while sword-bearing guards maintained a vigilant watch on the lowest.
“Incredible,” Robin said. He stared, a thoughtful look on his face.
“What do you think?” a portly Friar Tuck asked.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Will Scarlet said.
“Who could have built it?” asked Little John.
“A better question is, where did they get the metal,” said Mutch. He’d been a civil engineer in the last life and tended toward practical questions. “Did you see those windows? That was glass! Real glassl”
“I think,” Robin said, sitting down, “we’re going to wait for the riverboat’s return. Will, Ben—scout the hill. There should be a grailstone on the other side. If the natives are peaceful, we’ll spend the night here.”
“Yes, Robin,” Will Scarlet said. He and Ben Taylor slipped into the forest like shadows.
While Robin stared out across the River, deep in thought, the rest of his men began setting up camp: clearing the area, gathering wood, building a circle of stones to hold their fire. After a minute Robin opened his pack, took out a small square of cigarette paper, a tiny clay jar with a stopper, and a carved fishbone pen. He opened the jar, dipped his pen into a thin grayish ink, and began to write. His script was tiny, meticulous.
When he finished, he wrapped the paper around an arrow’s shaft, tied it in place with human-hair string, and returned the arrow to his quiver. Now it was just a matter of time.
The natives turned out to be surprisingly friendly, considering the language barrier. They were a shy people, quiet and simple in their ways, all living in grass
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huts around a grailstone. They allowed Robin and his men to fit their grails into the unused slots in the grailstone, then clustered at the far side of the village to keep a wary vigil.
Robin counted twenty-five men and thirty women. He noticed each man kept a long, bone-tipped spear close at hand, though none made a hostile move.
“Polynesian,” Friar Tuck suggested, “or from another of the Pacific Islands.” He had been a sociologist before being recruited into the merry men: one of the reasons he’d joined was to see more of the people resurrected along the River’s banks. “Probably never saw a white man in their natural lives….”
Nodding, Robin collected his grail from the grailstone after the charge had come. “What do you think the chances are they’ll attack?”
Tuck hesitated. “They were a friendly people. But I wouldn’t want to press our luck.”
“Come on, then,” Robin told the rest of his men. “Back to the River. We shouldn’t push our welcome by eating in front of them.”
He led the way back to the cliff. Will Scarlet was standing guard, keeping an eye out for the riverboat.
“No sign of it,” he reported.
Robin nodded slowly. “I’m sure they’re on a scouting mission this time,” he said. “They’ll be back.”
“In such a craft?” Little John said, his bushy black eyebrows coming together in a frown. “They could go to the ends of the River. Why shouldn’t they return here?”
“Any of a dozen reasons.” Robin hunkered down and opened his grail. There were thin crispy wafers, little packets of what looked like peanut butter, strips of some
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dried, cured meat, and a little flask of brandy… as well as the usual tobacco, marijuana, and dreamgum.
Robin took a chew of the meat and continued. ‘ ‘First, that riverboat’s one of the most valuable pieces of equipment on the River—but it burns wood. They’ll have to put ashore whenever they run low. I’m betting they only stop at prearranged safe bases, and if they’re scouting new territory they won’t stop at all. They’ll head home when they start to run low on fuel. Maybe two days, maybe three. Second, they didn’t have enough people on board for an extended journey. If it were my riverboat and I were going far, I’d pack it with armed men. Every petty tyrant on the River will try to steal it, given half a chance.”
“Shades of Robert Fulton …” Little John murmured to himself.