22 The Grief of Tar-Thara
Tompa stared down the road, scratching. She’d already scratched enough that each stroke brought a tweak of pain, so now she rubbed her bottom with slow strokes, instead of scratching.
From behind her sounded the furtive scraping of a foot on rock. Tompa whirled.
It was Roussel, standing twenty feet behind her. His gaze slowly moved from below her waist to her face. They stared at each other. He opened his mouth, shut it. She bared her teeth. The silence seemed ready to explode.
“Sorry,” he said. “Guess I should have knocked.”
“What in hell is that supposed to mean?”
He glanced away from her guiltily.
Oh, yeah. In novels, she’d read about people knocking on doors before entering a room. It had seemed to her one of the nicer gordo customs. But he hadn’t knocked, hadn’t let her know he’d arrived, and he should have. “You perverted asshole!”
“I said I was sorry.” He moved his head from side to side in an uncomfortable, slap-happy way. “It’s just that, well, you’re beautiful, but I wasn’t trying—”
“No, no, no, no, no! Not now!” She thrust her arm toward the sharboo-cria and pointed. Taking a deep breath, she struggled to bring her voice under control. “Awmit has reached the middle of the herd of gloves. Can’t you see this isn’t the time for you to be male?”
Roussel looked from her face to the distant group of friendly Shons, whose arms flailed as they fought off the creatures. He looked back at her. “Okay.” After a pause, he added, “A herd of gloves?”
Coming from his mouth, her name for the little devils sounded harmless, even silly. “The nasty beasts that did this to me.” She raised one knee and ran a fingertip over the rash of dots sprinkled over her shin. The gentle touch was like placing a match to gasoline; her leg burst into itches. She lowered her leg, aware of Roussel’s scrutiny as she scratched until her foot touched the ground. “There were thousands of them. Big ones.”
Why bother trying to explain to a flap-hap? She turned from him and, strenuously ignoring the itching, began walking toward the battle between Shons and gloves. The Shon’s voices carried faintly to her ears, though she couldn’t understand the words.
Roussel wasn’t following her. “The other Shons will be right behind them,” he said. “We don’t have much of a lead.”
Tompa glanced longingly past him at the jumbled boulders of the landslide, only a few minutes up the road.
He followed the direction of her glance and nodded. “We might be able to lose them in there if we have enough of a head start, especially since I can guide us by the most direct route. We have to make it to the footbridge on the other side of the landslide before the hunters do.”
“But . . .” Her voice trailed away. If she plunged into the chaos of rocks now, she’d lose Awmit. She started forward and back, unable to decide whether to wait.
The matter was decided for her. The friendly Shons suddenly spread out from their tight formation and darted free of the gloves. One lagged behind, head low, staggering more than running. Tompa edged back, waiting for their arrival like a relay runner, prepared to sprint the instant she received the baton. Awmit, she was glad to see, led the way. Several gloves were attached to his legs—and half of one wiggled in his mouth.
Startled and more than a bit nauseated, Tompa realized she’d started scratching her thighs again. To keep her hands occupied, she cupped them around her mouth and shouted, “Hurry.” Awmit hurried past, swallowing the glove as he ran.
Tompa was running by the time the other converts reached her—except for the one bringing up the rear, who had slowed to a halt. The Shon managed one more step before she collapsed, face down, in the road. Her forehead made a sickening sound as it hit the stony pavement.
Tompa stopped. She inched toward the fallen Shon.
A low roar reached her. She looked down the road. The army of pursuers had rounded the bend by the sharboo-cria and spotted her.
“Graceful human!” Awmit grabbed her skirt, tugging so hard she grabbed the waistband in sudden panic. “Leave reverently the fatigued martyr.”
After a last glance at the fallen convert, Tompa followed the others. What in God’s name had she been thinking?
That was the problem, she hadn’t been thinking—just feeling, as in feeling responsible. Getting involved with others caused so damned many problems.
She grabbed Awmit’s hand and pulled him along faster. The roar behind her grew louder. She sprinted past one of the converts, then another. By now there was enough rock debris on the road that they had to weave too much to hold hands. Awmit kept up with her, but she knew he couldn’t maintain this pace for long.
Ahead, Roussel stood atop a boulder at the edge of the landslide, waving for the others to follow him. Skirting the base of the boulder looked like an easier path to Tompa, but the two converts ahead of her ran straight toward Dante. One of the converts dashed ahead to kneel on a flat, smaller rock in front of the boulder; the rock and her back formed steps leading halfway up the boulder. Without pausing, the second convert stepped on her back and then, with a hand from Dante, vaulted to the top of the boulder.
Awmit gave a burst of speed. Without slowing, he leaped onto the rock and then the back of the convert and from there, he bounced the rest of the way to the top—five feet, at least. Tompa didn’t know the old coot was so agile.
Roussel extended his hand. “Come on, Tompa.”
She glanced longingly at the wider, easier path along the base of the boulder. Another convert flew past her and duplicated Awmit’s feat of vaulting to the top. The Shon acting as a step gave a shuddering groan, but remained in place.
With a defiant glare at Roussel, Tompa started climbing the boulder to the right of both the convert and Roussel. She was halfway up and searching for her next handhold when the last convert bounded to the top of the rock. Tompa glanced down and saw the stepping-stool convert rise to her feet, wave her arms at the pursuers, and run off along the base of the boulder. Tompa caught one more glimpse of her heading downhill, away from the rest of them.
A rough hand grabbed her wrist.
“Hey!” she complained.
Without hesitation or ceremony, Roussel pulled her to the top of the boulder. Her knees scrapped against the rock.
“That way!” He pointed to a narrow pass between two large, sharp-edged rocks. Awmit repeated the command in his own language, then scooted toward the pass at the head of the dwindling band of converts.
“Move, damn it!” Roussel grabbed Tompa around the waist and shoved her along.
She seized his hand and flung it off her, but she moved.
“That was a brave little Shon,” he said.
Tompa watched Awmit squeeze between the rocks. “What do you mean?”
“The lady who made herself into a step, then tried to draw the hunters after herself, rather than you. It can’t be easy for a Shon to deliberately head off alone like that.” He ended with words muttered under his breath that she didn’t catch.
She turned sideways to pass through the narrow gap. “What did you say?”
“I started to say I hoped you appreciate the sacrifice.” Roussel crowded against her shoulder, hurrying her. “But I’m sure you don’t.”
On the other side of the gap, the four friendly Shons waited, rising up and down on their heels nervously. One of the converts held a club in each hand, reminding Tompa to grab one herself from the rucksack on Awmit’s back. It felt good in her hand.
Almost bouncing with agitation, Awmit took Roussel’s sleeve as soon as he emerged from the gap. “Path lies where, Dante human?”
“Follow me.”
They turned to leave—all but the convert with the clubs. Awmit paused. He started to say something, but stopped. Appearing awkward and shy, he plucked a glove from his leg and held it toward her.
The armed Shon waved the clubs in her hands. “This one’s fingers hold uneasily death.”
&nb
sp; Awmit held the wiggling glove higher, near the Shon’s face.
“Thanks given terrifiedly for the delicacy,” said the armed Shon. She puckered up, extended her lips twice as far as a human could manage, and sucked the glove into her mouth. Then, with two inches of the furry creature protruding from her lips like a grotesque, living cigarette, she charged back into the gap, brandishing her clubs in obvious hope of keeping the pursuers at bay for a few precious minutes.
As Tompa trotted uphill behind Roussel, she turned her head and whispered toward the Shon, “Thank you.”
Roussel, immediately ahead of her, said, “If you’re going to thank someone, at least do it loud enough that they can hear.”
“Without a translator,” Tompa snapped, “she couldn’t understand me if I shouted.”
He hurriedly led their small group, two humans and now just three Shons, on a twisting, dodging route that trended steeply uphill. The terrain was too rough for running, so they walked quickly. She watched her footing carefully lest her leg slip into a dark crevice where some horrible beast lurked.
After five minutes, Tompa heard a fierce, high-pitched wail from behind. She paused, looked back. Although she couldn’t see anything, a twinge in her heart told her the hunters had killed the club-wielding convert, or maybe the stepping-stool convert. She glanced at Awmit, scurrying along beside her, glad he was still alive. Not meeting her glance, he stuffed the last glove into his mouth. Tompa shook her head in disgust mixed with chagrin as a puff of fetid air told her he was chewing the beast alive.
The chant of the hunters rumbled in the distance. The threatening sound made Tompa’s mouth go drier. She tried to swallow but didn’t have enough spit in her salty, sticky mouth. Worse, she was still itching but had no time or privacy to scratch. She rubbed her thighs together roughly with each step and tried to concentrate on the uneven terrain rather than how thirsty and terrible she felt.
They ran down a chute of smooth rock with a boulder blocking its end. Roussel waited to help the others scramble over the boulder. He gave a hand to Awmit and the two remaining converts, then held out his arm to her.
“I don’t want your help,” she said.
He shook his head but kept his hand outstretched. “I’ve never known anyone so mule brained about running the race solo. Why are you like that?”
Tompa didn’t know what to say, so she simply glared at his hand and crawled over the rock on her own—all the while wondering if the converts behind her had slowed the pursuers enough to make their martyrdom worthwhile. Probably not.
Roussel guided them on a complicated route that kept them hidden between rocks most of the time. Occasionally she could see across to the gorge, and she eyed the distant road with nearly physical hunger. That side of the gorge made sense; this side was an endless, petrified chaos, with one direction seemingly as good as any other. Sometimes they jogged over what appeared to be a well-trodden path. More often, broken rocks littered the way between huge boulders and treacherous hollows, and they were lucky to make much progress at all.
They moved quietly, with the ever-present chant of the hunters as a reminder of how sounds carried. Even when the chant rose to a climax and then fell silent, there was little conversation. Tompa tried to talk to Awmit, but his answers were curt, so she gave up. Her mouth was too dry to talk, anyway.
Fifteen minutes later, the Shons started whispering amongst themselves, too quietly for her to hear. Soon they stopped, and Tompa imagined that they were as thirsty as she was. The worst thing the gloves had done, it seemed in hindsight as she furtively scratched at her thigh, was causing her to drop the water bottle.
Only she couldn’t really blame the gloves. It was her. She’d panicked over something that was, apparently, harmless. Keep cool, girl.
But sweat ran into her eyes and a stain darkened Roussel’s back as he climbed over a six-foot boulder. Cool? Now that the sun was high, that was easier said than done.
Pebbles clattered to her left and behind her. Tompa turned to look.
A blur, then a many-throated shout. “For justice!”
Tompa jumped, startled.
“Attackers,” Awmit cried. A convert squealed in fear. From behind came the sound of shouting and bodies thudding to the ground.
Tompa spun to face the attack, club still in her hand. She finished the motion by smashing the face of one of the attackers. He flew back from her blow to a sitting position against a rock, staring at her with those huge eyes, the rest of his face a ruin of blood.
“What’s going on back there?” Roussel called.
The Shon she’d injured slumped to the ground. There seemed to be five attackers, all holding sharp rocks. She clubbed the nearest one on the back of the head. Warm blood splattered her cheeks. She raised her club to hit the Shon the attacker had been fighting.
“Pity, graceful human!”
Tompa stopped her blow inches from the head of a cringing convert. The jumble of shouts and action ran together in a nonsensical, terrifying blur that made friend and foe look the same. She froze. What if she’d hit Awmit?
“Run, graceful human!” Awmit called.
Tompa shook her head, realizing that her lapse had lasted barely a second. An attacker was keeping Awmit busy while the other three piled on a convert, who fell under the assault. They immediately turned toward the convert Tompa had almost clubbed. Tompa dispatched two of them, wincing as the shock of breaking bones vibrated up her arm. The smell of their blood turned her stomach, but she shoved aside the weakness.
The lone remaining convert leaped onto the back of the third attacker. The convert clawed viciously at the eye of her larger opponent, who screamed in pain and fell to his knees.
“Awmit!” Tompa ran. He was on his back. An attacker straddled his chest. The attacker raised a sharp rock overhead.
One step. Another. But too far. “No!”
Awmit’s attacker jerked at her screech of fury. He jumped to his feet and tried to face her. Awmit grabbed his foot and tripped him, then leaped onto the fallen Shon and used the attacker’s own rock to batter his head.
“That’s enough.”
At the sound of the human voice, Tompa turned in a crouch.
Roussel had arrived belatedly and was trying to coax the convert off the chest of the attacker whose eye she’d gouged. When she kept pummeling, he took her shoulders and pulled her away. The attacker lay on his back, moaning. “I said, that’s enough!”
“She can’t understand you.” Tompa tapped her ear.
“Oh.” He glanced at Tompa, then returned to trying to keep the convert from killing the attacker.
Tompa wiped the blood from her face and shivered. The club slipped from her fingers. She stepped toward Awmit.
He rose to his feet and edged away from her.
Awmit turned his back on her and went to join the convert. “Why?” she whispered
“You’re going to kill him,” Roussel said to the convert, who’d slipped from his grasp and was kicking the fallen attacker. “Stop that.”
“Agree negatively,” Awmit said. “Kill quickly.” He scurried past Roussel and leaped onto the attacker’s head.
Roussel threw up his hands. “Maybe they’re right.”
Awmit and the convert made quick work of the attacker. Then they turned as one to face Tompa and bent their heads far to one side. “Graceful human,” they said together, “proves sacredly her strength and innocence.”
By himself, Awmit added, “Strong shadows surround graceful human.”
Tompa tried to quell her trembling so she would appear worthy of their words. In the not-so-far distance, the chant of the hunters started again. Everyone stood still for a moment. Tompa fought off the flames of menace the chant sparked in her and bent to pick up her club. She faced Roussel. “Where the hell were you? I thought you Navy types were such big heroes.”
He reacted as though she’d clubbed him in the belly. His eyes closed and his lips pursed so tightly that Tompa almost felt sorr
y for him. She turned quickly and watched the convert kneel beside her fallen comrade. “How is she?”
“Dead,” Awmit replied.
“Dead,” the convert repeated. “My sister is dead.”
“Your sister?” Tompa asked
Awmit ignored her and turned to Roussel, as though he was the one who’d asked. “Those ones birthed squealingly as litter-spawns of a dwarain decimated bloodily by the pod-loog’s grenade. Never of years enough to mate, those ones.” He pointed with all his fingers at the sisters, living and dead. “Converts and this one protected unsuccessfully those young ones. Yet Tar-Thara alone lives. Failure smolders and fouls filthily this one’s soul with smoke.”
Tompa didn’t want to know this. Didn’t want to feel responsible for an adolescent Shon whose sister had died trying to help. Didn’t want to think of the dead converts as people trying to protect the children amongst them.
The convert, Tar-Thara, began sobbing. It was the most human sound Tompa had ever heard a Shon make. If only, Tompa thought, she could close her ears as she could her eyes. Abruptly, she turned her back on the sounds and smells of death and walked in the direction they’d been headed when attacked. She found herself moving in rhythm to the hunter’s chant. Well, so be it.
“Truth shines,” she heard Tar-Thara say in a choked, sobbing voice made more poignant by the translator’s dispassionate rendering of her words, “that graceful human acts honorably. Flee frantically!”
Tompa paused, closed her eyes. When she heard footsteps behind her, she resumed walking toward the boulder that Roussel must have hidden behind during the attack.
She climbed it. Wind buffeted her as soon as she reached the top, tossing her hair across her eyes. Not quite believing what she saw, she yanked the hair away from her face for a clearer look. Then she turned around.
Awmit was bending over to become a stepping stool for Tar-Thara. Roussel remained at the site of the battle, his head down, staring at Tar-Thara’s dead sister.
“Everybody,” Tompa said, “we made it!” She jabbed her finger toward the far side of the boulder. “We’re out of the landslide. Here’s the bridge!”
As the last of her words rang out, the chant roared into a sudden, brisk tempo. Like the swarm of cockroaches that had spilled from a loaf of moldy bread she’d once broken in half, the Shon pursuers began pouring over and around the rocks behind Roussel.