Inheritor

They were working out an agreement, he and she, or he was getting better at it. Nokhada extended a foreleg, and the other side of that getting better at itwas his speed in tugging the rein’s slipknot free of the restraining ring, getting hold of the saddle and being ready when Nokhada heaved upward with a powerful snap that pitched her rider up with the same force.

The stopping of said force allowed the rider, at apogee, to subside into the saddle if the rider had aimed himself appropriately at the seat and not to the side.

He had. Jase—was making the mount he’d made when he’d begun, being boosted up and into the saddle of a standing animal. Banichi was up; so was Jago, and the boy, last, who made a mount like Jase’s, and made a wild snatch after the rein.

At that point Nokhada made an unsignaled full about turn and used that momentary inattention to get more rein and start her way toward the front of the column.

Ilisidi was on the steps, and came down to her mechieta, Babsidi, who held sole possession of the area around him: mechiet’-aiji, herd-leader. Babsidi came to the steps, and at a genteel tap of Ilisidi’s riding crop extended a leg as Ilisidi tucked her cane into a holster made for it and stepped aboard, coordinating her step and Babsidi’s rise with a grandeur no machimi actor he had ever seen achieved. This wasa rider. This wasthe rider of this animal, for all the years of his dominance over the herd and hers over her followers. This was real; and a human found his breath stuck in his throat as Ilisidi brought Babsidi about, every other mechieta following and adjusting position, and tons of muscle moving as one creature.

Bren took tight grip on the single rein and held Nokhada hard from advancing, twisting her head as much as her long neck permitted. He pulled her full about and let her straighten out. He could see Jase, whose mechieta Jarani was one of the lower-rank mechieti, a quieter beast which wouldn’t put him to a contest for the lead and which wouldn’t lose him, either; the boy from Dur had a similarly quiet beast, so he trusted. But Cenedi’s mechieta, who was second in the herd, and Nokhada, who thought she should be, were the two principle difficulties in the whole herd. Cenedi, used to being by Ilisidi, stayed with her. But Nokhada, if ridden, would try to get next to Babs if it killed her rider. He kept a tight rein.

Jase struggled just to keep his balance. He’d been chancy half a year ago and he seemed no abler at balance in the saddle after half a year on the world’s surface. He held on with both hands; and Bren reined Nokhada in that direction, able to do so, and, he admitted it, showing off and fiercely proud of it.

Jase was not happy.

“If I die on this ride,” Jase said, “I hope you can handle the manuals.”

“You won’t die.—Foot! Watch it.”

Jase tucked it out of convenient reach of Jarani, who, frustrated in his aim, sidled over and bared teeth at Nokhada.

Nokhada ripped upward with the tusks at Jarani’s shoulder, who returned the favor half-heartedly, and for a moment there was a sort-out all around them; but Jarani gave ground and ducked and bobbed his head as mechieti would who’d just been outmuscled by one of their kind.

“Damn it!” Jase said, shaken and mistakenly trying to prevent that head movement.

Meanwhile Banichi and Jago had moved to be near both of them, theirsecurity in a cluster of Ilisidi’s young men.

“Where’s Tano and Algini?” he asked finally, having something like privacy in the squalling confusion.

“On duty,” was all Banichi said, meaning ask no further.

So presumably they were staying behind to guard the gear, or the premises, or were catching sleep in preparation for going on a round the clock alternation with Banichi and Jago.

Which sometimes happened. And from which he might take warning. All hell might break loose here before they got back—and their leaving might be a ploy to get the paidhiin to safety. They mighthave learned something from the boy that Banichi wasn’t saying.

Ilisidi started them moving, not at a walk, but at least not at a breakneck run, toward the gap in the low fence by which the vans had come in. At that moderate pace Nokhada had no difficulty reaching the front; but even with Jase and the boy from Dur trailing them there was no chance of losing them. Putting a prisoner or a guest atop an associated mechieta was the best way in the world to guarantee that individual stayed in sight and placed himself wherever the herd-status of that particular mechieta encouraged it to travel. You couldn’t leave unridden ones behind, either; they’d follow at the expense of any structure that confined them, breaking down rails or battering through gates, and injuring themselves if they couldn’t.

Man’chi. In its most primitive evocation.

At Malguri he’d seen his first primitive model of the behavior and as a human being achieved his first gut-level understanding, with Nokhada under him battling to keep up, risking life and limb—primal need that had roused enough primal fear of falling and enough personal response to that ton of desperate muscle and bone carrying him at a frantic pace that he’d had no trouble feelingthe emotional pitch. His heart still beat harder when he recalled that first chase. He’dbeen damned glad to have caught up to Ilisidi and not to have broken his neck; all through that long ride he’d been glad to catch up to Ilisidi, and he’d learned to think, gut-level, of the niche Nokhada wanted as the safest place he could be without even realizing the mechanics of what was going on in either the mechieta or in him: the mechieta going to its leader and the primate finding a safe limb, thank you, both at the same destination.

They still had some unridden mechieti with them today; but they were carrying equipment, canvas bundles.

What’s that for? he asked himself.

But he had no answer, and didn’t figure the paidhi was going to find out from his own security, not without bringing him into play, where hissecurity didn’t want him to be.

So they maintained his ignorance for his protection and Jase’s, he feared. And they held their sedate gait, good enough riders to keep Jarani and Nokhada together, by urging Jarani and getting in Nokhada’s path, while he was getting good enough at least that he wouldn’t let Nokhada have the piece of Jarani’s hide that Nokhada, by her little tensions and shiftings under his legs, wanted. The single rein always seemed to him small restraint to the mountain of an animal she was, but taps of the riding crop for some reason distracted her from mayhem, possibly because earlier in her life an ateva arm had wielded it, or just that she paid attention to her rider naturally.

And he was getting better at doing it at the precise instant it had most effect, too, which he had discovered to be right before she started to do something overt. Thatrequired a rider reading those little muscle twitches and the set of her ears and tapping her hard enough to get her attention.

Jase, however, who had ridden once, from the landing site to Taiben, was clinging with both hands to the saddle, not doing much with the rein, which was a good thing. He bumped about like a sack of laundry, and was probably a

But this was the man who found a window-seat on an airplane a challenge to his sense of balance.

“Relax the spine,” he said to Jase. “You won’t fall. Relax.”

Jase tried. It was difficult for him, but he tried.

And at this speed there wasn’t a tendency for the herd to form into hierarchical order: individual mechieti dipped heads unexpectedly, snatched bits of green. Which scared Jase when it happened.

“Relax.”

Jase’s hands were, in fact, white-knuckled, and Jase’s mouth was a thin, straight line as Jarani took a snap at another mechieta moving up on them from the rear. That mechieta nipped back, and Jarani bumped Nokhada in sheer surprise.