Chapter Twenty-Four
The Hamain, R’Bak
“I don’t like it,” Benreka said, studying the small camp at the base of the long, sandy slope.
“You never like anything,” Nilzwurn replied, eyes hidden by the rubber eye shields of the surveyor binoculars; they were optimized for the heat and dust of R’Bak.
The other four surveyors in the team chuckled. It was a customary response to bickering between their commanding officer and his executive officer, who was also the only woman in the group. But that didn’t mean all of the laughter was good-natured.
Those who were from Kulsis’s northern hemisphere evinced their region’s typical, if contradictory, tendencies toward both leader worship and misogyny, even when the contradiction between those two cultural reflexes was not only sharp, but ironic.
That was certainly the case in Nilzwurn’s scouting team, even though Benreka was from the north continent herself. She was not merely the source of almost all their long range plans, but clearly the superior tactician, as she’d proven time and again in their engagements with the barely seen Sarmatchani insurgents roaming this particular stretch of scrub-desert.
No doubt Falhoolp and Oblonil would have pointed to the fact that two-thirds of the time, her tactical solution had been to withdraw before becoming more heavily engaged. But they would have been less eager to reflect upon how, when following her advice, they’d suffered almost no casualties in what would have been fruitless combats, one a meeting engagement and the other an improvised ambush.
“I tell you,” Benreka persisted, “that just doesn’t look right.”
“What? What’s so strange?” Nilzwurn groused with a shrug, taking his eyes away from the binoculars. “A Sarmatchani crone with three whinaalanis.”
“Three whinaalanis that have been unloaded.”
“Why wouldn’t they be?” Falhoolp chimed in from behind. “The barbarian hag has clearly decided to take lunch. So, she means to stay for a while.”
Benreka was about to point out that unloading some of her wares was one thing, but the woman’s decision to remove the creatures’ harness and tack was anything but common. Particularly not when there was still travel left in the day and it was barely past the height of the light orange sun the locals called Shex.
Nor did Benreka bother to point out that the woman was not the kind of Sarmatchani they’d been encountering up until now. She had the longer robes and lighter sandals of the tribes that lived near the fringes of the high desert of the Hamain. The Sarmatchani who alternated their hunting between the scrub hills and the flatlands to the west had gear and garb that was a compromise between what worked best in both those environments.
In lieu of sharing her observations, Benreka decided to remain slightly apart from the rest of the group, which was usually fine with them—particularly in the wake of one of the all-too-frequent leadership spats. The men tended to gang together afterward, snickering as if their cliquishness was a show of solidarity with their much bedeviled—or would that be henpecked?—leader.
“Falhoolp,” called Nilzwurn, “you stay here on overwatch.”
“What for?”
“To protect us against the phantom tribesmen that Benreka’s imagination might conjure.”
More chuckles. Oblonil either found it amusing enough to warrant a full-fledged guffaw, or was trying to score points with Nilzwurn.
Benreka gathered her legs beneath her. “I’ll go first.”
The men stared at her.
“Why are you suddenly in a hurry to see the faces of the Death Fathers?” Nilzwurn asked.
She sneered. “I’m not. But we don’t want her running off.”
“Again,” Nilzwurn said, “why not? She leaves all the gear and gets away with her skin.” Falhoolp grinned at that. There was no way this old woman was going to get away alive and he knew it.
Benreka played along. “She’s out here on her own with three whinaalanis. That’s unusual enough. It usually takes at least one local to control each whinaalani. But for some reason, they like her or are willing to listen to her. Whichever it is, that’s item of interest number one. The second and greater item is why she feels so safe here.”
Nilzwurn frowned, probably because he hadn’t thought of that, and of course, wasn’t quick-witted enough to come up with a pithy rejoinder. In this case, however, that pause gave him enough time to actually see the value of Benreka’s point. He nodded at her. “Okay. You take the lead.”
“I’ll tell you when to come on down,” Benreka tossed over her shoulder as she rose slowly above the ridgeline.
“Wait a minute, I—!” objected Nilzwurn, but she was already striding down the slope, hands raising slowly to show that there was nothing in them.
“Nervy bitch,” Falhoolp muttered.
As Benreka continued toward the old woman, she had a brief temptation to turn around to see whom Falhoolp’s rifle was trained on at that particular moment. She doubted it was the old woman.
Who stood, staring at Benreka. At the same instant, the whinaalanis squirmed and leaped away, moving toward lower ground just a dozen meters beyond where the lizard-train had stopped for a midday meal.
Benreka hastened forward, calling, “Your mounts!”
The old woman looked behind, almost bored, and shrugged: utter resignation. She made no move to reach cover or to follow her whinaalanis. She simply waited for Benreka, who could hear Nilzwurn behind her, jogging to catch up. Either he didn’t want to be left out of the encounter or, for some reason, his instincts had kicked in enough to tell him that his executive officer’s behavior was not merely unusual, but suspicious.
Behind them, Falhoolp let out a string of frustrated curses at the whinaalanis. They had once again demonstrated their species’ reputation for surprising intelligence; as they fled, they remained beneath the contours of a small ledge just a few meters beyond the woman’s stopping point.
That provided the topic with which Benreka began what she hoped would become a genuine conversation with the woman. “This is a strange place to stop, Mother,” the Kulsian said, using the local term of respect for those of great age.
The woman snorted out a bitter laugh. “I am a mother no longer and certainly no mother of yours.”
“Then what is your name, that I may call you as you wish?”
The woman seemed to contemplate deflecting that question as well, but ultimately shrugged. “Issikoffa,” she spat. “You may call me Issikoffa.”
“And why did you stop here, Issikoffa?”
“One place is as good as another.”
“Is it?” Benreka looked around at the loose tack, scattered packages, and small crates. “You chose ground lower than you might have,” Benreka remarked, glancing back toward where Falhoolp waited with his rifle and eternally-ready trigger finger. “But you remained near the lip of the lower land.”
“And is that so unusual?” Issikoffa asked, a gray eyebrow rising.
“On its own, perhaps not. But it’s also strange that you untacked all your whinaalanis, as you might at the end of the day.”
Issikoffa sighed. “So I am now an object of suspicion because one of my whinaalanis ended last season lame and needs more time to rest without a burden during the day?”
“It is a rare thing that humans love whinaalanis so much that they will risk losing all their gear and goods when the sun is still high and their camp can be seen from afar.”
Issikoffa’s laugh was mirthless. “And with observation you introduce your actual intent, yes?” She waved at her packs in disgust. “Take what you came for.”
“We came to ask questions, as well, Issikoffa.”
“Oh? And what could Kulsians possibly need to learn from a dirty old barbarian woman in the wastes?”
Oblonil, who’d come up behind Nilzwurn out on one flank, sneered. “Your words, not ours. Barbarian.”
“I didn’t need to hear your words,” she said, spitting in his direction. “It is easy to read the thoughts of such as you.”
Benreka heard Oblonil curse as his feet moved into double time, closing rapidly.
Nilzwurn stilled them with a single word: “Halt. Answer the question, old woman: what are you doing out here?”
She lifted an eyebrow at him as well, then glanced at her wares. “I would have thought it was obvious.”
“You’re a long way from any community. Closest is that damned village I can’t pronounce. Nuffer . . . er, Nafif . . . ”
“Nuthhurfipiko,” supplied Benreka, eyes on the woman.
She seemed surprised by the smooth pronunciation.
Nilzwurn nodded. “Yes, that one. It’s at least two days away from there. More, moving by whinaalani. You’re a long way from any of your people, hag.”
The woman shook her head. “You speak with such certainty, off-worlder.” Then she glanced up malevolently under one brow. “How do you know ‘my people’ are not all around you, even as we speak?”
Nilzwurn shook his head. “I know because we have eyes that watch from the sky, Issikoffa. We’re the only things for miles around.”
Benreka glanced at him. It was a good bluff. The locals had little understanding of space. It was likely she didn’t understand that just because there were satellites in orbit, it didn’t mean that every part of the planet was under constant observation. Hells, the surveyor teams rarely knew if one of their platforms was overhead at any given moment. Whatever had removed the coursers—possibly a splinter group among them—had eliminated a number of satellites in the process. And just recently, two more had failed: one a victim of micro-meteoroids, the other an electrical malfunction.
Issikoffa sat on one of her packs. “Well,” she said, “since you’ve called my bluff, you might as well get about your business.” Her eyes left Nilzwurn and drifted toward Benreka, where they remained—suddenly and mysteriously intense beneath a slight frown.
It may have been the peculiar nature of Issikoffa’s attention that gave Benreka the acute situational awareness that had her hitting the dust the instant after the first rifle report echo-cracked over the sandy expanse.
It was a flat, sharp sound: not one a surveyor weapon, but neither was it one of the local flintlocks or matchlocks. Instead, it sounded very much like one of the weapons they’d heard about since landing and which had killed one of the original team members at such extraordinary range that its report had been distorted by attenuation.
But there was no wheeet! of a near miss nor any dusty impact. Either the shot had gone unusually wide or—
“Falhoolp?” Nilzwurn shouted at the slight rise now seventy meters behind them. “Falhoolp!” His second cry didn’t have the rising tone that asked for a reply; it was one of urgency, even fear. As Nilzwurn was waving the other two surveyors who’d just begun descending the ridge the ridge to drop, Oblonil was diving down, unfettered by having a command rank or any consideration higher than brute self-preservation.
He was prone in the dust when the crackle of distant rifles arrived at almost the same moment as their bullets. The rounds kicked up grit, knocked over packs, dropped one of the upslope surveyors with a gaping red wound in his chest, and rolled Nilzwurn in the dust as he grabbed at a through-and-through thigh wound.
Benreka’s response was to lift up her weapon high enough to be seen and throw it aside. She became aware of Issikoffa looking down on her as if she might have been a wayward dog: a vast improvement from the gaze that, moments before, had regarded her as a subhuman enemy.
The meeting of their eyes was broken by a swift blur that came from behind Benreka and tackled the old woman off the crate upon which she’d sat with strange, foreboding serenity: Nilzwurn. Staggering on his bloody leg, he rolled up to his feet, holding her close to his chest, face looking over her oddly relaxed shoulder. He’d either dropped or tossed away his rifle; his other hand was pushing a revolver tightly against Issikoffa’s temple. The hammer was back and his finger was white upon the trigger.
“She’ll die if you shoot!” he yelled into the wastes.
Oblonil, glancing at the two corpses splayed on the slope behind them, rose into a tight running crawl and joined his commander.
“What are you thinking?” Benreka asked, baffled.
“I’m thinking that with me using this old crone as a shield, and the two of you covering our withdrawal, we can get back to the vehicle and get the hell out of here.”
Issikoffa clearly understood enough Kulsian to find Nilzwurn’s plan amusing. “You think you are safe behind me? Me? Who is already dead?” She threw her head back and laughed. “You and your satrap dogs killed me over half a year ago in Imsurmik.”
Nilzwurn glanced at her as if she might be mad, a ghost, or both. “Fool: that was when Imsurmik fell.”
“So it did . . . and so did my boy, Suukamanu, reclaiming it from you bastards.” She threw her arms outward, beckoning to the wastes. “Shoot! Shoot now! Kill them!”
Benreka hadn’t known what she was hoping for when she began approaching the old woman alone. She had nothing more than a vague notion that the scouting team was already surrounded and that her only chance of survival was to differentiate herself—and her attitudes—from the other surveyors. She’d had a fleeting vision of throwing her lot in with the tribals and, if the fates were kind and the Death Fathers’ collective gaze did not fall upon them, she and Lanunaz might be reunited. Maybe she could travel with the locals long enough to find a way to escape, make her way back to Downport, and thence spaceside. Or maybe she’d remain with the tribes and find a way to get word to him, to flee to an appointed place in the wastes when he finally made planetfall. Or maybe some other ploy might present itself; it hardly mattered. Seeing Lanunaz again was the only thing that did matter in this benighted solar system.
It was that faint tendril of an uncertain and formless hope that now propelled Benreka to her feet, arms out to either side of the old woman as she turned toward the quarter from which most of the gunfire was coming.
“Are you mad?” Nilzwurn shouted.
“No. We won’t all get out of here, but as long as I’m near the woman, the tribals will hold their fire.”
“Not if you don’t have a weapon out.”
“They won’t take the chance of missing me and hitting her. Meanwhile, the two of you can make it out, maybe ransom me.” Please don’t. “And I do have my knife.” She actually had more than that: a small hold-out pistol and a razor slipped into a thin slot along the back of her left boot. But none of that mattered. All that mattered was getting the two surveyors moving toward their vehicle and saving Issikoffa’s life.
“They’ll skin you alive,” Nilzwurn called over his shoulder as he released the woman and Oblonil helped him hobble away.
“If they do, they do,” Benreka yelled back. What she didn’t add was that she doubted the tribals would mistreat her. There had been only a few reports that the so-called barbarians actually tortured their captives, and all but one of those remained unsubstantiated. Surveyors had certainly found executions, but only of security teams and they’d been carried out swiftly.
Keeping a hand near her sheathed knife, Benreka turned to the old woman so that any tribals behind her could not see if she had drawn it or not.
But Issikoffa’s initial surprise had not turned to gratitude. Instead, hair wild, eyes wide, she leaned into Benreka’s face and screamed, “Why could you not let them shoot me? Why did you have to keep me alive? I did not lie. I am dead to this world: dead to anything that mattered. The only thing I want is to take as many of you with me as I can!”
“Is that why you volunteered to draw us here?”
Issikoffa blinked. “You knew?” When Benreka nodded, her eyes began calming. “Yes, of course you did. You knew to ask those questions.” She frowned. “Why? Why have you sacrificed yourself this way? You’re a Kulsian. A master of a distant world and often a master of this one. Do you truly hope to be ransomed?”
Benreka shook her head. “No. I hope to be free as I could never be on my homeworld.”
Issikoffa peered at her as if another face had leaned out from behind Benreka’s head. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that not all Kulsians are the masters you suppose. Those who come from south of the equator are held no better than . . . well, than R’Baku. We Families of the north have so little regard for them that they are said to exist beneath the heels of our boots.”
“So,” Issikoffa breathed, leaning back slightly. “They were right.”
“What do you mean?”
The old woman nodded slowly. “You are Benreka.”
She blinked. “How . . . how do you know my name?”
“You are why we are in this region. I did not think it possible that the star people could know of the comings or goings of surveyors here on R’Bak. But they did, for here you stand. And if the one you call Lanunaz is right—that you care for him as much as he cares for you—you will help us. Even against your own people, your own Family.”
Benreka struggled through waves of shock, then disbelief, and then finally joy to accept that these R’Baku not only did know who she was, but that they also knew of Lanunaz, knew he was in space, and knew of their carefully concealed love.
She shook her head. “These surveyors are not my people,” she said. “They, like my Family, once were. But not any longer.”
Issikoffa nodded. “Because you met Lanunaz, who is from the south, and you were with him.”
Benreka blinked hard against tears she refused to shed. “We could not let anyone know what existed between us. I am not sure who would have been punished worse, him or me. At least he would still have had a family to go back to. Mine would have been forced to reject me.” She shrugged. “Not that it would have bothered them very much.”
Issikoffa raised her hands slowly, then let them settle gently on Benreka’s shoulders. “You are safe now, child.”
As if that gesture had been a signal—and it probably was—the gunfire resumed. Benreka glanced briefly over the old woman’s narrow shoulder.
In the distance, the uneven and dusty progress of Nilzwurn and Oblonil came to an abrupt end.