The Last Hour of Gann (88 page)

Truth, but against all the truth in the world lay Amber and she needed him.

So. He needed the sun to find the road. And he would have to sleep until then, so that he could make his journey at a run. The knowledge that he might well wake holding a corpse sat in him like frozen clay, but he could do nothing for her here. He had to find a city. He would not bring Amber with him. He would simply describe her symptoms, demand medicines, and return as swiftly as he was able. He would have to trust the other humans to tend her until then, and oh but that thought was as chill in his heart as Amber’s limp body against his breast.

“Father, please,” he whispered, but said no more than that. He didn’t know what else to say.
His earlier prayers hammered at him,
hammered
, with a weight and an impact that left a physical pain inside him:
The burden is too great. Her wounds slow us all. Relieve her of her pains.

Relieve me of this burden.

He touched the back of his hand to her smooth brow. Amber did not know he was there.

Meoraq
rose and left the tent. He would speak slowly, he decided. He would not be hostile. He would draw no blade. He would say only that he had done much for their (
miserable worthless wretched cowardly
) lives and he would ask one of them to tend to Amber in his absence. And if they refused, he would politely and without drawing weapons, observe that he could not look after them while tending to a sick woman himself. And if that failed to sway them—

Nicci’s tearful voice cut across his thoughts, bleeding meaning before he consciously translated the words: “We can’t just leave her!”

Meoraq stopped walking. His head cocked. He had not heard that, he decided. Or if he had, it held some other meaning.

Their backs were to him, black shapes in the night, flames making night-terrors of all their ugly faces, making them all strangers. All but
Scott. Scott he knew at once.

“The fact that she’s sick at all
, in spite of the Vaccine, means we can’t just assume what she’s got isn’t catching,” he was saying in that calm, urgent way he thought hid his mind so well.

“Then why aren’t we all sick?” someone asked.
“If the Vaccine doesn’t work—”

“No one’s saying it doesn’t work,”
Scott said quickly. “I’m just suggesting that maybe it only works up to a point. If someone keeps putting themselves in contact with a potential contagion…” Scott paused to let those words work on his murmuring people, then gravely said, “She spends a lot of time with the lizard.”

Meoraq’s head tipped further. He felt his spines flattening.

“Talking to him. Sharing his food. Touching him. Whether or not they’re doing anything…intimate,” said Scott, as his people’s low whispers grew louder, “my point is, they’re always together. Who knows what kind of germs he could be carrying? If she’s caught something from him and it jumps to the rest of us…” Scott paused yet again to survey the effect of his words. He liked what he saw enough to let his thought go unfinished. Instead, he said, “The safety of the colony matters more than any one individual. Miss Bierce and I may have had our differences, but I know she’d say the same thing no matter who was in her place.”

Nicci put her hands over her face and cried harder. She did not protest, not even when
Scott came and put his arm around her shaking shoulders.

“I can’t agree to this,” said Dag suddenly.

Meoraq looked at him, curiously unrelieved, waiting.

Dag said, troubled, “How are we going to find this temple-place without the lizard? We need him.”

“We can keep the lizard,” Scott assured them as his humans murmured. “We just need to be more careful about coming into direct contact with him.”

“Hey, I’m all for that,” said
Eric, shrugging his arm up around his woman’s shoulders. “Particularly when he gets into one of his slappy moods. But you need to consider the possibility that he might not want to keep tagging along after Amber dies.”

And that was too much.

“After?” said Meoraq with a furious hiss. “Not even if, but after?”

They turned with satisfying leaps and cries.
Scott took his arm off wailing Nicci and put more of the fire between them. He was a coward, but not a fool. “This isn’t personal. Everyone here appreciates what you’ve done, uh, Meoraq.”

His spines flattened with a slapping sound.
“I do not like the way you say my name,” he said. He did not raise his voice. He did not draw a weapon. He was a Sword of Sheul and he was his own master. “I don’t like much of anything I hear you saying.”

“
How is she?” Scott asked, backing up again.

His spines began to hurt. His throat was already throbbing. “She rests in Sheul’s sight
tonight. Tomorrow, I go to find a surgeon in the city.”

Surprise in every human face
and then unease. “Is there one around here?” Dag asked.

“No,” Meoraq admitted. “I will be
away many days. Twelve at the least. Perhaps more.” And as alarmed noise began to whisper through their mouths, he said, “You must tend the woman while I am gone. I will have your word on this!”

“Twelve days? You can’t leave us for twelve days!”

“Anything could happen!”

“What about those monsters? What if they come back?
”

“She’s not going to make it anyway!”

Meoraq whipped around to aim his hand like a knife at that one, the female Maria, hissing, “You shut your poison mouth!”

She did, shrinking back while
her man shielded her, and all the humans quieted for a time. Again the hateful Scott gauged his people’s mood. Then, with all apparent concern, he said, “Do you really think she’s going to last another twelve days? Really?”

“I think
she’ll die if no one cares for her. Or is that your intent?” he hissed.

Scott
’s ears pinked and his mouth tightened, but not for long. “Are you calling me a murderer?” he demanded in a very loud, fast, oddly-pitched way.

“Ease up, man,” said
Eric, catching at his leader’s arm. “I’m sure he didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“Do not tell
me what my meaning is, human!” he snapped. “If she dies in spite of your care, that is Sheul’s will and I honor it, but if she ails and you
let
her die,
that
I call murder and I will see every Gann-damned one of you judged for it!”

“Easy,” said
Eric, his eyes huge and orange in the firelight. “Easy, Meor—”

“
Stop saying my fucking name like that
!”

Humans scattered
back all around him, some with their hands held up and empty, some darting behind others, all staring at him. Meoraq clapped his hands to his face and breathed, battling the killing rage that wanted so badly to take command of him. A Sword of Sheul is a master over his emotions. Six breaths, just as he had trained from boyhood, six breaths deep and slow, like winding steps to peace. Always, he had envisioned Sheul at the last riser, His arms outstretched in welcome. Now, he saw Amber, lying still as death at his feet.

He lowered his arms to his side, calm again, and looked at them. ‘I hate you all,’ he thought, but he thought it calmly.

Scott waited, letting the silence stir at fears, then said, “You’re right. Whatever happens to Amber is God’s will. None of us can change that. But regardless of what happens, the rest of us need to take care of ourselves. Sentimentality has no place in this decision. You knew that when you saw her holding that knife and you have to know it now. I know you don’t like me—”

Meoraq passed a hand over his eyes
again, trying to shut out the human’s voice, to seek Sheul’s behind it.

“—but you must know I’m right.
Say you do go off to the nearest doctor. Are we really supposed to just stay here and wait for you? We don’t have the resources to wait twelve days without you.”

“There is water at the stream and, if you are sparing, enough meat to last until my return.”

Scott glanced towards the sleds, where slabs of corrokis meat had been wrapped in some of the humans’ packs and stacked in anticipation of the next day’s journey. “I’m sure it would be, if we were moving. But if we’re just sitting here, that much meat in one place is nothing but an invitation to all this planet’s hungry animals to come get an easy meal. How are we supposed to defend ourselves?”

Several watching humans voiced uneasy agreement.

Scott nodded at them in encouragement before turning gravely back to Meoraq. “I have to weigh the risks here and the fact is, Amber Bierce is just one person. It’s difficult to admit this, of course.” He paused and, although his expression remained as grimly serious as ever, something about him smiled anyway, invisibly and fanged. “But a leader has to make difficult decisions.”

“You will not take her in,” Meoraq said. It was not a question. He could feel the color throbbing in his throat, but his thoughts were calm. Black, but calm.
“You would let her die to stab at me.”

“She’s not dying!” Nicci shouted before
Scott could answer. “Don’t you even say that, you…you…She’ll be fine in the morning! She’s always fine!”

“Will you look after her then?” Meoraq asked her.

Nicci fell at once to a sniffling silence.

Scott
patted her shoulder. “If you were offering any kind of real solution, that would be one thing. But to be brutally honest, I’m not sure how we
could
take care of her for twelve days. She was choking on her own spit a few minutes ago. How are we supposed to give her food and water? I’m sorry, Nichole, I know this is difficult for you. It’s difficult for all of us, but I really think it would be best to let nature take its course. Or let God’s will be done, if you like that better.”

Meoraq’s
hand came back to his brow-ridges, rubbing hard enough to hurt. Six breaths, he told himself, and counted them off with his eyes shut. Six breaths, deep and slow, six breaths to Amber.

“I’m not enjoying this—”

“Lies! You’d
fuck
this moment if you could!” he spat, and took several stabilizing breaths while Scott stood very quiet. At last, Meoraq raised his head and faced them. “I will meditate upon your words and give you my answer in the morning. I don’t want to see any of you until then.”

No one had any reply
to that, which was just as well.

Meoraq turned around and went back to his
tent, where Amber lay on her side on his mat, just as he had left her. He undressed, placing his clothing in a thin layer atop the blanket before joining her beneath it and pulling her unresisting body against his to warm.

“
Father, this world itself moves as You command it,” Meoraq said, pressing his palm gently to her brow. The words were bitter in his mouth, bitter as the bile on Amber’s wet breath. “And whether You choose to heal her or take her into Your halls, I will thank You and love You no less. Only hear the prayer of Your son, I beg, and let Your will be done swiftly, whatever it must be. The hateful little Gann-bastard is right.”

* * *

It was a terrible night that followed. Amber lay silent and cold beside him through every endless hour. He was afraid to give her water, afraid to drown her right there in his arms, but as the day dawned, in a kind of desperation, he did attempt it. She only drooled it out. He tried to imitate the cattle-hands he had seen, who sometimes gave their livestock medicines by stroking their throats to make them swallow. Amber only lay there choking under the weight of his hand. Twice, he brought out the knife of his fathers and held it over her. Twice, he sheathed it again, but he didn’t know if that was the right thing to do. He had dealt deaths beyond counting in his life, but he had never had to wait this way, had never borne the silent struggles of some fragile life his witness and felt so damned helpless and useless and alone as he did now.

He prayed, because that he could do. He said the Healing Chant until the words became as mechanical as a
ny construct of the Ancients. He said the Prayer of Appeal and all forty-three verses of the Bridge of Men. Mostly, he prayed in the words he might use with his father, speaking as thoughts came over him. Sheul might have heard him; Amber never did. He knew long before the dawn showed him her slack face that there would be no surgeon, no medicine, no run to the city. She did not have twelve days to wait for him. She would be dead in three, if she could not rouse to drink. The hope that she might awaken and be miraculously whole had brought him through the night, but when he could see her again and see what those long hours had done to her, he felt even that stubborn hope strain.

The sun rose and Meoraq did not stir. He watched Amber’s clay struggle to hold life within it and listened as the humans outside gathered their goods and made ready for the day’s journey. If they were quieter than usual as they went about these tasks, this was the only sign of their concern
. It was as if she were already dead to them—dead and burnt, her memory so far distant that grief was just another word, if they had ever known it at all.