Shadows, стр. 41
“Tanavuna!” she cried, reaching out to him.
Tanavuna unslung his rifle and took aim, but that gave Subitorni time to draw a pistol and fire twice. The first shot missed, but the second ripped through the outside of Tanavuna’s left arm.
Pain shot into his shoulder and down to his hand. Blood soaked his robe. He fell backward, and the M14 skewed sideways. He dared not shoot for fear of hitting his wife. Subitorni took his time to aim his third shot, but as he squeezed the trigger, Kesteluni kicked him in the jaw. Now off balance, he toppled backward and fired; the bullet ricocheted off the tunnel ceiling.
Tanavuna ignored the pain in his arm and, with his eyesight still impaired, pushed himself up and staggered to where his wife lay. Subitorni had vanished. Tanavuna knelt beside her body and, closing his eyes, hugged her. He whispered how much he loved her, how sorry he was that he hadn’t been home to keep her safe, and how happy he was to find her again. He wept and felt hot tears on his cheek. Rocking back and forth, he kissed her.
But she didn’t kiss him back. His vision cleared, and he saw her unblinking gaze fixed on something beyond the sight of living men. The liquid on his cheek wasn’t his tears. It came from a bullet hole in her forehead, just below the part in her thick black hair. Subitorni’s last shot at Tanavuna had been a wild miss…but still, it had struck home.
At the base of the slope, the faint light from the skylight shimmered on dark water. Tanavuna knew it had to be from the river, east of Imsurmik. Rage gave way to despair as some part of his grief-clouded mind realized that Subitorni had escaped…for now. Then the clouds of misery gathered into a black storm and drowned his ability to think at all.
Hours later, Riidono found Tanavuna still holding his dead wife, emotionally spent. He was halfway back to the surface when his anger began to build again. When he finally met with Captain Cutter in the day’s fading light, he knew what he wanted to say.
“Permission to go after the man who murdered my wife, sir.”
“Not alone, Lieutenant.”
“Sir, I—”
“We’re all going.”
* * *
Cutter’s Cutters performed their mission so well that, with Colonel Murphy’s grudging permission, Major Moorefield issued supplies for them to go after the escaped J’Stull commander. The escape tunnel emptied into the river east of Imsurmik, and they searched fifteen miles downriver with no trace of Subitorni. The frustration that he had escaped burned not only in Tanavuna’s heart, but in his men’s as well. When the search was called off, several openly wept. When they no longer had any tears left to shed, they sat together as each man planned how they would exact their personal revenge on Subitorni, if he was alive and caught someday.
In keeping with her beliefs, Kesteluni was buried in a fertile place near the river without a coffin. Healers from other villages came to pay their respects, putting medicinal plants on her grave so that her body might nourish them. Even Paakunami, the old woman held captive by the F’ahdn for more than thirty years, attended the ceremony. At the suggestion of Cutter’s surviving soldiers, and the families of the nine men lost in the fighting, their dead were buried nearby. With the river receding under the increasing heat, the oldest locals explained that the Sear would likely mummify the bodies until the rains returned, at which point their remains would also feed the plants. Cutter found it comforting.
* * *
At nightfall after Kesteluni’s burial, Cutter found Tanavuna standing on the bluff overlooking the river. Leaning forward against a waist-high boulder, the indig officer had a panoramic view of the valley below. In the middle of the river stood a line of rocks that, during rainy periods, became white-water rapids. Now only sluggish streams flowed around them.
Tanavuna hadn’t reacted to Cutter’s approach, so the Lost Soldier stood back and didn’t say anything for a while. Tanavuna’s eyes roamed the skies in search of something he’d never find, as Cutter knew all too well. He had seen and done the same thing, for the same reasons, a long, long time ago, on a planet far, far away.
“You won’t find it out there,” he said finally, coming to stand beside Tanavuna. There was no reason to further define “it;” they both knew what he meant. “You won’t find it anywhere, because it doesn’t exist. Every man I’ve ever known who survived combat wanted to know the reason for the death and destruction they’d lived through. On my world, we called it Survivor’s Guilt. The answer to why you and I lived—and why Kesteluni, Kuun, Ammaii, and all the rest died—is that there is no answer. At least, not one I can understand.”
“I don’t know what to do next, Captain.”
“Call me TD when we’re alone.”
“What does this TD mean?”
Cutter smiled. “Some would say it’s from a sport my people play. Or played, maybe. I can’t say if they still do or not. But that’s not actually where it comes from. My full name is Tyree Denning Cutter, so T and D are the initials of my first and middle names in my native language.”
“Why do you need three names?”
“I don’t know, it’s just what my people did.”
“What should I do now, TD? Without Kesteluni, my life has no meaning.”
“Life always has meaning, my friend. Nobody ever knows how to deal with death, particularly senseless death. But you don’t have the time