A figure popped out of the brush at the next turn, and Bren’s heart thumped. But it was Banichi, waiting for them, and the bus slowed.
Banichi waved at them, signed for them to turn, and there was no place to turn, but in among the trees, deep into brush.
Algini did it, and Bren steadied himself by a grip on Jago’s rail. Brush scraped the windows. Algini drove it in solidly, plowing down undergrowth, breaking his way through until the bus was enmeshed in brush. Algini reached and opened the door, which Banichi had to pry open, breaking a branch.
Another man appeared in the woods, at Banichi’s back. “Look out!” Bren called out, heart in his mouth, and then felt foolish, because there were two more, and then a fourth, and Banichi seemed quite easy in their presence.
“Allies, Bren-ji,” Jago said, patting his arm, folded her map in a few practiced moves, and climbed down. Cenedi was ready to follow.
Bren negotiated the steps after Cenedi, having to cling to the rail, on tall, tall steps, to be sure his weary legs stayed under him. The ground seemed to be pitching and rolling, and he was hungry, and dizzy, thirsty, and absolutely exhausted from sheer worry.
“Keimi-nadi,” Banichi said, “I present Cenedi, chief of security to the aiji-dowager.”
“Nadi.” Keimi was an older man, in country clothes, with scratches on his face and graying hair straying from its queue. But there was no country accent. “Welcome. Welcome to the aiji-dowager, and to the paidhi.”
“Nadi.” Bren gave a nod of his head. More watchers had appeared, women and men, even a couple of children. The woods was populated.
“Along with ourselves,” Cenedi said, “we have brought trouble. This bus, for which our opposition will be searching by every possible means.”
“We should get away from this area,” Keimi said. “And will. Is the dowager able to ride?”
“Able to ride?” That small stir in the aisle of the bus at their backs was not another of their security, it was Ilisidi herself who forged her way to the door, above the steps, with every intent of descending. “Able to ride?” Ilisidi said indignantly. “Bury me, the day I am unable to ride. Have you mechieti?”
“We have sixteen, aiji-ma, scattered about for safety. Sixteen, and their gear, and can get others.”
“Excellent.” Ilisidi wanted to descend, and lowered her cane to the steps. Cenedi reached to assist her, and when he had her in reach, lifted her by the waist and set her on the ground, where she planted her cane and, leaning on it, surveyed the gathering that had materialized out of the dawn woods.
“Nadiin-ji, where is my grandson?”
People looked at one another in dismay, and Keimi bit his lip.
“Say it,” Ilisidi snapped with a thump of that cane. “Is he dead, or is he alive?”
“We by no means know, nand’ dowager. The aiji was here when the trouble began at Shejidan, and there was some talk of going back to the capital, but he sent the paidhi—Mercheson-paidhi—to Mogari-nai, and then followed, and came back. But he left.”
“He came back from Mogari-nai,” Ilisidi said. Bren’s heart lifted. There was news. “And where did he go?”
“He refused to say, nand’ dowager. His guard said it was for safety.”
“He had his guard with him.”
“He had Deisi and Majidi, nand’ dowager. He did not have the other two. One fears—”
“And my mother?” Cajeiri asked, pressing forward. “Was my mother with him?”
“Cajeiri-nandi?” Keimi asked. The boy had been four when Taiben last saw him. “Nandi, Damiri-daja was with the aiji, in good health. And we do know they left eastward, with Deisi and Majidi.”
“Alone?” the dowager interrupted sharply.
“We wished to send a larger guard, aiji-ma. We all would have gone. We could not persuade the aiji your grandson. He said he would move more quietly.”
“Toward the east,” Ilisidi mused, and Bren drew a deep breath, thinking: either into Damiri’s home territory, Atageini land, relying her great-uncle Tatiseigi’s having stayed on Tabini’s side in this mess—or past the Atageini and past Kadigidi territory, into deeper wilderness.
Or straight at Kadigidi borders, to strike at the heart of the enemy, Bren thought with a chill. On one level it would be like Tabini, not to depart without retaliation—but, God, against tremendous odds, and refusing Taiben’s offer, and with Damiri.
Instinct said no, that wasn’t what he had done, not with Damiri on his hands, not with the ship due to show up with answers, with the dowager, with his heir. He’d want to minimize damage, want to keep his losses low, his strength intact, and organize.
“Then we shall assume he is waiting for us,” Ilisidi said, echoing his own estimation. “We have committed the coastal association at Desigien. Now we have contacted you. Attack will surely follow in both instances, if the scoundrels setting up in Shejidan have begun to track us. We were approached by one of their people in Desigien territory, and we assume there are others of his ilk in other villages. We have brought you this ungainly bus, laying tracks all the way, which we had rather not have done, but we had little choice—we have come in from the rail station, with an unfortunate lot of racket, and we fear they will follow.”
“It will not find us, dowager-ji. We are never where it comes. And those they send here do not come back.”
Historic guerilla war, the way atevi had fought from the dawn of time, before the Assassins’ Guild had risen up to make it a conflict of professionals. These were not of that guild. They were foresters. They were there, they were not, they scattered and they reconverged on a timetable that had nothing to do with clocks. Bren had no idea what their capabilities were, and he would put his money on the Assassins, in a contest, but tracking them—the edge was with the Taiben folk.
“Come, nandiin,” Keimi said, and moved a branch aside. Others held the brush back, making a hazy path through the thicket, one that the dowager followed, with Cenedi, with Cajeiri, and all of them followed, baggage hauled out of the bus, ported along. Bren carried his computer, and Jago carried her duffle and his just behind him, the men taking two bags apiece, their bulk a hard load in the thicket, and the rangers helped, holding branches aside, making a corridor for them, leading them by ways that became, imperceptibly, a trail, broad, free of branches.
Brush ahead of them cracked, however, with a noise that left no doubt of a presence in the woods, and at a distance, a mechieti made that soft, disgusted sound that, once heard, one never forgot.
Mechieti. Four-footed transport that left far less trace in Taiben’s wide lands than a stolen bus. In a moment more, around a bend of the trail, a rider sat waiting with a number of saddled mechieti, tall, rough-looking beasts, golden brown to sable, and possessed of two hand-span long tusks that ordinarily were capped, in domestic mechieti, for safety of bystanders.
These were not. The tusks were bare, and dangerous, and all the herd went under saddle, reins simply lapped about saddle rings, but they were not led—and would not stray off, not even if shots were flying. It was all follow-the-leader in a crisis, the impulse that made a charge of these beasts so formidable.
The sole rider slid down off that leader, a scarred, ear-bitten creature, and, maintaining a careful hold on the halter, he bowed to Ilisidi and offered her the rein.
She can’t, Bren thought in dread. She hasn’t the strength, and, dammit, she won’t admit it.
“Sidi-ji,” Cenedi said, offering his hand.
Ilisidi ignored him, took the rein and the quirt, administered a whack to the impervious red-brown shoulder, a second whack, and a tug at the rein. The mechieti swung its tusked head around, snorted, stopped short by the handler while it inhaled the scent of someone strange, a diminutive someone who tapped its foreleg, now that she had its attention, tapped it hard behind, and took no nonsense.