The Complete LaNague

  Why then did it terrify him so?

  He decided to find out. Slowly, with one reluctant step after another, he forced himself to approach the spot. And with each advance the terror within him grew, gripping him tighter and tighter until he felt as if lengths of vine were coiling around his throat and chest, suffocating him. His heartbeat hammered in his ears like a madman on a drum; the air pressed thick and cold against him. A cloud of impending doom enveloped him until his legs refused to respond to his commands, until his resolve shattered into a thousand screaming fragments and he found himself running, gasping, clawing his way across the open field, away from the shimmering fear.

  When he finally managed to bring himself to a halt, he found himself on the far side of the field. He slumped against a tree trunk, trembling and panting while his sweat-soaked fur dried in the breeze.

  He had never known such fear. Even when the troopers had chased him and sliced him and he had been sure he was going to die, he had not been so afraid.

  What hideous thing hides there?

  He waited until his heart had resumed its normal rate and he was breathing easily again. Then he moved away into the trees. He still wanted to know what lay within the shimmering fear and determined someday to find out. Many odd things had been left behind in the world after the Great Sickness, and the shimmering fear was certainly one of the most bizarre. Perhaps he could move through the upper levels of the trees and look down on it from above. That might work...

  But not today.

  He was too tired and emotionally spent today. All he wanted right now was to find the psi-folk, eat something, and settle near their central fire for the night.

  Keeping the sun to his left, the tery moved further into the trees. He had not gone far when he came across an isolated hut. It was deserted. He noticed a kiln off to the side, cold, with clay pots and trays piled all around it. He looked inside the hut – clean, with a pallet on the floor and a small stone fireplace in the corner.

  He guessed this must be the home and workplace of the one who had found him after the troopers had had their sport. The man they called Tlad. The tery briefly debated whether or not to sit and wait for him to return, then decided against it. He owed the man a great deal more than gratitude. But how to show it? From listening to conversations between Adriel and some of the psi-folk, he gathered that this Tlad was a solitary sort who did not make friends easily and had little need for the company of other humans. He certainly would not want a tery around, then.

  Better to leave now than impose himself on his rescuer.

  The tery moved on through the forest, the only place where he truly seemed to belong.

  As he continued toward the presumed location of the psi-folk, the physical and emotional stresses of the day began to take their toll. Entering a grassy copse, he stopped to rest. A shift in the breeze brought the human scent and the sound of low voices from not far ahead.

  He rose and hurried forward, but stopped abruptly.

  Wait.

  It was too soon yet to be intercepting the psi-folk, and idle chatter was certainly not one of their traits. Silently he slithered along the ground to investigate.

  A cluster of six humans rested in the shade as their mounts grazed nearby. Leather jerkins...steel helmets...

  Troopers!

  All his fatigue suddenly evaporated in a rush of blinding hatred. But he held his position. He knew his reserves were low, and even under optimum conditions the headlong rush his emotions demanded would have been suicidal.

  Cautiously the tery circled them and continued on his way. His hour would come. He had only to wait. And besides...the captain was not among them.

  He came upon the psi-people soon after. Too soon.

  For some reason they had stopped their march early and were bustling about, setting up their camp. Adriel spotted him first.

  “It's the tery!” she cried, leaping to her feet and almost upsetting the mixing bowl in her lap. “He's come back!”

  The other Talents briefly looked up, then went back to their tasks as Adriel rushed forward, fell to her knees beside him, and threw her arms around his neck.

  “You came back,” she whispered as she hugged him. “They said you were gone for good but I knew you'd come back.”

  Pleasant as this was, the tery had no time for such a welcome. He had just realized that the probable line of march of the scouting party would lead it close to this site...so close that discovery would be unavoidable. The troopers numbered only six, so there was no danger of an attack; but should they be allowed to return to Kitru's keep with even a general idea of the whereabouts of the psi-folk, extermination would swiftly and surely follow. He had to warn them.

  But how?

  He dared not speak for fear of letting them know he was a talker...and a thinker. That kind of warning would give away his reasoning ability. The tery could not be sure that their sympathy for his aloneness in the vast forests would overcome their suspicion and reticence at having a talking, thinking, comprehending animal in their midst.

  He had to find another way.

  He broke from Adriel and ran to her father. Wrapping long fingers around the leader's arm, he tried to pull him away from the central pit he was helping to dig.

  “Adriel!” Komak shouted, shaking off the tery's grip. “Get your pet away from me or we won't have a fire tonight!”

  “I'll bet he's hungry,” she said, and went to get some meat.

  This approach obviously wasn't working. Short of a shouted message, only one recourse remained.

  Bolting toward the trees, he ignored Adriel's pleading calls and disappeared into the brush. It didn't take him long to find the scouts – they were dangerously close and headed on a collision course. He searched the ground and came up with a fist-sized stone, then climbed out on a limb that overhung their path and waited.

  If this didn’t work, he’d have to speak.

  They were walking their mounts single-file through the dense undergrowth and grumbling about the heat and difficult traveling. As the last man passed below, the tery hurled the rock at his head and leaped from the tree. With a dull clank, the missile caromed off the trooper's steel cap and drove it into his scalp. His horse reared as the trooper sagged to the ground. The tery grabbed the helmet off the lolling head and dove into the brush.

  Hopefully, the loss of a man – whether temporarily or permanently, the tery could not be sure – would throw the scouts into sufficient confusion to allow the psi-folk time enough to prepare a move against them.

  Gripping the rim of the helmet between his teeth and running as fast as his four aching limbs would carry him, the tery burst upon the campsite and went directly to Komak. The sight of a steel cap with fresh blood around the rim was all the big man needed to set him into action. He shot to his feet and glanced around. In an instant the camp exploded into frenzied activity.

  “What is it, father?” Adriel asked, aware that an order had been given.

  “Troopers! Your pet's brought us a warning!”

  “The tery?” She glanced his way with eyes full of wonder as her father guided her ahead of him toward their half-erected tent. “Good boy!”

  “I never expected to see any of Kitru's men this far into the forests...but the tery was gone only a few minutes. They must be nearly upon us!”

  She blanched. “What'll we do?”

  “Only one thing we can do.” He bundled the tent fabric into a careless wad and shoved it out of sight behind a bush. “We haven't got time to run – although Dennel seems to think that would be the best course.”

  He glared across the clearing at the youth who stood uncertainly amid the frustration.

  “We can't fight them!” she cried.

  “We have no choice! Finding a recently abandoned campsite is the next best thing to finding the group itself. They'll run to the keep and soon a whole company will be charging after us. This is probably just a scouting party. All we can do is set a trap and hope there aren't too
many of them.”

  They struck the tents and sent the women and children from the clearing along with everything they could carry. Twenty men with strung bows concealed themselves in the surrounding bushes and trees.

  “You come with me,” Adriel said, gripping the fur at the nape of the tery's neck and tugging him along beside her. “It's going to be too dangerous here.”

  Reluctantly, the tery traveled with Adriel and the other noncombatants for a short distance, then pulled away. He doubled back to the campsite. He had to see what happened.

  Komak's plan turned out to be fiendishly simple. As the tery watched from a nearby tree, the scouting party – one member rubbing a bare and bloodied head – entered the clearing in a cautious single file. They made a careful inspection of the half-dug central fire pit and conversed in low tones. The earth had been freshly turned and they were wary now.

  The tery spied Komak watching from another tree. Why didn't he give the signal to shoot? What was he waiting for? They were all here.

  Then the tery realized that Komak did not know that. He was no doubt waiting until he was certain the entire scouting party had revealed itself.

  The tery wondered what he would do in a situation like this if he had command of twenty Talent archers. Probably he would assign each archer a target trooper until each of the invaders was assured of three arrows; he would hold the remaining two archers in reserve. Then he would give the mental command to –

  Suddenly came the thrum of many longbows loosing their missiles in perfect unison. Five of the scouts cried out as each was pierced by three arrows from three different directions. They lurched, twisted, fell, and writhed on the ground. The sixth had stooped suddenly to examine the grass and received only a superficial wound in the fleshy part of his upper right arm. Seeing the fate of his companions, he turned and ran for the brush. Two shafts from the reserve archers stopped him before he covered six paces.

  No word spoken during the entire episode, and no cheering at its close. If not for the cries of the dying, the rustle of the leaves, the noises of the birds and insects, the tery would have thought he had gone deaf. It dawned on him then that with greater numbers and a greater desire to fight, these psi-folk could rule the forests completely and pose a real threat to Kitru...and perhaps to Overlord Mekk himself.

  Perhaps there was more than religion behind Overlord Mekk's inclusion of the Talents in the Extermination Decree.

  The tery bounded out of his tree and scurried over to the dead troopers, hoping that these were the ones who had invaded his home and killed his parents. And even if they weren't, he wanted to gloat over them. After all, they were Kitru's men, and deserved the worst that fate could hold for them

  But when he reached the bodies and looked into their dead faces, he felt no glee. He found he could not stare long at their frozen, agonized expressions. As vile and threatening as they no doubt had been in life, there was something pathetic about them now in death.

  Feeling cold and empty, he moved slowly to the edge of the clearing and settled alone on the grass.

  Before the women and children were brought back, the bodies of the troopers were carefully buried in the brush and their mounts added to the Talents'.

  7

  ADRIEL HURRIED AHEAD of the rest when she heard that all of the Talents had come through the skirmish unscathed and that it was safe to return to the campsite. The tery had run off again and she hoped he hadn't been accidentally caught in her father's trap.

  She sighed with relief when she saw him sitting alone at the edge of the clearing. From his posture, he looked depressed. But that was silly. How could an animal be depressed?

  As they all hastily went about setting up camp for the night, she looked around for Dennel but he was nowhere in sight. She asked around but no one had seen him since Komak's decision to ambush the scouts instead of flee them.

  “Where's Dennel?” she asked her father. “Was he hurt?”

  Komak grimaced through his beard. “Dennel? Hurt? Hardly. He ran off before our little encounter.”

  Adriel's heart sank. “I hope he'll be all right.”

  “He'll be back,” Komak told her. “He can no more take care of himself than he can fight for himself. He needs us – we don't need him.”

  “He was always nice to me.”

  Komak put an arm around his daughter's shoulders and laughed. “For that reason alone, I'll welcome him back.”

  “But is he really such a coward? He says he's mostly concerned with preserving the Talent.”

  “I know what he says. But I also know that he's scared to death.”

  “So am I.”

  “I know. I'm scared, too.”

  “You are?” The idea shocked her. “You don't seem scared of anything.”

  “All an act, my dear. That's why I need all the help I can get. A short while ago when we set the ambush, I was supposed to have twenty-one archers. But one of them ran off. I know he's your friend, and I know you'd like to believe him about the possibility of the Talents coexisting with Mekk, but he's all wrong. Dangerously wrong. He has this idea that we'd be better off if we split up into smaller groups. That way, in the event of an all-out attempt to do away with us, we could be fairly sure that some would survive to carry on the Talent.”

  “That sounds reasonable.”

  “On the surface, it does. But I really don't think Dennel's all that interested in preserving the Talent. Preserving Dennel is his main concern.”

  That remark stung Adriel, but she said nothing.

  Komak paused, then grinned pointedly. “Besides – today proves the advantages of moving with a large group of individuals who can communicate silently and instantaneously. I think the lad just wants to run and I wouldn't worry too much about him. I'm sure he's not worrying about us. Your tery is a better friend – worth three Dennels.”

  Adriel turned and saw that her pet was now ambling on all fours among the psi-folk. Instead of ignoring him or swatting him when he got in the way, they smiled at him, called to him, scratched his back, or gave him bits of food. He had become a hero of sorts and had earned his place in the tribe.

  “You're going to have to come up with a name for him,” Komak said. “I'm surprised you haven't already.”

  “I wasn't sure he'd stay. In fact, I was almost sure he wouldn't.”

  “Well, it looks like he's going to be around for a while, and we can't just keep on calling him ‘the tery.’ ”

  “I'll think of a name, but I want it to be a good one.”

  “Fine. We should do what we can to bind him to us. He's proven to be a valuable watch animal.”

  “Don't you think it strange how he warned us?” she said, watching the creature.

  “How do you mean?”

  “It was almost as if he knew we were in danger from the troopers and brought that steel helmet to warn us.”

  Komak laughed. “He might be smart, but he's not that smart. No, I think he showed a natural response to the merciless treatment he received at the hands of the troopers when they cut his flesh to ribbons the other day. The tery came upon the scouts and instinctively attacked one of them, bringing back the helmet as a trophy.”

  “But he brought it right to you.”

  “Many pets do the same. No, the good thing about your tery is that he hates and fears Kitru's men as much as we do, but his senses are much keener than ours. He'll spot them long before we can.”

  “I guess you're right,” she said but couldn't shake the feeling that there had been a definite purpose in her pet's actions today.

  They broke camp early the next morning and began to trudge still deeper into the sun-filtered forest. Dennel had not yet shown up.

  “Don't worry,” her father assured her. “He'll catch up to us. We'll bring along his tent for him.”

  The sun was tangled in the trees by the time they stopped that day. Some of the psi-folk didn't even bother to set up their tents, but ate small amounts of dried meat and fell asleep u
nder the stars. A light drizzle awoke them next morning.

  A tired, cold, achy group held a silent conference in a tight knot near the central fire. Finally Komak broke away and strode angrily to where Adriel sat with the tery. The group gradually dissolved behind him.

  “What's wrong, father?”

  “They want to stay here. We should be moving farther away from the keep than this, but the women are tired and the children are crying and it was the consensus that this is far enough.”

  “I'm tired, too.”

  “We're all tired,” he snapped, then softened. “Sorry. I told you I never wanted this job. But one thing I'm going to insist on is sending out a few scouts of my own to see what the surrounding area is like before we get too settled.”

  8

  “FOOD...” SHE SAID in a plaintive voice, holding a small piece of meat before her. “Come, now. Say it: Food...”

  The tery said nothing. Instead he merely stared back at Adriel. He liked looking at her. He liked her freckled nose and the red highlights in her blond hair.

  The sun was half way to its zenith and Adriel had been coaching him since breakfast. She was nothing if not persistent. The girl seemed determined to teach her new pet to speak.

  The tery debated the wisdom of giving in. Something deep within him ached to please her, to make her smile. He finally decided to gamble on a single word. Just for her. He pretended to follow her persistent example.

  Feigning great effort, he rasped, “Fud.”

  Adriel froze in wide-eyed wonder.

  “Fud,” he repeated.

  Komak was sitting nearby and turned his head at the unfamiliar voice. “Was that...?”

  “Yes!” Adriel said breathlessly. “It was him! He spoke! Did you hear him? He spoke!”

  She quickly gave the tery the piece of meat she had been holding and held up another. But the arrival of one of the point men Komak had sent out halted further demonstration of his newfound ability.