“Shoot them!” someone else shrieked.
Then all chaos broke loose, a hoarse cry from the rear of the crowd. Some of the Tamurlin turned screaming in panic, their cries swiftly drowned in the sounds of battle in the center of the crowd.
Kta jerked at Kurt’s arm and pointed, both of them for the moment stunned by the appearance of nemet among the Tamurlin, the flash of bright-edged swords in the sunlight. No Tamurlin offered them fight any more-the humans were trying more to escape than to fight-and soon there were only nemet around them. The humans had vanished into the brush.
Now with Kurt behind him, Kta stood in the clear, with dagger in hand and the dead at his feet, and the nemet band raised a cheer.
“Lord Kta!” they cried over and over. “Lord Kta!” And they came to him, bloody swords in hand, and knelt down in the dust before their almost-naked and much-battered lord. Kta held out his hand to them, dropping the blade, and turned palm upward to heaven, to the cleansing light of the sun.
“Ei, my friends,” he said, “my friends, well done.” Val t’Ran, the officer next in command after Bel t’Osanef, rose from his knees and looked as if he would gladly have embraced Kta, if such impulses belonged to nemet. Tears shone in his eyes. “I thank heaven we were in time, Kta-ifhan, and I would have reckoned we could not be.”
“It was you who killed the humans outside the camp, was it not?”
“Aye, my lord, and we feared they had spoiled our ambush. We thought we might have been discovered by that. We were very careful stalking the camp, after that.”
“It was well done,” said Kta again, with great feeling, and held out his hand to the boy Pan, who had come with the rescuers. “Pan, it was you who brought them?”
“Yes, sir,” said the youth. “I had to run, sir, I had to. I hated to leave you. Tas and I-we thought we could do more by getting to the ship-but he died of his wound on the way.”
Kta swallowed heavily. “I am sorry, Pan. May the Guardians of your house receive him kindly. Let us go. Let us be out of this foul place.”
Kurt saw them prepare to move out, looked down at what weight was clenched in his numb hand, saw the ax and his arm bloodstained to the shoulder. He let it fall, suddenly shaking in every limb. He stumbled aside from all of them, bent over in the lee of a hut and was sick for some few minutes until everything had emptied out of his belly, drugs, Tamurlin food. But the sights that stayed in his mind were something over which he had no such power. He took dust and rubbed at the blood until his skin stung with the sandy dirt and the spots were gone. In a deserted hut he found a gourd of water and drank and washed his face. The place stank of leaf. He stumbled out again into the sunlight.
“Lord Kurt,” said one of the seamen, astonished to find him. “Kta-ifhan is frantic. Come. Hurry. Come, please.”
The nemet looked strange to him, alien, the language jarring on his ears. Human dead lay around. The nemet were leaving. He felt no urge to go among them.
“Sir.”
Fire roared near him; a wave of heat brought him to alertness. They were setting fire to the village. He stared about him like a man waking from a dream.
He had pulled a trigger, pressed a button and killed, remotely, instantly. He had helped to fire a world, though his post was noncombat. They had been minute, statistical targets.
Renols’ astonished look hung before him. It had been Mini’s.
He lay in the dust, with its taste in his mouth and his lips cut and his cheek bruised. He did not remember falling. Gentle alien hands lifted him, turned him, smoothed his face.
“He is fevered,” Pan’s clear voice said out of the blaze of the sun. “The burns, sir, the sun, the long walk-”
“Help him,” said Kta’s voice. “Carry him if you must. We must get clear of this place. There are other tribes.”