Jungle Of Steel And Stone

street. And the boy had run away.

Perhaps he should have killed the boy, Veil thinks—but the boy had not killed him when he'd had the chance. Veil finds everything confusing; life is clean and simple in the desert, and it is usually easy to tell friends from enemies. Not in Newyorkcity, this is a place that clouds a warrior's mind and drains his will.

He sniffs a large amount of the Nal-toon's blood-shilluk. Then, impatient with the increasing slowness of the effect, he sniffs still more. Finally, his head spinning, Veil passes out.

* * *

Night-chill awakens Veil-in-Toby. He lies still, listening, trying to probe the darkness with his hunter-warrior's senses in order to evaluate the surrounding area. When he is satisfied that there is no one near, he pushes aside the brush that covers him and sits up. The pain that shoots through his skull almost makes him keel over, and he quickly sniffs some blood-shilluk. It takes a long time for the blood-shilluk to take effect, but Veil waits, unwilling to risk passing out if he takes more. He must move on.

It occurs to him that he should eat, although he has not been hungry for a long time. He has no food but resolves to find the strength to hunt at the earliest opportunity. He drinks at a nearby stream, then moves on to the southeast.

A full moon lights the open ground. Under other circumstances he might not travel so quickly after the incident in the open building, but he feels that the Nal-toon now wants him to hurry. No matter how much he rests, Veil thinks, he seems to grow progressively weaker. He must get to the airplane fields soon. He is terribly lonely and he wants to go home.

He moves through the trees around the perimeter of a meadow. As he approaches the far end Veil stops and gazes suspiciously at an area where the meadow narrows. The whole jungle is growing smaller, he thinks, narrowing. Although he has been walking in a straight line through trees, he now finds that there is a stone wall close to his right, and beyond that a street. He is in danger.

His head pulses with pain, but he resists the impulse to take more blood-shilluk; while the God-medicine at one time cleared his senses and eased his pain, it now tends to confuse and disorient him even further. He is no longer sure of the proper amount to take, and so he decides to try to take none—at least not while he is traveling.

Veil slumps down, braces his back against a tree, and checks his weapons. He has lost his throwing stick, but he still has his bow, six poisoned arrows, and a hastily constructed spear with a sharp stone head, lashed to the shaft with vines. He considers these adequate replacements for the spear and knife lost in the place of the rolling wooden objects.

He is so very, very tired, Veil thinks—yet he must make a decision. He does not wish to go out into the lighted street while there is still cover, but the narrowing of the jungle before him makes him nervous; it is an area where man-snares could be set, or where Newyorkcities could be waiting to ambush him.

To go out into the street where he can be seen, Veil thinks, or go on into the narrow jungle where he can be trapped?

He knows he must make the decision, and it looms as an unbearable, momentous hurdle. Suddenly he begins to weep.

'Great Nal-toon, please help me,' Veil whispers, ashamed of his sobbing but unable any longer to control his depthless sorrow and loneliness. 'My will is leaving me, and I do not think I can go on without strength, which You must give me. When will I be judged to have passed Your trial, great Nal-toon? Please have mercy on and forgive me, Nal-toon, for this warrior is finished.'

Chapter Fifteen

Veil rose to his feet and glanced around them, while Reyna continued crawling on her hands and knees along a bare patch of ground where there were many footprints. Throughout the day, mourners had cast hostile glances at the man and woman who acted strange and carried a noisy tape recorder. However, it was not annoyed mourners that concerned Veil; once, just before noon, he'd caught the glint of metal where the bright sunlight had shafted down through a gap in a heavily wooded area with no graves. He had the strong feeling that they were being watched, and it did not surprise him. After the incident at the construction site he knew that anyone with a map, ruler, and a modicum of intelligence could at least guess that the K'ung prince was heading southeast, even if his destination was unclear. Veil expected any number of hunters in the field before nightfall.

'Who were you talking with on the phone last night?' Reyna asked without looking up from the ground.

'Victor Raskolnikov and a couple of other friends,' Veil answered absently as he continued to study the surrounding woods and the small field of grave markers, which they were now searching. 'One's a doctor, and the other's a pilot and a mercenary. They're going to deliver Toby and the Nal-toon back to the Kalahari. Victor's financing the operation.'

'Oh, Veil,' Reyna said, glancing up at him. She was crying but with joy. 'Why didn't you tell me before?'

Veil shrugged. 'We can't take Toby anywhere unless we find him.'

'How will they do it?'

'In stages. First he'll be flown over the border into either Canada or Mexico—it hasn't been decided which yet, and that decision rests on a couple of other factors. If the doctor can patch him up, he'll be given false travel documents and put on a plane to Botswana. Otherwise, Walrus—the pilot—will deliver Toby himself. Your missionary friends have already been contacted, and they're taking care of business at the other end.'

Reyna got to her feet, walked over to Veil, and hugged him. 'Thank you,' she said simply.

'Don't thank me yet. We have to get Toby to Flushing Airport. Right now that fifteen miles might as well be fifteen thousand. Have you found anything?'

'Not here. I'm pretty sure he's behind us.'

'If you do find spoor, don't react. I think we've got company.'

'I know. I saw a couple of them. They're waiting for us to deliver the goods, aren't they?'

'Of course. How did you read them? Cops or crooks?'

'I think crooks.'

'Agreed. Cops would handle it differently.' Veil held Reyna out at arm's length and smiled. 'You're holding up beautifully.'

Reyna grinned shyly. 'What else is there to do?'

'Nothing. I'm just telling you that you're special.'

'Thanks. My biggest concern right now is that Toby will try to circle around through the streets tonight.'

'Because he'll see that this is a bottleneck?'

'Yes. And he'll sense the presence of the men—if they're still here tonight.'

Veil glanced at his watch. 'It will be dark in a couple of hours, so it's time for us to lose our observers. We'll walk back up to the other end of the cemetery, then go out and get something to eat. Keep talking to him. Lay it on the line, Reyna. Make it short and sweet. If he doesn't come to us tonight, it's all over.'

* * *

Veil worked quickly in the darkness, stooping and opening the canvas sack he had brought back with him. Inside was a three-hundred-yard length of strong twine to which tiny bells had been attached at twenty-yard intervals. Twine and bells had been stained black.

Both Veil and Reyna had covered their exposed flesh with mud.

Avoiding the patches of bright moonlight that fell through the trees, Veil went to the far edge of the cemetery. He tied one end of the twine around a tree trunk, then worked his way back. Within twenty minutes he had strung the entire width of the bottleneck.

Veil took both of Reyna's hands in his. 'Assuming Toby finally decides to do things the easy way, do you think he can find us?'

'I don't know, Veil.'

'Well, we can't use the recorder or have you call out anymore, because we don't know who else might be listening. So we'll have to do it the hard way, if necessary. You stay here, and I'll go out along the line about a