Роберт Бюттнер - Orphan's Journey

My jailer walked five yards into the grass, turned his back, and peed.

I rolled onto my side and tasked Jeeb. “Find Ord. Bring Ord.”

Jeeb telescoped his wings from beneath his carapace, and spiraled up into the clear morning. In a blink, he became a speck indistinguishable from a bird.

I glanced over at Bassin, who sat hobbled to his distant rock, his good leg crossed over his stump. He stared at me, head cocked, like he was making mental notes. When he noticed I was looking at him, he smiled and waved.

Bouncing across the frigid grassland of Bren — that’s what these folks called their garden-spot planet — tied to a farting dinosaur’s butt is better when you’re eavesdropping.

After an hour’s ride south, Blackbeard dropped back from the column’s head, and brought his pinto alongside my minder’s dapple gray.

Blackbeard leaned out of his saddle, rapped my shoulder plate, and said, “What did this Fisheater offer last night, Yulen?”

I twisted so I could watch them talk.

My minder shrugged. “One word, Captain. Gibberish.”

“A Fisheater who doesn’t bargain? Even when a Casuni may take his life?”

Life? I twisted my wrists inside my bonds.

Yulen, my minder, threw back his head and boomed a laugh. “Scratch a Marini, find a haggler.” He paused. “He is peculiar. I’ve never seen such armor.”

“He’s Marini, all right. Only a Fisheater magazine train could make such an explosion.”

Now that I understood their language, I still wasn’t understanding much of what these two were discussing. But I understood that the explosion when we crashed was what had attracted these guys. And I understood that they might kill me.

Yulen fingered his reins. “Fisheater wagons would need a month to travel from the Frontier to the Stone Hills. And where’s the rest of this one’s Legion? Where’s their gun peloton?”

Blackbeard shrugged. “Maybe the explosion sent his Clan mates back to hell.”

“Exploded by their own powder? Maybe they were Tassini, instead.” Yulen grinned.

It was the Captain’s turn to laugh, then he nodded. “A Tassini would defecate in his own yurt. But Tassini are also too stupid to operate cannons. This one’s simple-minded even for a Tassini.” He jerked Bassin’s head up by the hair, then let it flop back down against the duckbill’s flank.

Now I understood a little more. These big guys were part of a Clan, the Casuni. There were two other Clans, maybe more. Bassin, the feral loner, was from a Clan called Tassini. Tassini were primitive. The Marini Clan lived far from here, and were smart enough that they had artillery. My captors thought I was Marini. Flattering, I guess.

They rode in silence for a minute.

Yulen said to his Captain, “Do you suppose the Marini have started poaching Stones?”

“For the first time in three hundred years?” Captain Blackbeard snorted, glared down at me, and sighed. “I hope you’re no poacher. For your own sake. Casus roasts Stone poachers in their own armor.”

A distant bugle sounded.

Yulen, the Sergeant, drew a curved, hollowed tooth as big as a walrus tusk from his pack, and bugled back.

Blackbeard stood in his stirrups and shaded his eyes. “It’s Lieutenant Brendin’s Troop.”

I twisted to follow Blackbeard’s gaze. Far across the rolling prairie, another duckbill-and-rider gaggle strode like monstrous ostriches, trailing a dust plume. Above them a tiny shadow flitted, zigzagging like no bird, and my transponder detection circuit beeped in my earpiece. Jeeb.

I had tasked Jeeb to find Ord. Jeeb wasn’t some mutt who could be sidetracked if a rabbit crossed his path. Jeeb wouldn’t shadow a cavalry troop unless—

Captain Blackbeard said, “Looks like Brendin found poachers of his own.”

Sergeant Yulen nodded, as he visored a hand over his own eyes. “I count three bodies.”

My heart sank.

TWENTY-FIVE

TEN MINUTES LATER, Blackbeard’s cavalry crossed paths with the distant group.

The other troop’s Lieutenant, if I was reading his fancier armor style right, rode forward, grinning. He led a second, riderless duckbill by its reins. Where a rider would have been, there clattered an empty jumble of roped- together Eternad armor segments. I saw my own helmet, two stars on its fascia. I counted segments that added up to two old crimson suits and one modern suit, with three-up-three down chevrons clearly visible on its fascia. And “Ord” stenciled on the breastplate.

I shook my head and closed my eyes.

Blackbeard said to the new Lieutenant, “Find any Stones on the Fisheaters?”

The new Lieutenant, whose beard was brown, shook his head. “None they confessed. They answered questions with nonsense, or silence.”

Blackbeard’s eyes narrowed. “No Stones at all?”

“We stripped their armor, and searched them lips-to-assholes. Their armor is of new design, by the way. Light as magic. If the Fisheaters have any on offer at The Fair, I’ll trade all three of these poachers for a set in my size.” The new Lieutenant shrugged. “But question them yourself, over the embers.”

Embers? I squirmed. But the Lieutenant had used the future tense. My heart pounded. Maybe…

Blackbeard shook his head. “No time. Already, we’re going to have to overwork the mounts. The men would set us on the embers if we make them late to The Fair.” He turned to Yulen, and pointed at me. “Sergeant, strip the armor off this one, too. Dump him and that addled Tassini back with the Lieutenant’s other Fisheaters. Just have one man guard all five. We’ll make better time.”

Five minutes later, I shivered in my uniform underlayer. Yulen left me my boots and gauntlets. Without them, my tied hands and feet would have been frostbitten in hours.

As I lay bound at his feet, Yulen watched Blackbeard and the Lieutenant’s troops trot in column toward the horizon. The troops’ mounts, spares, and pack animals added up to a hundred, so much tonnage that I felt the prairie shake beneath my shoulder blades.

Yulen reached into his saddlebag, and drew out a double handful of brown wafers. They resembled Bassin’s patties, but appeared to have been baked, and they actually smelled good. He knelt beside me, tucked them in my chest pockets, and patted the bulge with a great hand, on which remained two fingers. “For you and your friends. It’s four days’ ride to The Fair. Brendin will starve you, otherwise.”

As six-foot-five barbarians who roast enemies over embers go, Sergeant Yulen was a nice guy.

“Thanks, Sarge.” I bit my lip, because the words blurted out in my new-learned language, which called itself Casuni.

His eyebrows rose, then he smiled and nodded. “That’s more like it. I never met a Fisheater who wasn’t clever. And slippery.”

“You’re wrong. But you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Just thanks for the kindness.”

He loaded me and my armor onto his duckbill, then he led his mount toward the lone cavalryman the Lieutenant had left behind. Our new minder, draped in pistols and blades in the Casuni fashion, dismounted and hefted Bassin onto one duckbill among a remuda of five, all grazing head-down. On each of three duckbills squirmed one bound but obviously live Earthling in his quilted Eternad underlayer.

My heart leapt.

Yulen and the minder made the duckbills hunker low, and sat the other three captives upright in their saddles, bound hands grasping the saddles. Then Yulen hefted me so I rode upright, too, in the saddle on the vacant fifth duckbill.

Yulen said, “Kindness? I show Marini kindness when groundfruit is in season.”

“When’s that?”

He grinned. “Groundfruit is never in season.” He slapped my duckbill’s rump; it trotted, and he shook his head. “Fat prisoners just bring higher ransom. That’s all.”