Part 32 (1/2)

'Refugees,' Salma whispered, and he remembered how it had been during the Twelve-Year War. As the Wasps advanced they had displaced hundreds, even thousands, onto the roads of the Commonweal, to be preyed on by bandits or descend to thievery to feed themselves. The Commonweal's rulers had done their best but there had been the war to fight as well, and the scale of the exodus had been unthinkable.

And now it seemed certain that it would happen here as well.

'What can we do for them?' he asked, and Nero laughed harshly.

'Do? You can't even stand, boy. What do you expect to do?'

Salma stared at him, and then slowly forced himself up to his knees. His head swam briefly, but he pressed his hands flat on the earth for balance. Whilst Nero looked on uncertainly, he rose slowly, first one foot beneath him, then the next, and then, forcing his legs to obey him, he raised himself upright. Pain shot through him from his wound, but he clenched his teeth and ignored it.

Now he was standing. Nero had stood up, too, hands ludicrously spread to catch a man twice his size.

'I . . . can . . . stand,' Salma got out, though he had to fight to keep his vision in focus. He knew that he might topple any minute, and placed a hand on Nero's shoulder to steady himself. 'Tomorrow, or the next day, I will walk,' he said. 'And then I shall be ready to act.'

A man called Cosgren joined the refugees a day or so later. He was a Beetle-kinden, but huge the largest Salma had ever seen, and monstrously broad across the chest and shoulders. For the first day he was with them he was quiet enough, watching his travelling companions carefully and even fetching wood for a fire. The next day he waited until they were all awake and then addressed them: 'Right, look at you. You don't know the first thing about where you're going, do you? So it's going to be like this. I'm in charge. And because I'm in charge, I'll get us to somewhere, but you all better do what I say, and that means I get what I want.'

The Fly-kinden youths huddled closer and looked at him rebelliously. They all had their hair cropped short to their skulls in androgynous fas.h.i.+on, and they carried weapons of a sort, if only sticks and stones. Cosgren must have weighed more than all of them put together, though, and eventually they let their gazes drop sullenly.

Cosgren's rule lasted almost peaceably for that same day. He took what food they had, with the pretence that he would distribute it, but everyone knew, and n.o.body said, that his own capacious belly would be filled first.

And then, at dusk, he wandered over to the wagon and the three Roach-kinden.

'Old man,' he began. The father of the two girls eyed him cautiously. He was not so very old, not really, but his white hair and beard made him look it.

'You hear me?' Cosgren demanded. 'Then say so.'

'I hear you,' said the Roach. His voice was surprisingly soft.

'I'm going to make your life easier, old man. I'm going to take your daughter off your hands.'

'My life's easy enough, and I thank you for your kind offer,' the Roach said.

Cosgren smiled, and a moment later he had knocked the man down with a simple motion, almost thoughtless.

'I'll give her more than you can,' Cosgren said, grinning down at him. 'You, girl, come here unless you want your old dad to get hurt some more.'

He was, Salma realized, speaking to the younger of the two girls, not that it would have mattered either way.

Salma was on his feet, without quite realizing how he had got there, and Nero hurried over to him, telling him to be careful.

'You're in no state,' the Fly said. 'Just wait a moment . . . there are ways . . .'

'I know.' Salma approached Cosgren's lumped back with dragging steps. 'You there!' he called, and the big man swung on him.

'You get back in line, boy. Don't want those wounds opened up again, do you?'

'No,' Salma said. He felt the line of his life stretched taut here, a moment of dread and then peace. In this wasteland between wars, in this meaningless brawl, and why not? Why not indeed? He had been given his moment, reunited with Grief in Chains, and then it had pa.s.sed him by, and here he was. 'I'm going to stop you,' he told Cosgren, conversationally.

For a second the big Beetle did not quite know what to make of it, this drawn-looking invalid threatening him with . . . what? With nothing. Then he grinned.

'A lesson for boys that won't do what they're told,' he said, and he picked Salma up effortlessly, huge hands agony about his ribs, and Salma poked him in the face.

The world was briefly a very painful and noisy place, and then dark, blessedly dark and quiet.

He came to with the sense that little time had pa.s.sed. There was an awful lot of noise nearby, but the pain in his chest and abdomen was too much for him to focus on it. Nero was kneeling beside him, asking over and over if he was all right.

There should have been another blow coming from Cosgren, but there was nothing. Perhaps the beating had finished, in which case he had got away lightly, but Cosgren would still be free to pursue his tyranny unchecked.

The sounds were screaming, he realized, and a man's, not the child's.

'What's going on, Nero?'

Nero grimaced. 'You . . . kind of cut him, Salma. Don't look so confused. That's what you meant, right?'

'Cut him? What . . . ?'

Nero took one of Salma's hands and brought it before his face. The first thing he saw was that it was covered in blood. Then he saw the claw, a sickle-shaped thing that curved from his thumb. Even as he watched it retracted back until there was barely a sign of it. Curiously, he flexed it back and forth, and felt its companion on his other hand do the same.

'I never had these before. When . . . ?'

'I noticed them on you back in the tent of the Daughters,' Nero told him. 'I couldn't remember then whether you'd had them before.'

There was a sudden s.h.i.+fting around them, of people coming together. Salma turned over and forced himself to sit up. Cosgren was standing, one hand clapped to a face slick and red. His eye, his one remaining eye, was staring madly.

'You little b.a.s.t.a.r.d.' The voice was choked with pain.

Salma saw a movement beside him, a glimmer of metal. The Roach man had drawn a thin-bladed knife, hiltless but sharp. They had all gathered around him, even the Fly gangsters. When Cosgren took a step forward, a flung stone bounced off his shoulder.

Half weeping with the pain he stared at them: the Fly gang, the Beetle mother, the ex-slaves and the Roach family. By that time, Nero had his own long knife out, and was holding it casually by the tip, ready to throw.

Cosgren snarled something something about their not wanting his leaders.h.i.+p, then let them starve and he stumbled out away from them, off into the barren terrain.

Tension began to leach out of the refugees. The Roach man knelt by Salma, offering him some water that he took gratefully. Behind their father, his two daughters stood, staring curiously.

Salma glanced around at the others. The Flies had gone back into their exclusive huddle as though nothing had happened. The three slaves had drifted away as well, and he saw that they had found their own new hierarchy, with the Spider as their spokesman, as though they were still compelled to live within rules of obedience.

He should feel weak after his exertions, he knew, but he felt stronger than he had in days.

The next day there were bandits. A dozen rode in, half of them mounted two to a horse. Their leader, though it was little satisfaction to see, was wearing Cosgren's leather coat.

He was a Beetle himself, or nearly. His skin was a blue-black that Salma recognized from his recent travels. The refugees had been travelling at the wagon's steady pace, most walking but Salma lying in the bed of dry gra.s.s it carried, staring up at skies that promised unwelcome rain before nightfall. Then the thunder of hoofs had come to them, and they had stopped dead, and most of them had looked to Salma.

Am I riding here on the wagon because I am weak, or because I have become their leader now? They needed no leader except perhaps in moments such as this. Salma got down, pleased to find his legs holding him without a tremor, and watched as the intruders' eight horses made a very crude semicircle before the wagon. The draft-beetle hissed at them, swaying its jaws from side to side, but the bandit leader ignored it, looking over the ranks of the refugees. They needed no leader except perhaps in moments such as this. Salma got down, pleased to find his legs holding him without a tremor, and watched as the intruders' eight horses made a very crude semicircle before the wagon. The draft-beetle hissed at them, swaying its jaws from side to side, but the bandit leader ignored it, looking over the ranks of the refugees.

'Let's keep it simple,' he said. 'These are troubled times, n.o.body's where they wanted to be, everyone's a victim, so on, so forth.' He spoke with the accent Salma recalled, and refined enough that he seemed testament to his own words, a man not originally cut from this kind of crude cloth. 'So let's see what you've got. Let us just take our pick and then you can go on your way.'

Salma looked over the bandit's men. They were a motley band, but not as raggedly dressed as might be expected. These were not just desperate scavengers driven to robbery. Most had some kind of armour: leather jerkins and caps, padded arming jackets, even one hauberk of Ant-made chain. There were axes and swords amongst them, and a halfbreed at the back, who looked to have Mantis blood, had a bow ready-strung with an arrow nocked. Salma's own army had some knives, some clubs, and the staff that Sfayot the Roach had cut for him.