Invader

"Go easy, go easy," Banichi said, and the shots kept coming — Banichi's, Jago's — keeping his ears ringing. "We can't have that damn firetube back in action."

"The grass is catching fire," the ranger said, and Bren threw a glance to the ranger's side: fire hadspread down-slope, not directly below them, but where the burning line of brush had caught down the hill to their left.

It was end of season. The grass was drying. Green-gold in the view from the porch —

All that grass. All that grass, clear to the sea. The capsule coming down in a sea of flame. The heat shield was mostly on the bottom, mostly there — how hot did a grass fire get, when the flames rolled ten meters high and scoured the land black?

Gunfire broke out on the slope above them, a sudden lot of it. He felt a rush of hope and terror, resisting the temptation to turn and look toward what he couldn't hope to see anyway. Gunfire rattled above them, and suddenly a nasal, angry squeal.

Thatdidn't belong at Taiben — he heard a scream cut short, and that godawful squalling snort that, God, anyone hearing a mecheita attack a man would never, ever forget —

Mecheiti were on the ridge. Riders.

He did turn on his hip, striving to try to see through the spreading fire. Leaves on trees just over their heads were catching, a thin flicker of fire, a rain of burning ash, carried on a gust of firestorm wind. Heat was building. The trees near them could go up the way the first had.

"Trees are catching fire!" he said. "We've got to get to the clear — we're going to get caught —"

But the rattle of gunfire that came to them through the roar of the fire had stopped; atevi voices upslope were shouting at each other.

He didn't know what to think. He crouched on his knees with the gun in his good hand and everyone around him equally confused, for the instant. A sapling burst into flame, all the leaves involved at once. He felt a heart-pounding panic, no better excuse. And faintest of all was a thread of a voice from an active pocket-com,

"Hold fire, hold fire, blue, below."

"They've got it," Banichi said. "Stay down!"

"Stay down yourself!" Jago said, the only time Bren had ever seen Jago defy an order. Her arm shot past him to grab Banichi's sleeve. "Your leg, dammit, stay here!"

"The hell," Banichi said, and broke his arm free, but he stayed down.

There was just the roar of the fire, now, no rattle of weapons fire. Nothing seemed to move. There was a reek of gunpowder, of burnt plastic, through the stinging woodsmoke, and Tano edged over, finding cover further away from the fire. They crept over sidelong across the slope, below the edge of the road, while a thin conversation over the pocket-coms continued, directing movement, directing roundup of surrendering rebels.

Then he heard Jago say, "The dowager. Yes, aiji-ma — we're fine. All of us. We're holding fire."

He hoped there hadn't been a carnage up there, that people he cared about were still alive, that there was some means of reaching a peace. He heard names like Dereiso, whom Banichi had named to him as a problem in the region. He heard orders to say they should stay still, and he heard the sound of a small plane overhead, which he didn't like, but Tano said it was theirs.

A motor started up, from around the bend of the ridge, and a second one — in a moment more, cars came down the road, Tabini's end of the convoy coming up behind and around their burning vehicle: ahead, nothing but fire — the downed tree that had buried the front end of their own car in its branches was a burning log, and the wind had carried sparks all over the ridge in that direction.

The third car didn't show, but down from the firelit hill came a ghostly soundless darkness: mecheita and rider. Others followed. Notunder guard. Rangers, Bren thought. He hadn't known there were mecheiti at Taiben. He'd never heard of any. But there they were, fifteen or so riders, coming off the sparsely wooded ridge beyond where the cars were stopped. Riders in metal-studded black, the brief glimpse of one who wasn't — no intimation of threat to the cars or hostility to them: people were out of the cars, Tabini among that body-armored, helmeted group, he hoped.

Banichi stood up, and Tano and Jago did. Bren reached out for a careful grip on a branch, hauled himself up to his feet as he recognized the smallish, plainclothes rider among the others.

Ilisidi.

Cenedi — Ilisidi's bodyguard — and at least fifteen of what she called "her young men," on towering, long-legged shapes with the flash of war-brass about their jaws, short rooting-tusks capped with deadly metal, armed for trouble, the ridden and the unridden — fully ten, eleven more mecheiti shadowing through the brush and rock of the area, catching up with their herd, high-tempered with the fighting and the fire crackling away from already burnt ground.

And definitely Ilisidi, Ilisidi on the redoubtable Babsidi, leaning on Babsidi's withers and surveying their resources as another rider came up — leading —

God, it was —

" Hanks!" he said, and in the same instant recognized the slightly portly ateva leading that rider, an ateva also in plain riding clothes.

Lord Geigi looked straight at him. "Nand' paidhi! One is veryglad to find you in good health."

"Indeed, I — received your messages, lord Geigi. With great appreciation. Hanks?"

"Get me away from these people," Hanks said, in Mosphei'. "Bren, get me loose!"

Hanks' hands were tied. To the pad-rings. "Hanks," he said, "shut up."

"We've the whole damn ridge going up," Tabini said. "We can't get the cars through the fire. We're going to have the whole south range going up if the fire units don't get ahead of it fast. Grandmother's graciously agreed to furnish transportation. Haven't you, 'Sidi-ji?"

"I don't know," she said over the constant quiet give of leather and the clash of harness rings. "Throwing me off the estate. Having your staffthrow me off the estate___"

"Grandmother." Tabini had a rifle in his hands. He rested its butt on his hip and kept the barrel aimed skyward. "One apologizes. One neededthe estate. For business. One knew you'dknow exactly who of the neighbors to go to."

"And your security couldn't figure it out?"

"Not with your persuasive charms involved, no, light of my day. Can we get moving?"

"Lovely morning for a ride. The smell of gunpowder and morning dew."

"Please," Bren said, foreseeing more quarrels, and more delay. "Nandiin. Please. It's descending by now. The fire's spreading —"

An explosive snort from one of the mecheiti, a squalling exchange and a scattering of armed security as a mecheita nosed through an unwilling barrier of its fellows and riders grabbed reins.

He knew when the incomer singled him out — he was sure when a perilously sharp pair of tusks nudged into his protesting hands, but he didn'tshove down On the nose; he let the sensitive lip taste, smell, wander over his gloved fingers —

Nokhada remembered him. Nokhada had reestablished herself, hismecheita. It wasn't love, it was ambition, it was man'chi, it was a fight looking to happen, and a warm gust of mecheita breath and a slightly prehensile lip trying for his ear while he tried to get the single rein off the saddle-rings where it stayed secured, when a mecheita had no rider.

He clipped the rein to the jaw-loop of the bridle, notthe slowest rider to get sorted out. He whacked Nokhada hard and, despite the ache and a breathtaking pain when he hauled, got her to go down, and got himself aboard for the neck-snapping rise back to her feet.