Firemask: Book Two of the Last Legion Series (21 page)

“I admit,” Alikhan said, “I am not that pleased with the course of events.”

“Shows what happens when you go and start a war,” Ben suggested. “No guts, no glory, like they used to say.”

Alikhan looked at him for a moment, then got up.

“Let us go on.”

• • •

At some time around midday, they found a spring, and mixed up two of Dill’s rations. One was labeled
BEEF WITH JUICES
, the other
GIPTEL AND BEANS.

“You’re the enemy,” Dill said, “so you get the beans.”

Dill opened his pouch, let water trickle in, then resealed the pouch and hit the heat tab at the base. The pouch got hot, and steam came out.

Alikhan awkwardly did the same.

“We eat with our fingers?”

“Should be a spoon on the side. Pull it away.”

“Ah. Clever.”

They chewed in silence.

“Since you are eating along with me,” Alikhan said, “I assume you aren’t attempting to poison me with this.”

“The theory is,” Ben suggested, “these rations make you so damned mean you can survive anything.”

“An excellent theory. I think I am now ready to walk on water across to safety, or perhaps sprout wings.”

“Those
gip
‘n’ unmentionables aren’t
that
bad.”

“Yes they are.”

• • •

Dill pushed a vine aside, looked for a nongloppy foothold, stepped forward, hastily changed his point of aim as a creature about the size of his head that looked like an earth frog that’d had something large land on it hissed.

Dill went one way, the creature went another.

Then it roared at him — the same roar that had sent him cowering for the rocks the night before.

“I’ll be dipped,” he said. “Little guys sure make a lot of noise.”

Alikhan, who had leapt back in alarm, unbristled his fur.

“Perhaps it is now time to discuss returning my gun.”

“I’m still pondering how much I believe your parole,” Dill said. “I’ll report back to you on that one.”

• • •

A river curled into the ocean, dotted with deep pools. A crag rose next to it, with a shelf that hung out far enough to give shelter against the rain, which had become a steady downpour.

Dill dragged fallen branches into a pile, then found a decaying stump. He kicked it open, scooped dry sawdust into his hands, put that next to his firewood. With his pistol set at low power, he sizzled the sawdust into life, then patiently fed branches, smaller, then larger, into the blaze.

Alikhan huddled on a log, watching.

“I am impressed,” he said. “None of my training gave me this.”

“Your training evidently didn’t figure you’d ever lose,” Dill said. “We’re more realistic.”

“I’m not sure that a little practice in losing might not be good,” Alikhan said. “When I studied under Senza of the
Polperros
, he and his cadre were forever going on about how the Musth were hurting themselves by failing to gain from the past, particularly the past’s defeats.

“My father thought that was nonsense, and antidestiny. We Musth should only concern ourselves with the future, and with victories.”

“The problem with rhetoric, either way,” Dill said, “is that it don’t put beans in the belly.”

“I suppose we are going to have another of your dried feasts again, which is slightly better than nothing,” Alikhan said. “Although I despise always being in your debt.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dill said. “I’m real comfortable with folks owing me. But I’d rather save the rats for an emergency. C’mon.”

“And I was just beginning to become dry,” Alikhan said, but followed the hulking man back toward the river.

“This is fishing lesson number one,” Ben said.

“I know how to fish,” Alikhan said. “Shall I cut poles, or do we make nets from clothing threads?”

“I said fish, not play about,” Dill said. “First, we need to know whether any body of water got fish. Ah-ho. I see something moving. Hopefully it’s not something that’s interested in eating Ben Dill or his buddy.

“Now, we need a nice pool. Not a deep one, because you being the pupil, me being the master, you’re going wading.”

They went a dozen meters upstream.

“This one looks about right, especially ‘cause there’s some narrows here. I take my little gill net from the pack, string it across here, so there’s no escapees. But that’s incidental. Watch and listen closely, class, and feel free to ask questions, because this is the hard part.”

Dill took one of Alikhan’s wasp-grenades from his pocket.

“Pity this isn’t a blast-grenade or a hunk of Telex. According to what we learned about your weaponry, you thumb this little doodad here, which gives you a count of, oh, six or seven before it goes whammy and weasels eat your flesh.”

“Be careful,” Alikhan said. “If the insects do not find a ready target, and you’re too close, you can be stung to death by them.”

“They’ll be too busy drowning,” Dill said. “Now, I prepare for the cast, keeping excellent posture and stance, thumb the fiendish thingy, and delicately place the fly directly upon the swirling water where we last saw our magnificent prey.”

The grenade went into the pool and half a dozen seconds later there was a muffled blast and a small white column of water frothed. Seconds later, fish floated to the surface.

“And now we harvest. Get your furry butt in the pool. Toss all of them onto the bank, and you’ll see a lot more, stunned, down on the bottom. They’ll recover, so don’t fart around grabbing them.”

Some minutes later, they had an impressive pile of fish.

“Next we gut them and throw the guts back into the river. Notice, we’re not taking the finny ones back to the camp to clean, because Lord alone knows who haunts this wilderness, and we don’t need to be setting out bait.”

“This is an incredible number of fish,” Alikhan said. “I do not know if even I can eat half.”

“We would have a choice here,” Dill said. “If we knew we were going to be out here in the bush for very long, we should lay over a day and smoke ‘em in the fire. Or, if we had more of your little bangies, we could be wasteful and just move on, fishing as we go.

“I dunno which’d be the best idea. I’ve got some hooks and line in my gear, so maybe we should just honk up what we can tonight, and keep moving.”

• • •

In the early afternoon of the next day, they heard a high whine, craned upward, and saw, shooting in and out of the clouds, a Confederation-design speedster.

“Hot damn,” Dill exulted. “Here comes rescue, if I do things right.”

He fumbled through his pack, found a mirror with a hole in its center.

“I just sorta peek through here, flash back and forth, hoping that bastard up there dreamin’ among the clouds happens to look down and YOWP he did!”

The aircraft banked into a dive, and Dill began jumping up and down, waving.

“I am not pleased,” Alikhan said.

“Better my people than getting et by whatever’s in this jungle,” Dill said.

“Possibly.”

Dill went back into the survival pack, found the flare pencil, cocked and fired it. The flare shot up for three meters, hit a tree branch and spun, sizzling red, on the sand, then was smokily extinguished by a wave.

“Goddammit,” Dill swore.

But the speedster kept on coming.

“Come on, baby, come on, baby, come … aw, goddammit, you blind friggin’ bat!”

The speedster climbed and leisurely disappeared into the clouds.

“Maybe he’s going up for altitude to call in help,” Dill said.

The Musth looked at him.

“You aliens aren’t supposed to be able to look askance, whatever that means,” Dill complained.

They waited another handful of minutes, but the aircraft never reappeared.

• • •

For two days more they moved south along the ocean’s edge. They saw no more aircraft in the skies, saw no boats on the water. For two days they lived off the fish they’d caught, then used the fishing gear to catch other, larger fish from the ocean.

“Enough,” Alikhan announced at the end of the third day. “If I eat one more of these swimmers, I’m going to sprout fins.”

“I’ve about had enough,” Ben agreed. “So let’s try something different.”

They used line from his survival kit to make small nooses, which they hung from a longish pole. Then they went back into the jungle, found a tree that animal noises were coming from, and planted the pole against it.

“Animals are like people, and lazy, taking the easy way, which generally gets you killed,” Dill explained. “We just built whatever furry sorts lurk around here a runway getting in and out of their homes in this-yere tree. They go up or down the pole, stick their silly fool heads in the nooses, and it’s Jack Ketch time, followed by Dill’s Special Stew.”

That night they ate the last of the fish, and at dawn eagerly went into the jungle to see how they had done.

Their pole-snare had done well — four of the five nooses they’d left held the heads of small mammalian-looking animals. Unfortunately, there was nothing but the heads, still dripping a bit of gore.

“This they didn’t tell me about in Basic Survival.”

“Annoying,” Alikhan agreed. “But worse is wondering just how big the creature that ate the heads off is? I have no particular desire to have
my
carapace munched upon.”

“Would you care to retire to our camp, my friend,” Ben said, “and see if we can’t find some nice morsels of fish in yonder ocean?”

“Certainly,” Alikhan agreed. “But first it might be practical if we consider relocating our camp a distance or two?”

“An excellent plan. The ambience around these parts ain’t what I thought it was gonna be.”

• • •

A day and a half later, they came on a village. Or, the remains of one.

It’d been thoroughly razed. From the air, Dill estimated. There’d been a couple of dozen fishermen, their wives and families when the aircraft showed up. The remains of their boats were still beached nearby.

Alikhan looked at the ruins, at Dill’s face, and somehow reasoned enough about human psychology to say nothing and go to the edge of the village.

Ben wandered through the ruins, numbly counting the blackened twists that’d been people. He finally came back to himself, realizing there was nothing at all he could do about it, and not having the stomach to sift through the ashes for anything they might be able to use, he went to where Alikhan waited.

“My people did this.” It was not a question.

Dill nodded.

“These people were not fighters?”

“Not likely.”

“Then this is not honorable.”

Dill had enough decency to reply: “War ain’t honorable.”

Alikhan held out his paws, signifying rejection of the comfort.

“Why do you think it was done?”

“I couldn’t answer that,” Dill said. “Maybe things have gotten nastier than they were before. Maybe your father’s decided nits grow up to be lice.”

“What does that mean?”

“Never mind.”

They went on in silence.

• • •

Just at dusk, Dill saw a
giptel,
a scaled Cumbre native kept by villagers for its tender white meat, drinking at a stream. Perhaps it had been one of the villages’ meat animals. In any event, it showed little fear of Dill as he crept up on it with a heavy rock.

He gutted the animal, built a fire, then a spit from thick green branches, and roasted the animal, basting it with fruit from nearby bushes he recognized from stores, using broad leaves for plates.

They ate, still not saying anything beyond the necessary.

After Alikhan buried the leaves and bones of the
giptel,
they sat, staring at the dying fire as darkness grew around them.

“If it is permitted,” Alikhan said, “I would like to talk about what we saw today.”

“Maybe you better not. I’ve got a short temper.”

“I think I must take that chance,” the Musth said. “I believe I mentioned I studied with a Musth named Senza. He is leader of a clan called the
Polperros,
whose call is to be Reckoners.

“Those are the ones who decide whether an enterprise is worth doing, and whether it is permissible as part of our destiny, and finally whether it is allowable within our codes.”

“Lawyers,” Dill asked.

“When my tutor was giving me instruction in Basic, he said that would be a correct analogy.

“I told you that Senza spoke about the necessity to learn from our defeats, such as the one we suffered when we fought against the Confederation, in my father’s father’s time.

“He taught that this was not merely rooting about in the shame of the past, but giving us lessons, guidance for the future. He frequently wondered if our willingness to do instant battle, which gave us dominion over the other beasts when we were evolving, might not be a hindrance, or even a fatal flaw now that we are civilized.

“Although what we saw today was certainly not an example of civilization.”

Dill nodded, forcing away his smoldering anger.

“My father, of course, believed that Senza and those who thought like him were betrayers of our race. When he discovered I had been interested in Senza’s teachings, he required me to leave the course of studies and the planet I was living on to find some other pursuit.

“I knew he would want me to be a warrior, and indeed I have always loved flying. So I thought I would please him. It is not easy having a parent who is a war leader,” Alikhan said. “What of your parentage?”

“Not much to tell,” Dill said. “My mother was a rancher, someone who raised meat animals on a pioneer world. My father was a musician, who charmed her right out of her socks, and I was the product. When I was three or four, he left her. Damned if I know where he went. Never felt much like looking.

“I didn’t know much, growing up, except that I sure as hell didn’t want to be a rancher. You never stopped working, and you could never go anywhere for longer’n a day. The animals were always needing feed, water, dragging out of a ditch, whatever. But there didn’t seem to be much of an alternative.

“When I was fifteen or so, my mother was out with a lifter, chasing some beasts toward a stock pen. I guess she wasn’t watching the ground around her, because she went in hard against a pinnace, got thrown out, and the xebecs stampeded over her body.