Survivor

“You might be right,” he said, “but it doesn’t matter. The whole idea of my withdrawing now was to test your hypnosis idea. I didn’t want to ask anyone else to serve as a guinea pig, and now, I don’t want to expose anyone else to Natahk’s anger if he finds out what we’re doing.”

She looked at him closely. He was sitting in his chair near the fireplace, his body limp, seemingly relaxed, his hands first clasped, then moving nervously. He was pale and the lines in his face seemed more deeply etched.

“You’re in withdrawal.”

He nodded. “I haven’t eaten anything since early yesterday evening.”

“Nathan hypnotized you?”

“Yes. Three times. He gave me about the same suggestions he gave you.”

“But for you, they worked.”

“So far. I’m weak, hungry—God, I’m hungry—but I’ve felt worse. And I probably feel better than you did eighteen or twenty hours in. I’m supposed to be in bed though.”

“I can believe that! Why aren’t you?”

He smiled thinly. “I wanted to talk to you while I could still make sense. Wanted you to know just how things stood between us and the Garkohn.”

“Who else knows?”

He grunted. “Neila’s been careful not to ask—which means she knows. Jacob knows. He even sat in on a couple of my sessions with Nathan. The Garkohn are getting bolder, ordering people around, spying more openly. Most people know something is wrong. I’ve had complaints.” He had been gazing off into space. Now he looked at Alanna. “I wanted you to know because you can deal with the Tehkohn. You’re the only one here who knows anything about them. I’m hoping you won’t have to do anything before my withdrawal is over, but I want you to be able to if necessary.”

“Does Jacob know you want that of me?”

“Yes. He doesn’t think much of the idea, but while I’m alive, he’ll obey.”

She did not want to talk or think of his dying, did not want to remember how easily it could happen during the next few days. He seemed to misunderstand her sudden pensiveness. He spoke softly.

“I know it’s a heavy responsibility, girl, and you’re just out of withdrawal. I’m sorry to have to…”

She got up and went to him, laid a hand on his shoulder. She had just been able to stop herself in time from touching his throat in the Kohn gesture of affection. “It’s a responsibility I had already accepted. You know it’s not the responsibility I’m concerned about.”

For a moment, there was silence. He covered her hand with his own in what first seemed to her an oddly Kohn response. But no. Some gestures were universal.

“Why don’t you go to bed now?” she asked.

He nodded, got up. But as he started away, she thought of something else. “Jules, what happened to the Tehkohn prisoners?”

He turned back. “Nothing. Natahk didn’t mention moving them even after Diut escaped.”

“Has anyone fed them?”

“We tried. They’ve refused to eat. No one has forced them.”

Alanna nodded. “Do you mind if I take them something?”

He looked at her strangely. “If you want to. If the Garkohn guards will let you.” As sick as he was, he was curious. The dangerous kind of curiosity. But he would not ask his questions. She spoke quietly.

“I know some of them, Jules. Some of them helped to make things easier for me when I was their prisoner. After my withdrawal, none of them were any more cruel to me than they were to each other. It wouldn’t be right for me to let them starve without trying to help.” Half truths. She wondered why she didn’t tell him her real reason for wanting to feed the prisoners—that if they were fuzzy-minded from hunger, even in their slightly weakened condition, they might do some unnecessary killing when they escaped. Missionary lives might be lost. But no. It was not yet time for him to know that they definitely would escape. She could not let him know that until Diut was ready. She would have to tell him something more though. His curiosity was clearly not satisfied. And now he was ready to ask questions.

“They treated you… well, Lanna, when they held you captive?”

“As well as could be expected, I guess. As long as I did as I was told.” Again, she was not telling the whole truth. But then, very little that she told him about herself and the Tehkohn could be wholly true.

“They didn’t…?” He struggled with the words and his struggle gave her warning of what was coming. She stood watching him coldly and feeling no inclination to help. “They didn’t rape you?”

“No,” she said. “They didn’t.” He would want to believe her and he would find a way to do so. He would not even have asked such a question if the Garkohn kidnappings had not forced him to consider the Kohn human enough to do such a thing.

“I haven’t wanted to ask you these things, Lanna.” He met her eyes sadly. “Perhaps because I was afraid of the answers you might give. It seemed so incredible that we found you alive. I just wanted to thank God that we had you back and let it go at that. But this damned Garkohn thing wouldn’t let me. It started me wondering…“He broke off abruptly. “It doesn’t matter.”

Obviously it mattered. How had he been able to give her charge of the settlement’s relations with the Tehkohn while he entertained such doubts? Or had he given her the responsibility in the hope that his apparent trust would touch her conscience and forestall any act of treachery? She finished his sentence for him. “Started you wondering whether or not you really did have me back.”

He accepted the accusation. “Do we, Lanna?”

“I was like a servant among the Tehkohn,” she lied softly. “Like a slave, really—the way you and Neila were on Earth in Forsyth. I had no blue in my coloring and thus no rank among them. They didn’t know quite what to do with me so they accepted me as a kind of interesting freak. They gave me whatever jobs they thought I could do. Other than that, they left me alone. I was an alien, an outsider.” She paused for a moment, watching him. “Please don’t make me feel as though I’m still an outsider, even here at home.”

He sighed, seemed to deflate, and she knew she had won at least temporarily. He came back to her and hugged her. “I’m sorry, girl. It’s the withdrawal. I’m not thinking clearly or it would never occur to me to doubt you.”

She said nothing, let him go off to bed thinking he had hurt her. Surprisingly, he had.

Natahk’s hunters let her in to see the prisoners without trouble. By now, they were probably used to allowing Missionaries to go in and try to convince the Tehkohn to eat.

The captives did not bother to look up at her as she entered. Their prison was a single large room with walls and ceiling of rough wood and a floor of hard-packed earth. It had a few tiny windows near the ceiling—enough to let in a little light and air. None of the captives brightened the room further with their personal luminescence. None of them wasted energy in any way at all. They sat or lay on the floor, silent and unmoving. Alanna spoke to them bluntly in Tehkohn.

“If I bring you food and guarantee it safe, will you eat?”

There was a long silence. Finally a judge near her answered quietly. “We will not eat.” No one contradicted him.

Alanna faced him. “Can you believe that I would poison you?”

“We don’t know.”-His coloring became dimly iridescent with indecision. “We don’t know who you are, Alanna.”

“So,” she said softly. She could have taken offense. The judge had insulted her by questioning her loyalty. Another Tehkohn, even of a lower clan, could probably have made the judge apologize. Alanna might have been able to do it herself, but it would accomplish nothing. The captives would still refuse to eat, would still doubt her. They would simply keep their doubts to themselves.

Now all three groups had questioned her loyalty—Garkohn, Missionary, and Tehkon. No one knew who she was except Diut. What would she do, she wondered bleakly, if he began to doubt. She spoke again to the Tehkohn.

“Is there nothing that I can do for you… to ease your wait?”

“Nothing that you would be permitted to do.”

There was nothing more to be said. She turned to go.

“Alanna!” The voice was quick and just a little louder than necessary. Loud enough to shift everyone’s attention to the speaker, a small well-colored huntress. Cheah, her name was. She rose to her feet in one swift motion, and came to stand before Alanna. It was she who with her judge-husband Jeh had found Alanna sprawled in the doorway of the Tehkohn prison room. It was she whom Alanna had lived to kill. And yet they had become friends. Cheah was raucous and Alanna quiet, but somehow they enjoyed each other’s company—and admired each other’s savagery.

“We have heard what the Garkohn did to you,” said the huntress.

Alanna lifted her head slightly, stifling a rush of humiliation. “It is undone. And the Garkohn will pay.”

“Didn’t I say it!” Cheah looked around at the other prisoners, her body suddenly shimmering triumphant in the room’s half light.

“Many things may be said,” muttered a hunter off to Cheah’s left. Alanna looked at him and saw by his poor coloring that he had made a mistake. Perhaps his hunger had made him careless.

“So?” Cheah looked at him coldly. “Talk is not enough for you? Shall we discuss it another way?”

But the hunter had realized his mistake. His body was already fading to yellow in the slow way that signified submission to a more powerful person. Cheah was not only well-colored, but she had lived up to her coloring by earning an impressive reputation as a fighter, and when necessary, a killer. Her size did not deceive those who knew her.

“Alanna has suffered as we have,” said Cheah to the group. “You understand what I mean. And now, she offers help and ignores your insults in order to prove what she should not have to prove.” She lowered her voice abruptly and the others leaned forward to hear. But her words were not for them. “I know who you are, Alanna. And if you bring food, I will eat.”

Alanna smiled, stepped to Cheah, and touched the back of her hand briefly to one side of the huntress’s face in a gesture of friendship. Then Alanna turned and left the building, barely able to conceal her elation.

Cheah had given her a victory. Alanna would bring enough food for all the prisoners, and Cheah would eat, would taste everything. Then she would fast. She knew what to do. When the others saw that she suffered no ill effects, they would eat too.

Cheah’s confidence in Alanna had restored Alanna’s wavering confidence in herself—in her ability to play two separate roles. As long as she had Cheah’s support among the Tehkohn prisoners and Jules’s support among the Missionaries, she had a chance.

And when Natahk returned, things would become even more complicated. She would have to play three roles. But she could do it. She would do it.

She hurried back to the Verrick cabin to get food for the captives.

CHAPTER SIX

Alanna

I had managed to avoid the Tehkohn Hao for most of my first season with the Tehkohn. It had not been hard since he lived in a different section of the dwelling and since people who wanted to see him usually had to go to him. I had not wanted to see him—although I was probably lucky I did, when I did. I had just hit one hunter with a stone—he had earned the blow—and I was about to face his friend. I would have had to fight, and though I was careful not to show it, I was afraid. Hunters were trained to kill with their hands and they possessed great strength. Also, even if I fought this hunter and won, how many of his friends would I have to fight? How many others would leap to his defense as he was coming to the defense of his fallen friend?

Then Diut stepped in and the confrontation was over. I was grateful to him but my gratitude did not make it any easier for me to look at him or be near him. He was a monster—as much a mutant as the Clayarks back on Earth—though among the Kohn people, his was a desirable mutation. He was huge and physically powerful, and hideous. No Missionary could have called him a caricature of the “true” human shape. He was more an intensification of everything nonhuman in the Kohn. And somehow, that made him seem alien even among them. With all that, though, I considered the fear and revulsion I felt for him to be foolish and dangerous. For one thing, he had done nothing to me, had shown no interest in me since that first night in Jeh and Cheah’s apartment. Clearly he meant me no harm. For another thing, the respect he received from the Tehkohn was far beyond anything even Jules could expect from the Missionaries. What would he and his people do to me if they realized how I felt about him? It would be as though the Missionaries had realized that T thought their God was so much air. Yet it was hard for me to control my feelings against Diut—especially now when he was so close to me.

“Find Gehnahteh or Choh,” he told me. “Tell them that your time with them is ended. Then go back to Jeh and Cheah.”

I left him quickly. I didn’t know why he was making the change, and I was worried. But I was so glad to get away from him that I didn’t stop to ask questions. I went straight to the apartment of Gehnahteh and Choh. Only Choh was at home when I went in. He was shaping a heavy stick into a handle for some farmer’s digging prongs. He looked up at me in surprise.

“What has frightened you?”

I told him about the hunter I had hit.

“You fought a hunter?” he asked incredulously. “You fought and won?”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t a fight. And I may have lost more than I won. Perhaps the Tehkohn Hao has some punishment in mind for me.”

Choh put his knife and wood on the floor and came to stand before me. “He’s not one to delay punishment, Alanna. If he had been angry with you, you would know.” Choh paused. “Alanna, you are a friend.”

He was saying good-bye to me. I touched the back of my hand to his face in the friendship gesture. I had seen others use the gesture but this was the first time I had used it myself—the first time I had wanted to use it. He covered my hand for a moment with a furry paw, then spoke once more.

“I will tell you a thing that perhaps I should not tell you because I’m not certain.”

“What is it?”

“The Tehkohn Hao has decided that you are a fighter. We told him you were, but he said, ‘Wait. Let her prove it.’ I think now you have proven it.”

“You told him?”

“You had already proven it to us.”

We looked at each other for a long moment, then I smiled. He had asked me once, “Do all your people bare their teeth to show pleasure?” I went to get the spare clothing I had accumulated and my few toilet articles.

“You have worked as one of us,” said Choh. “We will miss you.”

And I would miss them, I thought as I left him and walked out into the dim corridors. But as long as I was not to be punished, I did not mind returning to Jeh and Cheah—except for one thing. Jeh and Cheah did live in the fighter section of the dwelling. They lived near the outside where raiders would come first if they got past the guards, and they lived near the Tehkohn Hao. I would be seeing more of Diut and I would have to make a greater effort to get used to him.

Cheah welcomed me to her apartment, her small body blazing white.

“Ah-la-naaah!” she cried exuberantly. “I heard you fought Haileh—that you beat him to the ground!”

I stared at her in surprise. “You’re glad?”

“Glad! That one was an animal! He tried to humiliate you because he thought you were weak. He tried it with me once because I’m small. I almost broke his neck!”

I laughed because I could picture her doing exactly that. She was not the kind of person who would let her smallness make her a target for other people’s frustrations.

“You are back where you belong,” she said. “Jeh told Diut that you were a fighting woman.” She led me across the room. “Put your things here. We will make a pallet for you. Come!”

I spent five days with them. Easy days compared to what I had been used to. I had the work of the apartment to do—cooking and cleaning—because without any blue at all, I was the lowest-ranking person in the apartment. As I had relieved Choh, now I relieved Cheah. I didn’t like it particularly, but it kept me busy. And Cheah chattered and Jeh and I listened, amused. Jeh said once, “I take her with me to trade with the lake people, Mahkahkohn. She talks and talks and they are all white and at ease and she trades them out of their fur.” I believed it.

Then came the day when Jeh brought home gifts for me. There was a long robelike garment of fur dyed blue-green. It was made from the skin of a single large animal. The fur was coarser than Kohn fur but it was thick and the garment looked warm and comfortable. And there were new shoes of the same ankle-high boot type that I had been wearing, but these were fur-lined, and colored blue-green to match the robe.

“Put them on,” said Jeh. “They are yours.”

“You give them to me?”

“Diut gives them to you.”

I froze. “Diut?” In spite of my fears, I had hardly seen the Tehkohn Hao since moving back with Jeh and Cheah. And I did not want to see him.

“He made me go with him to get that thing,” said Jeh, gesturing toward the robe. “He said you and I were the same size. I had to put the thing on so that he could see whether it was as long as he wanted it to be on you.”

I stood listening to him, hearing what he was telling me, and what he was not telling me. I strove not to believe it. “Jeh, why is he giving me these things?”

“To please you, Alanna. He gives gifts sometimes, though yours are stranger than any I have seen. Get your other things. Gather them all. He’s waiting for you.”

“I… must go?” I managed to keep my voice almost normal.

“You are afraid?”

“Yes!”

“He said you would be. But you must go. Your fear will pass.”

Slowly, I gathered my belongings. But my hands were shaking so that I kept dropping things. Cheah came over, oddly silent, and helped me. Jeh led me out of the apartment and through the corridor for some distance to what appeared to be a solid wall. A hidden door.

Jeh felt for the handhold, found it, and pulled the door open. He spoke quietly.

“Go in, Alanna.”

I didn’t move. It was all I could do to keep myself from running away down the corridor. I had come this far by telling myself that I could talk to Diut—talk him out of this… experiment, or whatever it was. And I did not want to disgrace myself before Jeh and Cheah. Now though…

“Alanna!”

I jumped, looked at him.

“Go in.”

I went through the door and he shut it behind me.

There was no one in the room. It was a large room made of the same gray stone as the rest of the dwelling. There were two long chests of polished wood, one on either side of the room. I dropped my things atop one of these chests. There was a doorway on the opposite side of the room and I could hear someone moving around in the room beyond. So the Tehkohn Hao had at least a two-room apartment. Luxury. I could have lived my life happily without such luxury. There was a large animal-skin rug on the floor before the fireplace. I sat down on it and stared into the low fire trying to think. Everything had happened too quickly, too unexpectedly. It made no sense. Diut had hardly looked at me during my stay with the Tehkohn. And surely I could not have seemed sexually attractive to him.

He came into the room, his feet making almost no sound against the stone floor. I looked at him once, then looked away quickly, closed my eyes in desperation. I would keep still. I would not behave stupidly. We would talk, Diut and I, and end this nonsense.

“Tehkohn Hao,” I greeted. My voice was steady.

“Alanna.”

“Am I to have a liaison with you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why do men and women usually have liaisons?”

He was standing over me off to one side, towering, huge. I felt powerless and afraid and angry at myself for being afraid. I had to keep calm.

“Are forced matings the way among the Tehkohn?” I asked quietly.

“Have I used force?”

“Have I accused you?”

He whitened slightly and sat down beside me. “We have no tradition of forced matings, Alanna.”

“Will you let me go then?”

“But I have chosen you.”

“I have not chosen you.”

“What man have you chosen?”

“I… none. I didn’t know I would be permitted to mate here.”

“Has any man approached you?”

“No.”

“No man would unless I ordered it. None but me.”

I said nothing.

“Your differences keep others away,” he said. “You come to me as a stranger, an alien in spite of all that you have learned. But when you leave me, you will be Tehkohn. When others see that I have accepted you, they will accept you.”

I began to tremble, and to believe, really believe, that there was no way out of this. I was afraid I would lose control of myself if he touched me. When he touched me.

He reached over, took my hand, and examined it much as the Garkohn huntress Gehl once had.

“The fingers are too long,” he said. “And too slender. The nails are too thin, too weak. You are right to keep them short. The hairlessness is ugly at first—wrong, a distortion of what should be. But the coloring is the greatest distortion. Brown. No blue at all. The lowest artisan has some blue, but you have none.”

I snatched my hand away from him, now more angry than frightened.

“There are* no customs here that apply to you,” he said. “You have no rights, no freedoms that I do not allow. Without the blue, you are like an animal among us.”

I glared at him. “How could you want a woman who is like an animal?”

And his blue grew suddenly lighter with a great deal of white. “To see for myself that she is truly a woman.”

My fear was drowned in anger and humiliation. It was an experiment then. The creature wanted to see for itself what it was like to make love with an ugly distorted woman. I was here to satisfy its curiosity. “I wish I had the words to tell you how deformed and ugly you are to me, Tehkohn Hao. No animal could be as terrible.” He would hit me. I didn’t care.

He did not hit me. He stood up and hauled me to my feet. “We have traded insults. Now we will go and prove to each other how little our differences matter.”

He led me into the other room where there was another fireplace-more luxury—more wooden chests and a wide wooden platform strewn with furs. It took me a moment to realize that the platform was actually the first bed that I had seen in the Tehkohn dwelling. I stood staring at it mindlessly until Diut opened my robe. Then I looked at him.

In that instant, he must have sensed just how much I suddenly hated him. He drew back warily.

“Be careful, Alanna.”

There had been a wild human on Earth—a man fast enough to run me down to get what he wanted. He got it. Then I smashed his head with a rock. As I faced Diut now, I hardly saw his ugliness. It was as though he was wearing the face of that wild human. It was as though he had brought me the pain that man brought me. He put his hands on me again and I lunged for his eyes.

He jerked his head back and in the moment that he was off balance, I came to my senses. I turned and ran for the corridor door. But he was fast—blindingly fast. I was fast myself and he caught me before I’d gone five steps.

He grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled me backward against him. I kicked back hard into his knee.

He flared yellow with pain and relaxed his hold on me for an instant. I broke free and ran again.

He was not so quick this time as he came limping after me, but I could not find the outside door. I could have found it if I had not been so frantic. I didn’t have much trouble with hidden doors any more because, normally, I memorized their location in relation to other objects. This one I had been too frightened to memorize.

Diut came up behind me, caught me by the neck, and threw me to the floor. “Will you make me kill you, Alanna?”

I had no doubt at all that he would do it. I lay there looking up at him.

“Get up.”

I rose slowly, faced him. He knocked me down again with a single openhanded blow. My head rang with the strength of it. And again:

“Get up.”

I stayed where I was, waiting for my head to clear. I wondered why he didn’t just grab me and rape me the way the wild human had. It would be simple enough. It would even be simple for me. I would not dare to kill him. I knew that now. Not unless I was also ready to kill myself—before his people caught me. My moment of unthinking rage had passed. Now why didn’t he just take what he wanted and get it over with.

He kicked me. “You will get up.”

Bruised and furious, I stood up, half expecting to be knocked down again. Instead, as though nothing had interrupted his earlier attempt, he opened my robe again, slipped it off me, and stripped off my other clothing.

He walked around me, inspecting me much as Gehnahteh and Choh had on my first day with them. I stood glaring at him. At least I could glare at him now, without turning away. He was becoming for me nothing more than an extremely ugly man. His size and strength were more impressive now than his appearance.

“Well, get on with it,” I said. “You are an animal and you want to mate. Mate then.”

His coloring whitened. “People kept coming to me telling me that you were a fighter.”

“I am a thing. A thing that you have become curious about. Satisfy your curiosity.”

He took me by the shoulder and led me back into the bedroom to the bed. I lay down among the furs waiting for him, not looking at him.

Nothing happened.

After a while, I looked at him, saw that he had sat down on the edge of the bed and was watching me. He spoke quietly.

“It is a custom among the Garkohn to capture Tehkohn fighters and force them to eat meklah.”

I frowned, wondering what that had to do with anything.

“Sometimes my fighters starve themselves, refusing to trust any food offered them. Sometimes the Garkohn let them starve themselves to death. Other times though, it’s more amusing to the Garkohn to wait until my fighters are weak, and then force meklah down their throats.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because your behavior with me is much like the behavior of my captured fighters. When they are forced to give in, they continue to speak arrogantly, challengingly. When they can no longer fight with their bodies, they continue to fight with words.”

“What else can they do?”

“Nonfighters submit at once. Abjectly.”

I sat up looking at him. “Garkohn humiliate Tehkohn because the two are enemies. Why do you humiliate me?”

“There need be no humiliation in this for you, Alanna. I am the leader of my people.” He paused for a moment, then flashed white blindingly. “And you have distinguished yourself. You are the only woman ever to try to refuse me.”

And he flashed white on that. It amused him.

“What do you want of me?” I asked. “Only the night?”

“Many nights. And many days. I’ll continue your teaching—help you live as a fighter among us. As I have said, you will be Tehkohn when you leave me. Tehkohn, and your own person, not dependent on others to guide or guard you.”

I frowned, re-evaluating him in spite of myself. “I will be free? It will be as though I had some blue in my coloring?”

“Yes.”

Watching him, I suddenly realized that if he closed his eyes, they would probably vanish entirely. As it was, he seemed to look through slanted holes in thick fur. “You should have told me that before,” I said. “That I would be free, I mean.”

He hesitated. “It was what I had planned for you but I was not certain that it was what you wanted, that it would calm you.”

I said nothing. I was calmer now because I was able to control my reaction to his appearance, but there was no need to tell him that.

“And anyway,” he said, whitening, “I have never bargained for a mate before. I had to find my way.” He pulled me back on the bed, clearly ready now to see how good a bargain he had made.

He covered me with the thick, very soft blanket of his fur and hurt me as he forced his way into my body, an intruder too large and much unwelcome. Alien as we were to each other, he must have been able to read my pain in my expression.

“I always give pain before I give pleasure,” he said. “Your body will accustom itself to me.”

And if it didn’t, that was my problem. I put my teeth together and closed my eyes and waited for it to be over. He startled me once, bit me just at the throat. Not hard, not painfully, but he let me feel his teeth more than I would have preferred. I was surprised enough to grab a handful of his head fur to pull his head away. But in doing that, I looked at him and saw that his body had gone luminescent white. He continued to bite me, but more gently.

I let go of his fur, smoothed it unnecessarily. Left alone, it would smooth itself but I found it pleasant to touch. His one good feature.

“You like my fur,” he said later as we lay together, side by side.

“To touch,” I said. “It’s good to touch.”

He took one of my hands and put it into his mane. I felt the fur, the flesh beneath. There was a neck there, completely hidden. And broad as the shoulders were, they were not as broad as they looked.

“I find your smoothness pleasing too,” he said. “Good to touch.” He began to whiten a little and I realized that my hand exploring his mane was giving him pleasure. He closed his eyes—and they did vanish. There was no sign in what seemed now an even surface of fur that he had ever had eyes. Not even a slight indentation. I shuddered and put my head against his shoulder so that I would not have to look at him. I could get used to his strangeness. I was already getting used to it. But there were some things about him that would probably always be alien to me.

On the second night of Jules’s withdrawal, Diut returned to the Mission colony.

Alanna had spent most of the day sitting with Jules. He was in pain now, perspiring, vomiting, tossing. But at that, Neila said he was having an easier time than Alanna had had. Still, Nathan wanted someone with him at all times. Alanna had not minded the duty. Neila had her regular housework to do. Alanna had broken her watch only to take food to the Tehkohn prisoners. Finally, though, Neila had relieved her and sent her off to bed.

She went to her room sleepily, carrying a lamp and feeling strangely alone now that she was cut off from the sounds of Jules’s suffering. As much as she hated to see him in pain, she realized that it was easier to be with him and be able to see for herself that he was still alive.

She put her lamp on the chest near her bed and turned to close the door. Not until it was closed did she realize that she was not alone in the room. She froze, ceasing even to breathe, every sense alert to pinpoint the direction from which the first warning sound had come.

Somewhere in the shadows, Diut said her name.

She identified the voice and the direction from which it came in the same instant and turned just in time to see him materialize from a wall.

She crossed the room to him quickly in silent relief and joy. He caught her by the shoulders and looked at her for a moment, holding her away from him. Then she struggled free of his hands and buried herself in his fur.

Mentally, she gave him all her trouble—her heavy responsibility to the colony, the doubted loyalties, the Garkohn danger. Let him hold them for a while. He was accustomed to such things. It was only a game played within her own mind, but she felt as though she had shed a great weight, as though she could relax completely for the first time since her return to the settlement.

She spoke finally, softly. “You’ve been home?”

“Yes.”

She drew back from him now, waiting. They sat down together on the bed.

“The defeat was bad,” he said, “but not as bad as it first seemed. The escape passages were created to be overlooked by invaders. Most of them were.”

She nodded, remembering that she had fled into one of these passages herself when Garkohn invaded the dwelling. She had run to the inner apartments where the young children were left in the care of artisan families. But somehow, despite the deliberately confusing maze of corridors, the Garkohn had gotten there ahead of her and it was too late.

As though responding to her thoughts, Diut said, “The people waited until I returned to hold the ceremony for Tien.”

She looked at him but he would not meet her eyes.

“Our trade families had already painted her,” he continued softly. “Blue. A good blue. All who were left alive came to see her. Even the injured.”

She lowered her head, eyes closed. She had not meant to cry again. She had shed no tears since her first night with Jules on the trail back to the settlement. Jules had thought then that she cried with relief at her rescue.

But now she found herself weeping soundlessly against Diut. She was glad that she had not been able to attend the Tehkohn funeral rites. The Kohn had no concept of life after death and such rites were held solely for the benefit of the living. The dead were judged by those likely to know the best and worst sides of their character, the families with whom they traded—families from clans other than their own. If a hunter was lazy or dishonest, no one knew it better than the farmer with whom he traded. Thus the trade families judged and gave honor or dishonor through the color of the dye they used to cover the mottled yellow of death. The reputation of the surviving blood family could be helped or injured by one of these judgments. But of course, Diut’s infant child would be painted blue to honor Diut. It would not be the unique Hao blue, but the trade families would approximate it as closely as they could. And Diut said they had done well. The funeral would have been a time to show pride in the honor done. Expression of grief was a private thing—one of the few private things in Kohn life.

Diut held her until her spasm of weeping passed. He spoke no words of comfort, but in the Kohn way, he allowed his coloring to fade to the rare gray of grief and mourning. The color, like the emotion it symbolized, was a private thing. It was an admission not only of inner pain, but of helplessness and human vulnerability. A Hao was the personification of Kohn power, a being who must show only strength before his people. But now, alone with one who shared his pain, he was free to admit his own vulnerability, free to let Alanna know that she did not grieve alone. To her, his coloring said as much as words could have from a Missionary man, and she had long ago realized that she preferred the silent Kohn ways to the Missionary groping for words.

After a while, she regained control and ceased crying. She knew that Diut had other things to tell her, and that for the sake of the settlement, she had to compose herself and listen.

“You have made plans while you were away,” she said. “Tell me my part in them.”

His coloring slowly returned to normal. He gave her a long quiet look. “I have heard that your father is in withdrawal.”

“So. I was with him all day. My mother is with him now.”

“Only your father? No others?”

She shrugged. “Me. I have withdrawn.”

“I know of that.” He touched her throat briefly. “It is harder to break away without the ceremony. I knew what I asked of you. But I believed that you were strong enough to do it.”

She accepted this as the combined apology and compliment that it was and acknowledged it with a nod.

“How is your father?”

“Well. We may have found a Missionary counterpart for the returning ceremony.” She told him briefly of the experiment with hypnosis. He seemed to understand.

“Verrick tests this way then. But if it works as he hopes, will he order other Missionaries to use it now or will he wait until he has moved them north?”

Alanna thought for a moment, realized that though she had not considered the question before, she knew what the answer had to be. “I think he will wait, because of Natahk. I think he will not want the people exposed to Natahk’s anger—as he will be exposed himself s” She told him of Natahk’s recent arrogance and its cause. By the time she finished, he had yellowed slightly.

“Verrick must choose his own way,” he said. “But if he waits as you say, the Missionaries will be able to carry little more than the supply of meklah that they will need when they leave. Meklah enough for the trip over the mountains and enough to last until they find a place to settle again. They will have to abandon many more of their possessions to the Garkohn than should be necessary.”

Alanna knew he was right, but then, so was Jules in his way. She said nothing.

Diut changed the subject abruptly. “Have you been able to see the captives yet?”

She told him of her visits to the prisoners, of how they had at first refused to eat. That brought more yellow to his coloring.

“And do they all eat now? Has Cheah satisfied them?”

“Most ate today. Tomorrow, I think they will all eat.”

“Then you know how careful you must be. Once their Garkohn guards see that they are all eating, they might decide to tamper with the food whether Natahk has ordered it or not. And he probably has. Deception is easier and safer than force.”

“When will you free them?” she asked.

He thought about it. “I would have done it tonight, had you not managed to get food to them. But now… They will be better able to co-operate with their rescuers when they have all eaten. Also, it would be better if I gave Verrick time to finish his withdrawal. He will need his strength to face the Garkohn when Natahk learns of the escape.” He paused for a moment. “I will wait three days more.”

She felt cold suddenly as she realized that by feeding the prisoners, she had probably saved Jules’s life. If Natahk lost his prisoners and found the leader of his captive Missionaries in the process of breaking free of the meklah, he might be angry enough to kill. But in three more days, Jules would surely be through his withdrawal. Perhaps he would even be strong enough to pretend that the withdrawal had not taken place. At least, he would be strong enough to face Natahk. Alanna had made it possible for Diut to give him that much. Now if only Diut could give him the other thing that he and the Missionaries needed so desperately: A new start.

“How will it be for them in the north?” she asked. “Very bad?”

“Drier,” he said. “Colder. They will live if they want life badly enough.”

“But there are no people there?”

“None.”

“They will live then.” She meant it. The Missionaries were resourceful and their Mission drove them. They could win a struggle against the elements as they and their ancestors had won many such struggles on Earth. Here, as on Earth, it was the struggle against more numerous other peoples that had stopped them.

Diut looked at her. “If Verrick wishes it, I will send a few Tehkohn with him to teach him the best ways of living there.”

She did not have to think to realize that such help could save many lives. She lifted her hand in quick gratitude to lose it in the fur of his throat. He covered it for a moment with his own.

“I did not know how you would greet me when I came here tonight,” he said softly.

She looked at him, startled.

“I wondered whether you would relearn your old way of seeing me, as a distortion of what should be. I looked at you with your Missionaries and tried to see you as one of them.”

“So? And what did you see?”

“That you feared for them. That you were much interested in saving them.”

Alanna met his eyes. “I am, yes. How could I not be?”

“You are one who bargains, Alanna. Are you bargaining with me now for the safety of your people?”

“Yes.”

He stared at her for a long moment without speaking. Then he lay back on the bed. There was white suddenly in his coloring. Amusement. But she knew him now and she was not surprised. “You will never say what I expect you to say. You don’t change.”

“I’ve changed,” she said.

“What do you want of me? Only help for your Missionaries?”

“What should I want of you? We’ve made a child together, you and I. What should I want of my husband?”

He sat up and pulled her close. “Tahneh spoke to me before I left the mountains.” This was the other Hao, the old woman. “She comes with her advice, you know. She said, ‘Let her go with her people if she wants to go. Show her yellow if she wants it and leave her. Let her go or stay of her own free will.’”

“She knew I wouldn’t go,” said Alanna. “She wanted you to know.”

He said nothing.

“In a way, it will be harder for me now,” she continued. “The Missionaries will be so far away… But I couldn’t leave with them. I’m less one of them now than ever. And there is no man for me among them.”

“I have already seen that.”

She glanced at him sharply.

“All right,” he said, reading her expression. “I’ll leave you to insult them yourself.”

“I wasn’t insulting them. I only meant…”

He put a hand over her mouth, his coloring fading to white. “They are blue people, Alanna. All blue. Wholly admirable.”

Alanna sighed and shook her head. He could be as condescending, as patronizing, toward the Missionaries as most Missionaries were toward the Kohn. But now was not the time to argue with him about it.

He smoothed her hair. “And worthy people that they are, they no longer need you.” His tone changed, became more serious. “It would cause no real hardship among them if you left them now—went with the prisoners when they escape.”

She spoke quickly, concealing her alarm. “No, Diut. It would cause worse than hardship. Natahk would tell Jules where I had gone and why. And whether Jules fully believed him or not, he would be in no mood to trust you when you visited him again.”

“Natahk will speak eventually regardless of what you do. If he tells what he knows while you’re here, the Missionaries will kill you.”

“I know the risk,” she said. “And I’m not eager to take it. But I don’t want the Missionaries to die because my going made them too suspicious to trust you.”

“It is not likely that they will. Verrick will not like having to trust me if Natahk plants suspicion in his mind, but he will have no choice. He can escape this valley only by co-operating with me. He will understand that—as you understand it.” He looked at her silently for a moment. “You know your work here is done. Why do you resist leaving?”

“I cannot go until I know they are safe.”

“You mean you will not go.” There was a slight harshness to his voice.

“They can still make mistakes, Diut, with the Garkohn and even with you. Mistakes that can destroy them. Mistakes that I can help them avoid.”

“They are not children, Alanna. You have set them on the right path. If they cannot follow that path now, without you, then perhaps they do not deserve to survive.”

“I cannot desert them. For a while, they were my people.”

“Perhaps they are still your people. Perhaps you were too quick to reject Tahneh’s words. Are you so certain that you would not prefer to leave with them when they go north?”

She felt a rush of bitter anger. “I’ve already answered that. Why do you ask again? Do you want me to go?”

There was a long silence. He showed no yellow in his coloring, but she knew she had angered him. She hoped she had also made him feel ashamed. At first, she thought she had. His voice was mild when he spoke again.

“I have humiliated Natahk by walking away from his hunters as though they were blind and deaf. I will humiliate him again by taking the rest of his prisoners from him. Do you know what he would do to you to avenge himself if he learned that you were my wife?”

She stared at the floor, knowing and not wanting to know. “He will not find out.”

“You will go with the prisoners tomorrow. You will leave your helpless Missionaries to me, and you will take yourself out of danger. Otherwise, I will abandon your Missionaries and let them fend for themselves.”

She listened, dismayed. He had her. He had found the right weapon. However much she believed she could help the Missionaries, they did not need her nearly as much as they needed him.

“I will obey,” she said softly. “But if the Missionaries are killed as a result of some foolishness that I could have helped them avoid, what will we do, Diut, you and I. We will not have a marriage. What will you have saved me for?”

“You have said enough.”

“Not if I have failed to convince you! You were the prisoner of foreigners once—desert people. Didn’t you decide then that it would be better to die than to serve them at the expense of your own people?” This was something that had happened when Diut was little more than a boy. It had been his first success after coming of age as the Tehkohn ruler. He had arranged a tie with the tough desert tribe and brought them and Tahneh, their Hao, to the mountains as allies against the Garkohn.

“You are not a prisoner,” he said.

“Since we came together I have not been. But now…” Her voice trailed away and he said nothing for several seconds. He was not accustomed to people arguing with him when his decisions were already made. There was a time, Alanna remembered, when he would simply have slapped her and demanded that she obey. But he was changing.

“You are not a prisoner,” he repeated softly.

“So?”

He sighed. “The Missionaries are still your people. You know it. They are like you, and that is important.” He put his arm around her, toyed with her hair. “You want to be with them as long as they are here because you know that when they leave, you may not see them again.”

She nodded, agreeing, glad he had understood. For a moment, she was overwhelmed by the thought that she would not have put into words herself. No more Earth-human faces. Ever. “If I can see them leave the valley,” she whispered, “and know that they are free, then I will be free. I’ll go home with you and be what both you and I want me to be.”

“If you live.” He grayed bleakly. “Stay. Do what you must do.”

“And you will help?”

“So.”

Gratefully, wearily, she leaned against him. After a while, she lifted her head, flattened his fur out of the way, and bit him just at the throat.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Diut

We had to learn to understand each other, Alanna and I—understand why there were times when neither of us seemed to react properly to the other. I knew, for instance, that she was more impressed with my size and strength than with my blue. On her savage homeworld where people preyed on each other freely and where coloring had little significance, sire and strength were important. She told me that a male of her kind who was my size would eat well and would be given a wide berth by smaller people.

“And a female?” I asked.

She curved her mouth in a way somehow different from the way she did it when she was amused. “Women fought more,” she said. “Even those who were large and strong. If we lived, it was often because we were more savage than most men. Sometimes we were caught without warning though, and a man or many men would force us to mate with them. That was perhaps the least that could happen to us. Most often we survived it if we were not too badly beaten—and if there were not too many men. And if the men were not diseased.”

“It happened to you?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said bitterly. “It happened.”

“And thus your anger with me when I demanded a liaison.”

She said nothing. I had brought a little of her anger back, I think.

That was the way of her former home. She had learned all her respect for the blue since coming to us. I understood this with my mind, but somehow, I never completely accepted it. Respect for the blue was inborn with us. No one questioned it. It seemed impossible not to value it. I had grown up knowing myself to be highly valued for my blue. Even enemies like the Garkohn would have valued me.

Natahk and a few of his higher hunters pretended to be unimpressed by the blue but I would have gambled that they could not maintain their pretense before me or any other Hao. They knew better than I did how much they needed a Hao to unite them and make them a strong people again—a people worthy of respect.

But since Alanna’s people had no such needs, Alanna could forget her learned respect for the blue whenever she wanted to. For instance, when she behaved foolishly and I beat her, she fought back. No Tehkohn would have done that—fought against me. And Alanna never seemed to learn that her fighting did no good. I always hurt her more than she hurt me. I told her that her punishment would be less if she stopped struggling against me, but she ignored me.

She was stubborn beyond belief. For a time, her body was constantly marked with bruises that showed on her naked skin as they never would have on a Tehkohn. The day came when I thought I would have to either send her away from me or kill her. And there were moments when I was certain that it would be better to kill her.

Our most serious confrontation came as we hunted jehruk, the largest flesh eaters of the mountains. I had already taught her much about the jehruk—how they invaded our territory, how they stalked and killed leaf eaters that should have been ours, how they hid in the vines, almost indistinguishable from the leaves around them, and leaped out on unwary people. They camouflaged themselves well, those great ones. Their natural coloring was like the deep judge blue-green. Judges refused to eat their flesh claiming that they and the jehruk shared a common ancestor. They saw the jehruk as their wild relative and they took pride in its ferocity. I saw the jehruk as a creature to test myself against. It grew to be at least my size and it fought me with every intention of smashing my head from my shoulders.

On an earlier hunt, I had fought a fairly small one weaponless and killed it while Alanna watched. And when the fighting was done, she stood back looking at me strangely.

Later when we were camped, she washed my few small wounds and rubbed healing ointment on them. As she worked, she shook her head from side to side and spoke in her own language.

“What are you saying?” I asked.

She answered without hesitation. “That I lost you for a while as you fought that creature. I watched closely, but most of the time I couldn’t tell which was the animal.”

I blazed white in spite of myself. Only Alanna would say such a thing seriously. She behaved like another Hao, this furless one. She thought she was blue. And though that made me angry sometimes, it also pleased me.

I pulled her down and got her wet with the ointment she had been rubbing on me. We rolled together on the ground like animals until she made her “laughter” sounds, and on until she made other softer sounds of pleasure. Her body had grown accustomed to me as I had told her it would. We pleased each other very much now. Sometimes during our nights together, we forgave each other for the days. Sometimes, but not always.

The jehruk hunt that forced me to decide what to do with her was a piece of foolishness that we took a long while to forgive each other for. Alanna would have been killed if I had not been with her. And perhaps I would have been killed if she had not done what she did. Perhaps. But at the time, I was in no mood to show gratitude.

We were alone, tracking a huge jehruk—a creature that, by the size of its tracks, had to be half again as large as I was. Alanna had her knife and the weapons that she had had Choh make for her. These were a collection of sticks called a bow and arrows. My fighters had shown much white over them until Alanna began to bring in impressive kills almost as soon as I began teaching her to hunt.

Now she carried her most powerful bow—the best that Choh had been able to make. More than once, I had rubbed the soreness from her arm after she practiced with it. Her arrows were straight and metal-tipped—also Choh’s best. Alanna had brought down large leaf eaters with them. Now she wanted a jehruk—and I wanted to see her go after one. The hunt was hers. I only followed and watched. She understood that it was a test.

We had sought the jehruk for three days without luck. In fact, we had circled around and were nearing home when we came upon the tracks of Alanna’s jehruk. And then Alanna, who had been so watchful for the three days, let the creature see her before she saw it.

It was on all fours and partly concealed by the tree? and vines growing near the small stream to which it had come for water. I saw it just before it saw Alanna. She was several paces closer to it than I was but she did not see it at all. Even as I called a warning to her, the jehruk charged.

She was quick with her bow. It was an old weapon to her. She put one arrow into the jehruk’s chest just before the creature would have reached her. That slowed it, but did not stop it. I stopped it.

I reached her the instant before the jehruk would have, and knocked her out of the way. Then I met the jehruk. It reared onto its hind legs to greet me with long claws and teeth ready—and it did look like a somewhat deformed Kohn. Its face was long and almost as flat as ours. But its jaws were larger and more powerful. Its teeth were long and sharp. Also, its body was too long and its limbs too short to be Kohnlike. And it had no hands. Only the long claws of its feet.

The jehruk raked the air above my head as I hit its midsection hard, knocking it to the ground. Then, on the ground as we struggled, it raked my back. It brought up its hind feet to disembowel me but I twisted aside. All the while it screamed aloud and burned yellow from the pain of its wound. Once I had it by the throat, but it was too strong, too large, too much maddened by pain. On my own, I would never have chosen to fight it weaponless. Weapons were meant for animals as large as this. We rolled among the vines, biting and tearing at each other, hurting each other, but not enough. All I did, all I had time to do, was defend. I could not overpower the creature. I could not even free my hands for a moment to tear out its eyes. A moment’s laxity on my part and it would tear out my throat. It was trying.

Then its yellow luminescence flared even brighter. It gave a scream of agony, twisted its body, screamed again, and sprawled limp across me. Over it stood Alanna, pulling her bloody knife out of its back. This time she had been able to distinguish the animal.

She wiped her knife on the fur of the jehruk, then stepped away from it and from me. She looked to see that I was able to get up, but her glance was quick and guarded. She did not seem to need the words I had to say to her. But I was angry enough and in enough pain to say them anyway.

“You are as blind as a corpse,” I raged as I came to stand over her. “You endanger yourself, you endanger me. How much time have I wasted trying to teach you to see?”

She made no excuse, only stood with her head bowed. There was no excuse. She had already shown me how well she could see.

My back in particular hurt me now and I reached around to feel what damage the jehruk had done. My hand came away bloody and half covered with bits of fur torn loose. I turned and walked away from Alanna, went to the stream. I waded in and let the cold water soothe my wounds and carry away the loose fur.

When I came out of the water, I found Alanna cutting vines of the necessary lengths and thicknesses to help us drag home what we could of our kill. I had taught her how to do this. She seemed subdued. She worked silently, and did not look at me. Clearly, she was ashamed. I felt no sympathy for her. My camouflage ability would be marred for some time until my wounds healed and my fur grew again. It was always dangerous to be without full camouflage ability.

“I have ointment,” she said finally. “It might help your back.”

And I thought: Save it for your own back.

“Diut?” She laid a hand on my arm exactly where the jehruk’s claws had raked. My fur hid most of that wound and no doubt she did not see it. But I felt it. That was enough.

I turned, striking her across the face as I moved. She stumbled back, almost falling, then moved quickly to escape. I caught her arm and held her while I beat her. At first she struggled to break away. Then suddenly, she stepped in close to me and before I knew what she meant to do, she dug her fingers into a wound on my shoulder.

My body flared in yellow agony. I would surely have killed her then had she not managed to break away.

She ran to get her bow from where she had left it leaning against a tree. But even hurt, I was too fast to let her fit an arrow into it.

She leaped back from me as I snatched away her bow. Then suddenly she was crouching, her knife in her hand. I stared at her.

“Do you think I will let you kill me with that?”

“Do you think you can stop me? I’m quick, and you’re hurt.”

“And I have your bow and your arrows.”

She looked at me for a long time, her face already bruised and swollen, her eyes narrowed, the knife steady in her hand. “Then use them to kill me,” she said. “I will not be beaten again.”

Angrily, I threw the bow aside. A weapon. Did she truly believe I needed a weapon to finish her? Even with her knife and my wounds, she must have known she was no match for me. She might hurt me, but I could certainly kill her. And I would have to kill her if I went after her now. Kill her or give in to her.

But slowly, as my initial rage subsided, I realized that I no longer wanted to kill her. I valued her. Valued even her unheard of disregard for the blue because it made our relationship different from any that I could have with a Tehkohn woman. A relationship of the kind Jeh and Cheah had where differences existed, but were ignored. Once I had had such a relationship with Tahneh when she was younger. Our differences had been hi age and experience. She could have been my mother, and yet there had been no barriers. We had loved well. But now Tahneh was old and I was alone again. My people stood in awe of me and obeyed me and looked to me when there was trouble. That was as it should have been, but still, it left me as much alone as Alanna’s strangeness left her. We could give comfort to each other, she and I.

Yet there she stood with her stubbornness and her long knife.

“Put the knife down, Alanna. Shall we kill each other like animals? This is foolishness.”

“I will not be beaten again,” she repeated.

I said nothing.

“Why do you beat me?” she demanded. “What good does it do? Do you think I’ll learn faster out of fear of your beatings? I won’t. I can’t. Send me away from you if I displease you so.”

“Alanna, the knife.”

“No! Not until you decide. We’re not children squabbling in the inner corridors. You need not prove your strength or your coloring to me. We can talk to each other. Or we can go away from each other!”

I drew a deep breath and let my body relax. “Put away the knife, Alanna.” I spoke quietly, gave her no promise. Not in words. That would have been too much. But she rose from her crouch and after a slight hesitation, sheathed her knife.

I went to the pack she always carried when she hunted, and searched through it until I found the ointment in its small metal container. I gestured to her and she came to kneel beside me. We spread ointment on each other’s wounds and said little to each other. For days we would say little to each other—until the thing we had done to our liaison began to heal.

I did not beat her again. Not once. And most of the time, she obeyed. When she did not, we talked—sometimes very loudly. But in spite of our disagreements, our nights together became good again. I lay with her contentedly and her knife remained in its sheath.

To Alanna’s relief, Jules Verrick came out of his withdrawal two days after Diut’s visit. His physical condition was good—better than Alanna’s had been. He had not hurt himself as she had, had not gone through the violent convulsions that had wracked her. He was weak, hungry, thirsty, and tired, but that was all. Only five hours after his pain had ended, he was up and sitting in the cabin’s main room reading a book that Nathan had brought him—a book with a section on drug addiction. He looked up and smiled when Alanna came in. Her words erased his smile at once.

“We’re about to lose our prisoners, Jules.” She had already given the room a quick check to be certain that it, like the rest of the house, was free of Garkohn listeners. Now she sat down.

Jules closed his book. “You mean they’re plotting an escape? How did you find…?”

“No. I mean their people are coming for them.”

“Same question, Lanna. How did you find out?”

“Diut told me. He came back secretly two days ago. He wanted us to know about the escape so that we wouldn’t interfere.”

Jules grunted. “I must have made a pretty poor impression on him if he thinks I’ll stand for that!”

Alanna said nothing. His words were meaningless. More “ritual lying.” She had no more time for it than Diut had had. She had some harsh truths for Jules—about the Tehkohn, about herself.

He studied her, interpreted her silence his way. “You told him we’d go along with it, didn’t you!” he accused.

“I did,” she said quietly. “We had a choice. We could give up the prisoners peacefully, as he commands, or we could fight to keep them and lose the help he would have given us. But he won’t help us while we hold his people captive.”

“Not captive, Alanna, hostage! Image of God, the whole point of holding them here was to…”

“Was to keep the Tehkohn from attacking. But your talk with Diut has already accomplished that. He won’t attack us, and he’ll help us break free. But those prisoners are the price we pay for his help.”

“Unless he decides not to bother helping us once he has them.”

“He’s given us his word.”

“For what it’s worth.”

She shrugged, wondering why he continued to argue. There was nothing for him to win. “Diut’s word is no small thing with him,” she said. “He’s testing us. If we can obey him, control the people in this matter, then he’ll be willing to trust us in other more important matters.”

“We’re the ones who must prove ourselves.”

“We’re in the inferior position. We need him. He doesn’t need us.”

“That’s exactly what’s bothering me.”

Alanna let her expression go flat and bland. “Could we stop him from taking the prisoners if he came here with a force of Tehkohn?”

“Just possibly, now that we’ve been warned.” He sighed, leaned back wearily. “But of course, we won’t. Thanks to our ‘inferior position,’ we don’t dare. I know it.” He sat still for a moment, eyes closed. “All right, Alanna. Tell me about the Tehkohn escape. Just what is it we won’t be interfering with?”

She watched him very carefully as he spoke, hoping that he was as convinced as he seemed to be. A foolish move now could destroy everything.

“Tomorrow night,” she began, “Tehkohn hunters will replace the incoming Garkohn relief guards. They will have to do it near here to prevent Natahk from getting word of it too soon. There’s a slight chance that our gate guards might see something—a few luminescent flashes perhaps. If they do, they’re to ignore it, and they’re to let the Tehkohn hi as though they believe they’re admitting Garkohn. Diut has promised that the Tehkohn who take part in this will be disguised—camouflaged—well enough for us defective Missionaries to make an honest mistake. In fact, they’ll be disguised well enough for the Garkohn to make the same mistake until the Tehkohn are too close for it to matter.

“They’re going to keep the fighting as brief and as quiet as possible, and as long as the Missionary guards stay out of the way, they won’t be hurt. That’s the most important part. Personally, I think the best thing for our people to do is look scared and confused and run for cover. It’s going to be pretty hard for them to tell Tehkohn from Garkohn in the dark, and that can be our excuse. We’ll need all the excuses we can invent, too, because there are bound to be Garkohn around that we don’t know about and they’re going to take everything they see back to Natahk.” She paused, thinking. “That’s all. All we have to do is avoid mixing in.”

Jules shook his head. “And all we” have to do after that is hope Natahk lets us survive long enough for Diut to keep his word. Natahk is going to know we aren’t completely innocent this time.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t suppose Diut had any suggestions as to how to handle that?”

“No.”

“He wouldn’t.”

She turned her head a little, stared past him. “You know what to do.”

“Oh yes.” He drew a deep breath. “I know. It’s become a habit. Fight, for the sake of appearance, then give in. Over and over and over, to Diut, to Natahk…”

“For the people,” said Alanna. “For the Mission.”

He said nothing. His face was set in lines of bitterness.

“You give in,” said Alanna softly. She was talking more to herself than to Jules. “You give in until your position seems strong. Then you use your strength and others give in.” She paused, glanced at Jules. “The people need time to grow numerous and strong.”

Jules made a wordless sound of disgust. “Do you think you have to tell me that? I know it, and it still galls me. And the people aren’t going to like it any better than I do when they understand it. I only hope I can get it across to them in a way they’ll accept before the Garkohn goad them into doing something desperate.”

Alanna nodded. “You’ll have to teach them. I remember… it was a thing people learned quickly enough in the wilds back on Earth—when to fight and when to give way. The ones who survived learned.”

“And this is the wilds all over again, isn’t it? With you better fitted than any of us to survive.”

She shook her head. “You’ll buy my survival, Jules—mine and everyone else’s—by submitting, by playing all three of your roles. Leader, slave, ally… I don’t blame you for hating it, but I don’t doubt for a moment that you’ll do it.”

“You can add a fourth role to that if anything goes wrong,” he said. “Traitor. Because if I fail, the people will surely be destroyed one way or another.”

Alanna drew her arms tight across her stomach. “I know.” How well she knew. “But deception is the only real weapon we have. We face physical chameleons. To survive, we must be mental chameleons.”

There was a long silence, and when Alanna looked at Jules she saw that he had read more than one meaning into her words. She had hoped he would. She had never spoken this openly with him before, but it was time for him to begin to understand.

“Wild human philosophy, Lanna?”

“Survival philosophy.”

“Yes. In a way, you used it on us, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“And on the Tehkohn?”

“Yes.”

“All without losing yourself? What if I asked you again what happened while you were with the Tehkohn.”

“This time, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“You may have told me too much already.”

She shook her head. “Natahk will be here soon. He could force me. into a role that seems traitorous to everyone else. I don’t want it to seem so to you.”

“The penalty for playing too many roles.”

“When I came back to the settlement, I decided that I would play as many as necessary to get the people out of this valley, away from the meklah, the Garkohn, and the Tehkohn.” She spoke quietly, but with all the intensity that she actually felt.

He raised an eyebrow. “You seem to mean that. What if I asked you why you mean it—other than to save yourself, of course. Why… chameleon?”

“Because of you and Neila,” she said. “I keep telling you that. It’s true. It’s taken me two years without the sight of a Missionary face to make me realize how great a debt I owe.” She stopped, gave him a long look. “Natahk can’t stop me now. Even if he killed me, a way of escape would still be opened for you. Only you and the rest of the Missionaries can stop me—by letting him turn you away from me.”

“Why don’t you tell me why you think he can.”

“Maybe he can’t. But the fact that he found out about my withdrawal and didn’t readdict me means he has something planned for me.”

He drew his mouth into a straight line, remembering. “Yes, I see your point. One of them at least. You want me to settle for that one?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t give the trust you’re asking for?”

“Not yet.”

“The people are my first concern, Alanna.”

She said nothing, watched him.

“Natahk has shown himself to be our enemy. I’d trust your word over his unless, somehow, you too showed yourself to be against us.” His tone changed slightly. “And I still can’t quite believe you’d do that.”

“I wouldn’t,” she said. “For what it’s worth, I couldn’t.” She felt as though she had fought a battle and lost. She had come within a hair of telling him the whole truth. But she had not been able to make herself take the chance. Now, all she had accomplished was to make him suspicious again—and Natahk could still destroy her with a few words. She shook her head, tried to put the mistake behind her. She couldn’t correct it; it was done. “Is there anything I can do to help you keep order tomorrow night?” she asked.

There wasn’t. He gave her little part in that. He thought about it, then invited a few of his friends to have dinner with him that night. This was something he had done often before. It would raise little interest among the Garkohn at the settlement. Two Garkohn did attend invisibly for a while, but they soon left, having heard enough talk of crops, rabbits, chickens, etc.

Alanna signaled Jules when they were gone and he made a short announcement. A brother of one of the men scheduled to guard the gate the next night was present. Also present was the father of a man scheduled to help guard the Tehkohn prisoners. Alanna had wanted to be more direct—speak with at least two of the actual guards so that the information would only have to be transmitted once more. Her goal was not to prevent Natahk from learning that the dinner had taken place, and understanding through hindsight why certain guests had been invited. Unlike Jules, she believed that that would happen anyway—that it was inevitable. Her goal was only to prevent Natahk’s learning too soon. She wanted to be certain that the Garkohn at the settlement had no reason to suspect that anything was wrong. If they did suspect, if they signaled Natahk and Natahk arrived with an army, the Missionaries could be crushed between the two warring tribes. No punishment that Natahk was likely to inflict on the settlement after the raid would hurt the Missionaries as badly as would being caught in that vise.

But by Jules’s roundabout plan, the two special guests would speak to their relatives, and the relatives would speak to their fellow guards. The best that Alanna had been able to do was to convince Jules that at least the orders should not be relayed until the next night—until the last minute. That way, even if someone did fail to notice a lurking Garkohn, it would be too late for the Garkohn to contact Natahk and turn the raid into a war.

The other guests at Jules’s dinner were to speak to no one. Their only function would be to do what they could to stop any trouble that arose before Missionaries could be hurt. Jules was emphasizing the importance of his instructions and at the same time undergoing some intense questioning when a late-arriving guest knocked and had to be let in. Alanna caught Jules’s eye to lei him know that a Garkohn had come in with the guest. That ended ths business portion of the dinner.

The escape the next night began well. Both sets of Missionary guards received their warnings and behaved as they had been told to behave. And apparently, the Garkohn remained ignorant until the raid was in progress. The only trouble came when a Tehkohn hunter, hard-pressed by the Garkohn, and impatient with the unfamiliar latch on the storehouse door, kicked the door in. The sudden noise brought several Missionaries spilling carelessly out of their houses.

Someone shouted that the Tehkohn were raiding.

Someone else called for the men to get their guns.

Then one of the men who had had dinner with Jules the night before shouted, “Get back inside! You can’t tell one native from another in the dark. Let them fight it out”

Only two young men did not hear him—or chose not to heed. Their home was near the storehouse, and they moved quickly. They managed to tackle a pair of escaping prisoners. The prisoners, both hunters, paused a moment to break their attackers’ necks, then fled on. Raiders and ex-prisoners combined to dispose of the few Garkohn who got in their way. Then they left the settlement, carrying their own dead and injured with them.

The dead Missionaries were brothers, Kyle and Lee Everett. Alanna had known them. One of her few friends among the Missionaries had been their sister, Tate, who had been taken by the Garkohn over a year before. It occurred to Alanna that the memory of their sister might have been what spurred the two men to run so recklessly into danger. They would have been infuriated at seeing the Tehkohn escaping since, like most Missionaries, they had still believed that the Tehkohn were responsible for all the abductions. Jules had not dared to risk the chaos that might follow a general announcement of the truth.

And, Alanna thought unhappily, Jules had been right. Just as she had been right not to try to convince the prisoners that the Missionaries were not their enemies, and thus should be handled gently. The prisoners would not have believed her and more important, the Garkohn might have overheard. Her fear of the Garkohn and Jules’s fear of the temper of his people—their temper and their guns—had killed Kyle and Lee, but had doubtless saved many others.

Most Missionaries did not realize that anything had happened until early the next morning when Natahk arrived with an army of hunters. The First Hunter was as angry as Alanna had expected him to be. He and Gehl came straight to the Verrick house. Natahk was luminescent yellow in his fury. He stood looking from one to another of the three Verricks until his eyes came to rest on Jules. “I have heard that you were sick, Verrick, confined to your bed for days.”

He stopped, clearly waiting to trample any defense Jules made. Jules said nothing.

“Was it your sickness that prevented you from hearing the Tehkohn who came raiding last night? Were you asleep in your bed while they slaughtered my hunters and freed the prisoners?”

“I heard them,” said Jules. And his tone caused Alanna to turn and look at him with apprehension. He sounded the way he had the night before when he stood over the bodies of the Everett brothers—the way he had when he stopped blaming himself and began blaming the natives. All the natives.

“You heard?” Natahk feigned surprise. “And you did nothing? Called none of your people to the aid of my outnumbered hunters?”

“To what purpose?” demanded Jules. “So that the Tehkohn could be diverted to killing Missionaries while your hunters escaped?”

Natahk’s luminescence seemed to intensify, probably because Jules had guessed exactly right.

“Would you like to see the bodies of the two men who did try to help your hunters?” asked Jules.

Natahk struck him openhanded across the face.

Jules reeled back against the wall and fell, upsetting a small chest that contained Neila’s cooking utensils. The chest spilled its contents over the floor as Natahk spoke.

“What do I care for your two men—two fools who gave their necks to the Tehkohn—when I have lost twelve hunters!” He went to the dining table where a bowl of meklah fruit still sat—for Neila and for guests. He took a piece of fruit, turned, and threw it hard so that it half smashed against Jules’s chest. “Eat, Verrick.”

Alanna saw Jules’s hand move to where Neila’s large butcher knife had fallen out of the chest. He grasped the knife, his body hiding the action from Natahk. Then in a single motion, he rose to his feet and lunged at the Garkohn.

Alanna had quietly placed herself between Jules and Natahk, off to one side. Now she moved as Jules did, hit him with her full weight before he could reach Natahk. She caught his right wrist with both her hands and twisted it as they fell. He released the knife and it went skittering across the floor to the wall.

Jules jerked free of Alanna and thrust her away from him. She got up, looked at Natahk, who had not moved, then looked at Jules, who glared back at her. Neila, frightened and confused by the brief incident, now started to Jules’s side. But she stopped when she saw his expression. Alanna offered him her hand.

He got up, ignoring the hand, and faced Natahk. There was no change in the Garkohn’s seemingly placid face, but his coloring was still bright yellow.

“You will eat,” he said softly.

Jules must have known the threat behind the gentled voice. Containing his humiliation somehow, he went to the table, took a meklah fruit, ate it. Behind him, Neila began to cry.

Natahk went to where the knife had finally come to rest and picked it up. He turned it over in his hands for a moment, then spoke to his second-in-command. “Do we not have hunters with us who know the locations of all the Missionary weapons?”

Gehl flashed white in a luminescent Kohn nod.

“Tell them to collect the weapons.”

“Oh, God, no!” Jules spoke more to himself than to the Garkohn. Then, “No, Natahk! There will be killing!”

The Garkohn leader glanced at him and Gehl stopped to see if there would be a change in her orders.

“Natahk, my people will fight to keep their weapons. There will be pointless carnage.” He seemed to have to force the next words out. “Take my weapons if you wish. I’m the one who threatened you. But leave my people alone.”

Natahk hefted the knife again and smiled humanly. He spoke to Gehl. “Tell them not to worry about these.” He indicated the knife. “An adult hunter who cannot overcome a Missionary armed with this deserves to die. But see that they collect the others. The strange ones.” He meant the guns.

Gehl flashed assent again and went out.

Neila approached Jules again and the two exchanged looks of apprehension. Jules started toward the door, then stopped, and in what must have been a painful gesture, looked at Natahk.

No longer smiling, the Garkohn flashed a nod—a dismissal.

Jules and Neila hurried out, doubtless intent on doing what they could to hold down the carnage.

Alanna stared after them, then looked at Natahk and found him watching her.

“Why did you save him?” he asked.

“He is my father!” she said hotly. Then, watching him, she cooled, performed the mental gymnastics necessary to keep her calm and safe from the rage that had almost destroyed Jules. “Why did you spare him?” she countered.

Natahk made a sound of derision. “He has his uses. And sometimes I pity him. He always fights, yet he must always lose.”

She looked at him with surprise, wondering whether he meant it, whether he was capable of even such a condescending sympathetic emotion as pity. “Will your hunters kill?” she asked, glancing toward the door.

“If they must. Verrick will do what he can to make it unnecessary, and you will do what you can. But if they fight us, some of them will die.”

“You want me to help?”

“Of course. I expect you to be very useful in helping me control your people.”

She stood still, saying nothing. Was this why he had kept her secret and let her remain unaddicted? Because she too had her uses? If that was it, then he must have finally believed her claim that she preferred death to the meklah. Perhaps he feared that she would kill herself in a third withdrawal. But he was not finished.

“I demand little of you really. You would try to keep them out of danger on your own as you just did with Verrick. You do care for them to a surprising extent—surprising considering where your true loyalties lie.”

“I care for them.”

“Show your usefulness then. And perhaps I will begin to forget what you were. Except in one way.” He paused. “Your husband was teaching you to fight.”

“Yes.”

“You move well, and quickly. I will see that your training is continued.”

She ignored this.

“Our Missionaries in the south are also being trained. Most have little strength, but it is surprising what they can be motivated to do.”

Imagining the “motivations,” Alanna felt sick and angry. She moved away from him toward the door. She was about to go out when something occurred to her. “Will you tell Tate Everett that her brothers are dead?”

“So? They were the ones then.”

“Yes.”

“You will tell her yourself. You will see her soon.”

Alanna managed to conceal her sudden fear. “So?”

“Yes, Alanna. Your people are not safe here. The Tehkohn come raiding whenever they wish. Innocent Missionaries are killed. Soon, I must move you all south—where you will be safe.”

He was an animal. He was the one native about whom the Missionaries had been right!

“When?” Alanna demanded.

“Be grateful that I do not tell you. If I did, if I gave you a false time, I have no doubt that Tehkohn would appear at exactly that time. Then I would have to kill you even before I dealt with them. Now go and join your people.”

They went outside together, and for a moment stood in front of the Verrick house and watched. Garkohn hunters were driving Missionaries out of their homes. They were herding the bewildered people onto the common to be surrounded by other hunters. Hunters were already searching emptied houses. One of these last spotted Alanna and started toward her. Natahk waved him away.

“Go and appear to be one of them,” he told her. “It will help you win their trust when the need arises.”

She stiffened, spoke in flat controlled English. “They are my people. I don’t need you to tell me how to handle them.” She walked away without looking back at him.

The Missionaries had been rousted from their morning routines. Some had been driven from their homes only partially clad and more than one was wrapped in only a blanket. The Garkohn action had taken them completely by surprise. They were angry, confused, and in many cases, badly frightened people. Here and there, some of them protested to the silent stolid Garkohn, but the Garkohn ignored them unless they tried to break away from the group and return to their homes. Then they were handled with a swift efficient brutality that usually left them unconscious on the ground—and that warned their neighbors against any similar attempt. A well-trained Kohn fighter—even a low hunter—was much used to killing with his hands.

Near where Alanna stood, Garkohn-Missionary cultural differences caused a problem as five Missionary men leaped to the defense of a hysterical woman who had tried to break through the ring of Garkohn. The speed and fury of the Missionaries’ attack not only stopped the two Garkohn from beating the woman, but very nearly overcame them. Finally, the Garkohn managed to dispose of three of their attackers while the other two dragged the screaming woman back into the crowd. Other men moved to the outside of the crowd to face the approaching Garkohn, protecting their own, taking action against an attacking enemy. This was something that they could understand!

Jules Verrick reached them before Alanna did, and stood off the Garkohn in exactly the right way.

“What do you want? Will you stoop to murdering nonfighters?”

The yellower of the two Garkohn, a huntress, raised a hand to strike Jules out of the way, but her companion stopped her.

“Send out the ones who attacked us,” he ordered.

“They attacked in the defense of the nonfighter you were beating. It was their duty.”

Both Garkohn were silent for a moment, then the darker one flared angry yellow. “Your people are too much alike! Who can tell fighters from nonfighters?” He turned away with a mixture of anger and humiliation. The huntress followed.

The status of nonfighters—farmers and artisans—was in some ways similar to that of women in Missionary society. Fighters protected them, governed them, and considered it less than honorable to mistreat them. They ranged from the bright green of the highest farmers to the startlingly beautiful golden green of the artisans. Among the Garkohn, there were even artisans who descended to pure yellow. Nonfighters were the only truly beautiful people that Alanna had seen among the Kohn.

Jules turned from the retreating Garkohn and faced his people. He spoke only loud enough for those closest to him, those involved in the incident, to hear. “If we panic, we can die as uselessly, as foolishly, as the Everett brothers died last night. Yes, we lost them. They mixed into fighting between the Tehkohn and the Garkohn. They acted without thinking.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over their exclamations of shock. “We are not cowards,” he told them. “If we have to fight, we will. Only remember that we may be all that’s left of the human race, and that every time one of us dies, we decrease the chances of human survival as well as our own chances to fulfill the Mission!”

They were accustomed to obeying him, accepting his judgment. And he had invoked a powerful persuader in the Mission. They calmed and resigned themselves to staring their hostility at the Garkohn.

Then someone noticed what the Garkohn were bringing out of the houses and the calm vanished.

Several people called out, alerting the entire group to the fact that they were losing their weapons. Several more tried to break through the Garkohn circle. Abruptly, the colony was only seconds from the chaos Jules had envisioned. And Alanna thought it would take more than an inspirational speech to calm them this time. They would have to be shocked into submission.

She looked around for Natahk, saw that he had come closer to the circle. He was talking to a huntress not far from the outer fringe of Garkohn. She hurried toward him. A hunter of the circle tried to stop her, struck at her in the careless way that Garkohn reserved for slow untrained Missionaries. He appeared startled when she managed to avoid him. He tried again, not underestimating her this time, but he was simply not fast enough. She reached Natahk several steps ahead of him and Natahk stopped him and ordered him back to the circle. The huntress had just turned away from Natahk. He looked at Alanna questioningly.

He was holding what Alanna needed. She had seen it in his hand as she approached. Apparently, he had taken it from the huntress.

“Give me the gun, Natahk.”

He glanced down at the huge ancient .44 magnum revolver he held. Then he looked at her again, uncomprehending.

“Give it to me before your people have to start killing.”

He looked at the deteriorating situation on the common, saw two Missionaries beating down a hunter who, surprisingly enough, was trying not to kill them. But they were big men, strong in their own right. The hunter gave up and broke their necks.

Natahk handed the heavy gun to Alanna, all the while watching her with an intensity that she barely noticed. She fumbled with the gun for a moment, seeing that it was loaded, remembering… It had been a long time since she had last fired a gun. She had never fired one this large. But its size was a good thing. It would make plenty of noise.

Alanna went back inside the circle of Garkohn, Natahk ordering a path opened for her. She moved to the highest ground she could find, a slight rise from which all the Missionaries could see her, but where none could reach her without alerting the Garkohn. She held the gun with both hands, fired diagonally into the ground. The savage recoil sent a shock of pain through her hands, but it was worth it. She had been right about the noise. It was deafening. It got her the attention of every person on the common instantly. She used none of Jules’s diplomacy.

“We’re outnumbered,” she yelled. “Some of us are already dead. Take a look around. Then if you want to commit suicide, start fighting again.”

She stood where she was and watched them unfreeze. Watched them look numbly at each other, and at the surrounding Garkohn. Watched them become sheep again—discontented sheep, but sheep nevertheless. She closed her eyes and lowered her head so that her hair hid her face. They tried so hard to die while she was trying so hard to save them. If only they would be still until Diut opened a way of escape for them.

She was aware of Natahk coming to stand beside her. He did not startle her when he spoke.

“The weapon, Alanna.”

She handed it to him without hesitation. “You were wrong to collect them.”

“I was wrong not to collect them sooner. Do you understand what would have happened, had your father chosen to use one of them against me instead of the knife?”

“Yes.”

“I am not Hao, but I am my people’s leader. They would make the Missionaries pay many times over. It would be a matter of honor.”

“I said I understood.” She shook her head. Ironically, he was right. In a way, he was saving the Missionaries from themselves—saving them from the retribution that would surely come as soon as any Missionary was goaded into killing any Garkohn, however much the Garkohn needed killing.

Alanna watched a party of Garkohn leave the settlement. They were carrying some of the weapons and pulling others in one of the Missionaries’ handcarts. They left triumphantly, fighters who had won their battle, while most of their fellows stayed behind to guard the Missionaries. As soon as the gates were closed behind them, Natahk gestured Alanna away from him so that he stood alone on the rise. Then he demanded the Missionaries’ attention.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Alanna

Diut made me known to the people who were important to him. Jeh and Cheah, who were his friends, now became true friends of mine rather than superiors. It was an easy transition. I was not surprised when Cheah told me how concerned she and Jeh had been when Jeh took me to Diut. They had seen the terror in me and they were afraid Diut would be offended, yet they could do nothing. Cheah grayed just slightly when she told me: “It is never easy to see one friend kill another.” She spoke as though from experience and I wondered what pain she was remembering.

I met Diut’s First Judge, a woman as tall as Diut himself but, of course, without the heavy Hao musculature. Her coloring was excellent and her strength and fighting ability second only to Diut’s. She was Kehyo, the first Tehkohn woman to make me feel small—and not only with her larger size.

“You are Alanna,” she said when I met her. The occasion was a traditional gathering held to announce her third pregnancy. It was not the formal welcoming ceremony that would be held after the child’s birth, but only a gathering of friends that a couple held to share their joy and receive the good wishes of the bluest people they knew. I had not been invited, but Diut had. He took me along. Now Kehyo had come to sit near me.

“I have heard about you,” she said. “You are Diut’s furless one.”

I smiled a little. “Yes.”

“I hear that you hunt very well.”

“I’m learning.”

“But only with weapons.”

I hesitated. “Yes.” All Kohn who hunted used weapons sooner or later, but only I used weapons all the time. For that reason more than any other, Diut was teaching me to fight in the Kohn way. Other fighters would see my weapon, he said, and they would think I was nothing without it. I would be challenged as soon as he pronounced me a fighter and a judge as he planned to do. I was lucky. The Kohn way of fighting was only slightly more restrictive than the no-holds-barred wildland fighting that I had known on Earth. I was forbidden from snatching up a stone, knife, or other object to use against a weaponless person, but all else was permitted. All the things the Missionaries said were wrong—and some things the Missionaries did not even seem to know about.

“You’re unfortunate,” said Kehyo. “Alone and weaponless, you would surely die. You must stay close to the dwelling so that others can protect you.”

I turned to glare at her. Her coloring was absolutely neutral, as though she had spoken out of true concern for me. But I could feel her malice. Her even blue-green was a lie.

“First Judge,” I said, “I was left alone and weaponless in a land far more savage than this when I was no older than your young daughter. As you can see, I survived very well.”

“It was not a place where the jehruk roamed, apparently. I have heard that you have difficulty even seeing the jehruk.”

Before I could answer that, Diut was there kneeling beside Kehyo, his hand resting seemingly casually on her shoulder. Kehyo’s body tensed. She knew the threat of that hand.

Diut said nothing, only looked at her. Her haughtiness fell away as she met his eyes and her coloring faded to submissive yellow.

“The child within you protects you,” said Diut. “It will not protect you again.”

She lowered her head.

Diut looked at me. “Let it end here.”

I nodded. But later that night when we were alone, I tried to find out just what the trouble was.

“She has an old quarrel with me,” said Diut. “Or with herself. It does not concern you. She came to insult you only because we are mated.”

“But what…”

“Not now, Alanna. She won’t bother you again. Sleep now. In the morning you have a mock duel with Jeh.”

I slept, and still managed to lose my mock duel. The antiweapon rule hurt me more than I liked. Kehyo’s words returned to sting me.

In the afternoon, I went to see another of my new acquaintances, the most powerful of them, Tahneh, the older Tehkohn Hao. She had the Hao stockiness and height and she held her body straight in spite of her age. The people obeyed her, respected her, but her blue was marred by splotches of yellow, some as large as her open hand, and some smaller. Age spots, they were called. They came to all Kohn who lived past middle age, and when they came, Kohn who had been fighters fought no longer. They retired to the inner apartments and helped to instruct the older children in the ways of their individual clans. Also, they helped keep the records that gave continuity to Tehkohn history. They worked as much as they wished and only if they wished. No one drove them.

Tahneh was working now on an interweaving of the history of her original people, the Rohkohn, and the Tehkohn, who had become her people. Years before when Diut was only a boy, he had crossed the mountains to the desert and the sea, and been captured by the Rohkohn. He was a valuable thing to them—a young Hao to succeed Tahneh, who was already in her middle years and childless. But Diut had had the good luck to stumble upon the Rohkohn while they were in the midst of a drought. What rivers there had been in their territory had dried up and the Rohkohn faced slow death. Conditions in the mountains had been dry also—thus the lesser runoff from the snows down to the Rohkohn—but the Tehkohn still had the rivers at their altitude. They had no real problem. In spite of Diut’s youth, he had talked Tahneh into joining him in the mountains—this instead of maiming him to keep him in the desert. The two Hao began a liaison—the first of several—and there were other Tehkohn-Rohkohn matings, some of which produced children. A tie was formed and the two tribes became one. Now, in the multicolored ancient Kohn script, Tahneh wrote of that blending. She was still childless but she had a more or less permanent liaison now with Ehreh, her old Rohkohn First Judge. She obviously cared for him, but there was still a great deal of love between her and Diut. I wondered whether it was their physical similarity—the fact that they were both Hao—that made them close. I already knew how lonely it was to be one of a kind among more homogeneous people—even people who were kind.

I found myself liking Tahneh at once even though I envied her closeness with Diut. I understood myself well enough to realize that I would have envied anyone who was close to Diut. Because Diut had slowly become my shield against the feelings of loneliness and isolation that I had to contend with now that I had less work to keep me busy. He no longer beat me and he repaid my co-operation and growing Tehkohn skills with gentleness and attention. He was remaking me more thoroughly than had the artisans before him. And I was letting him do it, and letting myself be tied to him far more tightly than I should have. Even Tahneh could see that.

“You must be careful,” she said to me as we sat together in her apartment on the fleecy skin of a huge leaf eater. There was a low wooden stand before her like the easel a Missionary woman I had known used to hold canvas when she painted. Near Tahneh were the several polished-stone jugs that held her paints. There was a tray of brushes. There was a jug of something—not water—that she used to clean the brushes. There was a stack of thick, heavy, very white Tehkohn paper made from a plant that grew near the river. And there was Tahneh, drawing thin, angular Kohn characters with one brush after another. We were alone in the apartment. “Be careful,” she repeated. “It is only a liaison you have with him.”

I turned to frown at her.

“Keep your anger,” she said. “I mean only that you would not be the first to be hurt simply because a liaison ended as it must end.” She read me almost as well as Diut did.

“I know… that it must.”

“It is always hard for a woman to leave him. It was hard for me.”

I looked at her curiously, wondering how it must have been for her, loving a man who could have been her son. But the Kohn seemed to have no prejudices against such things. “It will be hard,” I said. “But I know I cannot hold him—though you could have, surely.”

“Now?” she asked, gesturing toward her spotted body.

“Even now, perhaps. But before the spots came, surely.”

“No.”

I frowned, not believing her, but not wanting to say so.

“He is still young, Alanna. He may yet find the woman who can give him children. Not that his childlessness is the fault of the women he has known. But he still hopes.”

“You mean… you mean he can’t…?”

“He is Hao. The blue often brings sorrow as well as power. I tried for as long as there was any hope to find a man who could give me a child. So often, Hao come out of the air, born to judges—not even high judges. But my father and both Diut’s parents were Hao. Diut and I both grew up certain that we too would produce children. It is hard to see that dream die.”

I said nothing for several seconds. Then finally, “I wondered why he had no wife.”

Tahneh’s blue yellowed to green. ‘ It is a capricious thing. No Hao ever knows for sure until the time comes to take a mate, until several mates have been taken without result.’

“I see.”

“See too that he is near to giving up. And he cares deeply for you, Alanna. I think your strangeness pleases him more than he would say. Part from him without trouble when he asks it, and he will call you back after a little time.”

“As with you?”

“With me it was different. You know that.”

“… yes.” I faced her squarely. ‘Did he tell you to advise me?”

“I’m not subject to his orders, Alanna. He does not tell me what to say.” Her blue glowed softly as she spoke. “I advise you because you need advice—and because I can see that he cares for you, and you for him. Sometimes I can see your anger when he looks at me. You can never take my place with him, but if you follow my advice, you can build a place for yourself. And also…” She stopped.

“What?”

“You can save yourself from Kehyo’s mistake.”

I sat still, watching her, knowing that I was close to finding out what Diut had refused to tell me. “What mistake?”

“He has told you nothing of her, even after last night?”

I glanced down, did not answer. Tahneh had not been present at the gathering the night before. But the Tehkohn dwelling was similar in at least one way to the Mission colony. There were no secrets.

Tahneh nickered iridescent for a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. “She was his first mate, Alanna. She is the daughter of his mother’s brother. His mother came out of the air and she had a brother who was a judge.”

“Cousins!” I said startled. “He said nothing even of that.”

“They grew up together,” said Tahneh. “It is often done that way when there are cousins of similar age. They are placed with the same nonfighter second-parents so that when their time comes, they know each other well. There is no fear of rejection or ridicule. But Kehyo tied herself too tightly to him that first time. They came together once more later, but after that, Kehyo had a child by one of her judge mates, now her husband, Kahlahtkai. Sometimes I wonder if she has ever forgiven Kahlahtkai for that.

“Most often, she is reasonable and deserving of her high position. Diut has gambled much on her in war. But she is not content with her husband. She cannot seem to rid herself of the idea that she might have had a child by Diut if she had had one more liaison with him. Sometimes she seeks to frighten or humiliate Diut’s mates. She has been quiet recently, belatedly taking pleasure in her two older children, and perhaps maturing a little. Also, Diut has beaten her twice over this. Until last night, I thought she had given it up, but perhaps your differences incite her.”

“Will she challenge?”

“Not while you are with Diut. He has warned her. He cares deeply for her but if she tries that again, he will surely kill her.”

She had tried it before then. “What about when I… when our liaison has ended—and when she has had her child?”

“When you leave Diut, that should end her reason for resenting you.”

“Should.”

“She is a fool about this one thing. Who can say what she will do. Don’t worry about her though, Alanna. I don’t think Diut will let her interfere with you.”

But I did worry. When I left Tahneh, it was to look for Diut and find out what I could do to speed my training. I had a new reason now for wanting to become the best fighter that I could as soon as I could.

Natahk stood before the Missionaries gathered on the common and commanded them exactly as he would have commanded Garkohn.

“You will return to your homes and gather as many of your possessions as you can carry,” he said. “At least one of my hunters will watch in each house with you. When you have finished, you will return here and wait until the rest of your people are ready. Then, together, you will be moved south where you will make a new settlement, away from raiding Tehkohn.”

The people stared at him in shock, then looked at each other. Now that they had been disarmed, they were being abducted. What could they do? They called out to Natahk, to Jules, to each other. They argued and shouted and drowned each other out. Jules came out of the crowd to stand beside Natahk.

“Do as the First Hunter says,” he ordered quickly. “Obey him! We can replace buildings and fields if we must. We can’t replace lives.”

There was silence for a moment as the people digested this. Then someone called out: “But our homes…! Our crops…!”

“We’ve built new homes before,” said Jules. “And we have enough seed and enough time to plant new crops. We can start again. Whatever happens, we must start again.”

“Go to your homes,” commanded Natahk. “Do as I have told you.”

“What about all the work we’ve done here?” Alanna could see that the speaker was John Williamson, a square burly man who served as the settlement blacksmith. “Just how much can we walk away from and still survive as civilized people.”

“Obey!” roared Natahk. “Or you will not survive at all!”

No one dared speak in the face of the naked threat. There were already five bodies strewn around within the circle of Garkohn. Resistance would clearly not be tolerated. Slowly, hesitantly, the crowd began to fragment into smaller groups. The ring of Garkohn fragmented also, at least one going with each family group. Alanna noticed that the heavily muscled Williamson and his grown son drew three Garkohn. The natives were taking no chances.

Alanna came up to Jules and Natahk just in time to hear Jules speak in a low strained voice.

“Why couldn’t you have warned me that you planned to do this? Are you just trying to drive them to violence so that you’ll have reason to kill them?”

Natahk looked at him coldly. “I already have twelve reasons to kill them, Verrick. The twelve fighters that I lost last night. Be grateful that I do not use those reasons.”

He started to walk away. Jules and Alanna followed when they realized that he was going toward the Verrick house. Neila was already there with Gehl. No doubt it was because of Gehl that Neila was gathering food, clothing, and tools to load onto Jules’s handcart. Like everyone else, she appeared confused, angry, and frightened.

Natahk spoke to Gehl. “Keep watch outside. Bring me word when they have all gathered. If there is trouble, kill.”

Gehl flashed white, glanced briefly at Alanna, and went out.

Natahk sat down, looked at Jules. “Sit, Verrick, and we will talk.”

Jules obeyed. Alanna, wanting as little to do with Natahk as possible, moved away to help Neila pack.

“Alanna!” said Natahk sharply.

She stopped as she was about to enter her bedroom where Neila had gone. She turned to face Natahk. He said nothing more, but after a moment she returned tight-lipped to sit in Neila’s chair.

He watched her with something between amusement and contempt. “Did you think that I would tell you any part of my plans and then leave you to warn the Tehkohn?”

She did not answer.

Natahk looked at Jules. “She has led you foolishly, and you have followed. Were you completely unable to see that you were endangering your own people?”

“Was I?” said Jules. “By keeping them out of a battle that would have killed many of them?”

“What do you think the Tehkohn will do to you now that they no longer need fear for the safety of the prisoners?”

Jules opened his mouth to answer, then closed it. He could not tell the truth, and apparently, he had not yet thought of a lie that would fit.

“YQU have made some arrangement with the Tehkohn,” Natahk accused. “That is what I thought. They made you a few lying promises to save their people. And now that they have their people, how much do you think their promises are worth?”

Jules leaned back, watching Natahk. “I don’t think I could do any worse trusting the Tehkohn than I did trusting you.”

Natahk shrugged humanly. “I have never asked for your trust, Verrick. I am not asking for it now. I am telling you that it is in the best interests of the Tehkohn to kill you now before you can be of further use to me. That is why I am moving you. To save your foolish lives.”

Alanna was startled to realize that Natahk was completely serious. He was not mocking now, in spite of his anger. He believed what he was saying. And, from his point of view, he was right. He knew of no reason for the Tehkohn not to move against the Missionaries. The trouble was, neither did Jules, really. He was simply, desperately, trusting Diut, trusting Alanna. If only he could hold that trust.

“With our weapons,” said Jules, “we would have been willing to face the Tehkohn.”

Natahk sighed. “With your weapons, you would have been willing to face anyone, including Garkohn. Your weapons helped to make you foolish. Without them, perhaps it will be possible for you to learn.” He looked from Jules to Alanna. “Begin teaching your father. Tell him what he is.”

“What he is?” asked Alanna frowning.

“What you are, what all Missionaries are now. Perhaps he will understand, hearing it from you.”

“Oh.” She knew what he wanted her to say, and the anger in his voice told her that it would do no good to protest. But her fear now that his plan might become a reality—that the Missionaries would be dragged away south before Diut could prevent it—made her protest anyway. “There is no need, Natahk. He knows. You have told him yourself.”

“Let him hear it again.”

She sat in silence, knowing that it was not only Jules that he was trying to reach. She was the actual collaborator, and Natahk knew it. She wondered whether he had some special punishment in mind for her. If he did, his sudden move now might give him the chance to carry it out.

“Alanna!”

Resigned, she spoke as though reciting. “We are a Garkohn people, united under your leadership with the other Garkohn of the valley.”

“Not nearly as united as you will be,” said Natahk. He looked at Jules. “Do you think I would accept a group of people so childishly weak that they fight only with the aid of weapons, and so without honor that they would use those weapons against other Garkohn?”

“All right,” said Jules. “You’ve stripped us. We can’t fight you. What happens now? Do we become your new judges?”

Natahk ignored his manner, answered the question seriously. “What happens after you are settled in the south is up to you, Verrick. You will become whatever you can become. It is possible that you will rouse yourselves and learn to fight, show the strength and stability you will need to become a fighter clan. Then, you may be judges of a kind, though with your blueless coloring, you will never command hunters. Or you might find your physical handicaps too great and become merely another nonfighter clan.”

Alanna spoke up. “You hope for the former and expect the latter, don’t you?”

He looked at her mildly. “Your minds are good. And we can use you either way. But we need fighters more than nonfighters.”

“What of our needs?”

“Your…Mission?”

“At the very least,” said Jules, “our Mission.”

“Fulfill it. Breed, multiply, teach your young the glories of their past—as long as you can remember them. And as long as you remember that you are a part of us, subject to the orders of the First Hunter. You must change your thinking toward us, Verrick. You must learn the ways of the other clans so that you can deal with them without giving offense—just as they must learn your ways. And you must accept the tie. Other than that, you are free to stay together and live as you wish.”

“You make it sound deceptively simple,” said Alanna.

“It is simple,” said Natahk. “You should be able to obey without trouble. Especially without the kind of trouble you have had. I think you know that Garkohn clans do not deal separately with non-Garkohn peoples. Especially not with proven enemies of the Garkohn.” He paused, looked from Alanna to Jules. “Do you both understand what would be done to a hunter or an artisan or a farmer caught working with the Tehkohn?”

“We understand,” said Alanna quickly. She was not eager to hear gruesome descriptions of Garkohn tortures. Diut had told her enough about them.

“I am not certain that Verrick knows, Alanna.” His tone made her wish that she had not spoken. Again he was going to make her recite—ostensibly for Jules. And again the threat was actually for her. “You will tell him,” Natahk ordered.

This time she was frightened enough not to argue. She spoke low-voiced to Jules. “A person caught working with an enemy tribe is painted red all over, and then he is blinded. They burn out his eyes. And they burn his hands until they can see that he will never use them again. Then they tie him with rope around his neck in the center of their dwelling, and wait to see whether or not he will live. If he lives, heals, they burn his legs. They burn behind the knee until the lower leg is useless. After that, he has to go on all fours if he wants to move. If he still lives, they keep him for sport, still tied by the neck like some special kind of animal, until someone gets too rough with him and he dies.” She shuddered. “I have heard that some of them live a very long time.”

“That part is wrong,” said Natahk. “You should have been told that they cease to live as soon as they betray their people.”

Jules looked at him with disgust. “All right, Natahk. You’ve made your point.”

“Have I? Do you understand that you have already earned this punishment—you and your daughter?”

Jules said nothing, sat very straight, waiting.

“Perhaps you were ignorant of the possible consequences of your betrayal, but you can see that Alanna was not. And I have no doubt that whatever contact you had with the Tehkohn was arranged through her.”

Alarmed, Jules cut him off. “Now just a moment, Natahk—”

“Be still!” Natahk did not raise his voice but Jules fell silent as though he had shouted. “She does not deny it. Why should you?”

Jules looked at Alanna and she looked back expressionlessly.

Natahk went on. “Your lives are mine. Only I can save them. Only I can deny justice to the twelve families who lost kinsmen last night.”

Jules watched him closely. “You intend to do this then. And this talk of torture is only to frighten us.”

“It is to warn you, Verrick. I will intercede for you now, but I will not do it again. And even now, I expect to be paid for the protection that I give. I expect you to accept yourselves as Garkohn, and then turn and help your people to do the same. I want your word that you will do this.”

“You want too much,” said Jules.

“So? Even in exchange for your life?”

“Shall I give you my word that I’ll betray my people in exchange for my life? Would you believe me?”

Natahk whitened slightly. “What bargain shall we make then, Verrick? What will you give me in exchange for your life?”

Jules watched him silently for several seconds. “Nothing,” he said finally. “I’ll go on doing what I have to do. I can’t promise anyone more than that.”

The white went out of Natahk’s body and his normal green glowed with the intensity of his emotions. “You choose death then?”

Jules tensed. “If that’s the only alternative.”

Natahk stared at him for several seconds. Then he smiled. “I have heard Alanna speak this way. She was lying. I think you are lying too.”

Jules shrugged.

“You Missionaries find it very easy to say you would rather die than do this or that. But you won’t die, Verrick. And you will learn, to obey me. Because each time you disobey, I will kill one of your people.”

“What!”

“I will begin with Alanna.”

Jules turned to look at Alanna.

“Relations between us were much simpler before she was returned to you,” said Natahk. “Without her, they will become simple again. And you, remembering her, will become much more tractable.”

Neila came out of the bedroom where she had obviously been listening, and stood staring first at Natahk, then at Jules. Alanna watched them all as though nothing they said had anything to do with her. Jules was bluffing, feeling himself too valuable to be casually murdered. Natahk was bluffing. He might kill others, but he had no intention of killing Alanna. Not yet. Jules was trying to salvage pride, and Natahk was trying to intimidate. A game then. One miscalculation from either of them, and the people would be destroyed because of the outcome of a game.

“Jules…” said Neila softly.

Jules glanced at her.

“You can’t let him…” She went to stand beside Alanna, put an arm around her protectively.

“You won’t do it,” said Jules to Natahk. “You won’t kill my daughter and then expect me to co-operate with you.”

Natahk stood up, stepped toward Alanna, and Alanna deliberately entered the game on Natahk’s side. She stood quickly, as though frightened, and moved so that her chair was between herself and Natahk.

“Jules!” cried Neila once more.

“All right!” Jules was on his feet. “Stop!” For his daughter, for his pleading wife, he could do what he refused to do for himself.

Natahk stopped, looked at him.

“I’ll do as you say. Leave them alone.”

“What will you do?”

“I’ll… I’ll try to guide my people in the way you want, help them to accept their new lives… and you.”

“You don’t believe what you’re saying,” said Natahk. “But your saying it is a beginning. You will say it again, and again. You will act as though it was true in order to deceive me. You will deceive yourself instead. Your lie will become truth. You and your people are mine, Verrick.”

Jules said nothing.

“In time,” said Natahk more softly, “you will realize that there is no shame in your submission. I don’t rule this valley through weakness. And all who live here submit to me in one way or another.”

Still, Jules was silent.

Watching him, Natahk whitened slowly, then just as slowly settled back to his normal green. “You are First Missionary then, Verrick. Go out to your people and see that no more of them throw their lives away. Take your wife with you. I want to speak privately with Alanna.”

Alanna had not thought anything could bring Jules’s resistance back so quickly.

“You want to… My God, Natahk, haven’t you done enough? Can’t you leave us any peace at all?”

“I want only to speak with her, Verrick. I won’t harm her as long as you obey me.”

Alanna spoke up quickly. “Jules, it’s all right. I’m not afraid.” She was, but her fear was for him. “Go, please. I’ll be all right.”

Jules stared at her with such a strange mixture of anger and concern that she was confused and silenced.

“My daughter?” he said to Natahk. “My house? You leave me no rights at all, do you, First Hunter?”

“The right to live your life with your family in peace, as long as you obey me. Go.”

Alanna spoke up again. “Please, Jules. Go.”

Jules looked from Natahk to Alanna, and finally to Neila. He gestured Neila to him, but she hesitated.

“Go,” said Alanna urgently. “Don’t let me be the cause of your getting hurt.”

Neila went to Jules and they left the house together. Alanna looked after them sadly. Then she heard Natahk sit down again and she turned to face him. “You are destroying him.”

“If he cannot change, he will be destroyed. He knows that.”

Alanna sighed and sat down. “What do you want of me, Natahk?”

“A narrative. Reasonably detailed, true.”

It was what she had expected—what he had promised her days before. She relaxed a little. “Where shall I begin?”

“With your capture.”

She obeyed, telling her story easily, altering only those facts that would indicate that her husband was something more than a judge.

Natahk questioned her from time to time, but for the most part, he listened. She did not know how much he believed, did not care. She kept to the truth as much as she could because her story was so long. She wanted to be able to tell it over in the same way as many times as Natahk might wish without having to struggle to remember too many lies. But surprisingly, Natahk seemed content with one telling.

“Why are you still here?” he asked when she had finished. “You could have left with the prisoners—should have left with them.”

She looked at him, startled. “Should have?”

“If you intended to rejoin your husband. It was your last chance.”

She shrugged.

“You do not believe me. You still expect your Tehkohn friends to help you, even though you will be on your way south before noon.”

Alanna said nothing. Let him worry. She would have been busy praying herself—if she had been Missionary enough to pray.

“You ask for punishment,” said Natahk. “You challenge.”

“I have said nothing.”

“Yes.” Natahk yellowed slightly. “Even your silences challenge. Why did you stay, Alanna?”

“To help my people.”

“Which group?”

“The Missionaries. Do you think the Tehkohn need my help?”

“And what is it you want to help them do?”

“Live. In spite of your goading. In spite of their beliefs.”

“That is a fragment of truth. Now tell me the rest.”

“I… hoped to free them from the meklah.”

“Why? The meklah does no harm as long as it is eaten regularly.”

“And it does no good. Do you not withhold it to torture your captive Missionaries?”

“We withhold it until they obey-and they learn to obey very quickly. But are you less vulnerable to me because you are free of the meklah? Was your father?”

She did not answer.

“You planned for the Missionaries to leave the valley,” he accused. “It is the only answer. But where were they to go?”

The truth? No. But what lie was possible? “I don’t know.”

He stood and came to face her. “I have not wanted to beat you.”

She did not have to pretend fear. “When Jules talked with the Tehkohn Hao, Diut promised to move the Missionaries to a place of safety if they co-operated. And he promised to have them all killed if they refused.”

Natahk stared at her, unbelieving. “Are you saying that he did nothing more than threaten, and Verrick believed?”

“Yes.”

“Even though Diut was Verrick’s prisoner at the time?”

Alanna manufactured cold anger. “And was he really a prisoner, First Hunter—yours or ours—when you forbade the Missionaries to paint him? When your own people obeyed him? Perhaps you would have believed his threats too if you had ever dared go near enough to him to hear him speak!”

She thought he would hit her. In fact, she expected him to hit her. She feared his strength less than she feared his questions now. But he only stood watching her. “You sided with the blue one, counseled your father to accept his word.”

Again, she did not feel that an answer was necessary.

“Even so, that should not have been enough. There is something missing. Something to do with your husband perhaps?”

“You know Jules doesn’t know about him.” She forced a note of bitterness into her voice. “And he’s out of favor with Diut—because of me. I only wish he did have enough influence to help.”

Natahk made a sound of disgust. “Somehow, you are lying. You are worthless. Gehl was right. She said it would be better to kill you.”

Had she? Then somehow Gehl too had noticed what Alanna could not help noticing. Natahk had b2en careless. But at least now, Alanna knew how to stop his questions. She looked at him calmly. “You are not going to kill me.”

He stared back at her for a moment without speaking. “So you realize that.” He whitened slightly. ”We will speak of it then, in a moment. Were the Missionaries to be taken to the mountain dwelling?”

The question did not take her by surprise, but she chose to pretend that it had. She hesitated as though nervous, then answered, “I don’t know.”

“Don’t you?” His voice was comfortingly filled with suspicion. “And what use could the Tehkohn have for a tribe of your kind?”

She feigned annoyance. “Why bother to ask me questions if you’re not going to believe my answers?”

His coloring became iridescent, flecks of yellow glinting within the green. Doubt. “You are a worthy enemy, Alanna, with your half truths and your lies. It will be interesting to reshape you and make you less of an enemy.”

“That, you will never do.” Deliberate challenge. But now was the time for it.

His iridescence faded to white. “Did I not say that all in this valley submitted to me? You will see. What was the name of your husband?”

“Natahk…” She shook her head. “Would you have me invent a name and give it to you?”

“I would have you obey me and answer my questions!”

“Yahnoh is my husband.”

Natahk lifted his head slightly. “I know of a Tehkohn judge called Yahnoh.”

“Of course. My husband.”

“‘Of course,’” he mimicked. “I think I will give you a meklah fruit to swallow back your next lie with.”

Frightened, Alanna said nothing. The risk had always been there. She might have to undergo a third withdrawal. But she was not weak or sick now. She would not sell either group of her people to avoid readdiction—any more than Jules had.

But Natahk’s mood seemed to change. His anger faded and he moved closer to her. As he spoke he touched her throat lightly. “And even with that threat, I will not stop you from lying or counseling your Missionaries to side with the Tehkohn. But soon I will stop them from listening to you. I wonder if the Tehkohn have really found some use for them. Or if they only planned to kill them.”

Alanna pulled away from the caressing fingers in disgust and stood up. At least he was diverted from his questioning.

“Be still,” he said quietly. He touched her again. “Am I so different from your husband? After all, judge that he is, even he is not the leader of his people.”

“He’s my husband. What more does he have to be than that to bar your way?”

“A Tehkohn marriage means nothing to us.”

She frowned at him. He was more right than he knew about one thing. He sounded far too much like Diut—like the Diut who had demanded a liaison with her such a short time ago. But Diut had changed, had allowed her to mold him as he molded her. And Diut was trying to help the Missionaries while Natahk was endangering them.

“Why should you want me?” she asked him. “You have Gehl now. You could have any other without trouble.”

“You must become part of the tie,” he said. “That will turn your people away from you so that you can no longer counsel them against me—also, it will protect you from their foolish customs. My only other choice would be to kill you and I don’t want to do that. We’re much alike, Alanna, you and I. I risk the anger of my hunters by saving and tying in with the Missionaries because I can see that in spite of the Missionaries’ weakness, their knowledge will strengthen us. And you risk the anger, the savagery, of your people as you try to save them from me.”

Another parallel. He was right, of course. However much she hated him, she and Natahk had similar goals—they worked for the good of their respective peoples. But they were not as alike as he wished. “I will not accept a liaison with you,” she said.

“So? Shall I give you to another hunter? Or perhaps several other hunters until one of them becomes your husband.”

“Why should you choose my mate? That is not the custom.”

“But you have no blue.” He smiled. “The power of the blue is a lie. My people believe it. I only use it. I killed a hunter and huntress bluer than myself to become First Hunter.” He clasped her throat between thumb and fingers, deliberately intimate. “And now, I will have the wife of a man blue enough to be called a judge—but not blue enough to stop me!”

Gehl opened the front door and came in.

Quickly, but seemingly casually, Natahk dropped his hand to his side. Knocking was not a Garkohn custom and Jules and Neila usually kept their door latched to avoid the most obvious intruders. But with all the recent coming and going, the latch had been left off. The Garkohn woman stood staring at Natahk and Alanna, noting, Alanna was certain, how close Natahk stood, and how Alanna had not moved away. Natahk had been bragging about his rank. Now Alanna remembered Gehl’s. She too had fought her way up, killing those who opposed her. Natahk himself held the only authority she accepted.

Eyes downcast, Alanna stepped away from Natahk. She could not yellow as another Kohn would have, but she hoped Gehl would understand. Alanna felt no shame at giving way. With her incomplete training, she was not ready to face such an opponent even if she had considered Natahk a prize worth righting for—which she did not.

Gehl could have him. In fact, as insurance against a possible future, Alanna hoped the huntress became pregnant.

Gehl spoke to Natahk. “There is trouble outside. Come out.”

“Trouble with the Missionaries? I told you…”

“Not with them. Come out.”

Natahk went to the door, then stopped as he noticed that Gehl remained behind. She was looking at Alanna. Natahk called her name once, sharply, then waited while she went out before him. When only Alanna could see him, he whitened considerably with amusement. He glanced at Alanna, then followed Gehl out the door, his coloring settling to normal.

After a moment, Alanna went to the door and looked out. There were a few Missionaries gathered on the common with bundles tied in blankets and handcarts haphazardly loaded. And a few Garkohn stood with them guarding them. But everyone’s attention was on the scene at the gate where several more Garkohn were gathered. Alanna could see that three of these were spattered with red paint, or with blood. And one of them sat on the ground, half propped up against the wall. This one seemed to be unconscious. And it was this one that Alanna recognized. He was one of those who had left with the load of Missionary weapons. The others were also from the weapons party. What was left of the weapons party.

Alanna withdrew back into the house, smiling grimly. Jules and Neila came in and she startled them by hugging them in sudden exuberant relief. Diut had not done the expected thing—had not taken his raiders and ex-prisoners and gone home to celebrate his successful raid. Perhaps it was nothing more than Alanna’s stubbornness and his concern for her that had kept him in the valley, but Alanna thought otherwise. He had his people back now, and the Garkohn could not threaten him. He was ready to move.

CHAPTER NINE

Diut

I had decided to make Alanna a judge. She had just the right combination of speed and strength to hold her own among my judges and she was learning quickly. I trained her intensively because the time was near when I would break with her. I had first thought to keep her for only a season and thus make her acceptable to any others she might choose to mate with. Before I had her, I thought a season would be enough. Especially since she fought against coming to me at all.

But she and I found far more pleasure in each other than I had expected. We came to know each other first by touch, as blind people finding beauty with our hands that we could not see with our eyes. Her skin was smooth and firm, and yet soft. Very good to touch. And her hands seemed to wander by themselves through my fur. But there were times when I looked at her starkly naked ill-colored body and wondered how I could want to touch it. And her eyes were wrong-poorly protected and too round. She said they were more narrow than any of the Missionaries she had left in the Garkohn valley, but still they were too round to be pleasing. Her nose was too large. I asked her once whether it would be considered large among her people and she was offended. “It is very ordinary,” she said. And then added, “Some Missionaries think the Kohn have no noses.”

I let white into my coloring and seized her by her huge nose until she threatened to pull out a handful of my fur.

She taught me the caress called a “kiss” among her people, and then complained that I had no “lips” to kiss. It was not a caress any Kohn people would enjoy anyway. There was not enough to it. A joining of mouths, a thrust of tongues. That was all. It could not be felt as biting could. She learned to caress me as I preferred and I was pleased. I sought to please her.

The season went by. The second planting was harvested and stored. My hunters went out to get as much meat as they could now—an excess to dry and store while the game was fat and plentiful. We raided all the small high valleys that could be closed to become our game traps. The record of Alanna’s kills with her bow and her arrows was impressive. Several of my judges decided to try the new weapons, though my hunters still scorned any weapon but their bodies against most animals. I was pleased with my judges’ flexibility.

My healers gathered a harvest of wild herbs to ease ailments of cold and old age that grew worse when the snows fell.

And I held on to Alanna. There was still much for me to teach her, and she was teaching me the language of her people. I knew I would have to deal with them someday. She was learning not only to fight, but to read the light speech that we used to signal each other through the mountains. We signaled warnings of raiders, of dangerous animals or good hunting, of places along the slopes that were not safe, and of other things. Light speech was difficult for Alanna to learn, especially at first, but her life would be safer when she understood it. As the snows came, and we were inside more, I spent much time teaching her. It was a pleasurable thing to do. Too much that had to do with her had become pleasurable. I realized that I was becoming too attached to her, and she to me. I promised myself I would let her go soon.

When she began to change, I thought it was because she sensed the nearness of our separation. I gave her no comfort because it was important to me to see how she handled her feelings alone. Her actions now would tell me whether or not I would ask her to come to me again after a few seasons. My cousin Kehyo had taught me that I should not ask a woman to come to me more than once if she could not control her feelings.

Alanna grew nervous. She watched me closely when she thought I did not see. She seemed to withdraw into herself and I could sense fear in her. Fear of parting?

I had already decided which apartment in the fighter section that I would give her, when she finally opened to me—told me what any other would have told me long before. And even on the night she told me, she was hesitant and evasive.

“Am I still ugly to you?” she asked. “Do you still see me as you did when we first came together?” It had been a long time since either of us mentioned such nonsense—back when she complained in jest that I had no lips. But she was serious now. Far more serious than she should have been over such a question. I refused to match her mood.

“How do you see me?” I asked, pulling her closer.

She lay silent by my side.

“Why are you afraid?” I asked.

“Because I think I’ve come to accept you more than you have me.”

“We have only a liaison, Alanna.”

“No.”

“No?” I turned my head slightly to look at her. “What more can there be for us?”

“A marriage… if you can accept a marriage with me.”

I sat up, controlling my annoyance. “Alanna, I have lost count of the number of my liaisons. Do you think I am without a wife, without children by choice?”

She said nothing, only watched me.

“How can I have a child with you when I have failed with so many Tehkohn women?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Our two peoples must not be as different as I thought.”

I looked down at her, suddenly confused. I could feel my body go iridescent. “What are you saying?”

“That I’m going to have a child, Diut. And it cannot be any harder for you to believe than it was for me.”

For a moment, I could not speak. When the words did come, my own voice sounded strange to me. “A child? Alanna, are you… can you be certain?”

“Oh yes.” She spoke with unmistakable bitterness.

“But… you are a young woman. It may be that you have made a mistake.”

“Do you want it to be a mistake?”

“I mean only that you… Others of my mates have thought themselves pregnant with my child. They wanted it so badly that they…”

“That they imagined their wish had been granted, yes. There have been such women among the Missionaries too. But never once did I even imagine that it was possible for you and me to produce a child. I did not long for it because it seemed completely impossible. I only hoped that our time together could be long, and that we could come together again someday.”

“I… had planned that we should, but…”

She sat up and faced me, the fear and uncertainty gone from her face. She appeared resigned. “You planned to give me an apartment of my own when I left you, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I said, surprised.

“I’ll go there then. I know our time together would have ended soon anyway. I’ll stay there alone until our child is born. Then I’ll come back to you if you want me, or I’ll stay there if you don’t.”

I could see both her certainty and her sadness, and almost against my will, I began to doubt. I knew I was hurting her. She was not the first woman I had hurt this way, but it was necessary. All my other mates had been wrong. I was afraid to believe her. Yet she was not the kind of woman who made stories within her mind and then acted as though the stories were true. Different as she was, she had shown herself to be worthy of my trust. Now, suddenly, I found myself striving to trust her. How many years had I thought myself to be flawed in the Hao way, unable to do what my yellowest artisan could do-unable to father a child.

“When did you first know of the child?” I asked quietly.

“Supposed child,” she said bitterly. “Imaginary child.”

“Alanna!”

She sighed. “Since shortly after the gathering at Kehyo’s apartment. I waited to tell you because at first I didn’t believe it myself. I waited to be sure.”

At once my suspicions increased. Kehyo had insulted Alanna that night. Might Alanna not now be trying to best Kehyo by doing what Kehyo could not—having my child? I knew that Tahneh had told Alanna about Kehyo. I spoke my thought as gently as I could. When I had finished, even someone who had never known a member of Alanna’s race could have read her anger.

“Show me where the new apartment is,” she said. “I’ll go there now. I can’t listen to any more of this.” She started to rise to her feet. I pulled her down again.

“You will listen. There is a decision for you to make. I will be guided by you.”

Some of her anger gave way to curiosity. “What decision?”

“Whether we will have a gathering of our own. Whether we will announce to our friends—who will surely tell everyone—that you are going to have a child.”

Her too-round eyes grew rounder. “So? You believe me?”

“I believe that you believe. And in the time we have been together, I have seen little foolishness in you.”

She stared down at her own brown leg. “I thought I was prepared for anything you might say. ‘Yes, I believe.’ ‘No, I don’t believe.’ ‘Yes, I want the child.’ ‘No, such a mixed child would be a monster.

“Choose, Alanna.”

“I want the gathering! Of course I want it. It’s my right. And I want more. Need more.” She looked into my face. “I would rather have you send me away than give me only your grudging acceptance. ‘Oh, well, she’s not entirely stupid. Maybe there’s a chance that she’s right.’ Diut, let me be alone until you can be sure.”

I lay on my back and looked up at her. There was a strange beauty to her when one did not try to fit her into the Kohn image—when one did not see her as a twisted Kohn. The day I realized that I was finding beauty in her was the day I knew it was time to be rid of her. People unable to produce children quickly learn the danger of becoming too attached to any mate.

“I have had other mates who thought they carried my child, Alanna.”

“So you have said.”

“One was Kehyo during our second liaison.”

“Yes.”

“Five others come to my mind quickly.”

She winced as though from a blow, and looked away from me.

“Through them all, I have not permitted the gathering. I have never before permitted the gathering.”

Now her eyes came back to me, filled with surprise. “Why not?”

“The first time, Kehyo’s mother came to me and said, ‘Wait. Be certain before you let her announce. With another, the people would laugh if there was a mistake. Then they would forget. With you, they might not laugh, but also, they might not forget. You are Hao, but very young. Let them have as little reason as possible to doubt you.’ Kehyo’s mother. My own mother was long dead. For that one piece of advice, I kept friendship with Kehyo’s mother until she died. She was a wise woman. And, of course, Kehyo had no child until long after she had gone to Kahlahtkai.”

“You kept her with you after her mother talked to you?”

“For two more seasons. I wanted a child by her very badly. And when she left me, she stayed alone for a time to be certain.”

“And now… if I prove to be wrong, you will be shamed before the people.”

I said nothing.

“We will wait until you are as certain as I am. Then we will have the gathering.”

“I said I would be guided by you.”

“So.” I could feel her dissatisfaction.

“And instead, I have guided you.” I pulled her down beside me and felt her move close. “I will go on guiding you then. Choose the friends you want to gather with you and tell them to come tomorrow. Tell them why if you like, or wait and I’ll tell them myself when they are together.”

She lifted herself on one elbow to look down at me. “Be careful what you say, Diut.”

“So?”

“I’ll do it. I’ll even leave you to say the words.”

“Well.” I felt white come into my coloring. “At least you have learned to obey.”

Natahk was gone. He had made a great show of gathering his fighters—all of them—and leaving the settlement. He had also made a show of shouting his anger at the Missionaries, blaming them for his weapons party’s demise. He had promised ominously that he would deal with them as soon as he had dealt with the invading Tehkohn. Alanna had watched him carefully and decided that he was lying.

He would not be foolish enough to go running around the valley in search of enemies who might or might not still be there, and who might or might not find him first. No. Instead, he would wait, with his camouflaged army, for the Tehkohn to come to him—at the one place where both he and Alanna knew they would come sooner or later. The settlement. The Missionaries had suddenly become bait in a huge trap.

Natahk was probably ready for an army of Tehkohn—enough fighters either to herd the Missionaries away to the mountains, or to exterminate them. As it happened though, after three days and nights of waiting, his trap caught only one Tehkohn. Diut.

By then, the Missionaries had taken advantage of their privacy.

For the first time since the founding of the settlement, they held a general meeting in the church with no Garkohn in attendance. At the meeting, they learned how Jules had managed to use the rivalry between the Tehkohn and the Garkohn to Missionary advantage. The Tehkohn, he told them, had agreed to divert the Garkohn with a battle while the Missionaries escaped. He lied to them in spite of his principles—gave them assurances that he did not feel himself, convinced them that in this one matter, at least, the Tehkohn could be trusted. He had to lie since he still did not dare to tell them that it was not the Tehkohn who had been stealing away Missionary captives, or that those captives were still alive. The captives had to be sacrificed if the colony was to survive, and Jules knew it. He had sworn Nathan James and Jacob Lorenz to silence, and had suppressed his private distress, his doubts. Alanna watched him with grim approval. He was chameleon enough when he had to be.

He ordered the people to keep as many of their belongings as they could already packed, and especially, to keep as much meklah seed and flour as they could packed. He told them to wait, and to stay in their homes if they heard fighting inside the settlement—Alanna had warned him of her suspicions. And the people were eager to obey. Natahk had made them more than willing to give up their homes and move to another valley. They were escaping to freedom again to fulfill their Mission without Garkohn interference. By the time Diut arrived, they were ready.

The Verricks were about to have dinner when he came. Jules had been helping to build extra handcarts for the journey since these and the Missionaries’ own backs were the only means they would have of carrying their belongings. Jules came in at Neila’s call. Diut came in with him—came rather carelessly, Alanna thought. She saw him at once, and deliberately turned away. Let him announce himself when he was ready.

He seemed to materialize out of the wall near the door. In shock, Neila dropped a bowl of peas and just managed to stifle a scream. Jules turned, gasped, then let his breath out slowly.

“Welcome, Tehkohn Hao,” he said. And a moment later, “Will you eat with us?” He had remembered himself enough to speak Garkohn. Alanna smiled to herself and went to help Neila clean up the mess.

“I will eat,” said Diut. “If there is time.”

Jules frowned. “Time?”

“I let myself be seen as I crossed the wall. I think the Garkohn will be here soon.”

Neila looked up. “You want them here?”

“Some of them.” He sat down at the table, looked directly at Neila, who looked away. He yellowed briefly. “I want Natahk here. He will come. I showed myself where he would see me.”

Alanna understood suddenly and stood up smiling. “And what will be happening outside that Natahk is not to see?”

He whitened. “Much. It has already begun to happen. By tomorrow, we will be victorious. Or dead.”

Jules shuddered. “I had hoped that the fighting would take place far away from…” He stopped short, reddened. “Is there anything we can do to help?”

Diut sat and looked at him in silence.

Neila began almost casually to do what she never normally did—serving each of them herself. She worked quickly, seemed to be glad to have something to do with her hands, which had been trembling. They were steady now. Much of the food contained no meklah. Alanna, for her own safety, knew exactly what did. She paid close attention to what her mother served Diut. And, apparently, so did Neila herself. She served Alanna and Diut exactly the same things. Alanna relaxed, feeling relieved. Jules and Neila probably did not realize it, but Diut, by accepting food from them was accepting them I fully as allies, as family.

Alanna glanced at him, saw that instead of eating, he was watching her. She began to eat. She did not realize until he picked up his fork I” that he was watching her for more reason than to see whether or not I, the food was safe. He had never eaten with anything other than his fingers. But he was quick and unselfconscious. After a moment or two of awkwardness, he held the fork with familiar ease. He even seemed to enjoy the food. Then he returned to business. “There is nothing for you to do, Verrick. Just keep your people out of our way.”

The straight thin line of Jules’s mouth showed his resentment. But I perhaps he felt he had earned the comment. He spoke quietly. “My people will not come out into fighting unless I call them.”

“So? It is well that you have already told them. Natahk might not allow you time to do it now.”

“Are you… are you going to just wait for him here?” asked Neila.

Diut looked at her, and she managed to meet his gaze, look back for a moment. “For me,” he said, “it would be better not to wait. I could keep ahead of him outside, kill many of his people before I was caught. But… there are things he could do to make me come out. Some of my judges have spied on the Garkohn. They say Natahk believes that I plan to seize your people away from him—that I have found some value in them for the Tehkohn. What better way to make me reveal myself then, than to destroy, bit by bit, that which he thinks I value?”

“But he really does value us,” said Jules. “He would be destroying people he wants for himself.”

“He wants some of you, certainly. Those with special skills, perhaps. But doubtless, many of you are expendable.”

Jules sighed. “Yes, doubtless. But if you wait here, Natahk will kill you.”

“He might try, but I think not. I have shamed him, and he will want revenge—but not my life. I am Hao, and valuable myself.” He lowered his voice slightly. “Valuable and vulnerable. Alanna.”

She looked at him.

“Go outside to where wood is stacked against the house. Feel on the ground between the house and the wood.”

Without questioning, Alanna went. She moved casually but quickly, folding her arms against the night’s chill, and watching with concealed alertness for any Garkohn who might already have entered. She saw none.

There was a small space at the bottom of the woodpile between the woodpile and the cabin. She was barely able to get her hand into it, but once she had, she felt a soft skin wrapping and the smoothly polished wood it covered. Her bow!

It was her most powerful Tehkohn-made bow. With it, she had made several large kills—mostly the shaggy ugly quadrupeds called leaf eaters. She fished out the quiver hastily, and carried it, the bow, and a few concealing sticks of wood back into the house. There, she was just in time to hear Jules ask Diut for the return of the Missionaries’ guns.

“Consider them part of the price of your freedom,” said Diut. “I will not give them back.”

The flat refusal seemed to take Jules by surprise. “But… why?”

“Because your people and mine might meet again someday—without a common enemy to unite us.”

“And you think our weapons will give you an advantage over us?” demanded Jules. “We’ll make new weapons!”

“We already have an advantage over you.”

Jules frowned at him. “Then why…?”

“Because I expect you to catch up, compensate for the shortcomings of your bodies. If you live, you will learn. We too must learn. By the time your new land allows you the leisure you need to make weapons such as those you have lost, we too will know how to make such weapons.” He looked over at Alanna just as she braced her bow against her foot and strung it. Jules and Neila turned to look at her first with curiosity, then with surprise. They had seen her come in with the wood, but apparently, they had not paid enough attention to her to see what else she carried.

Wordless, Alanna looked around for a place to hide the bow and quiver. She wanted it near the door where she could reach it quickly, but there was no piece of furniture near the door that was large enough to conceal it. She had to settle for the cabinet that contained Neila’s few dishes. It was across the room from the door and the window, but it hid the bow and quiver completely.

“That is not a good place,” observed Diut.

She shrugged. “I know.”

He leaned back, pushed his plate away. “I put the bow in the wood days ago when I thought there would be fighting here. I hope you will not need it. But if you do, you must use it.”

She looked at him steadily, not caring what Jules and Neila might read in the look. “I will not need it.”

“I think you are right. I am not here to sacrifice myself. But this obligation is my own. If I fail to fulfill it, the others must be free to act in spite of my failure.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Jules.

“I am to kill him,” said Alanna softly, “if he is clearly defeated and… used as a hostage to gain his people’s surrender.”

“Oh my God,” whispered Neila.

“It is a precaution,” said Alanna. “Only a precaution.” She turned to Diut quickly, fending off thoughts she did not want to think. “Exactly what is happening outside now?”

“The Garkohn trappers are being caught in a trap,” said Diut. “Jeh is coming from the west with one group of fighters. Kehyo has circled wide around and is coming from the east. To the north, there are nonfighters secreted in trees, waiting to drop stones and paint.”

“Nonfighters!”

“So that we seem more numerous than we are. But all will be quiet for some time now. Jeh’s fighters and Kehyo’s will kill silently tor as long as they can—making our numbers more even. The noise and light will not start until the Garkohn start it. And the Garkohn are bus> wondering what the Tehkohn Hao is doing inside the Mission settlement.”

Alanna managed a smile. “With Natahk in here, perhaps they will panic when they find themselves surrounded.”

“Some of them will surely panic. And they will panic others. We must keep Natahk here until that happens. When we hear shouting, the victory will be near for us. The more shouting, the better.”

Alanna knew he was right. Kohn fighting, even in war, was normally silent. That was part of the reason why the guns of the Missionaries had been so effective in alarming the Tehkohn and herding them into a trap earlier. Now, the Garkohn would be the ones making the noise, and the ones panicked by it, as they tried to warn each other that they were infiltrated and under attack.

“Tehkohn Hao.” Jules sat watching Diut with strange intensity.

Diut looked at him.

“I have a question that I don’t want to ask. But I must ask it. Too much is wrong. What connection is there between you and my daughter?”

Diut glanced at Alanna.

She shrugged. “I tried once to tell him, but the time seemed wrong, the risk too great. Now… he must know.”

Diut flashed white agreement and spoke to Jules. “Your daughter is the reason why you are still alive, Verrick. And she is the reason why your people will have their chance to escape this valley soon. She is my wife.”

For a moment, Jules sat staring at Diut as though he had not heard. Finally he closed his eyes, shook his head slowly. “Like the Garkohn,” he muttered. “No better than the Garkohn.”

“No!” said Alanna sharply.

Jules looked at her.

“I’m not his prisoner, Jules, I’m his wife. I’m glad to be his…”

“My God, Lanna!” The words seemed to explode from Jules like a cry of pain. Alanna stopped uncertainly, looked at Neila. Abruptly, Neila got up and ran into her bedroom.

“Oh hell,” muttered Alanna in English. “I’d hoped that now that they were committed, it wouldn’t matter so much.”

Diut switched to his own clear but strangely accented English. “In one way, it will not matter. Everything is arranged. If they want to live, they will follow the arrangement.”

The sudden switch to English caught Jules’s attention. He spoke to Alanna. “You taught him English?”

“Yes. He wanted to learn.”

“What else did you teach him?” The question was heavy with accusation.

“That we were rational people, Jules. That we could think and learn. That we were not animals!” She thought the irony of that might reach him even now, and it seemed to. He stared at Diut for a moment, then faced Alanna again.

“You have a child?” His voice had dropped to a whisper.

She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I had a child. My daughter was killed in the raid.”

Jules frowned, managed to look both confused and distressed. He seemed to find nothing to say. Neila crept back into the room, red-eyed, looking ill. She sat down, exchanged glances with Jules, then stared down at her half-eaten dinner.

Diut shattered the discomfort of the moment by announcing, “The Garkohn are over the wall. Several of them.” He kept his voice low and appeared to be listening, though Alanna heard nothing.

Controlling her sudden fear, Alanna got up and went to Diut. Of the four of them, he seemed the one least likely to live through the night. What would she do if he died? What would the Missionaries do? And, if the need arose, how could she possibly…? But again, she pushed the thought away. She would do it if she had to. She would not fail him. He had not failed her. But she would not think about it until she had to.

He sat still, looking up at her. She laid her hand alongside his face, let it move downward to his throat so that as the caress ended, she clasped the throat in the “v” of her thumb and fingers. “You must live,” she whispered in Tehkohn. “They are only slow hunters. Surely you can evade them.”

He stood and held her for a moment. “I will live,” he said quietly. “Preserve yourself. Remember all that I have taught you. I think Natahk will make you use it before the night is over.”

He let her go, moved back toward the wall, seeming to dematerialize before he reached it. He was doing his best now, and he was invisible. He spoke once more, his voice seeming to come from nowhere.

“Deny that I am here. Use time.”

Alanna took his dishes hurriedly and shut them in the cabinet with Neila’s clean dishes. As she was sitting down again, they heard Natahk’s voice.

“You will open the door, Verrick, or we will burn the house.”

Jules got up quickly and opened the door.

Natahk stood just outside with a burning torch in his hand. He was surrounded by a tight half circle of other Garkohn. Too many Garkohn—twenty, perhaps twenty-five. “You will send out the Tehkohn Hao,” Natahk said.

Jules stepped back as though in surprise, managed to seem bewildered. He stared at the torch. “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

It was a good act, Alanna thought. But Natahk was unimpressed. He gestured with his torch, then stepped back, well away from the door. Another Garkohn stepped up and threw a bucket full of something through the open doorway. Jules was drenched with it, and much of the room was spattered. The faint but distinctive odor of it told them all what it was. Lamp oil. It was pressed from a kind of nut that the Garkohn raised—that they had taught the Missionaries to raise. In the lamps, it burned with a bright steady yellow flame. It would give the dry wood of the cabin a fast start toward total destruction. Natahk spoke again.

“The Tehkohn Hao will come out, or you will all burn.” He had already begun to come forward with the torch when Diut’s unmistakable voice rang out.

“Garkohn!”

Natahk stopped, moved back from the door. His manner changed abruptly as he saw Diut seem to materialize out of the wall behind Neila. Natahk brightened his coloring pridefully toward white as he spoke. “You will come out.”

“Put out the fire,” said Diut.

“You do not give orders here, blue one. You will come out!”

Diut hesitated for as long as he dared. Alanna watched him, wondering whether he, like Jules, was to be drenched with lamp oil. Perhaps he wondered the same thing. He moved slowly, cautiously, toward the door, then suddenly sprang through the doorway in a leap that carried him well into the half circle. It was the kind of leap that might have carried him onto the back of an unwary animal. Now, it carried him into the midst of Garkohn who were not wary enough.

Startled, the Garkohn drew back, crouched, ready to defend. But Diut could have gone through them almost effortlessly if that had been his purpose. Instead, seeing no more oil to endanger him, Diut straightened, faced Natahk.

Natahk stared at him for several seconds, then turned back to the house. “And you!” He spoke to the three Verricks. “His friends. You will come out.”

Jules, Neila, and Alanna trailed out slowly. Natahk set one guard on Jules and Neila, and another on Alanna. “Listen to nothing she says,” he told Alanna’s guard. “If she does not obey, kill her.”

The hunter flashed white and looked at Alanna grimly.

For a moment, Alanna stared back at him. Then she looked away, thinking. He was an ordinary-looking member of his clan—a burly man, shorter than Alanna, but heavier, and no doubt, stronger. Alanna would have a chance to kill or disable him only if she was fast enough to get in the first blow, and accurate enough to make it count.

The Garkohn closed a complete circle around Diut, herding him out toward the common where a small fire burned. Alanna knew from having watched mock duels that it would still have been a simple matter for Diut to break out of the circle. He could have escaped into the shadows, hidden, and gone over the wall at his leisure. But he chose to stay and bait Natahk. He had promised Jeh and Kehyo a diversion. He was doing his part. If only they were doing theirs. Alanna found herself listening for shouts beyond the wall already even though she knew it was too soon.

Natahk joined the circle, faced Diut. “How interesting, Tehkohn Hao, to find you conferring with the Missionary leader. These people must be more important to you than I thought.”

“I have found them useful.”

Natahk yellowed. “They will wish they had been less useful.”

“That is your affair.”

“So? Has their usefulness ended so quickly? Why not use them once more. Call them out of their houses to help you. I have many fighters outside who would gladly kill them all!”

Diut said nothing.

Natahk looked at Jules. “You have betrayed your people, Missionary. And you know our way with traitors.” He looked at a huntress who stood just outside the circle. “Build up the fire.” Again he faced Diut. “I think we will make the fire for you too, Tehkohn Hao.”

Diut watched him warily.

“Have no fear though. We will not kill you. We will only revive the old custom—the custom that my people had almost forgotten. Since no Garkohn Hao has been born to us, we will make a Garkohn Hao.”

It was the grisly old custom that Diut had already almost fallen victim to among the desert people. A tribe that could neither buy a Hao nor produce one themselves stole one. They crippled him, kept him. The custom, Diut had told Alanna, was based on the belief that even the most bitter vengeful captive Hao was better than no Hao at all. Such a Hao was not a leader. He was a symbol of power, of unity, of good fortune. This reverence for the Hao, for the blue, was the nearest thing the Kohn had to a religion. But it was a religion that Natahk denied. His people might feel more secure with a captive Hao, but Natahk would not. He was acting solely from vengeance.

Diut’s coloring took on new intensity, became luminescent. He took a long slow look at the Garkohn surrounding him. “You have been without a Hao for too long,” he told Natahk. “You have forgotten how difficult we are to hold.”

“When we have burned your legs, holding you will be a simple matter,” said Natahk.

“Do you think that I will submit to your fire?” said Diut. “Come. Attack! You have forgotten what the blue means. I will refresh your memory!”

The Garkohn of the circle could not quite hide their reaction. There was a slight but general yellowing among them. The Hao were creatures of legendary fighting prowess. Diut was exploiting the fact that the Garkohn were not sure how much was only legend. Or most of them were not.

“You hold him captive in your midst for the second time and you are still afraid,” shouted Natahk. “You still think he is something other than a large Kohn. His size makes him a little stronger than one of you, but not stronger than all of you together. He is no more than a man!” He looked toward the space on the common where the huntress and a hunter who had helped her carry wood from alongside one of the cabins were building up the fire. It was growing promisingly.

“Put him on the ground,” Natahk told his hunters.

The habit of obedience was strong enough to overcome the fear of at least four of them. These four surged toward Diut. And Diut waited for them.

He let the first of them reach him, then he jabbed sharply into the man’s throat. Blocking, turning, he drove a fist into the solar plexus of a huntress, literally lifting her off the ground for a moment.

He moved almost too quickly for the eye to follow, striking, turning, kicking, using his longer reach, his greater strength and speed, to overwhelm his attackers.

In seconds, all four were dead or dying. A fifth who had attacked from directly behind Diut now dragged himself away beyond the Tehkohn Hao’s reach, his right leg broken at the knee by a hard-driven backward kick.

Four dead, one injured before the others could even think. What was left of the circle threatened to dissolve.

“Hokah!” Natahk called out.

The huntress at the fire looked at him.

“Go out and get more fighters.”

And Diut countered, “Stop, Hokah!”

The huntress paused uncertainly.

“Why sacrifice more of your people to the ambitions of a bad leader?” Diut looked around the circle. “It is Natahk who wants me—so that he can say he has bested a Hao. Let him best me then.” He faced Natahk squarely.

“I challenge, First Hunter.”

“You are my prisoner,” said Natahk. “You have no right to challenge. Go, Hokah”

The huntress went.

“So?” said Diut. “Who imprisons me?” He let his gaze rest on individual members of the circle. “Who dies next?”

Natahk called to the hunter still at the fire. “Ihiateh, bring torches.”

The hunter seized two burning brands and passed them to a hunter and huntress within the circle. Instantly, Diut attacked.

He broke through the circle now, lifted the first Garkohn who tried to stop him, and threw the man at the two who were approaching with torches.

The two hunters guarding the Verricks looked anxiously at the deteriorating situation. They seemed fearful of disobeying Natahk and leaving their prisoners, but they could see that their help was needed.

Abruptly, the hunter guarding Jules and Neila hurled himself into the fighting, helping those who had managed to seize more torches and drive Diut back against the wall of a storehouse. Alanna’s guard was more conscientious. He decided to kill her before he joined in.

Without warning, he slashed at her with a stubby hand. Alanna dodged backward swiftly, but seemed to stumble in bumbling Missionary awkwardness. Angry at having missed once, the hunter lunged toward her—directly into the hard jab that she had aimed at his throat. His fur cushioned the blow somewhat, and forced her to strike without the certainty she would have felt in striking a person whose throat she could see. But the hunter’s own momentum helped her—gave her blow more force. He fell, writhing, making gurgling sounds through his ruined larynx.

At that moment, there was a distant shout, then much shouting from beyond the wall. Garkohn alerting each other that Tehkohn had infiltrated their ranks.

The Garkohn inside, who had been on the verge of overwhelming Diut by fire and sheer weight of numbers, froze where they were. Diut, who had not been startled by the sounds, struck down one of them and ran for the darkness behind the Missionaries’ houses.

A pair of Garkohn hurried to open the gates, but before Natahk and what was left of his party could go out, several more Garkohn surged in, panicked, babbling that the Tehkohn had found allies—that at least two tribes attacked them.

Alanna saw Natahk kill one of his own men in rage, heard him order them back out to fight. “Fools! You’re the only allies that the Tehkohn need! You’ve let them trick you somehow! You’re like children and nonfighters. Go back!”

His commands and threats drove them back, but Alanna wondered if some of the yellow they showed was more in anger at him than in fear of the Tehkohn. Natahk followed his people out, Diut forgotten, and plunged into the battle.

Alanna and Jules moved at the same time to close the gates. The Garkohn could get in again, over the wall, but it would be harder, take longer.

The only Garkohn left in the settlement were the dead, and the one injured man whose leg Diut had broken. “He sat alone on the common, leaning against a tree, his body yellow with fear and pain. He watched them, probably waiting for them to kill him.

CHAPTER TEN

Alanna

The gathering was small. I invited Jeh and Cheah, of course. And I would have invited Gehnahteh and Choh. But Diut said flatly, “This is a time for blue, not yellow. There are other times for nonfighters.”

“But wouldn’t your blue balance their yellow?” I asked foolishly. I had been with the Tehkohn long enough to know better than to ask such a question.

“What balance?” said Diut with annoyance. “This is a time for as much blue as possible to bring luck to the child, and to you. It is the custom. Do you think Gehnahteh and Choh would be grateful to you for inviting them in violation of tradition?”

I sighed and invited Tahneh and Ehreh—their age spots did not seem to count against their blue. And Diut insisted on inviting Kehyo and Kahlahtkai—though not for their blue.

“I want Kehyo’s foolishness to end completely,” he said. “This gathering will tell her what, somehow, my words have never quite communicated to her.” Again there was no arguing with him, but this time I smiled. If nothing else, I approved of the message he was trying to give Kehyo.

I was beginning to see him as my husband, to realize as though for the first time, that I had no real choice but to accept his superstitions and his relatives as I accepted him. It was different, now that I had to view my acceptance as a permanent thing. This was the way I would live. The Tehkohn were the people whose lives I would share. The Missionaries would become only a memory. I could never think of returning to them with a “half-human” child. Nor could I think of abandoning such a child, who would surely be different and as much alone in its strangeness as I was.

I had thought about it and thought about it and thought about it before I told Diut, and I had been afraid. For the first time in my life, I longed to be the wife of some ordinary Bible-quoting Missionary man. Someone whose eyes really were as round as Diut said mine were. Someone furless and human-looking. I was terrified.

Then came anger—at Diut, at the child, at my own body… How could such a thing happen? Most Missionaries had never even considered the possibility. Jules and Neila had—with disgust. They had first seen the overt sexuality of the Garkohn as confirmation that the Garkohn were animals. Then the Garkohn came to understand how easily the Missionaries were shocked and offended. Obligingly, the Garkohn conformed to Missionary custom when they were in the Mission colony. But still, Neila was concerned with their refusal to wear clothing.

“Jules, I’ve seen some of our boys looking at their women,” she had said.

And Jules had made a sound of disgust. “Just about the same ones we would have seen looking at goats and female guard dogs back on Earth,” he had said.

“But what if they…?”

“They won’t. At least not without a lot of co-operation from those bull women. And if a Garkohn woman does co-operate, what’s she got to complain about? I might let the community loose on the first boy who gets caught at it though. It’s something to put a stop to early.”

“You could warn them. Get them together and warn them all.”

“And put the idea into the heads of those who haven’t thought of it yet? No. Unless Garkohn men begin looking at our women, I’m going to keep quiet.”

“Garkohn men… Image of God!” muttered Neila with unmistakable revulsion. “Thank God there’s no possibility of mixed children, no matter what happens.”

She was so wrong, my foster mother. But I hadn’t known how right I had considered her to be until I realized I was carrying Diut’s child. I felt betrayed.

And no doubt, I communicated my feelings to Diut without saying a word. He began to look at me with doubt and concern. But somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what was wrong. Not until I resolved my own conflicts. I was too solitary a person to ask for help. So by the time I spoke to him, I had already accepted the idea that I was to be the mother of his child whether either of us liked it or not—and that he might not like it very much.

He surprised me though. He got over his shock and disbelief much more quickly than I had expected. And he seemed to feel no resentment when he realized that he was to be tied to an alien or that his child would probably lack some of the physical advantages his people prized. He was content, even proud, merely to have fathered a child. At last.

I began to relax. On the day of the gathering, I went around to each of the three couples and asked them to come that night and share our evening meal. I said no more than that. By that night, we were, all except Ehreh, eating together, sitting on huge jehruk skins before the fire. Tahneh said Ehreh’s leg hurt him in a place where he had broken it years before. “He is at home waiting for me to come and pity him,” she finished callously. “Are there more ohkah cakes, Alanna?”

Diut whitened and spoke to her as I got the cakes. “He will die waiting for your pity.”

“He will die no matter what I do,” said Tahneh. She would be half destroyed if the old judge died.

Diut flickered iridescent. “I listen to you, Tahneh, and I wonder if it is such a good thing to be bound to only one woman. What will I do if Alanna becomes like you when she and I are old?”

The room went utterly silent. The other two couples had been talking quietly among themselves, but they had heard Diut’s too-casual question just as he had intended them to hear. Suddenly, they were realizing that this whole gathering might be less casual than they had assumed.

Jeh turned to face Diut. “What are you saying?” he demanded. “What is this you’re telling us?”

“Alanna is going to have a child.”

They mobbed him. As though he were plain green, they congratulated him and jostled him and shouted at him for the manner of his announcement and joked with him and ignored me entirely. The child was growing inside my body, and yet it was as though I did not exist.

Then Tahneh detached herself from the group around Diut and came over to me.

“So you are one of us now.” She spoke very quietly, but the others fell silent and turned to look at me.

“For certain now,” I said.

“And what do you feel?”

I started to answer and found myself unable to speak for a moment—as though the idea of what was happening was still new to me. Tahneh hugged me in arms startlingly strong in spite of her age and I hugged her back, sharing my joy with her.

The others came one by one to congratulate me, Cheah also reaching up to lay a hand of friendship alongside my face. “We are sisters now,” she said, “both breaking tradition and making marriages where we should not.”

And Kehyo, dazed, subdued. “Now I know why I am here,” she said. “I had wondered why you asked me. It was to tell me that you had won in spite of… That you had won.”

“It was to tell you that you and I are kinswomen,” I said.

“Kinswomen…? So.”

“And the past is the past.”

She stared down at me from her greater height. “I hear, Alanna.” She gave a brief dim show of white. “I wish you well—you and your child.”

Truce. Which was all I had hoped for really.

Diut drew me over to sit with him and we finished eating. When the food was gone and our guests were gone, we still sat together, not talking, enjoying the closeness that had grown between us. The fire burned down slowly.

When the Garkohn had gone, Missionaries began coming out of their houses, proving that they had not slept through everything, though they had followed orders and kept out of it. Jules called them to him.

“Our escape will be sometime tonight or tomorrow,” he told them when they gathered around. “Ready yourselves. Remember to pack as much meklah as possible in seed arid flour form. Meklah first, then clothing, food, tools, whatever. And remember that you’re going to be traveling for days through mountainous terrain carrying or pulling whatever you pack. So think. Essentials only. Now not everyone is awake. Check your neighbors. Make sure the word is passed. Go.”

They turned and headed back to their houses, some hesitantly, some hurrying. Jules singled out Nathan James, Jacob Lorenz, and John Williamson, and called them to him as the others left. He spoke quietly to them.

“Are you three packed?”

They nodded.

“Good. I don’t want to take the chance of anyone being missed. I Go through the settlement and…” He broke off, seeing that their I attention had shifted to something behind him. Diut had come out of the shadows and seemed to materialize beside Alanna.

She looked at him anxiously. He appeared battered and singed. j Also, she had noticed that he had a slight limp.

“I am well,” he told her in quiet Tehkohn. “And you did well. I saw your kill.” Then he spoke in English to Jules. “Some Garkohn may be driven back here before the fighting is ended. If that happens, my people will follow. It is still important for your people to stay inside until I or one of my judges says it is safe.”

Jules nodded, spoke to his three men. “You heard him. Tell the people that too as you spread the word. Make sure everyone is alerted.”

Nathan James hung back as the others left. Alanna had seen him looking from her to Diut and frowning at Diut’s use of English. She knew what was coming. “Jules, what’s going on? What’s between Alanna and that… the Tehkohn Hao?” Only Nathan and Jacob knew that it was possible for there to be anything between them. | Only they knew about the Garkohn crossbreeding. And only Nathan would concern himself with such a thing in the middle of a war.

Jules’s expression became stony. “For once, Nathan, do as you’re told without asking questions.”

“But…”

“Move!”

Startled, Nathan moved.

Diut left Alanna’s side and limped over to the fallen Garkohn. Alanna knew what was about to happen, but Jules and Neila did not. She glanced at them uncertainly.

“What’s he doing?” Neila asked Jules.

Jules said nothing.

The Garkohn forced his coloring to its normal dark green, over-I coming both fear and pain. He looked at the leg that Diut was favor-j ing and even managed to whiten a little. “We did hurt you then, Tehkohn Hao.”

“So,” Diut admitted.

“For hunters fighting against a Hao, even that is no small thing.” The man wrenched himself around to face Diut directly. “Let me die as a fighter.”

In a swift flow of movement, Diut dropped to one knee, seized the hunter by the fur of his head, jerked the head down, and broke the man’s neck with a single blow. The Garkohn’s hands were just reaching Diut’s arm as the blow landed. He had died as he wished to die-as a fighter was supposed to die. It was Kohn custom that a fighter who had fought well and lost had his neck broken—even if he had actually been killed in some other way. Other Kohn read contempt or respect in the way an enemy’s body was left.

“So,” Diut repeated, this time in agreement with the dead Garkohn’s request.

Alanna looked at her parents, saw that they were watching grim-faced. “There’ll be a lot more of that if the fighting spills into the settlement,” she warned softly. “The Tehkohn don’t carry off injured enemies and they won’t leave them here alive to heal and fight again.”

Neila shook her head in weary disgust. “Savages,” she muttered.

Alanna shrugged.

“Are you really one of them, Lanna? Can you really accept them as your people even now that you’ve gotten used to the way he… the way they look?”

“Yes,” said Alanna.

“I don’t understand.” She shook her head again. “After all we tried to teach you. And you’re bright. You learned so much. You accepted God and the Mission…”

“I accepted you and Jules. You used to know that.”

“But…”

“You saved my life. I was grateful, and in time, I came to love you. But you know I was never a true Missionary.”

“What else can you be? You’re here on an alien world among creatures of another species…”

“I’m a wild human,” said Alanna quietly. “That’s what I’ve always been.” She glanced at Jules. “I haven’t lost myself. Not to anyone.” And again to Neila. “In time, I’ll also be a Tehkohn judge. I want to be. And I’m Diut’s wife and your daughter. If… you can still accept me as your daughter.”

Neila gazed downward, her arms folded tightly across her chest. “Wild human,” she murmured. “I think that in spite of all your time with us, we never really knew what that meant.”

Alanna did not know whether Neila was rejecting her or accepting her in spite of her differences—her sins. She stepped closer, her expression questioning. Then, somehow, she had gone as far as she could in asking the woman’s acceptance. She stood still waiting.

-Neila looked up at her, held her gaze for a long moment, then abruptly caught her in a hard silent hug that reminded Alanna oddly of Tahneh, the female Tehkohn Hao. “You are what you are,” Neila said softly. “I don’t understand, but…” She shrugged, looked at Alanna sadly for a moment, then turned to go into the house.

And Jules?

Alanna looked at him. He looked at her, then at Diut, who stood a few feet away waiting. Finally, Jules turned his back on them both and followed Neila into the house. Without saying a word, he had managed to reject both of them, or at least, to reject their union. He probably understood what Alanna had said and what she had done better than Neila did, but understanding did not equal acceptance. Alanna had broken what was to him a very basic, very old taboo. A taboo that was part of the foundation of his life.

Diut came to her, spoke quietly. “I am going outside.”

Her concern with her parents shifted instantly to him. Already, the Garkohn had cornered him, come near killing him. Now he was going to give them another chance. But she made no protest. She knew that he was going out after Natahk. She touched his throat lightly and he turned and loped off into the shadows between the houses. She noticed that his leg seemed to bother him less now. That was good since he would have to camouflage himself and go over the wall. Opening the gate and walking out would make him the target of any number of possibly vengeful Garkohn.

She went back to the house to sit and wait. The helplessness she felt was galling. It was made worse by the almost tangible weight of resentment that Jules seemed to spread over the house. Finally, he went out to help check on the people’s preparations. It pained Alanna that she felt relief at his going.

She had always felt closer to him than to Neila—felt more able to talk with him, more able to be honest with him. She wondered what would have happened had she told him sooner, before the Tehkohn escape. She shook her head thinking about it.

“Was there… a ceremony of some kind?” Neila asked timidly.

Alanna jumped, startled out of her thoughts, then realized what Neila had asked.

“You mean a marriage ceremony?”

Neila nodded.

“No. But there was a ceremony for Tien when she was born. It amounts to the same thing.”

“How did she look? I mean… was she…”

“She was much like him. He thought she might even be Hao. You can’t tell until their bodies mature a little and their coloring darkens.”

“What would you have done… what would he have done if the baby had been like you?”

Alanna smiled a little remembering. “We talked about that. He said if the child was like me, he would help me teach it to hunt with a bow.”

Neila looked surprised. “He must be more tolerant than he seems. Did you want a liaison with him?”

“No.” Her memory went back even farther, and suddenly she wanted to tell the story, the truth, to this woman who had become her mother. She had never told it before, even to other Tehkohn. Doubtless, they knew parts of it, but only the public parts. The fact of the liaison, the marriage. Telling the rest now would pass the dragging time. She spoke easily, feeling amusement where once she had felt terror. Neila was horrified.

“Does he still beat you?” she asked.

“No more. Now we talk.”

“But still… Lanna, what he did to you is at least as bad as what the Garkohn do to their captives. You stayed with him while you were in the mountains because you had to, but surely now…”

“Now he’s my husband.”

“Not by any law we recognize.”

“I recognize it.”

“But why? I still can’t understand… Is it so that he’ll help us against the Garkohn?”

“It could be,” said Alanna. “That would be a good reason. But no, it’s because of what I said a few minutes ago. I’m not a Missionary. I don’t think I ever could be. But I can be Tehkohn—in spite of the physical differences. It’s almost easy.” She thought for a moment of the Garkohn, of the abducted Missionaries. “I’m not like Tate. Not like the others who were taken with her. Natahk may have made Garkohn of them, but not very good Garkohn. Because first, he would have had to destroy them as Missionaries.”

“Why did Diut beat you if not to destroy you as a Missionary-break you down?”

“We fought for a lot of reasons. Most often because he wasn’t used to hearing people say ‘no’ to him.” Alanna shrugged. “Neither was I. And the first time, because when I got a good look at him and realized that he wanted me, I panicked.”

Neila shuddered. “I would have panicked myself. I think he would have had to kill me.”

“I didn’t want to die.”

Neila looked at her strangely.

“I didn’t have any Missionary inhibitions about pairing with a Kohn man,” she said. “After I got used to the way Diut looked, I was glad the match had been made.” She laughed suddenly. “We were at least equally strange-looking to each other.”

“Not strange enough. How can you laugh about it?”

“It’s past. He said I looked deformed, wrong. That’s why he was curious about me. It didn’t seem possible to him that I was really a woman.”

Neila made a sound of disgust. “And what happens when the sick novelty of having a deformed woman wears off? Will he start to beat you again? Will he throw you out? Or will he just kill you to be certain he’s rid of you? Since he kills so easily.”

“That novelty wore off as quickly for him as it did for me. I think you know that.” Alanna paused. “You saw him put his life in my hands tonight.”

“…yes.”

“And he put himself in danger for all three of us. It really would have been easier for him to lead the Garkohn on a chase around the settlement—if he hadn’t been afraid of what they’d do to us before they got the chase started. Us, not some anonymous unskilled Missionaries.”

Neila said nothing.

“Do you know the meaning of the hand-to-throat gesture?”

“It’s a caress.” Neila sounded harassed. “It’s one of the things they do instead of kissing.”

“It’s that, yes. But it began as an expression of trust. You don’t let anyone that close to your neck unless you trust him. The words that went with the gesture were, ‘I hold your life, and do not take it.’”

Neila sighed, shook her head. “All right, Lanna. You’ve made your decision. I only hope your trust isn’t misplaced.”

Suddenly there was noise outside. Shouting, the sound of the gate being opened. Jules slipped silently into the house.

“Garkohn,” he said. “Two of them came over the wall blood-red with paint, and opened the gate for the others. Image of God, if we only had our guns!”

“Is everyone under cover?” asked Neila.

“Yes. Now if only the Tehkohn can get in here before we’re dragged out again.”

Alanna got up and blew out the room’s single lamp. Then she went to the small front window and looked out. The Garkohn were gathering on the common, building up the dying fire, and apparently quarreling among themselves. Most were smeared with red paint. Some were injured. Natahk was nowhere in sight—nor was Diut.

The argument on the common seemed to intensify and Alanna saw a huntress strike a hunter down. It was then that Alanna recognized the huntress as Gehl. Alanna watched her more alertly now. What was it she wanted her fighters to do?

Gehl pointed out a storehouse that Alanna knew was full of Missionary supplies, and two Garkohn went into it. When they came out, one was carrying a full bucket. Clearly, Gehl meant to take up where Natahk had left off. Alanna did not even wait to be certain which house was to be the huntress’ target. She knew. She went for her bow.

She found it quickly in the dark, took it and the quiver to the door. She opened the door and nocked an arrow.

Gehl had taken the bucket herself and was coming toward the house with it. Aiming quickly, carefully, Alanna put her first arrow through the huntress’ neck. It was a foolish target, Alanna knew—a small target obscured by the huntress’ mane. But Alanna took grim pride in having made the shot.

As the huntress fell, Alanna took another arrow, aimed, and shot the Garkohn who had been bringing Gehl’s torch. By then, the rest of the Garkohn had had time to hide themselves. But they were pinned down. They had hidden in the Missionary way of simply crouching behind a tree or building. They were all too well covered with red paint to camouflage themselves.

Alanna shut the door and barred it. She went to the window and lifted out the plastic pane—plastic from the ship. It would be more difficult to shoot accurately through the small window, but it would be safer than continuing to shoot from the door. It would lessen the possibility of an unpainted Garkohn catching her unaware and forcing his way in.

Even as Alanna thought of this, she saw a Garkohn run from the storehouse. She followed the bobbing patch of red for a second, then released a third arrow. The Garkohn flared yellow, fell, then managed to drag himself behind a tree. Alanna could have hit him a second time, but she chose not to. She had only five arrows left. Deliberately, she set two aside for Diut—just in case.

Abruptly, Alanna realized that the storehouse that the Garkohn had run from was afire. She could just see the flickering yellow and orange glow in the high small windows. As she was calling Jules and Neila to see, some of the lamp oil stored there exploded.