Farseed, page 19
“All this talk of that is useless.” Nuy folded her arms. “However it came about, Ho blamed you for the deaths. That’s why he kills. At least that’s why he killed Chiang, but maybe by now he’s found other reasons to want you dead. Even before the fever swept over us, even before the great storm came, he sometimes raged against your people, so maybe it’s Home that has driven him mad. It no longer matters why he wants to kill you, it only matters that he does.”
“What are we going to do?” Sofia asked, and Nuy heard the fear in her voice.
“I told you before,” Nuy said. “You should leave here and go north. Leave now, and you can keep ahead of my father even if he decides to come after you. I doubt he would follow you all the way to your settlement.”
Leila said, “I won’t go north until I find out what happened to Zoheret and Gervais.” She looked around at the others, as if appealing to them for support.
Those two may be dead, Nuy thought, but did not say the words aloud. If they had gone to the caves near the sea, her father might have come upon them while they were there or waylaid them on their way back to this camp. If the two northerners had not kept themselves hidden, if they had been ambushed by Ho, they were surely dead by now. To look for them was probably futile; she wondered how she could convince Leila of that.
“I won’t go north,” Leila said again, “not until I know, one way or another.”
“And what will you do?” Nuy asked.
“I told you,” Leila said, even though she had said nothing yet of any plans; her words were no more than insistence. “We have to look for them.”
“And how will you look for them? How will you search while guarding yourselves from my father? What will you do if you find them dead?”
“How can we answer that?” Tonio said. “All I know is that I’m not about to abandon two friends who were willing to search for me.”
Bonnie nodded. “Neither am I.”
Leila reached out with one hand. “Help us, Nuy. You know this land, and your people. I know this may be asking too much of you, and you owe us nothing, but our chances would be a lot better with you to guide us.”
“Your chances would be even better if you went upriver.” Nuy stared at Leila until she looked away. “You know what you are asking me to do. You’re asking me to help you in hunting my own father. Whatever he’s done to me and to others, I have to ask myself if I can do that.” She took a breath. “When Ho knows you’re here, and the two who were watching you last night will be telling him all about you by tomorrow night, he’ll come after you, and there are only two paths you can follow after that. You can leave this region, or you can hunt him down and kill him. That’s the only way this can end.”
Leila lifted her head. “Those can’t be our only choices,” she said, looking directly at Nuy, “but I agree that we can’t stay here.”
“I can lead you south,” Nuy said, “but I don’t know if I can strike out at my people unless I must to defend myself.”
“What about Tonio and Bonnie?” Kagami asked gently.
“What about us?” Bonnie asked.
“Tonio, your scan shows a broken leg that’s imperfectly healed as well as evidence of a severe concussion. You’re going to need all of your strength just to get home. And both of you are very malnourished. What you need more than anything right now is more food and rest.”
Bonnie sniffed. “No chance, Kagami.”
“If we’re going after my mother and Gervais,” Leila said, “there’s no point in bringing along anyone who isn’t up to what might lie ahead.” She was silent for a moment. “Nuy, how many people are with your father?”
“There are only three left who are close to my age,” Nuy replied, “Carin, Sarojin, and Belen. I think Sarojin might be unwilling to fight you, but we can’t count on that. Of the others, Owen will do whatever Ho wants, and so will Daniella and Katti most of the time. Gerd and Zareb are too thick-headed to be anything but fearless and loyal. Eyela and Ashur might give up peacefully if they think things are going against them, but I wouldn’t count on that, either.”
“Only eleven people,” Trevor said. “I thought there would be more.”
Nuy said, “Any one of them could give all of you much trouble, but it’s Carin and Belen and Sarojin you should worry about most. Your senses aren’t as sharp as theirs, I could see that right away.” She might as well get that out in the open. “They would be able to sense your presence even before you saw any sign of them.”
Edan scowled. “What do you mean?”
“They’re like me.” Nuy swallowed. “When we were little, we could come up from behind the adults even before they knew we were there, we could see things they couldn’t, hear sounds their ears couldn’t pick up, feel when bad weather was coming, sense what someone might say or do before he spoke or acted. I don’t know if Sarojin or Carin would fight you, but they might give you away to the others.”
Kagami’s eyes widened; the woman looked as though she was trying to grab hold of something that was eluding her. “There are three more like you?” she asked.
“Yes.” Nuy averted her eyes. “Once I thought it was only that we were younger, and that the senses of people grew much duller as they aged, but now I don’t know. My father sometimes told me that I seemed unlike him, that I—” Her throat tightened. “I heard you say it, too, outside the shelter, that I seemed not quite human.”
“And you say there are three others like you,” Kagami said. “I wonder—”
“Whatever I am, we should be talking of what to do now.”
“We have two horses,” Edan said. “That has to be an advantage.”
Nuy glanced at the animals, which were tied to a rope strung between two stakes. “If you’re determined to search downriver, your greatest advantage may be stealth. My father won’t be expecting you to go south—he’ll be planning on finding you here, waiting for your two comrades. As soon as Belen and Carin tell him what they saw here, my guess is that he’ll start moving north to this place, because he’ll be thinking that you won’t be expecting an attack. Going after him with your horses will only make it easier for him to know that you’re on the move. Believe me, Belen would see you long before you spotted him.”
Leila was very still, as if conserving all the strength in her body for what was to come. “Is there a chance he might decide not to attack us here?” she asked.
Nuy shrugged. “Do you want to take that chance?”
“Maybe we should stay here and get ready to fight,” Sofia said. “If he isn’t expecting us to fight, that might be enough of a surprise for him.”
“That would mean giving up on any hope for Zoheret and Gervais,” Leila said.
“We don’t know for sure that anything’s happened to them.” Sofia waved an arm at the ridge behind her. “If we move to the top of the ridge, we’d see him coming. We could shoot at him from up there.”
“Where you’d be cut off from water,” Nuy said. Again she had picked up the fear behind Sofia’s words. “My father wouldn’t get close enough to let you shoot him. All he’d have to do is stay out of range and wait you out.”
“If we’re going to do anything,” Leila said, “we’d better decide now. The longer we wait, the worse our chances get no matter what we do.”
Nuy had said what she had to say. She waited for the others to speak. “I’m with Leila,” Trevor said at last. “We should go south and find out what happened to her mother and Gervais.”
“I agree,” Edan said. He might be afraid, Nuy thought as she picked up the quaver in his voice, even as fearful as Sofia, but he would never admit it. She liked him a bit more for that.
“Those two horses will be useful for one thing,” Leila said then. “Bonnie and Tonio can ride back to the next camp upriver, and they’d better start now, because it’ll take them at least eight days to get there.”
“No,” Bonnie said, shaking her head. “Our place is with the rest of you.”
“You’re not strong enough to fight, if it comes to that,” Leila responded. “You heard what Kagami said. With the horses, you might make it to the next base, but it isn’t just that. There is something you can do to help. Somebody has to tell everyone upriver what’s happened here.”
“And someone should go with you.” Kagami leaned toward Bonnie. “You might need someone to look after you.”
“Wait,” Tonio objected. “Don’t you think we—”
“You’ve gone through enough,” Kagami interrupted, “and it’ll be a while before you recover your strength. You won’t help the rest of us if you’re unable to keep up with us.”
“I agree,” Leila said. “Sofia, would you be willing to go with them? It’s either you or Kagami, and if…when we find Zoheret and Gervais, they might need a healer.”
Leila, Nuy thought, had heard the terror in Sofia’s voice, too. “Why me?” Sofia asked.
“I’ll be honest,” Leila said. “Trevor and Edan are both better shots than you, and we’ll need Yukio’s sharp eyes.” Nuy was grateful that Leila had not been too honest.
“I’ll go,” Sofia replied, sounding resigned but also relieved.
“And if you’re able to do it, bury Haidar and Hannah on the way.” Leila paused. “We should do that much for them.”
Bonnie bowed her head. Nuy saw the sorrow in her face. “There is something else you can do,” Nuy said. “Give me your weapon. I may need it, and Sofia has one of her own.” Bonnie handed the stun gun to her without speaking.
“What should we tell everybody in the next camp?” Sofia asked.
“Just tell them everything that’s happened up to now,” Leila said. “After that, they’ll have to decide what to do for themselves.”
“They might send more people after you,” Sofia said, sounding more hopeful. “We could organize another group to come back here as quickly as possible.”
“That’s up to them,” Leila said, but Nuy heard no hope in the young woman’s voice. Leila was clearly aware of the dangers that faced them. With only six of them left, they would be outnumbered by Ho’s band. Whatever anyone upriver decided to do would make no difference to them; any help they might send would arrive too late. They would have to fight this battle alone.
14
Nuy crept through the thick reeds, then stopped to listen.
There was the sound of a cry in the distance. She hunkered down and held her breath. The high-pitched, almost musical cry sounded again. The sound might have been that of a big cat, or perhaps the whinny of a horse. She did not think it was human.
The moons had set. Above her, the sky was the deep dark blue-green of early dawn. Nuy sat there, looking east across the river at the grassy plain and the bright rose-colored light of the rising sun as the others settled around her. They had crossed the river to the western bank just before nightfall, because Nuy had advised them that they might be safer on this side of the river.
Now she worried that she might be wrong about that. The closer her father came to the place where he would expect to find the northerners, the more likely he was to move at night, to keep his band more easily concealed. Perhaps he would also think of sneaking up on them along this side of the river.
Leila leaned toward her and seemed about to speak. Nuy shook her head and put a finger to her lips. Leila opened her pack and gave Nuy a small handful of nuts, then passed the food around to the others. They had brought food with them, enough, Nuy estimated, for a few days at most, even if her companions ate as little as she did. Bonnie, Tonio, and Sofia had taken most of what was left of the food and supplies with them; they would have more need of things that would only weigh Leila and her comrades down. It was also likely that any confrontation with Ho would come before their food ran out, if Nuy’s guesses about what he might do were correct. She would not dwell on what might happen after that.
Nuy chewed on the nuts. The others were silent as they ate. They had managed some sleep while Nuy, Yukio, and Trevor took turns keeping watch, but all of them looked exhausted. Their clothing was still damp from sweat and river water, and their foot coverings were cracked and worn under the mud. Edan took off his boots, wrung out the dirty cloth coverings he wore under them, then put them on again. The rest of them had all been doing that almost every time they stopped to rest, pulling off their boots and examining their feet as if surprised to find that they still had them.
Belen and Carin were likely to rejoin Ho and the rest of the band by nightfall at the latest, when he would learn of the northerners camped upriver. It had seemed so clear to Nuy earlier that her father would decide after that to attack. Now all of her imaginings seemed suspect. Just because Belen and Carin had been talking about an attack didn’t mean that Ho was planning one, and if he had, he might have changed his mind. She was assuming that he had gone back to their former home near the sea, but he might be somewhere else entirely, perhaps a lot closer than she realized. He might be lying in wait, plotting an ambush, expecting more people to come looking for Leila’s mother and her friend. He might be anywhere.
No, she thought; she still had the advantage. Her father believed her to be dead. He would not expect her to be guiding these people to him. Belen and Carin believed that she had fallen to her death; they would never guess that she was guiding these people south.
Nuy stood up. The others rose to their feet, slumping with weariness. She peered over the tops of the reeds and gazed at the grassland to the south, a monotonous flat landscape broken only by the long gray ribbon of the river, the brown and black stalks of the reeds and plants along the banks. patches of green shrubbery, and two distant fingers of rock pointing at the sky.
Then she saw a tiny dark speck move along the southern horizon.
She quickly motioned to the others to be still. The speck slowly swelled into a larger spot as it continued in their direction. A horse was heading their way.
“It’s a horse,” Yukio muttered behind her after a few moments had passed. She looked back at him. “But I don’t see a rider.”
“Neither do I,” Nuy said; she had already seen that no one was riding the horse.
The animal was galloping through the grassland to the southeast of them, along the other side of the river. They watched in silence as the horse slowed its pace, then sped into a gallop again.
At last it slowed to a trot and then to a walk. The horse had a black mane, a chestnut coat, and did not seem skittish enough to be a wild creature.
“I know that horse.” Trevor stepped to Nuy’s side. “Zoheret was riding her when she left us.” Leila was standing just behind Trevor, and Nuy knew from the stricken look on her face that the same thought had come to the young woman.
“You’re sure,” Nuy whispered.
“I’m sure,” Trevor said softly.
Leila shook her head, then covered her face. Kagami put an arm around Leila; the older woman’s eyes glistened. It came to Nuy then that Leila’s mother had to be dead. She could see it now, the woman riding toward Ho, perhaps calling out a greeting, and then her father raising his weapon and bringing her down in the same way he had killed Chiang. Zoheret’s companion was probably dead, too.
“This horse must have run away right after he shot her,” Nuy murmured. “That’s how he might have done it, shot her with a stun gun first, maybe while she was on horseback, and after that he would have made sure she was dead, he could have used his spear then, so he wouldn’t have to get too close to her. The horse must have panicked and run away.” There was no way that she could keep the harshness out of her words. She wanted them to be harsh. Maybe then Leila would understand that there was little to be won now in fighting Ho. If they retreated, they might still be able to save themselves.
“There’s no bridle,” Trevor said, “and no rope, either.”
Nuy shrugged. “What are you talking about?”
“If Zoheret was riding this horse,” he replied, “she would have been using a bridle, and if she wasn’t, she would have put a rope on her horse and secured her before doing anything else.”
Leila grabbed Trevor’s arm. “Do you think—”
“This means nothing,” Nuy said. “She might have been surprised before she could get a rope around its neck.”
“Maybe,” Trevor said, “but I doubt it. Gervais and she would have made sure they were in a safe place before removing a bridle from a horse.”
“Zoheret might be alive,” Leila said.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Nuy said. “All we really know is that this horse got away from her somehow.”
“That’s more than we knew a few moments ago.” Leila gazed steadily at Nuy. “You said that you would help us. We have to go on. We still need your help.”
“I said that I’d help you.” Nuy looked down. “I won’t go back on my promise now.”
The horse stood across the river near an outcropping of rock, drinking from the water, as they passed on the opposite side. Trevor and Nuy had been arguing over what to do about the horse, with Trevor reluctant to leave the animal behind, while Nuy kept insisting that the horse would only be more trouble and was of no use to them now.
Throughout the night, Leila had been brooding on what Kagami had discovered about Nuy. A dream had come to her, one in which Nuy could look into her mind and enter her thoughts. Nuy had compelled Leila to follow her across the grassy plain, refusing to leave her behind even when she begged to lie down and rest. Leila was powerless to resist her in the dream, bound to Nuy by mental tethers, forced to wander through the high grass while knowing that she would never see the settlements again. The sharp pain of that thought had been enough to wake her, and she had slept only uneasily after that.
In the daylight, Nuy looked as human as any of them, and the idea that she could read thoughts seemed absurd. Nuy had spoken of others being blind or deaf, which might mean only that her senses were far more acute than Leila’s. But Kagami had uncovered genetic material in Nuy that was unrecognizable to her scanner. Something had altered Nuy’s DNA, and the girl had admitted that there were others like herself, which indicated that she might not be just a random mutation.
