Страница 45 из 84
It was a man on the Caliban’s shoulders, all shadowy in the twilight, the caliban itself indistinct against the brush, and a second caliban, smaller, came after with a man sitting on that one too. The calibans stopped. Weirds materialized out of the brush around the camp, shadows in the fading colors of night’s edge, some naked and some wearing dull‑hued bits of clothes.
The man sitting on the Caliban’s neck–the first one–lifted his arm. “You’ll leave this place,” the voice came ringing out at them, speech from a Weird…and that alone was shock enough, but the caliban moved forward, light and slow as the clawed feet could set themselves on the stone, and the hillers gathered on the doorstep of the common‑hall gave backward like the intaking of a breath. There were hunters among them, but no one had brought weapons to evening meal; there were elders, but no one seemed to know what to say to this; there were children, and one of the youngest started to cry, setting off an infant, but parents hugged their faces against their shoulders and frantically hushed them.
Other calibans were around the camp, some with riders, moving ghostlike through the brush. And smaller calibans, like the witless grays. And smaller still, a handful of the village ariels came slithering out into the empty space between calibans and hall and froze there, heads up, fringes lifted, a thing peculiarly horrid, that creatures the children kept for pets should range themselves with such an invasion.
“The village is done,” the intruder said. “Time to move. Calibans are coming–tonight. More and more of them. The times change. These strangersinside the wires, these strangers that mark you to go through their gates, that take food enough from the town to get fat, they’ve got everything. And they shoot browns. That doesn’t do, no, that doesn’t do at all. There’s no more time. There’s new Patterns, across the river, there’s things no outsider ever saw, there’s a safe place I’ll bring you to, but this place…this village is going to be for the wind and the ariels tomorrow, like the domes they tell about, like those, dead and dark. The stone underfoot won’t protect you. Not now.”
“That’s Jin,”someone said under his breath, a tone of horror, and the name went whispering through the village. “That’s Jin, that was lost on riverside.”
“Jin,” a man’s voice said, and that was Jin Older, who pushed his way out in front of everyone, with tears and shock in his voice. “Jin, come down from that, come here. This is your people, Jin.”
Something hissed. Jin Older slapped at something in his neck about the time his wife pushed through the crowd to get to him; and other kin–but Jin Older fell down, and a few tried to see to him, but one broke to ran for cover–a second hissing, and that woman staggered and sprawled.
“Take what you want,” Jin shouted, pointing a rigid arm at the village about them. “What you’ll need, you gather up–But plan to leave. You thought you were safe here, built on rock. But you leave these buildings, you just leave them for the flitters and be glad. You move now. They won’t like waiting.”
And then: “ Move!” he shouted at them, because no one did, and then everyone did, a panicked scattering.
Cloud reached his own house, out of breath, and fumbled in the dark familiar corner for his bow, with only the fireplace coals to see by. He found his quiver on the peg, slung that to his shoulder and turned about again facing the door as a flurry of ru
“It’s me,” he said before they could take fright–his wife Dal, his sister Pia, his grandmother Elly and his own son Tam, eight years old. His wife hugged him; he hugged her one‑armed, and hugged his son and sister too. Tam was crying as he made to go; ma Elly put herself in his way.
“No,” Elly said. “Cloud, where are you going?”
He was afraid at the thought of shooting humans and calibans, but that was what he was off to, what was about to happen out there–what had already started, on the invaders’ side. He heard shouting, heard the hiss of calibans. Then he heard faint screams.
“Come back here.” Ma Elly clenched his shirt, pulled at him with all her might, a stout woman, the woman who had mothered him half his life. “You’ve got a family to see to, hear?”
“Ma Elly–if we don’t stop them out there together–”
“You’re not going out there. Come back here. They’ll kill you out there, and what good is that?”
His wife held him, her arms added to ma Elly’s, and young Tam held to his waist. They pulled him inside, and he lost his courage, lost all the fire that urged him to go out and die for them, because he was thinking now. Then what? ma Elly asked, and he had no answer, none. He patted his wife’s shoulder, hugged his sister. “All right,” he said.
“Gather everything,” ma Elly said, and they started at it, in the dark. Young Tam tossed a log on the hearth–“ No,”Cloud said, and pulled the boy back and raked the log out with a stick before it took light, a scattering of coals. He took the boy by the shoulders and shook him. “No light. Get all the clothes you can find. Hear?”
The boy nodded, swallowed tears and went. Cloud looked rightward, where ma Elly was down on her knees among the scattered coals wrestling with the flagstones.
He squatted down and levered it up for her with his knife, asked no question as she pulled up the leather‑wrapped books that were the treasure of Elly’s line. She hugged them to her and he helped her up while the business of packing went on around them. “Not going to live in any caliban hole,” ma Elly muttered. He heard her voice break. He had not heard Elly Flanahan cry since his mother died. “You hear me, Cloud. We go out that door, we keep going.”
“Yes,” he said. If he had seen no other way he would have surrendered for his family’s sake, for nothing else; but what ma Elly wanted suddenly fell into place with all his instincts. Of course that was where they would try to go. Of course that was where they had to try. Only–his mind shuddered under the truth it had kept shoving back for the last few moments–the invaders would get the old, the weak, the children: the calibans would have them, and the darts would strike down those that stood to fight. All that might get away was a family like his, with all its members able to run, even old ma Elly. Coward, something said to him; but–Fool, that something said when he thought of fighting calibans and darts at night.
He took up a bundle of something his wife gave him, and very quietly went to the door and looked out into the commons, where calibans moved between them and the common‑hall lights. It was quiet yet. “Come on,” he said, “keep close. Pia, go last.”
“Yes,” she said, a hunter herself, for all she was fifteen. “Go on. I’m behind you.”
He slipped out, strung his bow, nocked an arrow as he went around the side of the house, toward the slope of the hill.
A gray thrashed toward him, sentry in the bushes. He whipped the bow up and fired, one true venomed shot. The gray hissed and whipped in its pain, and he ran, down the slope, collected his family again at the bottom, out of breath as they were, and started off again, a jog for a time, a walk, and then a mild run, gaining what ground they could, because he heard panic behind him.
“Fire,” Pia breathed.
He looked back. There was. He saw the glow. Houses were afire.
“Keep walking,” ma Elly said, a gasp for air. “Keep walking.”
A noise broke at their backs, a ru
“Who are you?” Cloud hissed at them. But the ru