The gray monster had burst without warning from a thick stand of reeds and charged the middle of the line of hikers, tossing Stefanko into the air and then savaging him. It had switched its attack to Peo when the chief drew his machette and tried to stop the animal’s awful gobbling. Fitharn had burst into illusory flame, driving the boar off the natural causeway into the swamp shallows. Felice and Richard followed the fireball with drawn bows, leaving the others to help the wounded. But there was no helping Stefanko.
Claude held the shuddering Martha in his arms, then pulled out the tail of his bush shirt and used it to wipe her streaming eyes. He led her to the mossy hollow where Madame was working on Burke and made her sit down. The knees of the engineer’s buckskin trousers were stained with dark blood and muck, but there were also bright scarlet patches down around both ankles.
“You’d better have a look at her, Madame,” Claude said. “I’ll take care of Steffi.”
He got a Mylar blanket from his own pack and went to the body, fighting to control his own rage and revulsion. He had known Stefanko only four days; but the ready competence of the man and the warmth of his personality had made him a congenial trail-mate on the trek from High Vrazel to the Rhine bottomland. Now Claude could only do his best to smooth the contorted face back into its accustomed smooth lineaments. No need to look so surprised any more, Steffi boy. Just relax and rest. Rest in peace.
A horde of flies had descended upon the ripped mass of intestines and moved only with sluggish reluctance as Claude rolled Stefanko’s body onto the metallic sheet. Using the heat-beam of his powerpack, the old man welded the edges of the Mylar into a bag. The job was nearly finished when Fitharn, Richard, and Felice came squelching back out of the jungle.
Felice held up a ridged yellowish object like an ivory marlin-spike. “We got the fuckard for what good it does.”
Richard shook his head in awe. “A pig the size of a goddam ox! Musta weighed eight hundred kilos. Took five arrows to finish it off after Pegleg trapped it in a thicket. I still can’t figure how anything that big could have snuck up on us unawares.”
“They’re intelligent devils,” Fitharn growled. “It must have followed us downwind. If I’d had my wits about me I’d have sensed it. But I was thinking about how we’d have to hurry to cross the river before the morning mist lifted.”
“Well, we’re stuck here now that it’s broad daylight,” Felice said. She held up the trophy horn. “This fellow saw to that.”
“Now what?” Richard wanted to know.
Felice had undipped the arrows from the holder on her compound bow and she now knelt to dip the stained glassy heads in the water beside the trail. “We’ll have to hide out on this side until sundown and then cross. The moon’s nearly full tonight. We could probably get over the narrow strip of east-bank lowland in a couple of hours and then bivouac among the rocks at the foot of the Black Forest scarp for the rest of the night.”
The Firvulag gave an exclamation. “You’re not thinking of going on?”
She glared at him. “You’re not thinking of turning back?”
Claude said, “Steffi’s dead. Peo’s in a bad way. He’s going to have to be taken back to Amerie by one of us, or he’ll lose his leg, or worse.”
“That still leaves five of us,” Felice said. She frowned, tapping the boar horn against her buckskin-clad thigh. “Pegleg could go back with the Chief. He could get help from his people along the way. And before you leave,” she said to the little man, “tell us how to get to the stronghold of this guy Sugoll.”
“It won’t be easy.” The Firvulag wagged his head. “The Black Forest is a lot more rugged than the Vosges. Sugoll’s place is up on the northeastern slope of the Feldberg, where the Paradise River comes off the snowfields. Bad country.”
“The Tanu won’t be looking for us on the other side of the Rhine,” she said. “Once we’re across, we probably won’t have to worry about any more gray-torc patrols.”
“There are still Howlers,” Fitharn said. “And at night, the Hunt. Airborne, if Velteyn leads it. If the Hunt spots you in the open, you’re finished.”
“Can’t we travel mostly by day?” Richard suggested. “Madame Guderian’s metafunctions can warn us of hostile Firvulag.”
The old woman had come up to the group, an expression of deep concern upon her face. “I am not so worried about les Criards as about Sugoll himself. Without his help, we may never locate the Danube in time. But if Fitharn does not accompany us, Sugoll may feel that he can ignore the King’s directive with impunity. And there is another matter for grave concern… Martha. She has begun to hemorrhage from the shock. Among the Tanu, she was forced to give birth to four children in quick succession and her female organs…”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Felice impatiently. “If she rests, she’ll pull out of it. And we’ll take our chance with Sugoll.”
“Martha is greatly weakened,” the old woman persisted. “She will become worse before she is better. This has happened before. It would be best if she returns with Peo and Fitharn.”
Richard looked dubious. “But now that Stefanko’s gone, she’s the only technician we’ve got. Without her help, God knows how long it might take me to trace the circuits on that exotic aircraft. And if the zapper needs work, I wouldn’t have a prayer of fixing it.”
“The expedition could be postponed,” Fitharn said.
“That would mean waiting a whole year!” Felice blazed. “I won’t do it! I’ll go get the damn Spear all by myself!”
Back at the cypress, Martha cried out to them, “We can’t postpone the search, Madame. Anything could happen in a year. I’ll be all right in a day or two. If I get a little help, I know I can make it.”
“We could rig a litter from one of the cots,” Claude suggested.
Felice brightened. “And in the rough spots, I could carry her on my back. She’s right about anything being likely to happen if we delay.” Her eyes strayed to the Firvulag, who looked back at her with bland objectivity. “Others could find the Ship’s Grave ahead of us.”
“It would be wisest to turn back,” Fitharn said. “However, the decision will have to be that of Madame Guderian.”
“Dieu me secourait,” the old woman murmured. “One of us has already given his life.” She took a few slow steps toward the Mylar-wrapped bundle lying on the trail “If we could ask him his opinion, we know very well what he would say.”
She turned back to them, lifting her chin with the familiar gesture. “Alors… Fitharn, you will turn back with Peo. The rest of us will go on.”
They concealed themselves for the rest of the day in a dense taxodium grove hard by the western bank of the Rhine. The gnarled, low-growing branches made comfortable perches. Curtained by festoons of lichens and flowering epiphytes, they could safely observe the river traffic and at the same time be secure from the crocodiles, hoe-tuskers, and other potentially dangerous wildlife that infested the bottomland.
It became very hot as the sun climbed. Food was no problem, for there were plenty of turtles whose meat could be roasted with the power-beams, as well as palms with edible hearts and an abundance of honey-sweet grapes the size of golf balls that drove Richard into raptures of oenological speculation. But as morning dragged into afternoon, boredom and reaction from the dawn violence made the younger members of the party drowsy. Richard, Felice, and Martha striped off most of their clothing, tied themselves to upper limbs of the big tree, and slept, leaving Claude and Madame on branches below keeping watch over the broad river. Only a few supply barges from upstream plantations drifted past their hiding place. Finiah itself lay about twenty kilometers to the north on the opposite bank, where the short Paradise River tributary tumbled out of a deep gorge that almost bisected the Black Forest massif.