“The most of ’em,” Robre confirmed. “But you’ll find little bands all through-” His hand swept upward, north and east. “Then they sort of thin out, there’s big patches of empty country, ’n’ then Cherokee ’n’ Zarki; I don’t know much about them-nobody does. Then east beyond the Sabyn, you get the Kaijun; sort of backwards, from what I hear, but clean.”
“Well, what we just saw was a large group of them moving from north to south, where most of them are. I’d say it was in the nature of a gathering, wouldn’t you?”
The two natives looked at each other. “Jeroo,” Sonjuh whispered, past a throat gone thick. “If the devils is gathering, then our folk have to know-raids, big raids.”
“Raids with hundreds of ’em,” Robre said. “Lord o’ Sky, that’s not a raid, that’s a war, like with the Kumanch or even the Mehk-but they don’t kill everyone ’n’ eat the bodies.”
“A pukka war,” Eric said. When Sonjuh gave him a puzzled look, he went on: “A real war, a big war, a proper war.”
Robre put up a hand. “Wait a heartbeat,” he said. “What are we going to tell our folks?”
Sonjuh felt a flash of anger. “That the swamp-devils-”
“That the swamp-devils use canoes? That we saw a big bunch of ’em?” Robre shook his head. “What’s Jefe Carul of your Alligators, or Jefe Bilbowb of us Bear Creek folk-never mind clans farther west or south-going to say?”
“Ahhh,” Eric King said, and Sonjuh closed her mouth.
If they both thought that, there was probably something to it. She reached for her pipe-it always helped her to think-then made her hand rest on her tomahawk instead.
“We need to learn more,” she said, shifting on her hams.
“We do that, ’n’ nothing else,” Robre said, giving her a respectful glance; Sonjuh warmed a little to him for that.
“So,” King said. “Who goes, and who goes back to give a warning.”
The girl furrowed her brows. “Well, no sense in me going back-Mad Sonjuh Head-on-Fire, dawtra Stinking, Friendless Pehte.” Robre had the grace to blush. “Everyone knows I’ve a wasp-nest betwixt my ears about the swamp-devils. Wouldn’t listen.”
“Nor to an outlander like myself,” King said thoughtfully. “Robre would be the best, then; he has quite a reputation.”
Robre flushed more darkly under his outdoorsman’s tan, his blue eyes volcanic against it. “Run out on my friends? And I’m the best woodsman, meaning no offense. You’ll need me.”
The three looked at each other. They had less than sixty years between them, and when Sonjuh gave a savage grin the two men answered the expression with ones of their own, just as reckless.
“I’ll send the two privates…the men-at-arms…back to Ranjit Singh at the main camp,” King said. “And as for us, we’ll go see what the hell is brewing.”
“What hell indeed, Jefe,” Robre said somberly, his smile dying. “Hell indeed.”
The telescopic sight brought the canoe closer than Eric King would have wanted, on aesthetic grounds; and while there was no disputing their usefulness, he generally considered scope sights unsporting. But this isn’t a game, he thought, as he kept the cross-hairs firmly on the lead man…or man-thing…in the vessel. The three swamp-devils were as hideous as the ones he’d seen before; even knowing what inbreeding, intense selection and genetic drift could do, it was hard to believe that their ancestors had been men.
More like a cross between a giant rat and a baboon, he thought.
They had their wits about them, though; they came down from the north three-quarters of the way toward the western shore, beyond easy bowshot from the east and where it would be simple to run the cypress-log dugout into a creek and disappear. All three kept their eyes moving, and they had bows and quivers or short iron-headed spears to hand. He closed his mind on a bubble of worry, and switched his viewpoint southward. A little hook of land stood fifty yards out in the Black River, covered in reeds and dense vine-begrown brush. At the water’s edge lay a deer-a yearling buck, with a broken arrow behind its right shoulder, still stirring and trying to rise. He nodded approval; that had been a very good touch. The westering sun was touching the tops of the trees behind them, throwing long shadow out over the water. It would dazzle eyes trying to look into the deep jungle-like growth along the riverbank proper, under the heavy foliage of the tupelos and sweet gums.
His lips curled in a satisfied snarl as the swamp-devils froze, their paddles poised and dripping water that looked almost red in the sunset-light. His finger touched delicately against the trigger, hearing the first click as it set, leaving only a feather-light pressure to fire. Still, that would be noisy.
The savages turned their canoe toward the mud, gobbling satisfaction at the sight of so much meat ready-caught; they’d assume the deer had run far with the shaft in it, losing whoever shot it. They drove the dugout ashore and the first two hopped out, grabbing the sides and pushing it farther into the soft reed-laced dirt.
Yes, shooting would be far too likely to attract unwelcome attention. He turned his head and nodded fractionally to Sonjuh. The girl let her breath out in a controlled hiss and squeezed the trigger of her own weapon. The deep tunngg of the crossbow’s release still brought the first swamp-devil’s head up; he was just opening his mouth to cry out when the quarrel took him below the breastbone, and he fell thrashing to the ground. At the same instant Slasher came out of the tall grass before them and charged baying, belly low to the ground as he tore forward. King and the native girl charged, as well, on the dog’s heels, tulwar and Khyber knife in his hands, bowie and tomahawk in hers.
The second swamp-devil let out a horrified screech, turning back and snatching for his spear, almost turning in time for the point to be of use. Then Slasher was upon him, and he was rolling on the ground screaming and trying to keep those fangs from his face and throat. The third was quicker-witted, or perhaps had just a second longer. He lifted his bow, and was drawing on the ambushers when an eruption of water and mud behind the canoe distracted him. Snake-swift he threw the bow aside and pulled out his tomahawk, half rising to meet Robre’s onslaught. The two struck, and fell into the mud at the edge of the water with a tremendous splash.
King accounted himself an excellent runner, but Sonjuh drew ahead of him, her feet light on the soft ground that sucked at his boots. I’m eighty pounds heavier, that’s all, he thought. Slasher’s teeth were an inch from the screaming swamp-devil’s face when she scooped up the spear he hadn’t had time to use, thrust it under his ribs, then turned and threw it three paces into the back of the last. Robre wrenched himself free of the slackening grip and chopped twice with his tomahawk.
“I’d have had him in a second,” he grumbled. “But thanks.”
“Then he wouldn’t have counted,” Sonjuh said, flashing him a smile. She bent, grabbed a handful of the man’s filthy, matted hair and cut a circle through the scalp before wrenching the bloody trophy free.
King swallowed. Oh, well, she is a native, he thought, and pulled the spear out of the swamp-devil’s back instead of speaking. He washed it in the stream, then peered at the head. The light was uncertain, but he could see that the edge of the weapon was ragged, although wickedly sharp. Uneven forging, he thought. That happened if you didn’t keep the temperature even enough. An amateur did it. Not at all like the work of the Seven Tribes, whose smiths were excellent in their primitive way. But the long-hafted hatchet still in the savage’s belt was very well made, and the knife likewise. He frowned; according to what he’d been told, the eastern savages had no knowledge of ironworking themselves, but…
“Is there much iron ore in these woods?” he asked.
“Plenty,” Robre said, wading back ashore after washing the mud and blood off in the river. “Bog-iron, grows in lumps in the swamps. That’s one reason our Seven Tribes folks have been pushing across the Three Forks into the forest country-charcoal and ore. Iron from the Cherokee and Mehk costs.”