopped at the top of the slope, stared down at them. Another man came up behind him, yelled and beckoned. Serroi dropped the reins and lifted her bow. The minarka scrambled hastily out of sight.

Hern chuckled. “You've got them pretty well trained.” He was standing on one foot, leaning against a drooping macai.

She scooped up the dangling reins and slapped her macai on the rump, grimaced at the sorenes of her calves and started down again. “Just as well,” she said. “TheDom's getting low and the Jewels don't give much light.” She yawned. “Another hour at least.”

“Walking.” Hern grunted. He looked at the macai pacing beside him. “Walking.”

When they reached the canyon floor the night was very dark, very quiet. The guardhouse was a blotch of darker shadow in the shadow of the wall. Serroi patted her macai's shoulder. “Hern,” she whispered.

“Mmmh?” The sound came out of the darkness edged with pain and a growing irritation.

“I think they're sleeping up there.”

“Good for them.”

“I'm not sure, though.” She patted the macai again, remounted. “At least they're a little rested. They should be able to carry us long enough.” She waited. Hern was a quick-rising blackness. He whooshed as he landed in the saddle, groaned at the pure pleasure of being off his feet.

They reached the gate without a challenge. When Hern bent down to lift the bar, they both heard a long-drawn, whistling snore. “Definitely asleep,” he murmured and swung the gate open with the flat of one hand. The snore turned to a juicy sputtering. As Serroi followed Hern through the gap she heard a confused muttering; it grew louder as the negligent guard thrust his head out an embrasure and looked blearily around. “Who there?” He withdrew his head a moment then thrust his shoulders out, a short throwing spear in one hand. “Get back here, you, or I skewer you.”

Serroi laughed. “You couldn't hit a mountain with the head you got. Better think about saving your neck,” she yelled at him. “Bar the gate again and tell those following us we must've snuck around you somehow.” She kept looking back as the guard lowered the spear and considered her words. When he pulled his head back inside, she chuckled again.

“What was all that about?”

“Giving that drunk some good advice. Hush, I want to hear … ah!” Behind them the gates swung shut. “Good man. You look after you and let the rest go hang.” She raised her arms over her head, twisted her body about, then slumped in the saddle. “Ay-mi, the tarr is beginning to wear off. Hern.”

“Hummmh?”

“I'm going to crash any minute.”

He rode closer, looked back at the black bulk of the wall. “The minarka?”

She rubbed at her eyes, yawned again. “Wall's it. We're in Sleykyn land now.” Sleep was clubbing at her; it was hard to talk, harder to think. She clutched at the saddle ledge feeling horribly insecure as if she were trying to walk underwater and making sorry work of it.

Hern caught hold of her shoulder. “Dammit, Serroi, where do we go from here? Where!”

The pain from his grip, the shouted word penetrated her haze. “East,” she thought she said, repeated it when he shook her and demanded an answer. “East,” she mumbled.

Hern shook her awake about midmorning. She was roped to the saddle, stretched out along the macai's neck, her arms dangling, every muscle in her body stiff and sore, her head throbbing as if borers were gnawing their way through her skull. He began working the knots loose and in a few minutes she was able to push herself up. She ran her tongue over dry and cracking lips. He was shrouded in dust. His grey-streaked black hair was pasted close to his head and powdered near white with the dust from the track. Weariness was an aura about him nearly as visible as the floating dust. When he put his hand on her knee, she felt it tremble. “Serroi.” His voice was harsh, cracking. “Can you find water?”

Water
. She touched her tongue to her lips again and tasted the bitter alkalinity of the dust.
Water
. His hand was warm on her knee. She sucked in a breath, winced as her throat hurt, squinted her eyes against the hammering of the light reflected from the white, white, terribly white soil and rock around her.
Water
. His hand was warm and alive, the fingers trembling with weariness.
Water
. Her eyespot throbbed, sought, tasted the air, reached out and out. She twisted her torso about until she faced the direction of the pull; she could almost smell the cool green liveliness of the water.
Good water. Close
. She lifted her arm, faltered as its weight seemed beyond her strength, lifted her arm and pointed. “There.” Like him, she croaked through the coating of dust that dried her mouth and thickened her tongue.

His hand touched her arm. She looked down. He was giving her the reins. “Can you.…” He moistened his lips, worked his mouth. “Can you manage?”

She flexed her fingers, closed them stiffly about the reins. After a moment, she nodded, touched the reins to the side of her mount's neck, eased the macai off the track and down the rocky bank and started across the parched and cracking land toward the water that pulled at her.

They came into a wide ravine, a great jagged wash slashing acrost the barrens. A dry streambed ran down the center of the wash, bits of desiccated brush and sun-bleached bones strewn about among its boulders. To the south the wash ran against a line of weathered stone as if a giant cleaver had sliced the land away and beaten the sliced-off part into rubble that lay in grey and white heaps along the base of the scarp. Directly ahead of them the rubble was swept away. Serroi could see sunlight glinting on small pools of water in the stream bed and beyond these an arching blackness that was the mouth of a cave.