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glazed over.
Okay, so he'd face himself for a change. He'd tell Merry as soon as the moment
presented itself. He hadn't waited too long. He ought to thank Kakombe for
forcing it out of him.
 You bet your ass I'm interested in her, he said finally.  And as soon as I
get the chance, I'm going to ask her to marry me.
 Excellent. And I will ask her the same, and we can let her choose between
us.
Oak started to laugh, held back. It wasn't Kakombe's fault. He just didn't
understand. Merry wouldn't have anything to do with him. Oh sure, they were
friends and all that. You didn't bounce around in the rear seat of a
four-wheel drive for days without making friends with your neighbor. But the
herdsman-warrior was a member of a primitive, tradition-ridden African tribe.
Maybe he knew English, and maybe he'd had a taste of formal Western education,
but he was utterly unsophisticated in other matters. He didn't have a thing to
offer Merry Sharrow, who'd lived a sheltered middle-class life in
Seattle, Washington. Just because he was nearly seven feet tall and muscular
and pretty good-looking and articulate and brave and considerate and
thoughtful and exotic and...
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All of a sudden Oak didn't have to work to hold back the laughter.
Evidently Kakombe had been watching him carefully.  Strange. First you are
angry, then confused, then amused. Now you look uncertain again. University or
no, I will never understand the ilmeet.
That made Oak smile again. He started to chuckle, then to laugh quietly.
 Amused again. What do you find so funny in this unwholesome place?
 Me. You. Us. Both of us dancing for days around the fact that one member of
our party is an attractive lady.
 I thought Merry was your woman. Otherwise I would not so have danced.
 Elephant crap. I don't buy that. You didn't know how to handle it and neither
did I. It's damn ironic. In this place we both ought to be scared shitless.
Instead we're standing here arguing over a woman.
 There is no special time or place for arguing over a woman, Joshua Oak. Any
time or place will do.
You learn that as a junior warrior. He kicked at the dirt, gazed off into the
woods.  I have been tracking too fast for you. It was intentional. In trying
to make you smaller, I was trying to make myself the bigger man. That is the
wrong way for an Alaunoni to act. You take the lead, friend Oak, and I will
follow. If you make a wrong turn I will still be able to correct our path from
behind. In this way you can set your own pace and will not get too tired.
 Who says I was getting tired? Oak turned angrily and pointed off between two
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trees.  That way, damnit.
Kakombe approved.  You have done some tracking yourself. I never met an ilmeet
who knew how to track. They started down the path Oak had chosen.  What
animals have you tracked, my friend?
 Only the two-legged kind.
Kakombe considered this, then nodded solemnly.
The forest grew thicker around them, slowing their progress. Unnatural sounds
filtered through the trees, cries of birds that weren't birds and small broken
things that hugged the earth in fear. Tiny eyes glared at them from between
leaves and branches. They glowed red-orange and occasionally a faint bilious
green.
Once they stumbled into a school of silver-sided fish swimming through the
damp air. All of them showed the imprint of an unknown aquatic disease. They
raced away to the south, flying beneath the trunks of tortured trees. As they
passed beneath an overhanging branch they were attacked by half a down
sparrow-sized birds. The birds sang as they struck; harsh, rasping notes.
Their oversized eyes bulged out of their sockets. Except for their unevenly
feathered wings their small bodies were naked and pink, and they sliced at
fish-flesh with minuscule needlelike teeth.
The aimless sun did not set, but it did plunge lower on the horizon. In the
gathering darkness a swarm of tiny white-glowing shapes feasted on the corpse
of a three-legged quagga. The quagga's stripes were as uneven and broken as
its body, a mutated version of its recently extinct self. Oak and Kakombe
detoured around the bloated corpse, whose smell rose even above the
perpetually rank atmosphere. As they circled, all the glowing grub-things
paused in their feeding. They rose on their hind legs and began to
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sway back and forth in unison, their tiny black jaws leaving phosphorescent
trails in the air. A faint breathy whistling rose from their collective
throats. Oak felt the gorge rise hot and sour in his throat, and was glad when
they'd left the concourse of maggots behind.
What happened then should not have shocked or surprised him, but it did.
Olkeloki had tried to warn him that they might encounter other things in the
Out Of besides shetani and dancing maggots and flesh-eating sparrows.
Blasphemous horrors that might manifest themselves at any time, without
warning.
Stunned, he turned to seek support from his powerful companion, but Kakombe
had vanished. The senior warrior was nowhere to be seen. Convulsively
clutching the ebony spear, Oak stumbled backward until he felt the unyielding
bulk of a tree against his spine. His throat had gone dry and his legs
trembled. He was alone against them, all alone this time with no help in view.
They'd been sniffing after him for years and now their time had finally come.
They were going to get him. There was no escape for him here, not in this
dark, alien place. And there were so many of them! Somehow he hadn't thought
that when they finally came for him there would be so many.
His worst nightmare was a populous one.
26
In the forefront marched the whey-faced men in their white robes. Bloody
crosses stained their cowls and breasts. Several of them held small burning
crosses out in front of them, as though Oak were a vampire they sought to
exorcise. The flames did not bother them because there was no meat on their
bones. White skeleton hands reached out from skeleton arms that disappeared
into the sleeves of white sheets. Beneath the cowls eyeless skulls grinned out
at him.
He pushed away from the tree and tried to run, only to find the way blocked by
a couple of hirsute, bent shapes. Their eyes were wild in anticipation of
destruction. Two held guns and the third a cluster of dynamite on which the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]