Roger saw one of the point-guards raise a hand and drop to one knee. The mahouts drew the pack beasts to a stop instantly in response, and the prince trotted forward as the column accordioned behind them.
Dogzard looked up from where she'd been riding on Patty's rump. The dog-lizard raised her striped head as she sniffed the air and hissed. Matsugae wasn't cooking, and nothing was trying to eat anyone, so she jumped off her perch and followed Roger.
The point, Lance Corporal Kane from Third Platoon, was stopped at the lip of a marsh. The bank was short, barely a quarter of a meter of bare dirt, and then there was only water, covered with weeds.
The vista stretching into the distance wasn't encouraging. The swamp was choked with fallen trees and dead vines, and the live vegetation was gray and weirdly shaped, clearly different from the normal jungle foliage. Roger looked around, then walked over to a sapling and lopped it off with the sword he'd taken to carrying slung over his back.
He was probing the marsh with his stick while Dogzard sniffed at the water disdainfully when Pahner walked up behind him.
"You know, Your Highness," the captain said dryly, "sometimes there are things that eat people at the fringe of water like this." The Marine seemed to have at least partially forgiven Roger for blasting the company with a stick of grenades, but the prince was still inclined to watch his tongue with rather more care than usual.
"Yes, there are," he agreed. "And I've hunted most of them. This isn't exactly shallow," he continued, withdrawing the chopped off sapling and examining the sticky mud which coated the first meter of its length. A bubble of foul-smelling gas followed the probe to the surface.
"Or solid," he observed with a choking cough.
The company had spread out in a perimeter, and seeing that there was no immediate threat, Kosutic had wandered up behind Pahner. She looked at the black, tarry goo clinging to the stick, then at the swamp, and laughed.
"It looks like... the Mohinga," she announced in hushed, hollow tones which would have done a professional teller of horror stories proud.
"Oh, no!" Pahner said, with an uncharacteristic belly laugh. "Not... the Mohiiinga!"
"What?" Roger tossed the sapling into the swamp. "I don't get the joke."
Dogzard watched the stick land and considered going after it. But only briefly. She sniffed at the water, hissed at the smell, and decided that discretion was the better part of getting in there. Balked of any possibility of "fetch the stick," she looked up at the humans speculatively. None of them seemed to be up to anything interesting, though, so she trundled back to the flar-ta with her thickening tail waggling behind her.
"It's a Marine joke," Kosutic told the prince with a smile. "There's a training area in the Centralia Provinces on Earth, a jungle training center. It has a swamp that I swear the Incas must have used to kill their sacrifices. It's been drained a couple of times in the last few thousand years, but it always ends up back in the military's hands. It's called—"
"The Mohiiinga. I got that much."
"It's a real ball-buster, Your Highness," Pahner said with a faint smile. "When we'd get Raider units that were, shall we say... a little more arrogant than they should have been, we'd set up a land navigation course through the Mohinga. Without electronic aids." His smile grew, and his chuckle sounded positively evil. "They quite often ended up calling for a shuttle lift out after a couple of days of wandering around in circles."
"You were a JTC instructor, Sir?" Kosutic sounded surprised.
"Sergeant Major, the only thing I haven't instructed in this man's Marine Corps is Basic Rifle Marksmanship, and that was only because I skated out of it." Pahner grinned at the NCO. Although the marksmanship course was critical to developing Marines, it was also one of the most boring and repetitive training posts in the Corps.
"All paths lead into the Mohiiinga," Kosutic quoted with horrified, quavering relish, "but... none lead ooout!"
"I won't say I wrote that speech," Pahner said with another chuckle, "because it was old when I got there. But I did add a few frills. And, speaking of the Mohinga..." The captain looked around and shook his head. "I certainly hope we can go around this one."
Cord walked up to look at the swamp as well, then walked over to where Roger and his group stood laughing in the human way. It was apparent that they didn't realize the full import of the marsh.
"Roger," he said with a human-style nod. "Captain Pahner. Sergeant Major Kosutic."
"D'Nal Cord," Roger replied with an answering nod. "Is there a way around this? I know it's been some time since you came this way, but do you remember?"
"I remember very clearly," the old shaman said, "and this wasn't here in my father's day. The fields of Voitan and H'Nar stretched outward through this region. But as I recall, they had been drained from a swamp that surrounded the Hurtan River." The shaman clapped his false hands in regret. "I fear that this may fill the valley of Voitan. It may stretch all the way to T'an K'tass."
"And how far is that?" Kosutic asked.
"Days to the south," Cord replied. "Even weeks."
"And north?" Pahner asked, looking at the swamp and no longer chuckling.
"It stretches as far north as I have knowledge of," the Mardukan said. "The region to the north, even in the days of Voitan, was held by the Kranolta, and they didn't permit caravans through their lands."
"So," Roger said dubiously, "we have to make a choice between going several weeks out of our way to the south, getting hit by the Kranolta the whole way. Or we can go north, directly into their backyard. Or we can try to navigate the swamp."
"Well, your Marines and my people may have some problems," Cord admitted. "But not the flar-ta. They can easily make it through a swamp no deeper than this."
"Really?" It was Kosutic's turn to sound doubtful. "That thing that was chasing you was in a desert. These things—" she jerked a thumb over her shoulder at Patricia "—don't look that different."
"The flar-ta and the flar-ke are found everywhere," Cord pointed out. "They prefer the high, dry regions because of the absence of atul-grack, but they can be found in swamps as well."
Pahner turned and looked at D'Len Pah. The chief mahout had taken over Pat when her original mahout was killed in the first ambush, and now waited patiently for the humans to make up their minds.
"Do you think the pack beasts can cross this, Pah?" the captain asked skeptically.
"Certainly," the mahout said with a grunt of laughter. "Is that what you've been jawing about?"
He tapped the beast in a crease in the armor just behind her massive head shield to get her in gear, and the flar-ta whuffled forward. She moaned dolefully when she saw the black muck, but she stepped into it anyway.
The pack beast's feet each consisted of four toes with leathery bases. They were equipped with heavy digging claws, and their pads were broad and fleshy. They were also webbed, and now Patricia spread her toes wide, more than tripling the square area of her foot. That foot sank into the sloppy mud but found "solid" footing well before the belly of the creature touched the water.
"Hmmm." Roger watched thoughtfully. "Can she move out into the swamp?"
Pah prodded again, and the beast grumbled but moved out into the black water. Obviously, she was as at home in the swamp as in the jungle, but a moment later she burbled and started to back up hastily as a "V" ripple started towards her from deeper in the swamp.