Then there was only the jungle.
RYAN AWAKENED ONCE in the night. He could hear the regular sound of Krysty’s breathing at his side and Dean carrying on a mumbled conversation with himself, still locked deep in sleep.
The fire had crumbled into itself, leaving only a pile of white ash, speckled with tiny glowing embers. Through the beaded curtain that was the front door to the hut, Ryan could see that it was a brilliant, moonlit night, throwing sharp shadows across the dirt floor.
Outside, there were the ceaseless night sounds of the tropical forest, insects chittering and hunting birds crying out, the occasional barking snarl of some larger predator.
Ryan wondered what had awakened him. There was slight pressure on his bladder from the octli that he’d drunk. The surprisingly potent liquor had also given him a sick headache, with pressure behind his good eye.
He decided to go and take a leak. It didn’t seem a good idea to wander off and risk being shot by one of the guards. Ryan had noticed that some of the natives carried small leather pouches with rawhide thongs attachedstone-throwing slings. As well as the archaic blasters, they had bows with long arrows, and a few had blowpipes slung across their shoulders. Any of them could strike him down from the darkness unless he stepped carefully,
He walked to the rear of the hut, looking out past two more buildings, seeing the surrounding fence through the gap. There was no sign of any of the sentries.
Ryan felt the short hairs begin to prickle at his nape, and he padded back to the sleeping room and picked up both the SIG-Sauer and the panga, bolstering one and carefully sheathing the other.
He stepped down into the open space, his head turning from side to side, suddenly realizing what had disturbed him. The background of noise from the trees beyond the fence had ceased and the night was unnervingly still.
It crossed his mind to go back and wake Krysty, to stir the others from sleep and go out to see if there was anything wrong.
But there was always that moment of serious doubt that everything was fine, and he would have roused J.B. and the others for no good reason.
And he was already outside, breathing in the rich night air.
Ryan moved with infinite caution, picking his way between the houses toward the fence. His shadow preceded him, etched on the cropped grass of the compound.
When he reached the perimeter he stopped for a moment, puzzled that he hadn’t yet seen any of the sentries or been seen by one of them.
His hand had been hovering over the butt of the blaster, but now he relaxed a little. He unbuttoned himself and started to piss against the high fence, playing the amber jet back and forth, watching as it trickled down the smooth-barked logs, soaking into the turf.
He buttoned up his pants again and started to turn away from the fence, when two things happened.
His eye caught a glimpse of a pair of naked feet sticking out from the deep shadow of the nearest building. Someone was either sleeping there, or something had gone very seriously wrong in the village.
Before his mind had taken a vital second or so to try to rationalize what he’d seen, Ryan was dealt a crunching blow across the throat.
He hadn’t seen it coming until the last fraction of a moment and didn’t have time to parry it successfully. He managed to get up his right hand to slightly deflect and dull the force of the hit, and if he hadn’t, then he would certainly have been killed.
Ryan staggered two steps away and slumped to his knees, all of his fighting instinct rallying to stop him going down into the darkness.
The man who’d attacked him was an etched silhouette, holding a long club shaped like a baseball bat. He was certainly a native, but wore a necklace of teeth and claws from some kind of forest predator.
A jaguar, Ryan thought as the club started to whistle down toward him for a second, killing blow.
He ducked and rolled, trying to yell out a warning to the village, but his vocal cords had been damaged by the attack and all that came out was a strangled whisper.