Fire was intermittent in the far distance. There seemed to be no separation of direction. It could be their angle on the situation. It could be that forces had closed on each other. They did not stay now for information.
Close call on a hidden hole; watch his damned feet, was what he most needed to do right now, and he’d been wit-wandering. Pay attention. Business at hand. He had to make it to the road, had to—
They had one locator going now, Jago’s. He saw it blip occasionally. Damnable situation. The Guild jealously guarded its equipment, its communications, in particular. But the one contingency it hadn’t reckoned with was a schism in its own ranks, equipment compromised all up and down. Nawari was risking his neck using the thing; Jago was on passive reception, he thought; but still only one of their units was on at all, for whatever reason. They had just that one assurance . . . and the promise of the bus, once they got to the road.
Until Banichi, carrying the communications long-distance unit slung from his shoulder, suddenly reached for his com and listened while he walked.
Then stopped, said something in code, and stood there listening for a very brief moment before he issued another string of code and shut down.
“The aiji’s men have diverted the bus.”
“Tell them that poses a problem,” he said.
“One has said so,” Banichi said. “And Nawari objected to the move. But the aiji’s men have pulled rank.”
Higher-ranking problem. God. An order from the dowager? A direct threat to her or to Cajeiri that they were not talking about, even on Guild channels?
They were stuck. They were damned well stuck without transport. Just the van, parked back on the road in the middle of the trouble.
And the shooting was still going on back there, faint in the distance.
“Damn,” he said, and thought. “Can we get Najida?”
“One will try to arrange something,” Banichi said, and made the call, in a string of code. They stood there, on the slant of a grassy hill, stalled, while Banichi talked in code. Guild business. Guild communications.
Damn, Bren said to himself. Damn. Damn.
“Nadi. This is the senior of the paidhi-aiji’s aishid. One requests a person in authority on an urgent matter.”
Banichi clicked off, exhaled, then indicated downslope. “We should keep going, Bren-ji. Nawari has contacted Kajiminda, trying to get them to send word to persons in the field. Meanwhile, he is calling Najida to ask for the village truck.”
It was going to take time. But it was hope.
Bren just started walking. So did they all. Lucasi struggled hindmost, doing his best. Tano was lagging a bit, in God knew how much pain. Algini was carrying Tano’s gear, and Jago had Lucasi’s rifle.
A few blisters? Damned well nothing. If someone had the foresight, they might bring water. Maybe a medical kit, but they had that.
The truck. It wasn’t going to be bulletproof. It wasn’t going to have any aura of authority. But it had wheels. Wheels were better than—
Damn ! Hole. He’d wrenched his ankle, not sprained it. Banichi seized his arm and kept him steady.
“One could carry you, Bren-ji.”
“Only if I slow you down,” he said, panting for breath but still going. “One can walk, Nichi-ji.”
Damn, he said to himself. Damn. Damn.
And the firing was still going on, with, suddenly, a loud thump. Something had blown up.
He kept walking, kept walking. One hill was like another, and he trusted Banichi and Jago knew where they were going. They kept him between them, occasionally half-dragged him over a gap, which hurt the ribs, but it kept them going.
Finally, finally they had to half carry him down a steep slope, and Lucasi slipped and skidded a fair distance down the gravel before Algini overtook him, hauled him to his feet and got him moving, then climbed halfway back again to steer Tano down the same steep face.
But beyond the rocks, beyond a ridge of scrub, a moving column of dust in the distance marked a vehicle coming down an unseen road.
They forged ahead, around a thorn thicket, up a little gravely, rock-centered rise, and then—
Then they saw the Najida truck coming at all the speed it could muster.
It was too good, too fraught with possibilities for things going wrong, and Bren made a desperate effort to hurry. He made it down last the gravelly slope with help from Banichi and Jago and waited by the pebbled roadside, where dusty grass struggled to survive, edge of a sparse meadow on the flat far side of the road.
The feet hurt. God, they hurt.
But the truck came on and rumbled to a stop. It was a flatbed with removable sides, and, thank God, the sides were in their sockets.
And Nawari was there with two of his unit, and Lord Geigi’s bodyguards—all of them. The driver was one of Nawari’s men—whoever had gotten the truck to Nawari was not with them. It was all Guild, all in dusty black leather and armed, a formidable force on the Guild scale of things.
“One is glad to see you, Wari-ji,” Bren said, “one is very glad. This is no safe venture. We have to get to the crossroads, next after the Kajiminda road—” His voice cracked. Banichi took over and gave orders with more precision, he was sure, and Jago pulled him around to the other door of the truck.
“Tano should ride in the cab,” he said. “One can manage back there.”
“Hush, Bren-ji,” Jago said, opened the door, and shoved him inside. “Is there water, nadi?” she asked the driver.
“A can in the back,” the answer came, and Bren thought to himself, Just hurry. But he could hear everybody climbing aboard behind, and then Jago came back immediately with somebody’s canteen and gave it to him.
He didn’t argue. He drank two good gulps and a third, and was going to pass it back, but she was gone, climbing aboard, as the driver took off the brake.
The truck rolled forward, accelerated.
Bren had another sip of water and wiped his mouth. His hand came away smeared and gritty, and he rubbed his face. No razor. Stubble he never let show. His clothes had taken on the color of the landscape and were stuck together with burrs here and there . . . he presented no sane-looking figure, he was sure. He had another, more conservative drink, dehydrated, lips cracked, sunburned, he could feel it, and too rattled, now that he sat on a padded seat with a canteen in his hand, to manage a coherent thought or lay any sort of plan for how he was going to approach the situation ahead.
Najida truck. The Edi at least knew the truck.
The Taisigi didn’t.
“We shall go to the Edi side,” he told the driver, one of the dowager’s men. And asked, “How were things at the house?”
“Holding, nandi,” was all the man could tell him.
19
The driver asked for all the speed the old truck could muster, raising dust from the graveled area and traveling brushy meadow road at the risk of its suspension. Bren had no way to communicate with his bodyguard. They were back there laying their own plans; he had no idea what those plans were or whether they were able to communicate with Najida and with Machigi.
He grew light-headed from sheer exhaustion. He was braced bolt upright in his seat by the cursed vest, without which he would not be coming home at all, and he could feel the foot in the split boot swelling. His body wanted just to shut down for a few hours, and he couldn’t afford that. He had to be mentally sharp. Had to talk to the Edi, for starters, and there was no guarantee the Edi had any sort of unified command.
God, he had to get his wits about him.
Fuel was going to hold out. They had enough. That was a positive.
But the brain was going.
Parts scattered when he tried to analyze them, irretrievable.
But out the windows, the land looked familiar. He began to know when they were nearing the Kajiminda intersection by the shape of a solitary evergreen, the grass, and the pale color of the stone. They were getting near. The gunfire—he couldn’t hear. The truck rattled and
thumped.
The intersection came in view, where trees were in greater evidence, a small woods in the distance, which here covered both sides of the road.
And now the driver was talking to someone on short-range.
Then gunfire was audible, even over the racket of the truck. The driver made the turn on a track through the woods and suddenly blew the horn. Repeatedly. It scared the hell out of him—he wasn’t expecting that. But it wasn’t the kind of move enemies would make, blowing the horn like fury while blazing down the middle of the road.
People came out of the woods onto the road ahead of them, carrying rifles pointed aloft, not aiming at them, thank God. The driver pulled up short of them, and Bren opened his door.
Banichi was faster, reaching him before he had to jump to the ground; and Jago was right there.
So were Lord Geigi’s men. They came up even with the door, and one of them shouted out in another language—the Edi language, Bren realized suddenly. It must be. The attitude changed, visible surprise. And he walked out near them.
“Nadiin, neighbors! Cease fire! Cease fire! We have news!”
He was unmistakable on the mainland. He traded on that. He was their neighbor. And Lord Geigi’s men spoke the language. That was beyond an asset. It shocked the four Edi and got the rifles aimed at the ground. It got them face to face in a far calmer mode.
Talk was hot and heavy for a moment between the Edi and Lord Geigi’s bodyguard. Bren heard his own title referenced, and the dowager. And Lord Geigi.
There was objection, and Machigi’s name figured in it, angrily.
Geigi’s men answered, in strong terms.
“Neighbors,” Bren said. “Neighbors, listen to me. There is more than one forces involved. One is a renegade Guild force, one you see here, and there is, yes, Machigi, who is here to stop the renegade Guild.”
“Who are these renegades?” they wanted to know.
“Murini’s men.” He had a succinct answer for that one, that ought to tell them everything. “They have committed crimes. They have laid the bloody knife at Machigi’s door, but of recent offenses, he is not guilty. At the dowager’s request, he is attacking them, with Guild regulars at his command.”
“He is in our territory!”
“He is killing your enemies. He is killing the people who bombed the road and kidnapped one of your children, nadiin-ji! Let the Grandmother of the Edi and the Grandmother of the Ragi solve it. This business has too many sides. Let the Grandmothers have the say! You have to stop shooting!”
“We will not let him on our land!” one shouted.
Geigi’s men said something in the Edi language, then, that involved the Grandmother, and heated words went back and forth, not one of which he could understand.
The guns here stayed still, but the firing beyond the curve of the road, farther into the encroaching woods, was still going on, echoing off the rocky heights to the left.
“Nandi,” Geigi’s Guild senior said then, in a low voice, “go. They will not be persuaded. Get back to the truck.”
“Bren-ji,” Banichi said, meaning business.
Damn, he thought. His bodyguard wanted him out of here. Geigi’s did. He took a step toward the men, hit a sore angle with his foot and limped inelegantly.
It hurt, damn it. Several things did.
Not least, the prospect of seeing the whole situation gone to hell. “Neighbors,” he shouted in Ragi, and pointed toward the road. “Off in that direction you have the sort of Guild who has done you immeasurable harm over two hundred years, the same element who backed Murini, the same element who fled Tabini-aiji, ran into the Marid and encouraged the Senji and the Dojisigi to actions against you. At their backs, beyond that woods, you have one Marid lord who is as angry with them as you are and who, if you stop shooting for an hour, will obligingly push these renegades right into your laps, after which time you can open fire to your hearts’ content. If you want to settle with your real enemies, listen to your neighbor, who has talked with the lord of the Taisigi and gotten his cooperation. You have heard the facts from me, you have heard them from Lord Geigi’s guard, and you four do not have the authority to decide life or death for the Edi people! Go as fast as you can and tell the elders in charge exactly what I said, and we will hold this road for you. Tell the elders come back here and defend this place, and let the Guild with Lord Machigi drive your enemies this way, do you understand me? Does this make sense to you? And then you will kindly oblige me by not shooting the Taisigi, while your elders and the aiji-dowager work out an agreement that will save your land! Do you hear me?”
There was a small space of silence. One said something in his own language, but it sounded like a question; and Lord Geigi’s men answered in that language in no milder tone, something involving Najida, Kajiminda, and the paidhi-aiji. Then they shouted an order, and the young men took off running, back into the woods, guns and all.
God, it was all he had in him. He was spent. He wanted to sit down right where he was.
“Bren-ji,” Banichi said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “You have done what you could do. At this point you are the person the renegades would most like to lay hands on. More to the point, the word is going out that you are here. The Edi are not a disciplined force. Some may fall back. Some may panic. We shall hold this place, up on the heights. Can you drive the truck?”
“I shall not,” he said. “Not leaving you here, no.”
“The renegades have failed to get past Machigi,” Banichi said. “They have the Edi between them and Kajiminda and somewhat between them and Separti Township. And then there is this road, back the way they arrived. The Edi will not take orders in any organized way, and if they start to take losses and panic, we are too few to hold what comes behind them.”
“I can make them listen.”
“You have no experience of this situation, Bren-ji. Your bodyguard advises you abandon this area, and fall back. If we have to, we will draw back to Kajiminda.”
“Afoot?” he shot back. “No, nadiin-ji. If you have to leave here, you will need a little speed, will you not?”
Banichi looked exasperated.
“Tell Machigi I am here,” he said. “Tell Machigi to push them if we can’t organize the Edi to do it. The Edi will shoot what shows up first, am I right?”
“We can hold that,” Banichi said, with a wave of his hand toward the rocky side of the road, and went to instruct the driver. The truck started up, pulled over near the rocks, and backed in, positioning itself for a run for Kajiminda. Everybody aboard the truckbed began getting off.
Bren found a small outlier of those rocks, next to a stand of brush, and sat down with a wince from the damned vest. His bodyguard was off giving directions. Geigi’s men positioned themselves off in the brushy outskirts of the woods, Nawari and his crew off in the rocks near the truck.
He just sat, and he wished he had the canteen he’d left in the truck, but he was not inclined to walk after it.
He was done, utterly done. He rested his head on his hands and was so dizzy he thought he might fall asleep where he sat. Three forces were going to collide and start shooting, and he could just sit here on his rock, undisturbed, unnoticed. That would be good. Just no one to notice him for at least an hour. He could sleep.
But the fire kept up, sporadic, even lazy. God, how long could they keep at it without running out of ammunition? They’d get down to throwing rocks at each other. Damned fools.
He came very close to sleep.
Then a whistle sounded in the woods, and a voice, calling out in accented Ragi, told him something had changed.
He started to get up. It wasn’t graceful. He grabbed hold of the brush one-handed and hauled himself up to a wide-legged brace before he got his balance.
A group of Edi, five in number, in hunting camoflage, came down the road, calling out and stopping where one of their side had planted three stacked rocks.
Good idea, those rocks. They got attention. And Geigi’s men
went to them and talked to them, and guns were in safe carry when they came in, properly quiet and respectful.
Bren started in their direction, but Geigi’s men waved them off again, a little back up the road.
Sit there, that was. And talk to anybody coming in. A welcoming committee. It was amazingly genteel.
One only hoped they got their information straight—a whispering game, one to the next. But it was what they could do.
He was on his feet. He limped over across the road to the truck, opened the door and got the canteen.
Jago came around the end of the truck. “Best you stay with the truck, Bren-ji. We are organizing.”
“Yes,” he said. “One will, Jago-ji.” He hoped Banichi wasn’t mad at him. He couldn’t even figure out whether he deserved it. If they were going to get killed, he really didn’t want anybody mad at him.
He climbed up to the seat of the truck and sat down, closing the door mostly, and very quietly, and had a small drink of water.
He was too damned tired, he thought, to be properly scared. He was scared in a numb sort of way that was not much different from acute terror. But he was here, and he had to be here. Worst was knowing he’d done everything he could do.
It got very still for a while. He heard Tano talking to someone, he thought, on com. Maybe talking to Machigi’s people. Maybe there was a code for Watch out for our allies once you get close to them. Please just shoot at uniforms.
That wasn’t too comforting, either.
His bodyguard and Geigi’s and the dowager’s were scattered out. Lucasi and Tano were still on the truck, which argued that Banichi had taken his plan for a fast retreat, those being the two that weren’t able to sprint for it, but he wished people were a little closer to the truck.
More of the Edi showed up. Once, through the driver’s rolleddown window, he heard a scattering of whistles and began to think, they can communicate. They are communicating.