"You should probably go on," says Haught. He is staggering, leaning heavily on me. The damage to that ankle must have been worse than I thought, and every step we take over the uneven ground worsens his condition.
"No," I say, shortly.
"Sir -" He swallows. We are both thirsty; the journey is thirsty work. "You can probably reach the steadhold before sundown, if you hurry. I should be all right. The, umm, the servitors, they can't see me as any sort of threat -"
"They might. And there are other hazards. There must be wild animals -"
"Sir, it's like you said to Admiral Shohl. There's no point endangering any more people than we have to." Such was my response to Shohl's offer to send a rescue party. There was no way any rescuers could have found us and returned with us before nightfall - not without orbital scans to pinpoint our position, without vehicles or transporters to carry us. I do not even know if the Tiazans would lend us any more riding beasts -
What has happened to the ships?
Haught's mind is only a little fogged by fatigue and pain; I see a resolution rising in it. "If you lie down and refuse to walk," I say, "Rrueo will pick you up and carry you. Rrueo will probably gag you, too, to stop you complaining."
He sighs. "I keep forgetting you're a telepath."
"Rrueo hardly needs to be, to know you are plotting some quixotic gesture. Now walk, human idiot."
He walks. We are at the foot of a long grassy slope... a few hours ago, our steeds cantered down it and we barely noticed it. Now, it looms like one of the mountains of my homeworld.
"What's it like?" Haught asks.
"To see others' minds? It offers... insights. And it has its uses, and its dangers." I glance sideways at him. "Rrueo is not intruding on your mental privacy, if that is your concern."
"But you could... if you wanted to."
"It would be feasible. Some minds are easier than others - your Admiral Shohl, now, she is no telepath, but she is watchful and wary and introspective - her mind is a fortress, not to be easily breached. Yours - Rrueo has made the comparison - yours is a village. A straighforward, bucolic place. But Rrueo does not pick the locks on the doors of your cottages."
"All right, sir, I believe you." He is silent for a few moments as we toil up the slope. "What about your own mind? How does that look?"
"Rrueo does not know. It may not even be possible, philosophically, for Rrueo to know. To know herself so completely, Rrueo's mind would have to contain a perfect image of itself."
"I think I see. Uh." Another red spike of pain in his mind-tone. The conversation is as much to distract him from his difficulties as anything else. From the pain, and from the fact that we are walking through the deepening scarlet light of sunset.
"We will stop at the top of this hill," I say. "There is no point in wearing ourselves out in futile effort - and, from the summit, we may have some warning of anything approaching."
"We probably won't be able to use our tricorders, sir. Remember what happened to Admiral Shohl's -"
"Rrueo is aware of this."
"Well, then, sir, how will we spot anything? It'll be dark."
"You are forgetting something else about Rrueo, human idiot. Rrueo is Ferasan."
"Oh. Yeah. Cat. Sorry, sir."
We reach the hilltop. The landscape spreads out around us in the gloaming. I can even see lights in the distance, lights that must be those of the steadhold. "The child must have been optimistic about the nearness of the tower," I mutter. Haught sits down on the grass, his face strained, his leg stretched stiffly out in front of him. My whiskers twitch. I can see the steadhold - one mad dash might take me there - but I will not abandon Haught.
I pull out my disruptor, and reluctantly extract the power cell. I toss it away. Perhaps I can retrieve it in the morning, if I am still alive. "Do the same with your phaser," I tell Haught. He complies, reluctantly. He does not wish to disarm himself. Understandable.
"Rrueo wishes she knew if it were safe to build a fire," I mutter.
"Best not risk it, sir," says Haught. "It looks like a mild night, anyway."
Tiaza Zephora's sun is setting. I shade my eyes to look at the western horizon. Stars are already gleaming in the sky... the sun is a sliver of red on the edge of the world, a sliver that shrinks and darkens... and is gone.
"The Tiazans must, sometimes, have travellers benighted in the open," I muse. "The sleeping giant must surely realize this, must make allowances... it would be feared and hated, if it did not..." I do not know if I am convincing Haught. I am certainly not convincing myself.
Movement. On the hillside, beneath us, there is movement. I look, my eyes now adapted to the dark.
They are here.
They are humanoid shapes, but short and squat, dark and vaguely formless; dwarves, wrapped in some sort of robe and cowl which hides their features. There are perhaps half a dozen of them, waddling up the hill towards us. "The servitors are coming," I whisper to Haught. "Remain calm."
"I can't see them, sir." His voice is strained.
"Rrueo sees them. Rrueo will talk to them. Stay calm."
I reach out with my mind, but there is nothing. In the night around me, I can feel the dim self-awarenesses of nocturnal animals, rodents, even night-flying insects with their rudimentary sense of being alive... but from the black figures on the hillside, nothing. It is not the active resistance of a mental shield - it is simply a nothingness, as if these animate forms are no more than some sort of machinery, or even a natural process of the ground itself.
"We mean no harm," I call out to them. "Rrueo's companion is injured and cannot walk without aid. Will you aid us?"
"Sir!" There is sudden urgency in Haught's voice. "Sir, behind you!"
I spin in place, and it is there - another squat monkish figure, barely half a dozen paces from me. How did it get there? Did it just spring unannounced out of the ground? Light gleams from something on its arm -
Haught stumbles to his feet and moves, placing himself between me and the servitor. It moves forward. "Hold on!" Haught yells, his voice high-pitched and desperate. The figure moves -
There is a sound, the sort of sound one might hear in a butcher's shop. Haught gasps and falls, toppling in a foetal position, his mind-tone one white blaze of pain. The servitor's arm - I can clearly see it, now.
From the forearm, two curved and hooked blades extend, nearly a metre long. Claws. Gigantic claws, wet and shining - wet with Harley Haught's blood.
I hiss, and atavistic impulse makes my fur rise on my body, makes my ears fold flat to my head... makes my fingertips tense, and my own claws slide out from their sheaths. I take good care of my claws, they are sharp as needles, reinforced with a polycarbonate varnish - they can score steel -
They are nothing compared to the monstrous natural weapons the servitor boasts.
I hiss again and spring forwards, my hands outstretched. The servitor steps backwards - then, to my astonishment, it turns and flees, waddling over the ground at a surprisingly rapid rate. Atavistic impulses fire within me again - I want to chase down this fleeing thing, to leap on it, to rend it with fangs and claws -
I curb my impulses. I am not an animal, and my companion needs me.
I kneel beside Haught. Blood is welling freely from two rents in his Starfleet uniform. The creature drove its claws deep into the human's midriff, piercing deep into his body. I pull my medkit from my belt pouch. Combat injuries - I have resources to treat combat injuries -
There is the sound of movement about me. I look around.
The other servitors have come up the hill. They fan out, in a semi-circle, around me and the helpless shape of Haught. They have all extended claws from their forearms. But they do not attack.
"Coward creatures!" I scream at them. "You think it fair to stab an injured Federation scientist? Come to Rrueo and face a Ferasan warrior!"
But they do not attack.
I stand there, astride Haught's body, fangs bared, claws extended, yowling my challenge into the still night.
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