Worlds That Weren't

King winced, since he’d obviously been thinking something like that. He went on more gently: “Sonjuh, remember how many of them there were. The only thing that they could have gathered in numbers like that for was war. They’re going to come swarming over the border and hit your people’s frontier settlements like Indra’s lightning-like Olsaytn’s hammer. They might not even stop at the Three Forks River. Your people have to be warned.”

Sonjuh opened her mouth, then closed it, then brightened. “Robre can do that. I’ll stay to keep you safe-we can hide you-”

Robre shook his head. “Empire man, I swore to guide ’n’ help you, not leave you for the swamp-devils to eat, ’n’ that’s a fact.”

King’s face went grimmer. “I might have expected more logic, even from a native,” he said.

Sonjuh felt herself flushing with anger again-she’d guessed what that word meant-but Robre surprised her by laughing.

“No, Jefe, you’re not going to argue me into leaving you, ’n’ you’re not going to anger me into it, either. I figure we’ll stock the canoe, then try ’n’ get you down past the swamp-devils. Your folk hold the coast, no?”

King gaped at him. Sonjuh unwillingly admitted to herself that there was some sense in that, cold-blooded though it was. Fighting their way for days downriver, through hordes of the cannibals, with only three warriors and one of them wounded, in a canoe too big and heavy for them to handle well “We hold Galveston, and we patrol the coast to either side…lightly and infrequently,” King said. “Talk sense, man!”

“You do the talkin’,” Robre said cheerfully; his face was grim. “I’ll get busy on loading the canoe.”

King was swearing again when Sonjuh put her hand across his mouth for silence. Slasher was on his feet again, bristling, fangs showing in a silent snarl, his nose pointed landward whence came the wind. The humans froze, peering about, and then Robre quietly put the box of supplies down and stepped backward to dry land to reach for where his bow leaned against another.

“Down!” she called.

They all flattened themselves. Arrows whipped by at chest-height above them, and a howling broke free from the woods to the eastward. More screeches answered it, out on the river; Sonjuh looked that way, and saw canoes boiling out from the bluff there, paddles stabbing into the water.

A rhythmic cry rose from the crews, near enough to her tongue that she could understand the words: “Meat! Eat! Meat! Eat!”

“Watch the land!” King shouted, rolling behind a couple of sacks of cornmeal and aiming his rifle riverward. Crack…crack, and a canoe went over as a rower sprang up in the final convulsion of death.

Howls came from landward. Sonjuh prepared her crossbow with hands that would have shaken, if she had permitted it. They must have sent runners up the bank and then over, she thought. And had more canoes there…too smart, for swamp-devils. They’ve been learning, damn them!

The cry from the woods turned into a chant: “ MEAT! EAT! ”

“I was never so glad to hear good old-fashioned Imperial volley-fire… ai! ”

The last was a brief involuntary exclamation as Ranjit’s thick-fingered right hand pulled the arrow-stub free with one long surging draw. His left poured the disinfectant, and King felt it through the wound and in streaks up the nerves of his leg, into his groin and belly. It was far from the worst pain he’d ever experienced, but it was certainly among the top five in an adventurous life. To deal with it as the Sikh’s experienced fingers tied on the field dressing, he looked past Sonjuh’s anxious face where she knelt holding his leg for the bandage and to the eastern shore where the sun rose over tall forest, across a river like molten metal wisped with mist. Were hating black eyes looking at him? Probably, he thought. We only killed a dozen or two of them- it was hard to tell how many bodies had gone into the water, especially since a patrol of alligators had gone by, picking up snacks- and there were thousands over there. I’d be surprised if they aren’t crossing north and south of here already. Dismally determined types.

The clansmen and soldiers were grouped around the islet, less three dead and several wounded. The stink of the cannibals’ corpses was strong, stronger than the newly dead usually were; flights of ravens and great-winged buzzards waited, on the wing or perched in trees nearby.

“How did you get here so fast, on foot?” King went on.

Ranjit Singh grinned whitely in his black beard. “I mounted us all on the pack animals, huzoor,” he said. “By turns; each man on foot to hold onto a strap while he ran. So we made good time.”

King nodded; that had been clever. The trick had been used before; sometimes cavalry brought infantry forward so during an attack, with a foot soldier clinging to a stirrup while the horse trotted.

“Did you hear?” he called over to Robre, who was sitting in a circle with his fellow tribesmen, amid fast speech and gestures.

“Yup,” Robre said, turning to face the Imperial. “Figure you’re planning on leaving us now?”