of them in widely spaced positions, an attack was out of the question. Slowly, carefully, he began to crawl back the way he'd come, his belly pressed tightly against the ground. Not until he was a hundred yards out of the watchers' sight did he finally stand fully upright again.
The taste of defeat on his tongue.
So all his work, all his cleverness, had been for nothing. The Brummgas had spotted his tunnel, and had set a trap for him. It was only the fact that they couldn't possibly have anticipated the arrival of a K'da warrior that had prevented them from nailing him on the spot.
What they were expecting, clearly, was one of their slaves. And if they were smart enough to watch one end of the darter's hole, they were probably smart enough to be watching the other end, too.
Earlier, he had left Jack and the hotbox without much more than a quick and casual check of the area. There hadn't been any alarm, which meant he must not have been spotted.
He didn't know yet how they'd managed to miss him. But however it had happened, he knew he couldn't count on being that lucky twice in a row. This time he approached the slave colony like the warrior he was supposed to be: slow, alert, and flat on his belly.
He hadn't noticed anything odd when he'd left, and now he discovered why. For one thing, the enemy observer was off to the side, where he could watch the doors into the two sleeping huts but didn't have a clear view of the three hotboxes. For another, the observer wasn't a Brummga. It was a human.
Not just any human, either. It was Gazen himself.
Draycos looked across the starlit patch of ground, watching Gazen idly fingering his rifle. Under normal circumstances, he could easily tell one human scent from another. But having just spent an hour in the hotbox with Jack, and a particularly strong-smelling Jack at that, he hadn't noticed the taste of Gazen in the air.
He twitched his tail in annoyance. First he had wasted time with thoughts of vengeance. Now he was wasting equally precious time making excuses.
For two months he had been trying to gently push Jack toward the path of a K'da warrior. He had tried to teach the boy to think and behave with a sense of justice and honor, instead of reacting like the selfish thief his Uncle Virgil had raised him to be.
Now, he wondered if perhaps some of the training had ended up going the other way.
He twitched his tail again. More rationalization. More excuses.
More wasted time.
All right, he ordered himself firmly. So Gazen himself was here. That meant he was taking this attack on the thorn hedge very seriously. And given that Jack was the newest arrival, he might have expected that Gazen's suspicions would immediately have turned his direction.
But apparently, that wasn't the case. If it had been, Gazen should have found a
place where he could watch the hotboxes as well as the sleeping huts.
Unless he didn't know Jack had been kicked out of his bed for the night.
Draycos let his jaws crack open in a wry smile. So all unknowingly, Fleck had in fact done him and Jack a huge favor. If he hadn't gotten Jack in trouble, Draycos might very well have strolled out of the sleeping hut tonight straight into Gazen's waiting hands.
Carefully, he began backing up again. They'd been saved by the thinnest of eyelid scales, the kind of luck every warrior hoped for. But that didn't mean there was any reason to throw a congratulatory party, either. Their main escape plan had just been discovered and neutralized. That meant they would have to fall back on Plan B.
Unfortunately, as far as he knew, they didn't have a Plan B.
Jack was asleep when he reached the hotbox, his hand jammed under the door to give Draycos a way in. The boy didn't wake up as Draycos slipped up his arm and settled into his usual position across his back. The two of them had a lot to talk about; but the hotbox still held some of the day's heat, and he might as well let Jack sleep while he could. There would be plenty of time to talk later when the growing cold drove him awake.
That point arrived two hours later, when Jack began shivering in his sleep.
Draycos managed to postpone it another half hour by returning to three-dimensional form and using his body to help keep the boy warm. But eventually, even that wasn't enough.
Jack listened in silence as Draycos related the night's activities. 'That was a
close one, all right,' he commented when the K'da had finished. 'Thanks to Fleck and his low-rent friends. A shame we can't ever tell him—I'd love to see the expression on that ugly slap-catcher face of his.'
'It would be interesting,' Draycos agreed. 'I presume, then, that you no longer wish to make him eat the spilled berries?'
Jack waved a hand. 'The bugs have probably gotten to most of them by now, anyway.'
He shivered violently. 'I just wish I'd thought to bury that blanket Maerlynn gave me in the floor here. It would have come in handy.'
'As a matter of fact, I did bury it,' Draycos told him. 'I thought it would might be bad for Maerlynn if you were found with it. Unfortunately, it is no longer here.'
'Maerlynn must have dug it up afterward,' Jack said with a sigh. 'Too bad.'
'The point is that we now have a serious problem,' Draycos said. 'I would have no difficulty myself jumping over the hedge. But I could not carry you over without risking injury to you.'
'That just means we'll need another way over, that's all,' Jack said. 'Over, or through.'
Draycos felt his ears twitch. 'You have an idea?'
'I think so,' Jack said. 'It'll take some fancy timing, but if I can pull that part of it off it should work.'
'May I ask what you have in mind?'
'Sure.' In the dim light, he saw Jack smile tightly. 'You remember Greb mentioning a couple of days ago that his and Grib's hatchday was coming up in three weeks? I thought we might throw them a little hatchday party.'
'In three weeks?' Draycos asked, frowning.
Jack shook his head. 'Life is uncertain,' he said. 'Let's do it now.'
CHAPTER 12
The Brummgas let him out of the hotbox an hour or so after sunrise, just about the time the place was starting to warm up to a decent temperature. The rest of the slave colony was quiet, with everyone no doubt taking advantage of their day off to catch up on some sleep.
All except Fleck. The ugly man was waiting with the Brummgas, a bowl in his hand. Without a word he held it out toward Jack and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. Sighing to himself, Jack looped the strap around his neck and trudged off. It was, he knew, going to be a long, lonely, tiring day.
He reached the rainbow berry bushes to find he'd been wrong on all three counts.
He wasn't going to be alone. Maerlynn was already there, along with Greb and Grib and Noy and a half dozen others.
All of them already with small piles of berries on the ground beside them.
'What's this?' Jack asked, blinking in surprise as he looked around. 'I thought this was Tenthday.'
'Good morning, Jack,' Maerlynn said cheerfully. 'Yes, it is. Better get these piles picked up right away, before someone steps on one of them.'
'I'll help,' Noy offered. Stepping carefully over his own pile he trotted over to Jack and put in the few he still had in his hands. 'Grib's pile is the biggest—we'll get those first.'
'But—' Jack said, still bewildered as he let Noy lead him over toward the twin Jantris. 'Isn't this your day off?'
'Sure,' Noy said. He turned his head away from Jack and coughed. 'But it's your day off, too. We wanted to help you.'
'We saw what happened,' Maerlynn explained as Noy carefully scooped up Grib's pile of berries and laid them gently in the bowl. 'It isn't fair to punish you for a rule you didn't know.'
Jack stared down at Noy as the boy moved to Greb's pile and started gathering the berries into his hands. Selfishness between thieves and con men was something he knew very well. Help between soldiers he could sort of understand—after all, their lives might depend on each other.
