Fire in the Sky

6

Kurz came to awareness slowly, head throbbing, inner eyelids half lowered, his body twitching. When his vision cleared enough, he found himself on his back, staring up at a sky full of dark clouds threatening rain. No, he thought as several drops splatted onto his face and arms. Not threatening. Doing it. His mouth twitched. What an odd thing to be thinking about. Rain. What…

He tried to move, but there was something holding his arms close to his sides, pinning his hands together.

He closed his eyes.

His body twitched again, he stopped seeing for an instant, thinking, existing… as if for that flicker of time neither he nor the world existed.

Stunner, he thought suddenly. It had happened to him a few times before, the same in-and-out spasms, the same agony in the head, the blurred vision.

He lifted his hands until he could see them, saw the comealong strap around his wrists. He couldn’t remember being stunned, but it had to be the Harper. She wasn’t in the flier, after all. I assumed she was. That was stupid of me.

His ears finally extruded and he could hear again. Voice. The Harper. She had a clarity of speech that made even a whisper travel and she wasn’t whispering. He listened.

“… no, Lan, we’re in fair shape, but not for walking out of the mountains.”

Sound of squeaky woman’s voice. Com voice. He couldn’t make out the words.

“That much, hum? Might be a problem keeping the prisoner in our hands if that’s the case.”

More squeaks.

“I think you’re right. Better we don’t even go back to the Vale. The Goлs has agreed about sending a flikit to collect us? Good. We’re provisioned for at least a week and should be able to manage the wait with no problem. Marrin was the worst hurt, but the daggnose in his kit doesn’t seem to be worried about him and now that I’ve got the pressure bandage on my ankle and a little palya in my blood, I’m doing fine.”

Squeaks.

“Oh I will. I saw our Spy in action. Oy! he’s impressive. I’m taking no chances with that one.”

He lay without moving, without threat as the Harper stopped a long stride away.

“The stunner is recharging,” she said. There was a calm determination in her voice, no anger, no judgment, just determination cool and powerful. “I mean to keep you alive, you know. I don’t need to explain why, you’re not stupid. If you do something threatening before the stunner’s ready, you can’t make me kill you. I’ll just take your leg off at the knee.”

He didn’t look at her or answer her. There was no need. When she tossed him a blanket and a food pac, he got himself to his knees and sat sucking on a paste tube. He was waiting. They always got careless sooner or later. His chance would come. It had to come.

18. Nibbling Down to Bone

Long after moonset on a heavily overcast night, Ceam and Heruit slipped into Dordan-that-was, groped through shadow to the blai that was now Drudge barracks. They took waterweed bladders from the string slings and squeezed them flat, expelling fish oil across the doors and walls of the rambling structure. Ceam dug a small hole, filled it with the last of the oil, coiled a fuse made from an oil impregnated length of vine into the hole and lit the end. He lit the end, tapped Heruit on shoulder, then the two of them slipped along a back street to the lubbot/storehouse where the Chav Muck kept his machines and repeated the process. Ceam set a shorter fuse and the two men ghosted from the Dumel to the fringes of the Fen.

A few minutes after they reached shelter, they heard a shout and the wind brought them the smell of burning oil, the crackle of flames. Ceam sucked in a draft of air, slapped his hand against his thigh. “Gotcha,” he whispered.

A breathy chuckle from Heruit-then, “Let’s get outta here before they get us.”

Leoca and Engebel watched from the fringe of trees as four small forms flitted across the open ground and vanished into the shadow of the wall without being spotted.

Leoca let go of the breath she’d been holding. She reached out, took Engebel’s hand. “One,” she said.

It was very late, about an hour before dawn, the time chosen after days of watching the wall patrols. When were the mesuch most alert? When did intervals between the wall patrols lengthen, when did the Chave walking them drag their feet and give only perfunctory attention to what was happening around them?

“Two,” Engebel said as a small dark lump appeared atop the wall to vanish almost immediately inside, then another and another until all four were in. “It’s holding. No patrol yet.”

Fighting the pull that was like weights on xe’s bones, Orebli led the other Meloach down the metal road between the heavy square blocks these mesuch used for houses. Heart beating too fast, eyes blurring with the strain, xe counted off the blocks until xe and the rest of the klid reached the airwagon storehouse. It was an open grid with four fliers stowed on each of three floors.

Orebli stepped from the road and nearly fell over when the extra pull vanished. He grinned and ran to the fire ladder, began pulling himself up. There were no guards in here, what old Heim had said, the mesuch depended on the walls and the wall guard to keep intruders out. They didn’t have enough Chave left to set guards anyway, Chel Dй bless the Bйluchar who died to make it so.

The four Meloach each took a flier. They brought hokori puffballs from their carry sacks and set them into the lift motors, then emptied small fishgut sacks of bloodworm larva over the seats. The only sounds in the structure were the gusty breathing of the Meloach.

When they finished they plodded back along the road, too weary to force more speed from their laboring bodies.

The climbing line was where they’d left it. Orebli crouched, reeling up the inside line, while the others slid down the other. Xe followed them down, shook the line to free the grapple hook. It wouldn’t come loose. Xe shook it again, heard the tramp of mesuch boots and hesitated, crouching in the mass of bushes and weeds growing near the base of the wall.

He heard an exclamation from the guard, saw the knotted rope go swooping upward. Then a shot. The other three had almost made the outer fringe of the trees. Two of them vanished into the shadow, but Sorhan flung out xe’s arms and fell. Orebli pressed xe’s fist to his mouth to hold back xe’s griefcry.

Xe crouched where he was, waiting for the shot that would end xe.

It didn’t come.

Xe heard a confusion up top, then running footsteps and a moment later, a blatting horn of some kind. Xe flattened xeself against the ground, began creeping along the wall, staying in the muck of weeds and such until xe rounded the first of the eight corners.

Xe lay still a moment listening, then turned onto xe’s back so xe could look up the wall and see what was happening.

Shadows flickered, there was the pound of boots. Then silence.

Xe jumped up and walked rapidly toward the next corner. The night was hushed, waiting for the storm to break, and sounds carried a long distance. Inside the walls there was a mess of confusion, orders being shouted, clangs xe couldn’t place, thuds of feet on the metal roads. Nonetheless, xe was very careful how xe set xe’s feet. Xe couldn’t know what ears might be listening for sounds out of place.

When xe reached the fifth corner, xe stopped, looked anxiously at the line of trees. Xe chewed on xe’s lip and fought the urgent need to run, to get out of there. The open space was waste land, patches of grass, a bit of scrub and humps of fungus. It didn’t look like much cover, maybe it was enough, though, especially when the mesuch would be focused somewhere else.

Xe went on xe’s belly again and started crawling, moving from bush to clump of mycota to shallow dip in the ground. The back of xe’s head itched and every bone in xe’s spine and it took all the will xe had left not to look around, just keep crawling, but xe did it.

Leoca waited anxiously in the shadow under the trees watching the small form creep slowly toward her, sometimes visible, sometimes swallowed by shadow. Hurry, baby. Fast as you can. They’re starting to beat the woods now. We have to get out of here. Come on, Orbi. Faster if you can. Ihol, you’re a bright one, baby. I don’t want to lose you. Don’t want to lose me. Come on…

Xe reached the woods not far from where she waited. She could hear the sob of xe’s breathing, the soft rustle of xe’s movements. “Orebli, over here,” she whispered, just loud enough to reach xe. “It’s Leoca.”

Xe came rushing through the trees, flung xeself at her, pressed xeself against her, trembling so fiercely xe could barely stand.

“I know, ti choi. Keep it in just a little longer, we’ve got to get out of here.”