Cobra Slave-eARC (27 page)

Somehow, in all their talks together, Merrick and Anya had never covered her people’s morning rituals. Certainly he’d never noticed anything like that aboard ship, nor had Anya performed any such rituals during the time they’d spent together as Ukuthi’s prisoners.

But now, as he left the shelter, wincing with aching muscles, Anya took his arm and led him to where the others were gathered in a line facing the rising sun. They joined the end of the line; and as they did, the ritual began.

Leif started it off, speaking solemnly in a language Merrick didn’t recognize or understand. A few sentences later, his wife joined in, followed a few sentences after that by Gina. For a minute all three spoke in unison, and then both adults fell silent while the child intoned the final three sentences alone.

And with that, it was apparently over. “Let’s get moving,” Ville said briskly as he picked up his bag from beside a dead log. “Same marching order as yesterday.”

“That was our village’s sunrise greeting,” Anya explained to Merrick as the group set off down the road toward the red-tinged sky. “It’s performed whenever there are families present and the sun can be seen or its position inferred.” She gave him a sideways look. “I’m sure your morning ritual is much different.”

Merrick nodded, agreement and understanding both. So that was why she hadn’t mentioned it before. As someone who was supposed to be from elsewhere on Muninn, he wouldn’t be expected to know how Gangari’s customs worked.

He just hoped no one would be courteous enough to ask about his own town’s customs. Maybe he ought to work up a few, just in case.

The rest of the trip was mostly uneventful. Around noon they ran into another pack of fafirs, but Anya, Ville, and Dyre again easily drove them off. There were no spine mace trees in the area this time, so the defenders instead used whips made from tapering vines they tore off a cluster of nearby trees.

As with the last fafir attack, Merrick was ordered to stay with the Streamjumper family. This time, he obeyed.

It was late afternoon and Anya was estimating only a couple of kilometers left to go when Merrick began seeing razorarms again.

They were, for the most part, a mixture of aggression and caution. Six of the seven that Merrick spotted stayed behind the first line of trees, paralleling the humans for a few minutes before turning back into the forest. The seventh came all the way out onto the shoulder, its foreleg spines quivering as it scowled at the intruders. But even that one never set foot on the road itself. It was as if the predators had decided the road was the humans’ section of territory and were treating it just as they would that of another razorarm family.

Which might be exactly what they were doing. The mojos which had been the razorarms’ symbionts on Qasama had known how deadly humans were and had been careful to steer the predators away from potentially lethal confrontations. Somehow, the birds’ caution had been impressed on the razorarms’ more limited minds.

From Anya’s description of her hometown as a village, Merrick had pictured it being similar to the Qasaman version: small and rustic, with high walls surrounding it as protection against dangerous animals.

Gangari was certainly small enough. The whole thing looked to be no more than a kilometer across, with a good two-thirds of the cleared area taken up by cropland stretching between the forest and the village proper. The rest of the landscape was also more or less as he’d envisioned it: around the cleared area was more forest, while behind it the ground rose sharply into the line of rocky, tree-covered mountains he’d seen in the distance from the landing area. To the north, a narrow white-water stream rolled down from the mountains and disappeared among the trees.

But the rest was nothing like Merrick’s mental image. The homes and community buildings were made of smooth-planed wooden planks, laid out in an elaborate cross-hatch design. The roofs were peaked, with carvings at the upper and lower corners that reminded him of upside-down ocean waves. Unlike the buildings in Qasaman villages, the ones here were well-spaced, with small gardens filling many of the spaces between them. The people he saw were dressed in a variety of clothing styles, ranging from bright colors to quieter and more muted tones. Here and there, in the distance toward the center of the town, there were occasional glimpses of people wearing copper-trimmed black.

Another surprise was that the road didn’t go all the way into the village. Instead, it split at the edge of the cropland, disappearing into the masses of trees to the north and south. “Is there a path?” Ville asked, coming to a halt at the edge of the blackstone.

“Yes,” Anya said, her voice tight. “But it has most certainly been changed in the twelve years since I last walked it.”

Dyre snorted. “Perhaps we should let your out-village friend find it,” he suggested maliciously. “He hasn’t proved useful anywhere else. He could at least offer us some amusement as he twitched like a chicken.”

Merrick tapped Anya’s shoulder and gestured questioningly. “Crossing a bersark field is dangerous,” she said. “Crushing the plants underfoot releases the poison.”

Merrick stared at her. They surrounded their village with poisonous plants? He gestured again, more urgently this time.

“He really is ignorant, isn’t he?” Dyre said with another snort. “Don’t cower, courageous one—it’ll be properly refined before they allow you to take it.”

Merrick frowned at him. Before they allowed him to take it?

“Is there any other way through?” Ville asked. “Surely the bersark doesn’t surround on all sides.”

“Not on all sides,” Anya said. “But the stream is swift and its banks treacherous, and the marsh on the southern edge is likewise impassible. We shall have to wait for someone to notice us.”

“But will they notice us before nightfall?” Ville asked, looking behind them at the sun. “And even if they see us, will they invite us in?”

“You both grew up here,” Katla pointed out, looking back and forth between Anya and Dyre. “Surely there’s a way for wayward travelers to find the path.”

“There was no such clue set when I was taken,” Dyre said.

“Nor when I left,” Anya said, an odd tone to her voice. “Still, I’ve seen no flights of kilerands in the past minutes. We may be able to risk a shout.”

“And lest the ignorant be further confused,” Dyre added, looking pointedly at Merrick, “kilerands often ingest bersark when they feed. Loud noises draw them.”

Merrick looked across at the village. There were several people out and about, but none of them seemed to have spotted the group standing out here on the village’s doorstep.

They weren’t really stuck out here, of course. The stream might be swift and treacherous, but it wasn’t so wide that he couldn’t easily jump it.

Unfortunately, that would reveal more about himself than he wanted at this point. Shouting across the field, and possibly drawing birds he might have to use his lasers to drive away, would be worse.

But there might be another way. Lowering his gaze to the plants stretched out in front of them, he activated his infrareds.

The fine-tuning that had been added to his generation’s enhancers had been designed primarily for reading and distinguishing human emotions. But Merrick remembered reading that some plants also had different infrared characteristics. If the bersark and the path plants were dissimilar enough, maybe he could spot that difference.

To his mild surprise, the trick worked. Snaking its way in a smooth pair of s-curves from the edge of the road to the far edge of the field was a slightly brighter swath of vegetation about two meters wide. Focusing on one edge of the path, he keyed in his telescopics.

There were different species of plants on Aventine that looked virtually identical, yet had drastically different properties. Mushrooms, in particular, were extremely dangerous for amateurs to deal with. The bersark and path plants were evidently another of that same class. Even knowing where the edge was, he couldn’t see a single clue in the normal visible spectrum that he could latch to distinguish one from the other.

Earlier, he’d wondered about the lack of a fence to guard against unwanted guests. Now, he saw that the villagers didn’t need one. They had a barrier of poison to protect them.

“But waiting until nightfall to call to the village would be even worse,” Dyre pointed out. “I say we let Anya’s out-village friend turn aside to right or left and give a shout. If the kilerands descend, we can try to drive them off before they cause too much damage.”

“Don’t speak venal foolishness,” Katla chided. “If we need to retreat and build another shelter for the night, then that’s what we’ll do. Surely cultivators will be out among the dawn mists.”

“I’ve spent twelve long years away from my home,” Dyre said darkly. “I will not turn my back on it now when it’s so close.”

“It’s my home too,” Katla said, a bit sharply. “I yearn for it as deeply as you do. But I have no wish to die within sight of its edges.”

Keying off his telescopics, Merrick took a deep breath. For once, he was with Dyre. He touched Anya’s arm again and pointed at the field.

And before she could say anything, he stepped off the edge of the road into the middle of the infrared-bright path.

Someone behind him gasped—Katla, probably, though it could have been Gina. He took another step, wondering if he’d just done something extremely foolish.

Wondering, too, if it was the kind of poison that would at least warn him that it was starting to kill him.

But nothing happened. No acrid or bitter aroma, no light-headedness, no confusion or paralysis or convulsions. Either the stuff was slow-acting, or he’d guessed right about the path. He took two more steps, then stopped and looked back.

The others were staring at him, their eyes wide, their mouths hanging a few centimeters open. Katla was standing behind Gina, gripping her daughter’s shoulders, looking like she was preparing to spin the girl’s eyes away from the awful spectacle that everyone was clearly expecting.

Everyone, that is, except Anya. Her mouth was closed, her eyes showing no signs of stunned fear or morbid anticipation. In fact, there was just the faintest hint of an approving smile on her face. Merrick gave her an equally faint smile in return, then turned again and continued on his way.

It took until the first s-curve for them to be convinced. Anya was first, stepping off the road’s shoulder and following the line of Merrick’s footsteps. Ville was next, gesturing the Streamjumper family to follow.

Not until Merrick had reached the second s-curve did Dyre grudgingly join the procession.

They were halfway across the field when a woman tending one of the gardens finally noticed them. Her eyes widened for a moment, and then she dropped her tools and ran off between two of the houses. By the time Merrick reached the last section of curve a crowd was beginning to form. There were no excited shouts, of either greeting or challenge, which bothered Merrick until he remembered Dyre’s warning about neighborhood birds that didn’t react well to loud noises.

But there was no mistaking the gradual brightening of faces through the crowd as they realized that some of their lost children had finally come home. Some of those faces brightened even more when they mentally added in the years and realized which specific children they were.

By the time he and the others reached the end of the field and made their way into the crowd the hugs and tears were waiting.

Dyre got the most attention, Merrick saw as he stepped discreetly to the side out of the way of the quiet jubilation. The Streamjumper family was a close second, especially with the surge of interest that was focused on the young daughter no one in Gangari had ever met before. Ville was clearly recognized and politely received, but Merrick could sense some distance lurking beneath the greetings. Merrick himself garnered a few civil nods and curious looks, but he had expected nothing more.

What was puzzling was that Anya was ignored almost as completely as Merrick. What was even more puzzling was that she didn’t seem surprised by the treatment.

The mass greeting was still in progress when Merrick began to hear odd thudding sounds from somewhere in the distance. Taking a few casual steps away from the crowd, he keyed in his audios. The thuds grew louder and resolved into the impacts, grunts, and groans of hand-to-hand combat.

He frowned. Even without his enhancers he’d been able to hear the sounds. The villagers around him should be able to hear them, too. Yet they seemed completely oblivious. Turning his head back and forth, he placed the sounds as coming from somewhere in the center of the village. He gave the well-wishers a final look, decided they could easily do without him for the moment, and set off to hunt for the trouble.

He didn’t have to go very far. About a hundred meters away he passed between two houses and found himself at the end of a rectangular patch of open ground about twenty by thirty meters. Around the edges were lines of four-meter-tall vertical poles, set a couple of meters apart, with attachments along the sides that suggested sections of fencing could be added between them. In the center of the field were a pair of young boys, ten or twelve years old, wearing hand and head protectors and attempting to beat the sand out of each other. One of the men Merrick had glimpsed earlier wearing copper-trimmed black was hovering at the edges of the fight. A trainer, probably, or else a referee.

And at the far end of the field, watching the proceedings from in front of a low-slung aircar, were two Trofts.

Merrick’s first semi-panicked impulse was to put a targeting lock on both aliens’ foreheads. A second later, though, he realized it wasn’t as bad as he’d thought. The Trofts were dressed in civilian-style leotards, not the armored versions the aliens’ soldiers wore, and they had no helmets or weapons.

Or rather, they had no lasers or blades. But both aliens carried half-meter-long sticks that had the distinctly sturdy look of weapons about them. A check with his telescopics showed that there was something at the end of each stick, either a gas-spitter nozzle or a capacitor electrode.