Not a matter now of driving them off a time. She read that too, the way she read the land. Jin took the high ground, to push. She knew what he would do, and by that what they would do, surely as the sun came up–if flesh was strong enough.
She put forward her spear in the dim dawn, in the quickening of Scar’s pace. There was no time now to order things. She gave a fleeting thought to MaGee and wished that she had had Dain put her somewhere, but MaGee would fare as they all fared, and there was no helping it. Pattern against pattern. The calibans had made MaGee part of it: part of her; that was the way of it. Grays joined them, plowed the earth like the currents of the sea. Their powerful claws found places to probe in the mounds: they dived in earth and surfaced again, hissing and whistling, but the long‑striding browns scrambled across soft ground, four‑footed and stable, bridging the gaps with the reach of their limbs, treading the grays down with grand disdain, in silent haste.
The sun arrived, spread its rays through the ruin of a forest before them, where the trees had been cast down, undermined. They plunged over this, like a living torrent, with hissings and scramblings; but greater were the rocks down by the sea that she had climbed on Scar. Grays, not their own, vacated the Pattern and fled before the browns, through the brush, over the ridges, among trees still standing.
Scar’s collar flashed up. Taem’s brown plunged ahead. The hisses of browns broke like water hitting hot metal.
Her riders surged about her. Whistles split the air; younger calibans took their riders to the fore as they climbed the mounds, refusing the patterns they met now.
Elai clamped her knees taut as they met soft ground where grays were at work and Scar lurched down and up again, past the roots of overthrown trees, past brush that raked harmlessly on her leather‑clad legs.
“Hai!” She caught the fever and shouted with her young men’s cries, with the high‑pitched yelps of the young women as they came down the banks among grays that froze under the browns’ scrabbling claws, confused and immobile. She couched her spear, held her seat, for now other shapes hove up, rider‑bearing calibans, shapes bristling with raised collars, with spears in human hands. Darts flew, struck her leathered arm.
She shouted, not knowing what she yelled, but all at once the fear was gone, every dread was gone. “ Ellai!” she was yelling at the last, which was her mother’s name; and “ Cloud!”
More darts; she shook them off; they struck Scar in vain, useless on his hide. Lesser browns fled Scar’s approach, bearing their riders out of his path. Scar trod others down, mounted over them, clawing their riders heedlessly underfoot, with riders yelling and calibans lurching this way and that through the ruin of trees.
Scar lurched, taxed her weak leg. She held as the earth opened, and grays came up, some calibans losing their riders as they slid into the undermining, and over all the hisses and the screams.
But she knew where she was going. Paeia was beside her, was delayed by one of the Styxsiders so that she lost that guard; but then came a clearing of bodies, a withdrawing except for the rider coming toward her, a caliban larger than the rest.
Jin.
Scar lurched aside, almost unseated her. One of her riders rushed by in the whirl of day and trees and plunging bodies. Her spearshaft cracked hard against another, and Scar bore her out of the path of that attack as another of her riders took it. Taem was out there, Taem’s brown trying Jin’s, circling.
“Scar!” she yelled, her spear tucked again beneath her arm. She drove with her heels, less to Scar’s tough hide than the darts that spattered about them. “Scar!”
Scar moved, shied off as Jin overrode Taem, kept retreating, retreating, disordering their lines.
Jin’s brown scrambled forward, lunged low as Scar shied off, presenting his belly. Elai fought for balance, dug with her heel and rammed the spear at the Styxsider; but Scar was still rising, up and over the collar crest of Jin’s caliban.
The lame leg betrayed her as Scar twisted, as he reared up with the Styxsider in his jaws and the Styxside caliban lunging and clawing at his gut. She hit the ground, winded, tucked low as a tail skimmed her back, melded herself in the gouged earth as it came back again, as the battle rolled over her. She spat mud from her mouth and scrambled for her life as the feet came near, as the rolling mass lashed the ground and calibans raked each other.
She fell again, legs too shaken to bear her weight, used the spear to lever herself up, sorted caliban from caliban in the mass and the one with the throat‑grip had a starlike scar shining on his side. She rammed the spear into the soft spot of the other’s neck, heaved her weight against it, and the mass all came her way: a tail hit her, but she was already going down, half‑senseless as calibans poured over her, to the sharing of the kill.
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–