Ammonite

Damn the woman. How could she risk herself like this? Couldn’t she see that she would just be throwing her life away, hers and Thenike’s? Throwing them away on a useless gesture. And their deaths would be added to the list of people Danner already felt responsible for. Damn them all.

She fell asleep eventually, and dreamed she was standing alone on a grassy plain facing a hundred riders. She was holding a knife, but as they galloped toward her, she realized the knife was a child’s toy, clumsily carved of wood.

She woke before dawn, hooves still thundering through her head. She got dressed and walked barefoot through the dewy grass toward the hospital, enjoying the cool wet sliding between her toes.

Lu Wai was sitting patiently by Letitia’s bedside. The only noise was the faint hum of a machine at the head of the bed. Lu Wai straightened.

“How is she?”

“Stable, ma’am. And improving. She spoke to me last night.” The trace of that miracle was still on Lu Wai’s face. She nodded at the machine. “But Dr. Hiam thinks we should keep her asleep as much as possible.”

“You agree?”

Lu Wai looked surprised. “Yes. Sleep’s a good healer.” She paused. “You’re not sleeping well, ma’am?”

“No. No I’m not.” She pulled a chair up to the bed and sat down. “Lu Wai, how do you decide what to do when you think you’re right, but everyone else, who you would have thought should know better, thinks you’re wrong?”

Lu Wai took a moment to answer. “That depends. Usually, when what I want is the direct opposite of what everyone else thinks is right, I find fear of some kind, my fear, at the bottom of it. Take my request to be sent with Letitia and Captain White Moon.”

“I—”

Lu Wai held up her hand. “No. You were right. What would have happened to Letitia if I’d died out there? But it was fear, fear for Letitia, that prompted my request.”

Danner said nothing. She was thinking of her fears: that all the people she knew would die and she was helpless to prevent it. Helpless when all her training had taught her she must be responsible for her people, that their lives were in her hands. But Marghe was not her responsibility any more; she had chosen to join the natives; and Thenike never had been. “You might be right. You are right. But how do you stop being afraid?”

“You don’t. ” Lu Wai looked at Letitia, festooned with tubes and wires. “But love and responsibility don’t give a person the prerogative to be always right. We can’t protect people forever.

Letitia had a job to do. She went to do it. It wasn’t my place at that time to be with her.”

Danner absorbed that.

Marghe was a trained negotiator. She knew this Uaithne. Thenike was a viajera, a representative of the other natives. And Marghe was also a SEC rep, better qualified than anybody to do this job.

As she stepped back out into the dawn, Danner punched in Kahn’s code. “Kahn, go find out where Marghe and Thenike are sleeping. Wake them up and tell them I’m reconsidering. That if they want transport north, they have it.”

“But, Commander, they’ve already gone. Borrowed horses from the Singing Pastures women and left last night.”

Danner closed her eyes and swore. Two women on horses was a very different proposition from two women on a sled that could whisk them out of danger if the natives got ugly. She took a deep breath. To hell with it. She was a soldier, not a diplomat. “Kahn, I want you to go find Cassil, Day, T’orre Na, and Holle, and respectfully request that they be in my quarters in twenty minutes. Tell Lu Wai and Twissel to join us. I want the sleds powered up and all personnel ready to be addressed in forty. I want a message sent to Nyo, to read: ‘Am heading with all speed on direct course for last known whereabouts of hostile tribes. Please change course to follow.’ That’s all.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Danner checked the weather reports and thought furiously as she waited for Day and T’orre Na and the others to arrive. When they did, she could tell by their faces that they had already heard her orders.

“You can’t do this!” Day said. “You know what Marghe said. If you’re there, armed, they’ll attack.”

“Nyo isn’t here,” Danner said. “I doubt she’ll reach us before we meet with the tribes. And the latest weather report suggests we, the storm, and the tribes will all meet at the same time. Which means none of our weapons will work anyway. So, technically, we won’t be armed.”

“Then why—”

“We’ll rely on our armor. You know what it can do. If we’re properly armored up, nothing these savages can throw at us can get through. Modern weapons, yes, because of the heat, but impact weapons, especially low-grade items like stones and spears, will just bounce off. If they got us on the ground, they could probably beat us senseless. Even a helmet can’t stop the brain being rattled inside the skull with enough pounding. But if we stand together… It should work.”