Bren came closer, finding, indeed, their missing young Guildsman, with a splinted leg and an attitude of utter exhaustion and dejection.
Tano, their team medic, dropped down on his haunches and asked, “Your condition, nadi?”
“Foot and ankle, Tano-nadi,” came the faint answer.
“He was the one who started all this,” Banichi said in the lowest of voices. “He came very near to being shot, but he spoke to me in time.”
Jagohad missed spotting the kid, when she had gone over the area. He had recognized Banichi in the dark. And he had somehow not gotten away from the original firefight, the one that had touched off the trouble. That was something.
“Can he walk?” Bren asked.
“He will slow us down,” Banichi said. “He will have to keep up to our pace or hide and wait for help. We cannot risk you, Bren-ji. He knows that very clearly.”
He didn’t like the choice. He felt responsible for the boy.
But if the renegades succeeded in taking them, the aishidi’tat had a problem.
He went over to the boy and half-sat against a rock—if he knelt down to the boy’s level, he thought, it would take his whole aishid to get himon his feet again. “One is glad to see you, nadi.”
“Nandi,” Lucasi said with a lowering of his head. “One understands the depth of trouble I have caused.”
“Banichi has told you that your sister is safe, along with Barb-daja.”
A nod. “Yes, nandi. One is deeply grateful.”
“Banichi may have told you. You are in Taisigi district, and that post up there is not Taisigi.
The Guild is moving on a nest of renegades of the Guild, from the years of the Troubles. And this will not be a safe place once they arrive. Can you possibly attempt to stay with us, or can you go to ground and stay there?”
“I wish to go with you, nandi.”
“Make the safest decision, for your own sake, whether to try this or to go to ground. I wish very much to present you to your partner safe. But we cannot have you endanger this mission.”
“I can do it,” Lucasi said. “I can, nandi.”
Bren walked back to Banichi. “I have told him the importance of our mission. He believes he can stay with us.”
“I have my own orders for him,” Banichi said, and he went over and said about two words, which Bren did not hear; but he saw the boy, who had risen to stand on one foot, nod emphatically. Twice.
They gathered up their gear then—or Banichi and Jago did. Tano and Algini were suddenly not in sight, and since Banichi and Jago started off, it didn’t seem a good thing to ask too many questions.
Guarding their backtrail, Bren thought. They had to make speed and still avoid running into allies or enemies in the dark, and with dawn coming on.
Then he realized the boy was not with them. Banichi had, he thought, outright ordered the boy to stay put and wait for them to come back for him once they had this mess sorted out.
Which was as it was. Banichi was thinking about the mission, he had no question of that.
About the mission and getting through this. He was glad if Banichi was doing what was necessary in spite of help from him.
He just hoped to hell Tano and Algini would get back to them soon.
They were about half an hour on, on a delicate climb downward, in the earliest of dawn, when all of a sudden the ground heaved and rocks fell, bounding hollowly down from the height.
Bren leaned back against a man-sized boulder and stared up in startlement at the source of the explosion, a cloud billowing skyward above the ridge.
He didn’t say anything. But that hadn’t been any weapon he knew about.
It was, however, Tano and Algini’s specialty.
And now that explosion and that cloud was a beacon for the neighborhood. It was going to upset any enemies in the area, who would probably run to see what had happened.
The renegades had certainly been stirred up from the hour Jago had fired the first shot. He had no doubt of that. But that towering cloud above the ridge was a magnet for an ambush.
The other side would know it—and maybe blame Machigi’s forces, which actually lay in the opposite direction. The combination of misdirections was not a bad thing—unless it brought action down on their heads.
Just hurry up and get back to us, he thought; and he hoped Tano and Algini didn’t stay to do any more damage.
And he hoped to God the kid back there just kept his head down and melted into a hole in the rocks before their enemies came swarming out and around the area.
He—he just had to get down this slope, carefully, quickly. Safety was ahead of them, not behind. Banichi and Jago might have left the kid out of practicality, but they were held to the progress hecould make, and the only thing he could do to help them was to watch where he put his feet and just do better, longer, farther than he thought he possibly, humanly, could.
He got down to flat rock. Banichi moved on, and he kept going, with Jago’s help under his arm.
“Bren-ji,” Jago said at one point, “go more slowly if you must!”
“For my sake or yours, Jago-ji?” he panted as he went. “If for mine, trust I can do this. I shall live, I assure you.”
They went at the increased pace, Banichi in the lead, Jago close by him, being sure he didn’t step into a hole, so he had one less thing to worry about. Staying upright. Moving. That was his job.
The sun was definitively up, now, removing the cover of darkness even to human eyes.
Breathing and walking occupied all available intellect. And he was no longer sure he was using his best sense, but he pushed a bit harder, able to see, now. He made it to the top of a rise, wavered, with the far view of hills swimming ahead of him, then realized he was wobbling on the edge of a drop-off, and he caught himself one nanosecond before Jago snatched him against her and steered him to safer route, keeping him from descending the hill in a catastrophic slide.
“One is,” grateful, he tried to say. But he hadn’t the wind left. The whole world went fuzzy at that point. He might have been out on his feet, except Jago still had hold of his arm, and then had her arm around him.
“Here is not a good place, Bren-ji. Just a little farther. Then we shall rest an hour.”
An hour. A whole hour sitting still. He wanted it so much.
But they couldn’t afford that.
He had to tell them that. But he had to get where it was safe. He energized his legs and managed to keep going, sure, with what shred of intelligence he had left, that where Banichi was going, where Jago wanted him to go, was at least better cover, and a place where he could take just a little rest and get his wind back and then argue.
Maybe he could even take off the damned vest for a moment or two. It would be such a relief.
God, he wanted to do that.
It was still another downhill, in among rocks, and past an overhanging shrub. Banichi waited at the bottom of a steep little slope, took his other arm and steered him to a little concealed nook and a flat rock he could sit on.
Then, silently, by the time Bren looked up, Banichi had left them. Jago was alone.
“Sorry,” Bren said, trying to get his breath. “One is sorry, Jago-ji. Banichi is scouting?”
“As well we take a look ahead, Bren-ji. Use the time.”
She offered him a drink from a small flask, plain water, which they had in very short supply, he knew that. His mouth was dust-dry and he let a mouthful roll around and moisten his throat in little trickles. For not very much encouragement at all he would lie flat on the rock and stay there, but it would only hurt more, getting up, and the damned vest, once he was sitting down, at least helped hold him upright in some comfort.
“How are you, Bren-ji?” Jago asked him, sinking down on her haunches. She wanted an estimate, he said to himself, not stupid overstatement.
“I can walk,” he said, “but my judgment is question—” More breath. New try.