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dirt-encrusted organ was stretched tight and thin. The stink of peritoneal
gasses was unbearable. Benadek bent to one side and let the contents of his
gut fly, spattering his boot toes.
"Report!" Achibol snapped. Honch breeding demonstrated itself: to Benadek's
renewed horror, the honch attempted to rise. "As you were!" Achibol snapped.
"Report!"
"Sir!" it replied in a surprisingly clear voice. "Observed mutant camp as
ordered. Killed three who returned. A fourth went in the cave."
"What unit? What orders?"
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"Garvig's platoon, sir. Standing orders from Jorssh: all platoons to leave
guards on mutant nests destroyed. Captives to be tortured for knowledge of Ahh
. . . Aachu . . . to be . . ." The honch's breath became a wet burble. It
raised its head and slammed it down on the rough rock. Heels drummed on the
ground and stones rattled beneath them.
"Achibol," said the sorcerer. "It was trying to say my name. And Jorssh . . .
that was hundreds of years ago. Could he still live?
That
's not programmed into the genes of his kind. Did the planners have tricks my
own people didn't discover?"
"Master? What does this mean?"
"I'm sorry, boy. I merely thought out loud. Jorssh was . . . or apparently
still is, a pattum, an un-simple
`simple' of a special kind."
With lightly veiled sarcasm he never would have dreamed of using before his
new accommodation with his master, Benadek said, "Good. A pattum is a jorssh,
a jorssh is a pattum, both thus are simples, but neither is simple. I
understand fully."
Achibol granted him a thin, penitent grin. "Pattums are honches, of a
sort special-purpose military tools. Technically `simples,' they are in
actuality complex, and more dangerous than ordinary honches."
"I have a hard time imagining anything more dangerous."
"Honches are guards, policemen, or soldiers. They're punctiliously obedient,
and capable of concerted action in small groups, but no honch can control more
than a squad of his fellows, a safety factor in the designers' plan. Honches
can protect and regulate, but cannot make war.
"Honches couldn't be mobilized in organizations large enough to exterminate
pure-humans completely.
With powerful pheromones, pattums can command a hundred or a thousand.
"Jorssh is a pattum I encountered several hundred years ago. I nullified his
campaign against pure-humans, and thought him long since dead. If this Jorssh
is one and the same, he may have found immortality of a kind, though not like
my own. But whatever he is, not only our mission is at stake, but our very
survival. We must hurry ahead, and hope our destination provides us with the
solutions we require."
Benadek gestured with his thumb. "The honch said a pure-human went in there.
The beast we heard must have killed him too."
"We don't know the pure-human is dead, or if the beast has another exit."
The sun was only a hand above the taller ruins. "I'll help Sylfie set up
camp not too near any of these cave-holes."
The young people found a dry stretch of ancient paving, and erected the tent.
Benadek made fire while
Sylfie prepared food. He gathered wood for the night, never venturing out of
sight of Achibol on the rubble talus, or Sylfie in front of the tent. He did
not like the black cave-eyes peering down, hiding unknown death.
Sylfie took a pot of root-and-squirrel stew to Achibol, and a tall mug of tea.
As soon as she'd set down her burden, the mage motioned her away.
"How can he stand it up there?" she asked Benadek. "There are bugs all over
that honch's eyes."
"He thinks there's a pure-human in the cave. But wouldn't he have come out by
now? Even now some beast could be sneaking . . ."
"Don't say that!" Sylfie exclaimed. "I hope there is a pure-human there."
"Then what clawed up the honch?"
She had no answer. They sat by the fire. Every swamp-sound seemed magnified in
the still dusk. The croakers fell silent as they did every evening, and the
night-creatures had not yet begun wailing and grunting. Benadek's eyes widened
at every crackle of small feet, at the fluttering rush of each falling leaf,
the rattle and splash of every nut falling into the green water.
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When the cave-mouth's blackness became for a moment less dark, a reddish glow,
neither noticed; but on the next sweep of Benadek's patrolling eyes, he saw a
dark figure standing by Achibol. A human, not a beast, wearing a full-length
cape with a hood that kept its face in shadow. The shadowy figures bent over
the corpse, dragged it to the cave-mouth, and rolled it within. Together they
came down the slight slope toward the fire. What had happened to the beast?
Perhaps the pure-human would explain.
The pure-human answered no questions. "This is Teress," Achibol told them.
"She'll accompany us to
Sufawlz. Consider her in mourning, and ask her no questions." Benadek peered
into the shadows that hid the pure-human's face. His imagination supplied him
what his eyes could not: great yellow cat-eyes in a face not human at all. The
pure-human turned its head away, as if ashamed.
Achibol took food from their pot, and then led the shrouded figure away from
the fire's light. The newcomer would not speak to him or Sylfie, Benadek noted
with unease, but conversed with Achibol.
No words could be made out. Benadek could not get rid of the impression that
the hooded face kept turning to look at him.
When Benadek's head was nodding, Achibol returned silently to the tent, and
took a packet from his trunk. He returned to their new traveling companion and
shook out a fluffy blanket. The pure-human wrapped itself in the cloth.
Benadek saw nothing that proved it was human, or female. He conceded only that
it walked upright.
* * *
In the morning, the apprentice's curiosity was still not assuaged. Each time
Benadek pumped himself up to question Teress, Achibol silenced him with a
stern look, a shake of his head. When camp was broken, his master walked ahead
with the newcomer, leaving Benadek with Sylfie and the mules.
That night, while Benadek and Sylfie arranged their camp, Achibol and Teress
still remained apart.
When dinner was prepared she joined them, neither speaking nor removing her
hood. Try as he might, Benadek got no more than a vague glimpse of her face.
Her skin was light and her hair probably dark.
After their meal, the pure-human went down a faint game trail to a creek. She [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]