Invader

"The place I least wanted you, nai-ji. Unfortunate gods, you have a knack for worst places!"

"I could have been aiji, grandson. All it wanted was a little encouragement. And you, damn your impudence, toss me from Taiben in my nightclothes —"

"You could have been dead, grandmother-ji! These are fools! Have you notaste?"

"Well, I certainly was not going to be your stand-in for a target, nadi. I assure you. You sent me Bren-paidhi. Was I not to assume this very handsome gift had meaning?"

"A foot in every damn province!"

"As I should! Who knows when you'll stumble?"

"They regard you no more than they do me. They want the office under their hand. And you'd never do that, grandmother-ji. They'd turn on you as fast as not."

"I'm not so forgiving as you, grandson of mine. Myenemies don't get such chances."

"Oh? And how isTatiseigi?"

"Oh, sitting in Taiben, having breakfast, I imagine — waiting for a civil phone call from a prospective relative."

"I proposed an honorable union in the first place!"

"This is not a man to rush to judgment."

As the wind gusted up their backs. As the light grew in the sky.

"I tell you," Ilisidi said, "this hacking up the land with roads is a pest, and they're never where you want them. I toldyou I was against it. No, follow the precious, nasty roads, won't they, Babs? Scare all the game in the countryside, rattle and clatter, clatter and rattle — game management, do you call it? Look, look there across the land. Thereare herds. I'll warrant you saw none in your clanking about last night."

"Unfortunate gods," Tabini muttered. "Demons and my grandmother. Naidiri! Where are the damned planes? Call again!"

"They say they're loading," Naidiri said.

The herds in question were in general movement, traveling away from the fire, like themselves. Once in recorded history fire had swept clear to the sea, jumped the South Iron River and kept going until all the south range was burned.

The paidhi didn't want to remember that detail.

"Look!" one of the hindmost said. "What's that?"

Pointing up.

Atevi eyes weresharp. He could scarcely see it. He had to bring Nokhada to a stop, and others stopped.

"That's it!" he said. It had a feeling of unreality to him. "That's it! It's coming in!"

Far, far up, and far in the distance and to the south. It wasn'twhere, on the charts, they'd said.

"It loses us time," Banichi said, "southward, in front of the fire."

It was true.

But it was in sight. They could do it. They could make it — please God it came down soft.

CHAPTER 23

There was one stream in kilometers all about, maybe within a day's ride, and the lander found it — landed up to its hatch in water.

Draped all over in blue and red parachute.

And not a sign of life.

"Damn quiet," Tabini said as they rode up on it. "Are they able to open the hatch, Bren-ji?"

"One would think," he said. There was, unremitting, the smell of smoke on the wind. A glance to the side revealed the fires: a long, long line of black darkening the dawn.

They rode up on it, as far as the stream edge. It was pitted and scarred. And quiet. He urged Nokhada with his foot, and Nokhada laid back her ears and didn't want to go until he started to get down — then she moved, waded down into the water.

Atevi weapons came out. All around him.

"Tabini-ma," he said. "Banichi —"

"In case," Tabini said, and Banichi urged his mecheita out, too, into chest-deep, silty water. They reached the side of the lander, mecheiti wading through an entangling billow of parachute.

Not just one chute.

Two.

Banichi leaned down and pounded with his fist on the hatch, the bottom edge of which was underwater.

Something inside thumped back. Twice.

And very slowly the hatch began to loosen its seal.

"Can you hear me?" Bren shouted. He didn't think they could. And where the seal gave, water was surely going in.

A further gap. A flood. And the hatch folded back, dropped to the inside, in a small waterfall of incoming brown water — giving him two sweaty, scared, and very human faces.

Nokhada stuck her nose toward them and he reined her over with a wrench that half-killed his shoulder.

"Hello, there," he said. "Better vacate."

"Don't believe him!" Hanks yelled from the shore.

"That's Hanks," he said. "I'm Bren. This is Banichi." He suddenly realized he was smudged, sooted, and there was smoke on the wind.

The visitors to the world, with water risen over their couches, their stowed gear, and up to their waists, took a fearful look outside — at a dark sky, rolling smoke, and a batch of armed and suspicious riders on brass-tusked mecheiti.

Two mecheiti were still riderless.

"It's perfectly all right," Bren said. "They've got planes coming. They're begi

The End