Brightness Reef (40 page)

He couldn’t help glancing repeatedly at the two women, the same way they were surely appraising him.

They sure looked . . . healthy.

You’re a true wild man now. Learn to prize the-honest virtues of wild females.

There would be women in the Gray Hills, too, but Rety said most of them began childbirth at fourteen. Few kept more than half their teeth past age thirty.

There was supposed to be a second group of volunteer exiles from the Slope, following behind this one. For their sake, Dwer smeared dabs of porl paste on prominent landmarks every half a midura or so, blazing a trail any moderately competent Jijoan could follow, but that should be untraceable by Galactic raiders or their all-seeing machinery.

Dwer would rather be home at the bitter end, preparing to fight hopelessly against the aliens, alongside other militia soldiers of the Six. But no one was better qualified to lead this expedition to the Gray Hills, and he had given Danel his word.

So now I’m a tour-guide, after all, he thought.

If only he felt sure it was right.

What are we doing? Fleeing to another place we don’t belong, just like our sinner ancestors? It made Dwer’s head ache to think about such things. Just please don’t let Lark find out what I’m doing. It’d break his bean.

The trek grew a little easier when they spilled off the mountain onto a high steppe. But unlike his other expeditions, this time Dwer turned south, toward a rolling domain of bitter yellow grass. Soon they were stomping through a prairie of calf-high shoots, whose florets had sharp tips, forcing the humans-and even the donkeys-to wear leather leggings for protection.

No one complained, or even murmured discomfort. Danel and the others took his guidance without question, wiping sweat from their hat brims and collars as they slogged alongside the stolid donkeys. Fortunately, scattered oases of real forest helped Dwer pilot the company from one water source to the next, leaving markers for the next group.

Rety must’ve been dogged to cross all this, chasing after her damn bird.

Dwer had suggested waiting for the girl. “She’s your real guide,” he had told Danel.

“Not true,” Ozawa demurred. “Would you trust her advice? She might steer us wrong in some misguided gesture to protect her loved ones.”

Or to avoid ever seeing them again. Still, Dwer wished

Rety had made it back in time to depart with this group. He kind of missed her, sullen sarcasm and all.

He called a halt at a large oasis, more than an hour before sunset. “The mountains will cut off daylight early,” he told the others. Westward, the peaks were already surrounded by a nimbus of yellow-orange. “You three should clear the water hole, tend the animals, and set up camp.”

“And where are you going?” Lena Strong asked sharply, mopping her brow.

Dwer strapped on his hip quiver. “To see about shooting some supper.”

She gestured at the sterile-looking steppe. “What, here?”

“It’s worth a try, Lena,” Danel said, slashing at some yellow grass with a stick. “With the donkeys unable to eat this stuff, our grain must last till we hit hill country, where they can forage. A little meat for the four of us could help a lot.”

Dwer didn’t bother adding anything to that. He set out down one of the narrow critter byways threading the spiky grass. It was some distance before he managed to put the donkey stench behind him, as well as the penetrating murmur of his companions’ voices.

It’s a bad idea to be noisy when the universe is full of things tougher than you are. But that never stopped humans, did it?

He sniffed the air and watched the sway of thigh-high grass/ In this kind of prairie, it was even more imperative to hunt upwind not only because of scent, but so the breeze might help hinder the racket of your own trampling feet from reaching the quarry-in this case a covey of bush quaile he sensed pecking and scratching, a dozen or so meters ahead.

Dwer nocked an arrow and stepped as stealthfully as he could, breathing shallowly, until he picked out soft chittering sounds amid the brushing stems ... a tiny ruckus of claws scratching sandy loam . . . sharp beaks pecking for seeds ... a gentle, motherly cluck . . . answering peeps as hatchlings sought a feathery breast . . . the faint puffs of junior adults, relaying news from the periphery that all is well. All is well.

One of the sentries abruptly changed its muted report. A breath of tentative alarm. Dwer stooped to make his profile lower and kept stock still. Fortunately, the twilight shadows were deepest to his back. If only he could manage to keep from spooking them for a few more ...

A sudden crashing commotion sent four-winged shapes erupting into the air. Another predator, Dwer realized, raising his bow. While most of the quaile scattered swiftly across the grasstops and vanished, a few spiraled back to swoop over the intruder, distracting it from the brood-mother and her chicks. Dwer loosed arrows in rapid succession, downing one-then another of the guardians.

The ruckus ended as swiftly as it began. Except for a trampled area, the patch of steppe looked as if nothing had happened.

Dwer shouldered his bow and pulled out his machete. In principle, nothing that could hide under grass should be much of a threat to him, except perhaps a root scorpion. But there were legends of strange, nasty beasts in this realm southeast of the gentle Slope. Even a famished ligger could make a damned nuisance of itself.

He found the first bird where it fell.

This should make Lena happy for a while, he thought, realizing that might be a lifelong task, from now on.

The grass swayed again, near where he’d shot the second bird. He rushed forward, machete upraised. “Oh, no you don’t, thief!”

Dwer braked as a slinky, black-pelted creature emerged with the other quaile clutched between its jaws. The bloody arrow trailed in the dust.

“You.” Dwer sighed, lowering the knife. “I should’ve known.”

Mudfoot’s dark eyes glittered so eloquently, Dwer imagined words.

That’s right, boss. Glad to see me?Don’t bother thanking me for flushing the birds. I’ll just keep this juicy one as payment.

He shrugged in resignation. “Oh, all right. But I want the arrow back, you hear?”

The noor grinned, as usual betraying no sign how much or how little it understood.

Night fell as they ambled toward the oasis. Flames flickered under a sheltering tree. The shifting breeze brought scents of donkey, human, and simmering porridge.

Better keep the fire small enough to seem a natural smolder, he reminded himself.

Then another thought occurred to Dwer.

Rety said noor never came over the mountains. So what’s this one doing here?

Rety hadn’t lied about there being herds of glaver, southeast of the Rimmers. After two days of swift trekking, loping at a half-jog beside the trotting donkeys, Dwer and the others found clear signs-the sculpted mounds where glavers habitually buried their feces.

“Damn . . . you’re right ...” Danel agreed, panting with hands on knees. The two women, on the other hand, seemed barely winded.

“It looks . . . as if things . . . just got more complicated.”

You could say that, Dwer thought. Years of careful enforcement by hunters like himself had all been in vain. We always figured the yellow grass could be crossed only by well-equipped travelers, never glavers. That’s why we aimed most of our surveys farther north.

The next day, Dwer called a halt amid another jog, when he spied a throng of glavers in the distance, scrounging at one end of a scrub wadi. All four humans took turns observing through Danel Ozawa’s urrish-made binoculars. The pale, bulge-eyed creatures appeared to be browsing on a steppe-gallaiter, a burly, long-legged beast native to this region, whose corpse lay sprawled across a patch of trampled grass. The sight stunned them all, except Jenin Worley.

“Didn’t you say that’s how to survive on the plains? By eating animals who can eat this stuff?” She flicked a stem of the sharp yellow grass. “So the glavers have adapted to a new way of life. Isn’t that what we’re gonna have to do?”

Unlike Danel Ozawa, who seemed sadly resigned to their mission, Jenin appeared almost avid for this adventure, especially knowing it might be their destiny to preserve the human race on Jijo. When he saw that zealous eagerness in her eyes, Dwer felt he had more in common with the sturdy, square-jawed Lena Strong. At least Lena looked on all this much the way he did-as one more duty to perform in a world that didn’t care about anyone’s wishes.

“It’s . . . rather surprising,” Danel replied, lowering the glasses and looking upset. “I thought it wasn’t possible for glavers to eat red meat.”

“Adaptability,” Lena commented gruffly. “One of the hallmarks of presentience. Maybe this means they’re on their way back up, after the long slide down.”

Danel seemed to consider this seriously. “So soon? If so, I wonder. Could it mean-“

Dwer interrupted before the sage had a chance to go philosophical on them. “Let me have those,” he said, taking the glass-and-boo magnifiers. “I’ll be right back.”

He started forward at a crouch. Naturally, Mudfoot chose to tag along, scampering ahead, then circling repeatedly to stage mock-ambushes. Dwer’s jaw clenched, but he refused to give the beast the satisfaction of reacting. Ignore it. Maybe it’ll go away.

That hadn’t worked so far. Jenin seemed thrilled to have Mudfoot as a mascot, while Danel found its tenacity intriguing. Lena had voted with the others, overruling Dwer’s wish to send it packing. “It weighs next to nothing,” she said. “Let it ride a donkey, so long as it fetches its own food and stays out of the way.”

That’ it did, scrupulously avoiding Lena, posing for Danel’s pensive scrutiny, and purring contentedly when Jenin petted it by the campfire each evening.

In my case, it acts as if being irritated were my bean’s desire.

While creeping toward the wadi, Dwer kept mental notes on the lay of the land, the crackling consistency of the grass stems, the fickleness of the breeze. He did this out of professional habit, and also in case it ever became necessary to do this someday for real, pursuing the glaver herd with arrows nocked and ready. Ironically that would happen only in the event of good news. If word came from the Slope that all was well-that the gene-raiders had departed without wreaking the expected genocide-then this expedition would revert to a traditional Mission of Ingathering-a militia enterprise to rid this region of all glavers and humans, preferably by capture, but in the end by any means necessary.

On the other hand, assuming the worst did happen out west and all the Six Races were wiped out, their small group would join Rety’s family of renegades as exiles in the wilderness. Under Danel’s guidance, they would tame Rety’s cousins and create simple, wise traditions for living in harmony with their new home.

One of those traditions would be to forbid the sooners from ever again hunting glavers for food.

That was the bloody incongruity Dwer found so hard to take, leaving little option or choice. Good news would make him a mass-killer. Contrariwise, horrible news would make him a gentle neighbor to glavers and men.

Duty and death on one side. Death and duty on the other. Dwer wondered, 7s survival really worth all this?

From a small rise, he lifted the binoculars. Two families of glavers seemed to be feeding on the gallaiter, while others kept watch. Normally, such a juicy corpse would be cleaned down to a white skeleton, first by liggers or other large carnivores, then hickuls with heavy jaws for grinding bones, and finally by flyers known simply as vultures, though they looked like nothing in pictures from Old Earth.

Even now, a pack of hickuls swarmed the far periphery of the clearing. A glaver rose up on her haunches and hurled a stone. The scavengers scattered, whining miserably.

Ah. I see how they do it.

The glavers had found a unique way to live on the steppe. Unable to digest grass or boo, or to eat red meat, they apparently used cadavers to attract hordes of insects from the surrounding area, which they consumed at leisure while others in the herd warded off all competition.

They seemed to be enjoying themselves, holding squirmy things before their globelike eyes, mewling in approval, then catching them between smacking jaws. Dwer had never seen glavers act with such-enthusiasm. Not back where they were treated as sacred fools, encouraged to root at will through the garbage middens of the Six.

Mudfoot met Dwer’s eyes with a revolted expression.

Ifni, what pigs! All right if we charge in there now? Bust ‘em up good, boss. Then herd ‘em all back to civilization, like it or not?

Dwer vowed to curb his imagination. Probably the noor simply didn’t like the smell.

Still he chided Mudfoot in a low voice.

“Who are you to find others disgusting, Mister lick-myself-all-over? Come on. Let’s tell the others, glavers haven’t gone carnivorous, after all. We have more running ahead, if we’re to make it out of this sting-grass by nightfall.”

Asx

MORE WORD ARRIVES FROM THE FAR SOUTH, SENT by the smith of Mount Guenn Forge. The message was sparse and distorted, having come partly by courier, and partly conveyed between mountain peaks by inexperienced mirror-flashers, in the partly-restored semaphore system.

Apparently, the alien forayers have begun visiting all the fishing hamlets and red qheuen rookeries, making pointed inquiries. They even landed in the water, far out at sea, to badger the crew of a dross-hauler, on its way home from holy labors at the Midden. Clearly the interlopers feel free to swoop down and interrogate our citizens wherever they dwell, with questions about “strange sights, strange creatures, or lights in the sea.”

Should we make up a story, my rings? Should we fabulate some tale of ocean monsters to intrigue our unwanted guests and possibly stave off fate for a while?

Assuming we dare, what would they do to us when they learn the truth?

Lark

ALL THAT MORNING, LARK WORKED NEXT TO LING in a state of nervous tension, made worse by the fact that he did not dare let it show. Soon, with luck, he would have his best chance to line things up just right. It would be a delicate task though, doing spywork at the behest of the sages while also probing for information he needed, for reasons of his own.