March Upcountry

“You know I like languages.”

“So the scummy thinks we should move out?” Pahner asked, just to keep things straight.

“Yes,” Roger said, somewhat coldly. He was beginning to develop a distaste for the epithet. “He has a problem with something that apparently comes out only at night. He wants to hurry to make it to his village before whatever it is comes out.”

“That’s going to be tough,” Pahner said consideringly. “We’ve got a pass to cross, then quite a bit of jungle. We’ll barely make it up to the top of the ridge before dark.”

“He seems to think we ought to be able to make it before dark without too much trouble,” Eleanora put in.

“He may be right,” Pahner responded. “But if he is, then his village has to be a lot closer than I think he’s suggesting.”

“Then I suggest that we’d better get moving,” Roger said.

“No question there,” Pahner agreed. “First we’ve got to get this tent taken down, though.”

“Hang on.” Roger pulled his drinking tube down. “Here,” he said, gesturing with it to the Mardukan. “Water.”

They didn’t have that word yet, so he used Standard. To demonstrate, he took a drink out of it and dribbled a few drops onto his hand to show the Mardukan what it was. Cord leaned forward and took a swig off of the tube. He nodded at Roger in thanks, then gestured to leave the tent.

“Yeah,” Roger said with a laugh. “I guess we’re all on the same sheet of music.”

But playing in different keys.

It quickly became apparent to Roger where the disconnect between Cord’s and Pahner’s estimated travel times lay. Cord’s giant legs drove him forward at a far quicker pace than humans were able to maintain. The Marines, had they been less heavily encumbered, could have jogged and kept up with the Mardukan, but Matsugae, O’Casey, and the Navy pilots were unable to make anything like the same rate of movement. As the sun set behind the mountains and the alluvial outflow narrowed into a mountain gorge, the Mardukan became more and more voluble in his worries, and translations became clearer and clearer.

“Prince Roger,” Cord said, “we must hurry. Theyaden will suck us dry if they find us. I’m the only one with a cover cloth.” He gestured to his leather cape. “Unless you have those ‘tents’ for everyone?”

“No,” Roger said. He grasped a boulder and pulled himself up onto it. The vantage point gave him a clear view of the company scattered up and down the narrow defile. The tail of the unit was just starting up the narrow, steep canyon while the head was nearing the top. As mountain canyons went, it wasn’t much, but it was slowing them as the heavily laden troopers struggled up the ravine, pulling themselves from boulder to boulder. They blended into the background well, but for the flash of solar panels on the rucksacks and the occasional reflection off a weapon’s barrel. The parties with the stretchers were in particularly bad straits, wrestling their heavy and cumbersome loads over rocks and around corners. All in all, the company was moving very slowly.

“No, we don’t have enough large tents for everyone. But we have other covers, and everyone has a personal bivy tent. How large and fierce are theseyaden?”

Cord mulled over a few of the words that obviously weren’t quite right.

“They are neither large nor fierce. They are stealthy. They will slip into a camp full of warriors and select one or two. Then they overcome them and suck them dry.”

Roger shuddered slightly. He supposed that it could be superstition, but the description was too precise.

“In that case, we’re just going to have to post a good guard.”

“This valley is thick with them,” Cord said, gesturing around. “It is a well-known fact,” he finished simply.

“Oh, great.” Roger jumped nimbly down off the boulder. “We’re in the Valley of the Vampires.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The wind was constant and enervating. It blew through the pass incessantly, funneling from the high- pressure upland desert to the lower pressure jungles. It dried the surroundings here at the head of the pass, creating one last patch of arid ground before the all-enveloping triple-canopy rain forest barely a hundred meters below.

Captain Pahner looked down at that canopy and, for the sixth time, reconsidered his decision to stop in the pass itself. Cord hadn’t cared one way or the other; he insisted that anything short of returning to his village was a veritable death sentence, and now he sat by a fire as the cold settled in. Pahner didn’t blame him a bit; the cold- blooded scummy would be virtually somnolent once the full cold hit.

The Marine scratched his chin for a moment, pondering what they’d so far learned from the native. He was forced to admit, albeit grudgingly, that Roger had had a point about the need to acquire the ability to communicate with the locals as quickly as they could. And the delay for the initial conversation probably hadn’t mattered all that much in the end. Not that Pahner intended to say anything of the sort to Roger . . . or even to O’Casey. There could be only one commander, especially in a situation as extreme as this, and whatever the official table of organization might have said, “Colonel” His Royal Highness Prince Roger wasn’t fit to be trusted with the organization of a bottle party in a brewery.

Now that the moment of pure, incandescent rage which had possessed him when the young jackass went right ahead and killed the flar beast had passed, the captain rather regretted his language. Not because he hadn’t meant it, and not because it hadn’t needed saying—not even, or perhaps especially, because of the potential impact their little tete-a-tete might have upon the future career of one Captain Armand Pahner (assuming the captain in question survived to worry about career moves). No, he regretted it because it had been unprofessional.

On the other hand, it seemed to have finally started making an impression on the sheer arrogance and carelessness which seemed to be two of the prince’s more pronounced characteristics. Which was the reason Pahner had no intention of admitting that this time the kid might have had a point. The last thing they needed was for the prince to feel justified in continuing to butt heads with the professional who was his only chance of getting home alive.

Setting that consideration aside, however, it was beginning to look as if Cord might prove very valuable indeed, at least in the short run, and the debt he felt he owed to Roger might actually work out in the company’s favor. It appeared that the Mardukan was a chief or shaman of the tribe whose territory they were about to enter, and that suggested that Roger might just have secured the best introduction and intermediary they could hope for.

Exactly why he’d been headed towards the lakebed remained less clear. He insisted that he’d been on some sort of vision quest, and it seemed evident that whatever problem he’d been seeking answers to must be pressing to drive him into such a hostile environment, but just what that problem was remained elusive despite his efforts to explain it. On the other hand, his conversations with Roger and Eleanora during the hike to this first camp had nearly completed the task of gathering a workable kernel for the language program. By tomorrow, translations should be as clear as the software could make them.

Pahner allowed himself a few more seconds to hope that would be the case—it would be really nice to have something break their way—and then put that particular problem away in favor of more immediate concerns. He turned and walked back through the camp perimeter, running one last personal visual check. Everything was in place: directional mines set, laser detectors on sweep, thermal detectors up and watching. If anything tried to get through those defenses, it had better be invisible or smaller than a goat. He completed his check and crossed to where Sergeant Major Kosutic waited with the portable master panel slung over her shoulder.

“Turn it on,” he said, and she nodded and hit the trip switch. Icons flashed on the panel as the sensors