The Last Hour of Gann

BOOK IV

PIONEERS

Meoraq was a warrior and had been all his life. He had been born under the Blade, raised in the training halls of Tilev, called to serve as Sheul’s own Sword in judgment. These were the ways he knew—to cut, to grapple, to conquer—and every man who ever spoke a word in his presence spoke it with respect and by his leave.

He was Uyane Meoraq, son of Rasozul, who was son of Ta’sed, son of Kuuri, and forty-three names more, every man of them a Sheulek in his own time, all the way back to Uyane Xaima, who had walked with Prophet Lashraq himself. He was the veteran of better than three hundred judgments and if Sheul willed it, he would either go on to three hundred more or retire to stand as champion of Xeqor. He was a warrior. He was not a cattle-drover.

The humans said they were ready to follow him. Yes, they said this, even on the night before, when they bedded themselves down free of sentries and of care, trusting him to keep all danger from their little camp. They said this when it pleased them to wake the following morning, most of them not only after dawn, but well after. Those with tents made no effort to strike them. Those nearest the fire were setting it alight. They all assured him they were ready and then they just sat there!

Meoraq worked his way through four humans, dragging them bodily onto their feet and setting them in a line, but when he reached for a fifth and noticed all four of his humans had drawn off into a cluster, he had to cry surrender. He bellowed it, in fact. And then he stormed off in search of Amber.

She was sitting on a crate at the edge of camp with her Nicci. Both had their packs on their laps. Amber stood when she saw him, although he noted she put her pack down, rather than shoulder the strap for travel.

“What are they waiting for?” he demanded. “Did you not tell them dawn? Where is that chattering cattle’s ass who calls himself your abbot?”

Amber’s green eyes rolled heavenward, just as any dumaq’s eyes might do if one were entertaining thoughts best not spoken aloud to a Sheulek. “Oh Scott!” she called in a curious, lilting way. “Meoraq would like a word with you.”

“A word? I’d like my hand upside his snout, if only he had one! Half the morning is gone! S’kot!” Meoraq grabbed Amber by the arm and dragged her with him as he strode ahead to meet the human hesitating toward him. “I wanted these people ready to march at dawn! Where is your obedience?”

Scott looked at Amber.

“He’s not happy about the delay,” she said.

“What delay?” asked Scott.

Meoraq drew back. “Is he serious?” he asked dangerously.

“Yes,” she sighed. “Look, Scott, he wanted us on the road first thing this morning. First thing. Like, the sun comes up and we get going.”

Scot heard this without apparent concern, certainly without apology. “Well if that’s what he wanted, he should have been ready.”

“What in Ga

“I don’t know. What are you talking about?” she asked Scott. “He’s been ready for hours. His teepee’s packed. He’s got his good, um, belts on. Or whatever he’s wearing…Are those suspenders?”

“This is a travel harness!” Meoraq snapped, clutching at one of its buckles. “And it’s a damned expensive one! I would have to sell three of you as cattle to make the cost of this harness and I can hardly see the sin of that since you have made no effort to obey me as men must do! Get your damned humans on their feet and make them ready!”

“And what was that?” Scott asked after a wary moment.

“Your guess is as good as mine, but it’s a safe bet that it’s got something to do with all this standing around.”

“Fine.” Scott turned boldly away from Meoraq and addressed Amber alone, folding his arms as though he wore a pair of blades upon them. “Tell him that if he wanted us to start early, he should have had our food ready on time.”

“I should have what?” Meoraq hissed.

“Are you high?” Amber asked, and while it was impossible to read either her malleable face or her tone, both were clearly touched by some sort of emotion. “He’s not ru

“He does if he wants us to follow him anywhere. I like this camp exactly where it is, Miss Bierce. We have the high ground here, we’re in easy reach of water, we have the herds—”

“This is not your decision, human!” Meoraq snapped. He could feel his throat warming in pulses. His color was coming in. He made an effort to take deep breaths.

“What herds?” Amber asked. “The saoqs are hours away these days and you have no guarantee that they’re coming back.”

“Deer don’t migrate, Miss Bierce.”

“These aren’t deer, you dumb dick! Stop acting like this is Earth!”

Meoraq terminated her further words with a silencing grip on her shoulder. “Enough. Speak my words, human. Do not speak for me. I am Sheulek.”

She shut her mouth and waited, glaring at Scott who made a point of gazing loftily back at all his lounging people as he said, “If you want to go, go. No one’s stopping you. But you are going to have to give me some incentive before I uproot these people a second time. We have everything we need right here in my camp. I’m not leaving just because you say so.”

“So be it,” said Meoraq, once he was himself quite calm. “Sheul has put you in my path and until I know the reason, I accept that I must care for you. So I will make a hunt for you. But if you want to share in it, you will have to be at my camp.”

Amber relayed this, more or less, while Meoraq stood behind her and punctuated the words with hisses where necessary. “Now here’s a little something from me,” she said at the end of it. “In all this time, you haven’t done a goddamn thing except hold meetings and tell us everything is going to be okay. When Meoraq walks away, you don’t get to say that anymore. Instead, you get to tell them to pick up a spear and figure out how to use it before they starve to death. You think anyone is going to care how far they have to walk as long as they don’t have to do that?”

Scott said nothing. His face had turned a deep purplish-red color, like shadesweet fruits left too long on the vine and gone to poison. “I’ll think about it.”

“Think as long as you like,” Meoraq told him and turned to Amber, “Gather your things and whichever of your people—”

“You do and you’re out of here!” Scott shouted, grabbing at Amber’s shirt. “Don’t you dare say one word to anyone, Bierce! This is my camp! Mine!”

Meoraq had never lost his temper so entirely or so quickly in all his life. Shoving Amber aside, he seized Scott by his soft, pink throat and lifted him right off the ground. “No one interrupts a Sword of Sheul!” he bellowed. “Not abbots, not judges, not governors, and not you, you freakish little gutter-bastard! Give me your obedience or I’ll send you back to the clay that shat you out!”

Scott strangled and battered futilely at Meoraq’s arm.

“Obedience, I say! Show me your fucking fist! Tell him—” he roared, turning, but Amber was nowhere to be found. Meoraq blinked, breathing hard, looking left and right and finally down, where Amber sprawled across the wet ground, clapping one hand to her head and staring dazedly at the sky. Blood, red as those shadesweet fruits in their fullest, dappled her fingers and streaked her hair.

And his first thought, unwelcome as a cold draft blowing across a dark and empty room, was not that she was injured, but only that she was a woman lying at his feet upon her back. He saw that and somehow forgot his anger even as it continued to throb in his throat, just as he forgot the human gasping for air at the end of his fist.

But thankfully, that moment ended.

Meoraq turned all the way to her and let Scott go. He didn’t mean to throw him, but he wasn’t careful either, and Scott crashed into a wooden crate and slid gasping to the ground. Meoraq was on one knee in the next instant, chasing her hand away to probe through the springy, matted mass of her hair.

The damage he found was little more than a scrape, neither deep nor wide. It bled, as head wounds were apt to do, but Amber did not give any kind of cry when he nudged at it. She pulled irritably out of his reach instead, saying, “I’m fine, damn it! You pushed me in the mud, not off a cliff! Christ, these pants were clean just, uh…I guess it was a week ago, but still! Damn it, Meoraq!”

“You’re bleeding.”

“I’m what?” She noticed the red smears on her fingertips and stared at them without comprehension, then touched at her head and studied the fresh daubs of blood she took away. “I didn’t hit a rock or anything,” she said, seeming puzzled but only a little troubled. “It must have been you.”

He drew back, his spines flaring forward.

“You have rough hands,” she told him. “Your…you know, your scales.”

He stared at her for a long time before slowly looking down at the faint sign of her blood, like red frost, on the side of his hand.

“There he goes,” said Amber, climbing to her feet. She was watching Scott, who had already retreated across the whole of the camp to gather his lieutenants and hiss at them. “It doesn’t look like he’s telling people to pack up and get ready, either.”

“I do not care,” said Meoraq distantly. He clenched his hand to a fist and opened it again, watching the blood shine where it was still wet and crack where it had already dried. “If it is to be Sheul’s lesson that I learn to herd cattle, so be it. I shall tether them up in a line and whip their flanks, but they will walk, by Ga

He heard a dry, fleshy, smacking sound. Amber had clapped both hands to her face and was holding them there. “You can’t talk to them like that,” she said, sighing in the same breath that she spoke, which was a clever human trick.

“Of course I can. I am Sheulek.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means I am owed all obedience.”

She sighed again. “Listen. This is…This is a social situation, okay?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means…You have to make friends with these people.”

“Eh?”

“Friends.” She cast about with her eyes, then shrugged her arms out in futility. “Friends, you know? You need them to like you.”