Star Hunters (15 page)

Breathing with difficulty, he tugged a strap loose, then started on another.

“Sulking like a baby.” She sneered, “Won't listen to a woman, will you, big man.”

He swung around, arm raised for a quick slap, stung to rage by her words.

“Go on, hit me. Prove what a man you are.”

He dropped the hand and turned away, sick with self-disgust.

“All right, now that's over.…” She touched his arm. The shock of joining staggered both, then Aleytys fought loose. “Sit down,” she said hoarsely. She went with him to one of the rock piles that broke the thatching of brush and grass.

He sat and looked up at her. “What's the point?” he said wearily.

She knelt beside him, “I'm a healer, Manoreh. Just sit still and let me work.” She closed her eyes and reached for her power river. The black water came cool and powerful into her. She slid the tips of her fingers lightly down his ribs, past the pelvis, then down the injured leg. The strains and bruises located, she flattened her hands against him and sent the water flowing to heal.

When the healing was done, she tried to pull her hands away. Her flesh stuck to his even through the leather of his jerkin and shorts. She took a deep breath, concentrated on the hands flattened over his ribs and over the big muscle of his thigh. She called up her ability to shield and slid a barrier between them. Tried again to lift her hands. This time they slid easily off him.

She met his startled look. “For a moment I couldn't move. Stuck.” She looked down at her hands, rubbed them together. “Started to panic.”

He stared past her at the horizon. Both could sense Haribu hovering here, chuckling maliciously. Aleytys shuddered. Manoreh shuddered. Both sat silent until the echoes of that laughter passed away and the presence retreated. Then Manoreh straightened. He slid his hand down over his body. “Useful gift.”

Aleytys smiled and reached out, then jerked her hand away. “I'll have to change my habits.” Her hand dropped onto her thigh. “Well? What now?”

He glanced at the dead faras. “Looks like I walk. My own fault. I didn't know.” He turned back to her. “We can't ride double.”

“Very bad idea.” She suppressed an urge to laugh, saw him puzzled as he felt her amusement. “We take turns walking,” she said firmly.

He started to protest. Then he shrugged. “We're just going through the motions anyway. Haribu can pick us up any time he wants.” He looked over the line where the mountain ridge met the sky. “No point in wearing ourselves out.”

She did laugh then shook her head. “The best bait wiggles vigorously to attract the prey.”

Manoreh snorted. He stood up, looking down at her. “Let's go.”

They moved up into the mountains following the river and the scattered piles of hare pellets. Higher and higher into the mountains, with breath coming in short pants and sweat streaming down their faces. Behind them clouds gathered over the Sawasawa but here the sun shone through the thin air and sucked the moisture from their bodies. Lips cracked, noses began to bleed as the membranes dried out.

About midafternoon Aleytys stopped, scowled at the sun, then left the scratch trail and scrambled down the unsteady scree to the narrowing river below. She ducked her head under the water and splashed happily about. After a while she looked up and saw Manoreh squatting beside the water.

“Take a break. Try this.” She splashed at him and laughed as he pulled back fastidiously. Even though she was fully clothed, he radiated embarrassment. She lay back and shook her head at him. “I was about to dry up and blow away. You're not much better off, friend.” He stood and walked around a bend in the stream. After a few minutes she could hear water splashing. Once again she shook her head. “Dumb,” she muttered. Reluctantly she crawled out of the river and climbed cautiously up the rock pile to the patient faras.

Manoreh joined her, water beading on his silver-green scales. Aleytys kicked at a pile of hare pellets. “Hundreds of hares have come along here. Think Haribu's breeding them?”

“Must be.” He scanned the mountains tilting up before them. “Why is he waiting?”

“Lazy maybe. Why bother when we're coming on our own? Maybe he just likes tormenting us. What do you think?”

“I think it's your turn to ride.”

The shadows were heavy and long when Manoreh put a hand on the faras's shoulder, stopping it. The sky was darkening, a few glowing clouds drifting toward the plain. “He sits there laughing at us.” He turned his head to stare toward faraway Kiwanji. After a moment's silence, he muttered, “It must be hell there now. Meme Kalamah! We have to finish this. Haribu! Where the hell are you?”

Aleytys looked around. They were close to water. There was dirt underfoot, a sparse covering of grass, some trees and down wood, and a patch of brush to cut the force of the wind. She slid off the faras. “I'm tired and hungry. Let's stop for the night. This is a good enough place to camp.”

Later she sat staring into the coals of their meager fire, sipping at a cup of cha and listening to Manoreh as he splashed about downstream, carefully out of sight. She smiled with amusement and a little affection. He irritated her but he was a good man to have on one's side in a fight. She turned her smile on the fire. It was a game they were playing. A deadly game. Their fire was a shout of defiance to Haribu, a sign telling him they knew he watched.

Manoreh came back holding his jerkin. The faint light from the coals gleamed on his hard, flat chest. Aleytys watched with tired pleasure as he knelt and reached for the hot cha-pot, folding a bit of leather jerkin around the metal handle. He poured a cup then sat down across the fire from her. “Why?”

“Appreciation of male beauty.” She chuckled. “I know. Very unfeminine of me.”

Then the cha pot was empty and the coals black. Overhead the moonring was a thin scattering of sparks. Manoreh was tidily packing the pots away. He was a careful man on the trail, would be ready to move with a minimum of delay if the need arose. Aleytys lay back and watched him stir about. When he finished spreading his blanket and was preparing to wrap himself for the night, she said, “Do we set watch?”

“Why?” He looked over his shoulder at her. “I'm a fool. Must sleep farther apart. Might help.” He watched her a minute then laughed. “Do I move or you?”

Aleytys echoed his amusement. “Since you're already settled.…” She jumped to her feet, carrying her blanket up with her. Still laughing, she started off around the bend then stopped and looked up as a dark shadow cut across the moonring and a whine smothered the night noises. She glanced back at Manoreh.

He was on his knees, struggling for calm, teetering on the edge of the watuk blindrage. Then he stood with a stubborn pride, projecting
DEFIANCE
at the circling skimmer.

Aleytys reached out with her talent, stroked mind fingers over the engine. She knew it now, knew its vulnerable places. She could wreck it in seconds with no more effort than it took to snap fingers. She glanced at Manoreh. Not the time for that now. The little fish was nibbling and would take them to the shark. Then the stun beam hit and there was nothing.

The Fa-kichwa Gakpeh stood on the rounded top of the great rock and gazed down on the Sawasawa. The morning's storm was passing slowly off, uncovering the isolated patches of green that marked the locations of the Holdings. Behind him the clouds were beginning to remake and slide down from the peaks for another storm that would break over the valley early the next morning. He pulled his chul-fur cloak about him. The air dropping down over the cliff was damp and chill. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the land below. There were wildings down there, he knew it, running in and out of the abandoned houses. They always came once the hares had cleared the way. The hares. He leaned forward, peering intently at the gray-green juapepo scum. No white down there. Hares must all be at Kiwanji. He smiled fiercely. Let them purge that cursed place. Let it burn and be left empty. He brooded a while over the land, sick and angry at the thought of defiling wildings running free over Vodufa Holdings.

An hour later he was riding down the mountainside with his company—Sniffer, Second, Fireman and hounds. Riding toward the nearest Holding.

In Kiwanji the blindrage was stirring again among the watuk males. More and more of them were pacing the rutted streets around the sides of Chwereva complex, their booted feet abrading the hard-packed earth, stirring heavy clouds of red dust as they walked. But even the blindrage wasn't enough to drive them against those massive walls of machine-cut stone with the energy guns mounted like dark, ugly demons at the four corners of the compound.

The blindrage turned inward, driving watuk against watuk until the street stank with the putrefying bodies of men knifed or beaten to death.

In the shelters the women huddled together trying to endure terror and tension. Some couldn't stand it any longer and went silently to the low stone wall at the psi-screen. They stood staring out at the bulging brown eyes staring relentlessly back at them. For hours they stood. Then slowly, one by one, or in groups of two or three, sometimes holding hands for comfort, they knelt, Bighouse woman and Bound together, caste distinctions buried in their common terror. They touched foreheads to the ground, then stepped silently over the wall, giving themselves to the hares as in other places and other times women driven beyond endurance had danced off cliffs or into the sea.

Inside Chwereva the boys lay hidden still, waiting, eating the trail rations Agoteh had given them and drinking water stolen from the stable taps late at night. Umeme had climbed the wall and looked down into the Tembeat. With a friend waiting at the top of the wall to give warning if any Chwerevaman came around, he went down into the ashes of the stable and flitted through broken shadows into the Tembeat.

He came back filled with a bitter anger and overwhelming grief. At first he couldn't tell them what he'd found, but later that night he did—needing to purge his memories of the horror.

Kitosime dipped the gourd into the dark water and lifted it, holding it above the stone basin, drops falling back in a slowing patter to pock with silver the mirror surface. Overhead the two stone lamps flickered red and gold, breathing a fragrant black mist at the low ceiling already blackened from two centuries of ceremony.

With great concentration she poured the water on the five powerstones, deriving her ceremony from images that welled up from deep inside her, humming intensely a rising and falling tune that came from the same darkness. Her body vibrated with it and it grew stronger and stronger as the stones woke, answering to the names she gave them. Black Wehweli. Agodoz, amber-brown with paler spots. Leghu, green and white like frozen water. And the Twins, both a pale, pale blue. In the half-light of the roof shrine with the storm wheeling in great circles outside, the rain coming in gusts against lowered louvers, lightning turning the darkness white, the power stones hissed under the touch of the water and sang with the power in their pattern. The air shook around her.

The eyestones waited in front of her knees. She felt them waiting. Taut. Desiring. Her body hummed with their desire. She struggled. Sought. The humming clashed, then began merging. She felt it merge. Felt the power coming into her hands, her arms. She lifted the gourd high, then dashed the last of the water on the eyestones. She swayed her upper body as the humming power consumed her. She felt a great heat, saw flickers of red and yellow. Images stirred against the darkness, swung around and around in dizzying circles, around and around, crossing behind her and coming to the front again, blurred glows that sharpened into faces.…

Hodarzu's face. Puzzled. Wrinkling to cry.

Fa-men bent over him, assegais dripping red. Blood running, pumping out the spear tips. Changing to smoke figures. Wavering. Fading. Changing.…

Manoreh flat on his back, pinned to a table by broad flat straps, naked, head shaved, a web of light obscuring his face.

The Woman. The Hunter woman, red-headed. Standing. Flames leaping out from her like sun rays. Power. Deadly. Killing, power radiating out from her. To touch Manoreh. To enter him and explode outward.…

Haribu. Thin horrible creature. Old. Obscenely old. Looking young but old. Green eyes stone-hard. Withering to death, the old man. Evil. Haribu.…

Fa-men standing over her. She crouched on a floor holding Hodarzu. Bent over her. Threatening her. Pressing down on her. Fa-men. Fa-men.…

Abruptly the humming power was gone, wrenching itself free as waves of need swept across her. She blinked, dazed, struggling to control her own terror awakened by the images, then heard the cries coming from outside.

“'Tosime! 'Tosime! Mama 'Tosime!” The children's voices pulled her. Once again her foot caught in the hem and she stumbled, slamming her head into the door post. For a moment she was paralyzed by the shock, then she fumbled her way outside and stood blinking into a lightning flash as a gust of rain caught her in the face.

“You're all soaked! What is it?”

Shielding her eyes from the water streaming down her face, S'kiliza stared up at her, body shaking with anxiety. “Mama, come down.” She took Kitosime's hand and pulled her to the stairs. The other children, silent but projecting their own terror, followed, crowding close against her.

At the stairs she lifted her dresscloth high and fled downward; pushed on by the panic of her children. The big front door was open. She ran through to the porch, dropping the cloth as she passed the door. She stopped, smoothing her dress into place with shaking hands.

An adult wilding stood panting beside the Mother Well, rain streaming thickly over the ingrained dirt on his face. His right hand was closed tightly about his left forearm. Blood welled out between his bony fingers and spattered slowly onto the court tiles to mix with the film of rain water and spread into wide, pale smudges of red. He was thin, starved to the bone, but he gazed at her with a stubborn pride that reminded her for a fleeting instant of Manoreh. She brushed the thought impatiently aside and turned to Mara. “Mara, there are clean cloths in the kitchen. Bring them here, would you, little one?” As the girl ran into the house, Kitosime smiled at the other children. “Do you think you could persuade your friend to come up here out of the wet?”