them an autonomous federation, and give them backing.
That was one of the standard methods, far cheaper and more productive than outright conquest, if you could find suitable natives.
If the Czar can weaken them and strengthen their enemies-and Krishna, we’ll never give the swamp-devils anything but the receiving end of a punitive expedition-it’ll make this region less of a source of strength to the Empire. Which means, he realized dismally, that this ceases to be an adventure that I could back out of, and becomes a duty that has to be seen through to the end. Oh, well.
“Let’s go,” he said aloud.
Robre Hunter hopped out of the canoe. Slasher disappeared into the blackness ahead, silent as a ghost; Sonjuh followed him, nearly as quiet. King and he pushed together, running the dugout into the soft mud under an overhang; the current had cut into a bluff, exposing the root-ball of a big live oak tree and making what was almost a cave. They arranged bushes and reeds to hide the vessel and waited until Sonjuh returned. It was very dark here, with the rustling leaf-canopy above cutting out most of the starlight, and the moon wouldn’t be up for a while. The smell of silt-heavy water and decay was strong, but he found himself sniffing deeply to catch the unmistakable man-eater stink.
Now, don’t get yourself worked up into a lather, he told himself sternly. No more dangerous than those there wild pigs.
Although there was something about the prospect of being eaten by things that walked on two legs and could talk that made his scrotum draw itself up the way no pack of wolves or wild dogs or stalking big cat could do. He was relieved when Sonjuh stuck her head over the tangle of roots and gave a slight hiss.
The Imperial made a stirrup of his hands to boost Robre up, and a flash of a grin with it; the unexpected resentment he had felt over her walking out with the Imperial faded a little more. There was a faint path on the natural levee above, more of a deer-track than anything else. Traveling on a beaten way was dangerous, but it saved time-and the noise you made in the underbrush was dangerous, too, in hostile country. He took the lead, with King in the middle and Sonjuh on rear guard; Slasher was weaving in and out ahead of them, dropping back for contact with his mistress every now and then.
Even then, he felt a tinge of envy toward Sonjuh for the well-trained beast. Quite a girl in every damn way, he thought, then, Keep your mind on business, idjeet.
Eyes were little good in dark this deep. He kept his ears working as he walked, nose, the feeling you got from air on your skin. Once he held up a clenched fist, and the others paused. Slasher had his nose pointed in the same direction, quivering. They went to their bellies in the trailside growth, eeling their way along, until the glimmer of firelight came through. More cautious still, moving with infinite care, he came closer and parted a final screen of tall grass with his fingers, making just enough space to see out.
Oh, shee-it on faahr, he thought.
There were the canoes they’d seen, and as many again, drawn up on the beach. A campfire burned higher, and something seethed in a big iron pot hung; knowing swamp-devils, his stomach twisted at what might be cooking, from the pork-smell of it. Every troop or family of them had one such pot, heirloom and symbol…A clump of them sat around the fire, at least half a dozen, reaching in to pull gobbets out or dip up hot broth in wooden ladle- spoons, talking in their gobbling, grunting tongue, snarling and snapping at each other occasionally. One sank his teeth into another’s ear, hanging on until three or four of the others kicked him loose.
King came up beside him, whispered in his ear: “We could make our retreat a little safer, don’t you think? I wouldn’t like to come running back and meet those chappies.” He went on for a few soft sentences.
“Good idea, Jefe,” Robre said; it was a risk, but it would give them an added margin of safety on their return if it worked. If it didn’t and the sentries were able to rouse their fellows deeper in the woods, the three of them could just high-tail it.
He drew an arrow from his quiver, stuck its point in the earth, drew more and set them ready to hand. Sonjuh settled in behind branches, down on belly and elbows-that was one advantage of a crossbow, you could shoot it lying down. When-if-he came back from this trip, he’d have an Imperial rifle that could do that and more besides. Still, the bow had some advantages. King turned to take rear guard, with the firepower of his rifle.
I’d have done the same in his place, Robre thought. But I’d have argued about it. The Imperial was a good man in a tight place, and not the least shy-no doubt about it. But he was disturbingly…cold-blooded, that’s the word. Though not too cold-blooded to attract the attentions of a very attractive girl He thrust everything from his mind save the bow as he came erect. It was a hundred long paces from here to the fire, a long shot in the night. The sinew and horn and wood of the Kumanch weapon creaked as he drew, a full 120 pounds of draw. Back to the angle of the jaw, sighting over the arrowhead and then up…he loosed, and the string snapped against the black buffalo-hide bracer on his left wrist.
One of the grisly figures around the fire looked up suddenly, perhaps alerted by the whisper of cloven air; half-animal they might be, but the savages were survivors of generation upon generation of survivors in a game where losers went into the stewpot. He began to spring erect, but that merely put the arrow through his gut rather than into his chest. With a muffled howl he dropped backwards into the flames and lay there, screeching and sprattling, the iron pot falling on him and its contents gushing out to three-quarters smother the fire. His second shot was on its way before the first hit, and the third three seconds after that, and then he was firing as steadily as a machine. Sonjuh fired her crossbow-and then had to take a third of a minute to reload it, bracing her foot in the stirrup at its head and hauling back on the jointed, curved lever that bent the heavy bow and forced the thick string into the catch.
By that time his quiver was about empty. The cannibals had churned about for a moment, eyes blinded by the fire they’d been grouped around, until more of them fell. Then they turned and ran howling at the woods from where the deadly shafts came; Robre answered, firing smooth and quick, oblivious of the shafts that were whickering around him from the swamp-devil’s bows. One had a better idea; he turned and ran yelling up the trail that led away from the riverbank. Robre drew, drew until his arms and chest felt as if the muscle would rip loose from the bone. He loosed, watched-and four seconds later that last shaft dropped out of the night into the fleeing cannibal’s back, sending him pitching forward limp at the edge of sight.
“Let’s go,” King said, his voice stark. He slapped Robre on the shoulder as he passed. “Well done, man. Well shot indeed.”
Sonjuh touched his arm, as well. “Better ’n well. That shot was three hundred paces, in the night-it’ll be told around the fires for a hundred year ’n’ more.”
“If anyone gets back to tell,” he mumbled, embarrassed.
The men spent a few hectic minutes pushing the dugouts into the current, sending them on their long journey down to the Gulf-the Black River reached the sea to the northeast of Galveston Bay. The log canoes were heavy, but none of them so heavy two strong men couldn’t shift them; they glided away silently into the darkness, turning slowly as they glided empty into the night. While they worked Sonjuh went from one body to the next with her tomahawk and knife in hand, recovering Robre’s arrows and making sure the enemy dead were unlikely to twitch. King looked up and winced slightly; the clansman blinked in surprise. The only good swamp-devil was a dead one…and for that matter, even if they deserved a favor you weren’t doing a man one leaving him with an arrow through the gut and burns over half his body.
“Let’s leave one canoe,” Robre gasped, as they finished their work. “We might be coming back faster than we go-rather not have to dog-leg a half a mile north, if that’s so.”
King nodded. “And now, let’s see what’s going on.”
Ten, Sonjuh dawtra Pehte thought exultantly as she eeled forward on her belly. Ten scalps! Ma, you can rest quiet. Mahlu, Mahjani, Bittilu, soon you can rest, my sisters.
It was not quite so dark as it had been earlier, with the moon huge on the northeastern horizon, hanging over the swamp-forest ahead. The land sloped down here, away from the section of natural levee along the river behind them. It grew thicker and ranker, laced with impenetrable vine and thicket along the trail, then opened out into cypress-swamp, glowing ghostly as the lights of many fires on islets and mounds in the muddy shallow water filtered through the thick curtains of Spanish moss. They stopped there, at the border where the trail opened out, and stared.
“Shiva Bhuteswara,” King muttered, in the odd other language he sometimes fell into. “Shiva, Lord of
