'All right, I was fixin' to kill you. That's lily, see? I'm not tryin' to
bilk you over it. Only now you 'n me ought to forget about all that,
see Patera? Put it right behind us like what Pas'd want us to do. So
how about it?' Urus held out his hand.
'My son, when you possess such a needler as _this_, I shall consent
to a truce _gladly_.'
Auk chuckled. 'How far you gone, Urus? Looking for a way out?'
'Pretty far. Only there's queer cheats in these tunnels, see? 'N
there's various ones, too. Some's full of water, or there's cave-ins.
Some ends up against doors.'
Chenille said, 'I can tell you something about the doors, Hackum,
next time we're alone.'
'That's the dandy, Jugs. You do that.' Painfully, Auk clambered
to his feet. Seeing that the blade of his hanger was still fouled with
blood, he wiped it on the hem of his tunic and sheathed it. 'Things in
these tunnels, huh? What kinds of things?'
'There's sojers like him down this way.' Urus pointed to
Hammerstone. 'They'll shoot if they see you, so you got to keep listenin'
for 'em. That was how I knowed he was a sojer in the dark, see?
They don't make much noise, not even when they're marchin', but
they don't sound like you 'n me, neither, 'n sometimes you can hear
when their guns hit up against 'em. Then there's bufes, what he calls
gods, 'n they can be devils. Only this cull Eland caught a couple
little 'uns 'n kind of tamed 'em, see? We had 'em with us. There's
big machines, sometimes, too. Some's tall asses, only not all. Some
won't row you if you don't rouse 'em.'
'That all?'
'All I ever seen, Auk. There's stories 'bout ghosts 'n things, but I
don't know.'
'All right.' Auk turned to address Incus, Hammerstone, and
Chenille. 'I'm going to go back there and have a look for Dace, like
I said.'
He strolled slowly along the tunnel toward the lingering darkness,
not stopping until he reached the point at which the men and beasts
shot by Incus lay. Squatting to examine them more closely, he
contrived to glance toward the group he had left. No one had
followed him, and he shrugged. 'Just you and me, Oreb.'
'Bad things!'
'Yeah, they sure are. He called 'em bufes, but a bufe's a
watchdog, and Hammerstone was right. These ain't real dogs at all.'
A crude bludgeon, a stone lashed with sinew to a fire-blackened
bone, lay near one of the convicts Incus had shot. Auk picked it up
to look at, then tossed it away, wondering how close the man had
gotten to Incus before he fell. If Incus had been killed, he, Auk,
would have gotten his needler back. But what might Hammerstone
have done?
He examined more curiously the one he had cut down with his
hanger. He had stolen the hanger originally, had worn it largely for
show, had sharpened it once only because he used it now and then
to cut rope or prize open drawers, had taken two lessons from
Master Xiphias out of curiosity; now he felt that he possessed a
weapon he had never known was his.
The radiance of the creeping lights was noticeably dimmer here; it
would be some time before the section in which he had left the old
fisherman was well lit. He drew his hanger and advanced cautiously.
'You sing out if you see anything, bird.'
'No see.'
'But you can see in this, can't you? Shag, I can see, too. I just
can't see good.'
'No men.' Oreb snapped his bill and fluttered from Auk's right
shoulder to his left. 'No things.'
'Yeah, I don't see much either. I wish I could be sure this was the
spot.'
Most of all, he wished that Chenille had come. Bustard was
walking beside him, big and brawny; but it was not the same. If
Chenille had not cared enough to come, there was no point going--no
point in anything.
How'd you get yourself into this, sprat, Bastard wanted to know.
'I dunno,' Auk muttered. 'I forget.'
Give me the pure keg, sprat. You want me to window you out? If
I'm going to help, I got to know.
'Well, I liked him. Patera, I mean. Patera Silk. I think the
Ayuntamiento got him. I thought, well, I'll go out to the lake
tonight, meet 'em in Limna, and they'll be glad to see me for the
gelt, for a dimber dinner and drinks, and maybe a couple uphill
rooms for us after. He won't touch her, he's a augur--'
'Bad talk!'
'He's a augur, and she'll have a couple with her dinner and feel
like she owes me for it and the ring, owes for both, and it'll be nice.'
What'd I tell you about hooking up with some dell, sprat?
'Yeah, sure, brother. Whatever you say. Only then he was gone
and she was fuddled, and I got hot and lumped her and went looking. Only
everybody say's he's going to be calde, the new calde--Patera. That
would be somebody to know, if he pulls it off.'
'Girl come!'
Never mind that. So now you're going back here, back the way we
come, for this Silk butcher?
'Yeah, for Silk, because he'd want me to. And for him, too, for
Dace, the old man that owned our boat.'
You've snaffled a sackful like him. You don't even have his
shaggy boat.
'Patera'd want me to, and I liked him.'
This much?
'Hackum? Hackum!'
He's waitin', you know. That buck Gelada's waitin' for us in the
dark next to the old man's body, sprat. He had a bow. Didn't any of
em back there have no bow.
'Girl come,' Oreb repeated.
Auk swung around to face her. 'Stand clear, Jugs!'
