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Going where? McGee wondered, clinging in the dark, clinging to the spear, the casual way the riders carried it: she had learned to ride with it, balanced herself with it when Brown was in a hurry, with that sinuous rocking fore and back, side to side in a rhythm that had its highs and lows, its pitches into which the riders settled as if they were born to it.
But this was real. This was the last move, the last plunge into dark and war and no one was ordering this thing, except that Elai was up ahead with Taem, with Paeia by her side, no less her enemies in potential… Dain would go to Elai’s side: Dain’s caliban went where Dain told it, and he would get himself to the fore, while Brown–
I’m scared, I’m scared, I’m scared, she told herself to the rhythm of their moving. This is no way to fight a war. There ought to be lines, generals, orders; someone ought to set this thing up. We’ll all be killed.
They climbed through brush, making noise, breaking branches, caring nothing that they were heard. Treelimbs raked her; she fended with a leathered arm, kept the spear along Brown’s side.
I’m going to use this thing. She flexed her fingers on it, the smooth wood: the head was venomed; an ugly thing, to counter other weapons bound to come her way. Panic gave way to certainty, like some long, long dive which had its own logic, its own morality. Life seemed precious and trifling at once. Dain. Elai sent him. Her messenger, after all. She laid her heels to Brown, clutching the spear the tighter, half crazed, drawing great breaths and anxious only to get on with it.
Life, she kept thinking, like a talisman, to keep herself alive.
Dain– Hardly started in his life. The rest of us– all caliban‑bait. The thought enraged her, and the spear was like her arm, an extension of herself. The sky was going lighter, the shapes of calibans more definite, the rhythm of Brown’s strides more certain.
Kill them, kill them, kill them. That’s what’s left to do.
liii
Message Alliance HQ to Gehe
Couriered by AS Phoenix
…inform you that pursuant to the agreement worked out in the commercial exchange treaty a limited access will be extended Union observers for several worlds of the Gehe
In the spirit of detente and in pursuit of mutual interests, a reciprocity has been arranged in the opening of Union records…
liv
205 CR, day 114
Cloudside
The morning came up gold and placid as they moved among the trees, beside the river, in the changes calibans had made in the land. Ridges hove up, freshly dug and showing the roots of overturned trees, the hollows between them pocked with seepage from the river, and Elai read the patterns through which they moved, shaped them with her mind.
Jin is this way, they said. So she knew the time they would meet. Ahead lies the alien. We surround you, go beneath you in harmony,
Cloud‑towers‑clustered‑Hillers
well‑ordered toward the
Green‑nest‑aggression
It spiralled off into gilded distances, the wreckage, the patterns building about them for days.
Where? she had tried to ask of Scar last night; but Scar ignored the stones, ignored her, as if he had said it all. When?
They moved when it was time; and calibans knew that time when they saw it, when the Pattern shaped itself, that was all.
Cloud against Styx.
One way against another.
There was logic in it. It had compelled Paeia, brought Taem to her side. Perhaps Weirds on both sides had shaped this confrontation: there were hints of this in the patterns…that Weirds knew no tower‑loyalty.
There was herself; there was Jin.
Two kinds; and calibans brought them both, here, to this place, long‑appointed. She had her spear in hand, her darts slung to her side. Her mates, her rivals were by her, joined with her, like Taem, who had said nothing of why he came, not the deep reasons: only he was there, and the pattern agreed with that, shaping no other way for him to go. They were Cloudside; and the whole Cloudside pattern was being shoved at now.
Not a matter now of driving them off a time. She read that too, the way she read the land. Jin took the high ground, to push. She knew what he would do, and by that what they would do, surely as the sun came up–if flesh was strong enough.
She put forward her spear in the dim dawn, in the quickening of Scar’s pace. There was no time now to order things. She gave a fleeting thought to MaGee and wished that she had had Dain put her somewhere, but MaGee would fare as they all fared, and there was no helping it. Pattern against pattern. The calibans had made MaGee part of it: part of her; that was the way of it. Grays joined them, plowed the earth like the currents of the sea. Their powerful claws found places to probe in the mounds: they dived in earth and surfaced again, hissing and whistling, but the long‑striding browns scrambled across soft ground, four‑footed and stable, bridging the gaps with the reach of their limbs, treading the grays down with grand disdain, in silent haste.
The sun arrived, spread its rays through the ruin of a forest before them, where the trees had been cast down, undermined. They plunged over this, like a living torrent, with hissings and scramblings; but greater were the rocks down by the sea that she had climbed on Scar. Grays, not their own, vacated the Pattern and fled before the browns, through the brush, over the ridges, among trees still standing.
Scar’s collar flashed up. Taem’s brown plunged ahead. The hisses of browns broke like water hitting hot metal.
Her riders surged about her. Whistles split the air; younger calibans took their riders to the fore as they climbed the mounds, refusing the patterns they met now.
Elai clamped her knees taut as they met soft ground where grays were at work and Scar lurched down and up again, past the roots of overthrown trees, past brush that raked harmlessly on her leather‑clad legs.
“Hai!” She caught the fever and shouted with her young men’s cries, with the high‑pitched yelps of the young women as they came down the banks among grays that froze under the browns’ scrabbling claws, confused and immobile. She couched her spear, held her seat, for now other shapes hove up, rider‑bearing calibans, shapes bristling with raised collars, with spears in human hands. Darts flew, struck her leathered arm.
She shouted, not knowing what she yelled, but all at once the fear was gone, every dread was gone. “ Ellai!” she was yelling at the last, which was her mother’s name; and “ Cloud!”
More darts; she shook them off; they struck Scar in vain, useless on his hide. Lesser browns fled Scar’s approach, bearing their riders out of his path. Scar trod others down, mounted over them, clawing their riders heedlessly underfoot, with riders yelling and calibans lurching this way and that through the ruin of trees.
Scar lurched, taxed her weak leg. She held as the earth opened, and grays came up, some calibans losing their riders as they slid into the undermining, and over all the hisses and the screams.
But she knew where she was going. Paeia was beside her, was delayed by one of the Styxsiders so that she lost that guard; but then came a clearing of bodies, a withdrawing except for the rider coming toward her, a caliban larger than the rest.
Jin.
Scar lurched aside, almost unseated her. One of her riders rushed by in the whirl of day and trees and plunging bodies. Her spearshaft cracked hard against another, and Scar bore her out of the path of that attack as another of her riders took it. Taem was out there, Taem’s brown trying Jin’s, circling.