Changer's Moon (41 page)

Since the searchlights were tied up at the wall, Cordelia Gudon (put in charge of stores because of her phenomenal memory and her ability to organize on the run) hunted them out some parachute flares and flare guns, scowled with affectionate concern at them, then went rummaging through boxes and brought out some grenades. “In case you have to get close,” she said. “I heard those Sleyks can be real bastards.”

After a drive down the valley that none of them wanted to remember later, the pickups split and raced, shuddering over the rough ground, to the places where the assassins were coming down, catching them on the last slope still about a hundred feet up and coming across bare stone. When the flares went off, Pandrashi counted six in the east-side band, Liz counted five in the west-side band. On both sides of the valley the meien, exiles and others killed three Sleykynin before their dazzled eyes cleared and they scrambled for cover. When the flares died, the sensitives uncurled from their pain-battered knots and went grimly along with the hunters as they tracked down the wounded and finished them off, a dangerous and ugly task. A wounded Sleykyn fighting for his life—or fighting to take as many with him as he can—is the deadliest beast in this world or any other. Rudy went past some low half-dead brush with a bit of shadow that seemed too meager to hide a chini pup, and died from a poison knife thrown with deadly accuracy, while Asche-helai came too close behind him to escape from the velater whip that wrapped around her neck, cutting it to the bone before Pandrashi put a single bullet through the Sleykyn's spine. Two dead in two seconds. The other Sleykynin fell to the guns without getting close enough to take anyone with them. On the west side, the last Sleykyn there spent his strength and will to reach the sensitive Magy Fa, killing her with his hands an instant before Liz blew his skull to bloody shards. She stood over him staring down at him until Ram touched her arm. “Five out of five,” he said. He looked down at Magy Fa lying in a tangled embrace with her slayer. “No more nightmares. That's something anyway.”

Liz drew her fingers absently along the rifle's stock. “Looks to me like we changed worlds without changing anything else.”

Ram shrugged. “In this place, Doubter, we make a difference; where we were, we made none.”

Liz made a small violent gesture, then strode off toward the pickup.

6

Gaunt and half-starved, Tuli prowled along the backside of the army, Ajjin and Allazo beside her running boldly in their four-foot forms. They had it down to a game now, a game they played with fierce pleasure, a game they always won because the demon beasts seemed unable to learn its rules. Coperic and the others of his band were scattered along the line of the army, preferring to stay as far from demons and norits as they could manage, whether they were ambushing stray soldiers or cutting out rambuts to butcher for their meals. The food they'd brought was gone, what game might roam here in ordinary times had retreated to safer, more silent slopes. Tuli and Coperic and the rest of the band lived off rambuts now, sharing them from time to time with the silent deadly Kulaan who'd come south to avenge their linas and who were going to continue their killing as long as they could crawl. Or with the remnants of the outcast bands, hungry ragged men and boys as feral as a pack of addichinin. Rambut meat was stringy and tough with little fat to flavor it, but it kept them going.

Most of the mijlockers were gone. After the first tenday half of them were dead and the rest were beginning to starve; they'd begun to melt away, leaving the dead behind to be buried hastily in the muck by work parties from the army. The futility of what they were doing and the lack of food sapped their will, so they went back to the deserted tars and empty villages to find what shelter and food they could and sit listlessly waiting for the war to end. Or they'd gone to the Havens to help fight off the Kapperim. As Hars and Teras must have done. Though she'd watched for them, she hadn't seen either of them again. What little news she'd picked up from the mijlockers sharing fire and half-raw meat with Coperic's band was not comforting. The Kapperim had gathered and were attacking all the outcast Havens, trying to wipe them out. Some nights she dreamed of her family and cried in her sleep because she wasn't with them. She fretted about not being with them, wondering what possible good she was doing here, helping Coperic flea and Bella flea and Biel flea and Ryml, Lehat, Karal, Sosai, Charda, Pyvin and Wohpa fleas take tiny bites from the flank of the monster that darkened the hillsides. But there was always the Game to take her mind off brooding and under the brooding there was the calm knowledge that she'd be doing far less if she was where her father could keep an eye on her.

She settled into the shade of some brush on a hillside above the section of wall where the Sankoise were. Coperic had been concentrating on the Majilarni and the Sankoise, pricking them into disaffection. During the first days of the siege when norits were falling like dying moths, Coperic and all of them had crept with near impunity among the skittish Sankoise, picking off one after another as they ran for cover. They were mostly town-bred men or sailors conscripted off Sankoise merchant ships. The wild country around them disturbed, even frightened, them. They were intensely superstitious; coming from a mage-ridden land, they saw omens in every turn of a leaf and the deaths, the throats cut, the men strangled, or left with skulls crushed, the rambuts lost, the equipment destroyed, all this worked on them until they began to settle into the mud like rotting logs. Kole was forced to call on his shrinking force of norits, leaving a good number of them with the Sankoise to weave alarum spells about the camps so the raids stopped and the men could sleep in such peace as they could find on the cold and uncomfortable slopes.

Tuli sat on her hillside watching them with considerable satisfaction as they wandered unhappily about, or knelt on blankets gambling or sought escape in sleep. The day was coming when even their centuries of conditioned nor-fear would no longer drive them to the wall. She lost her contentment when she looked toward the great Gate. Nekaz Kole was getting the walking towers built far faster than she liked. She scowled, got to her feet and went back to hunting demon beasts. That was a danger she could do something about.

7

A full day after the towers were completed, they sat on their rollers, three tapering fingers of wood pointed at the sky; early the next morning Ogogehians brought teams of massive draft hauhaus to them, six in each hitch. With hauhaus digging their split hooves into the mud and shoving with mighty shoulders against the harness, with norits riding beside each team to turn aside all missiles, the towers began to inch forward, rocking precariously even at that creeping pace, getting stuck repeatedly in the slush left behind by the attacking rain until one of the Four got impatient and pulled the water from the soil in a flash of steam and a mighty hissing. Slowly, inexorably, the towers moved toward the wall.

8

Hern dropped the binoculars, letting them hang about his neck, and swung around on his stool until he faced the others gathered in the small, square chamber at the top of the west gate tower. He filled a glass with water from the jug on the table beside him, drank thirstily, set the glass down, frowned at Yael-mri. “How many dead so far?”

Yael-mri looked at her hands. “One hundred seventeen meien, twelve healer trainees, eight girls, fifty-six Stenda, two hundred thirteen mijlockers, six exiles.” She began kneading at the back of one hand with the fingers of the other. “Almost everyone on or near the wall has been wounded several times, some as many as six or seven, many of them would have died except for Serroi; any we get to her with a flicker of life left she heals.” She rubbed her hands, staring past him out the windowslit at the pale blue of the sky. “She can't heal memory away. You know my meien, Hern, they're fighters, they go back on the wall, they have to, but the edge is getting worn off them. And they're sickened by the killing, the slaughter. They know the need, who better? but there comes a time when the spirit and the flesh rebel.” She made a small cut-off gesture, said nothing more.

Hern scrubbed his hand across his face. “Supplies?”

Yael-mri pulled her brooding gaze off the empyrean blue. “Arrows are a problem. We're salvaging what we can from the shafts shot at us, but even with the girls working in shifts on fletching and pointing, we're expending more than we can replace. Doing better with the crossbow quarrels, they don't require as much time or skill. Fuel's no problem. We had time to get in a good supply of coal. The fat fires and the food fires won't die for lack of coal or wood. Food—with a good harvest and a year to prepare, we had time and used it. Even after the influx of all those extra girls we won't starve. Herbs, salves, other medicines, holding out fairly well. Serroi again. She makes medicines unnecessary in the more serious cases.” She smiled wearily. “You know well enough our only shortage is of trained fighters. Kole can't starve us out, but he can whittle down our numbers until he can just walk over us.”

Hern nodded. “Even with the Shawar intact. The wall's holding him right now. Georgia, Anoike, your folk and supplies?”

Georgia glanced at Anoike. With a flip of her hand she passed the answer to him. “As Yael-mri said, six of us are dead, three of my bunch, two from Angel's, a driver who caught an arrow in the throat; her bad luck, wrong place, wrong time. Five horses dead or wounded. Ammo about half gone, some grenades left, other stuff we haven't used yet. Grenier's drugs, he scraping bottom, but he didn't have no big supply to start.” Georgia grinned. “If you want to see a happy man, a whole new pharmacopoeia to play with. Fuel for the trucks going to be a problem if this goes on much longer. Nona, she's a research chemist, and Bill, he used to build his own racing cars, they're working on some way of restructuring the engines to run on alcohol. Last report, they making good progress, thought they could experiment on one of the trucks when things get slow. That's about it.” he looked at Anoike.

“You said it, Dom. The wall holding them.”

“Right. But we've got a problem. The walking towers.”

Anoike crossed her arms, wrinkled her nose. “Thought that why you got us up here. How long?”

“Sundown.”

“Hunh.” She poked her elbow into Georgia's ribs. “Maybe you ready now to use those rockets.” Her hazel eyes filled with laughter, she turned back to Hern. “He a skrinch with them. I keep telling him Kole the thing holds them out there together. Pull him and they fall apart. But he sitting on those rockets like a broody hen on a clutch of eggs.”

Georgia shook his head. “He keeps that Nor too close. I figure we got one good shot with the rockets; if we try for him and that Nor shifts them aside, then we've lost the chance to finesse some advantage from the others we got. Those towers, they're different. Take them out and have a hot try for Kole. We miss him this time, no sweat, we get the towers and maybe some more norits.”

Yael-mri cleared her throat; when they looked at her, she said, “He's right. The Nor with Kole and three more out there are only a hair away from the challenge duels that could lift several of them into full power. Take no chances with that Four.”

Hern rubbed at the back of his neck, feeling tired. He'd been tired for days. Sitting up here, separated from his fighters, chained to the binoculars and the teletalk, directing the battles like some botso master moving his pieces about a board. Watching men and women die when they rushed to follow his orders. He was angry, frustrated, tired, occasionally despairing. He missed Serroi terribly; more than once he was tempted to send for her just to talk a little, to get away from the unending strain, to touch again the warmth between them and feel human again, but he didn't give in to that need. Her presence down there meant lives saved and he needed those lives. There were times, especially late at night, when he was stretched out on the pallet in the corner, a meie at the window charged to wake him if she spotted any movement below, there were times when he felt like walking down the stairs and away from the wall, away from the fighting and the responsibilities oppressing him, but he knew also he was the one person who could order events without getting an argument or mutiny from every part of his motley force. He was as locked-in here as Serroi was with her healing. At his lowest moments he wondered if he would ever escape, if the mijloc would claim him for the last part of his life as it had for the first. No, he told himself. No. But he could feel them all leaning on him, depending on him, everyone behind the wall and out in the desolation Floarin had made of the Plain. And the exiles who were fighting so powerfully for him, they'd need him too, he was the only one who could see that they got the land and help he'd promised them. He couldn't walk away, that much of his father he had in him. Heslin, he said to himself in the dark—and it was both a groan and a curse.

He poured more water and drank, turned to Georgia. “Can you move your launchers into place without alerting the traxim?”

Georgia frowned. “They're not that big. Have to be some work on them, takes a few minutes to sight them in on the towers.”

Anoike touched his arm. “The little pults the meien been using, they worth shit so far, but Kole he got to be expecting the Dom here to try anything he can. Make a lot of fuss getting them moved, I expecting Kole he don't notice us here and there fussin with the launchers.”

Hern clicked his fingers against the glass, then nodded. “That should do it.”

Yael-mri sighed. “There's more bad news, Dom. My sensitives say there are Sleykynin in the valley.”

“I thought you'd blocked that.”

“Apparently bands on both sides of the valley have been working round through the mountains toward the southern narrows. The ones we killed peeled off the main parties, testing us, I think. As far as I can tell, they came down beyond the sensitives' reach and have been creeping toward us the past two days.” She sighed. “I hate to ask it, dom Hern, but I need hunting parties and guard shifts. I know we don't have the fighters. I know everyone's needed on the wall, but how much good will holding the wall do if the Sleykynin break the Shawar? How long would the wall stand then?” She looked at her hands again. When she spoke it was in a whisper as if she feared to hear what she was saying. “How much good even those will do, I don't know. I just don't know. Sleykynin are old hands at games we meien have never played.