Bren started to move. Jago prevented him. “Get down,” she said.
Down. There wasn’t much further to get down. But Jago was out of her seat, in the tilted floorboard, covering him with her own armored body.
“Nadiin,” she asked, but there was silence from the front seats. “Bren-ji, are you hurt?”
“No,” he said, as honestly as mattered to his ability to move. He had no questions. They were in a mess. The two in front weren’t answering, and Jago got an arm between the seats, trying to ascertain their condition, while Bren stayed still and tried to breathe with her pressing on him.
“Both are dead,” she said in a very quiet voice.
The same shot. Blind damned luck. And there was, around the van, except for the occasional ping of the cooling engine, no sound but their breathing.
“Come,” she said. “This van is a target. Move carefully, Bren-ji. Can you get out Banichi’s door without a sound?”
“One will do it, Jago-ji.” He eased to the side, feet first, and felt his way into open night air.
He paused, remembering his pale trousers and coat. “I shall be visible in the dark.”
“Get below the brush. Get low, Bren-ji. Leave the luggage for now.”
The rest of his bodyguard was out there somewhere, and, he would bet, given that side window shot, they had some notion of the trajectory. They were not sitting still, he’d lay money on that. But Jago was, if he didn’t move. He wriggled out as quickly and quietly as he could, no matter the bruised ribs, and slid in under the brush, as compact as he could make himself, which hurt considerably.
Jago followed. She brought her rifle, tucked low, and took up guard over his position, above a streambed. A trickle of water flowed in it, among brush and rocks, a soft sound that overrode others in the night.
Absolute quiet for a time.
Then a thump and a skid on rock. Two sounds, somewhat upward on the slope. He felt Jago’s hand on his shoulder. Someone ran.
Thump. A rock rattled down the slope. Something heavier fell.
Damn, Bren thought. He was in a cramped position. His leg was going to sleep. He wanted to move it. And daren’t.
Then a faint, faint triple and stop green flash on Jago’s wrist. Someone reporting. Thank God.
She didn’t move for a moment. Then she patted his knee twice, which meant Stay put.
He did, as she eased out of the hiding place. He didn’t hear her move. He did what she asked and stayed very, very still, as Jago reached into the van and hauled out one bag and the other.
Brush whispered. Bren stayed absolutely still. A shadow moved in and Jago didn’t react. The shadow was Banichi-sized, and Bren managed quiet, small breaths.
Jago brought a bag. Banichi did. That was all. Jago came close and hissed, “Bren-ji. Come.”
He didn’t ask questions. He took careful hold of the prickly brush and hauled himself to his feet, trying to stay as involved with the brush as he could. He thought about his wardrobe. He didn’t havea darker coat, damn his planningc he’d not brought one. And hell with it: if they were going cross-country, hewas no help lugging that bag along, and his bodyguard had enough with their own gear. “Leave mine,” he whispered. “I shall manage. My notes. Just get my notes, nadiin-ji.”
Two other shadows materialized from around the end of the van, drawing his tense attention; but atevi vision was keener in the dark, and Banichi took no alarm, only passed the luggage to the shorter one—that would be Tano—and relayed the request.
Jago tugged, drew him away from the van. Banichi was right behind them.
How far to the border? Immaterial, he said to himself; borders meant less now than they usually did on the mainland.
Get to Targai if they could. If not Targai, then Najida or Kajiminda—any place where shots didn’t crash through the walls. They hadn’t even attempted to get the van out of its predicament. They just left it, committed to getting out on foot.
Maybe getting to a safe spot, where they could sit it out and wait for rescue.
He didn’t argue. He didn’t offer an opinion, whatever his bodyguard decided to do. If they were going to try to make it to Targai, he had to keep his discomfort quiet and try not to slow them down with personal problems.
13
« ^ »
They kept as much as possible to stony surfaces, in the higher areas of the hills, disturbing the ground as little as possible. “One is willing,” Bren said, at a stop where he could find breath enough for coherency, “one is willing to go a little faster. I think I can, nadiin-ji. Or find me a place to dig in and wait for you. Then you go for reinforcement and come back.”
“No, Bren-ji,” Banichi said quietly. “Our best hope is to go, now.”
Theyknew how the Guild was likeliest to proceed and what they could rely on; he didn’t. He could do nothing about his clothing: he shone in the dark, he was certain of it. And they were going slower than he was, even when he tried to forge ahead.
And a request to shed the damned vest? They wouldn’t hear of it.
A second shot like the last one, he thought glumly, and I’ll be dead anyway. I couldn’t stand it.
But two hours or so on, at the same steady pace, and he swore the whole of the Tasaigin Marid was uphill. They moved, and they stopped, and sometimes either Jago or Banichi left the rest and went on ahead, scouting during their rest time. Sometimes they would come back to report, or now and again the rest of them would just barely catch up, and then the one scouting would immediately be on ahead on another foray. Tano assigned himself to Bren, and Algini kept an eye to an occasional light-flash on his bracelet, that item of equipment like Jago’s, that Bren had only once or twice seen them wear. He couldn’t read it, no more than he could penetrate the verbal code that passed now and again, curt and infrequent; but green was good. Green was the good one. He’d observed that before.
Finally—Bren found himself increasingly scattered in his thinking, and mostly concentrating on not breaking his neck— his concentration lapsed. He managed to hook a dragging toe on a scrub root and took a stumble; he would have gone down a human-high edge, if not for Tano’s arm.
He looked around to nod a thanks, and that movement did it: his head went light, his vision went iffy, and his knees went to water.
This is going to hurt, he thought calmly. He was standing on a rocky slope, or falling onto one, except Tano wrapped his arms around him and steadied him, and the fall didn’t happen.
Sky replaced itself with Tano’s shadowed face.
“Bren-ji has to catch his breath,” Tano said to his partner.
Bren-ji had to catch a good deal more than that. A functioning sense of balance would help.
“Have to take the vest off,” he said.
“Sugar,” Algini said instead, and, Algini and Tano having all the baggage between them, got into one bag and came up with, of all things, a packeted soft drink.
Bren took it. It went down as sweet as fruit juice and hit his system like a hammer—
stimulant, among other things, probably a dose of minerals. He thought for a moment he was going to be sick, then that his breathing couldn’t possibly keep up with his heart rate, and then that it probably had helped him, once his body adjusted to it. He was not as dizzy, whether because of the stimulant or that he had had a little while to get his balance and catch his breath.
“I can walk,” he said.
And they did.
An atevi border was soft for about half a day’s walk, in a vague overlap of property rights.
But it got to be more the other side’s territory the closer you got to the middle. He thought if they had more of that fruit drink, and he could keep hitting it, he could keep going until morning.
Maybe that could get them to a safer place.
Tano kept a hand at his elbow, carrying a rifle and the baggage on the other side, hardly balanced, he told himself. They hiked down an increasingly deep ravine for a considerable distance, with Algini going ahead of them to find the way and occasionally, very occasionally, when they were stopped for a second, showing that spark of green that meant either Banichi or Jago was all right out there.