following the river, so I won’t need the canteen, so I filled it with fuel. That can be useful stuff.”
“Not for drinking, I hope.”
“Fuel burns.”
“Is it random killing you [sic-should be “your”] plan? Or something more organized?”
“I don’t
“If you.”
“If I can’t destroy their refuge, I accomplish nothing. If I don’t… if I can’t do something… large?”
“For your honor?”
“Yes. What Warvia did-I am nothing now. I must make myself something.”
“Wish.”
“To destroy the Shadow Nest.”
“You shall.”
“Make it fall. Crush them underneath.”
“That could be difficult.”
“Difficult?” Tegger shouldered his pack. He noticed three naked Machine People entering Cruiser Two. That was harmless, but they might search the other cruiser next. Tegger eased away into the bush.
He spoke to himself, or to the empty air. “Difficult. It’s impossible! I can’t invade a vampire nest. If I could get above them, onto that floating factory-but I’d have to fly.”
Whisper: “What is Valavirgillin hiding?”
Huh? “Machine People have their secrets,” Tegger said.
Whisper: “She knew that you and Warvia would succumb to the vampire lure. Still, she hopes that her little army can win. Does she know something that nobody else does?”
Tegger’s mind was trying to shut down; the moan was rising in his throat.
His first coherent thought in some time was that he had just heard Whisper’s first
Louis Wu of the Ball People had visited Ginjerofer’s tribe. Valavirgillin knew him, too… knew him better, since rishathra was among her skills. Had Louis Wu revealed something to her?
And he’d seen her naked, moments ago.
“She must have left her pack with her clothes. Whisper, where are Valavirgillin’s clothes?”
“Look along the shore… there. The pack is on the mud flat but you could reach it with a stick.”
“Whisper, I’m not a thief. I only want to look.”
The voice whispered, “What if Valavirgillin hides knowledge that would help her companions?”
“Information is property.”
Silence answered.
“Am I mad?” he asked himself. This wayspirit had done nothing Tegger’s own mind couldn’t do. What had happened to him might drive anyone mad. Was there a Whisper?
Warvia had suffered a shattering shock. What was she feeling? The horrifying truth was that she might be as crazy as him.
And Tegger was creeping through the brush like some predator, his prey a leather pack that didn’t belong to him.
Stop, listen for rustling brush, for Whisper or for his companions. Nothing.
He must already be lunatic, to suspect the Machine People woman. This was truly Valavirgillin’s war. She had involved the Ghouls, where a megalomaniac would have kept command for herself. Valavirgillin’s weaponry was worth their lives…
But here was her clothing, washed and tossed over bushes, and her backpack hung here, too. He could look.
He need not show himself. His blade had the reach. He slid its point under the strap and fished the strap to him, and slid backward on his belly into the bushes.
The pack opened out flat, like many he’d seen, but unlike those, this had a good many pockets. Leather on the outside; some very finely woven stuff as a lining. Her firestarter was as good as his own, traded from some distance away. Blanket, fancy canteen (empty), a box containing damp soap, bullets and an empty handgun.
The gun: for Tegger it might be the difference between life and death. Between thief and-there was no word for what he and Warvia were now, but every hominid knew the word
“Lunatic,” he said. He was trying to put things back as he’d found them. Could he get the pack back without being suspected?
He whispered into the silence. “I do not hold title to Machine People gunpowder. Stealing that secret would be
The lining: it was
He rubbed it in his fingers. Its weave was too fine to see at any distance. It had layers, several layers.
He separated a layer out and pulled. Threads of a less robust material separated, and the layer detached.
It was filmy stuff, very fine. He could see no way to put it back. What was it?
What was Whisper’s interest?
He stuffed it into his kilt. That was less likely to be searched than his pack. He wrapped Valavirgillin’s pack. His blade set it back on a branch, perhaps the right branch.
His erstwhile companions were all up and down the beach and into the bush. Maybe they were hunting him. He’d best be on his way.
Tegger knee-walked through brush until the brush petered out. Then he ran on bare mud, hidden in a mist growing gradually denser.
The river was broadening, and so was the mud-flat shore. The cruisers were out of sight.
Tegger wasn’t worried about River Folk. Folk whose eyes must see through air and water both would have trouble identifying him. They couldn’t swim as fast as he could run, and they could hardly walk at all. How would they inform the cruisers? He was outrunning the news of himself.
Tegger was on his own.
The knowledge was a tearing in his chest. Though four alien species had been his allies and friends, he gave them little thought. His grief was for Warvia. Never since their mating, never since his childhood or hers, had they been separated for more than a few days.
The world must change before he could ever face her again.
The over changed as he ran. Sand. Pebbles. A stand of trees dug in all over a bare rock cliff, nearly to the water. Narrow rapids here, and he had to climb a cliff side to get around them. Three vampires and an infant, huddled in the meager shadow of an overhanging cliff across the river, watched him run away from them and didn’t give chase.
As the day passed, he ran.
CHAPTER EIGHT — FOR NOT BEING WARVIA
It had been raining since midday. Valavirgillin tried to find paths over bare rock, but there was mud everywhere. Tilting, skidding, never quite toppling over, the wagons moved downstream toward the Shadow Nest.
When night bit an edge from the sun, Vala already had the military high ground picked out.
The river was four hundred paces wide here. Rooballabl and Fudghabladl should be safe enough. The cruisers filled their water tanks, then rolled up toward the crest. These nearer mountains were foothills to the Barrier of Flame, but that highest one would do.
