Chapter 14: The Great Swamp

"Quiet! Keep your head down!"

They crouched in the shadow of an empty hut that slumped against the outer wall of the village. Pete's voice was barely loud enough to carry over the chorus of shouts and screams that echoed between the walls of the village Ul. A fight seemed to have broken out between the Thantans and the lizardmen, back by the ruins of their workshop. A squad of lizardmen ran past, their guttural cries adding to the din. As soon as they were safely past, he scooped up a handful of mud, daubing it liberally over Amy's hair to supplement the grime that already plastered it close to her head.

"Damn it! Keep it out of my eyes." Amy's words were only mockfierce as she in turn plastered Pete with a handful of gooey muck. "There! As long as they don't look too close into these shadows, we should be all right.

The rammedearth wall was meant to keep hungry swamplizards out, not humans in. On their way, they grabbed up a couple of spears leaning against the side of a hut, one for each of them. Once they were on the far side of the wall, they were shielded from the light of the village fires as they circled around to where they wanted to be. No unfriendly eyes picked them out as they slithered down the side of the hill. As they ran through the gathering darkness, Pete took a careful bearing on the line from a large boulder to the top of Pleorran's palace.

"Which way are we going?" Amy's voice came from right behind him. "Which way's north?"

"We'll try to figure that one out in the morning." He reached back to take hold of her free hand. "Keep on going the way we're headed, and whatever happens, don't let anything separate us. We'd never find each other in this swamp. Look back there, behind us. You can just make out the light from the village fires. We need to keep headed exactly away from it. As long as we can see that, we can keep from going in circles."

They ploughed on through the mud and darkness, splashing through unseen ponds and streams. The last vestiges of daylight had been fading about the time they climbed over the village wall, and the darkness was almost complete. Finally, Pete felt the ground become more solid underfoot, rising slightly.

"All right!" he exulted. "This should be the place we're heading for."

"What place is that?" Amy was almost staggering with weariness, only keeping up because he kept a tight grip on her hand. "You still haven't told me where we are headed."

"A deserted village, on a hill. UlGlat told me about it. It used to be the village Krunnick. Nobody's lived here since the battle at Dron's fort. A lot of the tribe's warriors were killed, along with their chief and most of his advisors. The rest were adopted into Ul's tribe, and moved to his village."

"You're sure that it's deserted?"

"It'd better be." They slowly climbed the side of the hill, leaning on each other for support. It wasn't steep, but they were both almost too tired to stay on their feet. "Here's the remains of the wall. The gate's open, and I don't see a sign of any fires."

They pushed the gate closed behind them, seeking out one of the less ruinous huts. EssChad's storms and dampness were well on their way to reclaiming the abandoned village, but this roof still seemed to be solid. A couple of yardlong lizards scuttled away as they entered, and they blockaded the door with a pile of debris. They had no way of making a fire, but the night was warm. EssChad's light gravity, combined with their weariness, made the dirt floor seem as soft as any mattress.

"This planet hasn't any axial tilt," Pete mused as he studied the lightening sky from the top of the hill the next morning. It was raining, as usual, but not very hard. "That means that the sun always comes up due east."

"It does seem a little bit lighter in that direction," Amy agreed, "so over this way should be north."

"Yeah, not that it's too important to know exactly. We aren't going to be able to keep going in a straight line, anyway. Just so we're headed about right. If we follow whatever trails we can, we'll come to the edge of the swamp sooner or later. We don't know where our base was from here, but let's get out of the swamp before we start worrying about finding it."

They picked up their spears, heading down the hill through the everpresent rain in what they hoped was a generally northern direction. Pete hefted his spear appreciatively, trying its balance. It was made from a slender shaft of hard wood, with a chipped flint head. Amy's was a little lighter, its head a needlesharp fang lashed to a bamboo shaft. Light enough to be thrown, but they were really meant for stabbing at close range. He just hoped that they wouldn't be needed, but in the meantime they made good staffs for walking, and for probing the marshes as they made their way through the mud and shallow water.

Following the faint traces of what might once have been a path, they started out through the swamp. They had a long way to go, and didn't make the mistake of trying to move very fast. Lack of a proper diet had taken its toll, and Pete knew that they didn't have the energy to push themselves very hard.

"About ready to take another break?" Pete glanced back at Amy. He had been keeping an eye on her, and she looked like she was nearly ready to drop.

"I sure am." Amy prodded a fallen log with the point of her spear to make sure that it was solid before sitting down on it with a tired sigh. "How far do you suppose we've come, so far?"

"It's about noon." Pete glanced at his watch. Miraculously, it was still faithfully keeping track of EssChad's long hours. "I suppose we've come ten or fifteen miles, but the trail zigzags so much, we're probably only seven or eight miles from where we started."

"Maybe more than that," Amy disagreed. "It hasn't been all that crooked. I wonder..."

"What?"

"Look how wide this part of the trail is. I'll swear that it's been used pretty heavily, too. I wonder if it's one of the paths that Pleorran's armies followed when they marched to attack Dron's fort."

"I don't think so. It doesn't look like it's had that much use. Anyway, I hope not."

"Why not?"

"If it is, then it'll be one of the trails they'll check on first, trying to catch up with us. You can bet that Pleorran's not going to let us get away this easy, not if he can help it."

As soon as they were rested, they pressed onward. Pete watched their back trail, but no hostile lizardmen appeared. All that they saw was an occasional swamplizard, and none of them took any notice of the bedraggled pair of travelers. Along about midafternoon, Pete came to an abrupt halt on the edge of a sluggish stream.

"What's wrong?" Amy looked where he pointed. "Oh. No more trail. Now what do we do?"

"Rest a few minutes. It's about time for us to take a break, anyway. Then, we scout around. Look for the easiest way to go. This is probably one of the paths that the village hunters follow, and we've come to the edge of their hunting grounds. There'll be other tribes on ahead, but with the fighting, and all of the turmoil that's been going on, they may not have regular patrols out."

When they had rested a few minutes, they cast about for another trail to follow. Finding none, they simply crossed the stream and pushed through the swamp at a place where the undergrowth seemed a little thinner.

"Watch it!" As they splashed through a shallow pond, Pete struck with his spear at a footlong leech that undulated close to Amy's leg.

"Don't bother," she told him, smiling for almost the first time that day. "They don't seem to like our smell. I can't imagine why, unless it's because we haven't had baths for longer than I like to remember."

"It's not just that, I'll bet." Pete smiled back at her, thinking how brave she was, and how lucky it was for him that she wasn't the fainting type. Not that any of the women in their party had been... Wrenching his thoughts away from memories of Nancy, and the pain of not knowing whether she was even alive, he went on; "Remember, we've been living on the boiled juice of KeeBar's reeds. We probably reek to high heaven of whatever it is that the lizards don't like about them. As long as any of these critters get a whiff of us first, they aren't likely to try to eat us."

"I hope you're right. What do we do if one of the larger ones takes after us?"

"Running is probably the worst thing we could do, since most of them will attack anything that moves. Freeze in place, I guess. If they can't smell food, and don't see us move, they'll most likely not even notice us."

It was almost dusk when they came out on the shore of a small lake. Not that the edge of the water was really a definite boundary. Rather, the mud underfoot grew wetter, and thinner, until they found themselves standing kneedeep in fairly clear water beneath a fringe of overhanging trees.

"We need to find a place to hole up for the night," Amy reminded him. "Do you have any ideas?"

"One," he answered. "Maybe, that is. See that island, the one out near the middle of the lake?"

"Yes, what about it? It doesn't look like much of a refuge to me."

"Maybe not, but I'll bet that you won't find much wild life around it. Dollars to... Well, anyway, those purpletopped reeds growing around it seem to be the same kind that KeeBar used to keep off predators, and that I talked UlGlat into bringing me for their juice."

"If it's good to eat, I'll swim through herds of dinosaurs for it!" Amy's laugh was a bit shaky. "Let's go."

"I don't think that we'll have to swim. At least, not far." Pete probed the bottom of the lake ahead of them with his spear. "This water's pretty shallow."

A few steps, and the water was up to their waists. Then, to their chests, but that was all the deeper it got until they were almost to the island.