"Oh, hell," Pahner said.
"What?" Roger repeated. "What's wrong with that?"
"Maybe nothing, Your Highness," Pahner said sourly. "But in most cultures like this, those things are taken seriously. And sometimes it means the brother has to join the tribe. On pain of pain."
"Well, we're probably heading in the direction of his tribe," Roger pointed out. "I'll drink the deer's blood, or whatever, and then we'll pass on through. Nice story to tell at the club, and all that."
Eleanora shook her head.
"And what happens if you have to stay with the tribe or it's going to be a big problem?"
"Oh," Roger said. Then, "Oh."
"This is why you don't shoot until you have to," Pahner told him on the side circuit.
"Let me see if I can talk our way out of this," O'Casey said.
"Fat chance," Pahner muttered.
"... Chief Roger... regrets... honor. Travel... way... pass..."
Cord laughed.
"Well, I'm not all that happy about it, either. I was on a very important spirit quest when he had the temerity to save my life. Don't you people have any couth? Never mind. That doesn't matter a rid fly's fart. I still have to follow him around like a demon-spawned nex for the rest of my life. Oh well. Maybe it will be short."
He watched the little spokesman working through the translation, and finally gestured impatiently.
"This tent is nice, but if we hurry we can reach my village before the yaden arise. Unless you have skin like a flar beast, we'd best be under cover. I suppose you can cut up the flar and use it for cover, but it would take time. Time we might not have."
"I think he said—"
"Tough noogies," Roger finished with a laugh. "He said we're just going to have to live with it. And something about hurrying."
"I didn't get that full a translation," Eleanora said with a shake of her head. "And there was more than the basic cultural background. There's something definitely sticky about this translation. I got a real gender malfunction, at first. It's settled down to male though."
She glanced at the naked Mardukan and then away.
"Of course, I don't see how it could possibly mistake the gender," she added with a smile.
"I got most of it," Roger said. "I think I'm more attuned with him or something. He also says we'd better get moving or something nasty is going to happen."
"Did he indicate what?" Pahner asked.
"He called it the yaden. No context. I think it's related to night." He turned to the Mardukan and tried the toot's voice control function. "What are the yaden?"
Roger discovered that the software was giving him images in response to some form of subcommunication involving his background, the gestures of the Mardukan, and known words. In cases where it had clear translations, it shut down the direct auditory feed and substituted the "translated" words. But in this case, it obviously had no clear translation, so it was giving ephemeral images of possible translations, and the general outline, although startling, was clear. He almost laughed.
"He says the yaden are vampires."
"Oh," Pahner said blandly.
"He's very emphatic about it, though," Elenora said, nodding in agreement. "Yes, I get that, too, now. Vampires. You're good with this, Roger."
Roger smiled in pleasure at the rare compliment.
"You know I like languages."
"So the scummy thinks we should move out?" Pahner asked, just to keep things straight.
"Yes," Roger said, somewhat coldly. He was beginning to develop a distaste for the epithet. "He has a problem with something that apparently comes out only at night. He wants to hurry to make it to his village before whatever it is comes out."
"That's going to be tough," Pahner said consideringly. "We've got a pass to cross, then quite a bit of jungle. We'll barely make it up to the top of the ridge before dark."
"He seems to think we ought to be able to make it before dark without too much trouble," Eleanora put in.
"He may be right," Pahner responded. "But if he is, then his village has to be a lot closer than I think he's suggesting."
"Then I suggest that we'd better get moving," Roger said.
"No question there," Pahner agreed. "First we've got to get this tent taken down, though."
"Hang on." Roger pulled his drinking tube down. "Here," he said, gesturing with it to the Mardukan. "Water."
They didn't have that word yet, so he used Standard. To demonstrate, he took a drink out of it and dribbled a few drops onto his hand to show the Mardukan what it was. Cord leaned forward and took a swig off of the tube. He nodded at Roger in thanks, then gestured to leave the tent.
"Yeah," Roger said with a laugh. "I guess we're all on the same sheet of music."
But playing in different keys.
It quickly became apparent to Roger where the disconnect between Cord's and Pahner's estimated travel times lay. Cord's giant legs drove him forward at a far quicker pace than humans were able to maintain. The Marines, had they been less heavily encumbered, could have jogged and kept up with the Mardukan, but Matsugae, O'Casey, and the Navy pilots were unable to make anything like the same rate of movement. As the sun set behind the mountains and the alluvial outflow narrowed into a mountain gorge, the Mardukan became more and more voluble in his worries, and translations became clearer and clearer.
"Prince Roger," Cord said, "we must hurry. The yaden will suck us dry if they find us. I'm the only one with a cover cloth." He gestured to his leather cape. "Unless you have those 'tents' for everyone?"
"No," Roger said. He grasped a boulder and pulled himself up onto it. The vantage point gave him a clear view of the company scattered up and down the narrow defile. The tail of the unit was just starting up the narrow, steep canyon while the head was nearing the top. As mountain canyons went, it wasn't much, but it was slowing them as the heavily laden troopers struggled up the ravine, pulling themselves from boulder to boulder. They blended into the background well, but for the flash of solar panels on the rucksacks and the occasional reflection off a weapon's barrel. The parties with the stretchers were in particularly bad straits, wrestling their heavy and cumbersome loads over rocks and around corners. All in all, the company was moving very slowly.
"No, we don't have enough large tents for everyone. But we have other covers, and everyone has a personal bivy tent. How large and fierce are these yaden?"
Cord mulled over a few of the words that obviously weren't quite right.
"They are neither large nor fierce. They are stealthy. They will slip into a camp full of warriors and select one or two. Then they overcome them and suck them dry."
Roger shuddered slightly. He supposed that it could be superstition, but the description was too precise.
"In that case, we're just going to have to post a good guard."
"This valley is thick with them," Cord said, gesturing around. "It is a well-known fact," he finished simply.
"Oh, great." Roger jumped nimbly down off the boulder. "We're in the Valley of the Vampires."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The wind was constant and enervating. It blew through the pass incessantly, funneling from the high-pressure upland desert to the lower pressure jungles. It dried the surroundings here at the head of the pass, creating one last patch of arid ground before the all-enveloping triple-canopy rain forest barely a hundred meters below.