trucks back with anyone?”
There was silence. Shaking of heads. Emilio stared at the lot of them, simply
tired. “Bounder,” he said, looking to one of the hisa who waited by the forest
edge. “Where is Bounder? I need him.”
Bounder came, out from among the trees, on the slope of the hill. “You come,”
Bounder shouted down, beckoning up toward the hill and the trees. “All come
now.”
“Bounder, we’re tired. And we need the things on the trucks. If we go that way
we can’t take the trucks and some of us aren’t able to walk. Some are sick,
Bounder.”
“We carry sick, many, many hisa. We steal good things on trucks, teach we good,
Konstantin-man. We steal for you. You come.”
He looked back at the others, at dismayed and doubtful faces.
Hisa surrounded them. More and more came out of the woods, even some with young,
which humans rarely saw. It was trust, that such came out among them. All of the
company sensed it, perhaps, for there was no protest. They helped the old and
the unwell down from the trucks. Strong young hisa made slings of their hands
for them; others heaved down the supplies and the equipment
“And what when they get scan after us?” Miliko murmured unhappily. “We’ve got to
get deep cover, fast.”
“Takes sensitive scan to tell human from hisa. Maybe they won’t find it
profitable to go after us… yet.”
Bounder reached him, took his hand, wrinkled his nose at him in a hisa wink.
“You come with.”
They were not good for a long walk, however much the news had put the strength
of fright into them. A little while climbing uphill and down through woods and
bracken and they were all panting and some being carried who had started out
walking. A little more and the hisa themselves began to slow the pace. And at
length, when the number of humans they were having to carry grew more than they
could manage, they called halt and themselves stretched out to sleep in the
bracken.
“Find cover,” Emilio urged Bounder. “Ships will see us, not good, Bounder.”
“Sleep now,” Bounder said, curling up, and nothing would stir him or the others.
Emilio sat staring at him helplessly, looked out over all the hillside while
humans and hisa lay down where they had dropped their bundles, curled up in
their blankets some of them, others of them too weary to spread them. He used
his own for a pillow, lay down on Miliko’s, gathered her against him there under
the sun that slanted down through the leaves. Bounder snuggled up to them and
put an arm about him. He let himself go, slept, a weary, healthy sleep.
And he waked with Bounder shaking him and Miliko squatting with her arms across
her knees, with a light fog moistening the leaves, late, late day, and cloud,
and threatening rainfall. “Emilio. I think you should wake up. I think it’s some
very important hisa.”
He rolled onto the other arm, gathered himself to his knees, squinting in the
cold mist as other humans were waking all about him. They were Old Ones who had
come from among the trees, hisa with white abundantly salting their fur, three
of them. He rose and bowed to them, which seemed right, in their land and in
their woods.
Bounder bowed and bobbed and seemed more sober than he was wont. “No talk human
talk, they,” Bounder said. “They say come with.”
“We’re coming,” he said. “Miliko, rouse them out.”
She went, with quiet words spoke to the few still sleeping, and the word ran
through all the number down the hill, weary, damp humans gathering up their
baggage and their persons. There were even more hisa arriving. The woods seemed
alive with them, every trunk in the woods likely to conceal a flitting brown
body.
The Old Ones melted off through the woods. Bounder delayed until they were
ready, and then started off, and Emilio took Miliko’s blanket roll on his own
shoulder and followed after.
At any hint of a human limping as they went, brushing through damp leaves and
dripping branches, there were hisa to help, hisa to take them by the hand and