Destroyer

But he had no choice. If Taibeni were going to the heart of Atageini territory at his urging, he had to go with them, he had no question of that at all—no way out of this, no real desire for one—only an urge to get back to Tirnamardi as fast as this weary beast could carry his aching bones. He was ever so sorry to have involved his bodyguard in this mess, and ever to have mentioned the word Taiben in that message, and wished he and they had better choices, or that he had made better ones years ago, when there had been a chance to dissuade Tatiseigi from his flirtation with Kadigidi rebels.

Power-seeking. Political games. The old, old reason.

Hell of a mess, was what it was.

He held his mechieti still beside Tano’s. The rangers sorted themselves onto their mechieti, with few words exchanged in the process. The two bands had stayed somewhat apart, the herd-leaders having come to a tusk-brandishing statement of dominance, so that there was a primary and a secondary leader—even possible that the mechieti had been one herd before this… such thoughts drifted through a dazed human brain. He only knew this batch wanted to clump together, and that put him with his own bodyguard, and meant they would react that way in a fracas, which he much preferred. And now that they moved, they headed cross-country, as directly toward Tirnamardi’s distant fence as they could dead-reckon it, by what he could tell. He settled himself to the even gait, trying not to wonder what might have happened back at the estate, but he could not help it. The Kadigidi might have gotten in. The dowager might have perished. He detected Banichi at least trying to get information by tuning in the pocket-com, but only briefly. “Can you tell anything?” he heard Jago ask him, and Banichi:

“No transmissions.”

It did nothing to comfort any of them. He would have gone all out. But mechieti who had been run all night had self-protection enough not to kill themselves, and as the day dawned, clouded and dim, the mechieti of their party slowed, and slowed further. The rangers, in the lead, dropped the pace, until finally they stopped for water at one of the loops of their meandering brook.

“Rest an hour,” Deiso decreed. “Keep under saddle, nadiin, nandi.”

An hour. An hour of delay. He wanted to be there. He wanted that hour to be past, but there was no choice. He slid down his mechieti’s rock-hard side, the creature so bone-weary it was already in the process of sitting down. It folded its legs and settled and his feet hit the ground. He sank down to sit leaning against its sweaty warmth, rested there, propped up, eyes shut, deliberately, concentratedly relaxing muscles that had been tense for hours, one at a time, starting with the toes and fingers.

Bodies gathered around him, one and the other, atevi, warm and as bent as he on rest, no talk, not a word out of any of them, a mortal comfort. Safety, in an unsafe world.

Silence for a space and i

All the mechieti were getting up. Time to be under way, Bren thought, and wordlessly turned to grab the saddle, but Jago’s hand fell on his shoulder and caught his attention. Mechieti had gone on the alert.

Riders were coming in, riders in dark green and brown, more rangers—and bringing in a sizeable herd of mechieti with them. Bren gazed at them with rising hope that they could now make speed—and indeed, with hardly a dozen words of discussion with Deiso, the rangers started shifting saddles about, theirs and everyone’s, in an economy of motion and fuss that argued this must have been the order that had gone back to Taiben, and that the youngsters had gotten there safely, or somehow delivered their message and reached another band of Keimi’s men. He counted. They were no longer fourteen, they were thirty-three, a sizeable force, and armed, and Jago saddled him a mechieti that had not carried weight all night, a creature herd-bound to the rangers’ mounts.

He stood there with his legs shivering under him, exhausted, and knowing his own staff, including Jago, who handled that saddle as if it were a feather, must be feeling it in their bones. She secured the girth. He reached and touched Jago’s arm, that human-primate move, and she set a hand on his shoulder, that atevi instinct, bunching closer, group-made-solid.

“Can you do it, Bren-ji?”

“No question,” he said, and she took hold of him and lifted him up to the saddle, while Deiso and his people saw to the details, and exchanged rapidfire briefings the gist of which he caught in a half-sleeping haze. Yes, the youngsters had met up with them, yes, Cajeiri and his young bodyguard were safely on their way to Taiben—did he dream that? He fought mental drifting, brought his head up sharply and caught his balance as a strange mechieti moved under him. Stupid, he chided himself, to be falling off to sleep—he was apt to fall right out of the saddle; but he had been roused up out of a dark spot and handed information none of which was fitting together, not all of which made clear sense. The children were safe. This party was the aggregate of Deiso’s party, that had been out probing Atageini land for trouble since the gunfire. The other had been hunting trouble that might try to come around the Atageini flank—defending an old curmudgeon who didn’t want to be defended by Taibeni, but doing it all unasked, as their own best defense, only common sense, he heard Tano say.

Yes, they had seen the fire last night, and they had come across the children, heard the story, and sent them on to Keimi.

Thank God, Bren thought, in his private darkness, behind closed lids. Thank God. He could let go his worry for the youngsters.

“They will be safe, nandi,” he heard from Tano, and from Banichi himself:

“Keimi thinks the Atageini will be only a first step, that the Kadigidi will probe into Taiben as far as they can. They intend to stop that.”

“Wise of him.” More than wise. Necessary. He rubbed his eyes, making them stay open… his mind spiraled off into one of those fugues, those desperate quests after disco

Contention in which the Taibeni, closely bound to Tabini-aiji, had looked suspiciously on the Atageini’s dalliance with the Kadigidi, that old lowlander, central province association that had coveted Taiben’s woods, cut down trees, intruded into the highlands in countless raids, before the modern age.

Now Taiben came onto land they historically, before the clearing of these meadows, regarded as their own—bitter, bitter pill, the dowager’s insistence on Tatiseigi’s putting his seal to that letter. Tatiseigi would have an apoplexy if he knew the Taibeni had come in without it.

But Tatiseigi could pitch his fit. It was another thought he was chasing through the underbrush, beyond the Kadigidi-Atageini affair: another old, old association: the woodlands, the highlands, the long sweep of surviving woodland that swept right around the flank of the Kadigidi, woodland toward the west, outflanking the lowland association, serving as a barrier against lowland expansion. Come into that forest, and die.

Richness of game. Cover for movement… Atageini towns, historically, more afraid of those woods than they were of the plains-based Kadigidi. They would not go into the north. Would not intrude there. Would not poach that land, only appealed to their lord in Tirnamardi when game herds spilled over and damaged their crops…

Dusty papers, books, research in his cramped little office, the week he had succeeded Wilson-paidhi, all those years ago. Sunlight slanting through the window of the single room, its shelves piled high with books, facts obscuring truth in sheer abundance of paper…