A Fire Upon the Deep

… Where am I?… May I be part of you… please? Its keening carried memories, jumbled and mostly inaccessible, of blood and fighting, of military training before that. Somehow, the creature was as frightened of those early memories as of anything. It lay its muzzle — caked with dried blood — on the ground and belly crawled toward them. The other three almost ran; random coupling was something that scared all of them. They backed and backed, out onto the clear meadow. The other followed, but slowly, still crawling. Kwk licked her lips and walked back towards the stranger. She extended her neck and sniffed along the other's throat. Wic and Rac approached from the sides.

For an instant there was a partial join. Sweaty, bloody, wounded — a melding made in hell. The thought seemed to come from nowhere, glowed in the four for a moment of cynical humor. Then the unity was lost, and they were just three animals licking the face of a fourth.

Peregrine looked around the meadow with new eyes. He had been disintegrate for just a few minutes: The wounded from the Tenth Attack Infantry were just as before. Flenser's Servants were still busy with the alien cargo. Jaqueramaphan was slowly backing away, his expression a compound of wonder and horror. Peregrine lowered a head and hissed at him, "I won't betray you, Scriber."

The spy froze. "That you, Peregrine?"

"More or less." Peregrine still, but Wickwrackrum no more.

"H-how can you do it? Y-you just lost…"

"I'm a pilgrim, remember? We live with this sort of thing all our lives." There was sarcasm in his voice; this was more or less the cliche Jaqueramaphan had been spouting earlier. But there was some truth to it. Already Peregrine Wickwrack…scar felt like a person. Maybe this new combination had a chance.

"Uk. Well, yes… What should we do now?" The spy looked nervously in all directions, but his eyes on Peregrine were the most worried of all.

Now it was Wickwrackscar's turn to be puzzled. What was he doing here? Killing the strange enemy… No. That's what the Attack Infantry was doing. He would have nothing to do with that, no matter what the scarred one's memories. He and Scriber had come here to… to rescue the alien, as much of it as possible. Peregrine grabbed hold of the memory and held it uncritically; it was something real, from the past identity he must preserve. He glanced towards where he had last seen the alien member. The whitejackets and his travois were no longer visible, but he'd been heading along an obvious path.

"We can still get ourselves the live one," he said to Jaqueramaphan.

Scriber stamped and sidled. He was not quite the enthusiast of before. "After you, my friend."

Wickwrackscar straightened his combat jackets and brushed some of the dried blood off. Then he strutted off across the meadow, passing just a hundred yards from the Flenser's Servants around the enemy — around the flying house. He flipped them a sharp salute, which was ignored. Jaqueramaphan followed, carrying two crossbows. The other was doing his best to imitate Peregrine's strut, but he really didn't have the right stuff.

Then they were past the military crest of the hill and descending into shadows. The sounds of the wounded were muted. Wickwrackscar broke into double time, loping from switchback to switchback as he descended the rough path. From here he could see the harbor; the boats were still at the piers, and there wasn't much activity. Behind him, Scriber was talking nervous nonsense. Peregrine just ran faster, his confidence fueled by general newby confusion. His new member, the scarred one, had been the muscle behind an infantry officer. That pack had known the layout of the harbors and the castle, and all the passwords of the day.

Two more switchbacks and they overran the Flenser Servant and his travois. "Hallo!" shouted Peregrine. "We bring new instructions from Lord Steel." A chill went down his spines at the name, remembering Steel for the first time. The Servant dropped the travois and turned to face them. Wickwrackscar didn't know his name, but he remembered the guy: fairly high-ranking, an arrogant get-of-bitches. It was a surprise to see him pulling the travois himself.

Peregrine stopped only twenty yards from the whitejackets. Jaqueramaphan was looking down from the switchback above; his bows were out of sight. The Servant looked nervously at Peregrine and up at Scriber.

"What do you two want?"

Did he suspect them already? No matter. Wickwrackscar braced himself for a killing charge… and suddenly he was seeing in fours, his mind blurred with newby dizziness. Now that he needed to kill, the scarred one's horror of the act undid him. Damn! Wickwrackscar cast wildly about for something to say. And now that murder was out of his mind, his new memories came easily: "Lord Steel's will, that the creature be brought with us to the harbor. You, ah, you are to return to the invader's flying thing."