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She said it, as she said most things, with sincerity even though he knew it for a lie. Friendship could be pleasant, but it could also be a dangerous distraction. A boy born under the sign of the Blade did not play with the other boys of his caste, but competed against them, brawled with them, beat and were beaten by them. The masters at Tilev allowed no leisure hours in company, only study, meals and sleep, where every stolen whisper risked a slap across the snout. The brunts at least had some leeway to chat amongst themselves, but were set against each other so often and so brutally as part of their training that even then attachments were few. After his ascension, his duties as a Sheulek kept him moving from city to city, and what company he might share with a man like Nkosa was kept brief. A Sword of Sheul must always be honed and ready to strike, and personal feelings could only complicate things.
“Do you like any of these people?” he asked, gesturing toward the camp where a few humans were reluctantly gathering up their gear.
She dropped her eyes as if it were a reprimand before glancing shamefacedly at her people. “I should.”
“Why?”
“Because…Christ, I don’t know.” She covered her face again, baring her teeth as if she wanted to bite something. “Okay, so I’m a horrible hypocrite and the last person who should be trying to explain this to anyone, but that doesn’t make it any less true. People need people.” She grimaced even as she said it, not in a smiling way. “What would you do if Scott convinced them you were some kind of…of raging, man-eating, bloodthirsty lizardman?”
“Kill him,” Meoraq said with a snort.
She stared at him for a moment before asking, in some exasperation, “Wouldn’t that just prove him right?”
“I might as well, since he’s already convinced them in your scenario. At least he wouldn’t be around to gloat afterwards.” He watched Scott as he moved among his people, touching them, bobbing his head, speaking lengthy and serious words, and motioning quite often back at Meoraq with the whole of his Ga
“Yeah, I know. I’m fine.”
He grunted, then pointed brusquely out at Scott (with the whole of his own hand, ha). “How long is this likely to take?”
“I don’t know. Longer than it has to, I’m pretty sure.”
“Are you prepared to travel?”
“Me?” She looked around at the crates where she had left her pack and her Nicci. “Yeah, I’m good to go.”
“Then let’s see if we can hurry them along.” He shrugged his own pack higher on his back in a meaningful way and started walking. A great outcry rose up from those humans who noticed, and it had not fully settled before Amber was hurrying to collect not only her pack and her pet human, but one of the heavy, sealed sacks her people usually used to sit upon. Its weight gave her obvious difficulty, but she heaved it up and managed a loping run back to his side. Soon all the humans were finally scraping themselves together, shouting out for him to stop, to wait, to give them a damned minute, just as if he had not given them all morning.
Meoraq listened, at once a
“Yeah, they’re coming,” she said. And looked up at him with half a smile, half a frown. “But I don’t think you made any friends.”
“In the Book of First Hours, it is written, ‘If every hand of every man reached out to you in friendship, so it would yet remain they reached from Ga
“I got…practically none of that.”
“It means I am Sheulek,” he replied, patting her companionably but safely on the unfeeling swell of her pack. “And I don’t need friends.”
* * *
Which was just as well, since he made none that day.
Meoraq knew it was no easy thing he asked of them. He had waded through the hip-deep bog of reeking water that the lowlands became in the rainy season, crossed the middle plains under the sweltering wet heat of summertime, and climbed the highland steppes when the icestorms raged so violently that his clothes were frozen to his body. He had walked both by day and by dark of night, upon whole roads and fallen roads and no roads at all, and he had done all these things with no company apart from the ravening beasts of the wild and the equally ravening men who had gone to Ga
In forming this resolution, Meoraq had perhaps failed to recognize that he was not the most forgiving of men.
No matter how many times he ordered them to stay together and be quiet, they soon drifted apart, shouting back and forth whenever they had something they wanted to say. When his words were not enough to bring them under control, Meoraq dealt out a few cuffs. Mindful of human fragility, they had been the most glancing of blows, hardly more than two-knuckle taps, and yet they yelped (and occasionally bled) and whined about it so much that he soon cried surrender and let them do what they wanted.
Before the first hour was ended, they had stretched themselves out so thinly, half of them were no longer in sight. The ones with the least to carry left the rest so entirely behind that when they came to an obstacle—which was often in this roadless wilderness—they had time to set up their camp so they could whine at each other in comfort while they waited for the others to catch up.
The whining! Great Sheul grant him patience against their constant whining! It was muddy. It was cold. They were hungry. They were tired. The only thing worse than having to hear it was knowing that tomorrow, he’d also have to hear them whine about how sore they were.
And they were going to be sore, judging from the difficulty they were having carrying their supplies. Meoraq had no sympathy. If they’d had the resources to construct crates, they should have made carts as well, but no, they built these enormous, ungainly casings and then heaved them up by their edges, since they didn’t even have grips or pole-holds or anything. Most of the day—not even half but most—was therefore spent either waiting for the crates, arguing over whose turn it was to carry them, or struggling to move them out of the mud, through the thorns, or up over some tumbled stone ridge.
And what could he do about it? Not a Ga
If he ever got there.
“Meoraq!” Scott called from the bottom of a steep rise which was giving considerable trouble to the exhausted men trying to carry a crate up it. “Come here!”
Meoraq, who had been waiting at the top of that rise for some time now, lowered his spines and did not move.
Scott was not deterred. He pointed imperiously at the crate and said, “Come get under this end.”
“Fuck your fist,” Meoraq replied, making sure to speak clearly and evenly.
“Right here,” said Scott, patting the crate-top. “Come on, you haven’t helped out once all day. Meoraq? I’m saying that right, aren’t I? Why is he just staring at me?”
And he whistled, like a cattleman after calves, with his soft little mouthparts puckered up like an anus. He was farting out of his face. Meoraq was rarely one for that sort of crude humor, but he laughed.
Scott threw up his hand and slapped it down on the crate-top, turning to his men. “I never know what the hell he’s thinking. Where’s Bierce?”
“Look, man.” This was Eric, who was not as objectionable as Scott, but as one of his servants, was still never going to be one of Meoraq’s favorite humans. “I keep telling you, it doesn’t matter how many people get under it.”
“He’s stronger than we are,” Scott said indifferently, trying once again to lure Meoraq down from the top of the rise. “He could probably carry this end by himself if he ever gets it through his thick head that’s what he’s supposed to do.”
Supposed to, no less.
“The ground is way too loose,” Eric argued. “We’d have to build some kind of support—”
Meoraq clapped a hand to the end of his snout and rubbed. Building anything to lift that crate to the top of this rise would take at least to the end of the day, if they knew what they were doing as they built it, which was doubtful, and if they bothered themselves to do anything about it today, which was even less likely.
“—and we don’t have a hammer or rope or even duct tape!” Eric finished. “We’re going to have to find another way up.”
Scott considered this, then turned back to Meoraq. “Do you have any rope?”
“Yes,” said Meoraq, thinking himself wonderfully patient. “However, there are no trees up here to act as anchor.”
“What?”
“Trees, idiot.” Meoraq mimed the tying of a knot, then opened his arms in a broad gesture of futility. “Rope does you no good without something to tie it to.”
Scott patted the crate even louder. “We’re going to tie it to this,” he explained, and rolled his eyes at his generals. “Not the sharpest pencil on the planet, is he?”
Meoraq started to speak, then abruptly flexed his spines forward and shrugged off his pack. He opened it up, dug out the coil of strong braid he kept at the bottom, and tossed it down to them. He watched while Scott instructed his servants in how to bind up the crate (it both amused and disgusted him to see that Eric followed the man’s directions only until Scott moved on, then quickly untied it and did it right), then moved aside so that they could ascend to the crown of the rise and see for themselves there was nothing to tie it to. Undaunted, Scott ordered his men in a line, like boys playing Heave-To with the crate acting as the opposing team.
Meoraq glanced at the tumble of rock at the bottom of the rise and moved a little further back. He waited.
“Everybody pull together!” Scott called, coming over to stand next to Meoraq. “One! Two! Pull!”