Hearing those words spoken aloud, even before Sheul who surely knew all things, made Meoraq profoundly uncomfortable. He hesitated, then said the words which were soon to haunt him: “Her wounds slow us all and I cannot tend these humans in the wildlands indefinitely.” This was truth, but even truth could be molded into many shapes. “I ask You as Your true son who has served and loved You all my life, relieve her of her pains and so relieve me of this burden.”
Dead grass rattled in a slow gust of wind. Meoraq raised his head, but the plains were empty and the skies above were growing dark.
“I leave myself in Your hands, O my Father,” he said finally, decisively, “as You have left them in mine. Be with and watch over Your son as I tend them, and bring us safely to Xi’Matezh. I am ever grateful for Your blessings, for every breath is Yours, O Father, and I thank You humbly for each pain that I am alive to feel.”
He bent one last time, touching his brow to the muddy grass and holding it there while he took a slow count for the Six and spoke their names. Then he dressed again and went on his hunt while he still had light enough to see the ground.
He found a dead corroki calf lying close to a trampled tachuqi in the muddy path of its herd with an obvious story to tell: A tachuqi attack and a vengeful cow whose herd rallied around her. The tachuqis retreated when one of their half-grown chicks was killed, moving on after easier prey (Meoraq thought it very likely these were the self-same tachuqis who had come upon his own camp, now three days behind him). The corrokis lingered, waiting for their cow’s animal grief to dim, and finally traveled on this morning. The tachuqi’s carcass was too mangled to serve him, but the calf, well-preserved in the cold, would feed his hungry humans for many days.
Meoraq began cutting the calf out of its armored plates, grateful now that he had made his camp in the middle of the day. All things served according to Sheul’s design. He heard all prayers and answered.
That thought too would haunt him.
As the sun sank low behind the clouds, Meoraq returned to camp, dragging the first load of meat on a crude litter fashioned primarily from the calf’s own back-plate. He dropped it by the fire, heaved a great stack of human packs off the sled he had made, oh, a brace of days ago, then beckoned to Scott and his servants and went to cut some poles so he could make a second.
Eric alone came to him, but he listened to Meoraq’s commands and put together a fairly competent sled with a minimum of instruction. Meoraq, in a generous mood, gave him a tap on the shoulder and even refrained from pointing out the areas that could have used improvement. “It isn’t far,” he said, taking up the tether of his old sled while Eric manned the new. “But it will take more than one journey and I want to run if you can manage it.”
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Meoraq stopped and looked at the sky. ‘I am grateful,’ he thought. ‘For every pain that I am alive to feel, O my merciful Father, I am grateful.’
He turned around, but he was not the one under attack. Scott and his remaining two servants, Dag and Crandall, were on their feet before the fire (before the slab of meat Meoraq had brought them also, he noted), staring Eric down.
“I need my people here,” said Scott, furiously pointing at the ground beneath his boots. “If Meoraq wants help, he can use Bierce.”
“She’s hurt,” said Eric.
“I’m fine!” Amber called, struggling to rise from her mat.
“Sit down,” Meoraq said.
“But I can—”
“Sit.” He glanced at her, lowering his spines warningly, and she sat. When he turned back to Scott, the cattle’s ass was right in front of him.
“Stop giving my people orders,” said Scott. “If you want something, you respect the chain of command. You ask me and I’ll consider whatever it is, but stop giving my people orders.”
And while Meoraq was still reminding himself that he was the master of his clay and it would upset everyone if he cut Scott’s head off in front of them, however deservedly, Eric—of all people—suddenly said, “You gonna stand there with him and bitch about the chain of command or you wanna come pick up some food?”
It was unclear to Meoraq just which of them he addressed, but Dag and Crandall both pinked up in the face and dropped their eyes. After some uncomfortable moments, they shuffled away from Scott to stand with Eric. And it was Eric who looked his furious abbot in the face and said, quietly, “You need to get over this, man. You need to. Because this planet is not fucking around anymore. It’s going to kill us.”
“When we get to the skyport—”
“If there is one,” said Eric. “If.”
They locked eyes. All around them, watchful humans fidgeted and whispered. It was very strange to be one of the watchers instead of the one fending off Scott’s challenge, to feel none of the hot pleasure in seeing Scott skulk away, but only a growing unease. The storm had not passed, but was only darkening.
Like the sky, he thought with another upwards glance. What was coming with Scott…it would just have to come. Until then, he had work to do.
It took four trips and two sleds to strip the calf of all usable meat, and by the time they were finished, night was full upon them. The humans led the way with the light from their lamp-machines until they could see the fires that Amber had built. She was roasting the meat, stewing the organs, and hammering away at the marrow-bones with a rock when Meoraq came up beside her.
“This stupid fucking disgusting glop is not worth the effort it takes to get at it,” she snapped by way of greeting.
He grunted and handed her his samr, moving on with Scott’s servants to unload the sled. He listened to the chopping sounds as she broke into the bones, and since they didn’t come with shrieks as she dismembered herself, he allowed himself to become absorbed in portioning out the meat. For Eric in particular, he gave the tender neck flesh. With humans, as with any half-domesticated animal, good behavior should always be rewarded if one wished to see it repeated.
It was not until the sled was empty that Meoraq straightened up to discover that Eric had gone no further than Meoraq’s own fire. His Maria was there with him, not cooking, but only sitting and chatting with Nicci. Scott’s other servants, Dag and Crandall, seemed to be in no hurry to wander off either.
He looked at Amber, who was trading out heat-stones in the stew and sitting watch over the marrow. She looked at him, her mouthparts crooked up at one corner.
The words, “Get away from my fire,” rose to his throat, but no further. Amber wanted to be liked by these idiots. It cost him nothing to welcome them for one night.
Well…not welcome, but he could tolerate them.
So he simply walked over, set the last of the meat over the coals, and gave Crandall a hard rap on the top of his hairy head. Crandall scooted away from Amber and Meoraq hunkered down in his place. Amber was eating marrow, he saw. On the flat of his samr, warrior-fashion. “Do you like it any better than saoq or tachuqi?” he asked, gesturing at it.
“I can’t taste the difference,” she told him. “It’s all gross.”
“I can’t taste the difference either,” he confessed, taking some. “But they tell me there is one.”
Crandall was staring at him. After a while, Meoraq stopped politely ignoring him and stared back. Crandall got up and went to Scott’s fire instead. The few humans sitting up there made room for him and listened to whatever words went with his angry arm gestures. Some of them laughed. Scott himself was nowhere to be seen, which was odd. This was the time of night when he was usually pacing around the camp, hearing the many complaints of his people as they bedded down and telling them lies.
He watched for a time, making certain Scott was really gone and not just keeping himself uncharacteristically quiet and still. At last, he reached out and gave Eric a tap. “Where is your abbot?”
