He fell. When he managed to get his arms beneath him and tried again to sit up, Kta was beside him. The nemet washed his burning face from a waterskin, offered it to his lips and took it away before he could make himself sick with it.
“How did you come here?” Kurt found his own voice unrecognizable.
“Looking for you,” said Kta. “I thought you might understand a beacon fire, which drew me once to you. And you did see it, thank the gods. I planned to reach your ship and wait for you there, but I have not been able to find it. But gods, no one walks cross-country. You are mad.”
“It was a hard walk,” Kurt agreed. Kta smoothed his filthy hair aside, woman-tender, his fingers careful of burned skin, pouring water to cool his face.
“Your skin,” said Kta, “is cooked. Merciful spirits of heaven, look at you.”
Kurt rubbed at the stubble that protected his lower face, aware how bestial he must be in the eyes of the nemet, for the nemet had very little facial hair, very little elsewhere. He struggled to sit, and bending his legs made it feel like the sunburned skin of his knees would split. “Food,” he pleaded, and someone gave him a bit of cheese. He could not eat much of it, but he washed it down with a welcome swallow of telisefrom Kta’s flask.
Then it was as if the strength that was left poured out of him. He lay down again and the nemet made him as comfortable as they could with their cloaks, washed the ugly wound across his ribs with water and then—which made him cry aloud—with fiery telise.
“Forgive me, forgive me,” Kta murmured through the haze of his delirium. “My poor friend, it is done, it will mend.”
He slept then, conscious of nothing.
The camp began to stir again toward dawn, and Kurt wakened as one of the men added wood to the fire. Kta was already sitting up, watching him anxiously.
Kurt groaned and sat up, dragging himself to a cross-legged posture despite his knees. “A drink, please, Kta.”
Kta nodded to the boy Pan, who hastened to bring Kurt a waterskin and stas,which had been baked last night. It was cold, but with salt it went very well, washed down with telise.He ate it to the last, but dared not force the second one offered on his shrunken stomach.
“Are you feeling better?” asked Kta.
“I am all right,” he said. “You should not have come after me.”
And then a second, terrible thought hit him: “Or did Djan send you to bring me back?”
Kta’s face went thin-lipped, a killing anger that turned Kurt cold. “No,” he said. “I am outlawed. The Methi has killed my father and mother.”
“No.” Kurt shook his head furiously, as if that could unsay the truth of it. “Oh, no, Kta.” But it was true. The nemet’s face was calm and terrible. “ Icaused it,” Kurt said. “ Icaused it.”
“She killed them,” said Kta, “as she killed Mim. We know Mim’s tale from Djan-methi’s own lips, spoken to my father. My people will not live without honor, and so my parents died. My father confronted the Methi in the Upei for Mim’s death and for the Methi’s other crimes—and she cast him from the Upei, which was her right. My father and my mother chose death, which was their right. And Hef with them. He would not let them go unattended into the shadows.”
“Aimu?” Kurt asked, dreading to know.
“I gave her to Bel as his wife. What else could I do, what other hope for her? Elas is no more in Nephane. Its fire is extinguished. I am in exile. I will not serve the Methi any longer, but I live to honor my father and my mother and Hef and Mim. They are my charges now. I am all that is left, now that Aimu can no longer invoke the Guardians of Elas.”
Kta’s lips trembled. Kurt ached for him no less than for his family, for it was unbecoming for a man of the Indras to shed tears. It would shame him terribly to break.
“If,” said Kurt, “you want to discharge your debt to me you have discharged it. I can live in this green land if you only give me weapons and food and water. Kta, I would not blame you if you never wanted to look at me again; I would not blame you if you killed me.”
“I came for you,” said Kta. “You are also of Elas, though you cannot continue our rites or perpetuate our blood. When the Methi struck at you, she struck at us. We are of one house, you and I. Until one or the other of us is dead, we are left hand and right. You have no leave to go your way. I do not give it.”
He spoke as lord of Elas, which was his right now. The bond Mim had forged reasserted itself. Kurt bowed his head in respect.
“Where shall we go now?” Kurt asked. “And what shall we do?”
“We go north,” said Kta. “Light of heaven, I knew at once where you must go, and I am sure the Methi does; but it would have been more convenient if you had brought your ship to earth in the far north. The Ome Sin is a closed bottle in which the Methi’s ships can hunt us at their pleasure. If we cannot escape its neck and reach the northern seas, you and I are done, my friend, and all these brave friends who have come with me.”
“Is Bel here?” Kurt asked, for about him he saw many familiar faces, but he feared greatly for t’Osanef and Aimu if they had elected to stay in Nephane. T’Tefur might carry revenge even to them.
“No,” said Kta. “Bel is Sufaki, and his father needs him desperately just now. For all of us that have come, there is no way back, not as long as Djan rules. But she has no heir, and being human—there is no dynasty. We are prepared to wait.”
Kurt hoped silently that he had not given her one. That would be the ultimate bitterness, to ruin these good men by that, when he had brought them all to this pass.
“Break camp,” said Kta. “We start—”
Something hissed and struck against flesh, and all the camp exploded into chaos.
“Kta!” a man cried warning, and went down with a feathered shaft in his throat. About them in the dawn-dim clearing poured a horde of howling creatures that Kurt knew for his own kind. One of the nemet pitched to the ground almost at his feet with his face a bloody smear, and in the next moment a crushing blow across the back brought Kurt down across him.
Rough hands jerked him up, and his shock-dazed eyes looked at a bearded human face. The man seemed no less surprised, stayed the blow of his ax, then bellowed an order to his men.
The killing stopped, the noise faded.
The human put out his bloody hand and touched Kurt’s face, his hair-shrouded eyes dull and mused with confusion. “What band?” he asked.
“I came by ship,” Kurt answered him. “By starship.”
The Tamurlin’s blue eyes clouded, and with a snarl he took the front of Kurt’s nemet garb and ripped it off his shoulder, as though the nemet dress gave the lie to his claim. But then there was a cry of awe from the humans gathered around. One took his sun-browned arm and held it up against Kurt’s pale shoulder and turned to his comrades, seeking their opinion.
“A man from shelters,” he cried, “a ship-dweller.”
“He came in the ship,” another shouted, “in the ship, the ship.”
They all shouted the ship, the ship, over and over again, and danced around and flashed their weapons. Kurt looked around at the carnage they had made in the clearing, his heart pounding with dread at seeing one and another man he knew lying there. He prayed Kta had escaped: some had dived for the brush.
He had not. Kta lay on his face by the fire, unconscious—his breathing was visible.
“Kill the others,” said the leader of the Tamurlin. “We keep the human.”
“ No!” Kurt cried, and jerked ineffectually to free his arms. His mind snatched at the first argument he could find. “One of them is a nemet lord. He can bring you something of value.”
“Point him out.”
“There,” Kurt said, jerking his head to show him. “Nearest the fire.”
“Let’s take all the live ones,” said another of the Tamurlin, with a look in his eyes that boded no good for the nemet. “Let’s deal with them tonight at the camp—”
“ Ya!” howled the others, agreeing, and the chief snarled a reluctant order, for it had not been his idea. He took command of the situation with a sweep of his arm. “Pick them all up, all the live ones, and bring them. We’ll see if this man really is from the ship. If he isn’t, we’ll find out what he really is.”