A broad-cheeked woman holding one of the real AKs propped on the ground, idly snaked her index finger deep down the barrel. The hair rose on the back of Frank’s neck. His heart spasmed. He reached over and snatched her hand away.
“Don’t you ever do that!” said Frank, shuddering. “Jeez, Tezhay, I thought you taught these folks to handle these things.”
Tezhay looked puzzled. He hadn’t seen what the woman had done. “I did train. Is easy. A monkey can shoot this AK.”
“Did you not consider teaching some gun safety while you were at it?”
“No worries,” said Tezhay. “They know how to make safe with switch.”
Frank sighed, deeply.
“We go now,” said Tezhay. “The old man say the two not go far. Is not so long ago they go.”
They headed down the face of the cliff. Frank’s muscles ached from all the climbing they had done the day before, but he felt surprisingly strong and limber. All of this exercise was doing him good. His thighs felt taut. Some of his paunch had burned away.
“Any idea where they went?” said Frank.
“Not sure,” said Tezhay. “But the Urep’o boy, I hear him talk about how he come to Gi. I think maybe they go to find a xenolith.”
“You mean … there’s another?” said Frank.
“There is many here,” said Tezhay.
“And you know where they are?”
“Some” said Tezhay. “Not all.”
“But what was all this about a telephone?”
“He has one,” said Tezhay. “It works. How? I cannot tell you.”
“Huh,” said Frank, rubbing his beard. “So you volunteered for this search party because you want to stop them from reaching the xenolith. Right? Like you told me—once an exile, always an exile.”
“Is not true,” said Tezhay. “I want them be safe, is all. This boy is like child here. No understand how much there is danger out there.”
“So would you let them go back, if they could? Would you?”
Tezhay’s eyes wandered. “I don’t know,” he said. “Things change. If to stay here is to die. Then maybe … maybe so.”
The volunteers milled about in the clearing at the cliff base, studying every dent and scuff in the clay and dislodged chunk of scree. They clicked their tongues and murmured gravely at a fresh set of hoof prints.
“One Cuasar,” said Tezhay. “Riding fast.”
The man with the paintball rifle darted off down a narrow path, then immediately doubled back, exclaiming excitedly.
“Ahah!” said Tezhay. “He say they try and leave false trail, but they no can fool us.” Tezhay stepped towards a larger path angling to the right. “They go this way. To Sinta.”
Chapter 32: Ambush
Canu kept to himself, ignoring Feril’s repeated calls to confer with his officers. He crossed the river to the plundered village, fending off the temptation to start down the trail to the marsh camps. Instead he turned back and climbed partway to the mountain pass where he and Ara had mourned Ren’s loss together in the rain. Sunset made him return to the hillside, where some of Feril’s fighters managed to concoct a stew from barley salvaged from a wrecked granary, augmented with wild greens in cook pots retrieved from abandoned homes.
No one intruded on his self-imposed isolation. Pari and Vul were accustomed to his moodiness and brooding. Perhaps they had shared his eccentricities with Feril who had only nodded curtly to Canu as they waited in a queue to receive their dinners. Whatever the reasons, no one pried. They gave him his space.
Canu spent the night alone in the car and at sunrise, traversed the length of the wall. The sky again held more grey than blue, but splashes of sunlight were seeping through the ceiling earlier than they had the day before. He found his favorite tree at the edge of the gulch, at the far end of the wall and climbed it. He dangled his legs over a bough, meditating, surveying the valley. The road in both directions remained uncannily devoid of activity.
Canu wondered why he heeded Ara’s warnings this time around, why he feared countering her wishes, when all his life he had made a practice of questioning authority, ignoring rules and constraints of all sorts.
But he had never valued a person’s good graces as much as he did Ara’s. Though, he doubted he had the will to refrain from going after her much longer.
He squinted as the clouds parted long enough to allow the sun to wash over the hillside. As he basked, relishing its feel on his clammy skin, a series of flashes emanated from a spot near the center of the line, back a little ways from the wall.
Canu’s heart lurched, In haste, he lowered himself from the bough, creating a shower of loose bark, and ran along the wall to the copse of cedars where the flash had originated. He swept past Vul without a word and turned the corner down a freshly blazed path, barreling into the old Mercomar master, who stood tethered under a tree, arms folded, gazing through a breach in the wall. Canu threw him to the ground and rifled through his clothing.
The two guards, who had been sitting and gossiping on a fallen log, scrambled over, but hovered back, reluctant to intervene.
“Get away!” said the old man. “What are you doing?”
Vul came running up. “Canu! What the hell …? Get off of him.”
A seam ripped open in the old man’s jacket and a small, round signal mirror, punctured in the center, slipped out and clinked against the pebbles. Vul’s chin fell slack.
Canu snagged it and stuffed it into his pocket. He seized the old man by the shoulders. “What message did you send? What did you tell them?”
“Tell who? I doubt anyone was watching,” said the old man, sheepishly. “I just … saw the sun come and … I was playing around. I’m a mirror man. It’s what I do.”
Canu glared at the guards. “Pay closer attention to this one, unless you want the Alar to know you by name.”
“Go through his possessions,” said Vul to the guards. “Make sure he doesn’t have another mirror on him.”
“Make him go naked if you need to,” said Canu. He turned to Vul. “Did you not even notice?” said Canu.
“Did he flash, really?” said Vul.
“You think I’m making this up?” said Canu.
Vul shook his head. “I thought we had searched him well. I thought him harmless. That’s why we didn’t restrain him completely – only the tether. And he’s been well-behaved, complicit almost, sharing much I didn’t know about the Alar and the Venep’o in Gi.”
To Canu, from the start Rabelmani had seemed too calm for a captive, almost giddy about his situation. Vul seemed to interpret this behavior as a sign of dementia but Canu saw more fire than smoke behind the old man’s eyes.
“Where’s Feril?” said Canu.
“Making the rounds with Igwa, last I knew,” said Vul.
A whistle sounded from wall, cascading down the line as each sentry on duty repeated it. Canu hustled back to the wall, Vul on his tail. A woman holding a captured Crasac pike peered around the breach.
“What’s happening?” said Canu.
“A rider just passed,” she said. “A courier, perhaps?”
Canu climbed onto the stones and peeked over the top. A mounted figure streaked out of the trees along the road across the river.
“Another,” said Vul. “Or is he the one you saw?”
“Same one,” said the sentry. “Returning in the other direction.”
“He’s a Cuasar,” said Canu. “A scout, making sure the road is clear,” said Canu. The Cuasar rode a sleek, muscular mount that put Igwa’s shaggy ponies to shame.
“Clear for whom?” said Vul.
“Good question,” said Canu, he glanced back towards the cedars and saw that the guards had taken Canu’s advice literally. Rabelmani’s clothing lay wadded in a heap on the ground before him. He wore only a loin cloth exposing a series of hideous scars stretching across his bare torso. He looked as if he had been mauled by a pack of wolves with teeth of sharpened steel.
“Maybe
he’s not as skilled at defending himself with a blade as we thought,” said Canu.
“If that’s how you think,” said Rabelmani. “You should visit the graves of those who wounded me. You won’t find many of my former foes with heads intact.”
Canu ran his fingers around his own neck and elevated his chin. “Funny. Mine certainly seems to be attached just fine.”
“For now, young pup. For now,” said Rabelmani. “Once the garrisons empty. The Alar will hunt you down and stomp you like ants. Every last one of you.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Canu. “We’ve got thousand-strong garrisons of our own, you know, and they’re about to be unleashed.”
“Um, Canu?” said Vul. “No need to share this.”
Canu bit his lip.
“He means the marsh camps, I suppose?” said Rabelmani. “Nothing new to us. They’ve been kept in their place and in their place they’ll stay. Our diplomats have taken care of that.”
“Us? You consider yourself Venep’o?” said Canu.
“Why not? They healed me. Gave me shelter when I was cast out of Sesei. Introduced me to the Mercy of the Great Cra.”
“The Great Cra can go and lick my spittle,” said Canu.
Rabelmani’s chest expanded, but he remained calm. His gaze narrowed, and a slow, cruel smile creased his lips. “You renegades will be dealt with in due course,” he said. “If not by us then by your own kind.”
“Renegades?”
Rabelmani shrugged. “It’s obvious you don’t follow the will of those who lead you.”
“We follow the will of Sesei!” said Canu, clenching his fists, widening his stand.
“Canu, leave him be,” said Vul, touching Canu’s shoulder. “He’s just trying to goad you.”
“Well, it’s working,” said Canu. He forced himself to walk away, but turned abruptly to face the old man. “Don’t be so sure of yourself, mirror man. You may find yourself surprised.”
Rabelmani laughed. “Surprised? Like with your antics on the hill that accomplished nothing? Don’t worry. What’s to come is set in stone. You will all be exterminated. It is the Alar’s way.”
More whistles propagated down the line of sentries, this time sounding a more urgent alarm.
“And here they come,” said the old man. “Heheh! Your ends may arrive sooner than you were thinking.”
***
Feril sent word out for all officers to meet at an outcrop that provided a strategic view of the valley below. This time, Canu deigned to attend, but on the way, he passed to help Pari and the healers strap several of the more seriously wounded to litters, so they could be removed out of harm’s way.
When they arrived at the outcrop, Feril was huddled on top with Igwa, Vul and several of his sergeants. A hedge abutting the wall blocked the view from ground level.
“What’s going on down there?” said Canu.
“Nalkies,” said Vul. “Igwa says they’re westerners. Mostly on foot. They’re fleeing across the beet fields, under pursuit by Crasacs.”
“We’re setting an ambush,” said Feril.
Canu climbed up the jutting ledge to see for himself. The Nalkies retreated skillfully, making full advantage of stream beds and rises, delaying a block of advancing Crasacs with staggered lines of skirmishers. They were about to be forced into a narrows formed by a pair of rocky spurs that came together like the pincers of a scorpion.
Across the river, ahead if the Nalki retreat, Cuasars gathered on the road. They seemed to be waiting for something, perhaps a command.
“The Nalkies don’t see them. They don’t know they’re there,” said Pari.
“If those Cuasars head to the fords, they’ll cut off the retreat,” said Canu. “The Nalkies will be torn apart. We need to intervene.”
“Not quite yet,” said Feril. “We don’t have the Crasacs’ flank.”
“You’d rather watch some Nalkies die first?” said Canu, flabbergasted.
“Our fighters are at the ready,” said Feril. “If we want this ambush to work, we can’t show ourselves too early.”
“So how many of them do you plan to sacrifice to make your ambush work better?”
“Sacrifice? I don’t … We’re not ….” Feril stared blankly. Igwa leaned over and whispered something to him.
Canu couldn’t take it. He hopped down from the ledge and stomped off down the wall, passing behind ranks of anxious fighters.
Pari slid down a slant of stone on her bottom and took off running, catching up to Canu. “I’ve seen that look on you before and I don’t like it,” she said. “You’re up to something again, aren’t you?”
“Never you mind,” said Canu, quickening his pace.
“You had better not be planning something rash.”
“Nothing rash,” said Canu. “Just a distraction.”
Chapter 33: Confined to Quarters
Ara lay on a musty bed in her old quarters: a domed hut with walls woven of reeds and rushes, like a giant, overturned basket. It sat within a compound of similar lodgings assigned to junior cadre, arranged in a semi-circle around a common hearth.
She had slept erratically, waking often with night sweats and palpitations. She sagged from the weight of all that had gone wrong.
A guard paced outside, humming low under his breath, though his voice could not compete with the riot of frog calls that had commenced since dusk. Trills and shrieks merged with staccato, syncopated burps and near subsonic thuds to form a wall of noise that would challenge a dead man’s repose, never mind the sleep of a woman bedeviled with frets.
Coming back to the marshes had been a terrible mistake. The militias remained just as mired in the mud as when she left for Ur. Clearly, Ingar wouldn’t be sending as much as a squad of scouts to investigate the silencing of the Mercomar. Ara’s friends would be left to fend for themselves.
And here she lay, a prisoner in her own hut, helpless to help them. What would become of them? What would Canu think of her when she failed to return?
They should have never gone after the Mercomar. They could have lain low, joined up with some Nalkies, gone west to seek out the Lost Cadre, verify the rumors of their demise.
What could have aroused Ingar’s suspicions so quickly? She had told the truth about what went on in Ur, with the occasional embellishment and selective omission, but it was the truth just the same.
Ingar had always been the careful sort, always double-checking, hedging his bets. Perhaps he was just being cautious.
Or maybe he didn’t want Ara talking to the militias, worried that her return might fan the flames of discord. If she stayed calm and complied with Ingar’s edict, his concerns might ease and she would be released from custody.
After all, what more could he possibly learn about what went on in Ur? She had witnessed Canu crush the xenolith that opened Greymore to Ubabaor. And Baren was dead. The only survivors of the clash had crossed with Ara to Gi.
The sun had yet to rise. Ara rose and lit the lamp of rendered deer fat that made her hut smell like a hunting cabin. No one had occupied her quarters while she was away and she had returned to find it just as she had left it, as tidy as a shrine, though the walls had mildewed from the rainwater soaking the rush panels. A touch of mold left her bed linens feeling a bit slimy. Tomorrow, if Ingar would allow it, she could ask someone from the duty crew to wash them in the moat.
A man entered the compound, drawn like a moth to light to Ara’s door. He poked his head inside. “Any post for me, comrade?”
“Post?” said Ara, rising.
“A convergence comes this morning. Major one, says the tabulator. Word is, we’ve got barley flour and jerked meat coming our way. There’s going to be a feast, skillet cakes and such.” He grinned and rolled his eyes heavenwards. He lingered in her doorway, blinking. “So?” he said. “Any post for me to take?”
The guard came over and whispered something to the postman.
“Ah, I see,” he said. “Best be off, the
n.” He shared a sheepish grin, with sympathy in his eyes and sidled away. He completed his rounds, retrieving the message-bearing reeds that occupants of the other huts had stuck into their door frames, and added them to his bundle.
The guard stayed by Ara’s door. “What’s the matter? Can’t sleep?”
“Could you?” said Ara. “If you were confined for no reason?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” said the guard. “Every week another captain gets tossed in the brig. At least you get to lie in your own bed.”
Ara made herself smile and nod, settling heavily onto her stool when the guard walked away. Perspiration beaded everywhere, despite the cool night air that had descended on the marshes. She writhed, swatting at the tiny crepuscular gnats that came to bite.
The brig! She hadn’t counted on being sent to the brig. A dank and fetid pit in the dry season, she could not imagine its condition after the rains.
It would only take a rumor to raise Ingar’s suspicions, maybe only a whim. A deserter from Feril’s company could wander back with word of Ara’s deeds on the mountain. Travelers would be sent to Greymore to investigate what happened in Ur and word would filter back to Ingar. She would be slammed into that horrible pit and exposed to the derision and abuse it invited from bored militia. She would be one step closer to summary execution if Ingar found it prudent or expeditious.
As the sky began to lighten, panic set its teeth into her and clamped down. She got up and went to her chest of spare clothes, and changed into a shift much cleaner than what she wore, though it bore the musk of the marsh water in which it had been washed. She grabbed a frayed tunic and a pair of drawstring breeches and stuffed them into her satchel. She added a bowl and a spoon, some of the frayed twigs she used to clean her teeth and the little blade she used to trim her nails.
Leaving her lamp burning, she went to the back corner of the hut and ripped the seam between the two reed panels that formed her back wall. She squeezed out into an alley curving outside the compound, and dashed away from the mesh-filtered candle glow, into an uncertain twilight.
Chapter 34: Ara on the Loose
Ara slinked past overflowing latrines, middens of shell and bone heaped against sagging fences. She kept to the back alleys of militia compounds, staying away from main passageways as much as possible. She avoided in particular the compound gates and their watch standers, who might be aware of Commander Ingar’s edict against her. She found that the camp still slept. The alleys were vacant, her stealth unnecessary.