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let me continue on my own, but both of us knew he would not do so.
"He died well, and I would not belittle him by leaving the task we took up
unfulfilled." He had con-trol, save that his tone was that cold flat quiet
that chilled me.
"I grieve with you," I said softly, as he rose and damped the fire, "but I
need you, and my need makes me selfish. I will say the words with you at
Santha." I knew, nothing else to say.
We took sword belts from the dead men and with them bound the brist pelt tight
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around Tyith's body. He seemed smaller, somehow, in death, and light. Some of
the men were chalded, some chaldless, and it was odd that they should have
banded together. By rights we should have taken the chalded, or their belts at
least, to the Day-Keepers, but we left them, instead, for the forest
scavengers. Tyith we hoisted across Wirin's quivering back. The smell of death
was on his master, and the steel-gray threx did not like it. He turned his
head and sniffed at the brist-wrapped bundle slung across his back. Wirin's
ears went back, he lifted his head and uttered an awful trumpeted wail, and
then stood, head between his knees, quiet, as we tied Tyith's body firmly to
saddle and girth.
As the day unfolded, Sereth and I explored our altered relationship. The pace
he set was hard, both on me and the threx, with short stops but no real rest.
I was now just another commission to him, another woman. He was no harder on
me than he had been the day we met, but the softenings, the little
considerations, wordless gestures that had been between us affirmation of a
growing empathy, were conspicuously absent. Once, I had wanted desperate-ly to
please the discriminating Sereth of Arlet, larger-than-life legend. When he
had denigrated me, I had implemented a plan to make him court me at the very
level he had chosen to put me, and I had suc-ceeded. Until Tyith. I had lost
all the ground I had gained with him. It was a measure of .his strength that
he did not blame and punish me, for he would have been within his rights. He
was, once again, that distant, intense, time-hoarding Slayer who had fan-cied
me in
Arlet. And the further he pushed me from him, the more I craved our former
intimacy. I would have gladly borne him a child to replace the one I had
helped him lose, if only I could have so com-manded my self-willed
reproductive system.
That I could not do. Nothing less, I was sure, would suffice.
My musings were interrupted around sun's set, when we came upon a wild
golachit who had some-how fallen from the ledge above, to land on his back
wedged between two large angular boulders. His strident high-octave whine had
attracted perhaps a dozen of his fellows, from threx length to thrice that
long, who clustered together below the giant, who lay, legs waving, wedged
between the rocks. They were keening. But no golachit will move to help
an-other right itself, for such a death is common to them, natural, and
right. Dismounting and scram-bling to its side, we could see the softer
underbelly, already cracked, and the bubbling blue froth on its perpendicular
excrescence tube. Its great recessed eyes followed us. The chitinous shell
seemed undam-aged. Another day, exposed to the sun, would surely finish it, if
the night-hunting ebvrasea did not plunge their cruel beaks deep in its belly.
An ebvrasea could not kill a golachit with its eight legs under it, but an
overturned one is helpless.
Sereth walked quickly back to the threx, returning with a long, soft web-fiber
rope. This he looped around the golachit's body, wedging it between tho-rax
and head. The giant amber golachit clicked its mandibles weakly.
Sereth handed me a section of the long line, and I kept it tight around the
golachit while he played the coil to its end.
He backed Wirin carefully up the rocky incline, until he could run the slack
through the breast band around the steed's chest. Then he mounted and urged
the threx forward. The big threx's muscles bunched, and he strained against
the rope until he was sitting on his hind legs in his effort. The golachit did
not budge. The web-rope hummed with strain.
Sereth tried once more. Foam flecked Wirin's chest as he gamely struggled to
move the wedged weight. Stones flew under his hooves, and he dug troughs down
to solid rock beneath him, but to no avail. Sereth dismounted, and leaving
Wirin harnessed, brought Krist carefully beside him, back-ing him cautiously
through the jumbled rocks. There was barely room for the two threx to stand
abreast with level footing under them, but finally he had them positioned and
then backed them in unison, that he might get the rope around both their
mighty chests. That done, he stood before them, retreating slowly, calling. A
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good distance in front of them, he stopped, raised both hands, and whistled
shrilly.
Grunting, the threx threw themselves against the rope, determined to get
to their master. The golachit's hard shell grated against the rocks,
and it was free. The threx's lunging carried them thunder-ing forward, and
Sereth, running, narrowly escaped being trampled. The golachit lay on its
side, stunned for a moment. The keening had stopped. All that was heard was
rock settling, pebbles, and hard-breathing threx. Then, with a hissing squeak,
the golachit righted itself, rocking on outstretched legs, until its teetering
bulk fell heavily on its belly. It still wore the rope around it. Sereth,
coiling the slack in his hand, went slowly toward it. He stood before it,
care-fully, showing no fear,
and then walked around and disengaged the loop. Only when he was out of reach
of those deadly mandibles did I dare breathe. A golachit is an intelligent
being, but this one had lain in torture under the sun for long hours.
The golachit stood, weaving on its eight legs, its excrescence tube stretched
out before it. From that tube came two tiny drops of fire-red gol. Then the
golachit, with amazing agility for a creature of such great size, turned on
its back legs and scrabbled to its fellows. They creeched and chitted at each
other, the number closing around the amber giant protec-tively. Then the whole
herd moved off into the rocks, shadow on shadow in the failing light.
I scrambled down from my perch against the boulders. Sereth had picked up the
gol drops by the time I reached him.
They were blood-pulse in his palm. Red gol material is secreted only at times
of great joy or crisis, and is priced higher among us than any precious stone.
The golachit had amply thanked us for aiding it.
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