“The fogs will be thick tonight,” said Pirva. “Some of us will come behind and erase your trail. The men have sniffer animals, sniffers they use to find escaped Gharm, but we know how to send them awry. We have the scent of a female at breeding time, and with this we have already made a false trail, leading far away. So we do when we escape.”
Within moments they were inside the forest, headed up the slope. They walked, stumbling in the dark, seeming to cover very little ground. Time went by, and they heard movement far behind them, faint shouts and the blat of a horn.
“Too close,” said Pirva. “Too close.”
“The false trail was laid this afternoon,” grunted Nils. “Our wise-gems say there is truth in your songs. They want you to be safe. Come only a little farther to the place the false trail starts, then we may rest.”
They went between two stones and then down a declivity, while frantic activity took place behind them.
“The false trail starts between those stones and goes very far up,” whispered Nils. “But you will go down. Down is faster. We can get more distance between.”
Behind them a sound halfway between a cough and a bay, char-ugh, char-ugh, singly and in chorus.
“Sniffers,” whispered Nils. “Good noses. They have also very good hearing. Lie quiet.”
They lay in the litter under the trees, leaf smell in their nostrils, trying not to breathe too loudly. Above them on the slope the noises grew louder, more shouts, more snorts, then the confused sounds retreated up the hill. When the sounds dwindled, Nils poked Maire and beckoned. They went straight along the slope, putting maximum distance, whispered Nils, between them and where the hunters would end up. Behind them were little rustlings in the woods.
“Gharm, putting different stinks on your trail,” said Nils in an almost normal voice. “Stinks that go off in all directions.”
“You’re good at this,” remarked Maire.
“We have learned it for four hundred years,” said Nils. “And we go on living. So our people run away; so our people are saved from sniffing out; so our people achieve freedom.”
“Do you know who’s hunting me?”
“It isn’t Phaed. He went away. So it is probably Mugal Pye. They had an argument, Phaed and Mugal Pye. They snarled and insulted one another. Now each does things to annoy the other, each lies to the other, each plots against the other with the prophets. So our people say.”
“Where are we headed?”
“Where we can hide you for a long time,” said Nils. “Until we see whether the Tchenka will come to us as you said. If they do, then you are our mama-gem. Saturday and Jep are our mama-gem. You are our own blood, our own clan, our own people.”
“And if the Tchenka don’t come?”
“It would be cruel,” Nils said, sadly. “You would have done a cruel thing.”
“The Tchenka will come,” said Maire. “They came to us. They will come to you.”
“So Saturday said,” Nils replied. “But we must see for ourselves. We do not believe human promises.”
They stopped beside a stone. Another Gharm stood there, waiting. “This is Finner,” said Nils. “He takes you from here. Pirva and I must not be gone when the farmer returns, when the men come down from the mountain.”
“Can I go back later?” she begged. “Maybe help Sam?”
“We will help him as we can,” said Nils. “He will not be out of our sight. Think now of yourself.”
Maire shrugged. She was not even sure why she was here, except to save Jep. Jep was saved. Perhaps it didn’t matter anymore where she was, or what she did.
Finner beckoned and set off along the slope. Maire followed.
The night went by in long traverses, ups and downs, led by this Gharm and that Gharm. So far as Maire could tell from the stars, they were headed south, into the mountains which lay between Sarby and County Kate. The men who were tracking her had been led westward, toward the sea.
“At the end of the trail we have laid for the sniffers, the men will find boats,” said the Gharm who was leading her. “One boat will be missing, the others will have their bottoms bashed in. They will think you have gone out toward the blockade.”
“They’ll think I made it to the blockade ships? They’ll stop looking?”
“So we hope,”
“And where will I be?” asked Maire, wearily. “Aside from half-dead of walking.”
“Nearby here,” their guide told them. “In a cave. It is warm and dry. It is in a place where the wind blows the fog away often. We have supplied it with food. There is water. We are not cruel.”
It seemed to be important to the Gharm that she believe this. Maire nodded, accepting it. When she came to the cave, she found it to be as represented, a perfectly habitable space. She lowered herself to one of the pads waiting on the floor and pulled the folded blankets over her, so weary she could move no more.
“Very well,” she said. “You are not cruel.”
“Sleep,” said the Gharm. “We will watch over you.”
FIVE
• “I can walk,” Sam snarled at the men carrying him. “Put me down and let me walk.”
“Put my son down,” said Phaed, feigning surprise. “Don’t you hear him saying he can walk?”
They put him down, though they did not turn him loose. Sam’s hands were tied behind him in a particularly painful way, and Phaed held the end of the rope that bound them. The three burly men who had helped Phaed walked off into the mists, though whether they left or merely walked out of sight among the fogs, Sam could not tell.
“Where are we going?” he asked, trying to sound calm and unangered, though his entire nature screamed with outrage.
“To Sarby,” said Phaed. “We’ve rooms there, just off the square. You’ll stay with me for a while.”
Sam grated, “I’d feel more like your son, Dad, if you took off these ropes and if I
