Serpent's Reach

A nightmare shape danced. into the lights before them, left again: Warrior stayed with them, but the jolting on this stretch was such that it chose to go on its own feet.

By the map, this was the only road. They were on the last of their fuel, that which they had brought in containers, having used the stored power and both main and reserve tanks. They might nurse a kilometre back out of batteries after the fuel ran out. Cab light went on. Merry was checking the map again, counting with his fingers and making obvious conclusions.

“It’s six hundred to go,” Raen said, “and it pulls too much. We’re loaded way beyond limits and we’re not going to do it.”

“Map shows good road past the depot.”

“Easier walking, then.” Raen looked to the side as a black body hit the door, scraped and scrambled its way to the roof of the truck. Warrior had decided to ride again. Six hundred kilometres more: easy on a good road with an unburdened truck. As exhausted men would walk it…days.

“Could be fuel there,” Merry offered.

“One hopes. If we get that far.”

“I’ll drive again, sera.”

“We’ll change over at the depot. Rest.”

Merry turned the light out. He did not seem to sleep, but he said nothing, and in him, in the two with them—likely in all those men in the rear—there was evident that familiar blankness. They lost themselves in that, and perhaps found refuge.

She had no such. There was a stitch in her back which had been growing worse over the hours, and fighting the steering aggravated it; the right shoulder ached, until finally she chose to let the right hand rest in her lap, however much that tired the left. The jolt of the crash, she reckoned. Pain was something she had long since learned to ignore. A stoppered bottle sat beside her; she moved the right hand to it, flipped the cap with her thumb, took a drink of water, capped it again. It helped keep her awake. She worked a bit of dried fruit from her pocket, bit off a little and sucked at that: the sugar helped too.

The road worsened again, after a little smoothness; she applied both hands for the while, relaxed again when it passed. Imagination constructed a picture of the men in the back, jammed in so that some must constantly stand, or lie on others, whose muscles must cramp and joints stiffen, all jolted cruelly with every hole she could not avoid and every lean and lurch of the turns.

Figures flicked past on the odometer, a red pulse far too slow. The fuel registered lower and lower, most gone now out of the last filling.

Then the road smoothed out on a fiat high enough to see no flooding. She kicked them up to a better pace, and Merry came out of his trance and shifted position, causing the other two men to do the same.

“Should be coming up on the depot,” she said.

Merry leaned to take a look at the fuel and said nothing.

There was a scraping overhead. A spiny limb extended itself over the windshield. Warrior slid partially down, and Raen swore at that, for they had no margin for delays. It gaped at the glass, insisting on her attention, and at the realisation it was urgent her heart began to beat the faster.

She let off the accelerator, coasted, rolled down the window lefthanded. Warrior scrambled off when they slowed enough, paced them, the while the headlights picked out only dusty ruts and high weeds.

“Others,” Warrior breathed. “Hear? Hear?”

She could not. She braked, threw the engine to idle, quieter.

“Many,” Warrior said. “All around us.”

“The depot,” Merry said hoarsely. “They’ve got it.” Raen nodded, a sinking feeling in her stomach.

“Get the men out,” she said. “They’d better limber up, be ready for it, be ready to dive back in on an instant. Third thorax ring, centre; or top collar-ring, if they don’t know. Make sure they understand where it counts.”

Merry bailed out, staggering, felt his way around to the back. Warrior was dancing in impatience beside the truck. The two men in the cab edged out and followed Merry.

“How far?” Raen asked. Warrior quivered very rapidly. Near, then. She felt the truck lighten of its load, eased off the brake and set it in gear, not to waste precious fuel. Merry’s door was open. She left it so; he might need it in a hurry. “Warrior—hear me: you must not fight. You’re a messenger. Understand?”

“Yess.” It accepted this. It was majat strategy. No heroism, she thought suddenly, not among majat: only function and common sense, expediency to the limit. Warrior was very dangerous at the moment, excited. It paced the slow-moving truck as the men did. “Give message.”

“Not yet. I don’t want you to go yet”

The road curved, took a small decline, rose again. Then blockish shapes hove up in the starlight, among the distinctive structures of collectors.

The depot. The road went through it, that cluster of buildings that likely spelled ambush. Raen kept the truck rolling, watched the fuel that was registering just slightly: enough to carry them through—maybe.

Then the shrilling of Warriors erupted from the left of the road. She began to feel the jolting of the truck, men climbing aboard in haste. She kept it slow.

“Warrior,” she said, “don’t answer them.”

“Yes,” it agreed. “I am very quiet, Kethiuy-queen.”

“Can you—” The wheels jerked into a rut and she wrenched it over again. “Can you tell their hive?”

“Goldsss.”

That made sense. Golds even on Cerdin had chosen the open places, the fields, avoiding men. Once reds had done so too.

The headlights picked out girders, the frame of a collector, the wall of a weathered building, with barred and broken windows. The light flashed back off jagged glass.

Objects lay in the road, where it widened to include the buildings. Corpses, she realised, avoiding one. Human forms, desiccated by heat and sun, scattered in a pattern of flight from the central building. Another shape hove up, brown metal—the rear of a truck, with open doors.

Merry darted past, ru

She pulled in, braked, bailed out and ran round to the side; Merry was before her, the nozzle in.

“It needs a pump,” he said, anguished; and then flicked a glance up, at the collectors. She had the same thought. “Go,” she said to the man nearest. “Should be a switch in the building. It ought to work.”

The azi ran. All about them now, the shrilling was ominously louder.

“Golds,” Warrior boomed. “Here, here, watch out!” It moved, swiftly, dancing in its anxiety. Fire spat in the building.

“Watch it!” Raen cried, ran for the door of it; Merry was in the same stride with her.

A Warrior sprang out at them; she fired from the hip and crippled it, as Warrior pounced. Two others were on them: azi-fire raked past and took them. Raen clutched the rifle and kicked the door wider, on a dark room and an azi convulsing on the floor, majat-bitten. There were no others; Warrior shouldered past her, and she was sure by that. Merry found the comp, called out, and she punched POWER-ON. Lights came on, inside and out, blinding…local reserve, from the collectors.

“Works!” she heard an azi call from outside. “Works!”

And the shrilling was moving in on them.

“We could use that other truck,” Merry said.

“Don’t be greedy.”

“Less load, better time.”

“Try it,” Raen said. “Hurry.”

He left, ru

Warrior had darted out again; it rose from the corpse of a gold, mandibles clicking. “Other blues,” it translated for her. “Both dead. Gold-hive killed blue messengers. Lost. Message in gold-hive now. Bad, Kethiuy-queen, bad thing. This-unit goes now.”