Dragon and Herdsman

CHAPTER 18

They gathered their traveling companions together, and with Alison and Greenie in the lead they once again headed north toward the river.

Jack had hoped to stay close to Alison during the march, or at least to find time here and there to check on her. But with the Kodiak's attack now in the—for them—distant past, the Phookas and Erassvas had settled back into their old, careless ways. The Phookas again wandered freely, rushing off to grab a quick bite or see something interesting, and Jack again found himself being run off his feet trying to keep the herd together.

The Erassvas, for their part, began complaining about their thirst in increasingly loud voices. If the mercenaries were anywhere nearby, Jack thought sourly, they'd be able to find their quarry with their eyes closed.

Fortunately, after only about twenty minutes the travelers found a stream. Everyone drank their fill, and with the Erassvas now at least quieter they continued on.

The forest's water supply seemed to be getting more abundant. Jack noticed as he jogged back and forth keeping the Phookas in line. They were crossing more and more streams now, most of them reasonably narrow, but a few wide enough to make the travelers get their feet wet as they crossed.

Possibly as a partial result of the increased water supply, new plants and trees began to make their appearance. One of them was a purplish, knee-high shrub with two-inch thorns that reminded Jack of the hedge wall back on the Chookoock family estate on Brum-a-dum. The thorns didn't seem to bother the Phookas any, but after nearly impaling his shin on a pair of the shrubs Jack learned to watch for them and keep his distance.

Another newcomer was a tall, spindly, and rather rubbery tree that liked to grow in widely spaced groups of five to twelve. Unfortunately, they also seemed to come associated with a thin but strong pale green vine that grew at all angles between the various members of a given group. Together they formed a netlike structure that had a bad tendency to block off the best routes through the forest.

The vines were too tough for Jack's and Alison's knives to get through easily, especially since the springy trees they were attached to didn't provide a solid foundation for cutting. That meant that whenever the travelers couldn't go around a group they had to call in Draycos to slash open a path. Jack tried several times to get the other Phookas to help out, but the concept of using their claws to cut vines that weren't concealing food seemed to be completely foreign to them.

Fortunately, not all the new flora was determined to make their lives more complicated. There was also a yellow-leaved bush with bright red berries that was greeted with great enthusiasm by the Erassvas. As near as Jack could gather from Hren's explanation, mumbled around a mouthful of the berries, it was a plant that grew near the river and was one of the highlights of their continuous journey around the forest's edge. The first group of bushes they ran into generated a half-hour delay as Erassva and Phooka alike happily stood around stuffing their faces.

Alison wasn't happy with the delay, and wasn't shy about saying so. But Jack knew that after the scare they'd had earlier a treat like this would help boost the Erassvas' morale. Sure enough, when they finally hit the trail again, the uneasy grumbling was gone.

They didn't see any more Kodiaks that afternoon, but near sundown they did run into another herd of the horn-headed plant-eaters Draycos had told Jack about. The creatures themselves were about the size of large elk, with roundish bodies and rather mouselike faces. Each had two sets of horns: one that looked like extra-long wild boar tusks set into the sides of their heads just behind their mouths, plus a second set farther back that reminded Jack of the flat fan shapes of moose antlers. Nonpredators or not, Alison made sure to give them a wide berth.

With the day's delays clearly on her mind, she kept them going until the blue had faded from the sky overhead before finally calling a halt. With Draycos's help Jack got the Erassvas and Phookas settled amid a grove of the rubbery trees, situating them where the vine mesh would give them protection from predators from at least that direction. Then, leaving Draycos on guard, he went to find Alison.

He found her kneeling beside a stream twenty yards farther along their path, filling her canteen. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Fine," she said. "Never better. Why?"

"Why do you think?" Jack growled, studying her profile as he crouched down beside her. She certainly looked okay. "Taneem been giving you any trouble?"

"Not really," Alison said. "There was a time a couple of hours ago when she felt kind of itchy, and back when we were crossing that extra-wide creek she was moving around or something and tickling me."

"Probably bringing her claws a little ways into their 3-D form and scratching your skin," Jack said. "Draycos does that sometimes in his sleep. Never tickles, though."

"You're probably not as ticklish as I am," she said, pulling her canteen from the creek and recapping it. "Do I need to get her off me for a while or anything?"

Jack shook his head. "The only limit is how long they can stay off you," he said. "Draycos once had to stay on me for three days straight, and it didn't seem to bother him any."

"Except probably drove him a little stir-crazy," Alison said, getting back to her feet. "Do we want to bring them in shifts for some water, or just move the whole camp here for the night?"

"Let's do the shift thing," Jack suggested. "If the mercs decide to come hunting, they'll probably expect us to park by water."

"Good point," she said. "Okay. If you and Draycos want to start shuttling them over, I'll go take guard duty with the main group."

"Right," Jack said. "By the way, how many rounds does your Corvine have left?"

"Eleven," Alison said. "We'd never make it through another firefight like the one we had two nights ago."

"I'll keep that in mind."

The stars were starting to appear through the treetops by the time they finally finished getting everyone to the stream and back. Only then, as they settled in for the night, did Jack and Draycos finally have a chance to talk.

"What do you think?" Jack asked quietly as they sat together.

"I see no signs of trouble," Draycos said. "Though I am a little concerned by the fact that Taneem stayed with her the entire day instead of coming off to eat."

"It sounded like she was sleeping a lot of that time, too," Jack said, frowning across at Alison. She was little more than a dark silhouette against the fading light, sitting against the vine netting, her head slumped forward onto her chest. "Is that abnormal?"

"Not necessarily," Draycos said. "It sometimes takes a while to adjust to a new host, especially when the K'da is young. Of course, Taneem is an adult."

"On the other hand, this is a radically different host than the one she's used to," Jack reminded him.

"True," Draycos said, clearly still not convinced. Or else he was simply afraid to let himself hope that anything would come from the experiment. "She may simply come off Alison very well rested."

"No, there's more going on here," Jack said, scratching his cheek. "Remember the red Phooka who fell down that cliff? He didn't want anything to do with me, and in fact resisted the whole idea until it was either that or run off the end of his time limit. And even then he got off me just as soon as he could."

"I'm certain he found the change confusing."

"Confusing and uncomfortable both," Jack agreed. "Taneem, on the other hand, seems to have taken to Alison like a cat to nip."

For a moment Draycos was silent. "We will have to wait and see, I suppose," he said at last. "On another more serious subject, did you hear the air vehicle passing back and forth over the forest for much of the afternoon?"

"No, I didn't," Jack said, frowning. "How come you didn't say something earlier?"

"Because you and Alison were busy," the K'da said. "Also, there was little that either of you could do about it."

"We could have gotten ourselves ready for an ambush," Jack countered.

Draycos twitched his tail in a negative. "There was no indication that the vehicle was landing nearby. It was also not flying directly overhead, but instead along a course a kilometer or more to the east of our path."

"So either they were out looking for us," Jack said slowly, "or else they already knew where we are and were setting up another picket line in front of us."

"The latter would be my guess," Draycos said. "I thought that once it's full night I would scout ahead."

"Sounds good," Jack said. "Only this time you're going to have company."

"Jack—"

"No argument," Jack said firmly. "I need to know what's going on out there. Anyway, you'll be there with me. What can go wrong?"

The dragon sighed. "Very well. Do you wish to tell Alison, or shall I?"

Jack looked across at Alison. "Let's let her sleep," he decided. "But you'd better make a pass around the area before we go. Make sure no one's close enough to sneak up on the camp."

The forest was alive with the same nocturnal creatures Draycos had seen on their two previous nights. Fortunately, there were no hunting mercenaries among them.

Nor did he see or smell any of the creatures Jack had dubbed Kodiaks, or the horn-headed plant-eaters whose presence might attract such predators. The only even mildly dangerous creatures were small predators similar in size to the heenas he and Jack had encountered at the Vagran Colony spaceport soon after they met.

Unlike the heenas, though, these animals hunted alone instead of in packs, and seemed to concentrate their efforts on small rodentlike creatures. The likelihood that they would take on a group of Phookas, Draycos decided, was small enough to safely ignore.

He returned to the encampment to find Jack ready. "I thought we'd take about a hundred feet of rope, my tangler, and my knife," the boy said. "You think of anything else we need?"

"I believe that's most everything we have, actually," Draycos pointed out. "The area appears to be secure. Let us go."

They set off through the woods. Only a little of the starlight overhead made it through the forest canopy, but that was enough for Draycos to find his way without difficulty. Jack, for his part, held on to Draycos's tail and let the K'da guide him.

They'd been hiking for perhaps forty minutes when they reached the mercenaries.

"I don't see anything," Jack whispered as they lay side by side behind a wide tree trunk.

"They are there," Draycos assured him, flicking out his tongue as he tasted the air. "There is a hidden ground line of seven men, approximately fifty feet apart, stretched directly across our path."

"I hear running water," Jack said. "Another creek?"

"A fairly wide one, yes," Draycos confirmed. "The soldiers are hidden on the far side."

"So we come strolling up to get a drink, and they pop us," Jack said. "There's probably a gap in the trees right over the stream, too, so you can't use the skyway and jump them from behind."

"Yes, there is a gap," Draycos confirmed. "But even if there weren't, I could not easily use such a frontal attack. A few yards behind each man is a second soldier, hidden off the ground in one of the trees."

"Sounds like the same setup you ran into our first day out of the box," Jack said, a frown in his voice. "Don't these people learn?"

"Of course they learn," Draycos said. "But they have no way of knowing that I've seen this particular ambush strategy."

"Ah—right," Jack said, nodding. "That group was waiting northwest of us, while we were heading north. We never even got near it."

"And so they try again," Draycos concluded, tasting the air a few more times just to be sure. But there were no other surprises waiting for them.

At least none that could be detected by K'da senses. If there were more subtle booby traps around, it would be up to Jack to find and disarm them.

"So what do we do?" Jack asked.

Carefully, Draycos lifted his head for a better view. There were, he saw, bushes and stands of reeds all along their side of the stream. Plenty of cover for a hunting K'da to creep in close. The stream itself was fairly wide, and seemed to be flowing reasonably slowly. From the calmness of the surface, he guessed the stream was at least a couple of feet deep.

He lowered himself back down. "Come," he said, gesturing behind them. "I have a plan."

Together, he and Jack backed away from the ambush line. "We will need a dummy," Draycos said when it was safe to talk. "Can you construct something from branches and vines?"

"Probably," Jack said. "You want human or K'da?"

"Human will do," Draycos said. "Give me the rope. I'll be back soon."

With the rope coiled beneath his left foreleg, he headed a few yards farther back from the enemy until he found one of the slender, rubbery trees that had begun cropping up during the day's travels. Near its base another tree's roots had looped their way up into the air before disappearing back underground. Picking the thickest of the roots, he tied one end of his rope to it. With the other end clenched between his teeth, he started up the rubbery tree.

He was no more than fifteen feet up when he felt the trunk starting to bend under his weight. He kept going, digging his claws into the soft bark to keep from being dumped off, until the tree was bending over so far that he was climbing nearly horizontally, lying the other end of rope there, he headed down.

Once back on the ground, he spent a few minutes pulling the rope through the root loop, bending the treetop back down again. It was a tricky job, requiring all his strength to keep the rope from being yanked out of his muzzle and paws as the tree bowed over and the tension on the rope increased.

Finally, he judged he'd pulled enough of it through. Holding the rope tightly between his teeth, bracing his hind legs against the root loop, he slipped a section of the rope through another nearby tree root and secured it with a quick-release knot. Then, carefully, he eased off his grip.

There was a sharp jerk as the bent tree readjusted itself, startling a group of birds who had been picking seeds or insects out of the topmost branches. They all flew off madly together in a tight cluster, sending the treetop swaying in the opposite direction and putting a twitch of extra tension on the rope and knot.

But the knot held, and the branches settled down. Now, one good tug on the loose end of the rope would release the knot and let the tree straighten up again, pulling the rope through the looped root as it did so.

Back on the planet Sunright, he'd pulled a version of this trick on one of the Whinyard's Edge soldiers. This time, though, he wasn't looking for a prisoner for interrogation.

This time, it was going to be a prelude to combat.

Gathering the rest of the rope into a loose coil, he returned to where he'd left Jack. "Mortimer's all ready," the boy said, holding up the Jack-sized stick figure he'd made from branches wrapped and held together with vines. "What do you think?"

"It looks just like you," Draycos said.

"Thanks," Jack said dryly. "You can probably find a reed down by the creek to use as a breathing tube."

Draycos frowned at him. "How did you know I was going to send the decoy down the stream?"

"Didn't you—?" Jack broke off. "No, I guess you didn't tell me. Huh. That's weird."

"Great minds thinking alike, no doubt," Draycos said. "Though you have no doubt already deduced it, let me tell you the rest of the plan."

It took only a minute for him to fill Jack in. "Yeah, that's more or less what I was expecting," the boy said. "We're starting to think alike, all right. Not sure whether that's good or bad."

"For the moment, let us assume it's good," Draycos said. "Now help me get—what did you call it? Mortimer?—help me get Mortimer on my back. Then carefully—carefully—move up into position."

"Don't worry about me," Jack said. "You just watch yourself, okay? I'm the one they don't want to kill."

"That thought had occurred to me," Draycos agreed grimly. "I shall be back as quickly as I can."