Survivor (24 page)

He let her go, moved back toward the wall, seeming to dematerialize before he reached it. He was doing his best now, and he was invisible. He spoke once more, his voice seeming to come from nowhere.

"Deny that I am here. Use time."

Alanna took his dishes hurriedly and shut them in the cabinet with Neila's clean dishes. As she was sitting down again, they heard Natahk's voice.

"You will open the door, Verrick, or we will burn the house."

Jules got up quickly and opened the door.

Natahk stood just outside with a burning torch in his hand. He was surrounded by a tight half circle of other Garkohn. Too many Garkohn—twenty, perhaps twenty-five. "You will send out the Tehkohn Hao," Natahk said.

Jules stepped back as though in surprise, managed to seem bewildered. He stared at the torch. "What are you talking about? What's going on?"

It was a good act, Alanna thought. But Natahk was unimpressed. He gestured with his torch, then stepped back, well away from the door. Another Garkohn stepped up and threw a bucket full of something through the open doorway. Jules was drenched with it, and much of the room was spattered. The faint but distinctive odor of it told them all what it was. Lamp oil. It was pressed from a kind of nut that the Garkohn raised—that they had taught the Missionaries to raise. In the lamps, it burned with a bright steady yellow flame. It would give the dry wood of the cabin a fast start toward total destruction. Natahk spoke again.

"The Tehkohn Hao will come out, or you will all burn." He had already begun to come forward with the torch when Diut's unmistakable voice rang out.

"Garkohn!"

Natahk stopped, moved back from the door. His manner changed abruptly as he saw Diut seem to materialize out of the wall behind Neila. Natahk brightened his coloring pridefully toward white as he spoke. "You will come out."

"Put out the fire," said Diut.

"You do not give orders here, blue one. You will come out!"

Diut hesitated for as long as he dared. Alanna watched him, wondering whether he, like Jules, was to be drenched with lamp oil. Perhaps he wondered the same thing. He moved slowly, cautiously, toward the door, then suddenly sprang through the doorway in a leap that carried him well into the half circle. It was the kind of leap that might have carried him onto the back of an unwary animal. Now, it carried him into the midst of Garkohn who were not wary enough.

Startled, the Garkohn drew back, crouched, ready to defend. But Diut could have gone through them almost effortlessly if that had been his purpose. Instead, seeing no more oil to endanger him, Diut straightened, faced Natahk.

Natahk stared at him for several seconds, then turned back to the house. "And you!" He spoke to the three Verricks. "His friends. You will come out."

Jules, Neila, and Alanna trailed out slowly. Natahk set one guard on Jules and Neila, and another on Alanna. "Listen to nothing she says," he told Alanna's guard. "If she does not obey, kill her."

The hunter flashed white and looked at Alanna grimly.

For a moment, Alanna stared back at him. Then she looked away, thinking. He was an ordinary-looking member of his clan—a burly man, shorter than Alanna, but heavier, and no doubt, stronger. Alanna would have a chance to kill or disable him only if she was fast enough to get in the first blow, and accurate enough to make it count.

The Garkohn closed a complete circle around Diut, herding him out toward the common where a small fire burned. Alanna knew from having watched mock duels that it would still have been a simple matter for Diut to break out of the circle. He could have escaped into the shadows, hidden, and gone over the wall at his leisure. But he chose to stay and bait Natahk. He had promised Jeh and Kehyo a diversion. He was doing his part. If only they were doing theirs. Alanna found herself listening for shouts beyond the wall already even though she knew it was too soon.

Natahk joined the circle, faced Diut. "How interesting, Tehkohn Hao, to find
you
conferring with the Missionary leader. These people must be more important to you than I thought."

"I have found them useful."

Natahk yellowed. "They will wish they had been less useful."

"That is your affair."

"So? Has their usefulness ended so quickly? Why not use them once more. Call them out of their houses to help you. I have many fighters outside who would gladly kill them all!"

Diut said nothing.

Natahk looked at Jules. "You have betrayed your people, Missionary. And you know our way with traitors." He looked at a huntress who stood just outside the circle. "Build up the fire." Again he faced Diut. "I think we will make the fire for you too, Tehkohn Hao."

Diut watched him warily.

"Have no fear though. We will not kill you. We will only revive the old custom—the custom that my people had almost forgotten. Since no Garkohn Hao has been born to us, we will make a Garkohn Hao."

It was the grisly old custom that Diut had already almost fallen victim to among the desert people. A tribe that could neither buy a Hao nor produce one themselves stole one. They crippled him, kept him. The custom, Diut had told Alanna, was based on the belief that even the most bitter vengeful captive Hao was better than no Hao at all. Such a Hao was not a leader. He was a symbol of power, of unity, of good fortune. This reverence for the Hao, for the blue, was the nearest thing the Kohn had to a religion. But it was a religion that Natahk denied. His people might feel more secure with a captive Hao, but Natahk would not. He was acting solely from vengeance.

Diut's coloring took on new intensity, became luminescent. He took a long slow look at the Garkohn surrounding him. "You have been without a Hao for too long," he told Natahk. "You have forgotten how difficult we are to hold."

"When we have burned your legs, holding you will be a simple matter," said Natahk.

"Do you think that I will submit to your fire?" said Diut. "Come. Attack! You have forgotten what the blue means. I will refresh your memory!"

The Garkohn of the circle could not quite hide their reaction. There was a slight but general yellowing among them. The Hao were creatures of legendary fighting prowess. Diut was exploiting the fact that the Garkohn were not sure how much was only legend. Or most of them were not.

"You hold him captive in your midst for the second time and you are still afraid," shouted Natahk. "You still think he is something other than a large Kohn. His size makes him a little stronger than one of you, but not stronger than all of you together. He is no more than a man!" He looked toward the space on the common where the huntress and a hunter who had helped her carry wood from alongside one of the cabins were building up the fire. It was growing promisingly.

"Put him on the ground," Natahk told his hunters.

The habit of obedience was strong enough to overcome the fear of at least four of them. These four surged toward Diut. And Diut waited for them.

He let the first of them reach him, then he jabbed sharply into the man's throat. Blocking, turning, he drove a fist into the solar plexus of a huntress, literally lifting her off the ground for a moment.

He moved almost too quickly for the eye to follow, striking, turning, kicking, using his longer reach, his greater strength and speed, to overwhelm his attackers.

In seconds, all four were dead or dying. A fifth who had attacked from directly behind Diut now dragged himself away beyond the Tehkohn Hao's reach, his right leg broken at the knee by a hard-driven backward kick.

Four dead, one injured before the others could even think. What was left of the circle threatened to dissolve.

"Hokah!" Natahk called out.

The huntress at the fire looked at him.

"Go out and get more fighters."

And Diut countered, "Stop, Hokah!"

The huntress paused uncertainly.

"Why sacrifice more of your people to the ambitions of a bad leader?" Diut looked around the circle. "It is Natahk who wants me—so that he can say he has bested a Hao. Let him best me then." He faced Natahk squarely.

"I challenge, First Hunter."

"You are my prisoner," said Natahk. "You have no right to challenge. Go, Hokah"

The huntress went.

"So?" said Diut. "Who imprisons me?" He let his gaze rest on individual members of the circle. "Who dies next?"

Natahk called to the hunter still at the fire. "Ihiateh, bring torches."

The hunter seized two burning brands and passed them to a hunter and huntress within the circle. Instantly, Diut attacked.

He broke through the circle now, lifted the first Garkohn who tried to stop him, and threw the man at the two who were approaching with torches.

The two hunters guarding the Verricks looked anxiously at the deteriorating situation. They seemed fearful of disobeying Natahk and leaving their prisoners, but they could see that their help was needed.

Abruptly, the hunter guarding Jules and Neila hurled himself into the fighting, helping those who had managed to seize more torches and drive Diut back against the wall of a storehouse. Alanna's guard was more conscientious. He decided to kill her before he joined in.

Without warning, he slashed at her with a stubby hand. Alanna dodged backward swiftly, but seemed to stumble in bumbling Missionary awkwardness. Angry at having missed once, the hunter lunged toward her—directly into the hard jab that she had aimed at his throat. His fur cushioned the blow somewhat, and forced her to strike without the certainty she would have felt in striking a person whose throat she could see. But the hunter's own momentum helped her—gave her blow more force. He fell, writhing, making gurgling sounds through his ruined larynx.

At that moment, there was a distant shout, then much shouting from beyond the wall. Garkohn alerting each other that Tehkohn had infiltrated their ranks.

The Garkohn inside, who had been on the verge of overwhelming Diut by fire and sheer weight of numbers, froze where they were. Diut, who had not been startled by the sounds, struck down one of them and ran for the darkness behind the Missionaries' houses.

A pair of Garkohn hurried to open the gates, but before Natahk and what was left of his party could go out, several more Garkohn surged in, panicked, babbling that the Tehkohn had found allies—that at least two tribes attacked them.

Alanna saw Natahk kill one of his own men in rage, heard him order them back out to fight. "Fools! You're the only allies that the Tehkohn need! You've let them trick you somehow! You're like children and nonfighters. Go back!"

His commands and threats drove them back, but Alanna wondered if some of the yellow they showed was more in anger at him than in fear of the Tehkohn. Natahk followed his people out, Diut forgotten, and plunged into the battle.

Alanna and Jules moved at the same time to close the gates. The Garkohn could get in again, over the wall, but it would be harder, take longer.

The only Garkohn left in the settlement were the dead, and the one injured man whose leg Diut had broken. "He sat alone on the common, leaning against a tree, his body yellow with fear and pain. He watched them, probably waiting for them to kill him.

Alanna

The gathering was small. I invited Jeh and Cheah, of course. And I would have invited Gehnahteh and Choh. But Diut said flatly, "This is a time for blue, not yellow. There are other times for nonfighters."

"But wouldn't your blue balance their yellow?" I asked foolishly. I had been with the Tehkohn long enough to know better than to ask such a question.

"What balance?" said Diut with annoyance. "This is a time for as much blue as possible to bring luck to the child, and to you. It is the custom. Do you think Gehnahteh and Choh would be grateful to you for inviting them in violation of tradition?"

I sighed and invited Tahneh and Ehreh—their age spots did not seem to count against their blue. And Diut insisted on inviting Kehyo and Kahlahtkai—though not for their blue.

"I want Kehyo's foolishness to end completely," he said. "This gathering will tell her what, somehow, my words have never quite communicated to her." Again there was no arguing with him, but this time I smiled. If nothing else, I approved of the message he was trying to give Kehyo.

I was beginning to see him as my husband, to realize as though for the first time, that I had no real choice but to accept his superstitions and his relatives as I accepted him. It was different, now that I had to view my acceptance as a permanent thing. This was the way I would live. The Tehkohn were the people whose lives I would share. The Missionaries would become only a memory. I could never think of returning to them with a "half-human" child. Nor could I think of abandoning such a child, who would surely be different and as much alone in its strangeness as I was.

I had thought about it and thought about it and thought about it before I told Diut, and I had been afraid. For the first time in my life, I longed to be the wife of some ordinary Bible-quoting Missionary man. Someone whose eyes really were as round as Diut said mine were. Someone furless and human-looking. I was terrified.

Then came anger—at Diut, at the child, at my own body… How could such a thing happen? Most Missionaries had never even considered the possibility. Jules and Neila had—with disgust. They had first seen the overt sexuality of the Garkohn as confirmation that the Garkohn were animals. Then the Garkohn came to understand how easily the Missionaries were shocked and offended. Obligingly, the Garkohn conformed to Missionary custom when they were in the Mission colony. But still, Neila was concerned with their refusal to wear clothing.

"Jules, I've seen some of our boys looking at their women," she had said.

And Jules had made a sound of disgust. "Just about the same ones we would have seen looking at goats and female guard dogs back on Earth," he had said.

"But what if they…?"

"They won't. At least not without a lot of co-operation from those bull women. And if a Garkohn woman does co-operate, what's she got to complain about? I might let the community loose on the first boy who gets caught at it though. It's something to put a stop to early."