The bellow of thunder and the howl of the wind muted the sound of the blows on Marot's fossil. The Krishnans moved about, talking and gesturing. A garrulous species, given to oratory, each seemed to try to shout the others down. The arbalesters retreated to the tents to protect their weapons from rain, but the others remained. As lightning sent lavender tentacles snaking through the clouds, the herd of ayas was led away. Misery silenced the captives.
Then a Krishnan gave a shout and pointed. Twisting his neck, Reith glimpsed, beyond the curtain of rain, mounted figures moving. The four crossbowmen boiled out of the tents, hastily recocking their weapons. Amid the gabble, Reith thought he caught the words: "Basht's gang!" He remembered Sainian's warning against the bandit chieftain.
Crossbows snapped, though the rain drowned out the thrum of the quarrels. From one of the newcomers came a scream.
All was confusion. People ran hither and thither, slipping on the mud and sometimes falling down. Swords flashed from scabbards; contradictory orders were shouted. Reith had a glimpse of Foltz, charging towards the camp with his sword out.
A mounted man pounded past, so close that Reith feared being trampled. To his astonishment, as the wind blew back the rider's rain cape, he glimpsed the black-and-white habit of an attendant of the Bákhite priest.
Nearby, two fought savagely on foot until one slipped in the mud and fell. Reith saw the other's blade rise and fall again and again, until the cries of the fallen man died away to a gurgle.
The fighting swirled away downstream. At last a feminine voice said: "Hold still, Fergus, and I'll cut you loose."
It was Alicia, wielding a dirk taken from one of the sprawled bodies. She severed Reith's bonds and then freed Marot.
"Now what?" she asked breathlessly.
Sitting up and rubbing his extremities, Marot said: "They've all gone downstream, dieu merci!—those on their feet, that is. Where are my sacred eyeglasses? Ah, there!" He picked his glasses out of the mud. "Fergus, you and Alicia go find us mounts. Then come to the dig."
"What are you planning?" said Reith, scraping mud off his face.
"You will see. I know what I do." The paleontologist limped off upstream.
"He'll collect his specimen if it kills him, and us. too," growled Reith. "But we've got to catch some ayas. Come along!"
Reith picked up his sword, which lay naked in the mud, and trotted towards the shrubs to which their ayas were tethered. There he found not only the expedition's four animals but also ten others. A Krishnan in a rain cape barred their way with a sword.
"Ohé!" said this one. "Who loosed you?"
"Out of my way!" cried Reith. "I'm collecting my animals."
"Nay, ye shan't! I command these beasts until Master Folch relieves me. Get ye hence and threaten me not! Must I spit you?"
The Krishnan stepped forward in a fencing stance. Reith bored in, lunging, thrusting, and parrying. The swords clanged and whirled, spattering raindrops. Once Reith slipped on the mud but, straining every sinew, recovered before his antagonist could take advantage of the error.
Reith feinted at the Krishnan's midriff. The Krishnan whipped his blade around in the parry in seconde, turning his hand from supine to prone. Reith had been well drilled in the counter to this maneuver, he doubled and drove his sword into the Krishnan's chest.
While Reith's blade was still fixed between his opponent's ribs, the Krishnan made a weak slash at Reith's sword arm. As the blade bit into the leather of his jacket, Reith felt the sting of a cut. He snatched his own blade back.
The Krishnan tottered forward, muttering, and crashed to the ground. Reith wiped the blue-green blood from his blade on the fallen one's garments. Battered and exhausted, he picked his own party's ayas out of the herd and gathered up their reins, saying: "Let's go, Lish!"
Reith and Alicia led their four beasts to the remaining tent. They saddled the animals, working furiously with rainwater running down their faces and little by little washing off the mud. They hastily gathered such gear as had not been scattered, smashed, or stolen. All his and Marot's extra clothing had disappeared.
Reith recovered his razor case, his igniter, and Marot's spare eyeglasses. Not seeing Marot's sword, he detached one from a corpse. He tossed everything he could find on a pair of blankets, tied up the comers of the blankets, and loaded the bundles on one of the ayas. Then he and Alicia led the animals to the dig.
They found Marot sitting on the ground in the rain, whistling a cheerful French tune as he worked, methodically going through a pile of rock fragments ranging in size from tennis balls to fists. Foltz had broken the fossil-bearing slab into about two dozen pieces but had not had time to pulverize the fragments. A few of the stones Marot tossed aside; the rest he laid on the shaihan hide stretched out before him. He looked up, saying:
"One little minute and I shall be finished."
"For God's sake!" said Reith. "What are you doing?"
"Recovering most of my specimen, which Foltz broke up. I have sorted out the pieces with bone in them and discarded the rest."
"God damn it!" Reith exploded. "Stop fooling around and come along! D'you want our throats cut after all?"
"Just three more pieces," said Marot unperturbed. "Ah, there we are!" He gathered up the comers of the hide. "Help me to tie this up and load it on our faithful beast. If I ever have another chance to kill Foltz ..."
A quarter-hour later, they wrestled the bag, now securely tied and weighing about forty kilos, up to the back of the pack aya. It took the combined strength of all three to hoist the awkward bundle into place. Marot and Alicia held it balanced while Reith hunted for more rope to fasten it to the pack saddle. Then the aya shook itself, the bundle got away from them and clattered to the ground, and they had to start over.
When the job was finally done, Reith raked a forearm across a forehead coated with a mud of clay, rain, and sweat. "Ready at last?" he gasped.
"Hokay. A bord!"
They walked their mounts up the slope away from the river. As they neared the upper level, there was a lull in the rain. Turning back, Marot said:
"Look, my friends!"
From this elevation, they could see a place on the nearer river bank, a few hundred meters downstream from Reith's camp. There stood a cluster of people, afoot and mounted, with their yellow hats and rain capes bright against the dark, drab, rainswept ground. The figures were too small to identify; but Reith could make out perhaps five or six standing with bound hands. Surrounding them, afoot and on ayas, stood the attendants of the Reverend Behorj, weapons at the ready. A couple of bodies sprawled nearby.
"That ends Monsieur Foltz's dig," said Marot in tones of grim satisfaction. "Can you see if he is among the living, Fergus?"
"Not from here, especially as he's in Krishnan disguise."
"What on earth happened?" said Alicia as they rode off. "Foltz's gang seemed to be fighting Behorj's escort, but how could that be? It makes no sense."
"It was Behorj's escort," said Reith. "Foltz's gang mistook them for bandits and started a fight; all one big blunder. Now I'm one solid bruise from the manhandling Foltz's people gave me. What about you? I saw Foltz lead you away towards the fossil, and I thought you were trying to persuade him to come back and cut our throats."
"Oh, you idiot! I was furious at you, of course; though I admit Aristide handled the priest better than I could have. But I wasn't mad enough to ask Warren to kill you. After all, you were once my husband; and I'm still fond of you, even if you do get my back up at times."
"Then what were you doing, pulling at his arm and bickering with him?"
"I was trying to save you two, silly, and dissuade Warren from breaking up the fossil. Paleo isn't my line; but as a fellow scientist I can imagine how Aristide felt. But Warren said he was going to smash the fossil, which he said he had a moral right to do; and then come back, kill you two, and bury you.