The crowd fell back to palaver over the amazing single-mindedness of the exotic sportsmen, and Burke began to get dressed. Uwe waggishly suggested that the Tanu were nearly as bad as the Irish for loving a fight without considering the long-view consequences. There was universal laughter at this and not a single son nor daughter of Erin’s Isle rose to defend the racial honor. The thought flashed into Burke’s mind that there was a reason for this, and he ought to know what it was; but at the same moment Khalid Khan caught sight of the red man’s healing wound.
“Mashallah, Peo! You did scratch yourself up a bit, didn’t you?”
Burke’s left leg was hideously indented at the calf by a purplish-red scar over twenty cents in length. He grunted. “Souvenir of a one-horned chozzer. It killed Steffi and damn near did for me by the time Pegleg shlepped me back here to Amerie. Galloping septicemia. But she caught it. Looks like hell, but I can walk, even run, if I care to pay the price.”
Uwe reminded him, “The meeting of the Steering Commitee. Tonight. Khalid should come.”
“Right. But first we have to see to the needs of this gang. How about it, men? Food and drink’s on the way, but is there anything else we can do for you now?”
Khalid said, “Sigmund’s hand. Aside from our three deaders, he’s the only casualty.”
“What happened?” Burke asked.
Sigmund sheepishly hid his stump. “Aw. I was stupid. Giant salamander sprang at me, fanged me right in the palm. You know there’s only one thing to do, the way their venom works…”
“Sig was bringing up the rear,” Denny said. “All of a sudden we missed him. When we went back to investigate, there he was putting on a tourniquet cool as you please, with his vitredur axe and his mitt lying on the ground beside him.”
“You come along with us to Amerie’s place,” the Chief said. “We’ll have her check it out.”
“Aw, it’s all right, Chief. We put plenty of AB and progan on it.”
“Shut your pisk and come along.” The Chief turned to the others. “The rest of you boys relax and eat and have a couple of days’ sleep. There’ll be a big council of war, a contingent one, anyhow, inside of a week, when the volunteers from the other settlements start showing up. We’ll need you to work on this iron when we get the blacksmith shop set up some place where the Firvulag won’t spot it. Till then, I’ll take charge of the stuff. Put it out of temptation’s reach.”
Then Burke raised his voice so that the entire bathhouse could hear him. “All of you! If you value your own lives, and if you give a damn about the liberty of humans who are still enslaved, forget about what you’ve seen and heard here tonight.”
A breath of assent rose from the assemblage. The Chief nodded and hoisted two of the heavy sacks. Khalid and Uwe dragged away the other four and they moved out of the bathhouse, trailed by Sigmund.
“The meeting is at Madame’s cottage as usual,” Burke told the metalsmith as he limped along. “Amerie’s living there now. We put her on the committee by acclamation.”
Uwe said, “That nunnie is some medic. She shrank Max! so we don’t have to keep him locked up anymore. And poor Sandra, no more suicidal threats now that the fungus is cured. Then there’s Chaim’s eyelid, all rebuilt, and she healed that big mother of an ulcer on Old Man Kawai’s foot.”
“That’ll make for quieter meetings,” Khalid remarked. “One less thing for the old boy to complain about. This nun sounds like a handy lady to have around.”
The Chief chuckled. “I didn’t even mention the way she cleaned up sixteen cases of worms and almost all the jungle rot. Madame might have to do some fancy politicking in the next election if she wants to hold on to the freeleadership of this gang of outlaws.”
“It never struck me that she relished the honor.” Khalid was acerbic. “Any more than you did when you were in the hot seat.”
They plodded along, making almost no sound on the path that wound beneath the sheltering trees. The long canyon had many little dead-end tributaries from which the numerous springs debouched. Most of the cottages had been built close to these natural water supplies. There were some thirty homes altogether, in which dwelt the eighty-five human beings who made up the largest Lowlife settlement in the known Pliocene world.
The four men crossed a rill on stepping-stones and headed up one of the rocky clefts to where a distinctive little house stood under a huge pine. The cottage was not built like the others of prosaic logs or wattle and daub, but of neatly mortared stone, washed white with lime and reinforced with dark half-timbering. It was eerily evocative of a certain elder-world dwelling in the hills above Lyon. Madame’s rose cuttings, nourished by the manure of mastodons, had burgeoned into rampant climbers that all but smothered the thatched roof in blossoms. The night air was heavy with their perfume.
The men came up the path, then halted. Standing in their way was a tiny animal. Stiff-legged, its oversized eyes gleaming, it growled.
“Hey, Deej!” Burke laughed. “It’s just us, pupikeh. Friends!”
The little cat growled louder, the low nimble moving up the scale to become a threatening howl. It stood its ground.
Chief Burke put down his burden and knelt with one hand outstretched. Khalid Khan stepped behind Sigmund, a memory and a terrible suspicion crowding to the fore of his mind. A memory of a rainy night inside a Tree when the cat had growled like this before. A suspicion of a valued companion who had been too good a woodsman to be surprised by the relatively sluggish attack of a giant salamander…
Khalid slipped open the mouth of his sack just as the cottage door swung wide to show Amerie’s veiled figure silhouetted against dim lamplight.
“Dejah?” the nun called, rattling her rosary beads in what was evidently some signal. She caught sight of the men. “Oh, it’s you, Chief. And Khalid! You’re back! But what…”
The turbaned metalsmith seized the hair of the one they had called Sigmund. With his other hand he pressed something gray and hard against the man’s throat.
“Do not move, soor kabaj, or you are dead, even as your brother before you.”
Amerie screamed and Uwe uttered an obscenity, for Khalid was suddenly struggling with a gorgon. Instead of hair, the Pakistani clutched writhing little vipers growing from Sigmund’s scalp. These struck, sinking tiny fangs into flesh that puffed up, throbbed, as quasidcadly venom flooded the blood vessels and went racing toward Khalid’s heart.
“Stop, I say!” roared the anguished smith. Involuntarily, his right arm tightened, driving the dull point of the iron lance-blank into the soft hollow below the monster’s voicebox.
The thing emitted a gurgling squeal and went limp. Khalid sprang away from the falling body, dropping the iron. It hit the earth with a dull thud and came to rest close beside the dead shape-changer. Amerie and the three men stared down at the creature, which could have weighed no more than twenty or thirty kilos. Flattened little dugs identified it as a female. Its bald cranium was monstrously compressed just above the eyes and elongated backward into a triangular bony collar. It had a mere hole for a nose and a massive lower jaw with loose, peg-like teeth. The body was almost globular, the limbs spiderishly thin, with the left forepaw missing.
“It’s not… a Firvulag,” Amerie managed to say.
“A Howler,” Burke told her. “Some biologists believe they’re a Firvulag mutation. Each one is supposed to have a different true shape. All hideous.”
“You see what she was trying to do, don’t you?” Khalid’s voice was shaking from reaction and chagrin. He felt his left hand, which was now completely normal. “She saw us kill her mate with iron, and had to find out what the new weapon was. So she must have crept up on Sigmund as he marched at the end of the line and… she took his place. Cut off her hand so she wouldn’t have to carry the iron.”