They had their wits about them, though; they came down from the north three-quarters of the way toward the western shore, beyond easy bowshot from the east and where it would be simple to run the cypress-log dugout into a creek and disappear. All three kept their eyes moving, and they had bows and quivers or short iron-headed spears to hand. He closed his mind on a bubble of worry, and switched his viewpoint southward. A little hook of land stood fifty yards out in the Black River, covered in reeds and dense vine-begrown brush. At the water’s edge lay a deer-a yearling buck, with a broken arrow behind its right shoulder, still stirring and trying to rise. He nodded approval; that had been a very good touch. The westering sun was touching the tops of the trees behind them, throwing long shadow out over the water. It would dazzle eyes trying to look into the deep jungle-like growth along the riverbank proper, under the heavy foliage of the tupelos and sweet gums.
His lips curled in a satisfied snarl as the swamp-devils froze, their paddles poised and dripping water that looked almost red in the sunset-light. His finger touched delicately against the trigger, hearing the first click as it set, leaving only a feather-light pressure to fire. Still, that would be noisy.
The savages turned their canoe toward the mud, gobbling satisfaction at the sight of so much meat ready- caught; they’d assume the deer had run far with the shaft in it, losing whoever shot it. They drove the dugout ashore and the first two hopped out, grabbing the sides and pushing it farther into the soft reed-laced dirt.
Yes, shooting would be far too likely to attract unwelcome attention. He turned his head and nodded fractionally to Sonjuh. The girl let her breath out in a controlled hiss and squeezed the trigger of her own weapon. The deep tunngg of the crossbow’s release still brought the first swamp-devil’s head up; he was just opening his mouth to cry out when the quarrel took him below the breastbone, and he fell thrashing to the ground. At the same instant Slasher came out of the tall grass before them and charged baying, belly low to the ground as he tore forward. King and the native girl charged, as well, on the dog’s heels, tulwar and Khyber knife in his hands, bowie and tomahawk in hers.
The second swamp-devil let out a horrified screech, turning back and snatching for his spear, almost turning in time for the point to be of use. Then Slasher was upon him, and he was rolling on the ground screaming and trying to keep those fangs from his face and throat. The third was quicker-witted, or perhaps had just a second longer. He lifted his bow, and was drawing on the ambushers when an eruption of water and mud behind the canoe distracted him. Snake-swift he threw the bow aside and pulled out his tomahawk, half rising to meet Robre’s onslaught. The two struck, and fell into the mud at the edge of the water with a tremendous splash.
King accounted himself an excellent runner, but Sonjuh drew ahead of him, her feet light on the soft ground that sucked at his boots. I’m eighty pounds heavier, that’s all, he thought. Slasher’s teeth were an inch from the screaming swamp-devil’s face when she scooped up the spear he hadn’t had time to use, thrust it under his ribs, then turned and threw it three paces into the back of the last. Robre wrenched himself free of the slackening grip and chopped twice with his tomahawk.
“I’d have had him in a second,” he grumbled. “But thanks.”
“Then he wouldn’t have counted,” Sonjuh said, flashing him a smile. She bent, grabbed a handful of the man’s filthy, matted hair and cut a circle through the scalp before wrenching the bloody trophy free.
King swallowed. Oh, well, she is a native, he thought, and pulled the spear out of the swamp-devil’s back instead of speaking. He washed it in the stream, then peered at the head. The light was uncertain, but he could see that the edge of the weapon was ragged, although wickedly sharp. Uneven forging, he thought. That happened if you didn’t keep the temperature even enough. An amateur did it. Not at all like the work of the Seven Tribes, whose smiths were excellent in their primitive way. But the long-hafted hatchet still in the savage’s belt was very well made, and the knife likewise. He frowned; according to what he’d been told, the eastern savages had no knowledge of ironworking themselves, but…
“Is there much iron ore in these woods?” he asked.
“Plenty,” Robre said, wading back ashore after washing the mud and blood off in the river. “Bog-iron, grows in lumps in the swamps. That’s one reason our Seven Tribes folks have been pushing across the Three Forks into the forest country-charcoal and ore. Iron from the Cherokee and Mehk costs.”
“Well, I think someone has been teaching your swamp-devils how to smelt for themselves,” King said grimly. “And how to work it.”
Robre snorted. “Be a good trick, to keep ’em from eating their teachers.”
Sonjuh shook her head. “No, it makes sense, Hunter-man. Like their gathering in big bands. They’re changing, ’n’ not for the better.”
Well, technically, it is for the better, King thought. They’re starting to live a little more like human beings and a little less like mad beasts. The problem is that men are more dangerous than beasts. And they’re still a lot closer to vicious mad beasts than to real human beings, like my friends here.
“What’s this?” Robre said. “Never seen anything quite like it.”
He pulled something from the ear of the savage who’d been rear paddle-steersman-in the canoe. King took it, looked, and felt sweat break out on his brow; his stomach clenched, and a feeling of liquid coldness stole lower in his guts.
It was a piece of silver jewelry, shaped to the likeness of a peacock’s tail. The two natives gaped at him; like any high-caste member of the sahib-log, he was not a man given to quick emotions, or to showing those he did have. The way his soul stood naked on his face for an instant astonished them.
“You seen that before?” Robre asked sharply.
“It’s Russian,” he said softly, after a moment to bring himself back to self-mastery. “It’s the sign of initiation into the cult of Tchernobog-the Black God. The Peacock Angel is one of His other names. Yes, I’ve seen this before.”
The Czar in Samarkand had always been among the Empire’s worst enemies. Partly that was a rivalry that went back before the Fall-St. Disraeli had spent much of his earlier life frustrating Russian designs on the Old Empire’s territories, or so the records said. Most of the rivalries were Post-Fall, though, after the Russian refugees in Central Asia had made contact with the descendants of the British Exodus in India. There had been some direct conflict, though not much: the Himalayas lay between, and the uninhabited wastelands of Tibet, and the all-too- inhabited hill country of Afghanistan and the Hindu Kush. Fighting through a hostile Afghanistan was like trying to bite an enemy when you had to chew your way through a wasp’s nest first. The Afghans hated the Angrezi Raj only somewhat less than they loathed the Russki.
“They’re enemies of ours,” King said. “Man-eaters.”
“Like the swamp-devils ’n’ us?” Robre asked.
“Not very. During the Fall…It’s a long story. They ate their subjects, not their own people, mostly; afterwards they kept it up as part of their new religion, making human sacrifices to their Black God, and then eating the bodies as a…rite that bound them together. Their nobles and rulers, at least. But they like to spread their cult, when they can. I can see how it would change your swamp-devils, too-it would give them a way to work together.”
Robre made a disgusted sound, and Sonjuh swore softly before she said, “Like I said. We’ve got to get more scout-knowledge about this.”
“So we do,” Robre said grimly.
“So we do indeed,” King added in the same tone. “For the Empire, as well.”
His mind drew a map. The center of Russian power was in Central Asia, between Samarkand where the Czar had his seat, and Bokhara, the religious capital, where the High Priests of Tchernobog were centered. Theoretically the Czar claimed much of European Russia, but it was still mainly wasteland, thinly populated by tribes whom he tried to reclaim with missionaries and Cossack outposts.
Still, they could get out through the Baltic and the Black Sea, King thought. There were Imperial bases in the lands facing reclaimed and recivilized Britain, but they were little more than trading posts and bases for explorers and traders and missionaries of the Established Church. The interior…he’d just come from there, and parts of it were almost as bad as this.
Yes, they could slip small groups out-pretend to be something else, Brazilians or whatever-travel by ship… But why spend the energy to interfere in this barbarous wasteland? What difference could it make to the contending Powers?
Well, the area is theoretically part of the Empire, he thought, with the part of his mind trained at Sandhurst, the Imperial military academy in the Himalayan foothills. It’s naturally rich, has plenty of unexploited resources, and it could become populous. When we finally get around to developing it, we’ll probably rely on the Seven Tribes-make
