“You can add a fourth role to that if anything goes wrong,” he said. “Traitor. Because if I fail, the people will surely be destroyed one way or another.”
Alanna drew her arms tight across her stomach. “I know.” How well she knew. “But deception is the only real weapon we have. We face physical chameleons. To survive, we must be mental chameleons.”
There was a long silence, and when Alanna looked at Jules she saw that he had read more than one meaning into her words. She had hoped he would. She had never spoken this openly with him before, but it was time for him to begin to understand.
“Wild human philosophy, Lanna?”
“Survival philosophy.”
“Yes. In a way, you used it on us, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“And on the Tehkohn?”
“Yes.”
“All without losing yourself? What if I asked you again what happened while you were with the Tehkohn.”
“This time, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“You may have told me too much already.”
She shook her head. “Natahk will be here soon. He could force me. into a role that seems traitorous to everyone else. I don’t want it to seem so to you.”
“The penalty for playing too many roles.”
“When I came back to the settlement, I decided that I would play as many as necessary to get the people out of this valley, away from the meklah, the Garkohn, and the Tehkohn.” She spoke quietly, but with all the intensity that she actually felt.
He raised an eyebrow. “You seem to mean that. What if I asked you why you mean it—other than to save yourself, of course. Why…chameleon?”
“Because of you and Neila,” she said. “I keep telling you that. It’s true. It’s taken me two years without the sight of a Missionary face to make me realize how great a debt I owe.” She stopped, gave him a long look. “Natahk can’t stop me now. Even if he killed me, a way of escape would still be opened for you. Only you and the rest of the Missionaries can stop me—by letting him turn you away from me.”
“Why don’t you tell me why you think he can.”
“Maybe he can’t. But the fact that he found out about my withdrawal and didn’t readdict me means he has something planned for me.”
He drew his mouth into a straight line, remembering. “Yes, I see your point. One of them at least. You want me to settle for that one?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t give the trust you’re asking for?”
“Not yet.”
“The people are my first concern, Alanna.”
She said nothing, watched him.
“Natahk has shown himself to be our enemy. I’d trust your word over his unless, somehow, you too showed yourself to be against us.” His tone changed slightly. “And I still can’t quite believe you’d do that.”
“I wouldn’t,” she said. “For what it’s worth, I couldn’t.” She felt as though she had fought a battle and lost. She had come within a hair of telling him the whole truth. But she had not been able to make herself take the chance. Now, all she had accomplished was to make him suspicious again—and Natahk could still destroy her with a few words. She shook her head, tried to put the mistake behind her. She couldn’t correct it; it was done. “Is there anything I can do to help you keep order tomorrow night?” she asked.
There wasn’t. He gave her little part in that. He thought about it, then invited a few of his friends to have dinner with him that night. This was something he had done often before. It would raise little interest among the Garkohn at the settlement. Two Garkohn did attend invisibly for a while, but they soon left, having heard enough talk of crops, rabbits, chickens, etc.
Alanna signaled Jules when they were gone and he made a short announcement. A brother of one of the men scheduled to guard the gate the next night was present. Also present was the father of a man scheduled to help guard the Tehkohn prisoners. Alanna had wanted to be more direct—speak with at least two of the actual guards so that the information would only have to be transmitted once more. Her goal was not to prevent Natahk from learning that the dinner had taken place, and understanding through hindsight why certain guests had been invited. Unlike Jules, she believed that that would happen anyway—that it was inevitable. Her goal was only to prevent Natahk’s learning too soon. She wanted to be certain that the Garkohn at the settlement had no reason to suspect that anything was wrong. If they did suspect, if they signaled Natahk and Natahk arrived with an army, the Missionaries could be crushed between the two warring tribes. No punishment that Natahk was likely to inflict on the settlement after the raid would hurt the Missionaries as badly as would being caught in that vise.
But by Jules’s roundabout plan, the two special guests would speak to their relatives, and the relatives would speak to their fellow guards. The best that Alanna had been able to do was to convince Jules that at least the orders should not be relayed until the next night—until the last minute. That way, even if someone did fail to notice a lurking Garkohn, it would be too late for the Garkohn to contact Natahk and turn the raid into a war.
The other guests at Jules’s dinner were to speak to no one. Their only function would be to do what they could to stop any trouble that arose before Missionaries could be hurt. Jules was emphasizing the importance of his instructions and at the same time undergoing some intense questioning when a late-arriving guest knocked and had to be let in. Alanna caught Jules’s eye to lei him know that a Garkohn had come in with the guest. That ended the business portion of the dinner.
The escape the next night began well. Both sets of Missionary guards received their warnings and behaved as they had been told to behave. And apparently, the Garkohn remained ignorant until the raid was in progress. The only trouble came when a Tehkohn hunter, hard-pressed by the Garkohn, and impatient with the unfamiliar latch on the storehouse door, kicked the door in. The sudden noise brought several Missionaries spilling carelessly out of their houses.
Someone shouted that the Tehkohn were raiding.
Someone else called for the men to get their guns.
Then one of the men who had had dinner with Jules the night before shouted, “Get back inside! You can’t tell one native from another in the dark. Let them fight it out”
Only two young men did not hear him—or chose not to heed. Their home was near the storehouse, and they moved quickly. They managed to tackle a pair of escaping prisoners. The prisoners, both hunters, paused a moment to break their attackers’ necks, then fled on. Raiders and ex-prisoners combined to dispose of the few Garkohn who got in their way. Then they left the settlement, carrying their own dead and injured with them.
The dead Missionaries were brothers, Kyle and Lee Everett. Alanna had known them. One of her few friends among the Missionaries had been their sister, Tate, who had been taken by the Garkohn over a year before. It occurred to Alanna that the memory of their sister might have been what spurred the two men to run so recklessly into danger. They would have been infuriated at seeing the Tehkohn escaping since, like most Missionaries, they had still believed that the Tehkohn were responsible for all the abductions. Jules had not dared to risk the chaos that might follow a general announcement of the truth.
And, Alanna thought unhappily, Jules had been right. Just as she had been right not to try to convince the prisoners that the Missionaries were not their enemies, and thus should be handled gently. The prisoners would not have believed her and more important, the Garkohn might have overheard. Her fear of the Garkohn and Jules’s fear of the temper of his people—their temper and their guns—had killed Kyle and Lee, but had doubtless saved many others.
Most Missionaries did not realize that anything had happened until early the next morning when Natahk arrived with an army of hunters. The First Hunter was as angry as Alanna had expected him to be. He and Gehl came straight to the Verrick house. Natahk was luminescent yellow in his fury. He stood looking from one to another of the three Verricks unt
il his eyes came to rest on Jules. “I have heard that you were sick, Verrick, confined to your bed for days.”
He stopped, clearly waiting to trample any defense Jules made. Jules said nothing.
“Was it your sickness that prevented you from hearing the Tehkohn who came raiding last night? Were you asleep in your bed while they slaughtered my hunters and freed the prisoners?”
“I heard them,” said Jules. And his tone caused Alanna to turn and look at him with apprehension. He sounded the way he had the night before when he stood over the bodies of the Everett brothers—the way he had when he stopped blaming himself and began blaming the natives. All the natives.
“You heard?” Natahk feigned surprise. “And you did nothing? Called none of your people to the aid of my outnumbered hunters?”
“To what purpose?” demanded Jules. “So that the Tehkohn could be diverted to killing Missionaries while your hunters escaped?”
Natahk’s luminescence seemed to intensify, probably because Jules had guessed exactly right.
“Would you like to see the bodies of the two men who did try to help your hunters?” asked Jules.
Natahk struck him openhanded across the face.
Jules reeled back against the wall and fell, upsetting a small chest that contained Neila’s cooking utensils. The chest spilled its contents over the floor as Natahk spoke.
“What do I care for your two men—two fools who gave their necks to the Tehkohn—when I have lost twelve hunters!” He went to the dining table where a bowl of meklah fruit still sat—for Neila and for guests. He took a piece of fruit, turned, and threw it hard so that it half smashed against Jules’s chest. “Eat, Verrick.”
Alanna saw Jules’s hand move to where Neila’s large butcher knife had fallen out of the chest. He grasped the knife, his body hiding the action from Natahk. Then in a single motion, he rose to his feet and lunged at the Garkohn.
Alanna had quietly placed herself between Jules and Natahk, off to one side. Now she moved as Jules did, hit him with her full weight before he could reach Natahk. She caught his right wrist with both her hands and twisted it as they fell. He released the knife and it went skittering across the floor to the wall.
Jules jerked free of Alanna and thrust her away from him. She got up, looked at Natahk, who had not moved, then looked at Jules, who glared back at her. Neila, frightened and confused by the brief incident, now started to Jules’s side. But she stopped when she saw his expression. Alanna offered him her hand.
He got up, ignoring the hand, and faced Natahk. There was no change in the Garkohn’s seemingly placid face, but his coloring was still bright yellow.
“You will eat,” he said softly.
Jules must have known the threat behind the gentled voice. Containing his humiliation somehow, he went to the table, took a meklah fruit, ate it. Behind him, Neila began to cry.
Natahk went to where the knife had finally come to rest and picked it up. He turned it over in his hands for a moment, then spoke to his second-in-command. “Do we not have hunters with us who know the locations of all the Missionary weapons?”
Gehl flashed white in a luminescent Kohn nod.
“Tell them to collect the weapons.”
“Oh, God, no!” Jules spoke more to himself than to the Garkohn. Then, “No, Natahk! There will be killing!”
The Garkohn leader glanced at him and Gehl stopped to see if there would be a change in her orders.
“Natahk, my people will fight to keep their weapons. There will be pointless carnage.” He seemed to have to force the next words out. “Take my weapons if you wish. I’m the one who threatened you. But leave my people alone.”
Natahk hefted the knife again and smiled humanly. He spoke to Gehl. “Tell them not to worry about these.” He indicated the knife. “An adult hunter who cannot overcome a Missionary armed with this deserves to die. But see that they collect the others. The strange ones.” He meant the guns.
Gehl flashed assent again and went out.
Neila approached Jules again and the two exchanged looks of apprehension. Jules started toward the door, then stopped, and in what must have been a painful gesture, looked at Natahk.
No longer smiling, the Garkohn flashed a nod—a dismissal.
Jules and Neila hurried out, doubtless intent on doing what they could to hold down the carnage.
Alanna stared after them, then looked at Natahk and found him watching her.
“Why did you save him?” he asked.
“He is my father!” she said hotly. Then, watching him, she cooled, performed the mental gymnastics necessary to keep her calm and safe from the rage that had almost destroyed Jules. “Why did you spare him?” she countered.
Natahk made a sound of derision. “He has his uses. And sometimes I pity him. He always fights, yet he must always lose.”
She looked at him with surprise, wondering whether he meant it, whether he was capable of even such a condescending sympathetic emotion as pity. “Will your hunters kill?” she asked, glancing toward the door.
“If they must. Verrick will do what he can to make it unnecessary, and you will do what you can. But if they fight us, some of them will die.”
“You want me to help?”
“Of course. I expect you to be very useful in helping me control your people.”
She stood still, saying nothing. Was this why he had kept her secret and let her remain unaddicted? Because she too had her uses? If that was it, then he must have finally believed her claim that she preferred death to the meklah. Perhaps he feared that she would kill herself in a third withdrawal. But he was not finished.
“I demand little of you really. You would try to keep them out of danger on your own as you just did with Verrick. You do care for them to a surprising extent—surprising considering where your true loyalties lie.”
“I care for them.”
“Show your usefulness then. And perhaps I will begin to forget what you were. Except in one way.” He paused. “Your husband was teaching you to fight.”
“Yes.”
“You move well, and quickly. I will see that your training is continued.”
She ignored this.
“Our Missionaries in the south are also being trained. Most have little strength, but it is surprising what they can be motivated to do.”
Imagining the “motivations,” Alanna felt sick and angry. She moved away from him toward the door. She was about to go out when something occurred to her. “Will you tell Tate Everett that her brothers are dead?”
“So? They were the ones then.”
“Yes.”
“You will tell her yourself. You will see her soon.”
Alanna managed to conceal her sudden fear. “So?”
“Yes, Alanna. Your people are not safe here. The Tehkohn come raiding whenever they wish. Innocent Missionaries are killed. Soon, I must move you all south—where you will be safe.”
He was an animal. He was the one native about whom the Missionaries had been right!
“When?” Alanna demanded.
“Be grateful that I do not tell you. If I did, if I gave you a false time, I have no doubt that Tehkohn would appear at exactly that time. Then I would have to kill you even before I dealt with them. Now go and join your people.”
They went outside together, and for a moment stood in front of the Verrick house and watched. Garkohn hunters were driving Missionaries out of their homes. They were herding the bewildered people onto the common to be surrounded by other hunters. Hunters were already searching emptied houses. One of these last spotted Alanna and started toward her. Natahk waved him away.
“Go and appear to be one of them,” he told her. “It will help you win their trust when the need arises.”
She stiffened, spoke in flat controlled English. “They are my people. I don’t need you to tell me how to handle them.” She walked away without looking back at him.
The Missionaries had been rousted from their morning routines. Some
had been driven from their homes only partially clad and more than one was wrapped in only a blanket. The Garkohn action had taken them completely by surprise. They were angry, confused, and in many cases, badly frightened people. Here and there, some of them protested to the silent stolid Garkohn, but the Garkohn ignored them unless they tried to break away from the group and return to their homes. Then they were handled with a swift efficient brutality that usually left them unconscious on the ground—and that warned their neighbors against any similar attempt. A well-trained Kohn fighter—even a low hunter—was much used to killing with his hands.
Near where Alanna stood, Garkohn-Missionary cultural differences caused a problem as five Missionary men leaped to the defense of a hysterical woman who had tried to break through the ring of Garkohn. The speed and fury of the Missionaries’ attack not only stopped the two Garkohn from beating the woman, but very nearly overcame them. Finally, the Garkohn managed to dispose of three of their attackers while the other two dragged the screaming woman back into the crowd. Other men moved to the outside of the crowd to face the approaching Garkohn, protecting their own, taking action against an attacking enemy. This was something that they could understand!
Jules Verrick reached them before Alanna did, and stood off the Garkohn in exactly the right way.
“What do you want? Will you stoop to murdering nonfighters?”
The yellower of the two Garkohn, a huntress, raised a hand to strike Jules out of the way, but her companion stopped her.
“Send out the ones who attacked us,” he ordered.
“They attacked in the defense of the nonfighter you were beating. It was their duty.”
Both Garkohn were silent for a moment, then the darker one flared angry yellow. “Your people are too much alike! Who can tell fighters from nonfighters?” He turned away with a mixture of anger and humiliation. The huntress followed.
The status of nonfighters—farmers and artisans—was in some ways similar to that of women in Missionary society. Fighters protected them, governed them, and considered it less than honorable to mistreat them. They ranged from the bright green of the highest farmers to the startlingly beautiful golden green of the artisans. Among the Garkohn, there were even artisans who descended to pure yellow. Nonfighters were the only truly beautiful people that Alanna had seen among the Kohn.