Rakki waved a hand at them. “Not this, here. Better farther on.”
“This yo’ country herebout?” Scar-arm asked him.
“I been up near this part sometime—” Rakki pointed to the direction ahead, “—from down that way.”
Bo was standing, studying the cloud cover above. It was showing the first sign of darkening before night came. “Need find place okay for bed down pretty soon,” he said.
Rakki pointed ahead again. “Go more, not far. Down from wind. Is food root and berry. Clean water.”
“You don’t say what we do, Dog Meat,” Screecher snapped, cuffing him. “Bo, he the Man. He say.”
Bo waved an arm. “Move on,” he told all of them. Jemmo had said the end of the day would be the time, when the Cavers were tired and their minds distracted.
They clambered down into the ravine and followed it over boulders and falls of loose shale between broken walls growing steeper and higher on either side. Thorn bushes and scrub growths began appearing between the rocks, and coarse grass and moss beds by the sides of the water runnels and pools along the ravine bottom. As these thickened into tangles of gray, curling leaves and creepers pushing over the rocks and choking the gaps between, the caustic dryness of the air above gave way to a humid, stultifying heaviness. Rakki’s eyes picked out a broken stem of reed, and below on the ground, two crossed twigs—repeated again ten paces farther on. It was the sign he had been watching for.
As he had expected, the dogs caught the scent first. The larger, black-and-gray one raised its head suddenly and growled, its ears pricked. The brown ran ahead and stopped with its front paws on a rock, barking insistently. The party halted around the two hairhides, exchanging nervous looks. Bo jerked his head from side to side, scanning the surrounding crags. “What happening heah?” he demanded. The arrow hit the brown dog in the side, causing it to yelp and whirl around. Another flew from somewhere ahead and pierced its neck. It fell, howling.
Figures brandishing spears rose among the growths and rocks on both sides, their bodies painted blue, white, and orange. Jemmo was at the center, wearing the red headband that was his war emblem. The large black dog snarled. “Get um! Kill!” Bo commanded.
The dog bounded up over the boulders and sprang, bringing one of the ambushers down, screaming. A spear flew down and was caught among leaves; another clattered off rocks. Manuka cried out as the third lodged in his thigh. Ahead, beyond the brown dog writhing on the ground, bowmen were running forward into sight, still out of range but fitting new arrows.
Rakki turned upon Fish and gestured at the club slung from his shoulder—a heavy wooden handle with an edged stone lashed at the head. “Need weapon! I fight too!” Fish hesitated, looking to the Oldworlders.
But they were not heeding him. Scar-arm raised the device he was carrying to his shoulder and pointed it. It made a strange crack, and one of the attackers above collapsed back out of sight among the rocks. Scar-arm shifted direction slightly and in moments a second did the same, and then a third clutched his side and reeled backward. At the same time, Bo pointed his weapon at the bowmen preparing to rush forward, and even at that distance, before they had begun to move, dropped two of them in the same baffling way. This was all wrong. Only Rakki could save the situation. “Give!” he screamed at Fish. Fish nodded and unslung the club. Rakki took it, weighed it . . . and stove in the side of Fish’s skull.
He hacked into Scar-arm’s shoulder as Scar-arm was aiming the weapon again, but Screecher shouted a warning before Rakki could get to Bo. Bo turned, saw the blood streaming down Scar-arm’s body, but for a vital split-second he failed to register the situation. A rock from a sling whirled by a warrior that Rakki recognized as Uban hit Bo in the side and sent him staggering before he could react. And then, screaming, whooping figures were rushing in from all sides. Spearmen had dispatched the black dog and were coming down. One of them—it was Neotto—took Screecher in the back as he tried to go for Rakki. A clubbed blow to the back of the knees toppled Bo, after which he was finished off by spear thrusts, his arms flailing in a vain effort to protect himself. Shingral was hit in the shoulder by a thrown spear.