Now that the battle was over, exhaustion threatened to overcome her. Exhaustion, and misery. After hours, the kuoptu which had flooded her mantle faded, replaced by brown grief. The same color, she noted dully, dappled the mantles of all the warriors within eyesight. The Kiktu had inflicted a terrible defeat upon the Utuku in the clearing. But they knew that, even at that moment, their tribe was being butchered and enslaved on the plain to the south.
Guo was so tired that she did not even wonder where she was going. At first, her vague supposition was that Kopporu was leading them to the east, to a part of the swamp from which they could issue forth in a hopeless attempt to rescue the tribe’s mothers.
She held that thought for some time. It was difficult to determine direction in the gloom beneath the overhanging cycads. And there were more than enough dangers in the swamp to keep her mind concentrated on the few goa ahead of her. Patches of bottomless mud; clumps of dangerous-looking plants, their purple spines glistening with what might well be poison; predators—small predators, for the large ones had fled the sound of battle—but even the small predators of the swamp could be deadly: she saw the bodies of several gana, and one warrior, covered with venomous slugs and snails.
Eventually, it dawned on her that they were heading north, not east. North-ward, she thought—for the actual route they were following seemed to twist and turn in a bewildering manner. Had she and her flankers not been guided by a swamp-dweller, they would have soon become hopelessly lost. But, over time, even to her weary mind, it was clear that they were moving farther and farther away from the battlefield to the south.
Around her, unseen because of the constant screen of cycads, giant ferns, and other vegetation whose name she did not know, she could hear the movement of other files of warriors. Kopporu, she realized, had broken the flank into small groups which, guided by swamp dwellers, could make reasonably rapid progress through the narrow passageways in the swamp. Much more rapid, certainly, than the rigidly organized Utuku—who would not, in any event, soon enter the swamp. Not after the terrible slaughter which Kopporu had inflicted on their left flank.
Occasionally, on the path behind her, Guo saw swamp-dwellers dragging vegetation across the trail. Confusing their trail, so that by the time the Utuku did enter the swamp in pursuit, it would be difficult to determine the exact direction in which the Kiktu survivors—
—had fled.
She knew, then. Understanding came to her in a flash. Everything fell into place. Kopporu’s strange maneuvers; the words and actions of the Great Mother’s attendant; and of the Great Mother herself.
Kopporu has betrayed the tribe.
That thought had no sooner came to her, however, that the simultaneous memory of the Great Mother’s actions drove it out of her mind.
One of my—husbands—is hurt. I forgot all about them.
She stopped abruptly. A sharp pang of guilt.
“One of you is hurt. I’m sorry—I was so tired. I—forgot.”
A soft voice came down from the cowl above. By its timbre, Guo recognized it as the voice of the eumale.
“No. None of us is hurt. Move on. We don’t have time to stop now.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she stopped and laid down her maces. Then she reached up and grasped her cowl with her palps.
“There are dangerous things in this swamp. Many of them are poisonous, and even the smaller snails are almost as big as you. Come down, and—inside me.”
A moment later, she felt the small bodies of the males rapidly moving down her tentacles. The last were the eumale and one of the truemales. Between them, they were bearing the body of another member of the bond.
“You said none of you were hurt!”
“He is not hurt,” came the reply from the truemale. An exquisitely subtle weave of green love and brown misery rippled across his mantle. “Abka is dead. For long now—he was killed in the battle in the clearing.”
“Move on,” repeated the eumale. “There is nothing we can do for him now. And we cannot hold up the tribe.”