Farseed, page 20
Nothing like that had shown up in anyone in the settlements; if it had, everyone would have known, and what to do about such mutations would have been fodder for a public meeting. So they had managed to avoid whatever had affected Nuy’s people, at least so far.
Maybe the longer they lived on Home, the more they would change. Perhaps the only reason children like Nuy had not been born to anyone in the settlements was because, unlike Ho’s group, they kept close to their transplanted environment while drawing on the stored genetic material brought down from Ship for many of their children.
It was pointless to dwell on such thoughts, especially now, with more immediate worries to face, but there it was. What they discovered out here might only convince others that leaving their settlements might mean eventually losing their humanity, becoming something else.
The horse lifted its head and whinnied. Leila halted and stared back at the horse; the others gathered around her. “I’ve been thinking,” Leila began.
“About that horse?” Nuy snorted and rubbed at her nose. “You people care more about your animals than you do about yourselves.”
“I’m thinking that maybe one or two of us should go ahead with you while the rest follow with the horse,” Leila said. “The more of us there are in a group, the more easily we can be seen. We ought to find out more about what’s ahead, and we might need that horse later.” Zoheret or Gervais might be injured, unable to travel very far without a horse.
Nuy arched her brows and folded her arms across her bare chest. “I was thinking the same thing, that two or three of us should go on ahead and do some scouting.”
“I don’t like it,” Edan said. “We should stick together.”
“We won’t have to go far,” Nuy said. “By now, we can’t be that far away from them. If they’re where I think they are, we’ll reach them sometime tomorrow, and if they’ve decided to come north, they’ll be even closer than that. My father might have sent two or three ahead of him as scouts.” She narrowed her dark eyes. “If we’re lucky, we might be able to bring them down and find out a few things.”
Leila did not want to think about exactly how Nuy planned to accomplish that.
“Who stays behind?” Yukio asked.
Leila thought quickly. “You and Trevor and Kagami,” she replied. “Trevor, you can swim the river and get that horse and then all of you can follow us. Nuy and I can go ahead with Edan. If we need you, we’ll wait for you, or one of us will run back for you.”
Trevor said, “I don’t like it.”
“Just do it.”
“Be careful,” Kagami said.
“You, too.” Leila touched Kagami’s arm. “Especially you.” She turned toward Nuy. “Let’s go.”
Nuy moved through the grass, with Leila and Edan just behind her.
By midmorning, the grass through which they were moving was only as high as Leila’s knees, and Nuy had led her and Edan closer to the river again, where tall patches of reeds and scattered groves of gourd-bearing trees would provide more cover. Occasionally Nuy motioned them to a halt while she stood still and gazed into the distance, twitching her nose or cupping an ear. Whenever Leila was about to speak, Nuy signaled for silence. Edan said nothing, and the expression on his face was empty of emotion.
Not long after midday, they stopped and sat down in the shade of three trees amid scattered gourds to eat small pieces of dried fruit. Leila could feel how loose her frayed clothing had become on her. By now, she should have grown used to being hungry, but felt even hungrier after the meager meal than she had before eating.
“We can speak now,” Nuy said, although Leila noticed that the girl was keeping her voice low. “Things will get more dangerous for us from this point on, and one person would be less visible than three. I should go ahead while you two wait here.”
Leila was about to protest. Nuy shook her head at her. “I know this land better than you,” Nuy continued, “and if I find no sign of my father’s band by late afternoon, I’ll return to you by nightfall.”
Leila opened her mouth again, but Nuy suddenly stiffened and put a hand to her lips. Leila held her breath for several moments. She could hear it now, a sound that might be the faint thunder of a distant storm.
They dropped into the grass and flattened themselves against the ground. In a little while, far to the south, Leila could glimpse what looked like a gray horse, galloping swiftly in their direction on this side of the river. Gervais had been riding a gray horse, and now she could see that there was a rider on the horse’s back. But the rider was too small to be Gervais, and even at this distance, she could see that the rider was almost naked.
Edan already had his weapon out. He propped himself up on his elbows and took aim. Nuy’s hand snaked out and grabbed his wrist.
“No!” Nuy whispered.
“Why not?” Edan whispered back. Leila was reaching for her own weapon when Nuy suddenly chopped at Edan’s arm with one hand. His weapon fell to the ground. Nuy seized his weapon, then jumped to her feet.
The horse kept coming toward them, the rider clinging to the horse’s mane. He seemed to be a boy, with a long black braid like Nuy’s. Nuy suddenly ran out from under the trees. Leila aimed her weapon first at Nuy, then at the rider coming toward them. Nuy shouted a word Leila did not understand. The horse swerved to one side and then reared, nearly throwing the rider.
“Nuy!” the rider called out. The horse reared again as the stranger clung to the mane. “You’re alive!”
Nuy took aim. “I warn you,” she shouted back. “I’ll shoot you if I must.” The horse danced under the boy. “Calm that horse, and then climb down, and be quick about it or I will shoot you.”
Leila aimed her weapon at the stranger, although Nuy seemed to have him under control. The horse stopped dancing. The boy slipped off its back, landed lightly on his feet, and thrust his hands up as he turned to face Nuy.
“What’s this all about?” Edan said angrily.
Nuy pulled her own weapon from her loincloth, then threw Edan’s gun back to him; he caught it awkwardly with one hand. “This is Sarojin,” she replied. “We can trust him, I think.”
“You think?” Edan took a step toward her. “You mean you aren’t sure?”
“You can trust me,” the boy said, his eyes wide as he stared at Nuy. “If Ho catches me now, he’ll kill me.”
“Is he moving north?” Nuy asked.
The boy shook his head. “No. Not yet, anyway.”
Leila could restrain herself no longer. “How did you get this horse?” she asked.
“Two people are trapped in one of the caves,” the boy replied. “They sent the horse at us, right after their first horse charged us. I don’t know what they thought they were doing, but I saw my chance when the second horse galloped toward us. I went after it as fast as I could and luckily nobody was able to hit me or the horse before I caught up with it. I jumped on its back and rode out of there as fast as I could.”
“What do you mean by two people trapped in a cave?” Leila asked, feeling hope well up inside her.
“Two people from the north,” the boy said. “They were riding upriver when we saw them. We cut them off and chased them south. Now they’re trapped in one of the caves near the seashore, so Ho’s going to wait them out. They tried to make a run for it, but Ho started shooting as soon as they were in range, and that forced them back. Night came, and then they sent the first of their horses at us, but whatever they were trying to do, it didn’t work then or the second time, either. Somebody’s always watching the cave now, so they can’t get out. Don’t know how much food they have, but they couldn’t have been carrying that much water.”
Zoheret and Gervais might have driven their horses away in desperation, hoping that at least one of the animals would find its way back to Leila and her group. Leila thought of what Trevor had said. By releasing their horses, Zoheret might have been trying to tell them that she and Gervais were still alive. She was letting them know that she needed their help.
“Can we believe anything he tells us?” Edan asked.
“Yes,” Nuy whispered. “I can tell. Believe him.”
The boy lowered his arms. “You have to believe me. All I was thinking when I ran after that horse was that I had to get away, no matter what happened to me.”
“We know your people attacked some of ours,” Leila said, “and killed two of them, and that you did it for no reason at all.”
“I had no part in that,” the boy said. “Ho left me with Zareb and Gerd and Katti and told us to go west and wait for him by the river while he and the others went north. I didn’t know what he’d done until he and Owen met up with us again. He told us what he did and then he gave us some of the food he took from them and he said he’d killed some more of the ones who sent death to us but he was eating their food the whole time he was saying it.”
Nuy said, “My father is mad.”
“Mad or not, he was quick enough to go after those two people he’s got trapped now, and if he had just been a little faster and Owen’s aim had been a little better, he would have had them, too. He’ll get them anyway when they run out of water.”
“He won’t get them,” Leila said. “We’ll see that they don’t.” She could grasp enough of what the boy was telling them to have a fairly clear idea of what had happened.
“I found Belen and Carin spying on these people.” Nuy waved a hand at Leila and Edan. “I heard enough of what they said to know that Ho was thinking of attacking them, too.”
“I didn’t see Belen or my sister on my way here,” the boy said, “but I’d crossed the river to this side and I was riding as fast as I could and keeping well to the west except when I had to water the horse.” He paused. “The bond we once shared with Carin and Belen is broken.”
Nuy grimaced. “I think I knew that already.” Her eyes glistened; the look on her face was that of someone mourning a death. “Hai.” Her voice was hoarse with sorrow.
Edan said, “I hope we can trust you.”
“You can trust him,” Nuy said. “We have no choice but to trust him. We should listen to more from him and then we’ll have to think of how to save the two my father has trapped.”
Sarojin spoke of what had happened since Nuy had been cast out. Nuy listened, interrupting Sarojin whenever she saw that Leila or Edan seemed confused, then asking him to explain something in more detail.
His tale was a grim one, as Nuy had supposed it might be. Eyela, it turned out, had died some months back giving birth to a child, and then that child, born too early, had died, too. Not long after that, Ashur had left the band, going east to hunt, even though that region was more unfamiliar to them than the lands to the west and south, and he had never returned. Perhaps some accident had overtaken him, or maybe the death of his mate and child had made him more careless with his own life.
A month after they had all realized that they would probably never see Ashur again, Gerd had been kicked in the head by a horse Belen had captured. Since then, he had been useless for anything except tending the fire or doing whatever small chores Zareb found for him. By then, Belen had claimed Carin as a mate, and Carin hadn’t seemed to mind that as much as Sarojin had thought his sister would. After that, Katti had retreated to the back of their cave and refused to eat or speak to anyone until Ho and Owen had beaten her nearly senseless, and now Katti did as she was told, but barely uttered a word. More recently, Belen had returned from hunting to tell them that he had seen strangers in the distance, by the river. That was when Ho had decided to attack them.
Nuy heard all this and it came to her that she was listening to the story as if all of the people in it, her people, were strangers to her. She had to hold herself apart from them now, or else her grief would overwhelm her. She would have to harden herself against mourning for what had been lost; she had to both pity and be pitiless. What the suffering of her people meant was that whatever battle lay ahead might be easier for Leila and her companions to win; Ho and his band were not as strong as they had once been. It was cause for both hope and hopelessness.
“We were sure that you were dead,” Sarojin finished. “I thought you were lost long ago.”
There was Sarojin, at least. She took his hand for a moment. “Belen and Carin found out I wasn’t dead,” Nuy said, “and Belen and I fought. I fell over the side of a high cliff when he kicked me, but he didn’t see that a ledge caught me, so now even he and Carin will believe I’m dead.”
“But how did you—”
“I can tell my story another time.” She glanced at Leila and Edan. Leila’s face was a mixture of horror and sympathy. Edan’s eyes were even colder than they had been before, but she sensed that he was pushing his feelings of anger and fear outside of himself, as she had.
“So Belen may think that he killed you,” Sarojin said.
Nuy nodded. “I wonder if my father will be happy to hear of my death from Belen or if finding out that I survived for so long will only anger him even more.”
“Belen will say nothing to your father.” Sarojin leaned forward. “If he goes to him and says that he brought you death, I think Ho would kill him, and maybe Carin, too, for not stopping him. Belen will say nothing, and neither will my sister.”
Nuy drew up her legs. “My father drove me out. He wanted me dead.”
“For a while, those were his thoughts. He would curse the stranger you brought with you, the one he had to kill, and then he would curse you, too. He kept saying that you should have killed the man instead of bringing him to us, that you deserved to be punished for that, and that you had to stay away until he was sure that you couldn’t carry death to us. Many days passed, and then he began to wonder why you hadn’t even tried to return to us. After that, he would send out Owen and Daniella to search for you while they hunted, and I know they must have searched near this river and near our old grounds, but perhaps they didn’t look that hard.”
Nuy said, “I was careful, and I found a good place to hide.” There was no need to tell him more than that.
“When Belen told Ho that he wanted to take Carin as a mate, Ho went into a rage, because he knew that what Belen was really saying was that you had to be dead. They fought, and after they had beaten each other bloody, Ho relented and told Belen that he could do as he liked.” Sarojin’s mouth twisted. “Carin told me that it would be wise of me not to object, but she didn’t have to say it, I could see it.” He cleared his throat. “Since then, Ho has mourned for the daughter he lost. I think if you went to him now, he would welcome you back.”
Nuy tried to absorb what he was saying. Ho would welcome her back. For a moment, a day she had spent with her father by the sea, in the days before the great storm, came to her. They had gone to collect fish, and Ho had thought of bringing a few shells back so that Katti could make necklaces for them. They had sat there until dark, looking out at the vast blue-gray sea as the waves lapped against the yellow sand. That had been the first time Ho had told her about how their people had come down from the sky. He had told her that story in a soft, gentle voice that had risen to anger only when he had spoken of leaving with his band to come south. She remembered how content she had been then, up until the more familiar note of anger had crept into his voice. She wondered now if the storms inside him had finally destroyed the man who had been with her that day or if he might still somehow persist in the recesses of Ho’s mind.
“I don’t want to go back,” she said, but that wasn’t so. She wanted to go back and find everything as it had been, her father gentle towards her once more, those who were dead still alive, and her bond with Carin and Sarojin and Belen as strong as it had been when they were children.
“I can’t go back,” Sarojin said, “and when Ho comes after these people, he’ll come after me as well. My only chance is to keep going north and stay ahead of him.” He looked around at the others. “You should turn around now and head north and keep going. He won’t think of coming after you until he knows that the two people he has trapped are dead.”
“We can’t turn back,” Leila said. “My mother is one of those people. Her name is Zoheret.”
“That was the name he used whenever he called out to her,” Sarojin said. “I don’t know what your mother did to him, but he kept saying that she had taken what should have been his, but that it wasn’t enough for her, that she had wanted him dead after that.”
“My mother wanted nothing like that,” Leila said. “All she wanted was to find out what had happened to your people and offer them help if they needed it.”
Nuy lifted a hand, knowing what she would have to do now. “I don’t want to go to my father,” she said, “but now I know that I must, and I’ll have to go alone.”
Leila’s eyes grew wide. “But you can’t,” she said.
Edan said, “You told us we could trust you.”
“Listen to me. I can take this horse and ride back and tell my father that I killed Sarojin along the way, and in the meantime, the rest of you can follow me. Let me see if I can find a way to convince my father to let your mother and her friend go, and if I can’t, then you’ll have to do whatever you can to save them yourselves.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Leila said. “You told us yourself that your father is mad. I don’t care what this boy says.”
“I think he would take you back,” Sarojin said, “but he might turn against you after that. How can you know what he’ll do?”
“I must take that chance.” Nuy stood up and took out her knife. “Sarojin, I won’t hurt you, but bow your head now, and keep still.” He frowned at her, but did as she asked. She reached for his long braid and swiftly cut it off at the base of his neck. “I may have to offer some proof that you’re dead.”
Sarojin fumbled at his neck. “I’m sorry,” she said. She could imagine how he felt, being robbed so suddenly of the braid he had worn ever since they were all children. “It’s only hair, Sarojin. You can grow another braid more easily than another life.”
