Fish Tails (59 page)

“Like something rotten?”

Deer Runner stiffened, adopting an enunciatory pose, one hand beating out the tempo: “This HORrible CREAture the QUEEN has GOT is LIKE something ROTten that LIVES in ROT n' ALso was PROB'ly beGOT in ROT.” Alternate emphases varied in pitch, up down, up down.

Precious Wind smiled. The tribal lore masters were already creating chants. “Would you say he smells like a dead body? That smell?”

“Come to think of it. Yes. You don't forget that smell . . .”

“Better you don't talk about it, Runner. Tell Arakny that Sybbis may have brought it hoping we would show fear or throw up from the stench or something equally aversive. I know it's impossible not to see the thing or smell it, but the less we seem to pay attention to it, the better off we'll be. Runner!
Be sure she lets ­people know we don't need to display fear because we have weapons that can dispose of the creatures.
”

“We do? We being who?”

“I do, and we'll be back with you soon. We don't want to use the weapons if we don't have to, so ask Arakny to do what she can to quench any talk about the creature, any notice, any obvious sniffing or gagging or whatever, until I've had a chance to learn more about it and make some decisions regarding it. Will you carry that message, please?”

“Yes'm. Hold down the talk about the . . . big man. Arakny said to tell you the queen will probably leave ganger spies behind. Or guards.”

“I'll manage them; don't worry about it. Here, let's save you some time and effort.” She urged him to remount, asked him to lean forward and cover the horse's eyes, then took hold of the horse's bridle and moved them the next place down the road. Two more hops and they were on the flat. Another hop, and they could see the Artemisian encampment just beginning to stir. The rider, whose mouth had opened at the first jump and had not closed during the process, said something that sounded like “Ouishuc.”

Precious Wind removed his hands from the horse's eye, and the mare blinked at her in some confusion. She said, “Let her rest for a few moments. Let her have a little drink from the stream over there. Animals and children have a more accurate sense of place than grown men do; they rely less on their eyes and more on that inner sense, so she's a bit confused. Don't let her move until she finds herself and settles, then ride slowly back and tell Arakny I will return to our site behind the camp as soon as the queen and her entourage have taken themselves out of sight. Tell her I'll take care of any guards that Her Royal and Most Rigorous Majesty leaves behind.”

“Just . . . take care of them?” he panted out, one quick breath, still staring around him.

“Yes. It's part of my weaponry, Runner, not a personal skill. Tell her I'll do it quietly and without a fuss. I think poor Sybbis needs to get out into the air more. Do more gardening.” Sybbis definitely needed to learn where food came from. She thought a moment more. “Are there other women in the ganger group?”

“Yes,” he said, putting his arm around the horse's neck and patting her. “She has some men she calls commanders. They have women with them. They call them wives like the northerners do, but the women looked more like slaves to me. We know there are quite a few women in their big camp, the main one they call Catland.”

“Why did they bring women with them, do you think?”

“Oh, ma'am, my thought is they're captured women that've come with this bunch to do the cooking. Ganger men can't cook, they've never done it. For sure, Sybbis has never done it. Since everyone in Artemisia goes camping and hunting and fishing, men and women both know how to do decent camp cooking at least, and wherever there's a clan house, there's sure to be a baker with a big oven and ­people who dry or preserve fruit and vegetables for winter, and at least one family that makes corn and flour flats for those who don't want to bother doing it at home. In Catland there seem to be about half as many women as there are men, but we don't know whether they're volunteers or captives or some of both.”

“Spoils of battle?”

“More likely just taken, grabbed off while picking mushrooms or fishing or what have you. Some families have lost a mother like that, and we've had to scramble to find somebody to nurse some new babies.”

“Odd, she can be queen of it all, but other women can have no authority.”

“Some of us thought it was what you might call peculiar.”

“Well, it will keep until I return. A question, Runner.”

“Yes, ma'am?”

“How do you think the gangers would react to losing their queen. Say she just up and disappeared. Along with her child.”

“They've got one or two ganger men might try to hold their camp together,” he said thoughtfully. “Don't think they could do it, though. Only reason she can is the story. None of the others are much connected to the story.”

“The Abasio the Cat story, you mean? Her connection with the hero of the war at the Place of Power?”

“That's the one,” he said thoughtfully. “The story gives her a little . . . a little reputation. Now, the big man, if he's as big a talker as he is in body, he could maybe hold on to most of the men. If he's not a talker, probably not. Not if they could get away without his seeing. Or maybe not if they could kill him.”

“You mean he might hold them through fear! Yes, possibly he could. But you haven't heard him talk?”

“No, ma'am. Far's I know, nobody has.”

“In future, Runner, why don't you call me ‘Presh.' That's what my friends do.”

She placed her hand on his shoulder, and he bowed—­only very briefly—­but when he raised his head she was gone. “Ouishuc,” he said once more. The horse snorted, agreeing with him.

Ul xaolat
now contained the new wagon location, close enough for Precious Wind to reach it in one jump. She returned just as Xulai was setting the kettle above a very small and virtually smokeless fire. Before tucking the device away, Precious Wind used it to cut a narrow cylindrical hole through the forest, an aerial tunnel through treetops, invisible from any direction except directly through it to the camp below. While the three adults fed themselves and the little ones, they kept an intermittent watch. By midmorning, most of the ganger troop was moving back to the east along the road, the queen's towering “advisor” shambling beside the queen's wagon. A score or so of the gangers remained behind, all of them armed with various edged weapons.

Xulai had watched the departure with a strange expression on her face. Catching Precious Wind's glance, she flushed. “Ogre-­human crossbreeds. Assuming there are such things, that's one of them, down there.”

“Ah,” said Precious Wind. “Of course. It raises some interesting questions, doesn't it? Was the creature told to offer its ser­vices to Sybbis? Or was it simply left where she could see it and acquire it? Or did she buy it from someone? And do you think Sybbis knows who or what it is? And how can she ignore the smell?”

Xulai considered the matter. “As to the smell, it may be no worse than the stench that was common in the city of Fantis. According to Abasio, they had no systems for disposing of dead animals or human waste or any kind of filth. All of it was simply dumped in the alleys, on the streets, in piles—­including any bodies, animal or human, that had accumulated. According to Abasio, the city reeked, but after a while ­people didn't notice it anymore. So Sybbis and her gangers may not notice it as much as someone would who has always breathed the clean air of the desert. As we mentioned, she doesn't think about things very much.”

Precious Wind accepted a cup of tea and breathed in the fragrant steam. The thought of breathing stink all day, every day and night, made her feel ill. “If someone could get to her with a different set of . . . I can't say ‘ethics.' Gangers have no ethics. Priorities, perhaps? With different priorities, she might be quite useful, but the ganger priority is the only one she has.”

“That being
‘Take what you want.'
And
‘Me first
.
' ”

“That sums it up very nicely, yes.” Precious Wind glanced around them at the campsite. “If we clean this place up quickly I can probably move most of those guards by afternoon.”

They drowned the little fire and buried the ashes, carefully erasing all evidence of their presence including footprints. Precious Wind jumped them back into the woods behind the Artemisian camp. Leaving Kim and Xulai with the wagon, she “cleared the area” by strolling along the south edge of the camp until she encountered the first ganger guard. “Pardon me,” she called, “can you help me?” She approached to lay a hand on his arm, and they vanished. In a very short time she returned, quite alone. She repeated this six more times, then retired into the woods, where she joined Kim and Xulai for a cup of tea.

“Are you going to move them all?” Xulai asked, who had been watching the process with something halfway between amusement and stirrings of what she thought might be conscience.

“I've moved all of them that were on this side of the camp, but I'm running out of locations to put them. I want each of them to be alone, so they won't threaten anyone in their new location . . .”

“But they're not . . . wounded or anything?”

“Of course not,” Precious Wind replied haughtily. “Any kind of wounding would be both unnecessary and incompetent. There are a dozen more of them, and I'll have to spend some time creating new destinations. You wouldn't know of a landmark that's unmistakable, would you?”

Kim offered, “The thing Abasio called the Listener, Xulai. Nothing else like that anywhere.”

“He's right,” Xulai agreed without enthusiasm. “It's not in what I'd call a convenient location, but it's huge. A kind of curling red stone—­that is, it's said to be red at sunrise. It's green most of the time, and it coils up from the ground and circles up to the north, then back toward the south, like a huge skinny ocean wave, only frozen in time.”

“Where did you see it from?”

Xulai shrugged. “We were just below the pass, weren't we, Kim? No! I remember the sign we saw right after we passed the thing. It said ‘One day to Findem Pass.' We were looking northeast. How many switchbacks from that sign, Kim?”

He turned away, counting on his fingers as she went on: “It was only visible from that one curve on the road. That near the top, the roads between switchbacks were a lot shorter.”

Xulai nodded, remembering the weird effect the thing had had on Abasio. “The thing really didn't show up very much, but it had a very odd effect on Abasio. I think we were on the third switchback from the top when we saw it.”

Precious Wind ate her breakfast while she consulted her folder of maps. Various landmarks were noted, as were the roads used by the king's tax-­hogs. She counted three down from the top, examined that stretch of road, then took
ul xaolat
and vanished once more, intending to start from the place their wagon had been this morning.

Several Artemisian men from Arakny's camp filtered into the wagon clearing shortly thereafter.

“My name's Deer Runner, ma'am,” announced their spokesman. “Your friend spoke to Arakny, and she sent us just in case any of Sybbis's guards wander anywhere near your wagon. If you don't mind, ma'am, I'll just stay here with you.”

Xulai didn't mind. “What're Sybbis's men doing?”

“Oh, they're standing around the northern two-­thirds of our camp, looking bored and hungry.”

“They don't seem to know that a third of them are gone,” said Kim. “No one has ever told them how to organize themselves, and they don't know. Their queen didn't leave any one person in command of them. How do they respond to problems?”

“They probably don't respond to problems, ma'am. I would imagine they often encounter a bad problem they didn't see coming . . .”

“ . . . or live long enough to see it depart . . .” suggested Precious Wind.

Xulai poured a cup of tea and handed it to Deer Runner. “Tell us about Catland. Everything you know . . . or suspect.”

Deer Runner accepted the cup of tea and relaxed, leaning against the wagon. “Well, when the Catlanders got here, it was Midsummer and they started out with a camp. Most of 'em had tents. When they noticed that most of our buildings are 'dobe, some of 'em learned how to make 'dobe. Sybbis told 'em to build a wall around the camp. They built the wall and spent some time putting pictures on it. That was very bad problem number one because by the time they had enough bricks made and dried to build that wall, fall had come and it was turning cold. About then, maybe, they realized they should have built houses instead of a wall.” He sipped at his tea, shaking his head.

“So, they had a very chilly winter. Soon as it got warm enough for 'em to make brick again, they built some shelters. They needed clay and they needed straw to make more bricks; they had to bring the clay and straw to them or go to where it was, so they tried to steal some wagons. They ended up with arrows through them, so they decided to set up their brickwork place where the clay was and buy wagonloads of straw.

“First thing they built was a house for Sybbis, and they had a look at the men's houses at Wide Mountain and built some bad copies of those for the men t'sleep in. We suggested they should build a cookhouse. We even offered to show them how, but they said they could see how. Since they couldn't see the foundations, they really didn't see how they were built. Their houses had no foundations under 'em. That was another bad problem. Once it came to snow, the bottoms of the walls got soggy. 'Dobe'll do that, and the walls started caving in. You need to put rocks where the walls are going to go, and you need to slope the ground on the outside away from the wall and ditch it—­‘landscape it' is what Arakny calls it—­so the water drains away. And you need to slope your roofs so the water runs off of them on the downhill side so water drains away.