enough for ten men to kneel and drive their paddles into the mirror-calm surface of the morning river. Beside him King leveled his binoculars and swore, swore very softly in a language Robre didn’t understand. He did understand the sentiment, especially since it was the first time the Imperial had seen the swamp-devils. Robre’s own eyes went wide as a second canoe followed the first, then a third…more and more, until a full ten were in view, the foremost nearly level with them.
He put out a hand, and after a moment King passed him the binoculars. He’d learned to use them well- another thing he’d save to buy from Banerjii, if he could-and his thumb brought the image sharp and clear.
It is swamp-devils, he thought helplessly. But it can’t be. Not that many together!
There was no mistaking them, though. The sloping foreheads and absent chins, faces hideously scarred that grew only sparse bristly beards, huge broad noses, narrow little eyes beetling under heavy brows. The build was unmistakable, too, heavy shoulders and long thick arms, broad feet.
“I thought they were men,” King whispered, shaken.
“They were, or leastways their fore-folks were, when we drove ’em into the east.”
Swamp-devils right enough, but only a few carried the clubs of ashwood with rocks lashed into a split end that were the commonest tool-weapon of the cannibals. Nearly all the rest had spears with broad iron heads, black bows with quivers of arrows, knives and tomahawks at their belts. They couldn’t have gotten all that in raids on his folk and the Kaijan settlements east beyond the Sabyn.
After an eternity, the last of the canoes passed-a full hundred swamp-devil bucks, in plain sight of each other and without a fight breaking out. They kept silence as well, paddling swiftly along the eastern bank, occasionally scanning the western shore. He could feel the weight of their stares, and froze into a rabbit’s immobility until the last one pulled out of sight.
“Lord o’ Sky!” he gasped. “Lord o’ Sky!”
“Well,” King said whimsically. “I gather that this means trying for tiger on the east bank of the river is definitely out.”
Sonjuh dawtra Pehte hummed tunelessly to herself as she stirred the ham and disks of potato in the frying pan-small children had been known to cry when she sang, but she liked the sound, which was what mattered. The morning was bright, and cool by the standards she was used to; the smell of the frying food mingled pleasantly with the damp dawn forest. Birds were calling, in a chorus of clucks and cheeps and Jeroo, I’m actually happy, she thought. That brought a tang of guilt, but only slightly-the Lord o’ Sky had heard her oath, and she intended to keep it or die trying. The Father-God wouldn’t care whether or not she regretted the dying. Of course, E’rc doesn’t plan on staying. That brought a stab, and he’d never hidden it, either…
Running feet sounded through the woods. Slasher woke and pointed his nose in their direction. Sonjuh caught them a few seconds later; she’d already set the food aside and reached for her crossbow. The two coastlander men-at-arms in Imperial service dropped their camp chores-armfuls of wood in one case, fodder gathered for their single pack mule in the other-and went for their rifles. They moved quickly to kneel behind cover on either side of the camp, looking outward in either direction as they worked the actions of their weapons and loaded a cartridge. Even then, she had an instant to notice that. Her people had never had much use for the coastmen, but these were very smooth; evidently they’d learned a lot, in the twenty years or so since the Imperial ships arrived to build their fort on Galveston Island.
She relaxed a bit as it became clear that it was Robre and Eric King loping back to the little forward camp. Not much, because she could see their faces.
“Swamp-devils?” she said.
“More ’n I’ve ever seen in one place,” Robre said grimly.
She turned and kicked moist dirt over the fire, stamping quickly to put it out before it could smoke much.
Robre nodded, and gave a concise description of the canoes they’d seen. “You were right, Head-on-Fire. ’Fore God the Father, there were a hundred of ’em if there were one. What’s happening? ”
“Whatever it is, it’s not good,” Sonjuh said, her voice stark. Jeroo, there goes being happy, all of a sudden. She didn’t feel bad, though. Alert, the blood pumping in her ears, everything feeling ready to go. Pa, Ma, sisters- soon you can rest easy, stop comin’ to me in dreams.
Eric had spread a map out on the ground; she craned forward to look at it. The written names were nothing to her or Robre, but the bird’s-eye view of the land was easy enough to grasp, and they’d both learned how to use them.
“We’re here,” Eric said, tapping their location-not far from the west bank of the Black River. “As I understand it, the…swamp-devils…live mostly here.” His finger moved down to a patch of stylized reeds and trees.
“The most of ’em,” Robre confirmed. “But you’ll find little bands all through-” His hand swept upward, north and east. “Then they sort of thin out, there’s big patches of empty country, ’n’ then Cherokee ’n’ Zarki; I don’t know much about them-nobody does. Then east beyond the Sabyn, you get the Kaijun; sort of backwards, from what I hear, but clean.”
“Well, what we just saw was a large group of them moving from north to south, where most of them are. I’d say it was in the nature of a gathering, wouldn’t you?”
The two natives looked at each other. “Jeroo,” Sonjuh whispered, past a throat gone thick. “If the devils is gathering, then our folk have to know-raids, big raids.”
“Raids with hundreds of ’em,” Robre said. “Lord o’ Sky, that’s not a raid, that’s a war, like with the Kumanch or even the Mehk-but they don’t kill everyone ’n’ eat the bodies.”
“A pukka war,” Eric said. When Sonjuh gave him a puzzled look, he went on: “A real war, a big war, a proper war.”
Robre put up a hand. “Wait a heartbeat,” he said. “What are we going to tell our folks?”
Sonjuh felt a flash of anger. “That the swamp-devils-”
“That the swamp-devils use canoes? That we saw a big bunch of ’em?” Robre shook his head. “What’s Jefe Carul of your Alligators, or Jefe Bilbowb of us Bear Creek folk-never mind clans farther west or south-going to say?”
“Ahhh,” Eric King said, and Sonjuh closed her mouth.
If they both thought that, there was probably something to it. She reached for her pipe-it always helped her to think-then made her hand rest on her tomahawk instead.
“We need to learn more,” she said, shifting on her hams.
“We do that, ’n’ nothing else,” Robre said, giving her a respectful glance; Sonjuh warmed a little to him for that.
“So,” King said. “Who goes, and who goes back to give a warning.”
The girl furrowed her brows. “Well, no sense in me going back-Mad Sonjuh Head-on-Fire, dawtra Stinking, Friendless Pehte.” Robre had the grace to blush. “Everyone knows I’ve a wasp-nest betwixt my ears about the swamp-devils. Wouldn’t listen.”
“Nor to an outlander like myself,” King said thoughtfully. “Robre would be the best, then; he has quite a reputation.”
Robre flushed more darkly under his outdoorsman’s tan, his blue eyes volcanic against it. “Run out on my friends? And I’m the best woodsman, meaning no offense. You’ll need me.”
The three looked at each other. They had less than sixty years between them, and when Sonjuh gave a savage grin the two men answered the expression with ones of their own, just as reckless.
“I’ll send the two privates…the men-at-arms…back to Ranjit Singh at the main camp,” King said. “And as for us, we’ll go see what the hell is brewing.”
“What hell indeed, Jefe,” Robre said somberly, his smile dying. “Hell indeed.”
The telescopic sight brought the canoe closer than Eric King would have wanted, on aesthetic grounds; and while there was no disputing their usefulness, he generally considered scope sights unsporting. But this isn’t a game, he thought, as he kept the cross-hairs firmly on the lead man…or man-thing…in the vessel. The three swamp-devils were as hideous as the ones he’d seen before; even knowing what inbreeding, intense selection and genetic drift could do, it was hard to believe that their ancestors had been men.
More like a cross between a giant rat and a baboon, he thought.
