NOVANDER WYE

1544 4D

Two days through and out of the mountains westward took them into a high, level land as brown and dry as dust, even in the late spring. Hour after hour Andrew and Alliji watched the few hills smooth out into flatness; the train floated across this empty space, passing withered grass that undulated slightly in the soft westerly breeze; high rose clouds slowly couched in the far green west and reached toward them.

The train finally slowed; they arrived at another outpost: a small hemispherical station built of geodesic brick, with steel vertex-brackets and some transparent panels at window level around its hundred-stride circumference.

Urvios came by and squatted down in the aisle beside Andrew. “You Darko Hejj?”

“Yeah.”

“Just tell your coll we’re in Novander Wye country here. We want to keep things smooth.” Darko Hejj and Novander Wye had had bad blood for many years; Urvios was doing Andrew a favor.

“Thanks.” Novander Wye. Andrew had had a few Novander friends in the City, before he’d married; after that, they’d disappeared. He nudged Alliji, and while everyone got ready to disembark for a break, they passed the word.

Three dark-haired Novander Wye Coll militia members, muscled and scarred arms bare for all to see against dark-blue short-cut uniforms, hefted beamers and blocked the train’s drop-ramp, stalling. Yuss whispered with their leader for some time as the restless soldiers shifted in the train’s aisles, watching; after some discussion and hand-to-hand exchanges, the Novander Wye men relaxed, backed away and beckoned everyone forward.

Yuss pointed away from the dome toward a ditch in a bare patch of field. “Do your dumping over there,” he called. “They’ll cycle it through their underground systems.”

There was little to see at eye level. Andrew took his turn at the ditch. The grass that had appeared dead as he looked from the train stood over two meters tall, deep greenish-black near its mounded roots. As he finished up, grasses rustled on the far side of the ditch.

Urvios stepped across the ditch, stooped and pointed at the base of the nearest tussock, then pulled aside the grass and its arching roots. A tumult of thrashing revealed a feeding in progress: a ferret-sized carnivore ripped at the head of a small dead lizard, while it clutched a struggling mouselike creature in its rear claws.

“Mealtime for the fehey,” Urvios said.

Alliji joined him to watch the greedy little creature. “What’s it caught?”

“That lizard, I don’t know, there must be eighty different ones out here. But that mouse-thing, that’s a turkil. It’s been storing longrunner vine seeds.”

The fehey dropped the lizard, curled itself into a ball, and bit savagely down on the turkil‘s head. The turkil‘s distended cheeks burst open, scattering vine seeds in a spray at the mens’ feet. The fehey disappeared into the rootweb dragging both its prey.

“Hey, gather those up,” said one of the Novander men, striding over and hopping the ditch.

“Are they valuable?” Andrew asked, picking up the few seeds that had flown across to where he stood.

“They’re from the longrunner, the tarona, we call it.” the Novander man said, scooping up seeds and pocketing them. “It’s a creeping vine that grows under the grass cover. The vine makes a network across thousands of kilometers, this whole plain, and it supplies nitrogen for the grasses and the tall plains-deer.“

“You mean it’s all connected?” Andrew crossed the ditch to help. “Here.”

“Thanks. Yeah. It tests out as light-conducting, too. Weird, like you could use it for comm or something. Nobody’s ever figured that part out. But try this.” He held out a small, withered orange fruit.

Andrew took it. “What is it?”

“Take a bite, but watch the juice. It’s not as dry as it looks.”

Andrew bit down, and a spiced, sweet taste like tomato filled his mouth. He experimented with an angular seed, biting down and breaking it into a bloom of spiced salt. He swallowed and said, “That’s wonderful.”

“Tarona fruit is our specialty,” the man said. Alliji and Urvios handed him seeds. “Thanks for picking these up. If you come back here in other times, ask for Mazzinart Grey. I’ll show you around.”

“Luce, get over here,” Mentrius called. “Got work for you.”

“Shit, look at that!” A soldier pointed skyward; a great flyer, with vast wings, a wide flat head, and a long shimmering tail, soared at least five hundred meters above them, motionless on the steady wind. “What the hell is it?”

Another Novander militia member came up. “That’s a black tononnsar. They nest in the mountains and mate only once in five years. They feed themselves and their young on plains deer carrion.”

He froze, then squinted into the grass. “Hold on. Tell everyone to shut up. Do it quietly.”

The barkers passed the word. Two of the Novander Wye unslung their weapons and moved quietly into the grass, crouching; the third motioned everyone to be still.

The crash of a ballistic gun: the grass beyond the ditch exploded with deer leaping in all directions. A few deer bolted past Andrew, so close that the air moved. The two hunters emerged from the grass dragging a buck, blood still spurting from its heart’s final beats.

Its head was long and narrow, with flaring jaws, long ears and neck, and stubby antlerlike protrusions of anchitin. Its large gray-green eyes were wide-open, their lateral-slitted pupils dilating and constricting as if trying to seize a last gulp of light.

One of the hunters drew the eyes shut and said a short verse in Wye-ran. “To ease its death,” he said. “Now we can feed our families properly tonight.” They hauled the deer carcass into an opening in the grass, and disappeared.

“Okay, Luce, come on,” Mentrius said. “They’ve got stuff in the station to load on the train for the trip back.”

Andrew and three others spent the next hour lugging small, fragile, heavy boxes onto the train’s freight storage car, and then, with the rest, set up camp in a bare field, placing the folding-panel shelters close side by side in neatly-paired tentlike rows. Guards took up perimeter positions; patrols scouted the area. It looked like a good, disciplined camp, shaped in part by the shock of the slaughter at Abridor.

Andrew wiped his forehead and made for the shelter he shared with Alliji. Now he had to wait until well after dark.