prank-playing, and once an ambush which stopped their hearts… Quickfoot’s joke.
Miliko frowned, and when the other humans did, the hisa caught the mood and grew
quieter, seeming perplexed. Miliko caught Whisper by the hand and tried
earnestly and once more to make sense to her, who knew less human speech than
those hisa they were accustomed to deal with.
“Look.” At last she grew desperate, seized a stick and crouched down, ripped up
living and dead bracken to make a clear spot. She jabbed the stick at the
ground. “Konstantin-man camp.” She drew a line. “River.” It was not likely,
knowledgeable men said, that any drawn symbol was going to penetrate hisa
imagination; it was not in their approach to things, lines and marks bearing no
relationship to the real object. “We make circle, so, we eyes watch human camp.
See Konstantin. See Bounder.”
Whisper nodded, suddenly enthusiastic, a quick bob of her whole body on her
haunches. She pointed back in the direction of the plain. “They… they… they,”
she said, and snatched the stick, waved it at the sky with the nearest thing to
menace she had ever seen in a hisa. “Bad they,” she said, and hurled the stick
at the sky, bounced several times, clapped her hands and struck her breast with
her palms. “I friend Bounder.”
Bounder’s mate. Miliko stared at the young female’s intense expression, suddenly
understanding, and Whisper seized her hand, patted it. Quickfoot patted her
shoulder. There was a quick sputtering of conversation among all the hisa, and
they suddenly seemed to take a decision, separated by pairs and each seized a
human by the hand.
“Miliko,” Ito protested.
“Trust them; let’s go with it. Hisa won’t get lost; they’ll keep us in touch and
get us back again when we have to. I’ll send a message to you. Wait on it.”
The hisa were anxiously urging them apart, each a separate way. “Take care,”
Ernst said, looking back; and trees came between. She, Ernst, and Ito had guns,
half the guns there were on all of Downbelow, except the troops’ and the other
three were coming. Six guns and a little of the blasting materials for moving
stumps—that was their whole arsenal. Go quietly, no more than three together,
she had urged the hisa constantly, trying to keep their movements ordinary in
human scan; and by threes the hisa had taken them, by their curious logic: she
and Whisper and Quickfoot, three humans and six hisa, and now three units of
three headed apart in haste.
No more pranks. Suddenly Quickfoot and Whisper were very serious indeed,
slipping through the brush, turning this time to caution her when she made what
their sensitive ears thought too much noise. The hiss of the breather she could
not help, but she took care to break no branch, imitating the hisa’s own gliding
steps, their stop and start swiftness, as if—the thought reached her finally—as
if they were teaching her.
She rested when she must, and only then; once fell, hard, from walking too long,
and the hisa scrambled to pick her up and to pat her face and stroke her hair.
They held her as they did each other, tucked her up with their warmth, for the
sky was clouding and the wind was chill. It started to rain.
She rose as soon as she could, insisted on their pace. “Good, good,” they said.
“You good.” And by afternoon more met them, more females and two males. There
was no sign of them one moment and then they came from a little hill within the
woods, and from out of the trees and leaves like brown shadows in the misting
rain, the water beading like jewels on their pelts. Whisper and Quickfoot spoke
to them, their arms about her, and had an answer.
“Say… far walk they place. Hear. Come. Many come. They eyes warm see you,
Mihan-tisar.”
There were twelve of them. One by one they came and touched Miliko’s hands and
hugged her, and bobbed and bowed in solemn courtesy. What Whisper said was long,
and drew long answers from one and the other.
“They see,” Quickfoot said, listening while Whisper talked. “They see human