Friends (2013) - Adams, Robert

As Von started toward the horse, Ethera’s arm reached out for him. He had not known until that moment that she lived. “My chief,” she said, as he touched her lovely face, so wonderfully whole and unmarked, “no one loved Blackhoof more than I, but you risk your life to climb down there. Would it not be best to end his suffering with an arrow?’ ’ She gestured at one good bow and several steel-tipped arrows that had survived.

“My soul flies now that I see you live, dear one. But I will not dispatch yonder steed without a proper farewell. He bore me in battle, and that’s an end to it.”

Blackhoof s eyes were huge in pain, his nostrils flaring; but he beamed an emotion of such pure joy at the coming of a kinsman, and this man in particular, that the danger seemed to recede before such camaraderie. An aftershock surprised everyone, and Von fell, sliding the last ten feet of rock-strewn slope to come up hard against the sweating flank of the horse. Putting out a big hand, he patted the wet, dark neck of his steed. They looked into each other’s eyes, and exchanged something beyond words or mindspeak, before Von cut his friend’s artery.

The chief of the clan didn’t have to make the climb back up alone. Ethera had come to join him, and helped support his large frame, bruised from the sliding.

By some miracle, the survivors made it the rest of the way without further mishap, although Terrell needed extra help with Berti, who was fading in and out of consciousness. Periodically a wild animal would scamper or gallop by them, so close that some of the Kindred could almost touch it. The greater fear drowned all smaller instincts.

Only when they’d reached the base of the plateau, and dusk was closing in, did they finally take a count of their numbers. The horses and ponies were presumed dead or run off. From a party of twenty warriors, thirty-five clanswomen, six prairiecats, and five Moon Maidens, their numbers were reduced to eight men, ten women, two cats . . . and none of the Moon Maidens. Von kept up their spirits with: “We don’t know that any be dead we didn’t see with our own eyes. Others may be lost from us, as we are lost from other clans.”

“Wouldn’t we have received mindspeak?” asked a young girl.”

“Nothing is certain,” Von insisted.

Further discussion would most certainly have involved plans to reconnoiter and set up camp. Foraging would be no problem with all the fresh food so newly descended from the plateau. Their deliberations never got anywhere, because they were ambushed!

Exhausted as they were from the arduous journey, they still had the strength to put up resistance. The nature of the enemy was so completely unexpected, however, that it delayed their response. The enemy was a short, hairy Ganik, but what was worse, he carried a weapon the likes of which none of the Horseclansmen had ever seen.

The noise from the strange weapon was frightening; in fact, they feared that the earthshaking had started again. Even more frightening were the smoke and sparks thrown by the strange weapon. None of the clansmen were harmed, however; and the idea of a Ganik deliberately shooting to miss was almost as inconceivable as his using an incomprehensible weapon in the first place. Before Von could give orders to rush the enemy, a giant of a man, almost nine feet in height, appeared from around a boulder to their right, blocking their only avenue of escape, since none wished to challenge the unknown weapon to their left.

“Don’t give hard time,” shouted the giant. “Bigboy hurt when ground shook. Back hurts. Ribs hurt. Don’t fight or Bigboy hurt you bad.” The Horseclansmen stood still, several thanking Wind that they could understand the strange language of the Ganiks. Somehow it made the bad situation a little better.

“Hey, shaggy man,” taunted Terrell. “Aren’t you afraid that your demon, Plooshun, will feed your guts to your children for sinning against him? He will strike you down for using that strange weapon!”

Von was surprised. He knew that Terrell spoke many languages, but he hadn’t realized that his young lieutenant knew so much about the Ganiks and their strange beliefs. Terrell’s words were having good effect on their first captor— the little man was sweating heavily, and cursing in his coarse dialect. However, before they could take advantage of the Ganik’s fear, the giant shouted again.

“Leave him be! Bigboy talk now,” he cried. “Come. The Judge decide what happens to you now.” The Horseclansmen still might have succeeded in rushing the enemy, despite their weakened state. Swifteye mindspoke to Von, assuring him that nothing could prevent her from tearing out the throat of whichever Ganik he assigned. Then suddenly a small army of Ganiks appeared, creeping forth from among the shadows.

Von broadbeamed a silent warning to his people: “Had they meant but to kill us, they’d have done so ere now. Wait for a better chance. We’ll bathe the ground in blood before we enter their stewpots, I promise it.” His people, more angry and frustrated than exhausted, eager to meet a tangible enemy after enduring natural disaster, agreed with their chief. They would bide their time.

So it was that Horseclansmen were introduced to the peculiar legal practices of a renegade Witchman.

The earthquake had played a game upon Noplis. Miserable over his latest performance, even obsessed with it, all the forces of nature had risen up to remove the would-be entertainer from his no doubt grateful audience. At least, it felt that way to him. If the earthquake were a bard itself, it could have done no better than to leave the singer of woeful tales with but one companion: his most severe critic, Flatear. Surely the earthquake had too blatant a sense of irony to be a first-rate artist.

“Sacred Sun is barely visible,” observed the prairiecat. A feline’s excellent night vision was of no use in a sky befouled with debris. On top of that, the big cat was continually sneezing in Noplis’ direction.

If the Witchmen were driven to learn the secrets of how mutant telepathy worked, it was something taken for granted by the Kindred, as natural a part of their daily lives as breathing or eating. Something about the earthquake was interfering with both the cat’s and the bard’s farspeak, although they could still communicate one-to-one. Was it magnetic disturbance released from the earth? Was it smoke and dust in the air? Whatever the reason, long-range telepathy was impeded in this locality.

“Last mindcall was over there,” observed the prairiecat, his good ear twitching in the direction of the wall of rock that had been vomited from the bowels of the plateau only a short distance from Noplis.

“Then we can’t follow,” moaned the bard, “and the other way lies certain death.” The wall of fire was a safe distance from them, but how much longer that would last neither dared venture a guess.

“We must find another route or perish,” said Flatear, already moving with grace and precision along the side of the new barrier. “There needs be an opening somewhere,” insisted the cat. “Help me look, two-legs.”

Well into the afternoon they searched, the inferno blazing nearer, a reminder of the urgency of their plight. There was little opportunity for the exchange of bantering words, and no breath was wasted. Search, hope, move swiftly ... or die.

It wasn’t exactly friendship that was formed by the ordeal, but there was a lessening of enmity. Treating a companion as an enemy is a luxury that danger does not allow.

The fire crept nearer, hot and hungry for them; the wall of rock remained impervious; the great eye of the sun was ever more occluded by the shroud of dust. Over and over, Noplis said a silent prayer: Let me not lose courage before this brave prairiecat. He had not even noticed that his prayer had changed from a screaming, hysterical plea of: Get me out of here!

They found a dead mountain pony. All they could salvage of his gear was a coil of rope. As Noplis worked at this task, he received a surprise. “Two-legs,” beamed Flatear, his tongue hanging from his mouth, perspiring, “if I don’t have another chance to tell you truly, I like one thing about your songs.”

“You do?” asked Noplis, a sudden weight removed from his heart.

“You pronounce names correctly.”

* * *

The Judge had been in a bad humor. Earthquakes tended to do that to him. The last occasion he had felt this way had been four hundred years earlier, during the submergence of Florida. Between his phenomenal memory and love of history, it was natural that he had made the joke: “Well, this will put a real dent in the tourist industry.” Alas, the technicians at the Center were no more likely to laugh at his humor than were the vaguely human forms that made up his new community, but at least he didn’t expect anything from the latter.

His mood was instantly lightened by glad tidings. “We’ve found Milo-men,” said a Ganik, using a term that his master had taught him.

“Splendid! At times like this, nothing is so welcome as a trial.”

The closet in which he kept his handmade vestments and favorite mirror (a floor-length one) had survived the tremors. Hurrying there, he eagerly reached out clawlike hands to fondle a moldy black robe—-yet another reason to be grateful that his olfactory senses didn’t work—and draped the garment around his bony frame. Even more absurd was the makeshift wig, once the working end of an old mop. One had to make do. Outfitted in the splendor of his office, he proceeded to court.

Bigboy always had trouble entering what had been the operations room a millennium ago but now served as the courtroom. Once inside, there was ample room for him; but despite a sloppy job of enlargement, the doorway still represented a tight squeeze. When there was to be a trial, the giant knew that the Judge would insist on his playing the role of something called “Abailiff.” Bigboy stood close to the olive-green wall, and waited.

Von was standing in the center of the room. When he closed his eyes, little sparkles of light danced behind the lids, and his balance was uncertain. How delightful it would be to simply lie down upon the hard floor . . . and sleep forever. With a start, he opened his eyes. No, he would not succumb; through force of will he would be as formidable as ever. The enemy would not claim his people or himself while life beat within the veins of any member of the Horseclans.

Yet no amount of bravado could completely remove the sour memories of being brought into this Hold. Down a flight of metal stairs, assailed by the stench of shaggy men’s unwashed bodies—so concentrated that it was indescribably revolting—they had been forced to march. Their weapons and supplies were dumped in a pile at the foot of the stairs. The scene was bathed in merciless white light from the ceiling. This made it more of a torment, because it was all too easy to see the shaggies clearly; and some of the Ganik females, with an even more noxious odor than their mates, poked and prodded them. Disarmed and surrounded by such as these, Von had to wonder if he had made the right decision. The machine gun remained a persuasive argument.

The sound of a dull thud attracted his attention. Berti had collapsed at Terrell’s feet. “Let me help,” said Ethera, but before she could take a step, a swarm of Ganiks surrounded the fallen man and made off with him. There was nothing Terrell could do, but he tried nonetheless. His attempt to hold on to his friend was met by one hamhock of a hand lifting him by the shoulders. Bigboy was the most alert giant Von had ever seen.

“Bigboy!” shouted Von. “Tell your chief Judge that should butchery befall our kinsman, he will answer to me, anon.”