Eddie leaned on his rifle and frowned, turning his head in a wide sweep. The fringe on the sleeve of his buckskins wobbled as he scratched his head.
"Over the river to the east?" he said tentatively. "Hide in the hills?"
"Cross two big rivers with a baby?" Jaditwara said. "And no more gear than in her saddlebags? No. She has to get shelter and food, and quickly, for her child's sake."
My son, Giernas thought, with a brief burst of fury, as quickly suppressed. You need a clear head now, goddammit.
"No," he agreed. "And she can't hole up with any of the locals, too much danger they'd turn her in."
"Well, she can't go west," Eddie said, waving. The land in that direction was even flatter and more open, millions of acres of grass to the foothills of the Coast Range. "So where would she go?"
"South," Giernas said grimly. "To the only place around here with crowds of people coming and going, strangers, where one more Indian woman with a kid wouldn't be noticed."
"Oh," Eddie said. Then: "Oh, shit"
Silent, they turned and ran back along their own trail, back to the camp. The locals were setting up, looking around for evidence of what had happened to their kin, building fires. Sue had Perks beside one of the fires on a section of hide, with water boiling and gear set out beside her. She nodded at their news.
"What do we do?" she said.
Pete forced words out. "What we planned." He waved north. "There are about half the soldiers they've got left, out of touch. We've got to act before they get their act together."
"Indigo?" Sue said gently.
"The longer she's in there, the more likely she and Jared are to get caught." He took a deep breath. "We'll have to make a few changes, though."
Sue nodded, then looked down. "I've given him a shot, but I had to short it-not sure of the dose," she said. "And this is going to hurt. A little further and that pistol ball would have lamed him for life. I think it's pressing on a nerve; he snapped at me when I touched it."
Peter Giernas knelt beside Perks's head; since Sue still had both hands, the snap would have been a warning only. The dog's eyes were wandering with the drug, but the black nose wrinkled and a long pink tongue flapped feebly at his hands. He took the heavy-boned shaggy head in his arms, remembering the puppy that had looked so sheepish when it piddled at the foot of his bed…
"It's okay, big fellah," he said quietly, taking the great scarred muzzle in one hand and clamping it closed, cradling the head against him firmly. "I know you did your best. You held them off while she got away. I'm sorry about your pups."
"Eddie, Jaddi, hold his paws," Sue said, washing off her hands and taking up the probe. "God, I wish I had more training for this-Henry should be here… All right."
She took a long breath and began. Perks whimpered, then gave a muffled howl and heaved against the hands confining him.
"Quiet, Perks!" Giernas said. "Quiet!"
The body in his arms went quivering-rigid. Sue's long-fingered hands moved; she swore, moved again…
"Got it!" she said triumphantly. The slightly flattened lead sphere thumped on the ground; Perks gave a long muffled whimper as she cleansed the incision and began to sew.
"He'll be all right in a couple of weeks, I think," she said, looking up and meeting Giernas's eyes.
"Thanks, Sue," he said. "And everything's going to be okay in a couple of days, if I have anything to do with it."
"Oh, now you sorry bastards are fucked!" Marine rifleman Otto Verger whispered in his birth-tongue. He grinned through the burned cork on his face; he had been born Ohteleraur son of Vargerax, far from this river in Tartessos. The inflatable craft waited where it had grounded among the reeds that swayed in the hissing rain, and he crouched on the slick wet fabric of it.
In harshly accented English: "It's me who's here the now, and I've got my rocket launcher!"
This little piece of Iberia was a bit like the east-country fens of Alba where he'd been born nineteen summers gone… except that here he had this fine piece of battlecraft in his hands, from the hands of the wizard-smith Leaton and his helpers. Verger loved the stubby weapon; his hands caressed it as he waited in the grounded rubber raft. A cammo-painted steel tube four inches around and four feet long, with flared padded ends, a shoulder stock and handgrips on the tube, a circular shield for the user's face on the left side and a simple optical sight. It was a lot heavier than a rifle, true. But with this you had the Fist of Tauntutonnarax the Horned Man itself at your command…
I mean, the Fist of God the Father and Son and His Mother, he corrected himself, freeing a hand for a second to sketch a cross on his chest.
Otto Verger intended to make the Republic his home; his last leave at his father's steading had settled that in his mind, watching his kin sit on a clay floor around an open hearth, cracking fleas while the stock grunted and squealed and baaaa'ed and mooed from the other end of the longhouse. So he must make his peace with Jesus and His sky-clan.
It was always well to be in good with the particular Gods of the folk you dwelt among, even if they were so strange you couldn't understand a thing about them. They were strong; that was enough.
Their sergeant had crawled off to find the others; then he raised his head over the edge of the boat from where he lay on the reeds.
"Path's marked," he said softly. "Follow me."
Verger rolled out of the boat and wiggled forward, stopping for an instant to make sure that his loader was following them; Private Sheila Rueteklo was Fiernan, and they'd stop to look at the pretty flowers in the middle of a death-duel. A slap on his boot told him she was there, and he snake-crawled forward. Mud and cold water soaked into his already saturated uniform. There were secrets to moving through swamp. If you went flat on your belly, spread your weight, you could move across quaking ground that would suck you down to your waist if you tried to go on two feet.
The toboggans following with their gear used the same principle-the Eagle People…
That's we Eagle People, fool, he corrected himself.
… were marvelously clever about that, finding new ways to use old knowledge.
If you pushed reeds flat to make a mat beneath you it was even better. The sharp green smell of bruised vegetation rose up around him, mingling with the yeasty scent of the mud, the occasional earth-fart of marsh gas, and the odors of gun oil and metal. He sniffed with a hunter's caution. Yes. There was the smoke of many banked hearths from the shore of the river to westward. The smell could come from a town, or large village, or war camp… but almost certainly from the fort the briefings had described. For a while he'd been convinced they were lost on this endless river.
Dark as arm's length up a hog's ass, he thought cheerfully. But we got here. Hard Corps!
The rocket teams and their protecting riflemen moved in across the darkened swamp with patient stealth; every once in a while an officer or noncom would pause to look at a compass and correct their passage. At last the swamp proper gave way to mere mud, liquid beneath his body with firm ground close enough below for him to crouch and duckwalk, then come half-erect. An officer came down and led them forward along a string the scouts-those picked ones like Clarkson-had put in. A lot of fen-men in this unit… Verger walked silently, despite the wet ground beneath his boots and the stumps of trees. At last he came to a tangle of fallen trunks that would make a good position, and the rain lifted a little. Light, yes, there was faint yellow light from ahead. He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them wide again. A row of squares, in a line three times the height of his head-gunport covers made from slabs of iron, with light leaking around them.