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“I will not ride quicker than you,” he promised.
For a moment it appeared he would not ride at all. Then one of the bearded men shouted, “Hup!” and struck the horse with something that made a popping sound, and he felt that he was being blown about by the wildest gale in the Whorl.
Abanja pulled up and looked back at him. “Another thing. This is a good horse. Yours isn’t. Yours is old, a common remount nobody wants. Your horse couldn’t gallop as fast as mine if a lion were after it.”
Shaken too hard to nod, he clutched his blanket.
“If you’re fooling me — if you really can ride, and you gallop off when you see your chance — I’ll shoot your horse. It’s not easy to bring down an animal as big as a horse with a needler, but half a dozen ought to do it. I’ll try not to hit you, but I can’t promise.”
He gasped, “You are a kind woman.”
“Don’t count on it.” After a moment she laughed. “It’s just that you may be useful. Certainly it will be useful for you to show Siyuf what you showed me. I take it women aren’t kind among your people.”
“Oh, no!” He hoped his shock showed in his face. “Our women are very kind.”
“That Aer who screamed, wasn’t that a woman? You said, her. Stand in the stirrups if you’re getting bounced.”
He tried. “Yes, a woman. A kind woman.”
“You loved her.” There was a note in Abanja’s voice he had not heard before.
“Very much. If I may say this, Mear loved Sumaire also. In the tent last night I thought about them. How stupid I was! I did not know they loved until they died.”
“Mear, was that the woman who killed the troopers?”
For the first time since his capture, Sciathan felt like laughing. “Mear is a man’s name. It was Sumaire who killed the women with guns, and they killed her.”
“Just trying to take away their weapons.”
Aer had been shot before Sumaire killed the troopers, but arguing would be worse than useless. Sciathan remained silent.
“She was your leader?” Abanja slowed her horse.
“Thank you.” He was genuinely grateful. “We do not fly like that. Each flies for himself. Sumaire was the best at gleacaiocht, the best at fighting with hands and feet. I do not know your word.”
“I saw her body,” Abanja told him, “but I didn’t measure it. I wish I had. The blonde?”
By now Sciathan was able to shake his head. “Dark hair. Like yours.”
“The little one?”
He nodded, recalling how cheerful Sumaire had always been, most cheerful when storms roared up and down the hold. When Mainframe had needed information and not excuses, it had sent Sumaire.
It would send her no more.
“Answer me!”
“I am sorry. I did not intend to be rude.” Unconsciously, Sciathan looked down the unpaved track and over the wind-scoured fields, seeking something that would render his loss bearable. “The small one, yes. Smaller than Aer.”
“But taller than you.”
He looked at Abanja in some astonishment.
“Was she smaller?”
“Yes, much.” He considered. “The top of Aer’s head came to my eyes. I think the top of Sumaire’s head would have come to Aer’s eyes, or lower. To my mouth or chin.”
“Yet she killed troopers a long cubit taller.”
“She was a fine fighter, one who taught others when she was not flying.”
Abanja looked thoughtful. “What about you? Do you know this kind of fighting? I forget the word you used?”
“Gleacaiocht. I know something, but I am not as quick and skillful as Sumaire was. Few are.”
When Abanja said nothing, he added. “We all learn it. We ca
“In that case you can’t carry food or water, can you?”
“No, only our instruments—” He had been on the point of saying “and our PMs.” He substituted, “and ourselves.”
“Have you seen our pterotroopers? Troopers with wings who fly out of the airship?”
“I have not seen these. I was told, and I have seen your airship if it is what I think.”
“You can see it now.” Abanja pointed. “That brown thing catching the sun above the housetops. Our pterotroopers carry slug guns and twenty rounds, but no rations or water. We tried field packs, but they left them behind whenever they could.”
“Yes,” Sciathan said.
“You would too, you mean. So would I, I suppose, though I’ve never flown. I doubt that our wings are much better than yours, and they may not be as good. I hadn’t thought about how you’d fight, but I should have. Do you have to break your wings if you’re forced down? You said that.”
He nodded. “We must.”
“The others didn’t. We’ve got them. Siyuf is sending a pair back to Trivigaunte for study, the blond woman’s wings and her propulsion module. Is that what you call it?”
“In the Common Tongue? Yes.”
“What about in your language?”
He shrugged. “It does not matter.”
Abanja stopped her horse and drew her weapon. “It does to you, ma
He chose the least revealing word. “The ca
“Her ca
“I do not. Shoot me and end it.”
Again; her smile surprised him. “Shoot you? I’ve hardly started on you. Who makes them?”
“Our scientists. I do not know the names.”
“You have scientists.”
“That may not be the correct term.” He had said too much, and knew it. “Makers. Mechanics. Is that not what it means?”
“Scientists,” Abanja said firmly, then changed the subject with an abruptness that startled him. “You loved Aer. Were you pla
“No, she was a Flier.”
“Fliers don’t marry? Here the holy women don’t, which seems pointless to us.”
“Marriage is so that there shall be children, new Fliers, in the next generation.” He was floundering. “I do not talk of you or, or—” He pointed. “People in the house upon this small hill. But for us, for Crew, it is for children. A Flier woman ca
“But you can marry. Are you?”
“Yes. One wife.” If he had succeeded in this, he would have been given one more at least, and perhaps as many as four; he thrust the thought aside.
“But you loved Aer. She must have been handsome when she was alive, I could see that. Did she love you?”
He nodded slowly. “When she was alive, I wondered. She did not like to say. She is dead, and I know she did.”
“I know this must mean a whole lot to you, Patera, and I really am sorry.” Chenille’s face, framed by the metal margins of the glass, was almost comically apologetic.
“Why?” Silk seated himself in the low-backed chair facing it. “Because my egg will get cold? The kitchen here will send up another if I want it, I feel sure.”
“We all got together,” Chenille drew breath, her formidable breasts heaving like capsized boats. “That’s Auk and me, and General Mint and Sandy and the other soldiers, and Spider and Patera Incus, and those sibyls. Maytera Wood and Maytera Maple, and the rest of them. I don’t remember who most of them are.”
“I doubt that it matters,” Silk told her. “What were you getting together about?”
“Everything, but especially the shooting. So much’s been — oh, hi, Hy! I’m sorry about this, truly I am, only Patera said you were finished and having breakfast.”
“Bird eat,” Oreb a
“We talked about it, but we want Patera to do it, so just Moly and her soldier.”