Butler, Octavia - Survivor

“You have a child?” His voice had dropped to a whisper.

She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I had a child. My daughter was killed in the raid.”

Jules frowned, managed to look both confused and distressed. He seemed to find nothing to say. Neila crept back into the room, red-eyed, looking ill. She sat down, exchanged glances with Jules, then stared down at her half-eaten dinner.

Diut shattered the discomfort of the moment by announcing, “The Garkohn are over the wall. Several of them.” He kept his voice low and appeared to be listening, though Alanna heard nothing.

Controlling her sudden fear, Alanna got up and went to Diut. Of the four of them, he seemed the one least likely to live through the night. What would she do if he died? What would the Missionaries do? And, if the need arose, how could she possibly…? But again, she pushed the thought away. She would do it if she had to. She would not fail him. He had not failed her. But she would not think about it until she had to.

He sat still, looking up at her. She laid her hand alongside his face, let it move downward to his throat so that as the caress ended, she clasped the throat in the “v” of her thumb and fingers. “You must live,” she whispered in Tehkohn. “They are only slow hunters. Surely you can evade them.”

He stood and held her for a moment. “I will live,” he said quietly. “Preserve yourself. Remember all that I have taught you. I think Natahk will make you use it before the night is over.”

He let her go, moved back toward the wall, seeming to dematerialize before he reached it. He was doing his best now, and he was invisible. He spoke once more, his voice seeming to come from nowhere.

“Deny that I am here. Use time.”

Alanna took his dishes hurriedly and shut them in the cabinet with Neila’s clean dishes. As she was sitting down again, they heard Natahk’s voice.

“You will open the door, Verrick, or we will burn the house.”

Jules got up quickly and opened the door.

Natahk stood just outside with a burning torch in his hand. He was surrounded by a tight half circle of other Garkohn. Too many Garkohn—twenty, perhaps twenty-five. “You will send out the Tehkohn Hao,” Natahk said.

Jules stepped back as though in surprise, managed to seem bewildered. He stared at the torch. “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

It was a good act, Alanna thought. But Natahk was unimpressed. He gestured with his torch, then stepped back, well away from the door. Another Garkohn stepped up and threw a bucket full of something through the open doorway. Jules was drenched with it, and much of the room was spattered. The faint but distinctive odor of it told them all what it was. Lamp oil. It was pressed from a kind of nut that the Garkohn raised—that they had taught the Missionaries to raise. In the lamps, it burned with a bright steady yellow flame. It would give the dry wood of the cabin a fast start toward total destruction. Natahk spoke again.

“The Tehkohn Hao will come out, or you will all burn.” He had already begun to come forward with the torch when Diut’s unmistakable voice rang out.

“Garkohn!”

Natahk stopped, moved back from the door. His manner changed abruptly as he saw Diut seem to materialize out of the wall behind Neila. Natahk brightened his coloring pridefully toward white as he spoke. “You will come out.”

“Put out the fire,” said Diut.

“You do not give orders here, blue one. You will come out!”

Diut hesitated for as long as he dared. Alanna watched him, wondering whether he, like Jules, was to be drenched with lamp oil. Perhaps he wondered the same thing. He moved slowly, cautiously, toward the door, then suddenly sprang through the doorway in a leap that carried him well into the half circle. It was the kind of leap that might have carried him onto the back of an unwary animal. Now, it carried him into the midst of Garkohn who were not wary enough.

Startled, the Garkohn drew back, crouched, ready to defend. But Diut could have gone through them almost effortlessly if that had been his purpose. Instead, seeing no more oil to endanger him, Diut straightened, faced Natahk.

Natahk stared at him for several seconds, then turned back to the house. “And you!” He spoke to the three Verricks. “His friends. You will come out.”

Jules, Neila, and Alanna trailed out slowly. Natahk set one guard on Jules and Neila, and another on Alanna. “Listen to nothing she says,” he told Alanna’s guard. “If she does not obey, kill her.”

The hunter flashed white and looked at Alanna grimly.

For a moment, Alanna stared back at him. Then she looked away, thinking. He was an ordinary-looking member of his clan—a burly man, shorter than Alanna, but heavier, and no doubt, stronger. Alanna would have a chance to kill or disable him only if she was fast enough to get in the first blow, and accurate enough to make it count.

The Garkohn closed a complete circle around Diut, herding him out toward the common where a small fire burned. Alanna knew from having watched mock duels that it would still have been a simple matter for Diut to break out of the circle. He could have escaped into the shadows, hidden, and gone over the wall at his leisure. But he chose to stay and bait Natahk. He had promised Jeh and Kehyo a diversion. He was doing his part. If only they were doing theirs. Alanna found herself listening for shouts beyond the wall already even though she knew it was too soon.

Natahk joined the circle, faced Diut. “How interesting, Tehkohn Hao, to find you conferring with the Missionary leader. These people must be more important to you than I thought.”

“I have found them useful.”

Natahk yellowed. “They will wish they had been less useful.”

“That is your affair.”

“So? Has their usefulness ended so quickly? Why not use them once more. Call them out of their houses to help you. I have many fighters outside who would gladly kill them all!”

Diut said nothing.

Natahk looked at Jules. “You have betrayed your people, Missionary. And you know our way with traitors.” He looked at a huntress who stood just outside the circle. “Build up the fire.” Again he faced Diut. “I think we will make the fire for you too, Tehkohn Hao.”

Diut watched him warily.

“Have no fear though. We will not kill you. We will only revive the old custom—the custom that my people had almost forgotten. Since no Garkohn Hao has been born to us, we will make a Garkohn Hao.”

It was the grisly old custom that Diut had already almost fallen victim to among the desert people. A tribe that could neither buy a Hao nor produce one themselves stole one. They crippled him, kept him. The custom, Diut had told Alanna, was based on the belief that even the most bitter vengeful captive Hao was better than no Hao at all. Such a Hao was not a leader. He was a symbol of power, of unity, of good fortune. This reverence for the Hao, for the blue, was the nearest thing the Kohn had to a religion. But it was a religion that Natahk denied. His people might feel more secure with a captive Hao, but Natahk would not. He was acting solely from vengeance.

Diut’s coloring took on new intensity, became luminescent. He took a long slow look at the Garkohn surrounding him. “You have been without a Hao for too long,” he told Natahk. “You have forgotten how difficult we are to hold.”

“When we have burned your legs, holding you will be a simple matter,” said Natahk.

“Do you think that I will submit to your fire?” said Diut. “Come. Attack! You have forgotten what the blue means. I will refresh your memory!”

The Garkohn of the circle could not quite hide their reaction. There was a slight but general yellowing among them. The Hao were creatures of legendary fighting prowess. Diut was exploiting the fact that the Garkohn were not sure how much was only legend. Or most of them were not.