Estios held his hands up to the light and studied them critically. 'We won't be a secret if we run into anyone. Why can't we start on the earth path you talked about?'
'It is not yet time.' Urdli was not about to let Estios know of his limitations. 'We can safely walk this land. To those we meet, if any, we will be two travelers, nothing more. The melanin bloom will peak shortly, and as long as you wear the tinted lenses you will not look out of place. The language spells will work as they always have. Only by carelessness will we appear strangers. There is nothing to fear. We shall be in and out before anyone else completes their portion of this elaborate arrangement, even your friends on the strike teams.' And that, of course, was why Urdli found it easy to take such a demeaning part in this effort to control the weapons. Here he would have the upper hand, away from interference. Verner's runners might succeed in their raids, but more likely not. Laverty's soldiers had higher chances, but they would follow the professor's orders to the letter. While the activity might alert Spider's earthly agents, Urdli thought the probability low. From the pooling of data, he had seen that Spider's plans were less advanced than he had feared. Naturally, he had not shared that observation with the others; he saw no reason to let them know they wouldn't be facing active opposition in most of the locations. 'You seem amused,' Estios commented. 'Perhaps I am. I had thought the Dog shaman would demand that I take a more difficult part in his plan,. face a threat that might be a danger to me. He holds me in less regard than he does yourself. A careful assignment of goals would have let him make the elimination of an enemy seem a mere twist of fate.'
'Yet he gave us the milk run. He specifically sent us out after the one weapon unlikely to have any guard other than its location. We'll face no opposition beyond the ordinary dangers of travel in this sub-Saharan blight.'
'Exactly. The dangers of travel are not really dangers to magicians of our caliber. And will be free to act on our own after we have done what is necessary here.'
'So he had underestimated you.' Estios smiled. 'I see why you're amused.'
Urdli smiled back. Verner was not the only one. 'I thought you would.''
The elder shamans rose and formed a circle around Sam and the sprouting tree. The larger circle of the dancers stamped and swayed around them. Howling Coyote nodded to Sam, and Sam began to sing faster. The shamans echoed his new cadence as they joined hands. Howling Coyote lifted his left foot and plunged it down and forward. The inner ring began to dance, turning within the greater circle in a tighter focus of power.
The preliminaries were drawing to a close.
Janice looked down the hill at the small group of people gathered there. Four norms and three orks. All, save Ghost, were strangers. She knew their names and some of their general abilities because Ghost had told her, but that made them no less strangers. She wondered if they could be trusted.
She wondered if she could be trusted.
For more than a week now, the only norm she had seen was Ghost. She had fought back the hunger because he was a follower of Wolf, and in some obscure way she didn't fully understand, a member of her pack. She had come to recognize his strong spirit during their companionship in the wilderness. As much as a norm could be a friend to one of her kind, he was one. Of course, he was also cyber-enhanced, a deadly shot, and a vicious fighter who might have a chance at injuring her seriously, but she didn't think that was the real reason she had not made a meal of him. She prayed it wasn't.
These others were different. Norm or ork, they were not part of the pack. All were experienced shadow- runners and therefore theoretically dangerous. But if one were to straggle behind, and let attention wane, then she might…
Might what?
Her stomach growled an answer. She turned away and snatched up Ghost's last offering. Her fangs sank deeply into the deer haunch, but the juices that flowed did little to quiet the insistence of her need. She spat the tasteless meat onto the ground.
She didn't know how much longer she could hold off the hunger. Here, in this land so alive with life and so near to concentrations of people, it got harder every day. Distress warred with longing when she gazed across the sound to the lights of Seattle. The feelings were only amplified by the nearness of the people below. Why was she so disturbed? Dan Shiroi had shown no discomfort at what he was. He had taught her that the hateful norms were proper prey for her kind, rabbits to their wolves. And she was just like him, wasn't she? Something inside her shouted no, its voice barely overcoming the joyous shouting that fired her blood at the thought of meat. Sam had said that after this one run he could do the magic that would transform her back to a norm. Could she believe? Did she dare hope? Did she want to?
Whatever she believed or desired, she had given her word. In that, at least, she was still like her brother. She would do as she had said, and help these runners to do their part in Sam's scheme. After that? Well, after that, things would be as things would be.
She rose and walked softly down the slope toward the gathered runners. She knew that Ghost would hear her, but she wanted to see how alert the others were. The information might be useful later.
One of the chromed norms, Ghost's tribesman Long Run, was the first to react. As if on cue, Ghost whis pered in the ear of the woman Sally Tsung, he had said she was and she turned to look. The others followed suit.
She kept her moves slow and was careful not to show her fangs. She knew her size was intimidating. She overtopped the tallest of the runners by almost a meter and was easily half again as massive as the biggest ork Kham was his name. For all her precautions, she sensed she had awakened their fear. They tried to hide it and were successful for the most part, but she could smell it on them. The big ork was especially rank.
He straightened up, trying to make himself look as big as possible. Early evening starlight glinted from the chrome hand he flexed nervously. Ghost had told her that Kham's cybernetic hand was a legacy from an earlier involvement in Sam's business, during which the ork was nearly killed. Was he having second thoughts? Kham cocked his head and stared at her with narrowed eyes. 'You ain't no sasquatch.'
There was no use denying that, but she didn't see what business he had knowing her metatype. So she just said, 'No, I'm not.' 'What are ya den?'
He was a nosy trog. 'You don't want to know.' 'Too bad ya didn't go ork.' He sounded halfway sincere. 'We orks is tough, and good-looking, too. If ya was one of us, ya wouldn't have ta hide in de woods alone.'
And an annoying one. She snapped, 'I was an ork once. Didn't like it much, so I changed.'
Flinching back at her anger, he quietly eyed her for a few moments. The others found nothing to say in the silence that fell. Kham fingered his broken tusk, and his brow furrowed as if thinking were hard for him. Then, having reached some kind of conclusion, his face relaxed. 'Ya must be his sister, den. Heard dey got a lot of bad dings over on Yomi island. Dat's where ya were, right? Heard dey got de virus dere. Youse what happens when an ork gets de virus?'
Hugh Glass's face flashed before her eyes, smiling. 'A present for you before I leave, ' he said, showing his perfect teeth. He touched her leg and she collapsed in pain, shattered bone tearing through flesh. Hugh faded from her sight, then the sounds began, the sounds of the searching hunters. She swallowed her scream and held in her terror. Unable to run, she would be caught and taken back to Yomi. The hunters came closer. Fear clogged her throat. Closer. She had heard stories about what they did to runaways. She whimpered in her pain and immediately stifled it with redoubled terror. ' 'Delicious,'' Hugh said, and sucked her dry. To her drifting, barely conscious mind, he said, 'Someday you may thank me, but more likely you'll hate me for all time. I'd prefer it that way, it tastes better. ' Then he was gone, and she had only herself and the darkness and the pain. And the hunger. She shrugged off the nightmare memory. She didn't want to think about that anymore. 'Don't know anything about a virus.'
'We're not here to be idle,' Ghost said, stepping between her and the ork.
She relaxed muscles she hadn't realized were tensed, and lowered her lips to hide her fangs. 'All right. Let's get this over with.'
'Don't you care what the plan is?' Tsung asked. 'No.'
The ork with the datajacks on his temples put a hand to his ear. After a moment he said, 'Matrix cover says locks are off on the compound. We got a twenty-minute window before the Gaeatronics security checks run their diagnostics. We got to be aboard the submersible by then.'
'Right on time,' 'Rung said. 'We don't get paid till it's over, so let's get moving.'
'Ain't like de fairy to be on time,' Kham grumbled.
