Sweet Silver Blues

40

Zeck Zack was as cooperative as a centaur could be after his sojourn with the dead. He didn't balk until having led us from the city via an underwall smugglers tunnel, he discovered that he had been enlisted in our enterprise for the duration.

Morley was in a puckish mood.

"But sir, surely you see all your caterwauling is without foundation. If you will reflect seriously you cannot help but confess the rectitude of our position. If we were to release you, as you so unreasonably insist, you would dash back through the tunnel and instantly set about wreaking evil upon us, imagining us to be the authors of your ill fortune rather than assuming that onus yourself, as is the fact."

I had arrayed my army in squad diamond, with a groll out front, another behind, Dojango on the right and Morley on the left. Night-blind, I marched at the heart of the formation, ready to rush to any quarter suddenly threatened. Zeck Zack stumbled along between Morley and me.

It wasn't long before the centaur surrendered to the inevitable. He betrayed a hitherto sequestered facet of character and began arguing with Morley in the same florid language and overblown, overly polite formulations.

The men who had brought our horses and gear were thrilled to see us. Our advent meant they couldn't just take everything back and sell it again. Nor, they decided after eyeballing the grolls, could they murder us and do the same.

We parted ways immediately upon delivery. They were of the school that maintains wandering around at night could get you killed. We kept moving on the hypothesis that the wise man puts ground between himself and people who want to kill him.

Not a lot of ground. Those horses had heard of me and just to make trouble they insisted that the sensible thing to do was stay put.

Nobody was out to kill them. Nobody behind them, anyway.

Their attitude didn't improve when the sun rose and they found themselves headed into the Cantard.

Morley accused me of anthropomorphizing and exaggerating the natural reluctance of dumb beasts to go into unfamiliar territory.

It just goes to show they had him fooled. They're crafty in their malice, unicorns under the skin.

Having had no revelation, I set a course due west. Thither lay the most barren territory in the Karentine end of the Cantard, the desert of colorful buttes and mesas people in TunFaire picture when they think of the Cantard. I decided to head there because it seemed a logical place for the night people to have established a nest. It was so inhospitable as to be repugnant to most races. There were no discovered resources to bring exploiters with their guardians. Ample prey existed close by—especially when there were Zeck Zacks to do the rounding up.

Our second day out Morley began to suspect that I was not sure of my course. He went to work on the centaur.

"There's no point to it, Morley," I said. "They wouldn't be stupid enough to trust him."

Doris grumbled something from behind us. I could now tell the grolls apart. I had made them wear different hats.

"What?" I asked.

"He says there's a dog following us."

"Uh-oh."

"Trouble?"

"Probably. We'll have to ambush it to find out. Watch for a place where the wind is toward us."

Three possibilities suggested themselves. The dog could be a domestic stray seeking human company. Damned unlikely. It could be an outcast from a wild pack. That meant rabies. Or, most unpleasant and most likely, it could be an outrunner scouting for game.

Marsha found a likely bunch of boulders on the lower slope of the butte we were rounding. He headed up a steep, twisting alley between, into shadows and clicky echoes. Morley, Dojango, and I dismounted and followed, rehearsing the balky animals in the vulgates of several languages.

"What did I tell you about horses, Morley?"

Doris hunkered between rocks and started blending in.

"Keep going, Morley. They're sight as well as scent hunters. It'll need to see movement."

Morley grumbled. Marsha grumbled back, surly, but continued climbing. A bit later there was one brief squeal of doggie outrage from below, canceled by a meaty smack.

The horses were not reluctant going downhill. Lazy monsters.

Doris had squashed the mongrel good. He stood over it grinning as though he had conquered an entire army troop.

"Yech!" I said "Looks like a rat run over by a wagon. Lucky he missed its head." I squatted, examined ears. "Well, damn!"

"What?" Morley asked.

"It was an outrunner. A trained outrunner. See the holes through the ears? Punched there by unicorn teeth. There's a hunting party somewhere within a few miles of us. They'll track the dog when he doesn't turn up. That means we have to leave enough nasty surprises to discourage them, because we aren't going to outrun them if they take our scent."

"How many?"

"One adult male and all the females of his harem that aren't too pregnant or cluttered up with young. Maybe some adolescent females that haven't run away yet. Anywhere from six to a dozen. If they do catch up, concentrate on the dominant female. The male won't get involved. He leaves the hunting and heavy stuff to the womenfolk. He saves himself for giving orders, mounting females, killing his male offspring if they stray from their mothers, and trying to kidnap the most attractive females from other harems."

"Sounds like a sensible arrangement."

"Somehow, I figured you'd feel that way."

"Wouldn't killing the boss break up the harem?"

"The way I hear, if that happened they'd just keep coming till they were dead or we all were."

"That is true," Zeck Zack said. "A most despicable beast, the unicorn. Nature's most bankrupt experiment. But one day my folk will complete their extermination... " He shut up, having recalled that the rest of us held a different view of the identity of nature's most bankrupt experiment.

We hurried on. After a while Zeck Zack resumed talking so he could explain some of the nastier devices his folk used to booby-trap their backtrails. Some were quite gruesomely ingenious.

He had contributed nothing but carping before. His sudden helpfulness suggested the proximity of unicorns scared the tailfeathers off him.