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When they reached the canyon floor the night was very dark, very quiet. The
guardhouse was a blotch of darker shadow in the shadow of the wall. Serroi
patted her macai's shoulder. "Hern," she whispered.
"Mmmh?" The sound came out of the darkness edged with pain and a growing
irritation.
"I think they're sleeping up there."
"Good for them."
"I'm not sure, though." She patted the macai again, re-mounted. "At least
they're a little rested. They should be able to carry us long enough." She
waited. Hern was a quick-ris-ing blackness. He whooshed as he landed in the
saddle, groaned at the pure pleasure of being off his feet.
They reached the gate without a challenge. When Hem bent down to lift the bar,
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they both heard a long-drawn, whistling snore. "Definitely asleep," he
murmured and swung the gate open with the flat of one hand. The
snore turned to a juicy sputtering. As Serroi followed Hern through the gap
she heard a confused muttering; it grew louder
as the negli-gent guard thrust his head out an embrasure and looked blearily
around. "Who there?" He withdrew his head a mo-ment then thrust his shoulders
out, a short throwing spear in one hand. "Get back here, you, or I skewer
you."
Serroi laughed. "You couldn't hit a mountain with the head you got.
Better think about saving your neck," she yelled at him. "Bar the gate
again and tell those following us we must've snuck around you
somehow." She kept looking back as the guard lowered the spear and
considered her words. When he pulled his head back inside, she chuckled
again.
"What was all that about?"
"Giving that drunk some good advice. Hush, I want to hear . . . ah!" Behind
them the gates swung shut. "Good man. You look after you and let the rest
go hang." She raised her arms over her head, twisted her body about, then
slumped in the saddle. "Ay-mi, the tarr is beginning to wear off. Hern."
"Hummmh?"
"I'm going to crash any minute."
He rode closer, looked back at the black bulk of the wall. "The minarka?"
She rubbed at her eyes, yawned again. "Wall's it. We're in Sleykyn land now."
Sleep was clubbing at her; it was hard to talk, harder to think. She
clutched at the saddle ledge feeling horribly insecure as if she were trying
to walk underwater and making sorry work of it.
Hern caught hold of her shoulder. "Dammit, Serroi, where do we go from here?
Where!"
The pain from his grip, the shouted word penetrated her haze. "East," she
thought she said, repeated it when he shook her and demanded an answer.
"East," she mumbled.
Hern shook her awake about midmorning. She was roped to the saddle,
stretched out along the macai's neck, her arms dangling, every muscle
in her body stiff and sore, her head throbbing as if borers were
gnawing their way through her skull. He began working the knots loose and in
a few minutes she was able to push herself up. She ran her tongue over dry and
cracking lips. He was shrouded in dust. His grey-streaked black hair was
pasted close to his head and powdered near white with the dust from the
track. Weariness was an aura about him nearly as visible as the
floating dust. When he put his hand on her knee, she felt it tremble.
"Ser-roi." His voice was harsh, cracking. "Can you find water?"
Water.
She touched her tongue to her lips again and tasted the bitter alkalinity of
the dust.
Water.
His hand was warm on her knee. She sucked in a breath, winced as her throat
hurt, squinted her eyes against the hammering of the light re-flected from the
white, white, terribly white soil and rock around her.
Water.
His hand was warm and alive, the fingers trembling with weariness.
Water.
Her eyespot throbbed, sought, tasted the air, reached out and out.
She twisted her torso about until she faced the direction of the pull; she
could almost smell the cool green liveliness of the water.
Good water. Close.
She lifted her arm, faltered as its weight seemed beyond her strength,
lifted her arm and pointed. "There." Like him, she croaked through the
coating of dust that dried her mouth and thickened her tongue.
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His hand touched her arm. She looked down. He was giv-ing her the reins. "Can
you. . . ." He moistened his lips, worked his mouth. "Can you manage?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]