Julian May - The Many-Coloured Land

A horde of flies had descended upon the ripped mass of intestines and moved only with sluggish reluctance as Claude rolled Stefanko’s body onto the metallic sheet. Using the heat-beam of his powerpack, the old man welded the edges of the Mylar into a bag. The job was nearly finished when Fitharn, Richard, and Felice came squelching back out of the jungle.

Felice held up a ridged yellowish object like an ivory marlin-spike. “We got the fuckard for what good it does.”

Richard shook his head in awe. “A pig the size of a goddam ox! Musta weighed eight hundred kilos. Took five arrows to finish it off after Pegleg trapped it in a thicket. I still can’t figure how anything that big could have snuck up on us unawares.”

“They’re intelligent devils,” Fitharn growled. “It must have followed us downwind. If I’d had my wits about me I’d have sensed it. But I was thinking about how we’d have to hurry to cross the river before the morning mist lifted.”

“Well, we’re stuck here now that it’s broad daylight,” Felice said. She held up the trophy horn. “This fellow saw to that.”

“Now what?” Richard wanted to know.

Felice had undipped the arrows from the holder on her compound bow and she now knelt to dip the stained glassy heads in the water beside the trail. “We’ll have to hide out on this side until sundown and then cross. The moon’s nearly full tonight. We could probably get over the narrow strip of east-bank lowland in a couple of hours and then bivouac among the rocks at the foot of the Black Forest scarp for the rest of the night.”

The Firvulag gave an exclamation. “You’re not thinking of going on?”

She glared at him. “ You’re not thinking of turning back?”

Claude said, “Steffi’s dead. Peo’s in a bad way. He’s going to have to be taken back to Amerie by one of us, or he’ll lose his leg, or worse.”

“That still leaves five of us,” Felice said. She frowned, tapping the boar horn against her buckskin-clad thigh. “Pegleg could go back with the Chief. He could get help from his people along the way. And before you leave,” she said to the little man, “tell us how to get to the stronghold of this guy Sugoll.”

“It won’t be easy.” The Firvulag wagged his head. “The Black Forest is a lot more rugged than the Vosges. Sugoll’s place is up on the northeastern slope of the Feldberg, where the Paradise River comes off the snowfields. Bad country.”

“The Tanu won’t be looking for us on the other side of the Rhine,” she said. “Once we’re across, we probably won’t have to worry about any more gray-torc patrols.”

“There are still Howlers,” Fitharn said. “And at night, the Hunt. Airborne, if Velteyn leads it. If the Hunt spots you in the open, you’re finished.”

“Can’t we travel mostly by day?” Richard suggested. “Madame Guderian’s metafunctions can warn us of hostile Firvulag.”

The old woman had come up to the group, an expression of deep concern upon her face. “I am not so worried about les Criards as about Sugoll himself. Without his help, we may never locate the Danube in time. But if Fitharn does not accompany us, Sugoll may feel that he can ignore the King’s directive with impunity. And there is another matter for grave concern… Martha. She has begun to hemorrhage from the shock. Among the Tanu, she was forced to give birth to four children in quick succession and her female organs…”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Felice impatiently. “If she rests, she’ll pull out of it. And we’ll take our chance with Sugoll.”

“Martha is greatly weakened,” the old woman persisted. “She will become worse before she is better. This has happened before. It would be best if she returns with Peo and Fitharn.”

Richard looked dubious. “But now that Stefanko’s gone, she’s the only technician we’ve got. Without her help, God knows how long it might take me to trace the circuits on that exotic aircraft. And if the zapper needs work, I wouldn’t have a prayer of fixing it.”

“The expedition could be postponed,” Fitharn said.

“That would mean waiting a whole year!” Felice blazed. “I won’t do it! I’ll go get the damn Spear all by myself!”

Back at the cypress, Martha cried out to them, “We can’t postpone the search, Madame. Anything could happen in a year. I’ll be all right in a day or two. If I get a little help, I know I can make it.”

“We could rig a litter from one of the cots,” Claude suggested.

Felice brightened. “And in the rough spots, I could carry her on my back. She’s right about anything being likely to happen if we delay.” Her eyes strayed to the Firvulag, who looked back at her with bland objectivity. “Others could find the Ship’s Grave ahead of us.”

“It would be wisest to turn back,” Fitharn said. “However, the decision will have to be that of Madame Guderian.”

“Dieu me secourait,” the old woman murmured. “One of us has already given his life.” She took a few slow steps toward the Mylar-wrapped bundle lying on the trail “If we could ask him his opinion, we know very well what he would say.”

She turned back to them, lifting her chin with the familiar gesture. “Alors… Fitharn, you will turn back with Peo. The rest of us will go on.”

They concealed themselves for the rest of the day in a dense taxodium grove hard by the western bank of the Rhine. The gnarled, low-growing branches made comfortable perches. Curtained by festoons of lichens and flowering epiphytes, they could safely observe the river traffic and at the same time be secure from the crocodiles, hoe-tuskers, and other potentially dangerous wildlife that infested the bottomland.

It became very hot as the sun climbed. Food was no problem, for there were plenty of turtles whose meat could be roasted with the power-beams, as well as palms with edible hearts and an abundance of honey-sweet grapes the size of golf balls that drove Richard into raptures of oenological speculation. But as morning dragged into afternoon, boredom and reaction from the dawn violence made the younger members of the party drowsy. Richard, Felice, and Martha striped off most of their clothing, tied themselves to upper limbs of the big tree, and slept, leaving Claude and Madame on branches below keeping watch over the broad river. Only a few supply barges from upstream plantations drifted past their hiding place. Finiah itself lay about twenty kilometers to the north on the opposite bank, where the short Paradise River tributary tumbled out of a deep gorge that almost bisected the Black Forest massif.

“Later,” Madame told Claude, “when it is dark, we will be able to see Finiah’s lights against the northern sky. It stands on a promontory jutting into the Rhine. It is not a large city, but it is the oldest of all the Tanu settlements and they have illuminated it with great splendor.”

“Why did they migrate southward, out of this area?” Claude asked. “From what I’ve been told, most of the Tanu cities are down around the Mediterranean, with this northern country left pretty much to the Firvulag.”

“A very warm climate is more to the Tanu taste. I believe that the division of territory between the two groups reflects a very ancient pattern, perhaps one that goes back to the origins of the dimorphic Race. One might imagine a world of singular niggedness where highland and lowland forms evolved, perhaps interdependent yet antagonistic, With the coming of high civilization and the eventual migration of the race to other worlds in their galaxy, these ancient tensions would be sublimated. But it would seem that Tanu and Firvulag genes never blended completely. From time to time during the history of these people the old rivalries would be resurrected.”