"Zeddies, Ann Tonsor - Sky Road (Singer 2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zeddies Ann Tonsor)

SKY ROAD
Ann Tonsor Zeddies
A Del Rey Book BALLANTINE BOOKS тАв NEW YORK

A
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A Del Rey Book
Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright ┬й 1992 by Ann Tonsor Zeddies
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 92-97049
ISBN 0-345-37865-2
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition: February 1993
For the tibe of my youth:
Stephen John, Claire, Margaret Grace
I Weaving the Medicine Shirt
1
In the camp at the foot of the mountains the night fire twisted and tugged within its circle, then slept at last, like a watchdog whose vigilance had gone unrewarded. A reflection of the flames danced in the eyes of the man who watched from the hillside. He was drawn to the flame as the shadows of the unburied were drawn to the fires of the living. The scents of the camp were calling him home, yet he was a stranger there.
They are Thanha, he thought. The Free People. Riders. My people. He feared that the fire of longing in him would light him up like a torch for those below to see. He forced it back till it dimmed like a coal. He let the wind blow past him and over him as if he were just another tangle of dry branches.
He had left his own companions waiting behind him, safely out of reach. They had learned much in the long journey from the south, but he still could not trust them not to betray themselves. With their alien weapons, they could wreak havoc in the dark, killing indiscriminately. That was the one mistake they must avoid. It was important not to be discovered and captured, not to provoke a fight. He wanted to enter the camp peacefully, in his own way and time.
He had already pinpointed the positions of the guards. As they stepped in and out of the shadows, he kept track of them. He was preparing to make his move when sudden, familiar terror seized him by the throat. The air quivered with a sound that was still beyond the guards' hearing. Something deadly moved in the night. He knew that his companions felt the alarm, too, but the people in the camp below slept on. They had no way of knowing about the destruction that was coming.
He had only a few moments to decide what he would do. Warn them? If they saw him, they might take him for an enemy and try to kill him. He knew those people and their fierce thoughts. He knew them as he had once known his own people. Once. Before the terror in the night had taken them.
It took a painful wrench to shift his thoughts back to the strangerfolk language and speak to the others.
Air strike coming, he told them. / have to warn them. Stay here. I don't want to see you killed by the Riders. That would be the last bad joke.
He did not stop to listen to their confused protests. He sucked in a deep breath and screamed, the old battle yell he had learned from his foster father. Then he plunged downhill through the snowdrifts as arrows hissed past him toward the place where he had been.
He could hear the alarmed camp waking as he ran among the tents. Beyond their shouting, he heard the scream in the air that told of the fire-from-the-sky ships coming. These Riders would meet their fate on their feet, at least. They would not die sleeping, as his own people had. But once awake and armed, they would stand and fight, and he knew they must not.
He ran for the picket line, hoping to reach it before they did. The horses were already rearing and plunging, panicked by the unearthly roar in the sky. He slashed the ropes and scattered the horses just before the first fists of thunder plunged into the earth and hurled him off his feet.
He was shocked by the high, thin screaming that he heard in a momentary gap between bursts of thunder. Riders did not cry out in fear. There must have been children presentтАФchildren too young to control their terror. He tried to locate that sound and head for it, dodging the warriors who ran past him toward the milling horses.
On the south side of the camp, the splattered snow was blackened with dirt and soot and the tents had caught fire. He ripped tent pegs out of the ground and lifted up the felt. The children ran to him, big ones carrying the little ones. They did not hang back from him as he had feared. They ignored his clothing and came to his voice. They did not stop to ask who he was.
"Run to the rocks," he ordered them. "Hide yourselves in the gullies and cover your heads. Stay there till someone comes for you."
The older warriors had rushed out to protect the little ones.
Confused, finding no enemy on the ground, some of them came running back to the burning tents.
"Take them to the rocks!" the man shouted. "Don't fight! Run! Go with the children!"
He could hear the flying fire ships coming back. The warriors gathered together, making a pathetic stand in the smoking circle of their tents.
"Don't fight!" he screamed. "Run!" The words came strangely to his lips. Those words, in that order, had never been spoken in the Riders' tongue. They could not hear him. They stood their ground, as they would stand to the end.
He shed his shirt, the remnant of his alien uniform, as he ran toward them. He had heard a Singer giving battle instructions to the Riders more than once. He summoned that carrying chant and called them again with all his force. They started to turn toward him, uncertain. They saw his bare chest and his flowing hair by the light of the fire. He looked like a Singer. They moved; they began to run. It was going to be too late; he could feel it. The fire ships closed rapidly on their second pass. Snow burst upward where the deadly metal from their guns ripped into the earth. He was caught in a nightmare memory of the night the fire had fallen on his home, obliterating his people forever. Still he ran and called.
Then, behind him, he heard his companions open fire. He had been entirely Rider since he had given the alarmтАФthinking in Thanha, lost in his memories. He snapped back to awareness of the present. Would his friends' weapons be enough to give them a chance? The flying machines were the small ones that sped close to the ground, not the steel spearheads that soared cloud-high. Even so, they were nearly invulnerable.
The flying thunder swerved away and up toward the ridge where his friends held their position. He swerved with the sound, fearing equally for the people so like his own and the strangers who had become his brothers. He spotted a flash from a new position below the crest of the hill and guessed what they were trying to do. The gunships made a tight turn to rake the flank of the lull, giving an expert eye at the highest point of the ridge a chance to hit them from their most vulnerable angle. It was the only way to stop the attack, but whoever was drawing the fire was in great danger.
Straining for some clue to what was happening, he thought he heard a change in pitch in the roar of the engines. He could not be sure. Then the first ship struck the ridge and broke up in
cartwheeling chunks of burning metal. The other flying machines seemed to hesitate in midair, then pulled up and away. A sudden silence fell in which human voices could be heard again, sounding small and exposed. By then the laboring warriors had nearly reached me rocks. Behind them, dark shapes dotted the snow like bundles of rags cast aside in flight. Snow and sky glimmered an even gray. The moon had set, and dawn was coming.
The stranger pulled up with the rest of them and stood, panting. Out of the foggy afterimage of the explosion figures hurried down through the snow to join him, and he counted, dry-mouthed with fear. Four. They had all made it.
Something ran and tickled on the stranger's arm, and he slapped at it, half-dazedly thinking it was an insect. He was surprised to feel wetness. Blood ran from a dozen cuts. Flying bits of metal had grazed his shoulder. He recognized the sensation as pain, then ignored it again.
An older man limped toward him, leaning for support on the shoulder of a young one. The old man's hair was clubbed in a war knot and bound up with a gold-embroidered strip of silk. The stranger stood very still, arms spread as if he could shelter his friends behind them. He knew that several unseen arrows were trembling on the string, a breath away from his ribs. Deeply humiliated by an enemy too big to fight, the survivors might avenge themselves on any strangers if he gave them a reason to strike.
Drop your weapons, he said urgently to those behind him. Drop themтАФnow!
Reluctantly they let the rifles, still warm, fall into the snow.
"I am Siri. I am Asharya here," the old man announced. "Who are you that takes it on himself to tell the Riders of the North Hills to run away? Who made you Singer for this people?"
"No one made me Singer," the stranger answered hoarsely. "But Singer is my name."
"Tell me no riddles, stranger," the old man said. "This is not a night for playing games."
"No riddle, Grandfather. My foster father gave me the name when I came to the Riders. I learned music from the true Singer of my people, but I never took his place. I was still young when they went where they had no need of me."