It was a good tribe to learn killing in, all the way from elementary mutilations right up to, so Uncle Jo sometimes said, a graduate degree in massacre: an MMA, Master of Mortial Arts. Mitigan studied his subject as Uncle Jo had advocated: studied it and practiced it, and got so good at it that when the Dirt-hogs were ambushed by the Lightning Bears one bloody night at Headoff Hill, only fifteen-year-old Mitigan escaped and survived. He’d sworn vengeance. He could not have lived with himself otherwise.
The Lightning Bears had laughed at him, man and boy, laughed at him and hadn’t even taken the trouble of killing him. They hadn’t laughed five years later, after Mitigan had taken out the whole Lightning tribe, one man by one man, including every male child. That’s why it took so long. That last infant he’d had to wait for, since it hadn’t been born yet. Firsters didn’t hold with killing babies until after they got born!
A man with that history had his future pretty well laid out for him. There was always a market for assassins, especially assassins who could think. Mitigan could think, though he did not think much about his career. A man could get tied up in his own thoughts, worried over them, or guilty over them, or overly convinced of his own prowess. A man needed a clear head to survive. He had to be careful.
Still and all, if a man really wanted to hit a target, Chur Durwen was right. There was always a way.
It wasn’t long before Mitigan put two and two together to come up with the same answer those at Cochim-Mahn had arrived at. The key to traveling on Dinadh was to have a structure or vehicle inside which one could be safe at night. Since the hover cars were controlled from the port city, they wouldn’t do. Since any other structure would make too heavy a load for a man, it would have to be hauled by beasts, which meant the beasts themselves had to be protected. Travel on Dinadh required a wain and beasts to pull it. Or the equivalent.
“You think I’m goin’ to fool with animals, you got a fool’s idea.” Chur Durwen yawned.
“Right,” agreed Mitigan. “We’ll do it our way.”
They’d brought certain items of equipment with them, the parts innocuously labeled and packaged as health monitors or retrievers and transcribers or library modules. Several of these items, taken apart and reassembled into a portable unit, would create a protective dome big enough to sleep in. Big enough to live in for a while, if necessary.
“Though it’ll be somewhat troublesome,” Mitigan told his companion, “I think we’d be wise to take a pack animal.”
Chur Durwen didn’t argue with him. In a pinch, Mitigan later told me, they could have carried their own provisions, but assassins preferred to stay unencumbered when engaged in their profession. Besides, at T’loch-ala, spring had not advanced so far as it had at Cochim-Mahn and there were many strong animals to choose from still in the caves.
“So now we know how,” muttered Mitigan over his evening meal as he stared out the window at the dancing Kachis. “All we have to figure out is where.”
The question plagued him as he ate, as he slept, as he did his weapons exercises morning and night. Chur Durwen, who preferred to get his daily exercise climbing up and down the ladders between hive and valley below, was bothered by the same question. Where?
It was a conversation Mitigan overheard between two women at the well ropes that gave them the clue they needed.
“Will you be going to Tahs-uppi with songfather?” one asked of the other.
“Alas, no,” replied the other. She was quite beautiful, Mitigan thought, with black hair that fell in a lightless flow almost to her knees. She was also very pregnant. “Songfather feels it is too near my time.”
“He’s probably right,” said the first, with a delicate shudder. “One should not be far from help the first time. Still, it’s sad that you’ll miss it. All the songfathers and their guests will be there, from everywhere in Dinadh. Another such opportunity will not come in our lifetime.”