Chapter 13

"Ssam khue."

Merritt rolled over as the guard shook at his ankle, still bewildered with sleep and momentarily unable to recall what his situation was. But Rejkh's heavy hand had lately taught him how short their tempers were, and that reflex had him crawling out of the burrow before his mind was clearly working. It was a strange male that had summoned him. He reached into the burrow on hands and knees and pulled his clothes out, partially dressed before the fellow lost patience with him; he shrugged shirt and jacket on while he walked.

From the hillside path he could look down on the center of the village, on the top of the aged tree with its awful ornaments. There was a gathering beneath its branches, apparently most of the population of the village, and he did not like the prospect of that.

When he reached the foot of the path and the bottom of the hill he could hear somewhat of the proceedings: it was a chant, one speaker alternating with a rhythmic slapping of thighs and palms, the group seated now on the ground about that tree. The guard pushed him forward and he went perforce toward it, more than apprehensive. There was a sudden hush, the chant broken at his approach.

Sazhje sprang up from among them and met him, seized and held his arm in a gesture of comfort; and now Otrekh rose to his feet and assisted a very old male to rise. There was a great deal of chattering of a sudden, but Rejkh shouted something and things grew quieter. Otrekh delivered a vehement address to the group and to the elder, and Merritt watched reactions anxiously; but beside him Sazhje remained unperturbed.

At last the others began to beat their hands upon their thighs and to chant one syllable over and over. It was bedlam, and Merritt would have stepped back but for Sazhje's forbidding hold on his arm.

Suddenly the commotion ceased, and the group fragmented, scattering in all directions, the young quickly and the elders in their own time, until what remained was a group of young males, all fitted with weapons; and this too Merritt regarded with mistrust, but Sazhje kept firm hold of his arm and hugged it with all her might when Otrekh spoke to her. There was a sharp exchange; she bounced one taut gesture of seeming triumph, looked up without letting go.

"Ssam come," she said, "Sazhje people come Gairh people. Ssam ahhrht. Ssam come ahhrht."

The young males were grouping for a journey, on a track back the way they had come; and he was going, and Sazhje was going with him. He understood finally, not where they were going, unless it was some other, more important camp, but that he was safe for the duration of the journey and Sazhje believed it. Rejkh was with them, and Otrekh: Rejkh would have come near him, but Sazhje hissed at him and Rejkh changed his mind at once. They started to move, making an irregular column going out of the village, with the young scampering along beside until they reached the first shadow of the trees. And Rejkh cast sullen glances, but Merritt gave him none back, reckoning that to be free to walk, with Sazhje holding his hand and walking with him was as much as he could ask and more.

"Where?" he asked Sazhje, making a snaking gesture to the winding trail before them. "Where Sam-Sazhje go?"

"Gairh people," she said again." She turned her head to look at him as they walked, her face touched with deep concentration. "Gairh people no good, no good Ssam people."

That was ominous enough, if the words put themselves together in a straight line.

"Friends to Sazhje?" he supplied the word he thought she might want.

She frowned. No, that was not it. She took her hand from his to make a pyramid of her fingers."

"Yes, the dam. I understand."

The pyramid fell down. "Kill tarn."

"What, kill the dam?"

"Ah. Ah. Gairh people kill tarn. Kill Ssam people."

Merritt frowned, searched for words. For the next several moments, until Sazhje quite tired of the conversation, he tried to learn what she meant; but it was beyond their composite vocabulary. Even Otrekh joined them and fell into the argument; and Rejkh tried to explain by signs and symbols and angry gestures, but at last Merritt had to conclude only that people at their destination were going to kill the dam. It would come out no other way.

And when he tried to ask what would become of him, Otrekh and Rejkh drew out of the conversation.

"Kill Sam?" he asked.

"Ssam ahhrht." That was all that Sazhje could manage to tell him, and she seemed to say it with less than complete conviction.

A little before camp that evening it began to cloud over; and twilight came early, but there was no rain. They were on high ground already, having branched off the trail they had used on the way in sometime earlier, and they settled down for what, among their kind, was a normal stop, short, according to human need for sleep.

Rejkh pushed Merritt over to a convenient tree, in what had become nightly ritual, intending to secure him for sleep; and Sazhje fairly exploded with outrage. She screamed and gestured wildly, disturbing the whole camp, and snarled first at Rejkh and then at Otrekh, and at others who joined the quarrel, so that Merritt began to fear for both their lives in all the spitting and growling. The males swung at her and twice actually struck her with their open hands, to no avail. But finally Otrekh dealt her a blow clearly audible, and she staggered and whimpered and slunk aside.

"Otrekh!" Merritt shouted, and the big fellow lowered his ears and growled, still not offering to attack. It was all show: Merritt had almost learned to tell, and this was purely face-saving. Sazhje evidently thought so, for she gave a scornful snort and sidled her way back to take Merrill's arm.

Olrekh still had something to say; and he was not moving. This time there was hardness in his attitude, and stalemate was on them, apt to end in someone getting hurt Merritt weighed the profit on either side and finally pushed Sazhje away, quietly went and sat down against the tree where Rejkh wanted him, and Rejkh saw to his securing with the cord, no less roughly than his habit. Sazhje watched in disapproval with much fretting and fuming, and when Rekjh was done and all the camp began to settle for the night, she came and settled at Merrill's side, worked her head under his chin and lay there hard-breathing and still angry.

"I'm sorry," Merritt told her, and her long hand patted his side comfortingly.

"Sazhje ahhrht," she assured him. "Sazhje ahhrht"

"We go to the dam, Sazhje?"

"Ah," she affirmed, and shivered against him. A few drops of rain were starting to fall. "Go tarn, Gairh people tarn. Ssam ahhrht. Ssam people no ahhrht Kill Ssam people. Ssam ahhrht Sazhje."

"I don't understand, Sazhje. "

"Gairh people no good Ssam people. Kill tarn."

Merritt shook his head in frustration. Sazhje at her most communicative was the hardest to understand; and she looked up at him in mutual distress, knowing she had failed to make him understand all of what she was saying. At last she simply put her head down on his chest and patted him comfortingly.

The weather had been threatening all evening when they arrived at their destination, soft sea clouds slipping overhead carried on the west wind, gathering darker and darker, and the air tinged with warmth. They came early into this hillside camp, but most of the inhabitants had already sought shelter for the coming night.

There was here, as at the other location upriver, a group of burrows dug into the clay hillside. But this place had not the look of permanence such as Sazhje's village had had. Here were no stone-bordered paths, but oozing clay banks tracked into footpaths; no tidy stone-fronted residences, but rush-mat windbreaks thrust into the irregular fronts of the dwellings. All that remained the same was the centering of the camp around a particularly aged tree, which Merritt began to suspect had some religious symbolism: this one, too, was hung with skulls, whether collected from enemies killed or some grisly form of honor to their own dead.

The population was different too. In Sazhje's village there had been children, the look of a people at home and life proceeding normally. But here the residents that came pouring out of the hillside burrows to see their visitors were males and a few, a very few young females.

This, Merrill thought, looking uneasily at the gathering circle, was very probably the base of operations from which attacks on the station had been launched: no random raids by subhuman minds, but a planned campaign directed from an organized camp… a camp known to villages and perhaps uniting several populations within it: a leader, an alien Caesar, and minds of common purpose.

And Sazhje had brought him into the center of this with her assurances of safety… no, had come with him into this; his estimation of her promises was unhappily confirmed. Brave, stubborn Sazhje. She was firmly beside him now, her fingers entwined with his, and he realized that she was frightened too. He hoped that Otrekh could protect her; he assuredly could not.

An argument erupted in the center of the camp by the trunk of the aged tree: Otrekh and Rejkh and some of the others debating with some of the resident leaders in ear-piercing shrieks and violent gestures. Merritt turned his face away and ignored it. He was exhausted from the long walking and the sleepless nights and from hunger too, for they never gave him enough; and it seemed likely that the discussion and the shouting would go on for some time. It was apparently a matter of custom with them, this sort of loud encounter… with what ultimate issue he did not at the moment wish to think. He saw a convenient place, a log that was perhaps intended for sitting, and tugged at Sazhje's hand, edged in that direction. She understood and went the few steps with him, sank down by him, holding his arm and enfolding his hand in hers, her head against his shoulder; but her ears flicked constantly intent on the debate in the center, beyond the crowd that curtained them from it. Torches were lit finally, and light shone through the massed bodies. The shouting became individual, one side and then the other, with the crowd shouting its own interruptions from time to time.

"What's Otrekh telling them, Sazhje? What's Otrekh saying?"

Sazhje either did not understand what he was asking in all the uproar or preferred not to answer. She reached to pat his knee and kept her ears pricked toward the debate.

Then her fingers tensed, her free hand came back to him, a sign of caution. One of the larger males forced his way through the crowd and came back toward them and Merritt started to his feet

He would have come willingly; he had no chance to. The strong hands closed on his sleeve and jerked him forward into the circle, spun him off-balance and into the very center by the tree.

Otrekh seized his arm and thrust him back protectively, snarling a warning at the others who started to close in. Merritt stood still, feet braced, believing for an instant that he and Otrekh were about to become the center of a fight, but the others dared nothing more than to sidle round them and make mock attacks.

Then one jumped him from behind, tried to take him away, and jerked the jacket half off him in the process, hampering his arms. There was an outburst of inhuman laughter at that, which encouraged his tormenter; the jacket came the rest of the way off, torn in the process, and Merritt staggered, nearly thrown to the ground.

Otrekh struck hands away and growled menacingly toward the most daring of the other group. Rejkh covered the other flank, baring his teeth and shrieking rage. A second sally brought Sazhje into it, her shrill voice audible over the deeper snarls of the males, and her impassioned threats and spitting growls cleared some of the less determined enemies out of her vicinity, even the bigger males either tolerant or somehow restrained from dealing with her. It left a circle of angry argument about Merritt that continued until he was nearly deaf with their shouting and their screams, and at last came down to a field of three: Otrekh and two ugly males who seemed to be in authority over the other side… no elders here; these were in their prime, and scarred and powerful.

One of them chased Sazhje into retreat behind Otrekh, and Rejkh joined her. Then the first round of debate seemed ended. The sudden silence was as unnerving as the commotion had been; and the larger of the opposition looked at Merritt and gave a grin that held nothing of kindness, rather served to show his powerful fangs to better advantage. That one gave an order to one of his subordinates, made a careless gesture and waited, breathing hard from the violence of the argument, while it was carried out.

Sazhje slipped back; Merritt felt her hand steal into the bend of his elbow, her long fingers lace with his. He was glad to have her by him.

"Ssam. Ssam, Gairh want kill tarn."

The big fellow, Gairh, was going to kill the dam. Merritt frowned in disbelief and looked to his left again as the other one arrived bearing what he had been asked to bring. There was a box of explosives neatly tucked under one spidery arm: one of the crates from the building site, one of their own; Merritt knew it by the lettering visible in the torchlight.

The bearer crouched and set it down in the midst of the gathering, and the one called Gairh said something with much vehemence and a showing of his fangs. Then he pointed at Merritt; and Merritt had a foreboding of it even before Sazhje translated.

"Gairh want Ssam kill tarn."

"No," Merritt said, with no pause to weigh the answer. "Tell him no, Sazhje. Sam's not going to kill the dam for him."

Sazhje pulled furiously at his arm to make him look at her. "Ssam. No, no, Ssam. Gairh kill Ssam. Sazhje no say no Gairh, no, no, no good Ssam people, no good. Ssam kill Ssam people, stay Sazhje people."

"No," Merritt said. "Sam's not going to kill Sam's people. You tell Gairh no."

"Sazhje no say," she protested vehemently, and Gairh seized her by the arm and spoke to her loudly and long, something to which Sazhje responded only with distressed refusals.

Gairh thrust her away and glowered at Otrekh, then delivered an order to his lieutenant, who squatted down and stripped up the already-breached lid of the box.

Some of the upper layer of the explosives were capped and fused for firing, prepared and thrown carelessly back into the box so that the whole thing was susceptible to heat or shock. Merritt saw it and stared down at it in horror.

Someone—he could not believe it was one of Gairh's folk—had prepared some of the cylinders and turned the whole box into a bomb large enough to devastate the immediate area.

Gairh was screaming at him now, frothing with rage and passion—snatched up one of the cylinders in his fist and waved it in his direction, shouting something. Then with the other bony hand he pointed aloft and one of his people caught a limb of the tree, snatched down the object that he wanted and held it up by the hair.

The face of Dan Miller stared sightlessly back at Merritt, as Lady's had that night in the yard… Miller, who often took the farside guard post because he liked the long in-house reliefs; who had become as expert with the explosives as Merritt, so that it was usually Miller who did the actual placing of the charges.

The creature shook the head and grimaced and screamed derisively; the others howled in chorused amusement. Merritt swallowed an upwelling in his throat and looked at Gairh.

The laughter suddenly died away and there was a moment of intense silence, no one moving. Gairh swelled up with a breath, looked as if he knew the intimidation had been effective.

With a wild howl Merritt hurled himself at Gairh's throat, carrying him over and hard against the mud.

Strong hands pried him loose from his snarling opponent, drew him back behind a wall of others' shoulders. Merritt swung to be free and suddenly felt a softer grip, heard Sazhje's voice, for Otrekh had moved in before him and Sazhje was holding to him, trying to talk sense to him, mingling words of her language and his. He gasped breath, forced himself to be calm, even while the closed ranks of Sazhje's people were all that was between him and the others, and that thin line was yielding. He stood quietly so that one of Sazhje's friends who held him would let go; and when the hands relaxed, he dived away and ran, away from the light.

"Ssam!" Sazhje's outraged shriek pursued him; and then her shrill voice was lost in such a massed howl of rage and anguish that he could no longer tell what was happening.

At forest edge and beyond, lost in the dark and the tangle, he paused to look back, realizing to his surprise each time that no one was following. The confusion that still came from the camp was such that it covered any noise he might make: and the name of it all might be Sazhje and Otrekh.

He hit the trail that led in the direction he thought the river lay, began to run, pacing himself to last. They could run him to earth once they caught his track; he had no doubt of it, but he had a few precious moments to open the lead he must somehow hold.

Or perhaps, the thought kept nagging at the edges of his mind, they were not following because they knew he would find no help: there was no knowing what might have happened at the station; and as for the connection between fire and explosives, the thought might not be too complex for Sazhje's kind, not at all.

If that box was set at the earthworks or the bypass flume, it would unleash that pent-up lake on the dam before it was ready; and if the dam failed, it would pour on the downriver a greater flood than Hestia had yet seen.

Загрузка...