Snare (65 page)

‘I think we know how Yarl managed to stay out of sight,’ Jezro shouted. ‘These tunnels must run under parts of Burgunee, too.’

‘It’s a good guess,’ Warkannan said. ‘His tame ChaMeech would have let him in on the secret, I suppose.’ Warkannan laid a hand on Zayn’s shoulder and leaned close to speak normally. ‘How are you doing?’

‘I’ll live,’ Zayn said, then raised his voice. ‘Just wondering how long this tunnel is.’

‘So am I,’ Jezro said. ‘I suspect we’re going to find out.’

Shortly before sunset Sentry’s chimes woke Ammadin. The sun was just touching the horizon, and Loy still lay asleep with her hat over her eyes to block the light. Ammadin picked up Sentry and quieted him. For a moment she wondered why she was even bothering to scan. The one person she wanted most to see had become invisible, thanks to the imp he was wearing. At that moment, caught by cold anxiety, Ammadin was forced to admit that she cared more about Zayn than she had ever wanted to care about anyone.

With an animal growl for her own weakness, she activated the crystal. In the late hush of the golden day, the dry, blue grass stood unbending, unmoving for mile after mile. She did see animals similar to grassars, mottled white and violet beasts with six sturdy legs, drinking warily at a stream under the watchful eye of a bull with three big, twisted horns.

‘Spot anything?’ Loy said from behind her. ‘Anything that wants to have us for dinner, I mean?’

‘No,’ Ammadin said, turning. ‘You’re up?’

‘Oh yes, and god, I feel almost human.’ Loy was actually smiling. ‘Clean shirt, nap, no saddle beating my behind – this is really living, I tell you.’

Ammadin had to laugh.

‘When you finish,’ Loy went on, ‘we can chomp our way through some more of these ghastly trail rations. I wonder if these yap-pack lizards are tasty? I wouldn’t mind a little fresh meat.’

‘Neither would I, but do you know how to cook? The men take care of all that back on the grass.’

‘They do? Maybe I should seduce a comnee man one of these days. I know how to cook, but I get very tired of it.’

Ammadin returned to Spirit Eyes. About half-way between the camp and the eastern end of the crystal’s reach she had a piece of real luck. Apparently Arkazo had wandered beyond the range of Soutan’s ‘hide me’ command; she saw him clearly, standing out in the grass and taking the nosebag off one of four horses. The other three were already grazing peacefully at tether. Ammadin watched as he tethered out the fourth horse, then stooped and picked up the nosebags from the ground. For a moment he stood wiping the sweat from his face onto his sleeve. Ammadin focused in close. She could see that he was wearing something on a chain around his neck – an imp, maybe? He ran both hands through his hair to shove it back, then unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. As he did so, she got a glimpse of the object on the chain – made of blue quartz, all right. She wondered what spell it carried – obviously not ‘hide me’.

Arkazo walked off towards the east and disappeared under the cover provided by Soutan’s crystal. What had Loy called the imp she’d given Zayn? An interference pattern something-or-other. Ammadin studied the place where Arkazo had disappeared; she noticed an odd edge or join, as if the grass beyond that point had been somehow pasted onto the real view. As she studied the image, she realized that she was seeing a portion of the ground by the horses, as if it had been copied and put in place of Soutan’s camp.

I never thought to look that closely before, she thought. Well, now I know.

Just as the sun touched the western horizon, she took her crystals back to camp. By the twilight glow in the sky she hobbled the horses as well as tethered them on short ropes between the circle
of fire stones and the river. Water Woman had assured her that the yap-packers couldn’t swim. Loy was already splitting spongy yellow wood with a hatchet.

‘I was lucky,’ Loy said. ‘I found a whole downed tree.’ She gestured at a stack of wood. ‘We’ll probably need to keep the fire going all night.’

‘Maybe,’ Ammadin said. ‘Predators usually have a territory that they defend from other predators. I’m hoping that there’s only one pack of these creatures around. If so, and if we scare them off a couple of times, they’ll give up.’

‘We should be so lucky. Hope is lovely, but let’s not douse the fire too soon.’

Ammadin went down to the stream and gathered an armload of stones, which she stacked near the fire-pit. Loy had finished laying the fire. She took a metal box of matches out of her pocket, knelt down, and lit the tinder while Ammadin watched. The tinder took, the kindling glowed, the fire caught, all on one match.

‘Good job,’ Ammadin said.

‘Thanks,’ Loy said. ‘My family used to go camping when I was a kid. My father was a great one for hiking, the bastard. Tramp tramp tramp, no matter how much our feet hurt. My poor mother’s idea of a vacation was lounging around reading, not that he ever listened to her. But anyway, let’s have dinner, such as it is.’

Loy’s guild had given them packs of dried flatbread and cheese, little bags of a dried fruit that Loy called grapes, oil beans, jerky, and the like – all of it edible and to Ammadin’s taste, not bad at all. Loy, however, complained. Apparently, like so many people in the Cantons, she had high standards when it came to food. By the time they’d finished eating, the Herd had risen, and a faint silver light lay over the wild pasture. Ammadin got up and walked a few steps, turning her back on the firelight. Nothing moved beyond the camp but a breeze, rustling the leaves of the Midas trees by the stream.

‘If they’ve got a name like yap-packers,’ Loy said, ‘we should be able to hear them coming.’

‘The horses will warn us long before then,’ Ammadin said. ‘They can smell things that are too far away for me to pick up.’

‘All right. That’s reassuring.’

‘Here’s something that isn’t. I spotted Soutan’s camp.’

Loy said something so foul that Ammadin was honestly startled.

‘Well, sorry,’ Loy went on. ‘He affects me that way.’

‘I can understand. I’m surprised Warkannan let his nephew go off with him.’

‘I don’t know who Warkannan is, but he may not have had any choice. Soutan’s particularly good at getting young men to follow him. He needs someone to wait on him, after all. He’s not the kind to take care of his own horses or split his own firewood.’

‘Well, that’s what I saw Arkazo doing, all right, taking care of the horses. I wonder why they’re riding east? I hope it doesn’t mean that Zayn’s dead. It might.’

‘You must be worried sick.’

‘No. It might also mean that Zayn’s alive, but the man he was hunting is dead.’

‘He was what?’

‘It’s too complicated to explain. I
am
worried, I guess.’

‘I’d be, in your position. Though I’ll bet you won’t go all to pieces like I did, if something’s happened to him. When Oskar drowned, I mean, I hardly knew where I was for months.’

‘And Rozi?’

‘What energy I had went to her, of course. There wasn’t much left over. She was really devastated. I wonder if that’s why Soutan meant so much to her? Sort of a substitute father.’

Ammadin’s grey suddenly tossed up its head and snuffled at the evening breeze. All three horses moved with a little hop of hobbled forelegs; the chestnut stamped a hind leg and snorted. Loy scrambled to her feet.

‘You’d better get that weapon,’ Ammadin said. ‘I’ll put another log on the fire.’

In a few minutes they understood why the ChaMeech had named these predators yap-packers. Yap they did, and loudly, continually, a stutter of sound against the quiet night like the clapping of a dozen pairs of hands. Most likely they deliberately panicked their prey, as the sabre lizards did, in order to cut the weak and aged members out of a herd. Ammadin stood by the blazing fire with a stone in each hand, Loy stood on the other side with her weapon at the ready and the pack slung from her back. The silver tube looked so flimsy that Ammadin doubted if it would do much good. Death spirits! she thought. As if I’d believe that!
The yapping came closer, louder. The black gelding whinnied and tried to dance, pulling at the tether rope, but the hobbles kept him in place. Her grey snorted; the chestnut merely trembled in abject terror.

‘A dozen of them, maybe,’ Loy said.

‘That sounds about right, yes.’

The yapping sounded again, quite close; then suddenly the pack fell silent. Ammadin could hear them rustling through the grass; they were coming straight for camp. She could smell them now, a sour beast-stink like spoiled keese. All at once something gleamed at the edge of the circle of firelight. Eyes appeared, gleaming red, and the glistening blue-grey skin of an animal’s head. It yapped, the mouth opened to reveal teeth, a lot of teeth. The horses whinnied, danced, huddled as close together as they could get. Other eyes appeared, gleaming; other skins glistened. One bold reptile stepped forward, fully in the light.

‘Small?’ Loy whispered. ‘Maybe to a ChaMeech.’

Ammadin nodded and hefted stones that suddenly seemed useless. The creatures stood a good three feet at the shoulder on six agile-looking legs. The yap-packer snuffled open-mouthed and took a step forward, its flat tail lashing. The others followed with one cautious step, a pause, a glance at the creature in the lead.

‘Lock,’ Loy said. ‘Fire.’

Something slithered like a noiseless rope, a flash, a gleam, light that was not firelight. The leader’s head exploded before it could even scream. The force knocked it back, jerked it around. Blood and grey matter spewed everywhere. Legs scrabbled, and it fell. The rest of the creatures squealed and cowered, shoving one another as they burst out yapping.

‘Lock,’ Loy said. ‘Fire.’

Another head burst, spattering blood and bone over the pack members nearest by. The beasts reared up, leapt back, turned on their middle legs with a kick of the back pair. The yapping turned to howls as they fled, screeching and scrabbling through the grass. Ammadin suddenly remembered the stones she held and let them fall to the ground. For a long time the two women could hear the pack, howling in terror, farther and farther away, until at last they heard nothing but the wind in high grass. The horses quieted as the howls died, and the wind scoured the last of the stink.

‘I owe you an apology,’ Ammadin said. ‘Those really are death spirits, aren’t they?’

‘To tell you the truth,’ Loy said, ‘I honestly don’t know how this thing works. But it does. Think they’ll be back?’

‘I doubt it. They acted like they had some intelligence, not much, maybe, but enough to follow a leader. They’re probably thinking, oh well, I bet they weren’t tasty anyway.’

Loy laughed, but it was an odd sound that hovered on the edge of a sob. ‘I’ve never killed anything before but bugs,’ she said. ‘And it’s disgusting. Really fucking disgusting.’

Ammadin turned to look at her face and saw firelight dancing across dead-pale skin. The hand holding the weapon hung at her side; Loy suddenly raised the other one to her mouth.

‘Are you going to throw up?’ Ammadin said.

She shook her head in a violent no, then turned and rushed for the latrine ditch beyond the camp. Ammadin could hear her vomiting. Ammadin walked over to the first dead yap-packer and squatted down next to it. It looked meaty, tough most likely, but meaty. As the leader it would have had first feed on all the kills. Beyond that, she had no idea what to do with it. She’d never cooked an animal in her life, and the only one she’d ever skinned was the saur for her cloak. She’d done a messy enough job on that, too.

In a few minutes Loy came back in full control of herself. She joined Ammadin, took her knife from her belt, and poked it experimentally into the dead yap-packer’s middle shoulder.

‘We’ll have to stew this to eat it,’ Loy said. ‘If I gut and clean it, though, we can take at least part of the carcass with us and cook it while we wait for Water Woman. We might as well use that kettle the guild bursar foisted off on me. Or will the pack horse rebel if we make it carry a dead animal?’

‘If you drain the carcass and wrap it in grass, I don’t see why it would. But can you do that?’

‘Yes. It’s done dying. I’ve cleaned plenty of game. It was seeing the heads – oh merde –’ Her voice trailed off.

‘Don’t think about it! Should I go haul in the other one?’

‘Let’s see how smart they are. Leave it out there as a warning. We won’t even be able to eat all of this one.’ She snorted like a horse. ‘Small! You better tell Water Woman about that.’

Had it not been for his watch, Warkannan would have lost not merely track of time but Time itself, or so he felt. The constant clatter of wheels on tracks made it impossible to speak and hard to think, and while it was loud, it was also oddly soothing. In a little pool of dim light the cart kept hurtling through the tunnel. The ChaMeech kept loping and booming, sending waves of thunder ahead of them into the darkness. The H’mai men took turns standing with the horses and sitting to rest. Standing in the jouncing cart pained Jezro’s twisted leg so badly that eventually Warkannan and Zayn insisted he stay sitting. On and on, rattling and lurching – Warkannan had no idea of how fast they were going or how many miles they’d travelled. From bitter experience he knew that ChaMeech males could keep up this pace for an entire day.

Every now and then Warkannan would take out his watch and call out the hours like a sentry on fort duty. Thirteen hundred came and went; fourteen hundred, fifteen, eighteen followed. Up on the surface the sun would be hanging low in the sky, but still the ChaMeech ran in their easy lope. Although Zayn seemed calm, Warkannan dismissed the appearance. Discipline would keep a man together on the outside even when his mind was half-torn to pieces. He could remember the ordeal they had shared, and how, at the very end, when they were safe with the regiment around them, he had suddenly realized how young Sergeant Benumar was, from a joke Zahir made, and the look in his eyes when he’d made it. He was no more than twenty then, Warkannan thought. He must have lied about his age to enlist.

Warkannan was just taking out his watch again when the ChaMeech in harness suddenly let out a burst of high-pitched sounds, clearly audible as words. All six began to slow down, and the cart jerked and swung until at last they walked in unison. The lavender female got to her feet and pointed down the tunnel, where another stone platform was emerging from the darkness. With one last jerk and wrench, the barge stopped.