Skeen's Return (28 page)

Timka rubbed at her forehead. “Not so bad as it might be, I see what Triff meant; if what she told you is accurate, they're related to the tattolins all right, but not nearly so murderous. Bad enough, though.” She faced Maggí. “There it is. With Telka trying to set up a Tatt-Habor in the mountains, it's not odd she heard of Sea Min gunja and she's probably been exchanging messengers with them for some time now. No problem, then, setting up an ambush for us. Most likely the gunja were delighted to go after a real enemy for once. Reminds me, Chul, did Triff give you any notion how many fighters in a gunja cell?”

His crimson tripartite eyes flickered as he searched his memories. “She said they were supposed to have two score to each cell … aaah … she said the rest of the Sea Min liked them only a little better than they did her; that was why she spent more time with the gunja than she did with the others, that and their shuping poetry contests. She said they were having a hard time getting boys to join them. Thing is, Ti, I heard this more than ten years ago and Triffakezaram was telling things that happened to her more than fifty before that. What it's like down there now.…” He shook his head, antennas twitching. “I haven't a guess.”

Maggí made an impatient sound. “Two score,” she said. “Better than I hoped what's a Pochiparn?”

“Sorry, I forgot.” Chulji pulled himself into a more compact form, shivered all over. “Gunja pets, sort of. They use them to attack ships or … or forts, things like that. Triff said that was part of novice training. They were supposed to go out and get a baby Poch for their cadre. Yes, yes, I know, what's it like? Aaah … sort of like a combination between a rabid wolf and a wounded shark with a dozen arms, each one of them longer than this ship. Once it's turned loose it eats or pulls apart everything it can get its suckers on. Triff said the older and bigger it got, the nastier its temper got. Not something you'd want to face on a calm sea where you can't run for the horizon. It's pretty fast, Triff said, but a ship with a good following wind can lose it. So they come at you when it's calm or quartering the wind and swimming down deep where you can't see them. Aaah, a Pochiparn's an air breather, it has to surface every half hour or so. You couldn't see the blow from a ship, even the mainmast, but Timka and me flying watch, we're bound to spot it. We'll most likely be able to give you at least a ten minute warning—they wouldn't blow closer than that to the ship—and the direction it's coming from.”

“Lovely,” Maggí said. “Skeen, Petro, any ideas?”

“Submarine warfare.” Skeen grimaced. “Give us a while to talk things out and see what we have to work with.”

Lipitero tapped a fingerclaw against the bowl of her glass, a sharp little sound that pulled eyes around to her. “How long are we likely to have for getting ready?”

“They'll want deep water,” Maggí said thoughtfully. “One day, a day and a half at most, though that might be stretching it some.”

“Not very long.”

“No. Ti, you and Chul take a look at the deck passengers, will you? I want to know how much I should worry about them. Hal, stay with me a moment, I want to talk to you about what you'll be doing in this melee to come. All of you, I'm rolling the dice and counting on you to weight the throw in my favor.”

Skeen set the darter on the table, laid the little cutter beside it. “And a pair of boot knives.” She was talking to herself, the cabin was empty; Lipitero was down in the forward hold digging among her gear for whatever it was she had there; she'd been mute since they left Maggí. She touched the darter, sighed. “I suppose I'd better let Pegwai use you. Left-handed I can't hit a horse more than a bodylength off. Wrong sighting eye, and I can't seem to change or compensate. Mala Fortuna, you owe me.” She kicked a chair away from the table, sat and waited.

Lipitero came in with a long leather case, set it beside the second chair and settled herself at the little table under the window. “The Mate and some of the crew are breaking out crossbows and enough bolts to thistle a dozen cells of gunja.” She reached out, touched the darter. “An interesting weapon. Does it work on Min? They throw off poisons so easily.”

“You keep darting them until they're too dazed to shift.” Skeen nudged the cutter with her forefinger. “And a pair of boot knives,” she repeated, this time to a hearer other than the walls. She pushed the metal cylinder about some more, glancing at Lipitero and away.

Lipitero tapped a clawnail against her chest. Through the silk of her robe came a faint tink of metal. “The hover field's batteries are powered up; I've got an hour's lift without glide, five hours with. I have a short-range, short time stunner, you remember, the one I used on Angelsin. Not much use in these circumstances because the range can't be increased. There's a short-range cutter too, mounted on a swivel; reach—one body length.” She flattened her hands on the table, the claws out like crystal scimitars, delicately drawn against the dark wood. “We're talkers and evaders, we Ykx,” she murmured. “We watch and we tease apart the strands of motive and we jerk on them to our advantage. We only fight when we can't run; we've surprised more than a few who pushed us into corners. Used to be that seldom happened, here or on the other side. Coraish Gather went lazy and careless. Coraish Gather is dead and Sydo Gather is facing extinction. It's this world, I think. There's something about it that perverts our energies.…” She drew her claws along the table top, cutting fine grooves in the tough wood. “That interferes with our fertility. Not just ours. You've seen how empty Mistommerk is; it should have folk three deep by now with all the Waves trying to outbreed and annihilate each other. But that hasn't happened. I was talking to Chulji a while back, one of those days when he came in to keep me company.” Her eyes flickered about the room, opening and closing, shifting right to left; it made Skeert dizzy to watch her. “The last hatching in his Skirrik family, seven out of the ten eggs didn't.” She made a soft sad little sound, half a sigh, half a moan. “He said the Old Ones have been working at it. They think it's something subtle, probably a complicated synergism.” She laced her fingers and rested her hands under the spring of her ribs. “If you want to know why I'm blathering like this, I might be an anomaly but I'm enough like the rest to find this …” her lips curled into a tight smile, “… to feel a twist in my gut, when I contemplate what I'm going to be doing with this.” She bent to the side, caught hold of the leather case she'd brought with her. Long, narrow, heavy from the way she handled it. She set it on the table, traced a complex curve on a square set in the side; when it cracked open, she lifted the lid. Skeen came round the table to look over her shoulder. In the case was a black cube whose sides were so smooth they made dark mirrors, night itself compressed into six squares. A cylinder machined to a like perfection projected from one side, a little longer than Skeen's forearm; pewter gray lines curved through the black, might have been elegant decoration or powerlines; with Ykx artifacts it was hard to tell which was art and what artifice.

“Impressive,” she said. “What does it do?”

“It eats mountains.”

“Huh, tell me another.”

“Seriously. You've seen Coraish. Ask yourself how we made it.” Lipitero pushed her chair back, got to her feet, twisting aside to avoid Skeen. When she spoke again, her voice had a gentle remoteness that lifted the hairs along Skeen's spine; it was too much like the voice of the Mala. “You can set the beam any length you want up to a hundred meters. You can change the shape of the beam, make it a broad blade and slice out blocks of stone, you can narrow it and carve fine detail, you can bend the end into a scoop and stir it around, churning stone into a fine slurry. Visualize it, Skeen, see what this thing will do when you use it against flesh instead of stone.” She shivered. “You want a closer look?”

Skeen touched a side of the cube. It felt soft like fine silk. “I won't trigger it by accident?”

“No.”

Slipping her single hand under the cube, Skeen tried lifting it. The weight astonished her. “You can't glide with this.”

“No. I can manage about ten meters at full press of the hover field.” Skeen turned her head; Lipitero's voice was chill, expressionless, her scarred face full of misery. “I have been thinking,” Lipitero said. “When Ti or Chulji spots the Pochiparn, I will manage it to that observation platform on the mainmast. As soon as the beast gets close enough, I can cut it into collops before it knows it's dead.” She closed her eyes. “And most likely slice a few Sea Min with it.” She shuddered, opened her eyes, a forced smile tightening her mouth. “Discourage them, don't you think?”

“They have objections, they should mind their own business.” Skeen tried once again to lift the excavator. “With two hands, maybe.” She moved away from the table, stood cuddling her stump. “You're stronger than you look.”

“I have to be, don't I.”

Day on day on day the ship crept across a seething sea, a sea that hummed and hissed against the sides, an empty sea; horizon to horizon beneath a coppery sky shimmering with heat, but for the ship nothing stirred, nothing, neither dolphin nor flier, not even a cloud. Day on day on day, they waited, ready for an attack which did not come.

On the ship each waited in his own way.

The passengers in the deckwell honed the edges of the halberds Maggí passed out to them, practiced throwing the short-hafted spears, loosening arm and body without releasing the wood. Grim but cheerful, they waited, talking about this and that, mostly shared memories; the women with children (especially older boys) patiently repeated old arguments; the children were to go below when the warning was given, shut but not locked into the forward hold; those older boys had their own bobtail spears and were to defend the younger ones if things went badly on deck. They wanted to stay where the excitement was, where the glory was, but their parents saw no glory in the slaughter of children and refused to hear their pleas.

Day on day on day of tension-filled fruitless watch and wait.

The Aggitj prowled along the rails, staring down into the cuprous blue-green, willing the Sea Min to appear, urgently needing release for the energy pent up in them. The Boy took little note of the passage of time or the jitters of the others on the ship, his full attention was required to soothe Ders and keep him to some semblance of sanity. The youngest of the Aggitj was a bomb waiting to explode. The Boy kept him as far away from passengers and crew as he could; Hal and Hart helped him and in this sharing were themselves helped to endure that hot endless wait.

The sky was coppery with the heat, the air sultry, thick as gelatin, thick as the tension on board the ship.

Lipitero sat quietly on the quarterdeck, her robe pulled close about her, the cased excavator by her knee. Now and then Skeen walked past her on her restless prowls about the ship. The Ykx's face was hidden by the robe's cowl, the silver fur on the back of her hands was blotched dark with sweat, patches of dampness spread under her arms and along her spine where the silk of her robe clung to her body, but she never moved. After a while, Skeen began to wonder if she'd turned to stone there, but she didn't break the Ykx's concentration to ask.

Skeen and Pegwai practiced against each other with staffs on the first day. On the second, Skeen fit the darter's holster and the lanyard to a leather strap that Pegwai could wear as a shoulder sling, then watched him practice with the darter using ice darts without the drug. Pick them off one at a time, she told him, you're good enough. You'll get more that way and the reservoir will last longer. She cut a slot in the end of her staff and set the limber resin knife into it, the deadly watercolor waterclear blade able to cut a thought in half. When it was bound in place she did no more practicing with that staff; it was too dangerous now, nothing would stop that blade, not leather, wood or even light mail. Let them come, let the bastards come, Lipitero will slice them with the excavator, I'll slice them with my bladed staff. Let them come and learn the stupidity of facing fighters they have scorned out of their ignorance, their willful ignorance. Come, Djabo curse you with warts and boils, come will you before I chew my nails off up to my elbows.

The sun rose on the fifth day, swimming in heat haze; the wind dropped until it was barely strong enough to give the ship steering way. Chulji-sea eagle labored up to soar in wide circles above the laboring ship. Timka-sea eagle spiraled wearily down, blurred into cat-weasel and loped along to the cabin she shared with Skeen and Lipitero.

Skeen sat at the window, staring out at the endless unchanging empty sea. She looked around when Timka came in, naked Pallah now, having shed her fur for Pallah hands. “Nothing yet?”

“Nothing.” Timka yawned, pulled herself into one of the top bunks and stretched out to sleep.

Skeen listened to the quiet breathing, punctuated by an occasional squeaky snore, until it became a rasp grinding her nerves raw. She went out and walked along the rail, eyes narrowed against the glare, staring at the same emptiness she'd seen from her window, until she noticed she was very much in the way as the crew labored to nurse forward speed from the fitful wind. She climbed to the quarterdeck, settled beside Lipitero and Pegwai, watching Maggí pace, read the flutter of reef points, take in the thousand implications in the condition of the ship and call out a steady stream of invective and orders, her deep voice hoarse with the exercise.

Even up here where what wind there was had a free flow, the heat was punishing. Sweat lay on her skin and rotted there, collected in her head hair and slid in streams down her face and neck. Pegwai's breathing was slow and even; he didn't sweat all that much, his folk were adapted to this sort of climate, they'd developed alternative body states to cope with changing temperatures. It slowed them down, but they stayed comfortable. She gazed at him with envy and irritation. Since she and Lipitero were drenched and miserable, it seemed decidedly unfair he should suffer so little. She scraped her hands across her face, gloomed at the oily muck she collected. “Salt water baths are an abomination.”