swamp-devils ’tall.”
“Four, then,” King said. “Ranjit Singh I’ll leave here to run the camp; he’ll complain, but someone has to do it. You, of course, and me, and two of the garrison soldiers with their rifles just in case-”
“And me!” Sonjuh said, rising. Robre began to say something; King cut him off with a negligent gesture. The redhead went on: “I won’t do anything hog-wild, I swear it by God. But you’ve seen I can take care of myself ’n’ carry my load. ’N’ if you do run into swamp-devils…this is what I came for!”
King thought for a long moment, tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair. “All right, then, true enough. I don’t expect we’ll be gone more than four or five days-I can’t spend much more time than that anyway, my furlough is long but not indefinite. And you will not go haring off on your own. Understood?”
“I swear it, Empire-Jefe,” she said.
Robre sighed. “You’re the man payin’ for this,” he said unwillingly. “’N’ she’s right, Coyote nip her, she is as good a hunter as anyone on this trail but you ’n’ me.”
“Excellent,” King said. “Well, time to-”
“I’m for a walk,” Sonjuh said. She had relaxed from her cat-tense quiver, and smiled as she looked at him. “Care to walk along with me for a spell, Empire-Jefe?”
King smiled back; Robre gave a disapproving grunt and stalked away. Sonjuh tossed her head. “It’s our law, an unwed girl can walk out with a man if she pleases,” she said. “’N’ if her Pa ’n’ brothers don’t object.”
“What if her pa and brothers do object?” King asked, when they’d strolled far enough to be out of easy sight and hearing of the campfires.
Sonjuh looked up at him out of the corners of her eyes. “Why, they warn him off,” she said slyly. “Then beat ’n’ stomp him if he doesn’t listen.”
Good thing you’re an orphan, King thought but carefully did not say aloud, as he slid an arm around her supple waist. The girl leaned toward him, her head on his shoulder, smelling pleasantly of wood smoke and feminine flesh.
Some time later, Sonjuh gave a moan and pushed herself up on her elbows, looking down to where he kneeled between her legs, a dazed expression on her face.
“Jeroo!” she panted. “Corn Lady be my witness, I didn’t think there was so many ways of sporting!”
King grinned at her. “Benefits of a civilized education,” he said.
He’d been given an illustrated copy of the Kama Sutra at twelve, and had never had much trouble finding someone to practice with; when you were young, handsome, well spoken, athletic, rich, and the eldest son of a zamindar, you didn’t. From Sonjuh’s surprise and artless enthusiasm, he gathered that the native men here went at things like a bull elephant in musth.
“But I’ve been having more fun than you,” she said, and laughed. “And looks like you’re ready for some.”
His grin went wider, and he put a hand under each of her thighs, lifting them up and back.
She chuckled lazily: “Remember what I said about walkin’ out?” He nodded, reaching for the pocket of his uniform jacket; the girl had tossed it when she ripped it off his back. “Well,” she went on, “if the man gets her with child, then her Pa ’n’ brothers-’n’ the rest of the clan, too-see to it he takes her to wife. Just so you’d know, Empire-Jefe.”
“Behold another wonder of civilization,” he said, busy with fingers and teeth on one of the foil packets; being an optimist and no more modest than most young men, he’d slipped half a dozen into his pocket earlier that evening. “Vulcanized rubber.”
Sonjuh stared for a moment, then burst into a peal of laughter. “Looks like it’s wearin’ a rain-cloak!”
King growled and seized a shin under each arm V: THE PEOPLE OF THE BLACK GOD
Hunter Robre spread his hands. “I can’t make the cats come where they don’t have a mind to,” he said reasonably, then slapped at a late-season mosquito. Dawn had brought the last of them out, to feed before full sunlight.
The blind where they’d been waiting all night was woven of swamp-reeds, on a hillock of drier ground. The wild-cow yearling they’d staked out was beginning to smell pretty high, and all their night had gotten them was the sight of a couple of cougars sniffing around, and two red wolves who’d had to be shooed off. Forest stood at their back beyond the swamp, tupelo and live oak and cypress knotted into an impenetrable wall by brush and vines, the trees towering a hundred feet and more overhead. Even on a cool autumn morning the smell was heavy and rank, somehow less cleanly than the forests where he spent most of his time. Wisps of mist drifted over the surface of the Black River where it rolled sluggish before them; the other bank was higher than this, and thick with giant pine higher than ship’s masts.
“No, you can’t,” Eric King said, infuriatingly reasonable. He sighed. “I don’t expect that tigers of any sort are too numerous here, although it’s perfect country for them.”
“They aren’t common,” Robre agreed. “Weren’t never seen until my pa’s time, when he was my age.” Then he puzzled at the way the Imperial had said it. “Why shouldn’t there be more tigers here, if it’s such good tiger- country? And how would you know?”
King pulled a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket-that cloth coat had a hunting shirt beat all hollow, and Robre had decided to have a seamstress run him up one-and offered one to his guide. Robre accepted; they were tastier than a pipe, and a lot less messy than a chaw. For a moment they puffed in silence, blowing plumes of smoke at lingering mosquitoes: it didn’t matter now if the scent warned off game.
“There weren’t any tigers here before the Fall-before the time when Olsaytn stole the Sun, you’d say.”
Robre’s brows went up. Odd, he thought. When he thought of the Before Time, it was simply as very long ago, the time of the songs and the heroes; certainly before his grandsire’s grandsire’s time. The Imperial seemed to think of it more as a set date, as if it were something that had happened in his own lifetime. Odd way to think. Mebbe it’s all that writing they do.
“Why not?” Robre said. “Plenty of beasts a tiger can tackle that a cougar or wolf can’t. What were those fancy words you used last night… ecological niche?”
King shrugged. “I don’t know. There just weren’t, or so our books say. Why are there elephants in India, and not here? Nobody knows.”
Robre grunted noncommittally; he wasn’t quite sure if he believed in elephants yet.
King went on: “No lions either. When the fall came, they-the ancestors of the ones you’ve got now-probably escaped from circuses, or zoos.”
They thrashed out the meaning of those words. Robre rubbed his chin, feeling stubble gone almost silky and reminding himself to shave soon. “Wouldn’t folks have eaten them?” he said.
“They probably did eat the elephants in the menageries.” King grinned. “But a few predators would have been turned loose before people realized how bad things were going to get. Then, in the chaos, when every man’s hand was against every other’s…well, hungry tigers used to being around people, they’d be good at picking off stragglers, wouldn’t they? And most of the dying happened fast; by the third or fourth year, people were scarce again in these lands, very scarce. Other things-game and feral livestock that survived in out-of-the-way corners, or country farther south-bred back faster than humans, spreading over the empty lands as the vegetation recovered, and so gave the big cats plenty to hunt. They breed quickly themselves, so even a few pairs could produce a lot of offspring. Eventually they’ll fill all the land humans haven’t taken over again, but that will need another century or two.”
Robre nodded. It made sense in a twisty sort of way, like most of what King said when he wasn’t doing an obvious leg-pull. It still made his head itch on the inside…
“And because they’re descended from so few, they’ll have a lot of mutants…freaks, that is, due to inbreeding. Like the black-with-yellow-stripes you shot…What’s that, by the way?” King said casually, pointing with the hand that held the cigarette.
“What’s what?”
Robre turned and looked upstream, across the Black River. Then his eyes grew very wide, and he whipped the cigarette out of his mouth, crushed it out, did the same with King’s. The Imperial froze as Robre laid a hand across his mouth, and they crouched watching through the slits in their blind.
The light was growing now, and the mist on the river to the north was lifting. What had showed as mere hints of shape turned hard and definite. A canoe, a big cypress log hollowed out and pointed at both ends, big
