Betrayer

They were stuck. They were damned well stuck without transport. Just the van, parked back on the road in the middle of the trouble.

And the shooting was still going on back there, faint in the distance.

“Damn,” he said, and thought. “Can we get Najida?”

“One will try to arrange something,” Banichi said, and made the call, in a string of code.

They stood there, on the slant of a grassy hill, stalled, while Banichi talked in code. Guild business. Guild communications.

Damn, Bren said to himself. Damn. Damn.

“Nadi. This is the senior of the paidhi-aiji’s aishid. One requests a person in authority on an urgent matter.”

Banichi clicked off, exhaled, then indicated downslope. “We should keep going, Bren-ji.

Nawari has contacted Kajiminda, trying to get them to send word to persons in the field.

Meanwhile, he is calling Najida to ask for the village truck.”

It was going to take time. But it was hope.

Bren just started walking. So did they all. Lucasi struggled hindmost, doing his best. Tano was lagging a bit, in God knew how much pain. Algini was carrying Tano’s gear, and Jago had Lucasi’s rifle.

A few blisters? Damned well nothing. If someone had the foresight, they might bring water.

Maybe a medical kit, but they had that.

The truck. It wasn’t going to be bulletproof. It wasn’t going to have any aura of authority. But it had wheels. Wheels were better than—

Damn! Hole. He’d wrenched his ankle, not sprained it. Banichi seized his arm and kept him steady.

“One could carry you, Bren-ji.”

“Only if I slow you down,” he said, panting for breath but still going. “One can walk, Nichi-ji.”

Damn, he said to himself. Damn. Damn.

And the firing was still going on, with, suddenly, a loud thump. Something had blown up.

He kept walking, kept walking. One hill was like another, and he trusted Banichi and Jago knew where they were going. They kept him between them, occasionally half-dragged him over a gap, which hurt the ribs, but it kept them going.

Finally, finally they had to half carry him down a steep slope, and Lucasi slipped and skidded a fair distance down the gravel before Algini overtook him, hauled him to his feet and got him moving, then climbed halfway back again to steer Tano down the same steep face.

But beyond the rocks, beyond a ridge of scrub, a moving column of dust in the distance marked a vehicle coming down an unseen road.

They forged ahead, around a thorn thicket, up a little gravely, rock-centered rise, and then—

Then they saw the Najida truck coming at all the speed it could muster.

It was too good, too fraught with possibilities for things going wrong, and Bren made a desperate effort to hurry. He made it down last the gravelly slope with help from Banichi and Jago and waited by the pebbled roadside, where dusty grass struggled to survive, edge of a sparse meadow on the flat far side of the road.

The feet hurt. God, they hurt.

But the truck came on and rumbled to a stop. It was a flatbed with removable sides, and, thank God, the sides were in their sockets.

And Nawari was there with two of his unit, and Lord Geigi’s bodyguards—all of them. The driver was one of Nawari’s men—whoever had gotten the truck to Nawari was not with them.

It was all Guild, all in dusty black leather and armed, a formidable force on the Guild scale of things.

“One is glad to see you, Wari-ji,” Bren said, “one is very glad. This is no safe venture. We have to get to the crossroads, next after the Kajiminda road—” His voice cracked. Banichi took over and gave orders with more precision, he was sure, and Jago pulled him around to the other door of the truck.

“Tano should ride in the cab,” he said. “One can manage back there.”

“Hush, Bren-ji,” Jago said, opened the door, and shoved him inside. “Is there water, nadi?”

she asked the driver.

“A can in the back,” the answer came, and Bren thought to himself, Just hurry. But he could hear everybody climbing aboard behind, and then Jago came back immediately with somebody’s canteen and gave it to him.

He didn’t argue. He drank two good gulps and a third, and was going to pass it back, but she was gone, climbing aboard, as the driver took off the brake.

The truck rolled forward, accelerated.

Bren had another sip of water and wiped his mouth. His hand came away smeared and gritty, and he rubbed his face. No razor. Stubble he never let show. His clothes had taken on the color of the landscape and were stuck together with burrs here and therec he presented no sane-looking figure, he was sure. He had another, more conservative drink, dehydrated, lips cracked, sunburned, he could feel it, and too rattled, now that he sat on a padded seat with a canteen in his hand, to manage a coherent thought or lay any sort of plan for how he was going to approach the situation ahead.

Najida truck. The Edi at least knew the truck.

The Taisigi didn’t.

“We shall go to the Edi side,” he told the driver, one of the dowager’s men. And asked, “How were things at the house?”

“Holding, nandi,” was all the man could tell him.

19

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The driver asked for all the speed the old truck could muster, raising dust from the graveled area and traveling brushy meadow road at the risk of its suspension. Bren had no way to communicate with his bodyguard. They were back there laying their own plans; he had no idea what those plans were or whether they were able to communicate with Najida and with Machigi.

He grew light-headed from sheer exhaustion. He was braced bolt upright in his seat by the cursed vest, without which he would not be coming home at all, and he could feel the foot in the split boot swelling. His body wanted just to shut down for a few hours, and he couldn’t afford that. He had to be mentally sharp. Had to talk to the Edi, for starters, and there was no guarantee the Edi had any sort of unified command.

God, he had to get his wits about him.

Fuel was going to hold out. They had enough. That was a positive.

But the brain was going.

Parts scattered when he tried to analyze them, irretrievable.

But out the windows, the land looked familiar. He began to know when they were nearing the Kajiminda intersection by the shape of a solitary evergreen, the grass, and the pale color of the stone. They were getting near. The gunfire—he couldn’t hear. The truck rattled and thumped.

The intersection came in view, where trees were in greater evidence, a small woods in the distance, which here covered both sides of the road.

And now the driver was talking to someone on short-range.

Then gunfire was audible, even over the racket of the truck. The driver made the turn on a track through the woods and suddenly blew the horn. Repeatedly. It scared the hell out of him—he wasn’t expecting that. But it wasn’t the kind of move enemies would make, blowing the horn like fury while blazing down the middle of the road.

People came out of the woods onto the road ahead of them, carrying rifles pointed aloft, not aiming at them, thank God. The driver pulled up short of them, and Bren opened his door.

Banichi was faster, reaching him before he had to jump to the ground; and Jago was right there.

So were Lord Geigi’s men. They came up even with the door, and one of them shouted out in another language—the Edi language, Bren realized suddenly. It must be. The attitude changed, visible surprise. And he walked out near them.

“Nadiin, neighbors! Cease fire! Cease fire! We have news!”

He was unmistakable on the mainland. He traded on that. He was their neighbor. And Lord Geigi’s men spoke the language. That was beyond an asset. It shocked the four Edi and got the rifles aimed at the ground. It got them face to face in a far calmer mode.