"Join the club," Jack said with a sniff.
"I'm sorry—would you like to ride for a while?" Alison asked sweetly, gesturing to the vine hammock at her feet.
"What about Taneem?" Draycos asked before Jack could come up with a suitably sarcastic answer.
"She's fine," Alison assured him. "She's been sleeping most of the time, too, I think. But she's fine."
"This from your vast experience with K'da?" Jack put in.
Alison gave him a look of strained patience, then lifted her collar an inch and peered down into her shirt. "Taneem?" she called.
For a moment nothing happened. Then, the upper right side of Alison's shirt stirred and the top of a dark gray K'da crest pushed up against the cloth as it transformed into three-dimensional form. Alison opened her collar a little more, and the crest was joined by the top of Taneem's head and a single silver eye peering through the gap. "Yes?" a tentative voice asked.
Jack felt his mouth drop open a little. Taneem was actually speaking?
"This is Jack, Taneem," Alison said, pointing to him. If she was surprised by the Phooka's new verbal skills, she didn't show it. "And this is Draycos. Do you remember them?"
The single visible eye swiveled to look first at Jack and then at Draycos. "I think so," Taneem murmured.
"They're friends," Alison said, talking to the Phooka as if to a young child. "Do you understand?"
The eye swiveled to Jack, then back to Draycos. "I think so," she said again.
"Good," Alison said. "Then—" She broke off as the dragon crest abruptly flattened back down onto her skin. "Taneem?" she called. "Taneem?"
There was no response. "She's a little shy, I think," Alison said. "Still, it's progress."
"It is indeed," Draycos agreed, his tail making slow circles again.
"Aren't you glad now that we saved them?" Jack asked.
An instant later he wished he'd kept his mouth shut. Draycos spun to face him, his crest stiff, glowing green eyes glittering unpleasantly. "Sorry," Jack apologized hastily. "Sorry. I didn't mean it that way."
The crest relaxed a little. "I know," Draycos said, some of the fire going out of his eyes. "Yet you are right. To my shame, you are right. For a time I did not permit myself to hope."
"Just don't hope too high and too fast," Alison warned. "This whole thing is very new to her. She's not going to be operating at the level of a K'da poet-warrior any time soon."
"I'm just glad she's able to talk," Jack said. "And in English, yet. Is that what you were muttering in your sleep? English lessons?"
Alison frowned. "What are you talking about? I don't talk in my sleep."
"How would you know?" Jack countered.
"My parents told me," Alison retorted. "What was I saying?"
Frost, Neverlin, Braxton . . . "Just your basic nonsense muttering," Jack said. "Nothing I could make out. So you weren't teaching her English?"
"Not that I know," Alison said, still looking troubled. "I assume she picked it up the same time Hren and the other Erassvas did. So what's our current plan?"
"We've veered east from their last ambush attempt, so it's probably time to turn north again," Jack said. "If your guess a couple of days ago was right, we've still got two or three more days before we hit the river."
"Then we'd better move it," Alison said. "What was this about an ambush?"
"It didn't work," Jack said. "We can leave the details until it's too dark to travel."
"Fine," Alison said. "You can go back to your herding—I'll take point."
Heading north, as it turned out, was easier said than done.
The first obstacle was a line of crumbly-edged cliffs like the one the ill-fated red Phooka had fallen down on the evening of their first day in the forest. Alison found a way through, but it cost them time they didn't really have to spare.
The second obstacle was another bog, or perhaps an arm of the same one they'd spent the day slogging through. Alison was half-inclined to go on in, citing the same reason of enemy stalemate that Jack had given Draycos earlier in the day. She seemed surprised and even a bit embarrassed when she learned that the party had already done that once, and that Jack for one had no interest in a repeat performance.
The sun was dropping toward the horizon and a line of evening clouds was creeping across the sky when they finally finished circling the swampland and Alison called a halt. "What do you think?" she asked as Jack and Draycos joined her. "We've got maybe another hour of light left. Do we want to keep going north, or should we angle northeast and get back to the path we were on earlier?"
Jack peered through the trees, studying the terrain. Neither direction looked any better or worse than the other. "I vote for northeast," he said. "That'll put the bog at our backs, which means they probably won't be coming at us from that direction."
"And we'll have a place to retreat to if necessary," Alison agreed. "So we'll angle northeast until dark, then turn north again tomorrow?"
"That should work," Jack said. "Draycos?"
"I have no objections."
"Good." Alison craned her neck. "Anyone seen Taneem? She hopped off just before I called break."
"She is over there," Draycos said, flicking his tongue to the side.
"I see her," Alison said, nodding. "Taneem? Come on, girl. Time to go."
Obediently, Taneem trotted toward them. She eyed Jack and Draycos a little nervously as she approached, sidling gingerly past them as if afraid to touch either of them. She placed one of her forepaws on Alison's outstretched hand, and a second later had gone two-dimensional and slithered up the girl's arm. "At least she's not completely oblivious to the universe, like the other Phookas," Jack said.
"No," Draycos rumbled. "Instead, she has become excessively timid."
Jack had hoped the K'da wouldn't notice that. "Give her time," he urged quietly. "Like Alison said, she's new to this."
"I know," Draycos said. But Jack could still hear the disappointment in his voice. "Come—help me get the rest of the Phookas moving."
He padded away. Jack looked at Alison, lifted his eyebrows. "I don't know," she said, shrugging helplessly. "But he's right—let's get moving before we lose the daylight."
It was quickly clear that neither the Erassvas nor the Phookas were really interested in going any farther. As Draycos set off on his moving-sentry duty he could hear Hren complaining to Alison, insisting they be allowed to settle down for the night. For her part, Alison responded by ignoring his protests and continuing to walk.
The Phookas, without the ability to complain, simply began dragging their feet. Draycos could hear Jack's running footsteps weaving in and out of the herd as the boy urged, cajoled, and occasionally ordered them to keep going.
Once or twice Draycos heard the sound of a light slap when none of the words would do the trick. More frequently, he heard a muttered curse that the boy had apparently borrowed from Uncle Virge's vast collection of such words. Clearly, Jack was as exhausted as the rest of them.
But one way or another, he kept the herd moving, and he kept it mostly together. Draycos kept an eye out for stragglers as he ran the perimeter, again finding himself impressed by Jack's ability at the task. There were very few stragglers that made it anywhere near Draycos, and even those Jack usually managed to snag before the K'da had to step in.
The sky overhead was darkening, and he was starting to look for a suitable place to camp for the night, when he heard the sound of the Malison Ring floater.
He froze in place, swiveling his head back and forth. It was coming up from behind them, from the south, he decided. And unlike earlier that day, this time it was headed straight for them.