He gasped and sank to his knees. It felt as though a 'Mech were sitting on his chest What had happened to his unit? Where was Sep? Jarlik? Denek and Fram?
He groaned, and his own voice woke him. He looked up into a pair of round pink eyes, which shocked him fully into consciousness.
Moving with great difficulty, he turned onto his side. The small animal—if that's what it was—sitting beside him seemed undisturbed by the movement It regarded him calmly, as he pushed himself up, one-armed, to sit facing it.
His head was still reeling, but Ardan felt certain that this was reality. The swamp looked exactly as he remembered it The mudbank was real. The pain in his arm, legs, head, and back was real.
The creature he was staring at was short. Seated, it came just barely to his shoulder. Its head was as round as its eyes, and it had long-lobed ears hanging to its shoulders. The mouth was thin and straight, creating a prim expression much at variance with its infantile eyes. What Ardan had first taken to be an animal now seemed to him more a being somewhere between beast and human.
Ardan cleared his throat, tasting the remnant of vomit in the back of his throat. "Hello," he said, with some difficulty.
The thing jumped backward from a sitting position with catlike agility. Now it was standing, showing that it had long, thin legs, a stocky body, and a rudimentary tail that twitched with nervousness.
It stared at him for a moment. Then it uttered a high, thin wail that carried through the trees and echoed back from the depths of the swamp.
Bewildered, Ardan shook his head. The creature watched with much attentiveness. It shook its own head, mocking his motion exactiy. When Ardan held out his hand in the gesture that meant peace on most known worlds, it held out its own. That meant nothing, Ardan knew. It was purest mimicry.
Then, in the distance, he heard another strange sound. Spattering steps were racing through shallow water. Shrill hoots and chirps accompanied the noise. Before he realized what was happening, he was surrounded by a dozen exact replicas of the creature sitting beside him. They were clad in only their own pale-furred hides, indistinguishable from one another.
The newcomers hooted briefly at their fellow, who chirruped back in a concise burst of sound. They seemed to be communicating in a language of their own, which amazed Ardan. He dimly recalled some of the computer briefings on the swamp life of Stein's Folly, but none of that information had prepared him for the intelligence he sensed among these pink-eyed beings. They turned, with one accord, and fell upon Ardan. Before he could react, he was tied into a sort of bundle with fiber cords. Then the creatures hoisted him on their shoulders, two on either side, and carried him away into the swamp, going deeper and deeper between the increasingly huge trees.
That was when things became hazy. At times, Ardan thought he was back on his father's farm, riding a load of grain to the bins. At others, he felt himself carried away on a berserker 'Mech, running uncontrolled across the countryside.
He burned with fever. He shook with chill. He vomited down the length of himself and all over the creatures carrying him. They dunked him into a pool, splashed water over themselves, and trudged on.
He went out, at last, into a blackness that was a great relief. When he came to, it was to the pitch darkness of the nightbound swamp.
He stirred. There came a twirping sound from somewhere nearby. Another chirrup, more distant, answered the first. A glimmer of light moved toward him, letting him see that he was in a kind of wicker hut, very crude but quite efficient
He lay on a pallet of tree-moss, still tied up, but much less painfully than before. His mouth felt cleaner. They had given him water, he was almost certain. He hoped it wasn't the terrible stuff from the swamp.
A short figure stumped into the hut with a tiny torch in its hand. It was exactly like every other he had seen thus far, without even any sex differentiation, as far as Ardan could tell.
The thing squatted beside him, tested his bindings, held the torch close, and lifted one of Ardan's eyelids. It grunted. The sound indicated satisfaction, as nearly as Ardan could tell.
"I'm glad you're happy. At least one of us is," he said crossly.
The creature sank onto its heels, staring at him. A complex series of grunts, honks, hoots, and chirrups gave him a notion of the source of some of the night-sounds that had troubled him. There was no point of similarity with any language Ardan had ever heard, however. He tried to shrug, but his broken arm made him groan instead.
The creature nodded twice, decisively. It touched his face with an inquiring finger, poked at his bare chest, examined his toes with much interest. Then it took itself and its glow-worm torch back off. The hut was dark again.
Ardan fell asleep, much to his surprise. When he woke, there was light in the hut. Dim green light that was filtered, he surmised, through the interlocking branches and leaves of tremendous trees.
He felt ill. Never in his healthy life, even when injured in battle, had he felt so awful. Fever shook him from time to time. Chills covered him with gooseflesh. His stomach heaved, but lacked anything more to eject.
He smelled smoke. These creatures had fire, then, as well as tools? They were sapient, then. A few other non-human sapients had turned up among the worlds of the Inner Sphere, but these were surely the strangest-looking of any yet known.
He lay still, waiting. The fever cushioned him somewhat from reality. Nothing made much difference now. Whatever happened, he didn't care a great deal.
When the procession came for him, he didn't struggle at all. They lifted him again, still tied, and carried him outside. There they laid him on a litter made of green branches tied together with the familiar fiber cording. When they had him situated, they decked the litter with odorous green, pink, and purple flowers resembling orchids, except for their dragonlike yellow maws.
"Here comes the bride," he murmured, quoting from an old book. Ancient traditions and rituals had always fascinated him. Now he looked fair to become a part of one.
One of the Pinks (he decided that he had to call them something, even if only in his thoughts) screeched shrilly. The rest lined up instantly, lifted the litter, and splashed into the water surrounding the hummock holding the hut.
It seemed to Ardan that they walked a long way. He stared up into the vine-clad trees. Birdlike creatures flitted overhead, while other creatures resembling the arboreal primates of Old Earth scampered along the branches and vines, keeping pace with the procession.
He fell into a peaceful state that was interrupted only when his bearers stopped. They tipped the litter up so that he was standing, supported by the wooden frame to which he was tied.
He was on a sizeable spot of solid ground surrounded by dark green water. A number of trees stood about at considerable distance from one another. There were eighteen, which, for some reason, Ardan counted. Bound to all but one tree were skeletons tied with seemingly indestructible cord.
The bones were indubitably of human origin. No Pink had ever grown to such height The skulls were distinctive, the rib-cages ribboned with climbing vines. The foot-bones were hidden in a light growth of thin grass.
"Oh, wonderful!" he groaned. How long had the Pinks waited for the last victim to complete their set?
"Stein? Is that you, old boy?" he asked aloud. The Pinks ignored him.
"Folly is right. I'll just bet you and your boys and girls tramped off into the swamp, bent on exploration and glory, and wound up as...what?" He turned his gaze to the Pinks, who were very busy about some inscrutable business.