It fell, scrabbling in the dirt, plainly trying in vain to breathe. The other two leaped away and held their distance, barking furiously. She slid both hands to the end of the staff and slashed it in what Gar had called a roundhouse swing, cracking the skull of the big dark dog. It fell, and the little one ran, howling.
But half a dozen more dogs surged around her, snapping and barking. In a panic again, she struck upward and caught one under the chin. Its head snapped back with a nasty noise like a branch popping in the fire; it cartwheeled away and fell.
Instantly the others were on it, biting and savaging. Alea stared a moment, appalled, then realized she had a chance. She stepped forward, swinging roundhouse-style again, and cracked one dog’s head, then another and another. They fell—unconscious or dead, she didn’t know and didn’t care.
Then, suddenly, the three remaining were running, amazingly fast, howling as they went. She stared, unbelieving, then felt a surge of elation such as she had never known. They had tried to kill her, and she had won!
But there might be more of them. She whirled to look past Gar.
He stood, still crouched, sword and dagger still raised, panting and glaring. Alea looked where he did, then turned away, choking down nausea. “What…” was all she managed.
“I killed several and maimed one,” Gar told her. “They ran when they found out I wasn’t going to be easy meat. When the one with the broken leg caught up with them, they turned on him.”
Alea forced herself to stare at the sight.
“Don’t look,” Gar said anxiously. “It will sicken you.”
“I have to face the world as it really is, bad as well as good!” Alea snapped. “If I’d done that all my life, I might not have been so stunned when they cast me into slavery!”
Gar was silent. She sensed a queer mixture of admiration and disapproval in him, but that only made her more determined to watch. She stared for a minute or two before she turned her back, hand pressed to her stomach, bent over and fighting nausea.
“Yes, it’s ugly,” Gar agreed.
She looked up in surprise and saw the concern in his face.
Perhaps it hadn’t been disapproval she had sensed, only fear for her delicate feelings. Well, she was determined that they wouldn’t be delicate any more!
She turned back for another glance, then turned away again. “Poor beast. I know how it felt.”
“I hope you never will,” Gar said, his voice low, “but I know what you mean.”
“Do you really?” Alea looked up at him sharply, but saw the gravity of his gaze and realized that he did. She looked away. “Thank Heaven people aren’t such traitors!”
“Aren’t they?” Gar said with contempt.
Alea’s head snapped up to stare at him, amazed to find that he, too, felt bitterness. She backed away, suddenly wary again, even though something within her told her that if she had cause for bitterness, he might well have it, too—but cause or not, it made him dangerous again.
Gar straightened up. “Quickly, let’s find that tree before they work up enough courage to come back.”
This time he gave her a boost before she could turn it down, catching her by the waist and swinging her high. She cried out in anger but caught the branch and swung herself up, glaring down at him. “Don’t you ever do that again!”
“Only if it’s a matter of life and death,” Gar assured her, “and it well could be now.” He handed his staff up, and she took it automatically. Then he leaped high, caught another branch, and swung himself up on the other side of the trunk from her. Somehow, he had managed to make his sword and dagger disappear again.
“We should go higher,” Alea said.
“If they come back, yes.” But Gar was scowling at the pack, staring at them with a somber intensity. Alea gave him a peculiar glance, wondering what was wrong with him—but the dogs suddenly broke off from what they were doing and ran howling away across the meadow, back the way they had come. When they had disappeared into the dark line of trees on the far side, their howling died away, and Gar said, “I don’t think they’ll return.”
“What scared them?” Alea asked, wide-eyed.
Gar shrugged. “Who can say? If they were someone’s pets, I might be able to read them, but I haven’t had any experience with wild dogs.” He turned to her. “Did any bite you?”
His words triggered awareness of an ache. Alea looked down, amazed to see the blood on her ankle. “I didn’t even notice it!”
“That happens in a fight sometimes.” Gar dropped down and swung his pack off. “Tell me if you see them coming back.” He took out a small bottle and a bit of cloth, pulled the stopper, then poured a little of the liquid onto the cloth. He turned to dab it on Alea’s ankle.
She snatched her foot out of the way. “Don’t touch me!”
“I won’t.” Gar sounded exasperated. “Only the cloth will—but I have to put medicine on that bite. It might make you sick otherwise.”
“Only if you put the same stuff on your wrist!”
“Wrist?” Gar looked down at his left hand, amazed. “So they did get me!”
“A wonder we each only had one,” Alea said. “Will you treat it?”
“Yes, after yours.”
“All right,” Alea said, “but only the cloth, mind!”
Gar dabbed the liquid on the bite marks, front and back. Alea cried out; it stung!
“Sorry. I should have warned you,” Gar muttered. He stepped away, dropped the bit of cloth, and took another from his pack. He poured more medicine on it and dabbed at his own wrist. Then he capped the bottle, put it away, and took out a roll of bandage. “Here. Cover the wound with this.”
Alea took it hesitantly and managed to pull her foot up well enough to wrap the bandage. “You seem awfully concerned about these bites. What are you afraid of?”
“Rabies,” Gar said, his voice hard.
Alea froze in fear. Dread crawled through her. She had seen people die of rabies, tied down and howling.
“Not really much chance of it,” Gar told her. “In the late stages, rabies is pretty obvious. But one of them might have been in the early stages.”
“There’s no cure!”
“My people have found one.” Gar took another bottle from his pack. “They used to have to scratch it into you with a needle, but after five hundred years, they learned how to make it into a pill. We’ll have to take one a day for two weeks, but it will protect us against any other bites.”
Overwhelming relief flooded Alea. She took the pill and put it in her mouth, then unslung the skin the giants had given her to squirt a mouthful of wine. Gar looked up in surprise as she handed it down to him. He nodded and took it. “Yes, thanks. Pills go down much more easily that way.” He squirted a stream into his mouth and bit it off just as skillfully as Alea had; she decided his people’s ways couldn’t be all that different from her own.
He handed the skin back to her and said, “I think we’d better try to break our trail before we pitch camp.”
“How can we do that?” Alea asked, frowning.
Gar showed her quickly enough, and it was very unpleasant. Wading through a cold stream made her ankle hurt even more, and swinging from tree branches wasn’t much better.
But she was really surprised when he asked, “What kind of plant here has a really bad smell?”
“That one.” She pointed to a broad-leafed weed.
“Then take some and rub it on your shoes,” Gar said. He yanked off a leaf, rubbed it on the soles of his boots, then pulled the rest of the leaves and set off, rubbing them on his boots every dozen steps or so.