Ammonite (10 page)

They were impossibly old. These stones should not be here, unless humans had landed on Jeep hundreds, thousands of years earlier than supposed; or unless whoever, whatever, had quarried these megaliths, carefully shaped them with crude tools, and raised them up, was not human.

She stood in the snow, rubbing absently at her cold-numbed buttocks. Who made this? The large animals of Lu Wai’s theories? But then they would be sentient animals. She stopped rubbing, cocked her head to the mist. All she heard was Pella pawing at the snow to get at the grass.

The day was fading. Marghe uncinched the girths and swung the saddle into the snow. It was lighter than it had been. Just outside the circle, she scraped away a big patch of snow for Pella. The tent took two minutes. It was dark inside; when her wristcom beeped she had to fumble for the FN-17, which she swallowed with a mouthful of icy water.

She popped the memory chip from her wristcom, replaced it with one on which she kept her personal journal. “I don’t know what to make of these stones. Even here, in the tent, I can sense their presence. It’s not quite like anything I’ve felt before. I wonder what their significance was, and to whom. Perhaps I should say
is
.

Even assuming their makers are long dead, I feel sure they’d still be a focus of ritual activity. On a plain like this, stones this size would really mean something.”

She rubbed her forehead. Of course they meant something.

She hit OFF, curled up against the pack and saddle, and pulled her furs closer.

She was tired. Outside, Pella munched loudly on half-frozen grass. They were both tired, tired and sick of the monotony of the almost-void where the only changes were ones of brightness, a brightness that dimmed as they plodded north.

Maybe she would be more coherent in the morning. She sighed and pressed CHIP EJECT. Nothing happened. She tried again. Nothing. Perhaps it was the cold.

She took the wristcom off, held it between her palms, tucked her hands between her legs. While she waited for it to warm up, she breathed deep and slow, concentrating on finding a still, calm place in her center. She came out of her light trance and tried the eject button again.

Nothing. She tapped in a request for diagnostics. The chip was still accessible, but it suggested she take the wristcom to a reliable service outlet, as the port was jammed. She turned it over in her hand thoughtfully, then requested a chip map. The chip was almost full. She tried to run an erase, but the jam had triggered automatic erasure protection. There was room for perhaps fifteen hours of dictation. The operating memory would add another hour or so.

Fifteen hours was not enough to keep a decent record. Her trip would be useless.

How much time would she lose by going back? She slid her map from its pocket and studied it. It would take weeks to get back to Port Central, weeks to return here.

Not an option. She tried looking at the problem from another angle: how else could she record her observations? She had a little paper, not much. Perhaps she could persuade the women she met to give her cloth, and dyes to use as ink.

A sudden thought occurred to her. She tried the compass. The stones sent numbers flickering at random; useless. She was alone on Tehuantepec, plateau of myth and magic, strange beasts and wild tribes, with a malfunctioning compass, out of range of any communications relay, and with a SLIC that for all practical purposes was useless. Was this what had happened to Winnie Kimura?

She awoke to dawn and hard-edged thoughts. She was not going to end up like Winnie. The compass damage might be as temporary as her proximity to the stones.

There was only one way to find out. She slithered from her nightbag. If the damage was irreversible, then she could probably retrace her path. Even with bad weather, it should not take her more than twenty days to get back to the valley. She would be safe there until either a satellite came in range of the new communications relay or the spring came and she could make her own way back, somehow, to Port Central.

Pella whickered.

She rolled the nightbag into her pack. The sooner she left, the better. She dragged her pack through the tent flap, stood and stretched, and looked around.

Fear slapped the breath back into her lungs.

She was surrounded by riders on motionless horses. Shrouded in mist, with only their eyes visible under frost-rimed furs, they looked like apparitions of otherworld demons.

Marghe lifted her arms to show she was weaponless and walked stiffly toward the nearest figure. When she stepped within the cloud of breath wreathing the horse, its rider snapped down her spear. The stone tip brushed the furs at Marghe’s belly, and she realized that stone could kill just as effectively as steel. The rider’s eyes were heavy-lidded and light blue.

The point of the spear did not waver a hair’s-breadth as the rider pulled back her hood to show flame-red braids and cheeks shining with grease.

“Stranger, why do you stand in the ringstones of the Echraidhe?”

The accent was difficult, but Marghe heard the cool lack of interest in her questioner’s voice and her throat closed with fear.

“The penalty for soiling-the stones of our ancestors is death.”

The spear moved as the rider balanced it for a belly thrust. Fascinated, Marghe watched the point pull back for the disemboweling stroke.

“Uaithne!”

The spear before Marghe hesitated.

“I forbid, Uaithne.” The voice was low and harsh.

“Levarch, she is nothing. A burden.”

A woman of middle years kneed her horse forward until she sat eye to eye with Uaithne. “I forbid.”

Uaithne shrugged. “I obey the Levarch in all things.” She shouldered her spear.

Marghe realized she was not to die alone and unremarked in a heap of her own entrails, and her legs sagged. The Levarch leaned down and supported her under the arms. She shouted at another rider. “Aoife, take up the stranger. Uaithne, bring her horse and goods.”

Marghe hardly had time to understand the Levarch’s words. She saw a woman with dark features and a broken nose galloping at her, and then she was heaved across the bow of a saddle, bouncing uncomfortably on her stomach and clinging to the horse’s shaggy withers. She could barely breathe and thought she might vomit, but when she tried to struggle upright, the rider named Aoife thumped her over her right kidney. She stayed still, lace rubbing against the rough wool saddle blanket.

The riders made swift time over the snow. Marghe hung on, sick and frightened, eyes closed against the thunder of hooves just below her face.

The day wore on. Shock, cold, and hunger impaired Marghe’s control. She could not maintain an even blood flow around her dangling body and drifted in and out of consciousness. Once, swimming out of a daze, she struggled until Aoife struck her a ringing blow to the temple.

The horses’ slowing roused her. One side of her face was scraped raw. The horses came to a halt, pawing and snorting, and Marghe heard Pella’s distinctive whicker. Aoife swung down from the saddle.

Marghe lifted her head. There was no thump, no shout of warning. It was almost dark and she could not see much. She felt a hand on her belt and flinched.

“Dismount.” Aoife pulled, hard. Marghe slid backward onto her feet and crumpled onto the snow. She stared at her legs stupidly. Someone laughed: Uaithne.

Aoife hauled her upright. Standing, Marghe towered above her.

“Open your clothes.” Aoife had a knife in her hand. “Open your clothes or I’ll cut them open.”

Marghe pulled off her gloves. With the tip of her knife, Aoife pointed to the snow; Marghe dropped the gloves. Her fingers were stiff and she fumbled open the ties of her overfurs.

“And the rest.”

The buttons of her fur waistcoast and densely woven shirt were easier.

“Hands on your head.”

Marghe did as she was told. Aoife stepped in close and ran her free hand expertly over, between, and underneath the layers of clothing.

“What’s this?” She pulled back the fur from the wristcom.

“It… I talk to it, and it remembers. Like a mimic bird.” She hoped this tribeswoman had heard of the southern bird.

“Show me.”

Marghe touched RECORD. “Weapon violence is obviously a feature of these people’s lives,” she said. She played it back. The sound was tinny in the cold, thin air, but recognizable.

“Give it to me.”

Aoife felt around it for sharp edges, sniffed it, weighed it in her palm, hesitated, then slipped it into her belt pouch. She stood on Marghe’s boot tips, pinning her to the ground, and palmed her way down the inside and outside of both legs. She found the FN-17. “This?”

Sweat beaded on Marghe’s upper lip. She did not know the word for medicine.

“It stops me becoming sick.”

Aoife tucked it away with the wristcom. Hands back on her head, Marghe struggled to keep her face expressionless. Aoife stepped back and sheathed her knife. Marghe did not see where it went.

“Fasten yourself up.”

The tribeswoman marched her over to a mound of snow, then walked off.

Marghe panicked. Were they going to leave her there without food or horse or vaccine? Wild-eyed, she looked about her. No. They were hobbling the horses.

Relief made her want to grin. She closed her eyes, trying to make sense of what was happening.

“Do you enjoy freezing?”

She jumped. Aoife stood there.

“Here, under the snow—” the tribeswoman bent and brushed at the snow mound,

“a shelter. It’s warmer.” She spoke slowly, as though to a half-wit.

That stung, but it was something Marghe could make sense of, something that had happened before, that she could respond to. “How was I to know you covered your tents with snow?”

Aoife looked at her, then shrugged and walked back to the horses. Marghe wondered if it was her accent the tribeswoman had found difficult to deal with, or her ignorance. She resolved to watch, listen, and learn. Out here, ignorance might be a capital crime.

When she thought no one was watching, she squatted and wriggled through the tiny entrance flap headfirst. It was light, and did not smell, which surprised her, and had room for three or four if they stayed prone. She lay there for a while, grateful for solid ground and a place away from curious eyes.

She breathed in deeply through her nose, exhaled through her mouth. And again.

Her heartbeat began to steady and her fear lessened. The basics always helped.

What was her status: hostage, guest, slave? What would happen to her? She had no idea. She tried, instead, to organize her thoughts around questions she might be able to answer. Where was she? If the stones had not scrambled her compass irreversibly, she might be able to guesstimate her position. If she could get back her map. Where was her pack?

She lay there listening to her heartbeat, reassuring and steady. If she was left here alone, it might be possible to creep out in the night, find her pack and her horse, and leave.

In the dark, a dark without stars or moon?

No. Tomorrow, then. For now, she would have to stay calm, wait and watch.

And think. She spoke the strange words aloud,
Eefee, Waith-nee, Lev-ark, Eck-rave

, rolling them over her tongue, tasting them, testing: Gaelic names that had not been used on Earth for thousands of years.

Aoife wriggled into the shelter, followed by two others. Not Uaithne. Marghe accepted the nightbag flung in her direction. Her own, she noted.

“Sleep.”

She followed the others’ lead, stripping off hood and boots and sliding fully clothed into her bag. She thought she saw a look of approval on Aoife’s dark and broken face.

They were up the next day in the thin gray light before dawn. Marghe was not offered food, nor did she see any of the Echraidhe eating. They rolled up their nightbags, donned hoods and boots, and began unpegging and stowing the leather tents. Marghe wondered if Aoife still had the FN-17. She could not escape without it.

The small muscles over her ribs and stomach tightened in dread as Aoife walked a horse toward her. The bruises from yesterday’s journey were just beginning to show and her face was red as skinned meat.

“Hold him.”

Marghe took the rein. She did not know what else to do. Aoife strode off and returned with Pella. The tribeswoman stood by with folded arms while Marghe patted her mare and ran her hands down her neck. Her gear was neatly slung behind the saddle. She checked her pack and found it was all there, her FN-17, her wristcom, her map. Only the knife and the food were missing. Her relief was so great, she nearly turned to Aoife and thanked her.

The tribeswoman mounted and gestured for Marghe to do likewise. The other horses were wheeling and thundering northward.

As they rode, Aoife pulled strips of dried meat from the pouch by her thigh. She handed some to Marghe. They slowed a little to eat and Marghe took the opportunity to strap the wristcom back across the pale skin over her left wrist. With it back in place she sat up straighter, could regard Aoife coolly, and she understood suddenly that her relief at the presence of the wristcom on her wrist was not just the practical comfort of having the compass: while she could record things, she still had a professional persona. She was Marguerite Angelica Taishan, the SEC rep; she was not lost and alone, helpless as any other savage on a horse.

Aoife had the power to take away from her that so-slender thread of identity any time she wished.

She touched the compass function key. It seemed to be working. Good. She turned a casual circle in her saddle. She had horse, vaccine, map and compass.

Aoife’s spear was strapped down securely and her small, shaggy mount was probably no match for the longer-legged Pella at full stretch.

Aoife was watching her. She tapped the sling at her belt. “I can kill a ruk with this at nine nines of paces. You—” she looked Marghe and her mount up and down,

“you I could bring down before that summer mare lengthened her stride.”

Marghe said nothing. Perhaps, if it came to it, Aoife would hesitate to kill.

“A stone can stun a rider, as well as kill,” Aoife said.