Read Online Hammerfall by C. J. Cherryh - Free Book Online

freedmen as assistants. This caravan master had served the Ila’s particular needs for ten years, so he said, and took her pay and feared her as he feared the summer wind.
    â€œThere are not enough beasts to carry us,” Marak said to the man. “If the party numbers over forty, we’re short, and it needs more supply than that.”
    â€œTo Pori,” the caravan master said, which might be his understanding of the mission.
    â€œOff the edge of the Lakht. Beyond Pori.” There was no lying to the caravan master, above all else. This was the man on whose judgment and preparation all their lives depended.
    â€œThere is nothing beyond Pori,” the caravan master said.
    â€œThat’s why we need more beasts and more supply,” Marak said, and appealed to the captain with a glance. “I need more tents, more beshti, first-quality, far more than the weapons.”
    The captain snapped his fingers and called over the aide who had brought the caravan master; and the aide went in and called out an au’it, who sat down on a bench in the courtyard and prepared to write on loose sheets. A slave brought a lamp close to her, and set it down on a bare wooden table, while small insects died and sparked in the flame.
    â€œHow many beasts?” the captain asked Marak.
    â€œAsk the caravan master,” Marak said. “He knows that, or he knows nothing.”
    â€œAsk wide, but prudently,” the captain said sternly to the master. “This is the Ila’s charge.”
    The master, whose name was Obidhen, looked down and counted, a rapid movement of fingers, the desert way, that took the place of the au’it’s scribing. “Sixty-nine beasts,” Obidhen said. “The tents are enough, ten to a tent. More will mean more beasts, more food, more pack beasts, more work, more risk. I have slaves enough, my grown sons, and the two freedmen.”
    â€œThe tents are enough,” Marak agreed.
    â€œThis is a modest man,” the captain said to Obidhen. “The Ila finds merit in him, the god knows why.”
    Obidhen looked at Marak askance, not having been told, perhaps, that his party consisted entirely of madmen.
    But after that, the supplies must be gotten and loaded, and the caravan master went out with orders to gather what he needed immediately, on the Ila’s charge, and form his caravan outside the walls by the fountain immediately. Obidhen promised three hours by the clepsydra in the courtyard, having his beasts within the pens to the north of the city, and his gear and his tents, he said, well-ordered and waiting in the warehouses by the northern gate. He could find the rest, with the Ila’s seal on the order, within the allotted time.
    â€œWe will need for each man or woman a change of clothing,” Marak said. “Waterskins. Mending for their boots and clothing. And salves and medicines for the lot.”
    â€œDone,” the captain said then, and appointed aides to bring it, and a corporal to rouse out a detail to carry it down past the fountain gate, to be parceled out as Obidhen directed, every man and woman a packet to keep in personal charge . . . not so much water as might be a calamity to lose, but enough to augment their water-storage by one full day and their food by a week.
    â€œSergeant Magin will escort you as far as your first camp out from the walls,” the captain said, when the au’it had written down the details for whoever read such records. “I know,” Memnanan said. “You wish no escort. This is not an escort.”
    â€œI take the warning,” Marak said.
    Memnanan, looked at him as if there was far, far more he wanted to ask, and to say, and to know, before he turned an abjori lowlander and a caravan of good size loose in his jurisdiction.
    â€œYou will carry a letter and water-seal,” Memnanan said, “for the lord of Pori.”
    It would speed their journey, if they might