It was late afternoon on their third interminable day. The sandy bays had followed one another without respite, some broad, some narrow, but all of them devoid of streams or rivers. The castaways had survived on coconut milk and a few meager sips of rainwater caught on loaves in the frequent showers, but they were all weakening fast. They needed food and, above all, they needed drinking water—copiously and soon. They needed rest and shelter. Little Chicken was furious that these woodlands were so unlike his home forests. In the taiga he could have survived indefinitely with no tool but fingernails; here his survival skills were little better than Rap’s.
The scanty and unfamiliar diet had made all three of them ill. Thinal was close to collapse, and his feet were raw. At times he had allowed Little Chicken to carry him, and then they had moved faster, but even the brawny goblin was failing. His moccasins were worn away by the abrasion of the sand, his ankle was swollen, and obviously only his contempt for pain was letting him walk at all.
Rap’s boots were no great advantage. He had torn strips from his loincloth to bandage his blisters, but then he had merely developed other blisters in other places. Walking on sand was worse than running in snow; his legs ached in every muscle and joint. The shallows provided firmer going, but sand and seawater together were agony on raw flesh.
At least the weltering of the sun let them walk in the palms’ dappled shadow, but high tide had driven them up into shingle and shell banks at the top of the beach, with every step real torment for the imp and the goblin. And then Rap’s farsight had solved the strange problem of where the rain went. The lushness of the jungle proved that rain was frequent; the absence of streams seemed inexplicable. Snapping out of an exhausted daze, he had realized quite suddenly that there was a river a short distance inland, paralleling the coast, a river that was capturing all the rainfall. A river meant fresh water and it must join the sea somewhere, although here it was unreachable, shut off by undergrowth as thick as hay bales.
And then, as he forced his farsight out to the limits of his range, he had detected a path, a narrow strip of bare reddish soil winding through the trees. One end opened on the beach just around the next headland, the other lay on the riverbank. There were buildings there.
“Tell about huts, “ Little Chicken growled. He was becoming surprisingly proficient in impish.
“Just huts.” Rap’s head was aching with the effort. “Eight or nine of them. In a half circle. And some things made of poles. Little buildings, thatched . . .”
“Headhunters!” Thinal wailed. “Fairyfolk are headhunters!”
“What choice do we have?” Rap said again.
Thinal glared at him, his foxy features sour with pain. “You don’t have any. But I do.”
“You promised.”
“Then I’m un-promising! You get me into danger, Master Rap, and I call Darad! I said I’d warn you. I’m warning you now.” It was astonishing, really, that the little guttersnipe had endured as much as he had.
“Okay!” Rap said. “You’ve done very well. More than I would have expected. You stay here, and we’ll go ahead and scout. If it’s safe, we’ll come back and get you.”
Thinal looked around the beach. Not much of it was visible at high tide, with the waves surging almost into the palms. No food. No water. No company. ”I’ll come,” he said grouchily. “But I’m warning you—if anyone’s head’s going to decorate a pole, mister, it ain’t going to be mine.”
2
“People?” Thinal whispered, almost bumping into Rap as he stopped on the path.
“There’s nothing alive in the village except chickens,” Rap said. ”And nothing moving in the jungle.” He wasn’t quite lying, but he hated even being devious. “Look behind that bush.”
Thinal just stared mutinously where Rap was pointing; it was the goblin who pushed in and parted the leaves. Rap already knew there was a dead dog there, with an arrow in its hindquarters. It must have dragged itself away to die.
Snorting angrily, Little Chicken pulled the shaft from the rotting, buzzing carcass. He returned to the path. Thinal whimpered.
“It’s a long arrow,” Rap said. “Fairyfolk are small, aren’t they?”
Thinal shrugged, but Rap was sure Andor had told him that fairies were black-skinned and little taller than gnomes. Long arrows would need long arms, surely. The point was made of iron, sharp and barbed. “It’s like what the legionaries carry, isn’t it?”
“Don’t know,” Thinal said. “Darad would.”
“How far, Flat-Nose?” Little Chicken asked.
Rap squared his shoulders. “Just around the next bend. Come on.” He resumed the painful monotony of moving one sore foot in front of the other, leading the way.
Once there had been a dozen huts in the village, clustered in the shade at the perimeter of a clearing, but four of them were ruined, probably burned. The poles that had puzzled him at a distance were scaffolds for drying nets; a Krasnegarian should have recognized those. He could also make out wickerwork privies and chicken coops, a couple of boats—and a well. The thought of water was making every cell in his body scream.
Then he rounded the last curve and an explosion of cackling startled him; birds flapped across the ground in terror and vanished into the trees. Rap headed for the well, and his companions put on a spurt behind him.
Water! Praise the Gods! Water and more water . . .
Slaked inside and out, soaked and dripping, the three waifs forced uneasy smiles at one another. Very uneasy smiles—there was something terribly wrong about this abandoned settlement. Four huts burned, no people, a dead dog. Thinal’s shifty gaze was even jumpier than usual; the goblin’s angular eyes had narrowed to slits.
The little clearing was well hidden. The path to the oily dark river was short, but it was narrow and would be hard to detect from the water. Upstream lay other, larger, clearings planted with crops, but even those somehow suggested concealment. The calm jungle air was heavy and sticky; the insects numerous and savage. Rap slapped and flapped and cursed, as his companions were doing, and wondered why his mastery didn’t extend to insects, and why anyone would choose to live in such a place when the shore was so much more pleasant.
“No people?” Thinal asked for the hundredth time. “You can’t see anyone at all?”
“There’s nobody moving,” Rap answered cautiously. He tore his farsight away from one particular spot near the edge of the fields and began to scan the huts. The trouble was, he didn’t trust Thinal as far as he could have thrown Little Chicken, which was no distance at all. The imp’s nerves were as tattered as his feet, and any nasty surprise was going to bring Darad in his place in a flash. He had not replaced his canceled promise.
And the goblin was almost as bad. In the northern forest he had been doggedly insistent that he was Rap’s trash, his slave and servant. He had not mentioned that recently. Here, far from his familiar haunts, his customs and habits were being shaken and undermined. He had always been a threat at Rap’s back, but now the tradition that had stayed his bitter hatred was weakening. He was becoming less predictable by the hour.
Thinal ended his cautious scrutiny and hobbled toward the nearest hut. The goblin unconsciously drooped into a tracker’s crouch as he began quartering the ground. Rap followed Thinal.
The cabin was small, its leafy roof low. The walls were made of flimsy wicker and no higher than Rap’s waist, leaving an open space all around below the eaves. In that steamy climate this might be adequate shelter, however impractical it seemed to Rap’s northerner’s eye. He ducked in through the doorway, but then he had still to keep his head bent below hanging nets full of small gourds and tubers—the family larder, presumably. They reminded him how ravenous he was.
Woven mats covered the floor. Thinal was already rummaging through some rattan hampers in a corner. There was no other furniture except some clay pots, a couple of rough stools, and rolls that were likely bedding.
Thinal straightened with a sniff of disapproval. He flashed an unexpected grin. “A thief would starve to death here! Wouldn’t he?”
“Dunno.”
Chuckling, Thinal limped over to another corner and flicked aside the mat to reveal a wooden disk set level with the dirt. By then Rap had sensed the pot buried underneath.
“How’d you know about that?”
“Professional secret!” Thinal sniggered and hauled out a handful of beadwork. “Darkest corner. Necklaces . . . bangles? Junk!” He tossed it aside. “Coral and shells and pretty, pretty junk! No metal. No stones.”
Rap left him to his petty pillaging and went out to look for the goblin, whom he found studying one of the hearths. He greeted Rap with a mirthless, disbelieving show of oversized fangs.