The party departed at the first lightening of the murky, ever-turbulent skies that signaled the beginning of another day. Bo was in command, again seconded by Scar-arm, both carrying the mysterious Oldworld weapons that Rakki still couldn't see as being effective in any way. Screecher was with them, assigned to keeping a watch on Rakki, who had not been given a weapon. With them were four other Neffers carrying spears and bows: Manuka and Shingral, and two whose names Rakki hadn't memorized but thought of as Gap Teeth and Fish, the latter for no better reason than that he had been gutting a catch for Fire Keeper the first time Rakki saw him. They took two of the dogs with them, one mottled black and gray, the other a ragged brown, both fearsome, and two hill animals of a kind that Rakki hadn't come across before, with long heads, low, straight backs, and long-haired hides.
Rakki had never seen animals led by halters before. The Cavers used them to carry loads. Mistameg had asked him how many "boxes" of bullets there were. Rakki had never heard the word. Jemmo, who had given him the few bullets that he had carried with him—also taken from him, along with the edged club—hadn't said anything about boxes. Bo had made a shape in the air with his hands that Rakki hadn't understood but nodded to anyway. But when asked how many boxes, he hadn't known how to answer. So they had taken two hairhides—which was what he called the animals. If there were more boxes than two of them could carry back, they would make a return trip.
They followed the line of the cliffs, which took them up toward the higher ground above the swamp regions. Although this was not country that Rakki spent extended time in, he knew it well enough from many exploration and food-seeking expeditions. By the next day they would descend again into a valley that opened to the far side of the ash-mud wastes bordering more familiar territory.
As they receded farther from the lowlands the surroundings became bleaker, the slopes of scattered scrub and thorn bushes giving way to a wilderness of shattered black rock standing in angled pinnacles split by fractures that in places rent the ridge into immense blocks already starting to slide apart. Nothing grew here. The earth and rocks threw off an oppressive heat that Rakki could feel on his face. Vapors rose from the chasms and fissures, searing the throat and stinging the eyes. Even the dogs were affected, ceasing their noisy investigations around and ahead of the group, and instead following reluctantly behind, their ears flat, tails hanging down. Partway through the morning, rain began falling but it didn't wet the ground. Rakki's people told him that these were places where new parts of the world were made, when the earth heaved and roared, and fire fell from the sky.
There could be no stopping until they were past the barren uplands. They had brought some water in sacs made from skin and bladders, but the Neffers began squabbling over shares, and the supply was soon gone. The hairhides plodded ever more slowly, tongues lolling from slack mouths, their eyes bulging and taking on a strange crazed look, and the Neffers had to pull them by the halters and beat them with sticks to keep them moving. Bo and Scar-arm were surly at Rakki for bringing them this way, which somehow seemed to make it his doing that the water had run out. Screecher echoed their mood and subjected him to an assault of ongoing abuse interspersed with blows. Rakki's tongue swelled, and his mouth felt as dry as ashes from a fire. He endured the thirst and the insults without protest. The time for reckoning would come very soon now.
Finally, they dragged themselves over the last crest and could look down over folds of falling ground showing patches of lichen and stubby weed before disappearing into banks of mist, beyond which the dark shadows of mountains loomed indistinctly. The animals smelled water, and their lethargy gave way to a sudden eagerness to get ahead, making the handlers fight to keep them back. Beneath the mist were mud hills and then tar bogs that connected roundabout to the swamplands that Rakki was from. That was the route that Jemmo and the others would have taken. Rakki watched Screecher yelling at Gap Teeth, whose hands were slipping on the halter of the hairhide that he was trying to restrain. Soon now, he promised himself.
They descended into a basin of shelving slopes, where water rising from the ooze among the rocks came together to find its way down into the head of a ravine opening below. Already the air was cooler. Breaking free, the hairhides forged ahead to plunge their muzzles into the rivulets, while the dogs ran past them and lapped frenziedly. Rakki found a spot where the water spilled over a lip of rock in a trickle, threw himself down, and scooped it to his mouth in cupped hands. It was warm with an acrid, sulfurous taste, but in his condition he would have drunk the tar waters that lay in oily pools among the reeds lower down. Shingral and Fish started refilling the skins.
Rakki waved a hand at them. "Not this, here. Better farther on."
"This yo' country herebout?" Scar-arm asked him.
"I been up near this part sometime—" Rakki pointed to the direction ahead, "—from down that way."
Bo was standing, studying the cloud cover above. It was showing the first sign of darkening before night came. "Need find place okay for bed down pretty soon," he said.
Rakki pointed ahead again. "Go more, not far. Down from wind. Is food root and berry. Clean water."
"You don't say what we do, Dog Meat," Screecher snapped, cuffing him. "Bo, he the Man. He say."
Bo waved an arm. "Move on," he told all of them. Jemmo had said the end of the day would be the time, when the Cavers were tired and their minds distracted.
They clambered down into the ravine and followed it over boulders and falls of loose shale between broken walls growing steeper and higher on either side. Thorn bushes and scrub growths began appearing between the rocks, and coarse grass and moss beds by the sides of the water runnels and pools along the ravine bottom. As these thickened into tangles of gray, curling leaves and creepers pushing over the rocks and choking the gaps between, the caustic dryness of the air above gave way to a humid, stultifying heaviness. Rakki's eyes picked out a broken stem of reed, and below on the ground, two crossed twigs—repeated again ten paces farther on. It was the sign he had been watching for.
As he had expected, the dogs caught the scent first. The larger, black-and-gray one raised its head suddenly and growled, its ears pricked. The brown ran ahead and stopped with its front paws on a rock, barking insistently. The party halted around the two hairhides, exchanging nervous looks. Bo jerked his head from side to side, scanning the surrounding crags. "What happening heah?" he demanded. The arrow hit the brown dog in the side, causing it to yelp and whirl around. Another flew from somewhere ahead and pierced its neck. It fell, howling.
Figures brandishing spears rose among the growths and rocks on both sides, their bodies painted blue, white, and orange. Jemmo was at the center, wearing the red headband that was his war emblem. The large black dog snarled. "Get um! Kill!" Bo commanded.
The dog bounded up over the boulders and sprang, bringing one of the ambushers down, screaming. A spear flew down and was caught among leaves; another clattered off rocks. Manuka cried out as the third lodged in his thigh. Ahead, beyond the brown dog writhing on the ground, bowmen were running forward into sight, still out of range but fitting new arrows.
Rakki turned upon Fish and gestured at the club slung from his shoulder—a heavy wooden handle with an edged stone lashed at the head. "Need weapon! I fight too!" Fish hesitated, looking to the Oldworlders.
But they were not heeding him. Scar-arm raised the device he was carrying to his shoulder and pointed it. It made a strange crack, and one of the attackers above collapsed back out of sight among the rocks. Scar-arm shifted direction slightly and in moments a second did the same, and then a third clutched his side and reeled backward. At the same time, Bo pointed his weapon at the bowmen preparing to rush forward, and even at that distance, before they had begun to move, dropped two of them in the same baffling way. This was all wrong. Only Rakki could save the situation. "Give!" he screamed at Fish. Fish nodded and unslung the club. Rakki took it, weighed it . . . and stove in the side of Fish's skull.
He hacked into Scar-arm's shoulder as Scar-arm was aiming the weapon again, but Screecher shouted a warning before Rakki could get to Bo. Bo turned, saw the blood streaming down Scar-arm's body, but for a vital split-second he failed to register the situation. A rock from a sling whirled by a warrior that Rakki recognized as Uban hit Bo in the side and sent him staggering before he could react. And then, screaming, whooping figures were rushing in from all sides. Spearmen had dispatched the black dog and were coming down. One of them—it was Neotto—took Screecher in the back as he tried to go for Rakki. A clubbed blow to the back of the knees toppled Bo, after which he was finished off by spear thrusts, his arms flailing in a vain effort to protect himself. Shingral was hit in the shoulder by a thrown spear.
And it was over. Manuka had sunk onto a rock, one leg useless from the wound in his thigh. Gap Teeth had prostrated himself on his knees, head and arms on the ground in a gesture of submission. "No kill," he whimpered. "I fight for Great Swamp Warrior now. Do work. Make good slave server. You see."
Jemmo, who had come forward, cast an inquiring eye at Rakki. "He would be useful," Rakki confirmed. "And him." He indicated Shingral. "His hurt will mend." Jemmo nodded at his warriors to spare them.
But they killed Manuka, whose leg would have slowed them down too much; also, one of Jemmo's war party, whose stomach the Oldworld weapon had somehow gouged from a distance as if by a spear thrust, and who wouldn't have lasted more than a day or two. Only Screecher was left, glowering fearfully from where he lay propped on an arm, blood running down onto the ground and spreading from the wound in his back. Jemmo stood over him contemptuously and raised his battle mace.
"No!" Rakki said, moving to intervene. "That one is mine."
Jemmo shrugged and turned to supervise the stripping of the other bodies, keeping the Oldworld weapons for himself to be investigated later.
Rakki pulped Screecher's body slowly, breaking many bones. But he stopped short of killing him. "So who stinking dog meat now?" Rakki spat as he stepped back. His pride and his rage were satisfied. They left Screecher there in the ravine, for the flies and the snakes and the vermin that the corpses would attract.
There never had been any cache of bullets. Jemmo had come across a few somehow, and all he knew was that Oldworlders would go to practically any lengths to acquire them. Wiping out the expedition had reduced the caves' defenders by that many. And Rakki had collected much useful information during his two days there.
The Swamp People attacked the caves at daybreak, two days after the ambush—when Jemmo had worked out a plan but before the Cavers would be alerted by the failure of Bo's expedition to return. They divided into two war parties. The main force, led by Jemmo, assaulted the rampart enclosing the area in front of the caves, while Rakki took a secondary group up via a roundabout route to harass the defenders with rocks and missiles hurled from the heights above, which nobody had thought to keep guarded—one of the vital pieces of information that Rakki had supplied. The Cavers fought desperately, but surprised and with their fighting force depleted, they were overwhelmed. The day was not yet halfway through when the last survivors were driven out into the open, and Jemmo in his red headband, his gory mace slung across a shoulder, swaggered along the line to pronounce his judgments.
Mistameg and his immediate lieutenants were killed, of course, both to eliminate the threat that they would always have represented, and to establish Jemmo's authority. So were most of the remaining Oldworlders, since Jemmo didn't understand or trust them. That was why there had been none in the swamplands. He spared a few, including White Head, when Rakki reminded him that some would be needed to show the secret of the weapons that killed from afar. Also the females who were not too old for childbearing.
The Neffer males of fighting age were either clubbed to death or kept to be worked according to Jemmo's whim, depending on how dangerous he thought they looked. The females were taken as mates and slaves for the victors.
It was the way.