Troy ate slowly. So much depended now on Simba’s response to his appeal, on the cat’s dominance over his fellow mutants. If the slight bond between man and animals was not stout enough to lead them to trust him now—then he had failed completely.
Back in the flitter he made no further attempt to keep in touch with the fugitives. He had done all he could during that early morning contact. Either they would be waiting—or they would not. The future must be governed by one or the other of those facts—which one he would not know until the flyer landed.
In midmorning, bright and clear, the flitter touched with an expert’s jarless landing at the edge of the wood. Dragur ordered them out, the barrel of his needler as much on Troy as on Rerne.
“And now”—the agent faced the woodland—“where are they, Horan?”
“In there.” Troy nodded to the cover. Yes, they were all there, waiting in hiding. Whether they would show themselves was again another matter.
The Guildsman drew his blaster, thumbed the butt dial to spray beam. Troy gathered himself for a quick leap if the other touched the button. But the agent spoke first. “No beaming,” he snapped. “We have to be sure we get them all and in one attack.” Then he turned to Troy. “Bring them out.”
“I have no summoner, and they will not obey me to that point. I cannot bring them against their wills. I can only hold them where they are.”
For a second or two he was afraid that Dragur would refuse to enter the shadow of the trees. Then Troy’s statement apparently made sense to the agent.
“March!” Dragur’s tone sheared away the urbanity of earlier hours. Troy obeyed, the agent close behind him, needler ready.
Horan rounded a bush, stooped under a hanging branch. “Here! Here! Here!”
Simba, Sargon, Sheba—
Troy threw himself face down into the leaf mold, rolled—Dragur shrieked. Troy came to his knees again and faced the man now plunging empty-handed toward him.
Simba clung with three taloned feet to the agent’s shoulder, as with a fourth he clawed viciously at the man’s face and eyes, while both foxes made a concentrated attack with sharp fangs upon the agent’s ankles.
Troy caught up the needler the other had dropped when Simba had sprung to his present perch from a low-hanging tree limb. Horan was still on one knee, but he had the weapon up to cover Zul as the small man burst through the bushes to them.
“Stand—and drop that!”
Zul’s eyes widened. Reluctantly his fingers loosened their hold upon the blaster. The weapon thudded to the ground.
“You, too!”
The Guildsman who had prodded Rerne on into this pocket clearing obeyed Troy’s order. A furred shadow with a long tail crooked above its back flitted out of cover, mouthed Zul’s blaster and brought it to Troy, then went back for the guard’s weapon. Dragur staggered around, his arms flailing about his head where the blood dripped from ripped flesh on his face and neck. Simba no longer rode his shoulders, but was now assisting the foxes to drive the man, with sudden rushes and slashes at his feet and legs.
Blinded, crying in pain, completely demoralized by the surprise and the unexpected nature of that attack, the agent tripped and fell, sprawling at Rome’s feet, while Simba snarled and made a last claw swipe at his face. The ranger stared in complete amazement from the team of animal warriors to Troy.
“You planned this?” he asked in a voice loud enough to carry over Dragur’s moaning.
“We planned this,” Troy corrected. He thrust the two blasters into his belt, but he kept the needler aimed at the others.
“Now”—he motioned to the Guildsman—“you gather up Citizen Dragur and we will go back to the flitter.”
There was no argument against the needler. Half carrying the moaning agent, the Guildsman tramped sullenly back to the flyer, Zul and Rerne in his wake, Troy bringing up the rear. He knew the animals were active as flanking scouts though he no longer saw them.
“You”—Troy nodded to Rerne—“unload water, the emergency supplies.”
“You are staying here then?” The ranger showed no surprise.
“We are staying,” Troy corrected once again, watching as the other dumped from the flitter the things he might need for survival in the Wild. Then the Guilds- man, under Horan’s orders, gave Dragur rough first aid, tied him up and stowed him away, afterwards doing the same for Zul, before he, himself, submitted to binding at Rerne’s hands.
“And how do you propose to deal with me?” the ranger asked as he boosted the last of the invaders from Tikil into the flitter.
“You can go—with them.” Troy hesitated for a moment and then, almost against his will, he added roughly, “I ask your pardon for that tap on the head at Ruhkarv.”
Rerne gazed at him levelly. The mask he had worn in the city was back, to make his features unreadable, though there was a spark of some emotion deep in his eyes.
“You were within your rights—an oath breaker deserves little consideration.” But behind those flat words was something Troy thought he could read a different meaning into.
“Those waiting were not your men but patrollers?” He demanded confirmation of what he had come to suspect.
Simba appeared out of the grass, by his presence urging an end to this time-wasting talk.
“So you saw that much.” The flicker in Rerne’s eyes glowed stronger.
“I saw, and I have had time to think.” It was an apology, one Troy longed for the other to accept, though that acceptance could lead to nothing between them now save a level balancing of the old scales.
“I will come back—you understand that?” Rerne stated a fact.
Troy smiled. The headiness of his victory bubbled in him. Release from the strain of the past hours, or past days, was an intoxicant he found hard to combat.
“If you wish, Rerne. I may not be your equal in the lore of the Wild, but together we shall give you a good run—“
“We?” Rerne’s head swung. If he was looking for the other animals, he would not see them. But they were all there, even to Sahiba crouched under the low branches of a bush.
“Still we.”
“And Norden?”
Troy’s smile faded. That was a wicked backstroke he had not expected from Rerne. His braceleted hand went to the belt where the studs were no longer burnished bright.
“The crab did not jump,” he replied evenly.
“Perhaps it was not offered the right bait.” Rerne shook his head. “This is the Wild and you are no trained ranger. By our laws I cannot help you unless you ask for it, and that would mean surrender.” He waited a long moment, as if he actually hoped for some affirmative sign from Troy.
The other nodded. “I know. From now on it will be you and yours against us. Only do not be too sure of the ending, Rerne.”
He watched the flitter rise in the vertical climb of a master pilot. Then the carrying strap of the needler across his shoulder, he made a compact bundle of the supplies.
Sunset, sunrise, another nightfall—morning again— though here the sun made a pale greenish shimmer in the forest depths. Troy only knew that they were still pointed east. At least under such cover he could not be tracked by air patrols. Those hunting him would have to go afoot and so be subject to discovery by the keener senses of the animals. Shang took to the treetops, Simba and the foxes ranged wide on the ground, able to scout about Troy as he marched, carrying Sahiba.
Once Simba had been stalked in turn by a forest creature, and Troy had blasted it into a charred mass as it leaped for the cat. But otherwise they saw few living things as they pushed forward.
To Troy the Wild did not threaten. About him it closed like a vast envelope of content. And the memory of Norden was a whisper of mist torn away by the wind rustling through the boughs over his head. With the animals he had moved into a new world, and Tikil too was a forgotten dream—a nightmare—small, far- off, cramped and dusty, well lost. The only thing to trouble him was a vague longing now and then for one of his own kind to share the jubilation of some discovery, the exultation when he awoke here feeling a measure of his birthright returned to him.
On the fifth day the ground began to rise, and once or twice through a break in the trees Troy located peaks in the sky ahead. Perhaps in those heights he could find a cave to shelter them—something they would need soon if the now threatening clouds meant a storm.
“Men!”
Troy froze. The sobering shock made him recoil against a tree. He had half forgotten the chase behind. Now he heard Simba squall in fear and rage, the fear thrusting into Troy’s brain in turn as a spearhead. A pinner! The same force that had gripped him at the time of Zul’s pursuit glued them all to the earth once again. Yet there was no flitter in sight, no sign of a tracker.