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.
“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.”
“Well, I think someone has been teaching your swamp-devils how to smelt for themselves,” King said grimly. “And how to work it.”
Robre snorted. “Be a good trick, to keep ’em from eating their teachers.”
Sonjuh shook her head. “No, it makes sense, Hunter-man. Like their gathering in big bands. They’re changing, ’n’ not for the better.”
Well, technically, it is for the better, King thought. They’re starting to live a little more like human beings and a little less like mad beasts. The problem is that men are more dangerous than beasts. And they’re still a lot closer to vicious mad beasts than to real human beings, like my friends here.
“What’s this?” Robre said. “Never seen anything quite like it.”
He pulled something from the ear of the savage who’d been rear paddle—steersman—in the canoe. King took it, looked, and felt sweat break out on his brow; his stomach clenched, and a feeling of liquid coldness stole lower in his guts.
It was a piece of silver jewelry, shaped to the likeness of a peacock’s tail. The two natives gaped at him; like any high-caste member of the sahib-log, he was not a man given to quick emotions, or to showing those he did have. The way his soul stood naked on his face for an instant astonished them.
“You seen that before?” Robre asked sharply.
“It’s Russian,” he said softly, after a moment to bring himself back to self-mastery. “It’s the sign of initiation into the cult of Tchernobog—the Black God. The Peacock Angel is one of His other names. Yes, I’ve seen this before.”
The Czar in Samarkand had always been among the Empire’s worst enemies. Partly that was a rivalry that went back before the Fall—St. Disraeli had spent much of his earlier life frustrating Russian designs on the Old Empire’s territories, or so the records said. Most of the rivalries were Post-Fall, though, after the Russian refugees in Central Asia had made contact with the descendants of the British Exodus in India. There had been some direct conflict, though not much: the Himalayas lay between, and the uninhabited wastelands of Tibet, and the all-too-inhabited hill country of Afghanistan and the Hindu Kush. Fighting through a hostile Afghanistan was like trying to bite an enemy when you had to chew your way th
rough a wasp’s nest first. The Afghans hated the Angrezi Raj only somewhat less than they loathed the Russki.
“They’re enemies of ours,” King said. “Man-eaters.”
“Like the swamp-devils ’n’ us?” Robre asked.
“Not very. During the Fall…It’s a long story. They ate their subjects, not their own people, mostly; afterwards they kept it up as part of their new religion, making human sacrifices to their Black God, and then eating the bodies as a…rite that bound them together. Their nobles and rulers, at least. But they like to spread their cult, when they can. I can see how it would change your swamp-devils, too—it would give them a way to work together.”
Robre made a disgusted sound, and Sonjuh swore softly before she said, “Like I said. We’ve got to get more scout-knowledge about this.”
“So we do,” Robre said grimly.
“So we do indeed,” King added in the same tone. “For the Empire, as well.”
His mind drew a map. The center of Russian power was in Central Asia, between Samarkand where the Czar had his seat, and Bokhara, the religious capital, where the High Priests of Tchernobog were centered. Theoretically the Czar claimed much of European Russia, but it was still mainly wasteland, thinly populated by tribes whom he tried to reclaim with missionaries and Cossack outposts.
Still, they could get out through the Baltic and the Black Sea, King thought. There were Imperial bases in the lands facing reclaimed and recivilized Britain, but they were little more than trading posts and bases for explorers and traders and missionaries of the Established Church. The interior…he’d just come from there, and parts of it were almost as bad as this.
Yes, they could slip small groups out—pretend to be something else, Brazilians or whatever—travel by ship… But why spend the energy to interfere in this barbarous wasteland? What difference could it make to the contending Powers?
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