For Love and Glory

XXXVI

The landscape on which they descended reached enormous, heights and depths forested except where steeps were eroded to the bare rock. Rivers foamed down gorges. Mists eddied in hollows and along the intricately folded flanks of hills that in many lands would have been called mountains. Clouds drifted low and murky above. From the west, where lightning danced, Lissa heard thunder come rolling. Wind hissed. The aircraft quivered within it.

On a horizontal shoulder halfway up a hillside, woods ringed a glade where a spring bubbled, Uldor’s campsite. Perforce Lissa admired Hebo’s skill as he landed. Nothing grew underneath except a rough, low ground cover and some shrubs, but air ramped wildly in the narrow space, while around it the big trees bristled with thorns and the lesser ones lashed about like whips. When Lissa climbed out, the wind struck at her, almost cold. The smells on it recalled musk, vinegar, cloves, and things for which she lacked names. Through them wove storm’s ozone.

Hebo followed and stared about. He ignored strewn supplies and equipment left behind at the hasty evacuation. What caught his attention was the camp itself, thatch tipis and a rough stone fireplace grill. “Not even tents?” he blurted.

“I told you, a large part of our project is to find out what can be done with local resources,” she flung back. “This is an experimental design. Perfectly adequate. Now go unload our packs and batten down the vehicle. We’ll set off as soon as I’ve found the trail.”

“Have you brought a chemosensor, or what?”

“I wish I had, but we’ve got nothing adapted for this kind of work, and I doubt they do at Forholt either. I did bring my eyes and my wits.”

He grimaced but yielded. She walked to and fro, peering downward. Presently she went on hands and knees to examine leaves, twigs, soil. Altogether engaged, she forgot time and him.

Emerging at last, she saw him considering a stone in his hand, and joined him. “Well, have you found anything?” he asked. His intonation said that he didn’t believe so and that the lengthy wait had annoyed him.

She nodded. “It took a while because those amateur searchers ruined a lot of spoor, but I’ve figured out what must have happened and which way he set off. Let’s saddle up and go.”

“Really? I’m afraid you’ll have to convince me. This is dangerous terrain, not for heading into blind.”

“What? You expect me to teach you right now what it took me years to learn?”

“No, if it is in fact an art, not a hunch. But you’ll show me you know what you’re doing, or we’ll flit straight back.”

“We will? Listen, you—” Lissa gulped acridness. Just when he’s begun to seem fairly decent, up comes the arrogance again. “Very well. Kindly pay close attention. That’s what tracking is mainly about.”

She led him to a chosen spot, hunkered down, and pointed. “Traces often last a considerable spell. Years, under certain conditions.” Or geological eras if they happen to fossilize. “But they generally weather fast, at a rate that also depends on the type of ground, the depth of the impression, et cetera, et cetera. So I took care to retrieve area weather records from the radar satellites for the past several days, before we left base. Observe. The wind has strewn leaves and dust and other debris, but uncovered a trail—four feet, three-toed, about one hundred and seventy-five centimeters apart front to rear, stride indicating short legs, occasional traces of a tail. I can’t identify many Freydisan animals this easily, not yet, but no mistaking a Susaian.

“Now, these other pockmarks over it were made by rain—a shower, not a downpour—and the last time any fell was four days ago, about one hundred and twenty hours. Therefore the Susaian track is older, and of no use to us. Except that at this point and a later moment, as I can tell by the sharpness of the impressions, another four-legged creature crossed it, bounding. The pattern of the prints indicates the gait. A big beast, clearly a lyco. The claw marks are faint, but if you lie prone and squint your eye just over the surface, you can identify them, and they’re pointed downhill. So that’s the direction the pack fled in. Which is obvious from the mangled brush and dried flecks of blood farther on, but I’ve illustrated the principle. Finding where Orichalc went was a process of elimination.”

“I get the idea.” Did she hear respect? “You needn’t go on. I’ll follow your lead.”

Gladly, she bounced to her feet and made for the packs. “With due caution,” he added.

“Sure. You said something about the terrain.”

“M-hm. I’ve conducted my own look-see. I’ve had to learn some Freydisan geology and such. The rocks lying around are friable. The reddish dirt is another clue. Iron in the region, and a particular microbe’s been at work. It gets its energy by oxidizing iron. The result is crumbly formations, quickly leached. Be extra careful on steep grades. And even on a level surface, you might fall into a sinkhole hidden by deadfall or whatever.”

“I see. Uldor never mentioned that bug. Is it confined to a few areas, so he hadn’t encountered it? Yes, I definitely need you with me.” We need one another.

They donned their packs. “It’s pretty clear about Orichalc,” Lissa said. “He fled into the woods, uphill as it chanced. One lyco pursued, but only a short ways, because the growth hindered it more than a Susaian, and the killing was better back in the glade. The noise behind Orichalc and, yes, the ravenousness that he sensed, those made him move as fast as possible for his race, which is quite fast, and keep going for some distance. Philosophers can panic too. Finally he—after calming down and resting, I assume—must have tried to return. Where else was there to go? But in dense woods, an inexperienced person can get completely lost within less than a kilometer, and wander farther and farther astray. It’s especially easy on Freydis, where you have no definite shadows or heavenly bodies or anything to steer by. I only hope he soon realized the sensible thing was to settle down and wait to be found. And hope he survives the wait.”

They entered the forest. For some meters the going wasn’t bad. Lissa wove among hooklike thorns; arms before her face, she parted withes, passed through, released them slowly enough for Hebo to intercept before they slapped him. Then the trail, hitherto clear to a practiced eye, went into the thicket that had baffled the lycosauroid. No, not a coppice, more like a wall, too wide to go around and have any likelihood of finding the track again on the other side. It was a duckwalk or all fours, machete, long pauses to search for the next broken twig, bruised sapling, disarrayed tuft marking where fear had gone. Gloom and rank odors closed in. Sweat runneled over skin, hung in clothes and reeked, grew sticky under the gathering chill. Cries, croaks, whistles jeered from unseen mouths.

Hebo cursed. Lissa marveled at his vocabulary. She’d have to remember some of those phrases. Glancing back, she saw how he struggled. “I was afraid of that,” she sighed. “Your tent pack’s catching on everything. Get rid of it. It could cost us hours we can’t afford.”

“After lugging it this far? Bringing it was your idea,” he grumbled.

“I don’t claim omniscience,” she snapped. “And you didn’t object.”

Lips twisted upward in the wetly gleaming face. “Well, my sleeping bag’s waterproof. I hope yours is.” He lessened his burden.

When they won free of the brake, progress wasn’t much faster. Though this was only slightly more altitude, trees grew farther apart and underbrush became sparse. That, though, meant stretches of bare dirt or exposed rock where it could take minutes to make sure of the traces. Wind moaned louder, leaves soughed, clouds raced low and swart overhead.

“You’d think the lizard would backtrack himself,” Hebo growled once.

Lissa told herself not to resent the word he used. She’d been guilty of it too, now and then in the past. “It’s all I can do to find out how he went,” she reminded him. “Do you expect that a stranger to wilderness could?”

“N-no. You’re right. Stupid question. I’m tired, brain going numb. How do you keep fresh?”

She must laugh. “And fragrant? After enough running around in woods, you learn ways to save your strength. No, you don’t; your body does.”

“I wouldn’t’ve thought experience on one planet’s useful on another.”

“Oh, there are countless differences, of course, but the principles are pretty broad and the techniques pretty adaptable. When I mentioned that to Orichalc, it gave him the idea of persuading me to join the explorers for some years.”

“He didn’t do you any favor.”

She resisted a sharp answer.

The traces angled off. Orichalc had evidently noticed that he had gone above the camp, and sought to turn downhill. Unfortunately, on this irregular ground that was not a simple either-or proposition. A check against the flyer’s radio beacon showed that the general direction of the lurching path was almost at right angles to what might have helped. After a while, the descent sharpened. Here creep and erosion had thinned soil, so that trees stood three or four meters apart and gnarly knorrig was commoner than thornbark. In between gray trident bushes, dirt littered with windblown detritus, boulders, and bedrock.

“He must have known by now this was the wrong way.” Hebo’s voice came hoarse.

“Certainly,” Lissa agreed. “I suspect he was fire-thirsty, in random search of a streamlet or a puddle or anything.” They had drained their canteens along the way, and refilled them at a pool she had found and the Susaian had not.

The man glanced aloft into roiling, hooting gloom. “No dearth of water by nightfall.”

“Which isn’t long off. Damn, oh, damn.”

“We have lights. I can keep going if you can.”

She did not so much reach decision as feel it thrust upon her. “No. In rain and the Freydisan dark, they’d be useless. We’d better hole up, get some rest, proceed after dawn.”

Once more, as often during the past hours, they shouted their throats sore. No response. No response. Lissa’s vision strained straight ahead through gathering dusk. Beyond the nearest trees, woodland merged into a single blackness. She could still perceive how rapidly the slope rose yonder, and recalled from her aerial view that on its other side the ridge gave on a canyon which Orichalc would surely not enter.

He can’t be far. We arrived late, and had to find the signs and read them, but I swear they show him slowing down, closer and closer to exhaustion. Maybe we’ve less than a klick to go. But in exactly what direction? The cursed wind blows our cries back onto us. Oh, dear kind Orichalc, thirsting, hungering, shivering, alone, alone.

“Too bad we had to leave the tent behind,” Hebo said. “No matter how sturdy our bags, if I know hill weather, we’d be glad of a roof.”

At least he doesn’t blame me, he admits it was necessary. “We can arrange that,” Lissa told him, “provided we hurry. Will you hop to my orders?”

He sketched a salute. In the haggard, grimy, stubbly countenance, how boyish his grin flashed.

With her machete she chopped down a slim flexy and lopped off its boughs. Propping an end in a forked knorrig, she leaned the larger branches against the pole and wove the lesser ones between to make a framework. He had gathered withes, leaves, deadfall, whatever small stuff he could find. Together, she directing, they plaited and heaped it over the lattice. “Got to pitch the roof carefully,” she explained, “but this will keep us snug.”

“Yes, and I notice how the ground slopes,” he replied. “We won’t get runoff. Good job.”

Weary or no, he possessed a quick intelligence. “It’s an ancient device, primeval,” she said. Unable to resist showing off a bit: “Ordinarily I’d pile a circle of stones outside the entrance and bank a fire there, to reflect heat inside, but we haven’t time, it’d probably drown anyway, and our bags will serve. Hoy, pass that vine over the thatch, or it’ll blow loose during the night.”

The first drops flew heavy, cold, and stinging. “After you,” he said with a bow. She crawled into the narrow space. Best avoid possible misunderstandings and undress in the dark. By feel she arranged her things, got out of her stinking clothes, slid into the bedding. Never mind a bath, toothbrush, all ordinary amenities. “Your turn,” she called.

He took her hint and also left his light in his pack. Often, inevitably, groping and twisting about, he bumped her. She grew acutely aware of it and commanded herself to be an adult. That didn’t quite work. Which was ridiculous, she thought exasperatedly. There had after all been a couple of other humans on the Jonna expedition, and it had become good between her and Jomo Mkato from Brusa, clearly understood on both sides as just physical and friendly, and then after she returned to Asborg she’d renewed two old acquaintances. Had she now a feeling of desperation, the body wanting whatever comfort it could grab?

Well, it wasn’t going to get any for a while, not of that kind.