“Simply this, young Cawdor—the stickies have been altered and then released. Why, if not to track them and see what they do?”
“Fireblast! In which case they’ll be marked in some way, and whoever performed the surgery will be out for them soon enough,” Ryan finished.
The warrior queen had been listening intently to them, all the while keeping one of her piercing blue eyes on the albino. Although some of their speech had passed her by, she had grasped the gist of it and said hurriedly, “If we’re under threat here, then we move now and get back to camp. That’s far enough away to give us time and shelter, and we have numbers there.”
Ryan nodded. “That’s good, but it doesn’t account for what you want to do with us. We coming with you or making our own way?”
Gloria flashed him a smile that showed strong white teeth that reflected the sparkle in her wild eyes. “I thought that was settled, sugar. You come with us and we look together. I’m not leaving you behind now.”
Both Krysty and Mildred noticed that the woman’s eyes strayed to Jak when she spoke the latter sentence.
“Then we can relax and get the hell out?” Ryan asked.
“What are you waiting for, sweets?” Gloria said before turning to her warriors and speaking once more in the singsong “eh-la, eh-la” chant that was obviously a signal.
This time there was a different intonation to the chant, an emphasis on the second syllable rather than the first, and it was this that gave the cue for the warrior women of the Gate to holster their blasters in the small leather pouches they kept in the small of their backs.
Jak looked across at Ryan, who was puzzled by the expression on the albino’s face. There was something there that Ryan couldn’t recall having ever been part of Jak Lauren in all the time that he had known and fought with him. It wasn’t fear, neither was it apprehension. It was something that fell into the gray area between the two.
Jak recognized the question in Ryan’s steely blue eye. “Why go with them?” he asked simply.
“Makes sense,” Ryan replied carefully, aware that Gloria could hear every word.
“Better on own. Something go wrong when people strange.”
“Mebbe. But mebbe not this time,” Ryan said guardedly. “This could help both of us, and this is land where we may need help.”
“Better on own,” Jak said hoarsely with an agitated shake of his head.
“You’ve got nothing to fear from us, honey,” Gloria said softly, aware that she was intruding but feeling it was important to make her point.
Jak fixed her with his glowing red orbs. “Not you. Something beyond. Not to trust anyone…anything. Can’t explain, but—”
“You a doomie?” Gloria asked him.
Jak gave a curt head shake. “No, but had strangest feeling.”
“I know there’s been something—something you haven’t been able to talk about,” Ryan said quietly, “but this is necessary for both of us. We go with them, and that’s final.”
Jak shrugged.
Gloria smiled at him. “We’re not that frightening, sweetie. And we’ve got this far in one piece.”
Mildred was once more aware of the way Gloria regarded Jak before she turned to her warriors and snapped her fingers twice.
With an understanding that could only have been born of traveling and hunting for so long, the group that had been covering the companions dispersed into the veld and the surrounding bush, while Gloria raised a hand to stay Ryan and his people when they made to move. She waited, with her head raised and a distant look in her eyes. Her nose quivered gently at its upturned tip as she sniffed the early evening air.
From the distance came the sound of whistles, differing in pitch and length. Jak could tell that they came from five different mouths, and from an equally differing number of locations. Each whistle told Gloria something that she needed to know, and when the last whistle had died away on the darkening air, she nodded her approval.
“Okay, we can move out now. Follow me, and stay together.”
“I think we’ve got some idea what to do,” J.B. murmured laconically to Mildred as he watched the warrior queen stride out onto the veld, hair swaying in time with her hips. She made no attempt to stealth, so confident in the abilities of her scouts that she felt no danger.