Jane Carver of Waar (11 page)

There was no official send off. Queenie was there, sad and quiet, but Kitten and Handsome weren’t, and neither was the chief or Blind Ghost. We trailed out of the dark, silent camp and up to the rosey light that spread across the plains and tinted the flowers of the blue-stemmed grasses the electric pink of a hooker’s hot pants.

***

Nothing happened during the day. We rode into the sun all morning, until it was right on top of us, then rode away from it all afternoon. After a while Sai started recognizing some far off mountains. “That is Shar-Vet, and that the Tooth of Zavyan. We travel homeward. Think you they mean to honor their bargain after all?”

I snorted. “You believe that, I got some Florida real estate I’d like to show you.”

“Flo-rida, Mistress?”

“It’s an Earth thing. You wouldn’t understand.”

Our escorts kept up their palsy-walsy bullshit, pointing out landmarks, translating dirty Aarurrh jokes with the few scraps of purple-guy talk they knew, piling on the food and drink and exchanging knowing looks and private jokes that Sai, who had a Dick and Jane level vocabulary in Aarurrh, couldn’t begin to understand.

I like to think that even without Queenie’s warning we might have figured out what these bozos were up to from the food thing: they were feeding us way too much. If we were going to be travelling for three days we would have run out of food on day two the way they were shoving it down our throats. They knew they’d have two less mouths to feed after tonight. But even if we’d figured it out and escaped, I’m not sure we’d have made it.

From our weeks of hunting and gathering, Sai and me knew enough of the local veggies that we wouldn’t have starved, but water was harder to find than an honest politician in Washington DC, and there were predators. We saw them in the distance a few times; vurlaks, Chevy van-sized six-legged hulks that looked like a cross between a Gila-monster and a pit bull with skin like velvet over concrete; and shikes, spindly, two-legged, four-armed tiger-monkeys with teeth too big for their heads. They hunted in packs and looked like they were distant cousins of the Aarurrh. Between those guys and a whole damn menagerie of other horrors I only heard about, Sai and I would have been lunch meat before sunrise.

We reached the outcropping of black rocks just as the sun was setting behind us in a sky like raw meat. They were a jumbled collection of natural stone towers sticking out of the top of a low hill like teeth growing from a tumor. They ranged from tree height to higher than a five story walk-up, and were split and crumbled like rotten wood. Boulder crumbs the size of Volkswagens were piled up all around their bases.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee wound us through the rocky maze to a wide clearing somewhere in the middle. There was a scorched ring of stones in the center filled with blackened wood and ash, and surrounded by sun-bleached bones. This was obviously a regular campsite.

I could see Sai scanning for the rock that looked like an uklan’s head, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding when I saw him relax. He nodded subtly off to the east and I snuck a look. One house-sized rock did kind of look like a lizard’s noggin. We spent the rest of sundown trying not to look in that direction.

Our murderous buddies made a big show of setting up the camp, building the fire, helping us with our bedrolls, and cooking up another big feast. It occurred to me that the fuckers were fattening us up, and that tomorrow night
we
were going to be the main course. Tweedledee grinned at me. “You eat good. Long trip tomorrow.”

Yeah, through his lower intestine. I suddenly knew how Hansel and Gretel felt when the wicked witch gave them the grand tour of the oven. I wasn’t hungry anymore.

Pretty soon, too soon, it was time for bed. As I lay down, an army of doubts invaded my mind. What if we’d beat Handsome and Kitten here? What if Sai had picked the wrong rock? What if I couldn’t carry Sai and jump at the same time? Panic rose. I was sure our boys would hear my heart beating, even over the crackle of the fire and the train whistle of the wind through the rocks.

It wasn’t my heart that gave me away. I forgot these guys were animals. They weren’t all experts like Blind Ghost, but they could smell fear.

“Why you scare?”

Tweedledum had been banking down the fire when he turned. He took me by surprise.

“I... Animals. I thought I heard an animal.”

He laughed, showing too many teeth. “Animal not what you need be scare.” He went back to his side of the fire, still chuckling. I let out a sigh of relief.

Sai and I lay down and waited for the perfect opportunity, though what that was supposed to be I don’t know. It was like a bad comedy. The Aarurrh were faking sleep on their side of the fire. We were faking sleep on ours, both of us waiting for the other to drop off. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. I needed to do something or I was going to scream. The perfect opportunity wasn’t coming. I’d have to make an imperfect opportunity.

I rolled a little toward Sai. “Go pee.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Go piss, dammit! Then wait for me.”

“Ah, a ruse. I understand.”

An Aarurrh head raised. Damn animal hearing. Sai stood up. The Aarurrh were on their knees instantly, grabbing for weapons. Tweedledee barked. “What?”

Sai motioned to the dark beyond our low fire and said the Aarurrh equivalent of “I gotta go drain the lizard.”

Tweedledee and Tweedledum exchanged a look, then waved him off. He wasn’t the one they were worried about. He shuffled off. The Aarurrh didn’t lie down again, but after a bit they tucked their legs under themselves and set down their weapons, talking quietly. I figured that was as good a chance as I was going to get.

I rolled onto my stomach and gradually got into a pushup position, pointed directly where Sai had disappeared. I prayed that the fire between me and the Aarurrh was hiding some of what I was doing. My heart was pounding like the subwoofers on a cholo’s Chevy. Now or never. I pushed up, got a leg under me and launched like a sprinter coming off the blocks.

Tweedledee and Tweedledum yelped. I could hear them clattering to their feet. I didn’t look back.

I landed fifteen feet from my launch point. Sai was tucked behind a rock the size of a toll booth. A spear whizzed by my shoulder and chipped sparks off a rock wall beside me. The heavy thud of paws shook the ground.

I flinched to Sai’s side. “Come on, fancy boy! Mount up!”

Yeah, okay, I’d fantasized about saying that to him before, but in slightly different circumstances. He hopped on my back and I leaped for the stars. I didn’t make it.

That first leap wasn’t so good. I didn’t adjust for Sai’s weight, and ended up tripping on a refrigerator-sized rock I meant to go over. Luckily we crashed down into the shadows on the far side and the Aarurrh thundered past.

I got up with bleeding scrapes all down my left arm and hip. Sai didn’t have a scratch on him, the fucker. I’d broken his fall.

The Aarurrh spotted us again as soon as I made my next leap, but I had the balance down this time and stuck my landing, a rock ledge higher than they could reach. They tossed their spears, but I jumped away and hopped from rock to rock like a mountain goat, staying off the ground entirely as Sai shouted directions in my ear.

Tweedledee and Tweedledum tried to keep me in sight, but the monoliths were a maze. They had to swing around huge blocks and double back from dead ends that I floated over.

Now I knew why Queenie had told us to wait until we got here to make our escape. This was the perfect place for someone who could leap to get away from someone who could run. On the plains the Aarurrh’s bolos would have brought me down before I got a hundred yards. Here I lost them in seconds. Suckers.

I touched down by the uklan’s head and looked around, nervous. All this was going to be for nothing if the kids weren’t here to do their part.

We heard footfalls behind us and spun, terrified that it was Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Kitten and Handsome came out of the Uklan’s shadow.

Handsome motioned to us. “Hurry!”

We ran to them. They hauled us onto their backs and started galloping hell-for-leather down the hill toward the moonlit plains. Behind us we heard the frustrated howls of Tweedles Dee and Dum echoing from inside the maze of rocks.

We didn’t stop running until daylight. I drifted in and out of sleep on Handsome’s back and I’m pretty sure Sai did the same on Kitten’s. I had a dream where I was back on the Greyhound my first time running away, trying to get comfortable lying against the window with the metal frame vibrating against my forehead and the skanky guy in the seat next to me breathing tuna salad all over me as he told me how he’d personally killed Pol Pot back in Nam.

I woke up feeling a slightly seasick when I felt Handsome slowing down. My head had been bumping against a buckle on one of his sword straps. Not exactly where I wanted to wake up, but better than that Greyhound.

The landscape had changed. It was hillier and lusher. There were twisty little bushes with dusty blue leaves, and tall aspen-like things that I thought were trees until I got closer and saw that they were more like giant, stretched-out pine cones.

We stopped at a stream and Handsome and Kitten gulped down water, sides heaving. Sai and I dismounted and had a drink and a splash ourselves. When the kids caught their breath they lead us up a path to a pass between hills that looked over a fertile river valley.

Handsome waved a paw. “Tae land. You safe there.”

It was a landscape painting on acid. A patchwork quilt of fields straight out of a Jolly Green Giant commercial, except with purple plants, pink and safety-orange bushes, crayon-red dirt roads, a glint of river between bushy trees with black leaves, clusters of little six-sided huts, and far off in the distance a bulky castle, sandstone orange, all under a Pepsi-blue sky. It hurt my eyes.

Handsome turned to me. “Sorry you must run, back then. I want to kill Aarurrh men, but chief can’t know we help you.”

“Isn’t he gonna guess? How are you gonna explain being missing from camp?”

Handsome and Kitten exchanged a sly glance. Handsome grinned and said an Aarurrh word I didn’t understand. I frowned and turned to Sai. He looked embarrassed.

“Er... honeymoon.”

I laughed and grinned back at Handsome. I swear he and Kitten were blushing under their fur.

After that we had a little food. Then the kids gave us some lovely parting gifts. Handsome undid his pack and took out the battle gear I’d worn in my fight with One-Eye. He’d even gone to the trouble of banging out the dent in the shin guard. Before I could thank him he’d unslung one of his swords and handed it to me, hilt first. “You have sharp eye. Now you have sharp claw too.”

It was the sword he’d whittled down for me, but he’d smoothed out his rough hack job on the handle and wrapped it with new leather braiding. It fit my hand like it was made for me.

I was embarrassed. “Aw, man, Handsome—I mean, Raohah—this is great. I don’t know what to say.”

“You do favor for I. Say nothing.”

I guess I’d solved his romance problems for him, but still.

“Well, thanks anyway. You already did plenty helping us get away and letting us ride on your backs. Now, how the hell do I wear this thing without tripping over it every five seconds?”

Sai wasn’t quite as happy with his gifts. Kitten had brought him a bunch of froofy clothes, as usual not all male, and was happily trying to help him decide which to wear.

Sai tried to be diplomatic. “Thank you, mistress Murrah. But this really isn’t necessary. Yes, very beautiful, but perhaps not practical for... Er, I’m afraid I don’t have the correct anatomy for that particular...”

Finally he gave up. “Mistress, forgive me. These clothes are much too beautiful for me to make a rash decision now. With your permission, I will take all and decide later which to keep. Clothes as fine as these should not be worn for hard travel. I will continue to wear this sturdy shift for the rest of our journey and save these treasures for some grand occasion.”

Kitten blinked. I knew just how she felt. Sometimes Sai used so many words you didn’t know what he was saying. “Take all?”

Sai bowed like a maitre’d. “If that accords with your wishes.”

Kitten giggled, sounding like a cat trying to swallow a fish bone sideways, and gave him a goodbye hug that made him squeak. I offered Handsome my hand. He’d never seen the gesture before, but got the hang of it when I took his paw and shook it. He shook back and nearly ripped my arm off.

Finally Sai and I waved goodbye and trudged down the path toward the psychedelic farmland as Handsome and Kitten started heading back to the plains, with plenty of “honeymoon” stops along the way, I’m guessing.

CHAPTER TEN

CIVILIZATION!

W
e were halfway down the hill before Sai remembered what I looked like. After so much time together wearing nothing but dirty loincloths he’d started taking me for granted. Now with civilization only a mile away, it occurred to him that he was walking with a giant, half-naked pink chick whose boobs were peeking out from under her armor.

He stopped. “Mistress Jae-En, er...”

“What’s up?”

“Er, below us are the lands of my people. Civilized lands. You cannot... ’Tisn’t proper for you to... We must make you decent.”

He started digging through Kitten’s scraps, looking for something that fit. The only thing that came close was a flimsy, green peignoir kind of thing that must have originally been worn by the Waar version of the half ton German soprano. It hung around my waist like a muumuu and didn’t make it all the way to my knees.

“I ain’t wearin’ this. I look like Sophie Tucker.”

“Mistress, once we are among friends, I will find you more suitable raiment, but until then naught else will cover your... your...” He motioned helplessly at my height and general hugeness.

I smirked. “Go on silver-tongue, see if you can end that sentence without me clobberin’ you.”

“Er, your... statuesque proportions.”