Jo Clayton - Fire in the Sky

The swaying was worse, the footing more uncertain, so this time it was harder to get them going, even with her mindtouch soothing them, but the harp music helped. They were used to the sound and it covered all but the worst of the noises from the bridge.

As Shadith swung into the saddle, the Denchok on the far side of the swollen creek cupped his hands about his mouth and called, “Watch out for choreks. Thick as fleas.”

She waved to him, then rode Brйou around the litter ponies and took her place in front. “Let’s go.”

It is the peculiar quality of water sounds that they can be quite loud and yet inaudible a few minutes off. Before they’d gone more than a few score paces along the road, all Shadith could hear was the wind creaks of the trees and the pattery sound of the leaves. Now and then a flurry of sound broke across this background and once she saw a small flier turn into jewels when it darted through a sunbeam, ruby and emerald on the carapace, with diamond wings. The Forest hummed around her, the peace as thick as the shadow that lay across the road, the trees giants now, rising ten or twelve times her height. Their trunks were rough textured, the bark deeply incised and so loose that they looked like they had the mange, patches of old bark in place, dark gray and spongy, patches of new pale green and rough as if someone had used a rasp on them. The distance between the trees increased with their height, but the forest didn’t open out like others she’d seen. Even though the light under the canopy was minimal, spikes of fungus rose everywhere, pastel and pulpy, pale pink, ocher, grayish-green, ivory. Lichen vines spread from trunk to ground in fan-shaped webs and giant slimemolds spread like golden syrup across the ground. The air had an odd mixture of conifer bite and fungal musk.

She kept the mindtouch sweeping from side to side, reaching as far as she could. Back and forth, back and forth, almost soothing in its regularity. Back and forth, back and forth, the road a green and pastel tunnel ahead, gently curving, following the swell of the mountains, rising and falling only a little, sometimes a small cut into the mountain to keep the level easy, sometimes a hardpacked fall of scree glued in place with concrete.

They stopped to feed and water the ca6pas. Danor feigned sleep so she’d leave him alone. He needn’t have bothered. She was too tired to fool with him. She sat a while wondering if she should put her boots back on, at the same time rather enjoying the freedom for her feet. Probably not a good idea in this place, no telling what bacteria or parasites she was picking up. She didn’t move. It was hot and the air was heavy and her feet felt good as they were.

Maorgan made her some tea and scolded her into eating some dried fruit he’d cut into small pieces so they’d be easier to swallow. She needed the energy and got the fruit down, though her gorge rose at the thought of eating and her throat tried to close on her.

On the road again. Back and forth. Back and forth. Drowned in deepening green twilight and the heavy odor from the lichen, molds, and other fungi. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Late in the day, when it was almost time to stop for the night, she felt a burn at the farthest point of her reach.

“Hold it. There’s something…”

Rage/satisfaction/anticipation…

Male aura. Fior. About a kilometer on.

She slid from the saddle, walked a few steps from Brйou, set herself and swept her mindtouch in a slow arc, focusing all her attention into the touch, dragging in as much information as she could.

One man. One caцpa. No backup, just him.

With an exploding sigh, she came back to her body, started as she saw Maorgan standing beside her. “What is it?” he said.

“Ambush. One man. Angry. Must be a political.” She untied the thongs on the saddlebag and took her boots out. She sat in the middle of the road, wiped her feet with her kerchief, and began the painful process of getting the boots back on.

“What are you doing?”

“Going after him, of course. You lead the caцpas at a slow walk, I circle round behind him and nail him with the stunner.” She grunted as her heel finally dropped home, then started working the other foot into its boot.

“Shadowsong…”

She looked up. “Don’t be tedious, Maorgan. It was the truth I told you back there on the first day out, not just a story to pass the time. This is what I do, what I have done a hundred times before.” She wiggled her foot, yanked on the boot tops and seated the second heel, got to her feet and brushed herself off. “As far as I can tell-and this isn’t all that accurate, mind you-the chorek’s in a tree about half a sikkom ahead. If I’m not on the road waiting, do what you have to do.”

She waited until she heard the clip-clop of pony hooves and Maorgan’s whistled tune winding lazily past the spears of fungus. Wrinkling her nose with distaste, she began circling around to get behind the chorek, pushing her way through those spears, the pulpy stalks breaking apart and squishing under her boot heels, the smell intensifying with every step. The slimy pulp from the fungus made her bootsoles dangerously slick. She fell twice, the first time when her foot came down on one of the slimemolds while she was concentrating too hard to keeping the touch on the chorek, the second as she was trying to hurry across an open section and get to shelter.

The smell worried her and she stopped to check the wind. It was slow, sluggish-and blowing from the direction of the chorek so that was all right. Have to be careful, she thought, funny to think cracking a stink would be as big a danger as cracking a twig underfoot.

She saw him finally, a dark blot in a rope cradle about three meters up one of the trunks. He’d sunk spikes into the wood to hold the rope ends and pulled the thick loose bark out from the wood, using the curl to mask him from the road. She saw him stiffen as he heard Maorgan’s whistle. He moved slightly, brought something gray and short up from where it had been resting, sighted it on the road, and waited. Not a pellet gun. What is that?

Shadith wiped her hands on her shirt, eased the stunner from the leather sack dangling from her belt. She wiped her hands again, made a last sweep of the surround to verify he was alone, shot him.

The weapon fell with a clank onto the tall roots of the tree, rolled off toward the road. The chorek was draped over the ropes, his mouth open, eyes rolled back, the whites glistening in the murky light under the canopy.

Watching him intently to make sure no twist in his genes made him a tricky candidate for stunning, she made her way to the foot of his tree and collected the thing he’d dropped. She stood staring at it for several moments, deeply shocked. Pellet guns were one thing, in a pinch most smugglers would carry a few for trading, but energy weapons? That was big time trouble. The only time she’d seen it happen was on Avosing, and that was only because there was major value being exchanged. But one ragtag bandit on a nondescript world?

She tested the cutter on the limb of a tree close by, then used it to burn loose one end of the rope cradle, not caring a whole lot whether or not the man survived the fall.

He was limp from the stunning and not that high up. He hit the downslanting roots, rolled onto the ground, and finished the rollnot far from where she’d found the cutter. She checked his pulse, nodded, straightened his legs, then moved to the center of the road, waiting for Maorgan to show.

Maorgan looked down at the man. “Don’t know him. Where was he?”

She flicked a hand at the tree, then frowned as Danor came tottering around the ponies. The Melitoлhn’s eyes were focused on the chorek, his face was flushed, his body tense despite his weakness, there was a bulge inside his shirt that didn’t come from bandages. Where he’d got the knife or whatever it was, she didn’t know. “Danor, no.” She spoke deliberately, then put herself between the stunned man and the Ard. “We need to question him first.”