Earthblood (5 page)

Roan listened, catching a word here and there. They were out without permission, because young Veed were always carefully protected. So they couldn't complain to their elders about the wounded Veed. This meant they had to take their vengeance on the spot.

But they couldn't get up into the trees because their bodies were too awkward for climbing and they couldn't throw things up into the trees without hitting each other.

Several of the Veed went over to one of the slenderest of the trees, where three gracyls hung in the branches like clumps of moss, and began pushing the trunk back and forth. The gracyls screeched, clinging tighter in their panic, and as the tree gained momentum, one of them fell to the ground, too panicked to try to fly.

The Veed were gleeful. It was like shaking the purplefruit off a tree. Several Veed grabbed the gracyl and Roan carefully didn't watch what they did with him.

"Fly to the next tree," Roan called to the other two gracyls. "All you have to do is stay calm."

But they couldn't. They could only cling and screech, the way gracyls always did when they were frightened. They couldn't change, even to save their lives.

Another gracyl fell.

Other Veed were starting on other trees.

"Make for the thickest trees," Roan called. "They can't shake the thickest ones."

But no gracyl moved. Roan burned with the frustration of it all, the helplessness of the gracyls and the blunt cruelty of the Veed. Where was Clanth? Perhaps he was already safe in a broad-trunked tree.

"Clanth!" he called, but there was no answer. Perhaps Clanth couldn't hear him, or perhaps he was clinging to a tree, squawking with terror, like the other gracyls. But he had always been a little different; surely he would save himself. Then Roan remembered. Clanth couldn't fly.

Roan's tree began to sway.

He looked around for a rope vine, to make it to the broader trees toward the center of the grove, but there was no rope vine. He cursed himself for not having cut one and looped it through his belt when he was in the first tree. But it was too late.

Well, it would be easy enough for him to hang on. He stood on one branch and held on to the next, watching the gleeful Veed below, their teeth gleaming as they smiled their crocodile smiles, their crests swaying contentedly.

Something dropped past Roan and fell into the waiting arms of a Veed. They gasped to see it and so did Roan. It was all white and for a moment Roan thought it must be a human child.

That was the moment he leaped.

He leaped for the back of the Veed holding the screaming white creature and he drove his knife deep into the Veed's right eye, through to the brain, and the Veed died beneath him.

Roan pulled the knife out and stood on the dead Veed, the white creature clinging to his neck, and stood to meet the slashing blows of the other Veed.

But they backed away from him.

They were in awe and fear of him, that he had wounded one Veed and killed another. They had seen many a gracyl die, and that was funny. But they had never seen a Veed die before; they hadn't thought anybody could kill a Veed.

They fled to take revenge on more gracyls. It was safer.

Roan pulled the white creature from his neck and looked at it. She was a white gracyl.

"I'm not dead," she said wonderingly. Gracyl fear didn't last long when the danger was over. "I knew I was going to be broken and I prepared to die and . . . now I feel as though I must have died and here I am still alive."

"You're a half-breed?" he asked. "Or a mutation?"

"I'm an albino," she said. "You saved my life, didn't you? You did that on purpose."

Then they were silent a moment, looking at each other in the little moonlight. Caught in the brief bond of savior and saved, they tried to meet minds across the deeps and dimensions that separated their alienesses.

"I belong to you now," she said, and clung to him, and he held her close and felt her whiteness and kissed her strange, cold mouth and it was all a part of the swaying darkness and the hissing Veed and the dying gracyl and the death that Roan had made. The dead Veed and the victory. Roan had lost the threads that bound him to himself and all that was left was the white gracyl woman under his hands in the sickle moonlight. Across the grove, the gracyls were screaming as they fell but Roan was not thinking of them dying, only of the distant music of their voices.

"That one was Clanth," she said dreamily. "I was going to be his female and now . . . "

"Clanth!" Roan cried, and came to himself.

"Yes. Only Clanth. After all, I just took him because nobody else wanted me and now it doesn't matter."

"Doesn't matter!" He yanked her savagely to her feet. "Show me which way the scream came from! Show me where Clanth is!" He had not been listening. He had been not caring. He had been as bad as a gracyl. Worse, because they couldn't help it and he could.

He saw the Veed beginning to leave the grove as they made their way through the trees. Either they had had all their fun or it was time for them to get back before their parents discovered they were gone.

"There he is," said the white gracyl female. "What do you want with him?" One last Veed, seeing Roan, gave Clanth a parting slash and moved sinuously off. Roan knelt by the dying gracyl. "Clanth, I couldn't find you. I couldn't help." But he hadn't looked.

"I'm broken," Clanth said. "But, Roan, I had a female."

"I brought her to you," Roan said. He stood and put his knife at the white female's back until she came over to Clanth. "You can die in her arms."

"That was silly," she said when Clanth had died.

The gracyls, those that were left, were coming down from the trees now and incredibly starting their mating ceremonies again.

Roan walked away through the grove, and out into the white moonlight. He climbed to the top of the tallest garbage heap and sat, looking down on the ghetto, not listening to the happy gracyl sounds, thinking about what a human woman might be like.

Here on the high ledge, the wind was sharp with sand particles, buffeting angrily like a gracyl when you held him upside down to show him that even if you didn't have wings, you weren't something to throw chunck flowers at. Roan got to his feet, holding on tightly to the tiny fingerholds of the wind-worn carving, feeling with his toes for a firm grip. He was high enough now: over the tops of the purplefruit trees, he could see the glare panels strung out across the arena gate, spelling out:

Renowned Throughout the Eastern Arm!!

Entrepreneur Gom Bulj Presents:

Fabulous Feathered Flyers!

Superb Scaled Swimmers!

Horrific Hairy Hurlers!

A Stupefying Spectacle of Leaping Life-forms,

Battling Boneless Beasts, Wingless Wizards of Wit,

Frightful Fanged Fighters!

See Iron Robert, Strongest Living Creature—

Stellaraire, the Galaxy's loveliest creation!

Snarleron, Ugliest in the Universe!

ADMISSION, G. CR. .10, plus tax.

Roan's hand twitched, wanting to go to his credit coder to check once more; but he restrained it. He knew what it would show. The balance gauge would barely glow. Even the five demi-chits he'd earned stacking bread-logs for the Store was gone, spent for dye-wood billets for carving. He'd have to be satisfied with what he could see from here—not that that would be much. He could hear the noisemakers faintly, but the dusty grounds of the arena were mostly obscured by the trees and the high wall, crumbling along its top like all the Old Things, but still high enough to shield the marvels from his view.

But on the other side, there, where the great white-boled Never-never tree grew . . .

It was beyond the Soetti Quarter, where Dad had told him never to put a foot—but it spread wide, almost to the rubble-littered top of the wall, where it dipped down in a sort of notch.

He wouldn't really be going into the Soetti Quarter—just passing through . .

.

Ten minutes later, Roan perched in an arched opening, just above the lower gates, breathing a little fast from the quick climb down. He checked to be sure no heavy old gracyl mares were stretching their atrophied wings on nearby balconies; then he jumped, caught at ancient green-scaled tiles, scrambled up to a position astride the steep gable of the first house. From the balconies below, he heard a clatter of food troughs, a few shouts, a lazy pad of feet, the slam of a door; the oldsters' early-evening siesta was under way and everyone else was at the Extravaganzoo. Roan rose, ran lightly along the ridge tiles, jumped the gap to the next house. There were carved devils at ten foot intervals here; he had to drop flat at each one, work his way under, then up again. At the end, he swung down under the eave, dropped to a shed below, then swarmed up the carved gable end of the next house; but then it was easy; a series of wind-god altars, like stepping-stones, led to the end of the last house before the high, black-glazed Barrier. He jumped for a drain ledge, worked his way along to a down gutter, held on with his fingers, and slid quickly to the yellow dust of the path. Roan grinned to himself. All those years of playing with gracyls had almost taught him how to fly.

The burrow under the Barrier was almost choked with rubble and blown prickle bushes; it had been a long time since he and Yopp, a Fustian eggling, had last explored it. Maybe he was too big now; he grew so fast—like a Soetti, Raff had said once, grumbling at having to cobble new shoes so soon after the last ones . . .

But it was all right; once the last prickle bush was dragged clear, Roan went in head first, pulling himself along with his hands until he came to the straight-up part; then he stood, put his back against one wall and his feet against the other, and walked up.

The iodine smell of the Soetti was strong, even before he reached the top and pulled himself out into the hazy, late orange sunlight, filtered dark by the great, sagging, patched nets the Soetti used to hold in their kind of air. Roan lay flat, breathing close to the ground; when he had his lungs full—even though they burned a little, from the bad Soetti air—he jumped up, ran for the high fences barely visible in the gloom at the far side of the quarter.

He was halfway there when a big Soetti—almost five feet high—in greaves, a flared helmet with black eye shields, and a heavy cloak, popped out of a hut in his path, blocking his way, heavy pincers ready. Roan slid to a stop, watching the violet-freckled claws. They looked too massive for the short, spindly Soetti arms, but Roan knew they could cut through quarter-inch chromalloy plate.

From burrows all around, bright Soetti eyes winked, ducking back as he looked their way. The warrior advanced a step, snapping his claws like pistol shots, pow! pow! Roan stooped, picked up a four-foot stick of springy booloo wood. He waved it at the Soetti; it hissed, its arms twitching in instinctive response to the movement. It saw what Roan was trying to do, and backed quickly; but Roan moved in, flicked the stick almost under the Soetti's faceted eyes; the pincers flashed, locked on the wand, as involuntarily as a wink; and Roan jerked the stick, hard, throwing the warrior off balance. He dropped the stick and sprang past the creature, sprinting for the board wall, laughing as he ran.

The Never-never tree was three yards thick at the base, rising like a column of buttressed white stone set with daggers of crystalline lime. It wasn't hard to climb, as long as he just held on with his knees and elbows and didn't touch the spines; and the branch, the one that reached out to the wall—it wasn't very big, but it would probably hold all right—even with the weight of a sixteen-year-old Man on it.

Roan started up; the first fifty feet was simple enough, the spines were as big as Roan's wrist, set well apart; he could even use them as footholds. He reached for a higher grip—and a spine broke under his foot. His hand snapped out to seize a razor-edged spine while his knees gripped the narrowing buttress between them. Pain tore through his hand and snaked down his arm, red pain and blood. Roan hated the dumb way his hand had grabbed, like the Soetti's claws, at whatever came near. The Soetti's claws couldn't learn but maybe Roan's hand could, if it hurt enough. And it did hurt enough and now it was slippery as well.

Pain was a taste of death in Roan's mouth, like the time he'd broken his foot. But something else Roan could do was force himself to forget things. He ignored the hand and went on.

The branch that stretched over the wall had patches of peeling bark adhering to it. Roan brushed them away before stepping out on it; he couldn't take a chance on losing his footing; with his slippery hand, he might not be able to hold on if he fell. He wiped his hand again on his tunic, then clenched it to hold in the pain and the blood. The branch moved gently underfoot as he walked out on it, swaying to the gusty wind, and dipping now under his weight. Raff was right; he did grow too fast. He was heavier than an old gracyl brood master. The tip of the branch was level with the top of the wall now; and now it dipped lower, the shiny blue leaves at its tip clattering softly against the weathered masonry. But he was close now; the whine and thump of the noisemakers were loud above the chirp and bellow of the crowd beyond the walls, and he could see the blue-white disks of the polyarcs glaring on the dusty midway. The last few yards were hard going. The tiny spines were close together here—and sharp enough to stab through his bos-hide shoes. If the slender bough sank much lower under his weight, he wouldn't be able to reach the wall. But he knew. He knew from the gracyl games how much weight a tree limb could hold.

Balancing carefully, Roan started the branch swaying, down, up, in a slow sweep, down, heavily, then shuddering up . . .

On the third upward swing, Roan jumped, caught the edge of the wall, raked at loose rubble, then pulled himself up and lay flat on the dust-powdered surface, still hot from the day's sun. He opened his hand and looked at it. The blood had formed a blackish cake with the dust. That was good; now maybe it would stop running all over things and spoiling his fun. He patted it in the dust some more, then crawled to the edge of the wall and looked over into the glare of the grounds—