And halfway up, a shelf, a tilting slab, hardly more than a dus's width. The beasts went on climbing, sending down small rocks; Niun stopped there, tucked up in a cramped position, dragged Duncan as much onto the ledge as he could. Duncan coughed, a racking, heaving cough, lay face down and curled somewhat; and Niun crouched there listening, his hand on Dun-can's heaving shoulder.
The dusei reached the top, perhaps to move on, perhaps to wait; Niun willed them to wait, felt Duncan's breathing ease at last to deep gasps and finally to a quick, shallow pace. There was no bed but the cold stone, no place but this to rest. In his mind Niun hoped their pursuers would try the cut in the dark one grand slide to oblivion for that carelessness, going into that place not knowing it was there. Or if they came around it, they would go some distance out of their way, some far distance. There was time to rest, enough, at least, to give Duncan a little ease.
Melein, he cast out toward his dus, hoping, desperately hoping. There was nothing, but only that remote unease that had begun this day and continued. He dared not yield to sleep; tired as he was, he might go on sleeping, until the moment he found himself surrounded by hao'nath.
He did sleep, came awake with a guilty jerk, an attempt to focus his eyes on the stars, to know how long. The moon was up. For a moment it seemed a star moved, and his strained eyes blinked and lost it; illusion, he persuaded himself. There was still a star there, stable and twinkling with dust. He watched that patch of visible heavens until he found his eyes closing again, despite numbed limbs and the misery of a point of rock in his back; Duncan's back moved evenly under his hand. He stayed still a long time, finally moved his hand and shook at Duncan, as reluctantly as he would have struck him. "Move," he said. "We have to move.
Duncan tried, almost slipped off the ledge in trying to push himself up to his knees; Niun seized him by his Honors-belt and steadied him, moved his own stiffened limbs and pulled, secured a better grip on him. Somewhere above them the dusei stirred out of a sleep, and vague alarm prickled through the air, a re-reckoning of positions. The enemy had a new direction going around the cut, Niun reckoned.
Where Melein might have gone, to be set in their path before he might.
He climbed, hauling Duncan's faltering steps higher with him, bracing himself and struggling by turns. At last the upper rocks were about them, and a sandy ridge, a last hard climb. Duncan hung on him and made it, carried his own weight then, though bent and stumbling. The dusei met them there, comfort in the dark and the moonlight; and before them stretched another flat, and the low southern hills.
A land with no more limits than the one they had just passed from; and no sight of a camp, nothing.
"Come," he urged Duncan, against complaints Duncan had not voiced. He caught Duncan's sleeve, gentle guidance, started walking, a slower pace than before. It was almost the worse for rest; aches settled into bones, rawness into his throat; Duncan's hoarse breathing and occasional coughs caught at his own nerves, and at times he hesitated in a step as if his joints yielded, minute pauses, one upon the next.
And suddenly there was sense of presence, familiar presence, home, home, home.
They are out there," Niun exclaimed. "Sov-kela, do you feel it?
"Yes." The voice was nothing like Duncan's. It managed joy. 1 do.
And out of some reserve of strength he widened his steps, struggled the harder, a hand cupped to his mouth, attempt to warm the air.
Rounded domes of rock existed here and there, knobs of sandstone wind-smoothed, sometimes hollowed into bowls or flattened into tear shapes. A skirl of sand ran along the ground, a wind for once at their backs, helping and not tormenting, for all that it was cold; and a lightening began in the east, the first apricot seam of dawn.
Dus-sense persisted, a muddle of confusions, urging them south, unease in one quarter and another, as if the evil had fragmented and scattered; there was hope amid it; and a darkness that was nearest of all, a void, a shielded spot in the network.
It acquired substance.
There was a stone, a roughness in the land; dus, perhaps a ha-dus might have such a feel, nonparticipant; might look so, a lump of shadow in the dawn.
The shape straightened, black-robed, weapons and Honors aglitter in the uncertain light. Niun stopped; Duncan did. And suddenly dus-sense took hold of that other mind, a muddle of distress before it closed itself off again.
"Ras," Niun murmured. He started walking again, Duncan beside him. The dusei reached the kel'e'en and edged back, growling.
"Ja'anom," Duncan breathed.
"Aye," Niun said. He walked closer than stranger's-distance to her; it was no place for raising voices.
"You found him," Ras said.
"Where is the rest of the tribe?
She lifted a robed arm south-southeast, as they were bearing.
"Are they well?" Niun asked, bitter at having to ask.
"When I left.
Duncan made a faltering move and sat down, bowed over. Ras spared him a cold glance. Niun swallowed pride and knelt down by him, fended off the dus that wanted close to him, then let it, for the warmth was comfort to Duncan. Niun leaned his hands against his own knees, to rest, the reassurance of Ras's message coiling uncertainly in his belly. He put aside the rest of his reserve and looked up at Ras. "All safe?
"Kel Ros, sen Otha, sen Kadas dead.
He let it go, bowed his head, too weary to go into prolonged questioning with Ras. He had not known the sen'ein; Ros had been a quiet man, even for a kel'en; he had never known him either. Ras settled with a rustling of doth, kel-sword across her knees to lean on.
"There are others out there," Niun said at last. "Hao'nath. They have been following some few days.
If that perturbed Ras she did not show it.
"Did Hlil send you?" he asked.
XT
No.
The old feeling returned, that tautness at the gut that assailed him whenever Ras turned up in his path, or behind him. Brother and sister was the obligation between them; it was mockery. For a moment the hao'nath themselves seemed warmer.
"Come," he said. "Duncan, can you?
Duncan moved and tried. Niun rose and took his arm, lifting him up, and at the unsteadiness he felt, slipped an arm about him, started in the direction the dus-sense indicated.
Ras walked beside him this time, a shielded blankness in the dus-sense. Mri of Kesrith had learned that inner veil, living among dusei; Ras had, of loathing or of necessity, ignoring even a warding-impulse to stay with him.
The light brought detail to the land, the rounded hills, the limitless flat, the shadowy gape of the cut they had passed.
There was nothing in all of it that indicated a camp.
The preparations had that cold and lonely feeling which always came of dawn hours and broken routines. Galey meddled with his personal gear while the three regs with him did the same, and all of them waited on Boaz.
Ben Shibo, Moshe Kadarin, Ed Lane, two legitimate regs and Lane, who was more tech than not, in armscomp. Shibo was backup pilot; Kadarin he had picked for a combination of reasons the others shared, the several world-patches on his sleeve, a personal file that indicated an absence of hatreds, a phlegmatic acceptance of close contact with regul.
They took to Boaz's presence the same way; quietly, keeping misgivings to themselves.
At present the misgivings were his own, a fretting at the delay, wondering if at the last moment Luiz might not confound them all by interposing his own orders.But at length she came, Luiz trailing anxiously in her wake. She had a clutter of gear with her, photographic and otherwise; and Galey objected to nothing it was civ business and none of his. She paused to press a loss on the old surgeon's cheek, and Galey turned his head, feeling oddly intrusive between these two. "Load aboard," he told the others; Kadarin and Lane gathered up the gear and went out Shibo delayed to offer a hand for Boaz's gear.