The Last Hour of Gann (86 page)

“Like a doughnut,” said Amber.

Nicci rolled her eyes. “The Commander’s right,” she muttered.
“It’s always food with you.”

“Okay, it’s like a tire,” Amber said crossly. “Is that better?”

“There are four great gates at the cardinal points and often others in the various districts around the city, for ease of trade and the summering of cattle, but whether civil or private, each gate-house is fashioned with but one tunnelway that opens to the outside at one end and to the inward terrace here. No other door opens to the outside and no other door opens to the city. The many watchmen appointed at the gate-house are garrisoned along either side of a central stair with the private homes of the officers and their families above, arranged to rank, with the warden’s home topmost, encompassing the entire floor so as to be the only home with access to the roof. So it is,” Meoraq concluded, eyeing his poor drawing for faults, “that there are only three access points to the gate-house: the outer gate, the inner gate, and the rooftop stair. All three points were easily held by Szadt and his men. The gates were built to stand and Szadt had the whole of that armory at his disposal. Apart from that, he had somehow acquired certain machines—either from the stores of the Ancients or built after their fashion, I do not know—which could be tossed out through the inward windows. These burst and burned to terrible effect, capable of killing twenty men or more in an instant.”

The humans looked at each other, but didn’t seem much amazed.

“They still worked?” Nicci asked. “The grenades or whatever they were?”

“He said they were built by this other guy,” Amber said before Meoraq could answer. She was scowling.

“He said
maybe
they were. And maybe the other guy just found them.”

“Can you two fight about this later please?” asked Maria, ignoring the censuring mutters of
Eric. “I want to hear the story. Go on, Meoraq.”

He paused, not to let Amber
and her blood-kin settle, but to think about whether or not he really wanted to give the human Maria the idea that she could give him orders. In the end, he continued, but only because it was a good story and he liked telling it.

“Kuaq rallied its defenses immediately, of course, and if
Szadt had advanced out into the streets, surely he and his men would have been taken, but instead Szadt sealed himself within the gate-house to plunder it at his leisure. All attempts to break through the inner gate met with burning death. So too ended the efforts to send warriors around the outer wall to that gate. And so ended the disastrous assault upon the rooftop, when two whole legions of warriors were dismembered alive by more of the Raider-Lord’s infernal machines. And in the lull that followed each onslaught, Szadt provided those encamped without the gate-house with the terrible sounds of his entertainments as he tortured those watchmen he had taken prisoner. At one point, he offered to release the families for certain goods, but when another attempt was made to break the gates, Szadt ended all negotiations. For hours, the cries of the women and children were heard as the Raider-Lord shared them out among his men and then threw them screaming over the inward wall at each tolling of the hour.”

“Jesus,” said Maria, and shivered. “Okay, you two can fight now. I don’t want to hear any more.”

“Kuaq fought tirelessly to remove the invaders, but in vain. Eventually, it was decided that they should send their plea for reinforcements to Xeqor. Our governors at once dispatched two forces: one, a legion of warriors capable of making the march to Kuaq in just six days, and the other, my father, who went alone and was there in three.

“He waited, hidden in the prairie, until night fell. And then he scaled the wall, here.” Meoraq tapped the burnt tip of his stick against his sketch. “Not to the rooftop, but to one of the outer wind-ways which
Szadt had not thought to guard, it being set the height of ten men in a sheer wall and sized for the children whose task it was to keep them clear. How my father made that crawl must have been its own story, but he made it and once inside, my father hunted down every last raider of Szadt’s band and killed them all. One hundred and eleven men at final count,” Meoraq said proudly.

“No way,” said
Eric, his brows rising. “That’s seriously bad ass, lizardman.”

Meoraq grunted, deciding to take that as praise, and went on. “My father’s attack must have begun soon after dark and was swiftly discovered. All of Kuaq saw the erupting fires of
Szadt’s machines and heard the cries of battle, although the gates remained impervious to assault. At the striking of dawn’s hour, the Raider-Lord’s headless body fell from the rooftop where he had thrown so many others to their deaths. The fighting continued, but the core of Szadt’s band had broken and by nightfall, it was silent.

“The governors prudently waited some time to be certain of my father’s victory before they hailed the gate-house, but received no answer. No answer, but no killing machines from
Szadt’s raiders, either. And as time passed and the silence continued, it was decided that my father had received some mortal wound and succumbed to it. Attempts were made to break the gates, but they held. A locksman was brought, but he hadn’t yet managed to craft a new key when the legion from Xeqor finally arrived and my father let them in.”

“Why didn’t he open the inner door?” Amber asked. “There had to have been enough noise…I mean, he had to know someone was out there.”

Meoraq shrugged his spines. “Perhaps he was at prayers. In any case, he opened the outer gate, gave the keeping of the gate-house to the legion’s commander and came home.”

Amber’s eyes narrowed slightly. Her head tipped, but he knew better than to think that meant the degree of sarcasm which it would mean on a dumaq. “He just left? He never opened the other door?”

“My father had little enough patience when dealing with the governors of his own city. As it was, the legion who’d had nothing to do with the retaking of the gate-house were detained three days by a grateful council. After killing a hundred men and bearing a witness to the remains of the women Szadt had given to his band, I doubt he was in any mood to celebrate.”

“The remains,” she echoed, frowning.

“My father never spoke of any of these things,” said Meoraq. “But I have heard from many of those who were part of the legion that went to Kuaq and saw the gate-house in those first hours. It has been supposed that Szadt meant to return to the wildlands that same night, as he had assembled certain supplies and bound what few of the women and children he had not already murdered for travel. But when he knew that it was over for him, it is said that he butchered them, even as they were tied and helpless at his feet. He left no survivors.”

He did not tell them all of what he had been told—that even with his men being cut down in the rooms above him, in the madness of his great evil,
Szadt had not only hacked his bound victims to death, but had also engaged some of them sexually. Some before their murders and some clearly after. Bootmarks in blood proved that Rasozul had gone in and out of this room many times, and Meoraq knew that was where his father had been during those days that the governors of Kuaq had been bashing away on the inner-city gate, preparing the bodies for their pyres or searching in vain for life among the dead or perhaps only bearing that terrible scene his witness for however long he could manage. He’d asked once, years later, when he was Sheulek himself and his father had seemed in an open sort of mood, but Rasozul’s face had closed before the question had even come fully from his mouth. “I’ve told all there is in that tale once to your mother,” he’d said. “And I’ll tell it again to Sheul, but not to you, son. Not to anyone.”

“My father returned to Xeqor a hero. His name is known in every ci
ty I have ever passed through. His name is known,” he repeated meaningfully. “Mine is not.”

“Then why don’t you want to go home?” Amber asked.

“I go where Sheul sends me,” he said. “That is enough talk for tonight. Finish eating and bank the fire. I’m going on patrol.”

Amber stopped with her hand half-raised, a lump of marrow quivering on her fingertips. Her mouth opened.

“No,” said Meoraq.

Dag laughed. Waving
off Amber’s glare, he excused himself, heading back across camp toward his little tent. No one hailed him. It was early as the bells would have rung it, but night in the wildlands kept its own hours. All the other humans were sleeping.

“You didn’t even let me say anything,”
Amber said.

“You were going to ask if you could come with me.” Meoraq stood up, stretching the stiffness out of his limbs. “And the answer is no. You rest.”

“I’ve rested all frigging day!”

“You could barely walk a few hours ago,” Eric remarked, grinning.

His woman looked at him, at Amber, and then took his sleeve and towed him to his feet. They left, whispering and laughing.

“I get the first watch,” Amber insisted, reaching for her s
pear. “I always—”

She stopped there. Meoraq was smiling and holding out his open hand.

She looked at it while her blood-kin heaved a noisy sigh and tromped away, muttering something about being back in a few minutes to untie her. Amber closed her eyes and rubbed them, then crooked up the corner of her mouth and put her hand in his.

He pulled her to her feet and released her. “I found a dead tachuqi where I f
ound our meat.”

Her
gaze sharpened at once. “More of those things that attacked us?”

“
Not more, but the same group, or so I believe. We are still in easy distance of our previous camp.”

She dropped her eyes. He waited until she dragged them up again.

“But if I am wrong, there are tachuqis very close to us tonight. If you come with me, if we find them, can you stand with me and fight?”

She did not answer.

“Rest,” he said. “Sleep, if you can. I’ll wake you for your watch.”

She looked away again, staring hard into the fire at their feet. She nodded once.

He gave her a pat on the shoulder and left her there, passing Nicci on his way out of camp. She tossed her hair at him and sniffed in answer to his (admittedly terse) grunt of acknowledgement, but that was fine. He’d rather she give him a brief rudeness and move on than stand around and chirp at him as she did with her human friends.

But there was another light ahead of hi
m, which meant another human wandering in the wildlands. Scott, he soon saw, slouching by himself on a jut of stone beside the stream. He didn’t have time to slip away unnoticed; Scott shone his lamp right at him.

There was no one else around to see them, no one to intimidate or impress. Alone, they eyed one another with undisguised mutual disli
ke. Meoraq was first to speak. “What are you doing out of camp?”

He was so proud of his self-restraint.

“Thinking,” said Scott. “When you’re in charge, you have a lot to think about.”

There was a challenge in his words, naked as a sword’s edge.

“Truth,” said Meoraq. Such self-restraint. Surely Sheul was with him. “Now go back to your den. I want you all together.”

“Where are you going?”

“Patrolling. There is tachuqi-sign nearby.” Sheul’s hand slipped; Gann’s gripped him. “Join me, S’kot. We’ll hunt them down together.”

The human’s eyes narrowed. His smile was a cold gash across his face.

“No? Ah well. I suppose you are too important to your people to risk.”

“They need someone to be able to make decisions without waiting for a sign from God first.”

Meoraq laughed scornfully. “And you do that very well. In fact, I think that’s about all you do. But I note that even you don’t call them good decisions.”

And he walked on, taking a low pleasure in imagining the look on
Scott’s ugly face as he was left behind to steep in hate. As he circled his camp, he warmed himself with thoughts of Scott sulking on his rock, maybe for an hour, maybe even all night. He supposed he’d ought to ask Sheul to heal him of his spite, which was a poison and a shameful thing to live in the heart of a Sheulek…but he’d already asked Sheul for so much tonight.

In reality, Everly
Scott left right after Meoraq did, and while he did sit in his tent for about twenty minutes, he wasn’t sulking. He was thinking. And when he was decided, when everyone was sleeping, he slipped out again.

Amber was a light sleeper, but she didn’t hear him. It was the cold that woke her—the cold that blew down her back as a careful hand pulled her blanket away from her neck. Even then, there was no prescient leap of fear, only a sleepy annoyance. “I’m up, I’m up,” she mumbled, rolling over. “Back off, liz—
”

She saw the medikit, oddly. Just the kit, which she had last seen the day Mr. Yao placed it in
Scott’s hands. The medikit, open, and a blurry field of dirty crimson behind it that she never had time to recognize as the uniform jacket of a crewman for the
Pioneer
.

Then there was a hand in her hair, shoving her head back so that all she saw was night sky and a few sparks from the fire riding smoke out on the wind. She took a breath and something bit her on the neck. It was her last conscious thought: Snakebite. She heard it hissing again and again, hissing as it bit and bit, and she tried to scream, but her lungs were full of lead and the black got so much blacker and there wasn’t time to think Nicci’s name even once and that was it for Amber.