“Not deep—this one we can wade. Fortune displays a smiling face at last!” Soong squatted down and ventured to test the temperature of the fluid with a forefinger, withdrawing it quickly. “Born in snow, yes. We shall have very cold feet—”
They walked along the bank for a distance. Out of the withered drifts of last season’s grass a khat exploded with a muffled snuffle of panic. It skidded to the edge of the water, slipped on clay and, wildly kicking, plunged over. Its struggles continued in the water, keeping it afloat.
From the opposite bank shot a vee of ripples heading for that point of disturbance. The khat shrieked, a cry of agony almost human with pain and terror. Blood rilled out to stain the water and other lines of ripples converged toward it.
The Combatants stood aghast at the sight. But the struggle ceased seconds after it had begun. On the stones at the bottom lay clean-picked bones.
Lazily, glutted, three small forms floated. They were six-limbed, frog-headed creatures, but their jaws were the jaws of rapacious carnivores, and their four eyes, set in a double row above those vicious jaws, were black beads of ferocious, intelligent hunger.
Kana moistened his lips. “Tif.”
“What—?” Soong shied a stone at the small monsters. They glided off a foot or two, but they did not return to the opposite bank. Instead they lingered just out of range, their attention fixed on the Terrans—waiting—watching—
“Bad news,” Kana answered Soong’s half question. “You saw what happened to that khat. Well, that will happen to any living thing that tries to cross water where tif live.”
“But there’re only three and none of them are more than a foot long—”
“Three of them we can see. And where there’re three—there’re more. They travel in schools. Three in sight may well mean three hundred in cover, ready to attack when there’s meat enough!”
No, there was no way of judging how many of the frog-devils infested the river. And there was no practical way of getting across a stream so guarded. If the record-pak on Prime had not been so limited in its information! Or if the Terrans only had friendly natives to provide them with advice.
The limpid water seemed very peaceful, but as the Combatants moved downstream the tif swam effortlessly to parallel their path. Now and then the little monsters were joined by others of their species, come from the shadows below the banks, who paddled out to confer with the three in mid-stream, eye the Terrans for themselves, as if estimating their bulk, before retreating again to their hidden dens.
“Spreading the word—meat on the hoof—” Kana stopped.
The shallow river had widened as they followed it south, and now it was islanded with dry-topped rocks forming an irregular path. The Terran scout studied these—stepping stones? Could some sort of net be rigged above and below to keep off the tif? A few of the men might be able to cross here, leaping from rock to rock. But the whole Horde, burdened with disabled and wounded, could not do it. The problem would have to be turned over to that handful of experts in survival Hansu had gathered on his staff—veterans who pooled knowledge gained on a hundred different worlds to keep them and their comrades alive on this one.
But suddenly the breeze brought a familiar reek to his nostrils. He had not scented that since the night at the Cos fort. Kana threw himself down behind a bush and Soong landed beside him a moment later.
Almost directly across the river a tall Llor rode out on a sand spit. He carried no lance but balanced an air rifle across his saddle, thus proclaiming his rank as a regular of the royalist guard, rather than a warrior-follower of some provincial noble. The trooper dismounted to approach the water gingerly, inspecting the ripples before he struck down into them with the butt of his weapon. Plainly he was aware of the tif.
But safe on the sand he sat cross-legged, taking out a length of purple cane to chew while he waited. The Terrans flattened themselves every time the Llor’s glance swung carelessly across their too-thin cover. There was no hope of withdrawing unseen now.
The Llor spat pieces of pulped cane into the water and once or twice threw stones at the clustering tif. More and more ripples headed for that tongue of gravel as beneath the surface the small masters of the river gathered. Now and then the Llor watched them and gave birth to that snorting sound which served his race for laughter. But, Kana noted, he was careful to stay away from the water.
A mewling cry brought the trooper to his feet. Out of the woods came a party of riders. The one in the van wore a short scarlet cloak lined with ttsor fur and carried before him on a perch attached to his saddle a trained hork—thus identifying himself as a member of the Gatanu’s own household. But among the other riders was the hooded, robed figure of a Ventur.
The noble did not dismount, but his guard did, pulling the trader with them. For, astonishingly enough, the Ventur was a prisoner, his hands lashed at his back. The Llor held a conference with their scout, their leader going so far as to ride out on the spit to peer curiously into the water, while the guards urged their captive to the bank.
Then, to the horror of the watching Terrans, they calmly picked up the smaller trader and flung him into the stream where the water was now whipped to a foam by the swarming tif.
Kana’s first avenging shot snapped the noble out of his saddle—to plunge into the river headfirst. Methodically the Terrans fired in volleys, picking off the murderers on the far bank. Five of the party were down before the other three fled for the protection of the trees. But none of the fugitives reached that grove.
There was a continued flurry in the water where the tif greeted this rare abundance of meat. Kana dared not look at the place where the helpless Ventur had fallen. Death in battle was commonplace—he had been trained to believe that it would be his own end. But the callous cruelty he had just witnessed was to him a terrifying thing.
“By Klem and Kol’.” Soong twitched at his sleeve and pointed to the river.
Something struggled there, flopping about—hampered by sodden robe and bound hands. And in an ever-widening circle about the Ventur floated tif, limp and belly up. Kana leaped to the top of the nearest rock and then to the next. A stripped Llor skull snarled up at him as he jumped the water gap which cradled it. The Ventur was on his feet, winding toward the sand spit where a moment later Kana and Soong joined him. Kana drew his knife.
“I cut those—” he said in the trade tongue, motioning to the hide thongs which bound the other’s arms.
The Ventur retreated a step. His struggle to gain the shore had not dislodged his masking hood. Unable to read anything from the gray expanse, broken only by the eye-holes, Kana did not follow him.
“Friend—” Kana used that word with all the emphasis he could give it. He pointed to what was left of the Llor noble. “Enemy of us—enemy of you—”
The Ventur might be considering that point. Suddenly he wheeled and backed toward the Terrans, extending his bound wrists as far as he could. Kana sawed through the wet thongs.
His hands free, the Ventur caught the dangling reins of the noble’s mount. An unusually well-trained and therefore highly valued animal, it had not bolted with the rest. The Ventur mounted somewhat awkwardly. His hooded head turned from the river to the bodies of the Llor on its banks and the skeletons in the water where the tif, replete, still floated, their menacing eyes on the prey they could not reach.
One hand groped beneath the robe and came out with a small damp bag. A finger which was closer to a green-gray claw indicated the lazily swimming death and then the inert bodies of the tif which had threatened it. It motioned as if sowing something from the bag on the stream. When Kana nodded, the bag was tossed to him and the Ventur kicked the gu into a racking gallop back into the woods.
“Is that something to knock out the tif?” Soong questioned. “Do you suppose they knew he had it when they threw him in?”
“I don’t think so, or they would have taken it from him. Maybe its effects are permanent—those floating over there haven’t come to—”
The tif which had attacked the Ventur to their own undoing still drifted belly-up, their wicked mouths open. And Kana noticed that their active fellows avoided them. The bag in his hand might grant the Horde a safe crossing.