The Enemy of My Enemy (10 page)

There was a woman here, too, and her garments had been made of richer stuff yet … by the fragments of them that lay about … by the blood-stiff fragments of them. And onward a ways was another woman, an older one, but her age availed her nothing. And last of all, fallen with his back towards the woman whose flight he had futilly defended, was the man: presumably husband and son, or son-in-law. Evidently they had started to flay him alive with sharp shells, but interest had flagged — perhaps when he was dead, perhaps only some time afterward. Behind them, as the men of the levy passed backward and forward, first cursing, then grim, they saw the trail of things so hastily snatched up … and doubtless even more hastily dropped as pursuit grew fierce and hot. A garment. A blanket. A bag of food. Things never put to use, except, of course, to help track them down.

Then there was a cry like a groan. Someone pointed. Someone winced. Someone turned away. Someone hissed in bared teeth.

A toy.

It was harder finding the child, he had been hidden well, and evidently, whether obedient to a half-understood command, or understanding nothing but being too tired, or (it could have been) too frightened to cry, still — whatever — evidently the child had not been found till long, long after his family, fleeing away from him in purposeful intention of drawing off the pursuers, had been found. Perhaps might not have been found at all, were it not for the toy, key to the questing Volanth as well as, now, to the Tarnisi.

The levy-lord’s voice was deceptively low and thin. “The boy’s blood hasn’t quite dried yet,” he said. “The apes may not have reached their holes yet. Let’s — ”

Cominthal’s voice cut in. “We’ll bury them, I must hope,” he said, not so much asking as threatening. “They deserve that, even though only lacklanders.”

“We don’t know what or who — ”

“They were lacklanders! Who doesn’t know that landed folk never need live near Volanth!”

The levy-lord made a swift gesture. Five men — less would have been in danger — were detailed to attend to the quick sepulture; the rest skimmed on. And on. And on. The line changed formation often, according to the terrain and possible traces seen; during one such maneuver Tonorosant came close enough to Hob Tellecest for them to exchange glances. The latter was first to look away; he was pale, and his face twitched. It was doubtful that he had had the prophylactic experience of growing up in Pemath Old Port. And then the hundred spread out into wings again and Tonorosant lost sight of him. He found that he pitied the younger man: Surely it was not for this that he had parted with his own likeness, his own past folded up and laid on the shelf like a garment. No one, in foreign parts, dreaming envious dreams of Tarnis the rich, romance, would have ever included any of this in his fancy, in his visions.

They found the burnt-out shell of the house the dead had fled from while still quick. All the animals had been butchered, not skillfully, and the stench of them lay heavy upon the bitter smell of the burning, like the stench of rotten fish. Here the murdered man had lived in some small state, checking on the coming and going of the aborigines, administering the dilute law of the marches. Listening to his wife’s, his mother’s complaints, playing, probably, certainly, with his child. Half-glad, no doubt, of having to keep up no pretense; half — no: more, assuredly, much more than merely half-bitter at having no such true state as would need no pretense. A life less rich than any in the settled lands below led, but perhaps not much if at all a less honest one; certainly a more useful one.

At any rate, at least a placid life. Conceive, then, the sudden terror, the sort that first swells — then wrenches — then freezes the heart, when the world split open and the fire leaped out. The frantic grabbings-up of this and that, the dash for life, the searing decision to conceal the child and flee away from him in hopes of perhaps returning shortly, or — if the naked face of truth dared even then be looked upon — the knowledge that they would never see him again, only the hope that rescue might be for him at least in time … which it was not … .

• • •

The sunset sky had turned palest, dimmest yellow when they reached the beginnings of the trees, the heavy and twisted trunks from which the resinous gums were extracted, the leaner ones which produced the exquisite fruits, the straight and tall-timber trees; and there on the skyline lay Compound Ten, their destination. Here the Pemathi clerks came in season to trade and purchase, tally taxes, assemble and pack commodities, and all the other detailed things which their employers found so boring.

But before they could more than notice, fleetingly, another hundred skimming down in the distance, making for the rude comfort which lay within the compound’s walls, a man toppled from his float and fell, turning, to the ground. He had fallen silently; the next one cried out, the third struggled for balance as he screamed; then all crouched and sought for altitude and now the noise was all from below and two of the masterless craft crashed in gouts of steam and one smashed into another just behind it and the Volanth bayed and howled and leaped as though they had chance to catch those making the swift-flying shadows —

And still their stones thudded and flew, thicker than the flight of startled birds which added their cries to the confusion.

Confusion, though, not for long; for now the floats rallied, they wheeled and swooped, fire-charges cracked and crackled and fumed, the grasses burst into flame. Tonorosant saw the tangle-haired- and snaggle-beard-framed faces, the mouths distended with inarticulate shoutings and wordless hootings, the long hairy arms scooping low and coming up and flinging, so fast, so swift, they seemed almost to whirl … . He could smell the filthy, bitter, raw, male-musty animal smell of them; smell as (it seemed) alive with brute rage as the sound of them. He swiveled, sighted, fired his charge, saw face blacken, thought of the blackened body of the Volanth woman in the swamp; swerved and went up and went away, they all went up and away, the howling was feebler and fewer there below and behind them in the burning grass as the levy-hundred sped at top speed for the shelter of Compound Ten —

And, he saw, in the waning, lemon-pale light, there were fewer in the sky, now, as well.

He had a sudden flaring-up fear, but neither then nor later, nor later yet at the levy-muster within the compound grounds, did he see anything nor did he hear anything of his so newly-found, so briefly-held, so little-known friend (but only then and at first and at last realizing him for a friend: too late), the “returned exile,” Hob Tellecest.

Too late. Too late. Too late.

And, early as they were all up and out that next morning, and quickly as they found him: still too late. Forever too late.

“If we were to wash them with soap for a thousand years,” one grizzle-haired lord declared, “they would still be filthy. If we were to teach them and teach them for a thousand years, they would still be ignorant. We have tried to give them a civilized example for a thousand years … and they still do — this,” he pointed with his chin.

Tonorosant had hoped that Tellecest might have been dead before the Volanth took him. This hope had pressed against his heart, as he came up to the group around the body, till it seemed it would force the heart out through the throat. That hope died as soon as he saw the face. There wasn’t much of it left, but it was impossible to look at it and not believe that every single inflicted outrage and agony had been received in full consciousness. What had the young man and young mind inside that riven skin fled from, that could have been a tiny fraction as bad as this? And to this, then, to
this
— pulpy, bloody flesh, cracked and protruding bones, shredded by tooth and claw and sharpened stick and stone — had come the glorious dreams of Tarnis. What price, then, the Craftsmen’s price, compared to this price?

As though reading, though not successfully, his present thoughts, Cominthal repeated his question of the day before. “What do you think of all this,
now
?” he asked.

The grizzle-haired lord interposed. “What should be thought by anyone?” he asked. “Only that the thing which does this must be wiped out before it does it again. Cover that — cover and place it in the decent earth, my mother’s kin, lest the skies, seeing it, fall down upon us all in outrage and in wrath … . And then — to work. All of us. To work.”

“Work,” of course, was planning the campaign. It did seem to Tonorosant, though, that neither outrage nor wrath was the dominant emotion among those Tarnisi present there in wide-walled Compound Ten. “Excitement” was more like the just word, much more like it. He wondered if it were always so, in time of war. He did not know. He did suppose, though, that he would learn.

Yesterday the birds had fled, shrieking; today they perched unconcerned on trees and eaves and walls, chattering lazily to one another, now and then allowing their casual droppings to fall upon the stained ground and grass. The blood of life and all its lusts and humors had coursed through the veins of Tellecest. The alterations of his body had not altered that a bit. And now all was stopped and was forever still and all that was left in this world lay beneath the ground and grass and the wild birds of heavens let fall their filth upon it, and did not even know that it was there.

Had he, too, come here with secret, subtle plans, seeking more than just a pleasant place to hide? Did he intend something like the making and amassing of money, some day to buy his own island, too? — to share dominion over men and fields and trees with the sun and the sea, a king in minor? What had he ever done to the Volanth, that the Volanth would be justified in doing this to him? What
could
he have ever done, what could any man have ever done to any other man, that would have justified it? But none of these thoughts, of course, had the Tarnisi in common with him now, Tonorosant. They talked excitedly as the relief maps were lifted up, and in the tone and tenor of the common voice, the cast of countenance of the common face, he could find a parallel only in his recollection of the days when he and his men, down and away on the south shore of the Inner Sea of Pemath, were getting ready to go out at night to “tap” — intercept, cut, carry off — a tow of cargo. Morality had hardly been involved there, and it hardly now seemed involved here.

The levy-lord of his own hundred was named Losacamant, a small man who never seemed to smile, and who moved with an almost liquid grace of movement. In charge of the second hundred was Lord Mialagoth, he of the grizzled hair and heavy brows. The third charge-of-levy was the young and comely Lord Tilionoth, as intent upon the maps as though they were targets to cast his spears upon, but now not so self-contained, speaking to those who hovered close about him, but never taking his eyes away from the reliefs however animated his comments. Silent Pemathi upheld the great charts. One of their number, too, had been killed with great cruelty; presumably they had made their own arrangements about the body; certainly no one else had concerned himself in the matter.

“We all know how the apes act,” Lord Mialagoth was saying. “It’s their way to run wild, tear up whatever … whoever, alas, I must say … they come across — then they run and hide and gloat and work up their filthy courage for another attack. Last night some of us — your hundred, Lord Losacamant — bad luck — got the crest of the second wave. We have to move, move quickly, and hit them before they start up again. Now, here’s the terrain; can you all see?”

He pointed to the place where the house of the deputy march warden had stood, the fatal route along which the family and their servant had fled. The long, peeled withe he was using for pointer swept up along the direction to Compound Ten, paused — pale and accusing. “Here’s the ridge where the attack was made late last evening. And here
we
are.” The pointer withdrew, hovered, made an arc to the east. “Here is where we are going — the apes are thickest in this direction, and we will make a fine harvest, I must hope,” the addition of the formal, polite phrase coming somewhat oddly in the midst of the spare, direct language he was using. He went on to arrange with the two other levy-lords how the three hundreds were to be deployed, how signals and other communications, supplies, medical attention, and other essential but (to the Tarnisi) essentially boring matters were to be arranged. The arrangements consisted largely of leaving all such non-combatant duties to a Pemathi servants’ levy, as was customary.

Later, for a long time later, the events of the campaign seldom left Tonorosant’s mind. He had only to close his eyes at night to see them once again unfold, unroll, unravel, unreel. Until the time came when something screamed and seemed to batter on his mind with bloody fists, crying out,
I am not Tonorosant! I am Jerred Northi! These things did not happen to me!
I
will not think of them and I will not have them thought!
Night vision became nightmare, and the man who lay sweating and struggling, the man with two minds and two memories, dreamt that he awoke to find himself Jerred Northi and only him once more — in body as well. At this point, though with slow, dreadful difficulty, as one who extricates himself from a fearful grip, he forced himself fully, really awake. He lay there, composing his mind. It was better, he concluded — far better — to dream of undesired things which yet had been, than of things which could not be —

— yet.

The concave shells of the floats were bobbing gently as they got aboard, bright and scarlet shells, humming faintly with the great power of their incredibly small steam motors — a concession to foreign technology which no Tarnisi had ever been known to oppose.

“Keep those shields full up,” Lord Losacamant warned. “We won’t need that much speed for the wind resistance to make that much difference — in fact: too much speed, and we’ll do nothing but overshoot our marks. We haven’t come all this way to do that. This hundred will keep my words in mind, I must hope.”

Line after line, group after group, hundred after hundred mounted up to the designated altitude, then moved off in different directions to the assembly coordinates. And there they hovered, three great, long lines of them, drawn up in one great triangle. Then they dropped. Then they began to move. An observer, strategically situated, would have seen the scarlet triangle drawing in, inwards, ever in upon itself, diminishing in area. Those upon the ground probably would not have noticed the geometrical niceties of the arrangement: how the lines grew tighter as they grew shorter, the spaces between each craft forever diminishing. Those upon the ground had never heard of geometry, had probably never so much as traced a rough triangle with a stick in the rough dust. All that they saw and heard, all that they could know, was that punishment was soaring through the sky.