“There weren’t any tigers here before the Fall-before the time when Olsaytn stole the Sun, you’d say.”
Robre’s brows went up. Odd, he thought. When he thought of the Before Time, it was simply as very long ago, the time of the songs and the heroes; certainly before his grandsire’s grandsire’s time. The Imperial seemed to think of it more as a set date, as if it were something that had happened in his own lifetime. Odd way to think. Mebbe it’s all that writing they do.
“Why not?” Robre said. “Plenty of beasts a tiger can tackle that a cougar or wolf can’t. What were those fancy words you used last night… ecological niche?”
King shrugged. “I don’t know. There just weren’t, or so our books say. Why are there elephants in India, and not here? Nobody knows.”
Robre grunted noncommittally; he wasn’t quite sure if he believed in elephants yet.
King went on: “No lions either. When the fall came, they-the ancestors of the ones you’ve got now-probably escaped from circuses, or zoos.”
They thrashed out the meaning of those words. Robre rubbed his chin, feeling stubble gone almost silky and reminding himself to shave soon. “Wouldn’t folks have eaten them?” he said.
“They probably did eat the elephants in the menageries.” King grinned. “But a few predators would have been turned loose before people realized how bad things were going to get. Then, in the chaos, when every man’s hand was against every other’s…well, hungry tigers used to being around people, they’d be good at picking off stragglers, wouldn’t they? And most of the dying happened fast; by the third or fourth year, people were scarce again in these lands, very scarce. Other things-game and feral livestock that survived in out-of-the-way corners, or country farther south-bred back faster than humans, spreading over the empty lands as the vegetation recovered, and so gave the big cats plenty to hunt. They breed quickly themselves, so even a few pairs could produce a lot of offspring. Eventually they’ll fill all the land humans haven’t taken over again, but that will need another century or two.”
Robre nodded. It made sense in a twisty sort of way, like most of what King said when he wasn’t doing an obvious leg-pull. It still made his head itch on the inside…
“And because they’re descended from so few, they’ll have a lot of mutants…freaks, that is, due to inbreeding. Like the black-with-yellow-stripes you shot…What’s that, by the way?” King said casually, pointing with the hand that held the cigarette.
“What’s what?”
Robre turned and looked upstream, across the Black River. Then his eyes grew very wide, and he whipped the cigarette out of his mouth, crushed it out, did the same with King’s. The Imperial froze as Robre laid a hand across his mouth, and they crouched watching through the slits in their blind.
The light was growing now, and the mist on the river to the north was lifting. What had showed as mere hints of shape turned hard and definite. A canoe, a big cypress log hollowed out and pointed at both ends, big enough for ten men to kneel and drive their paddles into the mirror-calm surface of the morning river. Beside him King leveled his binoculars and swore, swore very softly in a language Robre didn’t understand. He did understand the sentiment, especially since it was the first time the Imperial had seen the swamp-devils. Robre’s own eyes went wide as a second canoe followed the first, then a third…more and more, until a full ten were in view, the foremost nearly level with them.
He put out a hand, and after a moment King passed him the binoculars. He’d learned to use them well-another thing he’d save to buy from Banerjii, if he could-and his thumb brought the image sharp and clear.
It is swamp-devils, he thought helplessly. But it can’t be. Not that many together!
There was no mistaking them, though. The sloping foreheads and absent chins, faces hideously scarred that grew only sparse bristly beards, huge broad noses, narrow little eyes beetling under heavy brows. The build was unmistakable, too, heavy shoulders and long thick arms, broad feet.
“I thought they were men,” King whispered, shaken.
“They were, or leastways their fore-folks were, when we drove ’em into the east.”
Swamp-devils right enough, but only a few carried the clubs of ashwood with rocks lashed into a split end that were the commonest tool-weapon of the cannibals. Nearly all the rest had spears with broad iron heads, black bows with quivers of arrows, knives and tomahawks at their belts. They couldn’t have gotten all that in raids on his folk and the Kaijan settlements east beyond the Sabyn.
After an eternity, the last of the canoes passed-a full hundred swamp-devil bucks, in plain sight of each other and without a fight breaking out. They kept silence as well, paddling swiftly along the eastern bank, occasionally scanning the western shore. He could feel the weight of their stares, and froze into a rabbit’s immobility until the last one pulled out of sight.
“Lord o’ Sky!” he gasped. “Lord o’ Sky!”
“Well,” King said whimsically. “I gather that this means trying for tiger on the east bank of the river is definitely out.”
Sonjuh dawtra Pehte hummed tunelessly to herself as she stirred the ham and disks of potato in the frying pan-small children had been known to cry when she sang, but she liked the sound, which was what mattered. The morning was bright, and cool by the standards she was used to; the smell of the frying food mingled pleasantly with the damp dawn forest. Birds were calling, in a chorus of clucks and cheeps and Jeroo, I’m actually happy, she thought. That brought a tang of guilt, but only slightly-the Lord o’ Sky had heard her oath, and she intended to keep it or die trying. The Father-God wouldn’t care whether or not she regretted the dying. Of course, E’rc doesn’t plan on staying. That brought a stab, and he’d never hidden it, either…
Running feet sounded through the woods. Slasher woke and pointed his nose in their direction. Sonjuh caught them a few seconds later; she’d already set the food aside and reached for her crossbow. The two coastlander men-at-arms in Imperial service dropped their camp chores-armfuls of wood in one case, fodder gathered for their single pack mule in the other-and went for their rifles. They moved quickly to kneel behind cover on either side of the camp, looking outward in either direction as they worked the actions of their weapons and loaded a cartridge. Even then, she had an instant to notice that. Her people had never had much use for the coastmen, but these were very smooth; evidently they’d learned a lot, in the twenty years or so since the Imperial ships arrived to build their fort on Galveston Island.
She relaxed a bit as it became clear that it was Robre and Eric King loping back to the little forward camp. Not much, because she could see their faces.
“Swamp-devils?” she said.
“More ’n I’ve ever seen in one place,” Robre said grimly.
She turned and kicked moist dirt over the fire, stamping quickly to put it out before it could smoke much.
Robre nodded, and gave a concise description of the canoes they’d seen. “You were right, Head-on-Fire. ’Fore God the Father, there were a hundred of ’em if there were one. What’s happening? ”
“Whatever it is, it’s not good,” Sonjuh said, her voice stark. Jeroo, there goes being happy, all of a sudden. She didn’t feel bad, though. Alert, the blood pumping in her ears, everything feeling ready to go. Pa, Ma, sisters-soon you can rest easy, stop comin’ to me in dreams.
Eric had spread a map out on the ground; she craned forward to look at it. The written names were nothing to her or Robre, but the bird’s-eye view of the land was easy enough to grasp, and they’d both learned how to use them.
“We’re here,” Eric said, tapping their location-not far from the west bank of the Black River. “As I understand it, the…swamp-devils…live mostly here.” His finger moved down to a patch of stylized reeds and trees.