The Pride of Chanur

But by the gods it was not true; there were the young and the reckless who might, on a better opponent’s off day, win; there were challenges like the one shaping up against Chanur, which involved more than one against one.

And sometimes — gods — one loved them.

She slept somewhat, in the steady acceleration, in sensations so uncomfortable numbness was the best refuge; and in the confusion of jump and time, her body was persuaded it was offshift or perhaps the shift past that.

A new sensation brought her out of it, weightlessness and someone hauling her out of a drift as a light flashed. “About to make descent,” Haral said, and Pyanfar reached for a secure hold in preparation.

It was a rough descent: she expected nothing else. She had no idea of the shape of the lander, but it was not one of the winged, gliding shuttles. The lander hammered its way down after the ma

There was a time she simply shut her eyes and tried to calculate their probable position; she had, she decided, no love of riding as a passenger. Then the sound increased and the stresses changed — gods, the noise. She heard what she fervently hoped was the landing pods extending.

They were in straight descent now, a vibration of a rhythmic sort.

Touch, one pod and then the others, a jolt and a series of smaller jolts, and silence.

Pyanfar flicked her ears with the sudden feeling that she was deaf, looked about her at her shaken comrades. Down was different than before: the gimbaled passenger section had reoriented itself and the central corridor was flat and walkable. “Out,” Pyanfar said. “Let’s see where they set us down.”

Hilfy unlocked the padded safety barrier, and they went. Hydraulics operated noisily and when they had come as far as the control pit, daylight was flooding in onto the metal decking from the open lock.

The others descended. Pyanfar delayed for an instant’s courtesy, a thanks for the Rau crew who were climbing out of their pit, their ship secured. “If you come,” Pyanfar said, “well; you’re welcome in Chanur land. Or if you stay here — we’ll be bringing more passengers as quickly as we can.”

“We’ll wait,” Nerafy Rau said. “We put you close, Chanur. We’ll have the ship ready for lift; we’ll be waiting.”

“Good,” she said. That was her preference. She ducked under the conduits and swung down onto the extended ladder, scrambled down to the rocky flat where they had landed, in the generally wedge-shaped shadow of the lander. The air smelled of scorch and hot metal; the ship pinged and snapped and smoke curled up from the brush nearby.

Midday, groundtime. The shadows showed it. Pyanfar joined the others and looked where Chur pointed, to the buildings which showed on a grassy horizon: Chanur Holding; and Faha was farther still. And the mountains which hove up blue distances on their right — there lay Mahn Holding. Close indeed.

“Come on,” Pyanfar said. She had made herself dizzy with that outward gaze, and shortened her focus to the rocky stretch before her. Horizons went the wrong .way; and the colors, gods, the colors… The world had a garish brightness, a plenitude of textures; and the scents of grass and dust; and the feel of the warm wind. One could get drunk on it; one had enough of it in a hurry, and the sight filled her with a moment’s irrational panic, a slipping from one reality to the other.

“Not so far,” Hilfy panted, latest from the world. “They’ll have heard that landing. He’ll know.”

“He’s got to,” Haral agreed.

So will others, Pyanfar thought, deliberately slowing her pace. Rushing up exhausted — no; that was not the wise thing to do. Tully checked his long strides as they did; the Llun who had trailed behind them caught up. Manes were windblown, Tully’s most of all. The sun beat down with a gentle heat: autumn, Pyanfar realized, looking about her at the heavy-headed grasses, the colors of the land. Insects started up in panic, settled again.

“They’ll surely send a car,” Chur said. “If they’ve spotted us.”

“Huh,” Pyanfar said; it was her own hope. But none had showed thus far, no plume of dust, nothing of the sort. “They may,” she said, “have their hands full. No good any of them leaving, not if things are heating up.”

No one answered that. It called for nothing.

She kept walking, out to the fore of the others. Familiar ground, this. She had known it as a child. They reached a brook and waded it ankle deep, came up the other side, and by now Tully was limping — “He’s cut his foot,” Chur said, supporting him while he lifted it to examine it. “You come,”

Pyanfar said unforgivingly, and he nodded, caught his breath and kept going.

Not so far now. They joined the road that led to the gates, easier going for Tully, for all of them. Pyanfar wiped her mane from her eyes and surveyed the way ahead, where the gold stone outer walls of Chanur Holding stretched across the horizon, no defense, but a barrier to garden pests and the like — the open plains lapped up against it in grassy waves. Beyond it — more buildings of the same gold stone. There would be cars… the airport was behind them, down the road; they would have come in from there, all the interested parties and the hangers-on, save only the adventurers from the hills, from Hermitage and sanctuaries, who would come overland and skulk about the fringes; vehicles would have driven in along this road, gone through the gates, parked on the field behind the house… that was where they always put visitors.

When their uncle had fallen to Kohan—

The years rolled back and forward again, a pulse like jump, leaving her as unsettled. Homeward… with all the mindset which took things so easily, so gods-rotted eagerly.

Nature. Nature that made males useless, too high-strung to go offworld, to hold any position of responsibility beyond the estates. Nature that robbed them of sense and stability.

Or an upbringing that did.

The grillwork gates were posted wide, flung open on a hedge of russet-leaved ernafya, musky-fragrant even in autumn, that stretched toward the i

“Pyanfar.” Someone came from among the hedge, a rustling of the leaves; a male voice, deep, and she spun about, hand to her pocket, thinking of someone out of sanctuary. She stopped in mid-reach, frozen by recognition a heartbeat late — a voice she knew, a bent figure which had risen, bedraggled and disfigured.

“Khym,” she murmured. The others had stopped, a haze beyond her focus. The sight hurt: impeccable and gracious, that had been Khym; but his right ear was ripped to ribbons and his mane and beard were matted with a wound which ran from his brow to chin; his arms were laced with older wounds, his whole body a map of injuries and hurts, old and new. He sank down, squatting on the dust half within the hedge, his knees thrusting out through the rags of his breeches. He bowed his filthy head and looked up again, squinting with the swelling of his right eye.

“Tahy,” he said faintly. “She’s inside. They’ve burnt the doors down… I waited — waited for you.”

She stared down at him, dismayed, her ears hot with the witness of her crew and of the Llun — on this wreckage which had been her mate. Who had lost that name too, when he lost Mahn to their son.

“They’ve set fires in the hall,” Khym stammered, even* his voice a shadow of itself. “Chanur’s backed inside. They’re calling on na Kohan — but he won’t come out. Faha’s left him, all but — all but ker Huran; Araun’s there, still. They’ve used guns, Pyanfar, to burn the door.”