They Fly at Ciron (7 page)

Really though, Uk thought, if Mrowky was going to do her now, he’d best take her out from under the light—behind the building; not for propriety, but just because Nactor or one of the officers might ride by. (No, Uk reflected, Mrowky wasn’t too swift.) Favoring his right leg, Uk started forward to tell his friend to take it around the corner.

The redhead, Uk saw, over Mrowky’s shoulder, had the stunned look of all the villagers. She was almost three inches taller than the little guy. Mrowky had one hand wrapped in her hair, so that her mouth was open. As his other hand passed over it, the redhead’s arm gave a kind of twitch.

Which is when Uk heard the howl.

From the darkness, black hair whipping back and a body under it like an upright bull’s, the big man rushed, naked and screaming. Rush and scream were so wild that, for a moment, .Uk thought they had nothing to do with Mrowky and the girl; they would simply take this crazed creature through the light and into the dark again. Then Uk glimpsed the wild eyes, that, as the light lashed across them, seemed explosions in the man’s head. The teeth were bared—the image, Uk thought later, of absolute, enraged, and blood-stopping evil. Under his armor, chills reticulated down Uk’s shoulders, danced in the small of Uk’s back.

The wild
peasant was heading right toward Mrowky and the girl.

All Uk had a chance to do was bark Mrowky’s name (tasting blood in his mouth as he did so); the careening man collided with them; for a moment he covered—seemed even to absorb—them both. Then he whirled. With a great sweep of one arm, he tore Mrowky’s helmet from his head—which meant the leather strap must have cut violently into Mrowky’s neck before it broke—if it didn’t just tear over his chin and break Mrowky’s nose. The big peasant whirled back; and Uk saw that he had Mrowky by the neck, in both of his hands—the guy’s hands were huge, too! And Mrowky was such a little guy—

With sword up and aching knee, Uk lunged.

The big man bent back (a little taller than Uk, thicker in the chest, in the arms, in the thighs), drew up one bare foot and kicked straight out. The kick caught Uk in the belly. Though he didn’t drop it, Uk’s sword went flailing. He reeled away, tripped on something, and went down. Blinking and losing it all because of the blood in his eyes, Uk pushed himself up again; but the redhead was gone (doubtless into the dark he’d been about to urge Mrowky into) and the peasant, still howling, was flinging—yeah, flinging!—Mrowky from one side to the other, backing away. Mrowky’s head—well, a head doesn’t hang off
anyone’s
neck that way! And the peasant was backing into the dark—was gone into it, dragging Mrowky with him!

Uk got out a curse, got to his feet, got started forward—and tripped on another villager who was actually moving. Wildly, he chopped his blade down to still her. (Yeah, in the neck!) Then he started off in the direction they’d gone, but not fast enough, he knew—damn the knee!

*

On the roof of
Hara’s hut, Qualt crouched, watching Rimgia, watching Rahm, watching Uk. (But he tried not to watch what Rahm was doing to the little soldier whose helmet Rahm had torn free.) Qualt turned away. Behind him something huge and dark and shadowy spread out from him on both sides, moving slightly in the breeze, like breathing—watching too. When he looked back, Qualt saw Rimgia stagger into the shadows around the council-house corner—and, in the shadows, saw Abrid run up to her, seize her by the shoulder, demand if she were all right, and, somehow, over the length of his own request, realize that she was not; and slip his other arm around her. Looking right and left, and totally unaware of what had gone on just around the corner (Rimgia’s eyes were fixed and wide, as if she were seeing it all again), Abrid helped his sister off along the council-building wall.

Qualt had gripped the edging of twigs and thatch so tightly that even on his hard and callused palms it left stinging indentations. His hands loosened now, and he moved forward, as if to vault down and pursue them. But the thing behind him—did it reach for his shoulder? No, for it had not quite the hands we do. But a dark wing swept around before him, like a shadow come to life to restrain whoever would bolt loose.

And turning, Qualt whispered, words lurching between heart beats that still near deafened, halting as the trip from one roof—over the violence—to another: “… this is—what thou seest if …thou flyest at Çiron!

Something had happened to Rahm—not to the part of him staggering through the chaos of villagers and soldiers. Rather, it
happened to the part growing inside—the thing that had begun forming when the bearded rider had shot Kern. It had needed a long time to grow: minute after minute after minute of mayhem. But the growing thing finally got large enough to fill up and join with something in Rahm’s hands, in Rahm’s thighs, in Rahm’s gut. It filled him, or became him, or displaced him—however he might have said it, they all referred to the same. And when, from the darkness, Rahm had seen Rimgia and the little soldier leaning against the council building, saw him touch her that way in the overhead light, the thing inside, jerking and bloating to its full size, had taken him over, muscle and mouth, foot and finger.

When what happened next finished happening, Rahm had dragged the soldier halfway through the town—till he no longer pulled at Rahm’s wrists, till he no longer flailed, struggled, gurgled, till he was limp and still and hung from Rahm’s grip, as Rahm stood in darkness—choking out one and another rib-wrenching sob.

Horses’ hooves struck around him. Rahm heard a shout beside him. A blade—Rahm saw firelight run up sharpened metal—cut at his shoulder; and a sound that was not a sob but a roar tore up out of him. He’d hurled the little soldier’s corpse away (the flung body struck the sword from the soldier’s hand, knocked the soldier free of his horse) and fled—till much later Rahm hurled his own body, nearly a corpse, down among the foothills.

He lay in the woods at the mountains’ base, his cheek on his wrist; tears ran across the bridge of his nose, slippery over the back of his hand. Breath jerked into his lungs every half minute.

He lay in the leaves, gasping. His eyes boiled in their bone
cauldrons. His teeth clenched so tightly, it was surprising the enamel of one or another molar did not crack. His body shook now and again, as if someone struck him hugely, on the head, on the foot. What kept going through his mind was, mostly, names. Names. In the dark woods, he tried to remember all the names he had spoken that day, from the time he’d first reached the field to the time he’d stood in the common. He would start to go through them, get lost—then try doggedly to start again, to remember them all this time. (What were they, again? What were they…?) Because, he knew, a third of those names—children’s, mothers’, fathers’, friends’—were no longer names of live people. And they mustn’t be forgotten. But his body, finally, shook a little less. They must
not…
Without his mind ever really stilling—

—dawn struck Rahm awake with gold.

He rolled and stood in a motion, blinking to erase unbearable dreams. He stood a long time. Once he turned, looked down the wooded slope, then off into the trees either side. He began to shake. Then, possibly to stop the shaking, he started to walk—lurching, rather, for the first few minutes—upward. Possibly he walked because walking was most of what he’d been doing for the past week. And the relief from walking, the feeling of a wander at its end, the astonishing feeling of coming home—something terrible had happened to that feeling.

Rahm walked—

Once in a while, he would halt and shake his head, very fast—a kind of shudder. Then he walked again.

The trees thinned. As Rahm stumbled over the higher stones, bare rock lifted free of vegetation, to jut in crags around him—or to crumble under uncertain handholds. Soon he was climbing more than walking. After an hour—or was it two?—he came
round a ledge, to find himself at a crevice. Fifteen feet high, a cave mouth opened narrowly before him.

F
ROM
inside, a flapping sounded—as of
a single wing. Rahm eased along the ledge. Still numb, he had no sense of danger. His motivation was a less than passive curiosity—more the habitual actions of someone often curious in the past.

A fallen branch, split along its length, lay on the rock. Morning light reflected on the clean, inner wood, still damp from the breaking. Like metal. Like a polished sword gleaming in firelight—

Rahm grabbed up the stick, as if seizing the reality would halt the memory. He shook it—as if to shake free the image from it. Then, a moment on, the shaking turned to a hefting. One hand against the stone wall, the other holding the stick, Rahm stepped within the cave mouth, narrowing his eyes. A slant beam from a hole toward the roof lit something gray—something alive, something shifting, something near the rocky roof. That something moved, moved again, shook itself, and settled back.

Rahm stepped further inside. Looking up, frowning now, he called out—without a word.

A mew returned.

Rahm took another step. The gray thing made the flapping sound again.

As his eyes adjusted to the shadow, Rahm could make out its kite shape. It hung in a mass of filaments—one wing dangling. A tangle of webbing filled most of the cavity. Ducking under strands, Rahm took another step. Leaves ceased to crumble under his heel. Within, the softer soil was silent. He glanced when his foot struck something: a bone chuckled over rock. Rahm looked up again, raised his branch, brought its end near the trapped creature.

He didn’t touch it. Between the branch’s end and the leathery wing were at least six inches. But suddenly the mewing rose in pitch, turning into a screech.

Rahm whirled—because something had flung a shadow before him, passing through the light behind:

Suspended nearly four feet from the ground, a bulbous…
thing
swayed within the cave entrance, dropped another few inches—much too slowly to be falling—then settled to the ground. It scuttled across the rock, paused, made a scritting noise, then danced about on many too many thin legs. Rahm jabbed his stick toward it.

Mandibles clicked and missed.

It ran up the wall, then leapt forward. Rahm struck at it and felt the stick make contact. The thing landed, spitting, and hopped away, one leg injured and only just brushing the earth. Behind it trailed a gray cord—the thickness, Rahm found himself thinking, of the yarn Hara might use on
her loom.

It jumped again. Rahm swung again.

Only it wasn’t jumping at him; rather it moved now to one side of the cave, now to the other:

Two more cords strung across the cave’s width.

And the cave was not wide.

Backing from it, Rahm felt his leg and buttock push against some of the filaments behind, which gave like softest silk. But as he moved forward again, they held to him—and when one pulled free of his shoulder, it stung, sharply and surprisingly.

This time, when it leaped across the cave, Rahm jumped high and, with his branch, caught it full on its body. It collapsed from the arc of its leap, landing on its back, legs pedaling. Rahm lunged forward, to thrust his stave through the crunching belly. Seven legs closed around the stick (the injured one still hung free): it scritted, it spat. Then all eight hairy stalks fell open. One lowered against Rahm’s calf, quivered there, stilled, then quivered again. The hairs were bristly.

Blood trickled the stone, wormed between stone and dirt and, as all the legs jerked in a last convulsion—Rahm almost dropped his branch—gushed.

Rahm pulled the stick free of the carapace and stepped back, breathing hard. He looked up at the thing trapped in the webbing above. He looked down at the fallen beast on its back. And above again—where cords, leaves, sunlight, dust motes, and movement were all confused. He raised the stick among the filaments. He did not bring the end near the
creature, but tried to pry among the threads in hope of breaking some—possibly even freeing it.

The branch went through them rather easily. The creature shifted above. Its free wing beat a moment.

Then, in a voice like a child’s, but with an odd timbre under it not a child’s at all, it said distinctly: “Use the blood!”

Rahm pulled his branch back sharply.

“To free me,” the voice went on—strained, as though its position was manifestly uncomfortable, “use the blood!”

“Thou speakest…!” Rahm said, haltingly, wonderingly.

“Just like you, groundling! Big voice but stuck to the earth! Come on, I tell you… use the blood!”

Rahm stepped back again. Then, because his foot went lower down (on that slanted rock) then he expected it to, he looked back sharply so as not to trip.

The cave-beast’s blood had rolled against one filament’s mooring on the stone—the cord’s base was steaming.

Now the filament came free, to swing over the cave floor. On a thought, Rahm pushed the stick’s bloody end against a clutch of cords beside him. There was a little steam. Half the cords parted. When he felt something warm by his foot, Rahm looked down: blood puddled against his instep. But, though it parted the cords, against his flesh it didn’t hurt or burn.

Rahm spoke, once more. “Thou wilt not hurt me if I free thee… ?”

“Free me and you are my friend!” The voice came on, like an exasperated child’s. “Quickly now, groundling—”

“Because,” Rahm went on, “I have been hurt too much when I thought what would come was friendship…”