Back at camp, Baver found Sten stripped to the waist, with Nils reexamining his wounds. His rib cage on the left side was dark with bruise, and scabbed. Sten twitched as Nils prodded, and Baver twitched with him. Undoubtedly some ribs were cracked, and if not for the man’s mail, Baver told himself, the blow Sten had taken would surely have killed him. It was hard to understand how such a blow had failed to cut through the hauberk; perhaps the blade had been turned somewhat before it landed.
Afterward, moving stiffly, Sten pulled his loose leather shirt back on, while his sword apprentice packed his gear on his pack horse. Then he and Leif left with their apprentices and pack string, steering toward the other camp. To make sure, Baver guessed, that the members of Jäävklo’s family had departed for the ting grounds or their clan territory. The two friends wouldn’t leave their Yngling with the offended Gluttons still around; wearing warrior braids made no one proof against arrows, not even Nils Järnhann. And Neoviking hunter-herdsmen, Baver knew, shot very well indeed, perhaps as well as their warriors.
Meanwhile Hans had cut a large forked sapling and tied Baver’s damp sleeping bag on it like some kind of fat and drooping banner. “Put the end in your stirrup,” he said curtly, handing him the sapling, “and carry it upright. It will dry then.”
Baver resented it more than he appreciated it; Hans treated him like a fool. But he took the advice.
With Leif and Sten on their way, Nils loaded his own pack horse, and mounting, led Hans and Baver down the bank of the Danube and into the broad river. They swam their mounts across, a long swim that tired the powerful Orc warhorses. Though smooth, the current was strong, and wet Baver to the buttock. It had wetted his saddle-
41
bags too, and red-faced he realized that Nils and Hans had slung theirs across their shoulders.
They continued north, on foot for a bit to rest the animals. After a few hours they turned east, parallel to the river, leaving the beaten trail for untracked territory. At the midday break, Baver opened his wet saddle bag and took out his radio. He was glad it was waterproof Again he tried to reach Matthew and Nikko, and again to no avail. Anxiety touched his guts: Surely he should have caught them on board by now, or at least made contact with the Alpha, the pinnace itself.
He chided himself then. It was perfectly possible that the shield had been on and the commast retracted each time he’d called. He simply needed to be patient. It was one thing to tell himself that, though, and quite another to dispel the unease he felt.
Meanwhile Nils led on through kilometers of grass that ranged from crotch-deep atop some of the rises to higher than the horses’ backs along some of the creeks they splashed through.
When they made camp that evening, Baver tried the radio once more, with no more success than before, and once again before he went to sleep. The failure kept him awake. If something had happened to Matt and Nikko, or to the Alpha, he was in serious trouble, on a hostile and dangerous world without a flying craft or modern weapons, aside from his pistol and a spare magazine. And there’d hardly be a second expedition from New Home within the year; perhaps not even next year.
After another two days they turned northeastward. To avoid the marshes, Nils said; these were extensive along the Danube after it turned north at the big bend. Meanwhile they’d seen no further tracks of horsemen, but now and then saw tracks and beds that Nils said were made by Orc cattle, abandoned when their owners withdrew by ship for Asia Minor.
Once, ahead of them, they saw carrion birds circling low, and rode to the spot to see what was there. They
42
found the half-eaten remains of a calf. Nils said the wolves who’d killed it were close by, waiting for them to move on. Baver was horrified at the thought, and as they rode away, imagined wolves leaping on him from the tall grass, to pull him from his horse.