Blue’s eyes lighted with satisfaction. He closed his fingers in a circle: band.
Jin met Blue’s gaze and smiled with the eyes only. Yes. Decimate the band. Blue would find a way, tomorrow, in battle: put Parm and his lads–Vil too–where they could die.
It would save a tower. Save the unity of the towers.
Thorn came in. So other calibans came, to the scent of blood, to the rumor of ariels. Thorn swung his head, swept the ground with his tail. “Hsss,” Jin said, leaning back when that great head thrust itself into his way. He grasped the soft wattle skin and pulled, distracting the caliban, but it wandered off, to walk stifflegged about the camp, just in case.
So he was whole again. Blue’s came. The pattern took shape again, men shifting to his side, gathering all about hisfire and not to Parm’s, not joining the search that Parm and his men made.
And when Parm brought the starmen back, he was obliged to cross the camp with his prisoners, to bring them to him, like an offering…offering it was. A placation. The starmen–muddy, wet, bedraggled–“Genley,” Mannin kept asking, looking about. “Genley?”–with fear in his voice. This was a nuisance, this man. To all of them. A small voice, while Parm looked at him and reckoned his chances, how much time this bought.
“Vil will pay for his mistake,” Parm said, having added up, it seemed, this silence in the camp.
Jin looked elsewhere, not willing to be appeased. The bands had made their judgement, silently, ranged themselves with him. The calibans were at hand, quiet on the fringes of the light.
“I will see to it,” Parm persisted, further abasement.
“Do that.” Jin looked at him. There was no reprieve. The man had lost his usefulness; now he lost his threat as well. Jin breathed easier still, assumed an easier expression; but Parm knew him. This was a frightened man. And would die before he recovered from it. Jin rose and dusted off his breeches, looked at the starmen.
Mannin snuffled. Kim stared, with dark, measuring eyes.
“These caused the trouble,” Jin said, snapped his fingers and pointed at Kim. “Kill that one.”
Kim started to his feet. A knife was in his back before he made it. He tumbled backward, and hit the ground the while Mannin simply stared, on his knees, stared and hugged himself and trembled.
“Now you see how it is,” Jin said, squatting down, face to face with Mannin. “Genley’s dead. Now you’re what I have.” He stood up again, looked round him at the hunters. “This man’s sick. Don’t you see? Keep him warm, put him near the fire. He’ll want something to eat. He’ll know not to run again. And you’ll know how to treat what’s mine.”
Faces met his, settled faces, things secure again, men certain they had taken the stronger side. He walked away to the other fire, to let Blue deal with smaller things, like being rid of Kim.
A waste, that. And not a waste. They did not mistake him now. Perhaps the killing of Genley was no accident. Perhaps Parm misjudged, how important starmen were to him, or where in matters they fitted.
There was respect around him. He was sure of it again.
“In the morning,” he muttered, for those who stood by to hear. “ In the morning,”others echoed, and it went through the camp–enough delay, enough of waiting on Elai’s coyness.
In the morning, revenge, blood, promises kept: no real opposition. He would not sleep this night; he wanted to see this thing done at last, Cloud put under his feet, Parm most deftly scotched.
Genley my father.
He mourned. His mourning confounded itself with his rage. He clenched his hands and thought on killing, on killing so thorough none of Cloudside would survive. They would tell tales of him, the things that he had done.
“Jin,” a man said, bringing him a thing, a sodden mass of pages. Genley’s. He had seen it often. He looked at it, the crawling marks that made no sense to him, dim in firelight and in the fading. His history.
“Give this to Mannin,” he said. “Tell him it’s his.”
lii
205 CR, day 114
Cloudside
Calibans moved, running through the camp in the dark before the dawn, a sound of heavy tread, of whispering of scales through brush. “ Hai, hey,”a voice yelled.
Riders scrambled for weapons. McGee collected her spear, her kit.
“Up!” Elai was calling to them; “up!”
They ran, confused in the dark; calibans nosed past riders. Dain doused the embers of the nightfire: the tumult ran down and down the shore, a murmur of voices in the night, the hisses of calibans as if some strange sea were breaking at their backs. “Hup, hai!” someone cried, near at hand, a man’s voice. “Up, up, up!” There were splashes from the river–not attack: McGee had gained a sense of this–it was another sudden move. But something was close. She clutched at her clothes, hurried for the shore in the dark, skipped as ariels flowed like water about her feet, avoided stepping on one somehow.
“Brown,” she called; it was all the name it had. Brown, don’t leave me here! She whistled as best she could in panic. Riders were moving out, in the dark, no sense or order in it. “Hey!”
A shape came toward her, a tongue quested, found her. A head‑butt followed, and that was Brown, all slick with water–had to be Brown. McGee clambered doggedly up with a ruthless spring onto Brown’s foreleg the way the riders did it, her spear in her hand and her bag of belongings slung about her with her precious notes. Brown started to move along with the others, confused as the others, shouldering others in haste–
Going where? McGee wondered, clinging in the dark, clinging to the spear, the casual way the riders carried it: she had learned to ride with it, balanced herself with it when Brown was in a hurry, with that sinuous rocking fore and back, side to side in a rhythm that had its highs and lows, its pitches into which the riders settled as if they were born to it.
But this was real. This was the last move, the last plunge into dark and war and no one was ordering this thing, except that Elai was up ahead with Taem, with Paeia by her side, no less her enemies in potential… Dain would go to Elai’s side: Dain’s caliban went where Dain told it, and he would get himself to the fore, while Brown–
I’m scared, I’m scared, I’m scared, she told herself to the rhythm of their moving. This is no way to fight a war. There ought to be lines, generals, orders; someone ought to set this thing up. We’ll all be killed.
They climbed through brush, making noise, breaking branches, caring nothing that they were heard. Treelimbs raked her; she fended with a leathered arm, kept the spear along Brown’s side.
I’m going to use this thing. She flexed her fingers on it, the smooth wood: the head was venomed; an ugly thing, to counter other weapons bound to come her way. Panic gave way to certainty, like some long, long dive which had its own logic, its own morality. Life seemed precious and trifling at once. Dain. Elai sent him. Her messenger, after all. She laid her heels to Brown, clutching the spear the tighter, half crazed, drawing great breaths and anxious only to get on with it.
Life, she kept thinking, like a talisman, to keep herself alive.
Dain– Hardly started in his life. The rest of us– all caliban‑bait. The thought enraged her, and the spear was like her arm, an extension of herself. The sky was going lighter, the shapes of calibans more definite, the rhythm of Brown’s strides more certain.