She lowered her voice almost to a whisper, speaking out of the corner of her mouth, still without taking her gaze off Artur's face. "Check to my right, about four meters off," she said, barely using her lips, "but don't turn your head to look."
He leaned over the stretcher as if to gaze more closely into the face of Artur, using the movement to disguise a tilt of his head to the right, so that out of the corner of his eyes, he could see into the forest on that side of them. His view picked up Cee, prowling along level with the stretcher and himself.
The vine with its pod no longer was around her waist. It hung by its vine-ends from one fist, with the weight of what was probably a single rock only pulling it down. Cee's other fist held a second rock ready. Her eyes were on him with the same steadiness they had held back at the camp when she had looked both at him and at Liu. "She still doesn't trust us completely," Onete said, still in a barely audible voice, still with her lips hardly moving. "But particularly, she doesn't trust you. Liu gave orders to the soldiers and they did what they did to Artur. You give orders to us, as far as she can see, so you must be another like him. If she starts to rotate or to raise either arm, hit the ground, or get something between you and her." "Thanks," said Hal, "I will. But don't worry about me. I know about slings - I can even use one myself. I'll be able to tell if she starts to use that."
What he said was true enough. His knowledge of slings as well as a number of other primitive weapons dated back to the early training of his first childhood on Dorsai. What he did not tell her was that it was going to be impossible for him to keep an eye on Cee at all times and meanwhile do whatever he might do to make sure they all got up to the ledge safely.
It was full daylight now, and they came at last to the large outcropping of rock under which it was possible for them to make their way to the boulder that had been set up to block the path beyond it on to the trail leading up the side of the mountain to the ledge.
CHAPTER 30
Shawnee, a slightly stout, middle-aged woman, with her gray hair pulled back above her ankle-length blue robe and sandals, had the round, calm face of a typical Exotic and was on sentry duty just outside the entrance under the rock that led to the mountain trail. "We heard you coming," she said, as the group reached her, "and got you on the scopes by relay from the ledge. The blocking boulder's moved back and the way's clear. You can take Artur through, and we'll block the way again behind you. "
There was a short period of difficulty, for the bearers had to bend double to pass through the entrance and this made Artur an impossible load for the four of them. It ended up with seven people, including Hal, crawling through with the stretcher essentially carried on their backs, until they reached the other side of the rock face and the opening beyond where the path up the mountainside began. The large granite boulder, as Shawnee had promised, was off to one side.
They stopped to rest while the boulder was rolled back. Once in place, it cut off not only entrance, but any light from above. Now anyone crawling under the rock face would have no alternative but to believe they had come up against the solid mountainside and that nothing but stone was beyond. "Amid said we shouldn't need to bother digging up the plug rock, if the soldiers were leaving," said Shawnee, "unless, you've got some reason to." "No. No reason to now," answered Hal. He felt weariness, but with the warm hearth-glow of success at its heart.
But then began the labor of getting Artur up the steep slope of the mountainside track to the ledge. In spite of the Guild members' own experience with the way in, and the fact Hal had warned them, the carriers found they could only work in five-minute stretches before needing to be relieved. Hal stayed beside them all the way, on one side of the stretcher, ready to help catch it if one of the bearers should slip and fall. On the other side climbed Onete, her syringes ready, and beyond her, scrambling sometimes on all fours like a mountain goat, but with the sling loaded and its vine-ends caught up short, ready in one grimy fist, was Cee - her eyes continually on Hal.
There was one uncomfortable moment when Artur began to come to, and moaned. Cee was instantly upright, the vine-ends of her sling sliding down through her fists to their full length, and in the same moment Onete stepped up to the side of the stretcher, her body directly blocking Hal from any throw by Cee. "He's all right! Hal's done nothing!" she snapped at Cee. "I'm going to make your uncle comfortable and put him back to sleep, right now. "
The stretcher bearers had stopped. Any excuse for a moment in which to catch their breath. Onete turned about, still blocking any throw at Hal with her own body, and gave Artur another injection. He relaxed on the stretcher.
"Let's get on," said Hal, taking his own grip on the side of the stretcher again, and they resumed their painful way upward.
When they finally stepped out onto the level surface of the ledge itself, everybody was at the end of their strength. "We'll take him to a room in the clinic," Onete told Hal. "You can find him there later, if you want him. Tannaheh has some people trained as nurses and assistants. There'll be somebody with him all the time." "Tell Tannaheh someone who's been through what Artur's been through is going to have to be brought out of it gradually," Hal said. "For a while at first after he comes to, he's going to think he's still in the hands of his torturers - but Tannaheh probably already knows that."
"I'll tell him anyway," said Onete. "You better get some rest yourself. You've been up more than twenty-four hours, haven't you?" "Perhaps," said Hal. "Anyway, I've got a few words I want to have with Amid before I call it done. I'll see you later." "He turned away from her and the stretcher bearers, who were now brand new at their job, being from among those who had stayed up on the ledge. Some of those who had helped the stretcher up the last few meters of slope had simply sat down, or lain down, where they had stopped, although to Hal's eyes none of them looked in need of more than an ordinary night's rest to put them back on their feet. He turned away and went toward Amid's office.
The heat of the rising sun of midmorning struck at his face and chest through his sweat-soaked shirt, and the level ground felt strange under his feet. He slanted across the open ground, approaching Amid's office from the front and side. He reached it at its right corner and walked along its front toward its entrance. As he passed, he glanced in one of the windows that were the best compromise these forest-built structures could make with the former Exotic homes, where it had been hard to tell from one room to the next whether you were outdoors or indoors. It had suddenly occurred to him that the small, old head of the Chantry Guild might be somewhere else about the establishment, and the thought of a prolonged search for him on legs wobbly with weariness was not attractive.