Walk a Lonesome Road Read online

  Whatever the drama, chores still need to be done, meals have to be prepared, and especially at this time of year, skipping them isn’t an option. Stew’s his staple in the winter, but all the meat he has in store is smoked, and the smell’s something Ren can’t tolerate. The answer is to make a separate batch of soup from his frozen stock and stored vegetables, but if Ren’s going to be here for any length of time, Dek will need to go hunting again.

  “Sorry for the trouble,” Ren says quietly as Dek rummages around in the cooler. Dek clenches his jaw and turns around. Ren stumbles back when he sees the expression on his face. “I didn’t mean....”

  “How long before this morning sickness stops?”

  “I don’t know,” Ren says carefully, clearly try not to set him off. “In women, it can last the whole pregnancy. Mostly it’s done by the fourth or fifth month. I have no idea since I’m not normal.”

  “So...another month, maybe?”

  “Y-yes. Dek, I can’t promise....”

  “Shut up,” and Ren’s mouth snaps closed. “Your arm? Another month do it?”

  “Pretty much, though I’ll have to be careful....”

  “Right.” Dek slams the container of stock down on the table. “In a month, the thaw starts. It’ll take about four weeks to get across the border, taking it careful. That leaves how much time before you can’t travel?”

  “I...a month, four weeks....” Ren rapidly does the calculation. “It’ll be about five months since implantation by then. Two months? I don’t know for sure,” he says, his eyes wide. “Does this mean you’re going to let me have an animal?”

  “No,” and Ren slumps, disappointed. “It means I’m going to haul your arse to Jurgizme Port myself. Put you on a boat to the Weadenal, and hope like fuck you can make contact with this Wechel guy.”

  Ren straightens up, his mouth open. “You...you’ll really do that?”

  “Said it, didn’t I? But if you’re not travel fit in a month, then I’m calling the defs. You won’t be my problem after that.”

  “I’ll be fit or I’ll use your gun,” Ren declares.

  “Well if you do, make sure you do it out of my territory, dead bodies stink like a son of a bitch.”

  Ren’s startled into a laugh. “Yes, they do. Dek...I don’t know what to say.”

  “That’s a first. Now shut up, and keep out of my way.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And can that, it pisses me off.”

  “All right.” But that doesn’t stop Ren beaming at him. Dek doesn’t smile back. Ren doesn’t realise just what’s ahead of him. If he did, he’d be a lot more worried than he is about this trip.

  Walk A Lonesome Road: 6

  The real reason Dek wants to delay a month isn’t Ren’s nausea or his arm—it’s to give him time to regain some condition, and to prepare for the longest trip Dek’s undertaken since he moved north. Dek might not be in the army anymore, but he plans everything like a military expedition, and like any expedition, it’ll move on its stomach. The complication is that Ren’s stomach is occupied, and even though Ren has no interest in the foetus itself, to keep him alive, they have to keep it alive. The only way Dek can handle this at all is to treat it like any other problem, and not think too hard about the person or what’s brought them to this pass. He learned long ago that day by day was the only way he’ll get through what’s left of his life.

  He hadn’t counted on Ren to actually be of any help, but he’d forgotten he was dealing with ex-military, and a doctor too. Ren might not be of much physical assistance, but his brain’s undamaged, even if in his own way, he’s as fucked up as Dek and maybe more. In some ways, it’s surprising he’s not more fucked up, and Dek suspects once the immediate crisis of this pregnancy and his escape is over, Ren will hit the wall harder and higher than Dek’s ever seen anyone. He’s hoping Ren will be out of his hair long before then.

  The pregnancy complicates everything, from clothing to food to sleeping arrangements on the trail. At least Ren’s experience as a doctor and of his ex-wife’s pregnancy, gives him plenty of warning what to expect. Ren being Ren, he can’t help sharing the knowledge, even if Dek would really rather be spared some of the details. “Basically you have to imagine a three parkig lump sitting in your guts under your ribs,” he tells him as Dek’s cutting up leather for his new boots.

  “Sounds like fun,” Dek says, thinking nothing of the sort.

  “Not much, if Geya was anything to go by. At least I don’t have to worry about vaginal discharge.”

  Dek lifts his head and glares. “Do you mind?”

  “You’ve seen vaginas, Dek. And your sister-in-law’s a doctor.”

  “Some things you don’t talk about,” Dek mutters, and Ren has the audacity to smirk. His mood’s been scarily good since Dek made his decision, though he still calls out and cries in the night, and he has a tendency to disappear into his room and emerge an hour or so later with red eyes and a tight mouth. Dek never talks about it. That side of it isn’t his problem.

  The nausea doesn’t seem to be improving much, but Ren claims he’s more comfortable anyway since he can choose when and what he eats, and in the quantities that suits him. Apparently his captors were inclined to force-feeding, and he spent the first six weeks after each implantation in restraints so he wouldn’t try to harm himself or the foetus. If Dek had known that, he would never have put that chain on Ren’s leg. Ren doesn’t appear to be holding a grudge over it, or the beating, though Dek would never have forgiven either if the situations were reversed. Despite his non-stop talking, and his tendency to overshare on the medical details, Ren’s surprisingly less annoying than Dek was expecting, and his frank attitude to Dek’s PTSD actually helps quite a lot.

  They talk about it a bit—well, Ren talks, Dek gets on with stuff, since there’s so much to do. “You know, treatment’s moved on since you were discharged,” Ren tells him one evening as Dek’s measuring him up for the trousers he’ll need as the foetus grows. Neither of them ever refer to it as a ‘baby’. Dek doesn’t comment—doesn’t need to. Ren can carry out these conversations in an empty room if he needs to. “There’s some new drugs, some very effective ones, and we’ve had some successes using telepathic therapists too. If you can take the edge off the worst memories, the mind can do the rest of the healing.”

  Dek’s not letting some fucking telepath mess with his head, but he doesn’t say this. Ren can sense his scepticism though. “I wouldn’t recommend what they were trying up in the compound. Jiffir was using extreme pain and distress as a way of trying to force the injured mind past the trauma—needless to say, he drove a lot of his subjects insane. I suppose that’s one way of overcoming PTSD—make the person so crazy they can’t distinguish the pain of that from other pain.”

  “He sounds pretty crazy himself,” Dek says.

  “Well, now he’s fucking dead,” Ren spits out, “and I for one don’t mourn him. I never believed in killing or the death penalty, but I’ve changed my mind about people like him.”

  “People say traitors should be hung too,” Dek points out, and gets a glare for his impudence.

  “I’m not a traitor. You done?” he snaps, and when Dek nods, Ren stalks off. Dek doesn’t really think he’s a traitor but Ren’s a bit on the sensitive side about it. Dek wonders if his sister’s still alive—in some ways, it’d be merciful to hope she isn’t. Dek doesn’t agree with what they were doing, but they don’t sound like bad people, just misguided. Locking them up just makes martyrs out of them.

  Dek concentrates on cutting the heavy cloth and ignores Ren’s tantrum. Two hours later, as Dek’s clearing up and thinking about going to bed, Ren comes into his workroom. “Do you think I’m guilty?” he asks without preamble.

  “Only got your word for it,” Dek says, though the honest answer is no, he doesn’t. Something makes him want to poke Ren, though he doesn’t know why, since it just makes the bugger talk more.

  “Do you think even if I was, I deserved wha
t happened to me?”

  His eyes are huge in the bare overhead work light, his mouth tight and sad, and Dek hasn’t got the heart to provoke him more. “No, I don’t,” he says. “Don’t think you deserved prison at all. Maybe a fine, a note on your professional record.” If the facts are are as Ren’s told him, then the harsh prison sentence is the best proof that this was all an elaborate plot to get hold of him. Janil told him of other doctors who did what Ren did and they barely got a slap on the wrist. Either Ren’s lying, or he’s a victim of a terrible conspiracy. Dek doesn’t know what to believe, but someone stuck that thing in Ren’s belly, and there has to be an explanation for that.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Ren says, raising his hand like he wants to throw a punch or something. “I wish someone believed me. Just once before I die, I’d like someone to know the truth.”

  “You know, that’s all that counts,” Dek says. “Try these on,” he says, chucking the new trousers over at Ren. “And quit dragging that crap up. Doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to anyone anymore.”

  “Does to me,” Ren says, even as he starts to undo his belt. “It matters to me, Dek.”

  Dek gives him a hard look. “I can’t fix this for you, Ren. Nothing I say will change what happened to you or why. You’ve got to make your peace with it yourself.”

  “Work for you, that attitude?” Ren snipes as he drags the new trousers on.

  Dek refuses to bite. “It’s all I’ve got to work with. How do they feel?”

  “Good.” He sticks his leg out, feels the fit, examines the drawstring waist that will give him room to expand. Then he looks up with a forced smile. “What the well-dressed pregnant man is wearing this season.”

  “They had any sense, they all would,” Dek deadpans.

  “I still can’t get over the fact you make all your own clothes. I can’t sew worth a damn.”

  “It’s not hard.”

  “Teach me how?” Ren asks, his previous anger forgotten.

  “Maybe,” Dek says cautiously and Ren smiles. Trousers, boots. These are safe topics. They need to stick to stuff that doesn’t hurt them or they’ll both be so crazy by the end of it, there’ll be nothing left to save.

  Walk A Lonesome Road: 7

  The month goes surprisingly fast. Ren complains that every time he opens his mouth, Dek tries to shove food into it, which is only a slight exaggeration. Ren’s worryingly out of shape, but that’s hardly surprising since he’s been locked up or restrained for four years. Much as Dek needs him to build up some fitness and get used to the cold, he needs to stack on some weight more, so Dek’s keeping him in the warm house as much as possible, and shovelling the high-energy food in as best he can, given Ren’s constant nausea. Dek rediscovers his skills as a baker, and is sneaking a lot of fat and sucrose into Ren’s diet in the guise of cakes and pies. He can only hope out on the trail that Ren’s morning sickness (or, as Ren’s starting to refer to it, ‘this fucking pukestorm’) will have eased, because he won’t be doing a hell of a lot of fancy baking over a campfire.

  Ren’s determined to get a little fitter, and to learn the skills he’ll need while they’re travelling. Dek’s as keen that he should learn, fully aware that if something were to happen to him, Ren would be desperately vulnerable, and while he’s eager to get the bastard off his hands and to safety, he also wants to make sure the job’s done right. If this plan’s botched, Ren would be better off dead—or at least in the hands of the local defs, which Dek’s still convinced might be the better option. Ren won’t even discuss it, and Dek knows better than to force the issue. If Ren’s not travel fit at the end of the month, then Dek will take matters into his own hands. If he is, then Dek will keep his promise.

  So Ren starts to work with the urtibes, and reveals an unsuspected deft manner with them. Watching him working confidently and calmly with the sometimes skittish Wuzi, and seeing how Jesti will cross the barn just to have Ren tickle her under the chin, Dek wonders what Ren had been like as a father. The son’s never mentioned, but Dek understands that strategy perfectly well. Some pain’s too deep to drag out into the light. Ren’s son will think he’s dead, and maybe that’s how Ren copes—pretending his boy is dead too. Dek wonders if losing a child hurts more than losing a wife, and decides he’s glad he’ll never have to know.

  The one thing Ren’s not too happy about is Dek’s insistence on weapon practice—not just with a knife, but a gun as well. “You did this already in the army,” Dek says, frustrated by Ren’s reluctance.

  “Yes, and I hated it. I’ve never killed anyone.”

  “Bunch of people died so you could get free,” Dek points out, a little meanly. “Even if you didn’t pull the trigger.”

  Ren stiffens, his eyes narrow with annoyance. “Those weren’t people,” he spits. “No human does that sort of thing to someone else.”

  “More often than you’d think,” Dek says, remembering the jungles in Denebwei and what they’d discovered in some of the rebel camps. The remains of their prisoners weren’t even recognisable as people any more. “Besides, it’s not just humans you’ll be facing. We’ll be travelling through tjuwai country.”

  “I don’t really want to shoot them either,” Ren says glumly. “They’re endangered.”

  “You will be too if you hesitate when one comes charging at you. I can’t guarantee to be there to protect you.”

  “I don’t need your protection,” Ren snaps. “I need your help, that’s all.”

  “And part of that’s protection. No point in pretending you’re much more than deadweight on this. You were anything else, you’d be doing it on your own.”

  Ren picks up Dek’s spare handgun, a hard looking curl to his lips. “The shooty end goes this way, right?”

  Ren turns out to be a crack shot with pistol and rifle. He just keeps coming up with ways to surprise Dek, and not all of them unpleasant. He’s not squeamish about using the knife to kill prey either, not like you’d expect a city boy to be. But he says he doesn’t want to use it on soldiers, and Dek agrees. If they get caught, Dek will just give Ren up, because he’s not going to turn that much of a traitor and kill their own people to save one man’s life.

  But soldiers aren’t the only danger in the forests and mountains here. Smugglers, refugees, poachers and criminals on the run all cross the border illegally around these parts, and the border patrols are always undermanned. They catch about one in a thousand coming across the border, and mostly they have to rely on the inhospitable terrain cutting down the flow to something like manageable proportions. At this time of year, in this area, there won’t be anyone patrolling except by the occasional flyer, which is why travelling now makes sense, though it’s definitely the harshest season to attempt it. They’ll have to climb some high mountain passes, and Dek’s not sure Ren’s up to it. “It’s not me, it’s the parasite,” Ren says, when Dek mentions it. “I can cope with the lower oxygen levels, and so should it, providing we’re not going above four pardecs or going to be up high for too long. Will we?”

  “Not planning on it.” But Dek’s still worried. Everything about this is more risky than he’s happy with.

  Ren might be useful in other ways too. He knows quite a lot about medicinal plants, at least theoretically, since folk and ancient remedies for common ailments were the subject of his higher degree thesis. Dek knows the plants from the field, and when he’s not sewing or cobbling or repairing in the evenings, he and Ren pour over his books, while Dek explains how things will actually work when they’re on the trail, comparing ideas and uses for the provender they can expect to find. Ren’s done some trapping, though this part of the world is completely new to him, and knows the basics of outdoor survival. The one thing that worries him is the riding, because he hasn’t ridden urtibes hardly at all, and he doesn’t know how his changing shape will affect that. Dek worries too—this isn’t a good place to learn riding skills. But they have no choice—all their other options will bring Ren to official attention
. So Ren gets used to the saddles and the gear and the feel of the animals by riding in tight circles inside the barn, and the rest, he’ll have to pick up as he goes along.

  As they work and prepare, Ren talks, of course, like he’s making up for four years of missed conversation. He’s curious about Dek’s background—hardly surprising, since he’s curious about everything. Dek doesn’t want to discuss it, but some of it’s relevant so he reluctantly gives a little information when Ren wants to know why he’s so familiar with the border territory and the north. “Grew up in Riekwenil, about three hundred pardecs south of here,” he says. “Then I was stationed on the border for two years, doing the patrol. Spent three years in Febkeinzian too. We moved all over with the army.”

  “Your wife was military too?”

  Dek clenches his jaw and glares a request for Ren to shut up, which only works half the time. Now Ren’s looking at him with an open, harmless expression that gets under Dek’s guard a lot more often than he’d like, and he finds himself speaking almost without meaning to. “When I met her, she was training as an engineer. She left the army when we married so she could move posts with me. Became a civilian contractor.”

  “How did she die?”

  Dek gets up and goes to the sink to do some unnecessary clearing up, hoping Ren will take the hint. But two weeks in comfort and safety have made Ren bold, so he actually comes up behind Dek—though at a safe distance, he’s not that bold. “Dek? You know my history. Why can’t I know yours?”