The Children of the Sky

than that:

“You’ve finally got your mind back, haven’t you?” Screwfloss’ voice was the faintest whisper, seeming to come from inside her ears. It was the sort of focused audio that a coordinated pack could do. Ravna made a nondescript affirmative noise. “Good,” continued Screwfloss’ whisper. “The less mouth talk you make, the better … we have a lot to catch up on.” But then he said nothing more.

As they lurched back to camp, Ravna noticed that Screwfloss had a small limp of his own. He was the pack who had chased her out of her house, the one whose leg she had smashed.

She was aware of numerous heads watching as Screwfloss settled her down by their wagon. After a moment, the second-scariest kidnapper came over and waved Screwfloss away. This was the lean, pale-eyed pack. It poked around at her, talking Samnorsk that mainly showed it had no real understanding of human language. Ravna moaned and swayed and hoped she looked mindless. After several minutes of this, the fivesome stood back. It seemed as irritated by her progress as Chitiratifor had been. It turned, said something imperative to Screwfloss, and walked away. So, thought Ravna, am I dead enough?

Most of the camp settled down for the night; the dimly glowing embers were not bright enough for Tinish vision. That didn’t stop the two chief kidnappers: a greenish light appeared atop the front wagon. Ah, they had one of the tunable lamps from Oobii. Chitiratifor had spread something across the flat of the wagon top. Maps? He seemed to be consulting with the lean fivesome.

After a time, they put out the light, but at least one pack was still moving around. She saw shadows sliding off into the undergrowth. A sentry being posted? Time passed. There were little animal noises, and then even that quieted. No doubt parts of the sleeping packs were still awake, but they made no humanly audible sound. Far away, she heard the river she had noticed this afternoon. She turned in the direction of the sound, and saw a tiny flicker of greenish light, surely too faint for any pack in the campsite to notice. So some pack had business down by the river, technical business they wanted done away from their fellow-kidnappers.

Ravna saw the light a couple more times, in the same direction, faint and vagrant through the underbrush. Eventually, one of Screwfloss shifted in its sleep, blocking her view. The pack had made no more secret talk.

It was getting hard to stay awake. She resisted sleep for a time, inanely. Consciousness was fun; what if she woke up without her mind again? As she drifted off, she played with possibilities. She’d heard Screwfloss conspiring about her murder, but since the abduction, his every action had protected her. Jefri, Amdi, Screwfloss. What if they were trying to save her? They hadn’t explained themselves, first because she was out of her head, and now because they were in the midst of enemies with the sharpest natural hearing of any race Ravna knew. Never mind that these three had chased her from her house and grabbed her once she got outside. Ah, what Flenseresque ambiguity! But if she had to bet her life on a theory about friends and enemies, she knew what it would be.

•  •  •

The next day, Ravna sat among Screwfloss atop the middle wagon. He made a big deal of bracing her with supplies and tie-downs, but in fact she was suffering only occasional dizziness. She did her best to stay slumped and motionless—and not touch her face! Her nose and cheek still hurt, but it was touching the crushed bone and cartilage that that made her cry out in pain.

Pretty obviously, they were south of the Icefang Mountains, and following one of the long geological rifts that scarred this side of the continent. Nothing like these rifts had been active during humanity’s time on Old Earth (or Nyjora), but such structures were common on terrestrial planets. On a time scale of centuries, these valleys suffered enormous ground shifts and killing lava floods. Even more commonly, carbon dioxide or methane would surge the length of a valley, killing everything that needed oxygen, or causing tornadoes of fire. The result was a turbulent patchwork of ecologies, full of paradoxes—at least to Oobii’s simple-minded analysis.

Her kidnappers were either crazy or they had an expert guide, some pack who knew the transient escape routes and understood the treacherous peculiarities of whatever life currently survived.

The wagons stopped near midday. The packs spread out, hunting lunch. Some of the results were humanly edible. Ravna was kept well away from other humans and Amdi. Screwfloss risked a few more words of focused whispering: “I think Chitiratifor has decided about you. I dunno quite what to do.”

Late in the afternoon they crossed the boundary of some recent cataclysm. In the space of two hundred meters, the dense undergrowth and bushy trees were replaced by an open forest of tall, slim trees. The direct sunlight had melted the snow down to isolated drifts. This might have been a different world, except that the same river continued to roar along just a few meters downslope of their path. The other wagoneers looked around nervously. Chitiratifor paced the wagons, emitting blustery encouragement that didn’t sound credible even to Ravna. She, on the other hand, was cheered by the change. If Eyes Above 2 flew over today, it would be much harder for these guys to hide. Pilgrim’s agrav skiff would do even better; Chitiratifor would have no audible warning at all.

That thought was the most exciting event of the afternoon.

As twilight deepened, Chitiratifor went on ahead; Ravna saw him consulting with the lean-bodied fivesome. When Chitiratifor returned, he waved the wagoneers forward another hundred meters and then off the road, into a relative dense stand of trees—tonight’s campground.

•  •  •

Dinner went much like the night before, though now she got a little meat—and she was enormously hungry. She did her best to disguise her appetite. Screwfloss helped with her act, but in an enormously irritating way, cutting her meat into tiny chunks and pushing one piece at a time at her. He made preemptory gobbling noises, as if encouraging an animal to eat. Okay. Ravna played dumb, and did her best not to look across the gloom to where Jefri and Amdi sat with Gannon.

This night, no pack came around to inquire about her medical status. Yes, something had been Decided. Raggedy Ears and the fivesome had another map conference and then it was lights out. The packs spread out a bit, each hiding itself as few human campers would do. It was hard to tell just where they all were, or who might be on sentry duty, but somebody was moving around. She saw shadows departing in the direction of the river. Chitiratifor.

Ravna gave it about ten minutes, then leaned toward the nearest of Screwfloss. “Gotta go. Gotta go!” she said.

Screwfloss emitted complaining noises, but came to his feet quickly enough. Even better, he didn’t object when Ravna started off in the direction of the river sounds.

Between the tree tops, the stars provided just enough light to avoid low-hanging branches. Ahead, the rushing river was loud, hiding whatever other sounds there might be. She saw no gleams of greenish lamp light. Finally Screwfloss drew her down. “Stay!” he said, in a focused whisper. So he wasn’t willing to risk serious snooping. She should probably be glad. But as she squatted down, she noticed Screwfloss slinking off downslope on his own snooping expedition.

She had crouched down about as long as seemed reasonable, when she heard soft gobbling. This was like Tinish Interpack speech, but with most of the chords unstacked, the squeaks and hisses spaced out. If it had been a little louder, she might have understood it. Someone was using one of Scrupilo’s voice-band radios, speaking very carefully to compensate for some kind of transmission problem. Even so, who could be in range? Now the words were Samnorsk … Nevil speaking. Nevil was giving them relay service via the orbiter! She stood, took a step or two in the direction of the muttered conversation.

A hand abruptly covered her mouth. An arm went around her waist. She was lifted off her feet and lowered gently to the ground. It was Jefri. They lay for a moment on the chill moist earth, both silent. Amdi’s voice came in her ear. “We have to go back now.”

Ravna nodded. Amdi was all around them. She and Jefri stood up and—

From downslope, there was an explosion of caterwauling, the sounds of monsters tearing each other apart. Jefri dived for cover, drawing her down with him. The night erupted with the cries of packs running from the campsite toward the river. Screaming rage was all around them. They huddled under something bushy as pack members hurtled past.

All the action was down by the river now. The fighting was louder, punctuated by whistling screams of mouth noise. Somebody was being murdered.

Jefri came to his feet and reached down to help Ravna out from the bush.