Captured (23 page)
“Not with the eyes,” said Mari.
Ekkatt smiled at her.
“We shall hope.”
Mari smiled back.
“Any chance we can make the summit in one day?”
“Unlikely,” Ekkatt replied, “but I would like to reach a treeless area before nightfall.”
“Above tree line,” Mari commented. “Then we better get a move on.”
She tightened the straps on her pack, checked her uustal to see that she’d clicked on the safety, and with a determined step, set out in the right direction.
Ekkatt followed close behind.
* * * *
The climb took three days.
They’d hiked directly into the territory of a giant durra. It had taken them an entire day to skirt the area the cat had marked.
Both suffered sleep-deprivation.
Ekkatt stood guard over Mari by night. She, in turn, spelled him for several hours after sunrise so he could doze.
Ekkatt knew she took the opportunity to vomit in private, or
puke her guts out,
as she put it. He knew it to be a physiologic response to the early stages of pregnancy.
He wished there was something he could do to help, but once Mari had emptied her stomach she seemed quite well for the rest of the day.
He knew she must be feeling fatigued, but she tried very hard not to show it.
No matter how steep the climb she pressed on.
As they’d both suspected, climbing down was much more technical than climbing up.
“It always is,” Mari observed.
On the steepest sections, they’d lowered the packs with a rope and free-climbed down.
Ekkatt wanted to rope them together, but Mari refused.
She claimed it was safer if they remained separate.
He understood why.
Climbers roped together tended to die together.
He could break Mari’s fall, but he had to admit that she could not break his.
If he fell, he would pull her from the wall, and they would both be lost.
On one particularly difficult section, he’d stopped on a ledge so she could rest.
He pointed off in the distance.
“Mari,” he said to her, “Look there.
Do you see that rounded hill?”
She nodded.
“If we are separated, if something should happen to me, take as much food as you can carry and all the weapons and go in the direction of the hill.”
“Nothing will happen to you,” Mari insisted.
Ekkatt took her hand.
“Be reasonable, little human.
If something happens, go to that hill.”
“Why?”
“As your people say, I have a
gut feeling
.
I think they are there, the colony we seek, somewhere beyond that hill.
Swear to me you will go there.”
“Okay, I’ll go there.
But nothing is going to happen to you.
Got it?”
“
Got
what?”
“I mean, do you understand?
Nothing is going to happen to you that we can’t fix.”
Ekkatt grunted and offered her the water bottle.
He watched Mari’s throat work.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand
then returned the water.
He took a long drink.
He loved this woman.
He loved her with every fiber of his being.
He would be lost without her.
He wondered how his father felt, losing two women.
But he’d had no choice, Lara had to go.
Either that or risk her death and the death of her children.
Ekkatt had sworn to his father that if she still lived he’d find her and his half-brother.
Ekkatt glanced at Mari’s face.
Her eyes were closed and she leaned back against the rocks, napping.
He noticed that she fell asleep quickly because of the baby.
He wished he could make their way easy, as easy as walking up to the main gate and asking for admittance, but his father had explained the troops guarding the gate and patrolling the perimeter had no idea what was within.
They’d been told they were safeguarding the citizens of Attun-Ra from the original site of the
astaei patah,
that entire villages had been razed and were off-limits until the ground tested free of disease.
Because of the rugged mountains and the isolation this was the only unguarded path in and out.
Ekkatt sighed.
Much had changed since the plagues.
The females of his world could not even attempt such a climb.
Before the deaths, yes, but over the past twenty years the women of Attun-Ra had been sheltered, petted.
Their lives had been made as comfortable as possible.
He doubted a woman of his race could survive in this wilderness, yet Mari seemed at home.
She never complained.
She looked down from the heights and controlled her fear.
She climbed up when it was necessary, and she climbed down when necessary.
She had good eyes. Even though his were better, she’d been of help in searching out game trails and finding the easiest pathways.
She’d mentioned that she’d done such things before, but he hadn’t taken her seriously, yet there was no denying she was competent in the wilderness of his world.
Not merely competent but tenacious. Mari was a survivor.
Ekkatt closed his own eyes, allowing himself to drift.
The giant durra did not hunt this high, so aside from the danger of a fall they were safe.
We have to reach the colony before the snows…another month.
Perhaps three weeks of food remain. When it is gone, I will have to hunt the small game.
I must feed my mate, and I must eat or we both die.
Ekkatt…Ekkatt…
Someone hissed his name.
He opened his eyes slowly.
“Don’t move,” Mari whispered in his ear.
“Don’t move a muscle, not even your head.
Stay still as a stone.”
Ekkatt heard the warning in her voice and he complied.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her hands slowly reach for the canister of pepper spray.
Her eyes glued to a point beyond his head, she removed it from her belt and flipped up the leather flap covering the nozzle.
“Close your eyes and hold your breath.
No matter what I do, don’t move until I tell you to.”
Her voice was low, her mouth barely moving, her eyes focused on something he couldn’t see.
“Close your eyes,” she said.
Ekkatt did as she ordered.
He heard a hiss and felt a fine mist on his skin.
Off to his left, came a loud scrabbling noise, then Mari threw herself on top of him.
Ekkatt heard a clatter of stone as something rolled down the mountain.
Mari placed her hand over his eyes while he heard her begin to cough uncontrollably.
Ekkatt sucked in a breath and wished he hadn’t.
With his throat and lungs burning, he began to cough like Mari.
He managed a quick look at her face from between her fingers.
He saw that tears streamed from her eyes. He heard her gag as if she would vomit before he was forced to close his eyes again.
They were on fire.
He felt Mari rip the water bottle from his belt. Even though she still coughed, she poured water onto his face, dousing his eyes, nose, and mouth.
“You don’t produce tears,” she gasped.
“I have to get it out of your eyes.”
She put the bottle to his lips.
“Drink.”
Ekkatt drank.
He felt helpless.
It took ten minutes before he managed to open his eyes and keep them open.
He found Mari on her hands and knees, bent over his legs, still coughing, staring down the talus field.
“What is it?”
Ekkatt asked in a hoarse voice, “A cat?”
“No,” coughed Mari, “That.”
She pointed to something gray in color.
It writhed on the rocks twenty feet below.
“Fuck.”
Mari looked at him, horror in her eyes. “Ekkatt…what is it?”
“Sephatha, very toxic.
Very deadly toxic.
Poison fangs.”
“Shit, Ekkatt, it was about to bite you when I sprayed it.
Are there more of those suckers?”
Her eyes darted back and forth.
“Most likely.
We need to move from here.
They live in a nest.
We must be close.”
Mari jumped to her feet.
“Then let’s get the fuck off this ledge.
That thing creeps me out.
Are there lots of these in your world because I’ll take a giant durra any day.
There was this milky white stuff dripping from that sucker’s fangs.”
“Venom.”
“Ekkatt, I think I’m gonna be sick.
Go kill it.
Please. Go down there and shoot it.
Or if you don’t want to shoot it, I’ll shoot it.
For God’s sake, somebody shoot it.”
“Be calm, Mari, I will take care of it.
But we must climb down.
Go to the packs.
Keep hold of your spray in the event you see another sephatha.”
“Yuck.
Just, just yuck.
Are these common, Ekkatt?
Tell me the truth.
Are these common?”
“No, Mari, they are rare.
I have only seen one in my lifetime.
Now two.”
“Ick.
One is more than enough.”
She shuddered.
“I’m climbing down that way,” she pointed in the opposite direction of the wriggling reptile. “Then I’ll make my way over to the packs.”
“Mari,” Ekkatt warned, “Keep your eyes open and watch where you put your hands.
Do you see that bare space?
Where the rocks level off?”
“Yes.”
“Pull the packs to that space and wait for me there.”
Mari nodded and set off.
With his eyes still burning Ekkatt watched her pick her way down the slope, making certain there was nothing more dangerous in her path than a loose rock.
Then he approached the sephatha.
If Mari hadn’t used her spray, it would have bitten him, and he would have died within a few hours.
He could add resourceful and quick-witted to her qualities.
Pepper spray
.
Ekkatt snorted.
Mari was full of surprises.
Looking at the sephatha, he suddenly understood what she meant by the word,
yuck
.
* * * *
“You didn’t kill it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It was merely protecting its nest.”
“You found the nest?”
“Yes.”
“How many little sephathas?”
“Oh…enough.”
“Enough to do what?
Kill an entire colony of Attun?”
