Читать книгу Under the Ember Star - Charles Allen Gramlich - Страница 10

CHAPTER FIVE

Nomads

Stone above. Stone below. Stone all around.

Ginn worked her way through a nameless slot canyon at the broken edge of the Karst desert. Smooth, cool rock twisted all around her in delicate hues of salmon, mauve and pearl. Duash followed, his robes swishing lightly.

Despite feeling that Red Jac would not have flyers on the hunt for them, Ginn had taken every canyon and dry wash she could. It made her feel less exposed, less vulnerable with the sky at least partially obscured.

“Better safe than sorry,” had been one of Jake Hollis’s favorite sayings, even though in the end it had not saved his life.

The narrow, tortured canyon that now hid Ginn and Duash had not been made by the desert’s scouring winds but by massive quantities of water pouring through a desiccated landscape. That meant it was old, because Kelmer hadn’t seen a flood of such magnitude in a long time. But then, most everything on Kelmer felt old.

The swishing of robes behind Ginn ceased and she turned. Duash had stopped to swig from a canteen. He’d not re-veiled himself; she thought she knew why. She moved back a few paces toward him, took a swallow of water for herself.

“The nomads are close,” Duash said.

Ginn nodded. “I know. Let’s just hope it’s the ones you signaled for.”

“It is. Else they would not be so near human settlements.”

“Not unless they were looking to burn someone.”

Duash blinked, but Ginn did not wait for any reply he might make. She continued along the canyon and in another hundred paces it opened abruptly onto a boulder strewn plain dotted here and there with dry-weed and skeet-brush. She paused, her hand on the butt of her blaster. She sniffed. Not even a breeze blew today. Yet, the air was tainted with dust. There had been movement here, only moments before.

Ginn slipped her left hand into the pocket of her coat. “They’re around,” she whispered over her shoulder to Duash.

“Yes,” hissed a voice behind her that she didn’t recognize.

Ginn stiffened, but did not turn. That would have been fatal.

The voice hissed again. “The alh Corovaneen we recognize. You we do not. Dirt your weapons.”

“Don’t think so,” Ginn said. “Figured someone might come down into the canyon behind us. I’ve got a bomb-bot in my pocket. Slaved to my life signs. I go unconscious and several hundred meters of this desert get vaporized. I’m gonna keep my guns.”

For three heartbeats, nothing happened. Then laughter boomed. It came not from whoever had been hissing words behind her, but from the rocks all around. Five gaunt figures rose from among those rocks, as if materializing from dust itself. They wore tan burnooses over vests and trousers of Kelmerian wool. Caplets of beaded leather adorned their bare skulls. Their only veils covered their mouths as protection against blowing sand. Above those thin scraps of cloth, their eyes gleamed large and almost black.

All five were shorter than Ginn’s five feet seven inches, and much thinner inside their clothing. But she did not make the mistake of thinking them weak because of that. It had been years since she’d seen nomads so close. Not since her father’s death. She had not forgotten them.

These were not the Kelms of the settlements, but wild creatures who smelled of grease and fire and strange, cinnamon winds. They did not walk with heads bowed and faces covered to hide their differences from the human. They were not vying for favors or begging for solars. They did not have to accept, or even pretend to accept, that she was their superior. And they could kill her as easily as they breathed.

Their weapons were multiple bone knives strapped to their legs and the stubby dart rifles common to nomads. These were air powered and fired three-inch long spines from Kelmer’s version of a cactus. The guns weren’t much good at over thirty feet, but then she wasn’t thirty feet away from them.

Ginn forced her body to relax. Her right hand fell away from her blaster but she didn’t take her left hand out of her pocket. One of the nomads lifted an arm. This one carried the ritual scars of a chieftain just below its eyes, on a flat stretch of skin where a human nose would be.

Sand whispered with movement behind her but Ginn still didn’t turn. A figure stalked past. A sixth nomad. This one was taller than the others, as tall as she. A tiny black spot of skeet-seed juice stained its mouth-veil at one side.

The newcomer had to be the one who’d ordered her to drop her guns. It stopped before the chieftain, handed over the weapon it carried. This was no dart rifle but a worn plasma pistol of older manufacture. That almost certainly meant it had been taken from some of the early human settlers on Kelmer. No doubt it had been handed down from one chieftain to another for generations.

The nomad with the skeet-stained veil turned to face Ginn. Its eyes were less black and more brown, almost yellowish, but there was hatred in them the others did not seem to share.

Ginn bristled. “I’m with him,” she said into the hatred, nodding at the same time toward Duash, who stood very still and quiet with his face exposed. Ginn figured he’d wanted his face seen, to make sure he was recognized and not killed. That didn’t explain how he’d come to be so accepted by the nomads. His speech, his dress, his manner. They all showed him to be a settlement Kelm and no member of the wild tribes.

“I knew they would not harm you,” Duash said suddenly.

“Glad someone knew,” Ginn said dryly.

The nomad chieftain laughed again, then shoved the plasma pistol into the braided twine it used for a belt.

“The alh Corovaneen is honored among us,” the nomad said, speaking in its native tongue with an occasional Earth standard word thrown in. “Yet in this he is not fully correct. We might have put you to dirt. You were wise in the claim of your bomb device. Even though we knew you were bluffing. Only your military has access to such things. Yet you showed no fear. We know you now for strength. Rest and peace. We will not kill.”

Ginn smiled faintly before responding fluently in the nomad’s own language. “I appreciate that.” She took her hand from her pocket, but added: “I think I’ll leave the bot activated anyway.”

The chieftain lifted both hands, fingers curled backward into a position no human-jointed digits could manage. It was the Kelmerian equivalent of a shrug. Then the being turned and strode away through the boulder field.

“We ride now,” it called over its shoulder. “There is far travel ahead, and in the desert, those who do not belong.”

Duash followed the chieftain, not meeting Ginn’s gaze as he passed.

Ginn shook her head but trailed after the others. Mostly she was thinking about the chieftain’s “those who do not belong.” It had to be Jac’s men, and if they found her a second time they wouldn’t be so easily surprised.

Within fifty yards, the boulders gave way and they emerged onto the banks of an ancient river. A kind of purple lichen patched the dry river bed, and skeet-brush grew thicker there. She even saw some wild kaftee plants, though all were an immature blue-green and too young to bear seed.

Kelmer was veined with such dead rivers, Ginn knew. Some were only truly dead on the surface. She figured there was underground water here. Maybe even an underground stream. It would be well to remember this location.

From the river bank to the stream bed was an eight foot drop. Almost sheer. The nomad chieftain took it without hesitation. The other nomads followed. Ginn stepped up beside Duash, who hesitated at the very edge as he’d hesitated before a similar drop back at her ruined apartment.

Surreptitiously, Ginn let her shoulder bump the Kelmerian’s. His balance knocked off, Duash had to take a step forward. With a mewl of surprise, he dropped over the edge but managed somehow to land on his feet below. Ginn followed, and smiled sweetly into the glare she’d earned.

Where they stood, the river had once made a bend and the bank had been undercut. In the darkness there, well hidden unless you knew what to look for, Ginn glimpsed the outlines of seven long, lean desert hovercycles.

Yes, they would ride.