Skeen's Leap (10 page)

Skeen came over and stood looking down at Telka. After a minute, she took out the darter, held it up. “Put your finger here if you need to shoot. I've got some things to do before we leave; among other things I want another look at the Gate.”

“Be careful of the Hunger.”

“How?”

“Well … I don't know. Stories say you feel it when you come through, that it is always more dangerous when the Gate is closed.”

“Why?”

“I don't know, something about the Gate, I suppose. The Wall shines more, it feels different, or so the stories go. Min keep away. Too close and we get called in and eaten.”

“Hm. Let me think about that a while. Oh yes, how long is the Wall?”

“It makes a square around the Hunger, a side is somewhere around four days' ride.”

“Four days. If Telka looks like coming out of it, dart her twice. And you could be filling the waterskins while you wait.” She caught up a bulky bundle resting beside the limp skins. “I'll be back in a little.”

Skeen toed over a flat section of shale, part of the tumbled rock piled against the posts. She dropped to her knees and began shifting stones, smiled when she uncovered a neat hollow lined with dried grasses and bits of fur. Some small rodent was about to lose its home. Maybe had already lost it, the place smelled old and musty. She undid the bundle and began tucking away the rings, broaches, necklets and other items from the Min, adding some of the smaller items she'd picked up in the Poet's house, as much as she could fit into the hollow. She set the stones back in place as carefully as she could, scraped up a handful of dust and scattered it over the pile, got to her feet, and looked over her work. She couldn't see any signs of tampering; that didn't reassure her much, these rural types were quick to pick up on the smallest hints. She took her boot knife and scratched obscenities from a dozen languages onto the stone of that left-hand post, then threw a minor fit, kicking at the stone piles, gouging up clumps of grass and kicking these over the stone, having herself a fine and furious tantrum that not only eased her anger and frustration, but provided an adequate explanation for the disturbance of the stones. She stood back, hands on hips. “Djabo bless,” she said. “You might even be there when I get back.” She caught up the swords and capes and the heavier items from the Poet's house and stood holding the loose bundle, wondering how she could hide the things so the Min wouldn't find them.

She rewrapped the bundle, tied it shut with the increasingly raveled silk strips and started walking slowly back to the fountain glade. Werebeast noses would track her if she left the patch she'd beaten into the soft soil going back and forth between the Gate glade and the Fountain glade. A limb arched low over that path. Leaves brushed against her face. She stopped, blinked. “I see,” she said. She slipped her arm under one of the strips, jumped, caught hold of the limb and pulled herself up onto it, then ran along it to the trunk. That trunk split into six smaller ones, with a dark and rather smelly hollow between them; smells wouldn't hurt anything, and she hoped to be back before the damp was too damaging. She eased the bundle into the hollow, moved back out along the broad limb. Even before she reached the path, she could no longer see the things. She swung down and went on to the fountain glade.

Timka was sitting on the basin lip, the darter in her lap. Telka was curled up on the grass in a slightly different position. “She started waking,” Timka said. “I put half a dozen darts in her.”

Skeen took the darter, slipped it into the holster, snapped the flap down. “That won't kill her. Won't do her much good. She'll wake with a sore head, that's all.”

“Well I know,” Timka said, rubbed at her temple. “How long will she be out?”

“Five, six hours.”

“It's something, I suppose. Too bad it's not five, six years.”

Skeen swung into the saddle. “Offer's still open,” she said. She leaned forward, then back, settling herself as comfortably as she could. “Or you can take off, go where you want, hope she chases me not you.”

Timka got to her feet, stretched, patted a yawn. “Lifefire, I'm tired.” She bent to the falling water, splashed a handful on her face, drank. She straightened, wiped her mouth. “Do you want to get rid of me that much?”

Damn right, I do, Skeen thought. Aloud, she said. “All I'm saying is it's up to you.”

Timka swung into the saddle. “I stick with you.”

“Hm. You know the land. What direction's the Lakes?”

Timka glanced at the sky, pointed. “That way.”

“Djabo's weepy eyes, so's Mintown, unless I'm turned around. You sure?”

“Yes. Oruda's ten days' ride from Dum Besar, three days by riverboat, given a good wind.”

Skeen clicked her tongue at the horse, nudged him into an easy walk, heading south. When Timka came up beside her, she said, “And from here to Oruda. How long?”

“On a straight line, a guess, maybe twelve, thirteen, fourteen days, depending on the going.”

They moved under the trees, into the growing shadow of the late afternoon, riding side by side, unhurried, Skeen thinking, Timka content to leave the planning to her.

“Direct line is out,” Skeen said.

Timka looked drowsily at her, nodded.

“Soon as she wakes, your sister will have scouts searching for us.”

Timka yawned, nodded. “Fliers,” she said.

“That complicates things. We'd have a good start on any other low tech world, but we can't outrun wings. Your sister could trace us and set up ambushes just about anywhere she wanted.”

“Told you. Should have let me use the knife.”

“Call me squeamish. How can we break out of this trap?”

Timka raised her brows. “Me?” She shook her head. “You're the Pass-Through, the fighter. I float. What happens, happens; the less fuss I make, the less pain there is.”

Skeen grimaced. “Better change your mind about coming with me. You must have kin in these mountains who'd take you in and keep you safe.”

“No.”

Silence for a long while. The sound of hooves on forest mold, of leaves rustling, a web of insect, animal and bird noises—a kind of white noise, soothing and restful. Skeen forced herself to go on worrying at the problem, her thoughts had leaden feet, didn't want to move at all. More than anything else she needed to sleep. She was in that state when mistakes were fatally easy and unusually fatal.

“The Ever-Hunger,” she said.

Timka glanced at her, startled, straightened her back. “What?”

“What is it?”

“Hungry.”

Skeen frowned, made a brushing motion as if to wipe away feeble attempts at humor. “I mean, what does it look like?”

“Don't know. Anyone who got close enough to see it got eaten.” She shivered. “Mostly it lives on deer and bear; sometimes in winter, we can feel it there … hungry, beating against the wall, reaching for us.” Again she shivered, looked sick. “It sings. You go close enough, it sings to you and you go closer and it crawls inside your head and you climb the wall. In the winter, we lose a lot of children to the Hunger.”

“Why stay then?”

“Where can we go? This is our land.”

“Hm. Given a choice you wouldn't go near the Wall, even on wings.”

“Lifefire, no!”

“Nor any other Min, even on wings?”

“You don't mean.…”

“Why not? Listen, I've got an idea. This damp, the clouds, smells like rain.”

“Before morning. It's the season. But rain won't stop the Hunger.”

“Didn't think it would. What it will do is wipe out our spoor, nose and eyes neither one any good. Give us a day loose after that and Telka will be biting her own tail because that's all she can find.”

“You don't know what you're talking about.”

“When you said it sings, you told me all I needed to know. Besides, I had a taste of that song when I came through the Gate.”

“You're not thinking of stuffing wax in our ears. A Min tried that a few generations back when her children got caught and she went after them. It didn't work.”

“No, not my idea. You're more sensitive to the thing than I am. How far is the Wall from here?”

“Oh, about a stad, maybe a little more.”

“And what's a stad?”

“The distance a horse can cover at a quick walk in one hour.”

“Sounds rather indefinite.”

“The edges blur; it's not important.”

“How close do we have to be before the Hunger gets dangerous?”

Timka scowled down at hands clenched about the reins. “Half a stad. After that, the calling … the singing … you can't break away.”

“How good are you at estimating time and distance?”

“Not bad. I'm almost afraid to ask why.”

“Hour. I'm fairly sure what that means to you isn't close to what it means to me.” She showed Timka the ring chron. “This is set to ship standard time. My hours. Up till now I haven't bothered with yours—haven't had to and it was just too much trouble. But your day is a little longer than our arbitrary ship standard, so I expect your time divisions are quite different. They usually are, planetside. So if I'm to have some general idea of what a stad is, I need your help.”

“I see … I think.”

“Right. Suppose I give you a start, then you tell me when you think we've been moving for an hour.”

“Yes, I can do that.”

“Right.” She looked at the chron, waited a few breaths. “Now.”

“Got it.”

“Good.” Skeen yawned, rubbed at the nape of her neck. “Djabo! Can you listen and count time? I need to keep talking or I'm going to fall out and it'll take a jolt of lightning to wake me.”

“Talk. It won't bother me.”

“This is something that happened to me when I was a lot younger and a whole lot rasher, before I had Picarefy—oh Tibo you baster, I hope she fries your liver.…”

“What?”

“Never mind. Habit I've got into, meaning nothing. Where was I … yes. What with one thing and another I was stranded on this crazy world, a place called Dragons Fart. Vulcanism like you wouldn't believe. What land there was changed shape day to day, mountain into swamp, swamp into desert, desert to mountain … well, it was not a place you went for fun. The south pole had the biggest hunk of land and was fairly stable, warm enough so there was some plant life. The seas were a real soup, walking on water was no miracle there, and the stink! Your nose gave out after ten minutes of breathing that air. As air goes it was reasonable stuff, but the stink would make you swear off living, it was that bad. How I don't know, but someone found out that one of the plants on the fringes of the ocean produced a juice that could be refined into one of the dandiest aphrodisiacs ever, good for all live-bearing oxygen breathers with iron-based fluid in their veins. Which made for one hell of a huge market, especially when the bosses did a little gengineering on it. You couldn't get that plant to grow anywhere else, and believe me, lots of types tried it. Which the bosses didn't mind all that much since it gave them a stranglehold on the stuff.

“A while before I got there, two refinery jocks got in a fight where one of them was killed. I heard the story in a dozen versions, no one was quite sure what actually happened. Some said it was over one of the sporting women working the barracks; some said it was because Erb was a tittuppy, acerbic type designed to provoke the worst in Dolf who was from a rabidly patriarchal world and neurotic about his masculinity, that Dolf kept riding Erb until Erb exploded; some said it was Erb's pet responsible for the nesh, that he bit a hunk out of Dolf and Dolf tried to stomp him and Erb jumped Dolf. Whatever started it, they cut each other up till it was hard to find enough pieces to pray over. When it was done, no one could find that pet.

“The beastie was a singing swamp lizard the length of your forearm, tail included. Carnivorous little worm—Erb used to feed it baby rats, always rats wherever there are men. It must have lived on garbage and rats, plenty of both around. A couple of men and a woman said they saw it scuttling about. Problem was, it grew. Oh how it grew. When it got big enough, it needed something more substantial than rats and developed a taste for biped … large live wriggling meals. It grew cunning, too, as it got bigger and bigger, never set pinky in any of the traps. Soon enough, things reached the point when either someone took out the Whistler, that's what everyone called it, or all flesh was going to have to get off-world and wait for the lizard to starve. The bossmen didn't care for that idea, they needed men down there. Androids rotted out and were a lot more expensive than your basic flesh machines, so they put a bounty on the Whistler's head and armed any fool who thought he was a great hunter. What that did was get Whistler a lot of easy meals.

“When it wasn't dining on hunter, it'd sit outside the settlement and whistle its meat. Soft and natural so not many heard it. Someone always did. Someone would go out and for all we knew walk right down Whistler's throat.

“There I was, landed in the middle and broke to my toenails. Living with a Hulk and a Snake and working in the Gummery to pay my food bill, all of us were and likely to spend the rest of our lives at it, since the pay was a hair above slave comp. When the bounty was doubled, Yamchik, that was the snake, he had a bright idea. The Hulk and me and him, we'd go hunting old Whistler. I thought it was one of his better ideas; Dragons Fart was wearing on me hard. What I didn't know was he planned to use me for bait. Come the dawn, there I was tied to a shaved fern on one of the few dry spots outside town. I did not appreciate the compliment, no way. Yamchik and the Hulk were in separate patches of bracken trying to keep leeches out of their shorts, clutching pellet rifles Yamchik had liberated from Stores. I'll say this for Yamchik, he had the hands of an artist when it came to locks. Taught me a lot, but that's nothing for now.