Her husband was there to see them off, along with most of his folk, and his son Frank. The older man spoke to his wife, but his eyes were on Ingolf. She translated the sonorous words:
"My man says you have brought back his son who he thought was dead for half a year. You have good luck with your spirit that turns aside evil magic, and you are a strong man who can hunt and fight and make strong sons and daughters. If you stay, we'll give you our daughter for a first wife, and build you a house and a boat for fishing and whale catching, and help you clear planting land. The… the… family-"
She waved around at all the people present; the word she was looking for was probably tribe or clan.
"-will be glad to welcome you. Your friends too."
Touched, Ingolf held out his hand to the older man; they shook, a firm hard grip.
"Tell him I'm honored," he said, which he found was true. "But I have my own people, who are depending on me. I am promised to them."
The chief of the Sea-Land tribe nodded; then he held up one hand with the palm out in a gesture of farewell. Ingolf returned it, then waded out into the chill water and vaulted over the side of the sailboat.
And it's over two weeks since I landed here, though I only lived two days of that. And young Frank was there six months, and he thought it was only an eyeblink too. I'm getting as far away from here as I can!
He shuddered as the Voice murmured at the back of his mind. It had been loud in his dreams last night. Would he ever be free of it?
"Let's see how getting really far away works," he muttered to himself. The others didn't notice, lost in their own thoughts. "It wants me to go west, anyway. That sounds fine right now."
Even half a continent empty of everything but ruins and vicious savages didn't sound too bad compared to staying close to that place.
"It's a whiles after the date I told Jose to clear out," he said as they neared Innsmouth. A full week, in fact, he thought with a slight shudder.
"Then why are we heading back there?" Kuttner asked.
He squinted across the bright water; the wind had been strong and favorable, and it was midafternoon. Nothing moved but birds, and leaf and branch waving in the stiff onshore breeze. Farther out all you could see was green; now they were close enough to see the build ings staring at them with empty eye sockets, and smell the faintest tinge of rot and ancient smoke under the greenness of the returning forest.
I will not be back east, even if I lose everything I made on this trip, Ingolf knew suddenly. I'll hoe spuds for a living and sleep in a barn for the rest of my life before I come east again. This country is poisoned.
"Why?" Kuttner said again, more sharply.
"Because I told Jose to go, but I'm not sure he did; he could have stayed a bit, thinking he could talk me around if I showed up. If he did go, he'll have left a mes sage. It's not going to be easy, getting out of here alive on foot. Not easy to catch a mounted caravan on foot, either, but we'll be a lot less likely to go into the stewpot if we can."
With fifty men and a train of wagons, you could just bull your way through. Four alone would have to spend a lot of time dodging and hiding. Even on horseback, they'd have trouble catching up. On foot. .. that would be hard. Everyone was perking up; Singh and Kaur nodded soberly.
Of course, Ingolf thought, if we can get out of here alive, it'll be a lot easier with those two along.
They stopped outside the harbor bar to suit up. The tension was almost welcome as they docked and sprang ashore, weapons ready, but the silence remained. Hot sun baked smells out of earth and sea-some familiar, some oddly alien, sharp metallic pungencies and oily half sweetness. They waited tensely, but nothing moved.
"Wait a minute," he said, and jumped back into the boat.
There was a satisfaction in chopping through the bottom, even though the springy material resisted his tomahawk, and then he nearly lost it when it did punch through a weakened patch at last and the splintered fibers gripped it. Water came bubbling through as he wrenched it free; then he slid the handle back into the loop at his back and drew his shete to slash the rigging and the furled sail to ribbons. When that was finished he bent the mast against the joint by hauling on a rope fastened to its top. That took a moment of straining effort, but he was rewarded with a grating rip of metal, and the aluminum pole tipped over.
"Why are you wasting time?" Kuttner said, when he jumped back to the dock; the sailboat was already listing.
"Because someone might have been watching and getting ideas," Ingolf said, as he sheathed the yard of steel in the scabbard across his back and took up his bow again. "I don't want any of the wild men going sail ing for their meat; that would be poor thanks for the folks who helped us. They're less likely to try it if they don't have an intact boat. Now let's get going."
There was a message, left in a hide bag fastened to a tree with a dagger. That was a message in itself-none of the wild men had come back, for they would certainly have taken both. He reached inside and unfolded the papers.
One was a letter on thick cream colored modern paper; some of the fibers in its coarse surface scritched on his calluses. The other was a piece of crumbling pre Change glossy, with a tourist map of Innsmouth on it. The note was short and to the point:
Capitan, stuff at the X. Killed more wild men second attack seventeenth August; lost Smith, Alterman and Montoya. We left twenty sixth; see you in Des Moines if not before. Go with God.
X turned out to be a warehouse, a blank windowless building of rusty pressed metal. On the ground in front of it was a circle of fresh scorch marks, where a dozen of the magnesium flares had been set off. He looked more closely, and saw the trip wires of a deadfall setup; there was a wild man, too, dead with a crossbow bolt through the chest. From the looks of the swollen, blackened body and the oily sweet stink and the maggots, the man had been there for at least three or four days, in weather like this. Kuttner had his shete out and was glaring around.
"Relax… relax a bit," Ingolf said.
The Iowan indicated the body. Ingolf nodded. "And nobody came back to eat it," he pointed out. "Jose set this up. Let's see what he left us."
They approached the doors warily, which proved to be wise: Singh pointed out another trip wire, grinning as he stood aside and triggered it with a long stick. A tunng sounded from within the warehouse, and a bolt flashed through the air, landing with a cruch sound in the body of a rusted FedEx delivery van across the road.
"That Jose, he is a clever man!" the big Sikh said, looking more natural than Ingolf had seen him since they landed on Nantucket.
"And inside is what'll save our lives."
He'd been pretty sure of what was inside, from the barnyard smelclass="underline" their horses, plus a remount each and a couple for bearing packsaddles. There was just enough water left in the buckets and containers set up to last them another day, and the food was about gone. The animals were frantic glad to see them; Boy came and nuzzled him carefully, making extra-sure it was really him, and incidentally checking him over for anything edible. He gave the horse some dried apples he carried, pushing off the others and trying to decide whether he was angry or grateful.
Some of both, he decided. Sure, they would have died of thirst soon or the wild men would have eaten 'em, and I really like Boy. On t'other hand, in the end people matter more than critters. He didn't weaken the Villains much by leaving these, and he probably saved our lives. And Jose isn't sentimental about animals.
That was true even by the standards of a farm boy, or a horse-soldier who'd seen the trail of equine car casses a hard-pressed pursuit left. Their tack was there too, plus some extra supplies-jerky and dried berries, spare arrows, presized horseshoes so their mounts could be cold shod, tools, and basic camping gear. And a substantial share of the melted-down gold and selected jewelry, neatly lashed into bundles of convenient size-convenient for a packhorse, and convenient to grab and run if you had to leave the beast behind.