Destroyer

He reined aside, to bring the beast slightly across the hill face without pulling it over. The heart of the fight was no place for him, whatever was going on. He had no idea whether they had just scattered the escort’s mechieti and driven off animals they needed. But his mechieti paid no attention, just ran blindly, crashed through other brush and kept going, defying his pull on the rein.

Someone rode near him, headed his mechieti off from pursuit. Tano. Again. Behind him, a volley of gunfire exploded in the dark.

“Hold here, Bren-ji,” Tano said. “Hold!”

He had no breath to object that he was trying to do just that. He hauled, the mechieti hauled back and he thought the rein might snap or the cantankerous creature, lunging ahead crosswise of the slope, would break both their necks before he could get it to stop at the bottom. He risked one hand to reach back and lay in hard with the quirt on the rump, which caused the rump end to shy off, and the whole beast finally to turn in the direction he wanted.

But now the rest of the herd was coming back toward them, Jago in the saddle, and the whole lot, riderless and ridden, shouldered past him and Tano. Their two mechieti swung about, fell into the herd, and they charged back down the draw, toward the origin of the gunfire.

A whistle, a very welcome whistle, came out of the brushy dark, and Bren drew a whole breath. Banichi was all right.

Their mechieti meanwhile settled to a determined walk, and broke brush as they went. “Keep down,” Tano said, reining back near him.

Then Banichi’s voice, out in the dark: “We are the paidhi-aiji’s guard. Identify yourselves.”

“Banichi?” asked a very shaky young voice. “Where are you?”

A gunshot. A whisper of brush. And from Banichi, distant, “Stay where you are.”

A long, long wait, then. Jago reined in and all the mechieti slowed to a stop, waiting, with occasionally a snort at the information wafted on the air.

“They are moving!” The same high young voice.

“Damn,” Jago hissed. “Tano!”

Tano and Algini both leapt off, instantly vanishing into the brush and the dark, in silence.

“Bren-ji,” Jago said. “If things go wrong, use the quirt and use it so hard it can’t think.”

Ride away, she meant. Get back to the gate. Get to Taiben. Go anywhere else. A young gentleman calling out instructions to his bodyguard had made himself a target and now his protectors had no choice but to go after his attackers.

Gunshot, flash in the dark. A brief scuffle somewhere, followed by a thump.

“Keep your head down.” Banichi’s voice came softly, ever so welcome, out in the distance. Meanwhile, Bren thought, he and Jago sat on mechieti, silhouettes against the dark, he because he was helpless afoot, endangered by the mechieti themselves, and Jago because if the herd leader slipped control they would all be afoot and trapped out here. That made them targets, no question, and all he could do was press as flat to his own knees as he could get, trying not to be shot by some ateva who could see far, far better than he could in this murk.

Gunfire. Gunfire responded, and something skidded on gravel.

“I shot him.” A quavering young voice piped up in the darkness the other side of the brush. “I think I shot him, Banichi.”

“You may well have, young aiji. Are you injured?”

Banichi had used the indefinite-number in that address, baji-naji, the whole future of the planet on a knife’s edge. Bren held his breath, lifted his head, trying to hear, and hearing nothing but his mechieti’s movements and the creak of the saddle.

“I am not. But they killed our escort.” That same young voice, a young gentleman who, at least was still alive. And so was Banichi. But they had heard nothing from Tano and Algini.

Then a different whistle from out of the dark.

“Come ahead,” Banichi said, and suddenly Jago shot ahead, and Bren’s mechieti went with her and all the rest, down a gravelly draw, across a little brook, up another bank. A breeze caught them there, a chill little breeze, bringing a shiver.

“There were three,” Tano said quietly out of the dark, “that we have accounted for. One may have escaped afoot. Keep low.”

Bad position. One Guildsman unseen represented a major problem.

“Bren-ji,” Jago said, “get down.”

“Yes,” he said, moved his leg from across the mechieti’s shoulder, secured the rein, gripped the saddle and slid down, wary of the creature’s tusks, expecting its head would swing toward him, and it did. He was ready for it. He popped it gently on the nose with the quirt and it swung that massive head back up, veered off indignantly and stood, as fixed by its leader’s staying as if it had been tethered there.

Shadows, meanwhile, moved on the slope, softly disturbing the gravel of a little eroded outcrop.

“Nadiin,” he heard a young female voice say: Antaro. “Nadiin, one regrets, the two Atageini are dead, down there.”

More movement. “Dead, indeed,” Algini said from their vicinity.

“The mechieti ran away,” Cajeiri’s voice said.

“As they would, young sir.”

“Did nand’ Bren send you?”

“Nand’ Bren is with us, young sir, and by no means pleased with your actions, no more than your great-grandmother.”

“We have to go on, Banichi!”

“How do you propose to ride, young sir, with no tack?”

“We have our tack, nadi.” That, from Jegari. “We had unsaddled for the night.”

“We told them we should not stop.” From Cajeiri.

The boy happened to be right. Even the paidhi knew that. They could well have kept going. They should have kept going to the border, given the urgency of the message, and without the escort’s adult advice, the youngsters, schooled in a more desperate experience, would have.

“The tack and the supplies are right here.” Antaro’s young voice. A slide on gravel. “We were down here, nadi.”

Atevi could see clearly in this darkness. It was all shadows to human eyes.

But suddenly: “Down!” Tano yelled.

Bren dropped to his haunches, behind the thin cover of the brush, and reached to his pocket, seeking his gun.

“Keep low!” Banichi’s voice.

Someone must be moving nearby, sounds too faint for human ears. Bren sat holding his pistol, virtually blind, knowing his vision posed a hazard to his own people, and declined even to have his finger on the trigger until he could confirm a target. Somewhere out there, Guild were stalking each other. Some Kadigidi Assassin had let his mechieti go after its fellows, staying to carry out his mission, and the best the paidhi could do was stay very, very quiet, as wary of keen atevi hearing as of atevi nightsight.

Small movements within his hearing. He could not tell the distance. His heart was in his throat. And for a long, long time, there was no sound at all.

Scrape of brush from down the ravine.

More furtive movements, barely discernible. Their mechieti shifted about. Jago had never gotten down, as he recalled. He feared she remained dangerously exposed. One of the most classic moves was to get the one rider holding the leader, encouraging the herd to bolt. But Jago was a good rider. She might be over on the mechieti’s shoulder, shielded between two beasts.

Brush broke. Splash in the little brook, crack of a quirt, and all of a sudden the whole herd moved, crashed past Bren on two sides, rushed past like a living wall, down the stream-course, up the slope, and all he could do was duck. Gunfire broke out. Two shots. Then silence.

Bren sat still, blind in the dark, sure that his was the only piece of brush on the slope that had not been crushed flat. They might have taken him for a rock, dodged around him. They had no compunction at all about ru

A calf muscle began to twitch uncomfortably. A thigh muscle followed. It became a shiver. He settled his finger onto the trigger of his gun. It was all he had, if any enemy circled back trying to get to the young people. He thought that Jago had ridden that charge, deliberately sent the whole herd down the throat of the ravine and up the slope, likely in pursuit of someone, or to flush a man out.