She scrambled out of the mire–wild, blind struggle: hands seized her, pulled her to safety, and she leaned on offered arms–Dain was one. They pulled her further, away from the heaving mass that had become a ball of calibans, huge browns biting and rolling like ariels about a prize. She could not see Scar.
“They’ve run,” Maeri said, one of her own. “First, they’re down.”
There was chaos everywhere, no rider able to stay mounted, calibans pursuing fugitives, fighting each other, humans in pursuit of humankind, the earth thundering to the impacts of the massed bodies in that knot before them. She saw Scar pull free of it, saw him seize another throat in his jaws and plunge into the mass.
Alive, then, alive. And Jin was under that. She began to shiver, unable to stand.
They brought her an accounting of the dead: Taem was one; but she had known that. There were other names. “MaGee?” she asked. “Where’s Paeia?”
“Paeia’s hunting,” the man told her, kin of Paeia; and with a grin: “MaGee fell off way back. Must be safe.”
“Find her,” Elai said, never taking her eyes from the feeding that had begun on this hillside above the Cloud.
There were other things to do, but the calibans would tend to them; and the most of her young folk would not go so far as the Styx. Some would, to be sure the Pattern there shaped the way it should. Most would come back to her, here, in good time.
She gave a whistle, trying to retrieve Scar; but that was useless yet. It would be useless until there was nothing left but bones. So she sat there on the trampled hill to wait, numb and cold and aching when she moved. They brought her drink; they brought her the prizes of Jin’s camp: she took little interest in these things.
But they found MaGee, finally; and MaGee sat down near her in the dim morning with the calibans dragging the bones toward the river, leaving the trampled ground.
She offered MaGee her hand. MaGee’s eyes were bruised‑looking, her face scratched and battered. Her hair hung loose from its braids, caked with mud.
So was her own, she reckoned.
“You’re all right,” MaGee said.
“All right,” she said, too weary to move an arm. She motioned with her eyes. “Got him chewed down to bone, that Thorn.”
Something distressed MaGee, the blood maybe, or getting thrown. Her mouth shook. “What happened?”
“Got him.” Elai drew a hard breath. Her ribs hurt. Clearly MaGee failed to understand much at all. She whistled up Scar, levering herself up again with the spear, because there was something starting on that bank, a new altercation among calibans–some of the Styxside lot, that might be, or some of their own from Cloudside, testing out who had the right to shove and who had to take. She was anxious. She wanted Scar out of there, but calibans were snapping and lashing at one another and she did not want the quarrel moved their way either. She could see Scar among the others; could see Paeia’s big brown throwing her weight around, sweeping lessers out of the way with her tail. The sniping attacks went on, lessers’ jaws closing on a hind or forelimb, dragging at the skin, worrying them from this side and that–
He’s old, Elai thought. Her fists were clenched. That Thorn got him in the belly. She saw Scar bowl a rival over and get him belly up, after which the rival ran away, but others worried at him: he swept them with his tail, whirled and snapped. It went on.
“Is he all right out there?” MaGee asked.
“Of course he’s all right.” Elai whistled again. Others called their mounts, and some of the quarrelling quieted. But there was no recalling them, not yet. She turned, motioned with her spear downriver, and others gained their feet, of the elders.
“What now?” MaGee asked.
“Nothing now,” Elai said, looking at her in bewilderment. “Don’t you know? That’s Jin down there. We’ve won.”
lv
Message: Gehenna Station to Base Director
Survey notes two movements this morning–one on a broad front toward the Styx and a second, smaller and more compact movement up the Cloud. The Styxward movement is of greater speed. Survey suggests contrary to expectations that the invasion may have been routed…
lvi
205 CR, day 215
Cloudside
Someone whistled, to the rear of the column, and heads turned: McGee looked, the while she limped beside Elai over the sand beside the Cloud: the calibans had come, swimming effortlessly down the current.
“Do we ride?” McGee asked. It seemed madness that they had left the calibans behind; or not madness: for her own part she had taken one fall, and that was enough for her bones. One fall; one nightmare of Brown trampling down a man. But no one said anything; they had left the calibans behind and walked at Elai’s order, as if it were sane; and she was not sure of that, was sure of nothing now.
Still the silence. Elai said little on the walk, nothing but monosyllables, stayed lost in her own thoughts, unlike a woman who had just won the world entire, who held all Gehenna in her hands.
The calibans paced them in the river, that was all.
“No,” Maeri answered her question, Dain’s sister of First Tower. “Don’t think so.”
They walked further. The calibans dived and surfaced, not coming in, but at last Scar did, strode out on the shore ahead of them.
Riverweed, McGee thought at first. But it was his skin, hanging in rags about his belly, about his limbs. He walked with his collar down, his tail inscribing a serpentine in the sand.
Elai whistled then; and Scar stopped. He’s hurt, McGee opened her mouth to ask, to protest; but she stood still, watched with dismay as Elai approached him, touched him, climbed up to her place despite the hanging skin.
They began to walk again, in Scar’s tracks on the shore, at Elai’s back, no more cheerful than Scar himself, while the calibans sported in the river.
They would know, back in Cloud Towers, who had won, McGee reckoned; the calibans would get there before them: ariels would pattern it, grays would build it for the people to see, out beyond the rows of dry fishnets.
But she looked at Elai riding ahead of them, at bowed shoulders, both rider and caliban hurting.
She was afraid then, the way she had been afraid before the battle; in a way that wiped out nightmares of what had been.
What’s happening? she wondered. She stalked Dain, walked beside him in hope of answers, but he had none, only trudged along like the rest.
They camped early; more calibans became tractable and came in, seeking out their riders. Scar sulked alone, down by the riverside, and Elai huddled by the fire.
“Is everything all right?” McGee asked at last, crouching there.
“Jin’s dead,” said Elai tonelessly. “Styx towers will fall now.”
“You mean that’s where the others went.” McGee pursued the matter, knowing it was fragile ground. Elai held out her hand and opened the fingers. End of the matter. McGee sat and hugged her knees against her chest, in the fire warmth, surer and surer that something had been lost.
Scar, she kept thinking in growing chill, and restrained herself from a glance toward the river; she knew what she would see: an old caliban on the last of his strength, a caliban who had done well to survive his last battle. Some other caliban could take him now. Any other. If one were inclined to try.