And did the dowager take note that there had been a planning session of his own staff, or did Cenedi possibly miss it? Bren took the rein from Tano. He gritted his teeth and got into the saddle, with Algini’s help.
Pain was bearable, if it was familiar pain. It would pass in an hour or so, even without the painkiller to hasten the hour. A little gentle riding would bring its own numbness.
Their direction was the same direction they had been tending yesterday. Cajeiri and Deiso’s two teenagers all rode together now, the ranger youngsters riding with considerable skill, compelling their mechieti to ignore their ordinary order, likely with their parents’ beasts, and stay near Cajeiri, an argument that occasionally annoyed the rest of the column, but they had their way and stayed.
For his own part, he was very glad to be somewhat behind, and to have his mechieti bored and quiescent. He rode quietly in line, seeing Banichi and Jago conferring with Cenedi up ahead, a conversation undoubtedly being overheard by the dowager. There might be close questions, or implied close questions from Cenedi, about the private conference, and Banichi might even answer them fairly honestly, since their intentions, while somewhat separate, lay in the same direction. It was safer to have Cenedi well-acquainted with their notions and their logic.
The dowager did not comment on the matter. Bren watched, unable to hear those quiet voices above the general movement of the mechieti. It was a peaceful ride, a quiet ride, few people speaking even to immediate companions, and it was only belatedly that he realized the oldest rider and the youngest children were no longer with them. The whistles from elsewhere in the woods continued, fewer in number, but perfectly audible.
Toward afternoon: “We are inside Atageini lands now,” Jago rode back to tell him.
He had noticed an upright stone a moment ago. He had learned to pay attention to anomalies, even when he had no idea what they might be.
And he had not heard a whistle in at least an hour.
“One remarks a certain silence here,” he said to her.
“The rangers will not signal near this boundary,” Jago said. “Atageini hunters cross here. None recently, by the look of things.”
“Does that indicate, nadi-ji, that the Atageini avoid crossing into Taiben?”
“It is worth remarking, nandi. We have no word of any hostilities, however, and none of any intrusions.”
“Inform my ignorance, Jago-ji. What do you think it would it mean?”
“Possibly that Lord Tatiseigi wishes no incident with Taiben in these perilous times. Possibly he wishes none of his hunters be caught and questioned by the Taibeni, which might give away too much of his intentions and his position, even if his intention is to stay neutral. And possibly some installation hereabouts has frightened the game away and there is nothing to bring hunters here.”
“Electronic surveillance?”
“We have picked up a signal.”
The subtler elements of Guild technology, which he was sure some of their staff carried, and the nastier elements of Guild actions possible on the border they were crossing. Wires. Traps. Not likely to stop others of the same Guild, but enough to slow them down.
He had noted Cenedi had traded mounts with Ilisidi this morning, taking the more fractious herd-leader for himself. Banichi had also pushed his mechieti up ahead of Ilisidi’s, he and Cenedi riding first and second in the column the last few minutes, a small indication of worry. Theirs were very experienced eyes, apt to spot specific things even a ranger might not, and that the mechieti might sense, but not know the danger.
He himself knew entirely too much about such devices, and their more lethal adjuncts, which were ordinarily deployed in secure places in Shejidan. One scarcely expected them to be placed out here in the depths of the woods, where roaming animals might trip them too often, with bloody result, not to mention the provocation it posed against Taiben.
And it was not without significance, he was sure, that Jago stayed closer by him now, with Tano and Algini staying very close behind him. Ever since they had passed that stone, their progress had acquired the caution of Guild very much on the alert.
The woods thinned, and there was open land visible, beyond the screen of trees. They were still within forest, riding that ridge of low hills, Bren recalled from his railroad-building days, which was the nebulous boundary between Taiben and the Atageini.
Soon, sure enough, they exited the woods onto open meadow, and took a downward pitch, now firmly within Atageini territory and evidently free of monitoring or threat. From the broad slope of the high meadow, they could see a village, an Atageini village, far down and across extensive grassland, past winding brown hedgerows, into cultivated fields gold with ripened crops or dead brown with harvested stubble. A little haze overlay equally grassy hills beyond.
It all had a quaint look, as many small villages did, hereabouts, little places nestled in sheltered nooks, not all of them to this day using electric lights. One saw no electric lines in this province, no more than in Taiben: installations like the monitoring equipment they suspected back there had to be battery-powered. The siting of the railroad right of way had been a particularly bitter controversy here, and in Taiben, and the train when it did go through had been slowed by Atageini insistence that the tracks, where allowed, should follow old farm-to-market routes. It meant a curving, inefficient progress that prevented trains going as fast through Atageini territory as they ran elsewhere… and they ran not at all through Taiben, except on the very border. He knew the whole untidy history. He had had to mediate a dispute on the junction of two regional rail lines that had, finally, finally gotten Atageini permission to lay track to that set of villages.
No sign of the disputed rail from their vantage. Only isolated copses of woods and rolling meadow, intermittent with plowed fields, until it grew too dark even for atevi eyes to be sure there were no traps.
Then they settled down for another camp, and, daringly, a hot cup of tea, a hot bowl of soup.
And another dose of analgesic.
Beside the little stove, Keimi and his remaining people announced their intention of going back in the morning, back to Taiben land, back to organize a second meeting with Ilisidi once she left this territory and proceeded northward to gather support there, as she intended to do.
And, in the conversation that followed supper and tea, there were statements of gratitude, hopes for their success, concerns for their welfare. It was all the Taibeni could offer at this point: Taiben rangers were persona non grata where they were, already. The district had a long, long history of cross-border forays and, before the aishidi’tat, of outright warfare.
So they would be committing themselves to Ilisidi’s plan in the morning. Bren found himself a flat place where no one would tread on him and went to bed early, absolutely exhausted. Traps, wires, old feuds… he had reached that stage of exhaustion and compliance when even terror for his life and the world’s welfare were no barrier to sleep, deep as a pit and dreamless, so far as he could remember.
He lifted his head, startled, when he heard stirring about, when daylight was at least faintly discernible to human eyes. His head objected to the sudden elevation. His eyes wanted to shut. He wanted to drop back down to the uncompromising ground and lie there another day, perhaps a week. An experimental movement of one leg convinced him that the saddle was, oh, no, not going to be comfortable today at all.
But staff had more important things on their minds this morning than playing servant to him. The Taibeni were to leave them. He levered himself up on his hands and knees, and got up, brushing off the clothes that by now were truly showing signs of wear. He had loosened his queue. He rebraided and tied it. He had neglected to take his boots off, and now he was sorry for it, but he limped about a sluggish morning routine, trying to make himself look as presentable as possible—the dignity of a lord was a protection to his staff, and he did as much as he could for himself, shaving, picking small bits of detritus off his coat, the effects of sleeping under a tree that shed.