The Stars Are Legion(62)

“We need these people,” I say. “Do you understand? If you want to go home, to go back to your monsters and your garbage heaps, I’ll find a recycling chute and happily throw you back into it.”

“Why do we need their help? We can do this together,” Das Muni says.

“I should leave you,” I say. “I wanted to leave you in the pits, but I didn’t, did I? You’re making me regret that decision.”

“Zan?” Casamir’s voice, close.

I start, turn around. “Yeah, we’re coming,” I say. “I just don’t like her wasting water.”

“There’s plenty of water,” Arankadash says. “We’ll get there in another fifteen or sixteen thousand steps.”

As I gaze at Das Muni, I remember how she cared for me in the pits. She could have left me, too, or eaten me, or fed me to her precious monsters, but she didn’t. Did I owe her, the way Arankadash now thought she owed me? Maybe.

“Let’s get going,” I say.

Das Muni lifts her head slowly. “You won’t leave me?”

“I won’t leave you,” I say. “Just . . .” And I’m aware Casamir and Arankadash are listening now. “Just never do that again.”

We pass great crimson formations, through dripping mist that stings our skin and numbs my tongue, and finally the path we’re following takes us from the broad open caverns to a narrower corridor. If I lay down, I could probably stretch out and touch both sides.

Arankadash sets her litter down and tells us to wait as she forges ahead. There is light here, emitted from pulsing pustules in the ceiling.

Little insects scurry along the walls, flashing red, gold, and green lights, but those emissions are dim.

We wait with increasing restlessness.

“Think she’ll eat us after all?” Casamir says lightly, but though it’s meant to be a joke, it falls into flat silence. “You two are a tough crowd,” she says, but she shifts from foot to foot now and pokes at the wall of the corridor with her bone stick.

Arankadash returns. “It’s clear,” she says.

“Of what?” I ask.

“Mutants,” she says. “They run prey through here and lie in wait at the end of the corridor. Come quickly.”

We pick up the pace through the narrow pass. The bodies we carry are heavy now, their mouths filled with bugs. Their eyes are sprouting fungus. Behind me, Das Muni stumbles, and her end of our litter jams in the wall, lodging firmly. A thick green ooze wells around the wound.

“Wait!” I call ahead, but Casamir and Arankadash are still moving, oblivious.

“I’m sorry,” Das Muni says.

“Don’t be sorry,” I say. “Help.” She does, and together we yank the bone from the wall and continue on our way. There’s light enough to make out the bends in the corridor, but we’ve lost Casamir and Arankadash.

My heart thumps loud in my chest. I’m tired, and my sharpened walking stick isn’t going to be easy to pull out if we’re attacked.

Das Muni is quiet, and all I can hear for some time is the beat of our feet and the huff of our breath. Occasionally, I look up at the pustules of light.

After five or six hundred steps, I hear raised voices, and slow. Listen.

I motion to Das Muni to lower the litter. I creep ahead, putting most of my weight on the outside of my foot and rolling my step inward, a trick to minimize sound that I only now realize is a skill I know.

I peer around a bend in the corridor and see Arankadash and Casamir circled by a group of women wearing bone-and-sinew armor. Finger bones rattle in their hair. They’ve smeared their faces in black grit, and they have pointed bone weapons strapped to their wrists. Arankadash has her hands out, palms up, and she is speaking quickly. The bodies Arankadash and Casamir were carrying lie at their feet.

I motion to Das Muni to lower our own load of bodies, to free up my hands. I pull my walking stick free and wait. Diplomacy first, always. I’ve found I prefer it.

But the leader of the group is having none of it. She bashes Arankadash in the face with a bone club. Arankadash crumples.

Casamir puts her hands behind her head and gets to her knees. She is showing her teeth, babbling.

I move.

I come at them quickly, weapon up. I dive at the one nearest Casamir first and drive the end of my stick into her eye. I turn as she drops and stab my weapon into the unprotected armpit of the woman behind her. The others are moving now.

Surprise lost, I’m still outnumbered four to one. I kick out the legs of the one that comes at me from the left, head-butt the woman in front of me, and duck as the woman with the club swings. Her weapon collides with someone else’s forearm. I hear the crack and cry.

I go for her eye, but she’s fast and ducks, landing a punch to my gut.

I lose my breath, stagger back, and collide with the fourth woman. I swing my weapon, but her armor deflects it. I’m getting sloppy.

The woman with the club swings for me again. I catch the swing with my stick and kick her in the stomach. She goes down, and I gore her throat, and turn.

There’s one woman standing, and she’s running.

“Get her!” Casamir says. “She’ll bring more of them! Zan!”

I bring up my stick and get ready to heft it like a spear. Hesitate. Who am I, to murder a fleeing woman in the back?