Rift (7 page)

“Be you a Tallgrass or a Mudder, boyo?” The sword flashed sun into Reeve’s eyes. “Eh?” the man prodded.

“I am Reeve.” As thin as the claver looked, Reeve judged he was all bone and muscle. Damn, to be caught unawares, to be on his hands and knees weighted down with his own trophy pack!

“A Reeve, he say, Mam,” the swordsman said to the other claver. “I say, the liar dies.”

“No!” Marie blurted.

The scrawny man eyed Reeve’s clothes, especially his boots. “Speak your prayers, boyo.” He raised the saber over his head.

Reeve scampered backward, but toppled from the weight of his pack. As he frantically pulled one arm loose from the straps, the claver planted a foot in his ribs and swung the sword back.

“Leave off,” came the command.

Another claver stood at Reeve’s feet, looking down at him. Her short, ragged hair stood up in spikes all over her head. She was young, maybe seventeen, and filthy. As she kneeled down beside him, her companion slowly lowered his weapon. She peered at Reeve, moving to within inches of his face, her nostrils flaring. Through the mask of dirt on her face, her hazel eyes were her only clear link to humanity. The waif was dressed in rags and fur boots laced with hide thongs, and she smelled of humus. She lifted his lips to inspect his teeth, then probed his clothes, frowning.

“Don’t move, boyo,” the man warned. Reeve didn’t need to be told.

With a grimy finger, the girl traced the breather
around his nose and mouth, drawing her finger along its almost invisible circumference. “This?” she asked.

“A breather.”

She looked at him doubtfully.

“Where be your clave, boyo?” the man growled.

A question he didn’t want to answer. “Far away.”

The sword poked at his chest. “Where?”

Throwing caution aside, Reeve pointed to the sky.

The claver looked up. When he gazed down at Reeve again his face darkened. He twitched the sword until it ripped into the fabric of Reeve’s jacket.

The girl lay her palm against the flat of the blade, pushing it away. “He will live,” she announced. Standing up, she took note of the swordsman’s glare. “Soil eater,” she said. Then she turned and walked away.

Under the contemptuous eyes of their captor, Marie helped Reeve to his feet. The man turned his head to one side, as though Reeve were easier to look at with just one eye. A curl of his lip conveyed his assessment of the pair of them. In turn, Reeve surveyed the barbarian who had so effortlessly and ruinously stolen up on them. A little taller than Reeve, and twice as thin, the fellow managed to intimidate with his murderous scowl, black and snaggled teeth, and a sword almost as broad and long as his leg. He stank, even at a distance of several feet. To be bested by the likes of this fellow set Reeve’s blood on a rolling boil. Noting the saber, Reeve decided the claver might know how to wield it, and resolved to bide his time before taking the ruffian on.

A sharp whack between his shoulder blades was Reeve’s signal to move as the claver herded them down the gully, in the direction the girl had taken. The foul taste of soil lingered in Reeve’s mouth, a muddy brine of dirt and saliva which he sucked on for the last shred of his pellet food.

2

By their poles, Loon saw that the Mudders were angry. They had taken feet. She lay on her belly and watched as they argued over which way to go. In the pouch at her waist were some well-chosen rocks. If they started in her direction, she would give a few of them a tap on the head. Clutching her sling, she squinted into the sun setting at the edge of the plains. Loon sucked the mud off her fingers and waited to see what course the hunting party would take.

The lead Mudder was a woman. From her fierce expression, she seemed to be in a hurry—no small wonder, since the Reever said he had made water on their food packs. On
food
packs. The Reever himself must be very fierce, Loon thought, to risk such an insult. The Mudder’s hair was braided with odd strips of silver. Some of the Mudders wore jackets like the Reever wore. Wherever he came from, his clave must be very rich. She guessed the Mudders had raided the Reevers and now pursued these two. It might be a feud. Taking feet was a sign of feud.

Spar said the Reevers claimed to be from the Sky Clave. If they were zerters, that would explain why the Mudders took the feet. But after a whole day with the Reevers, and watching them closely, Loon could not believe they were the deserters of the sky wheel. Everyone knew the zerters were fat, and these two were slim. But their captives were strange, to be sure. They could bear no animal meat. Their pack had many oddities. Among these were silver packs containing kernels the Reevers liked to eat. Ah—this was perhaps the silver the Mudder woman bound into her hair.

As Loon watched the Mudders argue, she saw the western horizon bulging with clouds. From this small curdle of gray at the rim of the world, she knew a storm was coming. The Mudders saw it too. They knew they must hurry before rain stole the trail. In the
distance, a rare group of six deer bounded across the grassland. Yet the Mudders paid no attention. They must strongly wish to find the Reevers. The group split up, trying three directions, one of which displeased Loon greatly. The woman with silver in her hair set out with four strong men toward the hideaway where Spar waited.

Loon slithered down the hillock and ran along the bottom of the gully, pushing herself to her best speed. She couldn’t outrun a horse, but the Mudders would travel slowly even by horse, looking for the trail, difficult to see in the hardpan of the plain. They would look for trampled grass as well—the Reevers stomped grass like buffalo despite Spar’s lessons, and, once, a beating. How could they be rich if they knew so little? Far away thunder growled. Loon ran harder, easing into a rhythmic lope, running on rocks whenever she found them, trying to mask her passage. Despite the pursuit of the Mudders, she ran with exuberance. She liked this Reever man, with his good smells and his mud-tinged lips.

Approaching the abandoned farm, she stopped and crept to the top of the rise to check for the Mudders. To her shock, they were just entering the farm gates. As soon as they dismounted, they found the tracks they were looking for. The leader pointed to the barn. That was a mistake.

Sprinting, Loon scampered to the side of the main hogan, flattening herself against it. She trusted that Spar had seen their pursuers, but she worried just the same. An owl flapped above her, disappearing over the roofline. This was the owl that lived in the barn. A bad omen, owls in daylight. It was a thing out of order, a creature out of place. With her heart knocking in her chest, she peered around the corner. In the barnyard, a lone Mudder held the horses, his back to her. She darted for the cellar window, then scrambled through.
Rushing up the cellar stairs to the main floor, she opened the door. And came face-to-face with Spar.

“Mudders!” she hissed.

Spar yanked on the rope and the Reevers—hands bound behind them, and linked together at their necks by a length of rope—stumbled forward.

“Quiet,” Spar growled, angry at their heavy-footedness.

They descended the stairs, following Loon into the darkness. In the cramped cellar, she pulled aside a rack of wooden shelves, exposing the escape tunnel. This tunnel-riddled farm had been Loon and Spar’s refuge for a week as they’d recovered from their trek across the Forever Plains. Eight large hogans shared the barn; with luck it would take the Mudders a while to search them all. Once inside the tunnel, she pulled the shelving unit back in place and felt for the stack of cut sod to plug the hole from the inside. Spar dubbed this farm Gopher Hole for its maze of tunnels connecting each hogan and leading to escape routes in four directions. Here the homesteaders had hoped to escape the orthong raids. She wondered if orthong had ever come this far south. If they did, that was something more to worry about.

In the tunnel, a fragrant stew of rotting humus, roots, and soil enveloped her. Tantalizing aromas, familiar but without names, threaded into her consciousness while she listened for sounds of pursuit. The old woman was leaning on her companion’s arm. They would have to abandon her soon. The woman was so old her hair was half gray. Perhaps this one was half a century old!

“There’s a flashlight,” the Reever man said. “In my field pack.”

“Shut your mouth,” Spar said. “ ’Less you want to lose your feet.”

Loon knew about flashlights. Her father had had one with a feeble spray of light, and he let her turn it
on sometimes. She thought she heard voices from above, Mudders calling to each other. She knew how Spar stumbled in the darkness, so she wanted the light. “Show me,” Loon said.

Spar opened the Reever’s pack, and Loon untied the woman’s hands, leading her to it. The woman groped inside, finally pulling forth a palm-sized object. Light flooded around them. Now Loon understood why they called these things
flash
lights. No weak drizzle of light. This was a flash of fire.

“Move,” Spar urged. He pushed the prisoners on ahead, shouldering the pack and waiting for Loon to go ahead of him. Then a scream erupted from down-tunnel. The Mudders had found an entrance. Luckily it was not the one Loon and Spar had used, a few feet back.

The old woman switched off the light. That was smart. Loon pushed to the front and grabbed the rope lead, tugging the Reevers along faster. Quickly sorting her options, Loon decided on the long tunnel past the second fork. Unless the Mudders split up, they’d have a good chance to escape. By now Loon was getting to know her pursuers. They scrambled to the fork, where Loon chose the south branch, pulling her prisoners along with her.

A muffled shout came from down-tunnel: “Food thieves!”

At her side, Spar whispered: “Leave the Reevers!”

“No.”

“They don’t eat soil,” he said, repeating the same argument as before. Spar had pointed out from the beginning that the man had been picking food scraps from the ground when they came upon him. Not eating soil.

“No,” Loon said again.

They heard, closer now: “Food thieves! We come for payment!” And “That way!” Flickers of light and shadow told of torches around the bend.

They hurried down the tunnel, the Reevers stumbling often on the rough floor. Loon helped the old woman along. “Be quiet,” Loon said to her. “Too much noise.”

The woman did better for a while, but she was hopelessly clumsy. Behind them came a huffing noise. Someone was running down the long tunnel after them. Up ahead was a speck of light. They ran toward it, finally crawling through a flap of grass onto the open plain. As they emerged from their passage, Spar yanked their prisoners to the side and stood poised, spear raised, at the entrance. Loon grabbed a rock from her pouch, standing back for a good aim.

Overhead, the clouds raced to cover the sky. Their black masses were, for a split second, shot through with lightning, tracing a maze like the one they’d just come from. A ripping crash of thunder followed.

Inside the hole, a Mudder stopped short of the trap. She could clearly see him crouching there, though he thought himself hidden.

“So you wait for us out there, do you?” came the voice. “Give up, and I’ll kill you quick.”

Spar stood poised with his sword.

“There’s four of you, but ten of us,” the Mudder lied. “I’ll kill you fast.” Then he made a mistake. He edged forward to a spot that gave Loon a clear trajectory.

Loon wound up her sling and sent her rock flying to its target. In the next instant the Mudder fell half out of the tunnel, face first. Spar’s sword finished him off. Loon crouched to see if others followed him, but he was alone. They dragged his body into the grass and scratched out the grooves where his heels had dug into the ground.

The Reever man stood blinking witlessly at the sky where the thunderheads collected, rumbling loud enough to knock the thoughts out of your head. At an ear-numbing crash, he fell to his knees, covering his
ears. Though Spar yanked and yanked on his rope, the man refused to budge.

Through his capture and the flight from the Mudders, the Reever had never shown fear until now. Loon took pity on him. Perhaps he had never seen a storm before, or heard the sky crack open. If he had never seen a Forever Plains storm, he had not truly seen a storm. Loon approached, kneeling beside him. In the gathering dusk, lightning forked again and again over their heads, reflected in his wide eyes. She put her arm around his shoulder and helped him to his feet. He was taller than she was, so she let her arm slide down around his waist.