If you're not slurped after gettin' your hands on Rishan's tokens, Shale thought, and avoided catching Mica's eye.
Galen squatted next to the bulbous trunk of the closest palm and leaned back against the smooth grey surface. "Big'un, this caravan. Twenty packpedes and a couple of myriapedes. The pedemaster's offsider just rode in to warn us. They'll be buying water and resin and fossicked stuff. And selling us salt. Make sure you're there. There may be work for you boys." He laid a friendly hand on Mica's shoulder, but the stare he gave Shale was flat and cold. "You-" he said finally. "You're old 'nough to earn your keep with a caravanner, if one of 'em asks. Understand me, boy?"
For a moment Shale didn't understand. And then he caught sight of the revulsion on Mica's face, and he did. He laid down his hammer. "Nah. Don't want t'do that," he said. "Not what Ore the stonebreaker makes his boys do. They say it hurts."
"Hurts? I'll give you hurts if you cheek me, boy! You'll do as you're tole." His pa stood up and came towards him.
"The rush is comin' down," he blurted out. "You got t'do somethin', Pa. Warn folk."
His Pa looked at him in astonishment. "You crazy as well as lazy, boy?"
Mica gave him an agonised look, but Shale couldn't keep quiet even though his hands had started to shake. "If the pedeman has his mount tied up in the street, he should get it inside someone's garden. The water'll be here 'fore the sun goes down."
Without warning his father back-handed him across the mouth, this time hard enough to send him flying. He hit the trunk of the nearest bab palm and slid to the ground, dazed.
Mica sat still, biting his lip.
"Your brother's got the brains of a sand-tick. What the pickled pede is the matter with him?" Galen asked him, without even bothering to look at Shale.
Mica shrugged and said nothing. His father walked away, grumbling. Mica waited until he'd disappeared through the palms, then went to kneel where Shale was trying to sit up.
"You all right?"
Shale touched his mouth gingerly. "S'pose so."
"What the withering spit did you have to tell him for?"
But Shale couldn't put into words the desire he felt-the stupid, childish need he had-to see approval in his father's eyes. He knew it was stupid, but couldn't help it. He mumbled, " 'Cause it's true. Mica, it's almost here. I can feel it. We got to get to the top of the bank." When Mica opened his mouth to scold, Shale added reproachfully, "You promised."
"Pedeshit. All right. Though you're too messed up to go anywhere much."
Shale pushed the basket of crushed segment plates at him. "Take this."
"Someone'll say we're stealing if they see us makin' off with it."
The feeling in Shale's chest suffocated him, speeding up his breathing, quickening his sense of urgency. Roughly, he shoved the basket into Mica's arms. "Then hang it up high in the bab palm so's it won't get washed away."
Mica gave an exaggerated sigh of irritation, but slung the bag over his shoulder, hauled himself up over the bulge of the lower trunk, then shimmied up the narrower part above until he could reach the fronds. He hung the bag on the broken end of a stem and slid down again. Shale, his whole face aching, headed for the bank on the opposite side from where they lived, and Mica followed.
"Pa's right," he said as he pushed Shale up over the top lip of the wash a moment or two later, "You got no more brains than a wilting sand-tick."
"Folk should know," Shale said, stubborn to the last. He felt dizzy and sick. Blood dripped from his nose and lip and already his face was beginning to swell. "Mica, think. They won't have their garden cisterns open. Gravel won't have opened the grove cistern, neither. An' what if there's folk in the streets? The pedeman's pede, too. Even Pa might still be in the wash somewheres."
"But it's not goin' to happen," Mica protested. "You're as muddled as a legless pede!"
"It's comin'!"
Mica stood up and looked down the wash. He could see over the settle to where the riverbed cut north through the plains. "There's nothin' there." He glanced at his brother where he sat in misery, holding his head in his hands. "Shale, there really isn't." But even as he said the words, he gave an uneasy glance back up the wash.
Beside him, Shale struggled to stand up. His fear vanished, swamped in the excitement of feeling the power of water on the move. The water in his blood stirred in joyous response; his heart raced. "Listen," he said, and cocked his head to hear better. "I tole you so!"
Mica listened, then squinted against the light to look up the wash. His eyes went wide with horror.
"Weeping shit!" he said.
CHAPTER SIX
Gibber Quarter Wash Drybone The rush shot down the riverbed, filling it from side to side, riding up the banks on the curves and sloshing back down again. The front was a roaring brown monster topped with a ragged curl of foam. It consumed the gully, blasted it with sound that was at once familiar and exhilarating. The feral rage of water on the move. Life and death inextricably mixed.
Too late, the settle heard. Within the walls of their gardens, people scrambled to close gates, to open sluices that led to the cisterns, to scream for children, to make sure that all were safe within their yards and houses. In the street, a pede reared up on its multitude of legs, wailing. Shale could see its head above the walls as it attempted to climb over into one of the house gardens. He was glad they were too far away to see the terror in its myopic eyes.
From where they stood, they could not see the bore hit the strengthened garden walls of the first houses, but they heard the impact, the slap of a wave travelling as fast as a pede could run, slamming into stone.
"I'll be waterless," Mica muttered, awe-struck. "It's never been like this before."
"Much more water," Shale agreed, crossing his arms over his chest to hug himself, as if that would stop the turmoil gathering inside him from bursting out.
The bucking torrent-now parted by the first of the houses-streamed down the parallel streets of the settle. The streets became rivers; garden walls were riverbanks. From their vantage point, Shale watched as villagers flung back the stone covers to allow the water, already gushing into their gardens through the water slits, to flow into their underground cisterns. He watched as several people escaped from the streets by diving through gates or climbing across walls. He saw the pede try to follow them, and fail. Its great body fell back and it was borne away on the water.
He cried out, anguished, his elation diminishing.
The water thrashed out of the settle and into the palm groves, far too much for the slots to handle. Spreading out to cover the cultivated land, it submerged crops, battered the trees, slammed up against the banks of the wash. The pede came with it, head emerging briefly, then disappearing, then visible again. Black pointed claws raked one of the palm trunks, scrabbling for purchase. The saddle came untied and was swept into the torrent. The water, relentless, dragged at the beast until it lost its grip. It snatched at the trunk of the next tree. This time it used its mouth parts as well as the sharp tips of its feet.
Shale churned with conflicting emotions. He stood on land, but he felt he was caught up in the water, struggling for life. He was filled with power then buffeted by it, powerless. He couldn't control his feelings. Everything was too volatile, too turbulent. He found himself shouting to the pede, as if it could hear above the sound of the water. For an absurd moment he thought that if only he could save the animal, everything would be all right. Everything could go back to the way it should be.
The pede didn't give up. It clawed deep into the second bab palm and rested. Its long feelers-the length of its body-lifted out of the torrent and began to grope around. One of them hooked on to another tree, closer to the bank where Shale and Mica stood. Quite deliberately, the pede loosed its foothold, allowing its body to swing out into the flow. Torn by the current, the creature groped through the air with its second feeler until it too hooked on to a palm, this one closer still to the bank.