Women of War Page 7

  It didn’t seem like humor. Puzzled, Skalet watched as the other walked away, slamming a door unnecessarily behind her, then returned to her own preparations.

  It was worse. Unimaginably worse. The moment the outer door retracted, the wind howled inside the tunnel, blowing Skalet off her feet, rolling her along the icy floor until she hit the yielding edge of a fuel bag. The rubbery material gave her a grip as she pulled herself to her feet.

  At least it was a steady wind, to start. She could force her way against it and did, reaching first the doorframe, then the outer wall, and, after groping in the dark, the guide line. She clipped herself to it, and pressed out into the night.

  Lean, drag a foot free, move it up and forward, push it into yielding softness to the knee, to the thigh. Skalet couldn’t predict her footing. Drifts were curling and reforming like living things. All she could do was drag the other foot free, up and forward, push it down, and progress in lurches and semi-falls.

  She’d run out of choices. There was no living mass except that behind her. Without a source, she could not release her hold on this form and choose another more suited to surviving these conditions. Not and return to the outpost as S’kal-ru. Only living matter could be assimilated into more Web-flesh, and she’d need to replace what she used.

  There was escape. She almost considered it as the wind lifted her for an instant, her grip torn from the guide line, one outer glove sailing free and only the cable jerking snug around her waist keeping her in place. She could cycle into a form that flew on this wind, pick one able to hide beneath ice for however many decades it would take for Ersh to notice her absence and send one of her kin to retrieve her. Disgraced.

  Skalet dropped to the ground as the wind caught its breath, then drove herself to her feet. If she failed for whatever reason, Her Eminence had another option. She could destroy the outpost and all the talented, complicated beings in it, including herself. Wasteful.

  It was only a question of one step after another. This form would obey her will. It would endure. Skalet pulled her right hand, now clad only in the liner, within the sleeve of her innermost coat, shoving the cuff through her belt as tightly as possible. She would need those fingers able to function once at the ladder.

  Her goggles were coated with snow, despite the fur trim around her hood. No matter. What use were eyes without light? She leaned into the wind again, trusting to the cable. One step after another, a movement that grew only more difficult as she lost feeling below her knees. No matter. She could not control time or the movement of starships, but she could control this body. It would succeed.

  At some point, the howl dimmed to a whine and the force pushing her back lessened. Skalet smiled, lips cracking, blood burning her chin. She had reached the array.

  The clip had frozen shut. Rather than waste energy fighting it, Skalet drew her knife and cut the cable around her waist. She staggered and caught herself with a grip on the ladder as the wind tried to peel her away again. The climb was a nightmare. Not only were the lower rungs half-buried in a rising drift, but she could not longer judge where her feet would land. Three times Skalet neared the top, only to lose her grip and slip back down.

  Once on the platform, she didn’t bother looking for the ice-breaking tools. Skalet felt her way down the nearest strut to its linkage with the rest, found the fastener. She drew her knife once more, then shook her head. No traces. Even if House Bryll was as devastated as the courier implied, there would be an investigation. Like other Humans, the Kraal were curious, tenacious beings. Unlike other Humans, the Kraal took the assignment of fault to extremes. For the crew of this outpost to outlive their doomed fleet, this had to appear an accident.

  Skalet put away her knife and pulled off the outer glove on her left hand, securing it in her belt. Her fingers turned numb almost immediately, but she managed to grip the fastener and twist. It was meant to be mobile to minus seventy degrees Celsius, so the antenna could be replaced at need. It wouldn’t budge.

  Cursing substandard equipment, Skalet stripped off her liner and the other glove, restraining a cry as the wind seemed to flay her skin. She pressed both palms around the fastener, warming it with her own, slightly greater than Human, heat. The core of her body seemed to chill at the same time, a dangerous theft. Skalet fought to hold form as much as she fought to keep her hands where they had to stay.

  Another twist. Nothing. She screamed in fury and drove her fist into the metal, feeling a knuckle break, but something else give as well. Satisfaction. Another twist and the fastener came free.

  By now, Skalet’s hands were shaking so violently she could barely get them back into the gloves. She couldn’t feel any difference with the protection on, but knew it was necessary. Form-memory was perfect. If she lost fingers to frostbite, she’d remember herself that way forever. She refused to believe it might be too late.

  Meanwhile, the wind, now her ally, was busy at work. The strut creaked and groaned, succumbing to the force hammering it. Skalet touched the support, feeling irregular shudders. Good. It would take only the slightest of bends to make the antenna uncontrollable. As if hearing her thoughts, the strut snapped and the array began to tilt.

  The outpost—and the fleet—was blind.

  Time to leave. Skalet made her way back down the ladder, groping in the dark with her left hand for the guide line. The right she’d drawn inside her coat completely, cradling it next to her heart, a source of searing pain as the flesh thawed and the abused knuckle complained of ill treatment. Reassuring.

  She’d anticipated an easier return journey, the wind shoving from behind and her trail already broken through the drifts. Instead, with a perversity she should have expected, the wind was a wall in her face and her footsteps had filled with snow. There was only the guide line and the strength of her grip on it.

  Her progress became a series of forward stumbles, never quite on her knees, never quite stopping. At any moment, Skalet expected to collide with a Kraal hurrying from the outpost to see what had gone wrong, to try a futile repair. Ephemeral and fragile, yet they readily risked their fleeting lives. Exceptional.

  Then the line came alive in her hand, yanking her backward into the snow before becoming limp. Skalet stood and gave a sharp pull in the direction of the outpost. The line came toward her with no more tension than its weight dragging through the snow.

  The entire array must have become unstable, the bent antenna a sail catching too much wind. Whether the structure had toppled to the ground or merely leaned didn’t matter. It had moved enough to pluck the uncuttable guide line from the outpost dome.

  So much for meeting a Kraal.

  So much for finding her way back.

  I whined and curled in a ball, my tail covering nose and eyes with a plume of fur. Despite this, and despite being perfectly safe and warm, I shook miserably. I’d assimilated nothing like this before. I’d never felt what it was like to truly risk one’s formself. My other Web-kin, being far more sensible, would have cycled long before this point. I would have. Skalet’s resolve was as horrifying as the Kraal themselves.

  If I could have stopped remembering, I would have. But Ersh had given me all of it and I whirled through Skalet’s memories as haplessly as a snowflake—or the Kraal fleet.

  This form reacted to fear with a rush of blood to the ears, a sickness in the stomach. Skalet ignored biology, intent on her problem. She couldn’t see, feel, or hear her way to safety. The broken line in her hand, however, would give her the distance from the array to the outpost. The wind in her face would give her direction. A risk, given that same wind had already swung one hundred and eighty degrees, but an acceptable one. If she reached the end of the guide line and found nothing, she could walk in an arc bounded by the line—if she could move it—and have a fifty percent chance of being right. Or have to abandon this form when it reached its physiological limit.

  But not before.

  The guide line proved harder to combat than the wind. Though light, its l
ength gave it considerable mass and weight. Exposed portions flailed with every gust, the rest being buried by the snow of a continent. Skalet barely managed to hang on to the piece by her side and keep moving. Her best estimate put her near or within the outer ring of domes, but they were difficult to detect under good conditions, let alone in the dark. Her goal was the ramp down to the central dome.

  Her feet started fighting a drift larger and more compact than most she’d encountered. Gasping with effort, Skalet nonetheless felt a thrill of hope. There were always drifts curving around the slight rise of each dome. She began step down the other side and suddenly lost her footing as well as her grip on the line. Before she could recapture it, it was gone.

  Skalet sat on the slope of the drift and replayed memory. She knew this area, had walked its winter night a hundred times. Yes. She should be able to see the dome from here.

  Skalet pulled her hand from inside her coat, using both to remove her goggles. Instantly the cold hit her eyes and lashes, freezing them shut. She rubbed away the beads of ice to peer into the darkness, flinching at needles of hard, dry snow.

  There. Skalet threw herself at that dimmest of glows, refusing to believe it was anything but the rim of the door she’d left hours earlier. Seconds later, she was moving down the ramp, waist-deep in new snow but out of the wind at last. The door. Her fingers wouldn’t work anymore. Sobbing with fury, tears freezing to her cheeks, Skalet fought this betrayal as she tried to open the latches.

  They opened of their own accord, a figure mummified in fur blocking the light from within. With an incoherent cry, the figure caught Skalet in gloved hands and drew her inside.

  The warmth, near the freezing point, was an exquisite agony. Skalet shuddered on the iced floor, gulping air that didn’t burn her lungs. The figure pulled off hood and goggles, becoming Maven-ro.

  She crouched beside Skalet. “So the Icicle can freeze after all,” she shook her head. “Give your report then get to medical. Scan’s gone down at the worst possible time. I’m off to see what I can do about it.”

  “No ... no point,” Skalet wasn’t vain about her voice as a Human, but even she was shocked by its reed-thin sound. She got to her knees, wheezing: “The array ... it’s collapsed ... the storm. Guide line’s ripped loose ...”

  Maven-ro’s face paled beneath its tattoo, but her mouth formed a firm line. “It is our privilege to serve. The fleet relies on us, S’kal-ru.” She stood, replacing her goggles and hood. “I must see what can be done.”

  With her better hand, Skalet found and held the other’s sleeve, used it to pull herself to her feet. What she hoped were feet—she couldn’t feel them. She didn’t understand why she felt compelled to stop the Kraal; a flaw in this form, perhaps. “There’s duty and there’s being a fool. You told me that, Maven-ro.” She staggered and Maven-ro was forced to steady her. “Dare you think I would give up and return if there was any hope of restoring the array?”

  Maven-ro lowered her head. She dragged off her goggles with one hand, keeping the other firm on Skalet’s belt. “Forgive me, S’kal-ru. There are none braver—” Her fingers flattened protectively over the tattoo on her cheek; her eyes, haunted, lifted to meet Skalet’s. “But now I fear the worst.”

  Hands and feet bandaged with dermal regenerators, which with typical Kraal sensibility did nothing to relieve pain, Skalet was in no mood for company. But her visitor that outpost night wasn’t one she could refuse, however dangerous.

  The courier waved the med tech from the tiny clinic. “Have you heard, S’kal-ru?”

  The surprise attack, the ragged desperate signals, and incoming casualty lists had silenced the domes. Kraal walked in a daze, huddled in anguished groups, worried about their future, their affiliations. Except this one. “You brought down your own House,” Skalet observed, curious. Under the blanket, her bandaged fingers gripped a knife.

  The courier smiled. Her age-spotted fingers lifted to the mask of tattoos on her face, selected one. “With you as my poison, I have cleaned it of those who would have destroyed it. Bryll will rise to prominence once more.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “But you doubt your own future.”

  Skalet smiled thinly. “I’m a realist. With what I know, I should prepare to disappear.” Which, given transport and a moment unobserved with some living mass, S’kal-ru the Kraal would do.

  The old woman’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Let go the knife. You are of more value than risk to me.”

  A figure of speech? Then again, a noble who aged in this society would be no fool at all. Skalet brought her empty hand above the blanket.

  “Good. I have another future for you to consider, S’kalru. I warn you. It means none of the comforts of homeworld or hearth. No lineages sprung from your flesh.”

  “I don’t seek such things.”

  “No. No, I believe you don’t. Yet you embody all that Kraal aspires to be, which is why I won’t see you wasted.” As Skalet twitched, the tattoos around the other’s lips writhed. A smile, perhaps. “Hear me out.”

  “I’m at your command, Your Eminence.”

  “The Noble Houses must communicate, one to the other, even in times of distrust and blood debt. To this end exist such as I, individuals of such clear honor we are given extraordinary latitude without hesitation. There are no watches on our comings and goings. No impediments to our actions; no constraint beyond affiliation. We are few, but we are crucial to the survival of our civilization, as you have seen. I would have you train as my successor, S’kal-ru.” The old Kraal moved her hand slowly, carefully, toward Skalet’s cheek. Involuntarily, Skalet reared her head back and away. Then, for no reason save self-preservation, she froze to permit the touch. Cold, dry fingers traced the fake tattoo once, lightly. “This might pass muster here, but never on a Kraal world. If you permit me, I will make it real. A ninth-level affiliation through me to House Bract, today’s power. What do you say, Icicle?”

  To be secretive yet a decision-maker, to be needed for her abilities, not just as another collector of dry facts and genetic information.

  Skalet found a way to bow gracefully, even lying down.

  “I take it you finished.” Ersh tumbled to where I stood staring out the window. Picco’s orange reflection cast shadows the color of drying blood. I found it singularly appropriate.

  “Yes,” I said quietly. “It’s called seduction, isn’t it? When you are brought to desire something until it’s impossible to refuse it.”

  “Apt enough.” A chime that might have been pleasure. Or impatience. The tones were regrettably similar. “Skalet might not have grown so—attached—to this culture, had she not been taught to thrive in it.”

  “Thrive?” I growled. “She’s responsible for the deaths of thousands.”

  “That’s what war is, Youngest,” Ersh agreed. “A uniquely ephemeral conceit, to settle disputes by ending life.”

  “Then why? Why do you let Skalet continue? Why not send Ansky or the others?”

  “Why tolerate insolence?” I acknowledged the rebuke by lifting my ears, which had plastered themselves to my skull in threat when I wasn’t paying attention. Ersh touched a fingertip to the stone sill of the window and the bell-like sound echoed from the corners of the room. Apology accepted. “Skalet’s mission to the Kraal outpost was her first successful interaction with another species. It has been her only success. She can spy on any species, glean information from a host of cultures, but fails every time to get closer. Except with the Kraal. So you see, Youngling, it is not always simple to decide which of your Web-kin goes where. It matters where they feel they can belong.”

  I had to assume Ersh was telling me something important, but it made no sense. “Skalet wants to belong to the Kraal?”

  Ersh didn’t often laugh as a Tumbler. The species was prone to a more taciturn outlook. But now she tinkled like a rush of wind through icicles. “Esen-alit-Quar. You have so much to learn. Skalet may be obsessed with the Kraal and this form,
but she is one of us above all else. She would never forge true bonds outside our Web.”

  I shuddered at the thought, heretical and yet attractive, in the way sharp edges attract fingertips. There was a trap I would avoid at all costs. Along with war.

  Like many young beings, I would have to wait for the future to prove me wrong.

  THE CHILDREN OF DIARDIN: TO FIND THE ADVANTAGE

  by Fiona Patton

  Fiona Patton was born in Alberta and grew up in the United States. In 1975 she returned to Canada, and after a series of unrelated jobs including electrician and carnival ride operator, moved to rural Ontario with her partner, one tiny dog, and a series of ever changing cats. Her Branion series which includes The Stone Prince, The Painter Knight, The Granite Shield, and The Golden Sword has been published by DAW Books. She has just finished the first book of a new series tentatively titled The Silver Lake, also for DAW.

  THE LATE SUMMER SUN shone down on the fruit-laden orchards of Armagh, dappling the flanks of the hound pack racing through the trees in otherworldly silence; not hunting but simply running for the sheer joy of laying paws to earth. In the lead, Fothran and Pepitain, the alpha male and female hounds of Goll mac Morna, Sub-Captain of the Fianna of Ulaidh, ran as effortlessly as the wind, their ruddy pelts flashing in the sun like fire. Behind them, Sarrack, long-legged hound of Cunnaun, ran beside Garra’s huge, tan-pelted Camlan and spotted Droga of the Bard Daighre—old and gray-muzzled, but still fast and strong. Making up the bulk of the pack behind came the hounds of the Ulaidh Fianna: siblings Farran and Daol always together, black-pelted Derkame and Deealath, golden-flanked Gloss, and tangle-coated Fooam with her whelp of the same name, leading a dozen more of every size, shape; and description. In their midst, the enchanted children of Diardin, members of the Fianna all, white pelts and red-tipped ears betraying their Sidhe blood, ran together with their own mortal hounds close behind.