Radnal and Horken hurried to see what he’d come across. “Where?” Radnal asked. Impac pointed to a patch of ground softer than most in the area. Sure enough, it held marks. The more experienced men squatted to take a better look. They glanced up together; their eyes met. Radnal said, “Freeman vez Potos, those are the tracks of a bladetooth. If you look carefully, you can see where it dragged its tail in the dirt. Donkeys never do that.”
“Oh,” Impac said in a small, sad voice.
Radnal sighed. He hadn’t bothered mentioning that the tracks were too small for donkeys’ and didn’t look like them, either. “Let’s try once more,” he said. The spiral resumed.
When Impac yelled again, Radnal wished he hadn’t tried to salve his feelings. If he stopped them every hundred heartbeats, they’d never find anything. This time, Horken stayed where he was. Radnal stalked over to Impac. “Show me,” he growled.
Impac pointed once more. Radnal filled his lungs to curse him for wasting their time. The curse remained unspoken. There at his feet lay the unmistakable tracks of three donkeys. “By the gods,” he said.
“They are right this time?” Impac asked anxiously.
“Yes. Thank you, freeman.” Radnal shouted to the other searchers. The seven headed southwest, following the recovered trail. Fer vez Canthal went up to Impac and slapped him on the back. Impac beamed as if he’d performed bravely in front of the Hereditary Tyrant. Considering the service he’d just done Tartesh, he’d earned the right.
He was also lucky, Radnal thought. But he’d needed courage to call out a second time after being ignominiously wrong the first, and sharp eyes to spot both sets of tracks, even if he couldn’t tell what they were once he’d found them. So more than luck was involved. Radnal slapped Impac’s back, too.
Sweat poured off Radnal. As it evaporated from his robes, it cooled him a little, but not enough. Like a machine taking on fuel, he drank again and again from the bladder on his back.
Now the sun was in his face. He tugged his cap over his eyes, kept his head down, and tramped on. When the Krepalgans tried doubling back, he spotted the ruse instead of following the wrong trail and wasting hundreds of precious heartbeats.
By then, the western sky was full of helos. They roared about in all directions, sometimes low enough to kick up dust. Radnal wanted to strangle the pilots who flew that way; they might blow away the trail, too. He yelled into the radiophone. The low-flying helos moved higher.
A big transport helo set down a few hundred cubits in front of the walkers. A door in its side slid open. A squadron of soldiers jumped down and hurried west.
“Are they close or desperate?” Radnal wondered.
“Desperate, certainly,” Peggol said. “As for close, we can hope. We haven’t drowned yet. On the other hand”-he always thought of the other hand-“we haven’t caught your two sluts, either.”
“They weren’t mine,” Radnal said feebly. But he remembered their flesh sliding against his, the way their breath had caught, the sweat-salty taste of their skin.
Peggol read his face. “Aye, they used you, Radnal vez, and they fooled you. If it makes you feel better, they fooled me, too; I thought they kept their brains in their twats. They outsmarted me with the fornication books in their gear and the skin they showed. They used our prudishness against us — how could anyone who acts that way be dangerous? It’s a ploy that won’t work again.”
“Once may have been plenty.” Radnal wasn’t ready to stop feeling guilty.
“If it was, you’ll pay full atonement,” Peggol said.
Radnal shook his head. Dying when the Bottomlands flooded wasn’t atonement enough, not when that flood would ruin his nation and might start an exchange of starbombs that would wreck the world.
The ground shivered under his feet. Despite the furnace heat of the desert floor, his sweat went cold. “Please, gods, make it stop,” he said, his first prayer in years.
It stopped. He breathed again. It was just a little quake; he would have laughed at tourists for fretting over it. At any other time, he would have ignored it. Now it nearly scared him to death.
A koprit bird cocked its head, peered down at him from a thornbush that held its larder.
Hig-hig-hig! it said, and fluttered to the ground. Radnal wondered if it could fly fast enough or far enough to escape a flood.
The radiophone let out a burst of static. Radnal thumbed it to let himself transmit: “Vez Krobir here.”
“This is Combat Group Leader Turand vez Nital. I wish to report that we have encountered the Krepalgan spies. Both are deceased.”
“That’s wonderful!” Radnal relayed the news. His companions raised a weary cheer. Then he remembered again his nights with Evillia and Lofosa. And then he realized Combat Group Leader vez Nital hadn’t sounded as overjoyed and relieved as he should have. Slowly, he said, “What’s wrong?”
“When encountered, the Krepalgans were moving eastward.”
“Eastw — Oh!”
“You see the predicament?” Turand said. “They appear to have completed their work and to have been attempting to escape. Now they are beyond questioning. Please keep your transmission active so a helo can home on you and bring you here. You look to be Tartesh’s best hope of locating the bomb before its ignition. I repeat, please maintain transmission.”
Radnal obeyed. He looked at the Barrier Mountains. They seemed taller now than they had when he set out. How long would they keep standing tall? The sun was sliding down toward them, too. How was he supposed to search after dark? He feared tomorrow morning would be too late.
He passed on to his comrades what the officer had said. Horken vez Sofana made swimming motions. Radnal stooped for a pebble, threw it at him.
A helo soon landed beside the seven walkers. Someone inside opened the sliding door. “Come on!” he bawled.
“Move it, move it!”
Moving it as fast as they could, Radnal and the rest scrambled into the helo. It went airborne before the fellow at the door had it fully closed. A couple of hundred heartbeats later, the helo touched down hard enough to rattle the tour guide’s teeth. The crewman at the door undogged it and slid it open. “Out!” he yelled.
Out Radnal jumped. The others followed. A few cubits away stood a man in a uniform robe similar but not identical to the one the militia wore. “Who’s freeman vez Krobir?” he said. “I’m Turand vez Nital.”
“I’m vez Krobir. I-” Radnal broke off. Two bodies lay behind the Tarteshan soldier. Radnal gulped. He’d seen corpses on their funeral pyres, but never before sprawled out like animals waiting to be butchered. He said the first thing that popped into his head: “They don’t look like you shot them.”
“We didn’t,” the officer said. “When they saw they couldn’t escape, they took poison.”
“They were professionals,” Peggol murmured.
“As may be,” Turand growled. “This one”-he pointed at Evillia-“wasn’t gone when we got to her. She said, ‘You’re too late,’ and then died, may night demons gnaw her ghost forever.”
“We’d better find that cursed bomb fast, then,” Radnal said. “Can you take us to where the Krepalgans were cornered?”
“This very heartbeat,” Turand said. “Come with me. It’s only three or four hundred cubits from here.” He moved at a trot that left the worn walkers gasping in his wake. At last he stopped and waited impatiently for them to catch up. “This is where we found them.”
“And they were coming east, you said?” Radnal asked.
“That’s right, though I don’t know for how long,” the officer answered. “Somewhere out there is the accursed starbomb. We’re scouring the desert, but this is your park. Maybe, your eye will fall on something they’d miss. If not-”
“You needn’t go on,” Radnal said. “I almost fouled my robe when we had that little tremor a while ago. I thought I’d wash ashore on the Krepalgan border, ten million cubits from here.”