That brought murmuring. Kamon checked it: "Only four children still
need milk. You, Samis, your breasts are big: you will go." Kamon
turned with gentle deference to one authority she felt to be stronger
than her own under the laws: "Doc?" Paul found it comfortable, no
longer even amusing, that Wright should be known to the giants by his
inevitable nickname. The pygmies disliked the short sound, and initial
_D_ always bothered them. To them he was Tocwright, or more often
Tocwright-Who-Plays-with Gray-Fur-at-His-Throat.
"Yes, Kamon. Samis too. Paul, how many trips will that take?"
"Three--leaving fuel for about three more of the same length."
Wright nodded. "Ed has a notion of using the lifeboat for a weapon.
Hedgehop, scare 'em to hell. But with fuel so low--"
There was shadow at the drawbridge. Ed Spearman flung aside the
carcass he had brought. Ann's white face was still, though she clung
to him briefly when he kissed her. It had occurred to Paul that Ann's
image of love would not be given reality anywhere in the galaxies: she
wished moments to be eternities and a human self to be a mirror of
desire. _But Dorothy and I--somehow we've learned to let each other
live...._ "More news," Spearman said. "I stopped at the village. A spy
of Pakriaa's came home last night--must be a sharp article: did the
sixty-odd miles up the lake shore in nothing flat, with facts and
figures."
"Lantis is moving." Wright dropped his hands to his bony knees.
"No, Doc, but will in a day or so." Spearman sat down, holding Ann's
fingers till she pulled them away. He nodded to Sears and Paul. "Good
trip?" He had grown even more rugged in a year of Lucifer. He wore
only shorts and Earth-made shoes; months of handling a heavy bow had
made his upper arms almost as thick as the narrow part of Mijok's
forearm. His face had deepened its lines; he had never smiled easily.
"Very good," Sears said. "The island is--" He was silent.
Spearman grunted. "You're sold too? Well, here's the news. One: you
remember Pakriaa's second challenge, sent by two warriors, correct and
formal--trust Pak for that. One of those messengers is returning. The
spy ran on ahead--with part of the body of the other ambassador." He
studied the sickened faces. "Two: the spy says Lantis plans to send
four thousand on the lake boats, another six thousand overland.
Pakriaa--who is in a state of mind I don't know how to describe, not
jitters exactly--Pakriaa thinks we may feel the lake-boat drums
tomorrow. She doesn't know what they are, by the way--invention of
Lantis, I guess. From her description they must be drums, maybe hollow
logs mounted on boats. She heard them last year in the war we
interrupted. You feel them before you hear them, she says: she thinks
it was a lake devil consulting with the Queen of the World. Three: the
spy wasn't sure, but thinks Lantis has already sent six hundred east
of the lake to make a big circle, come down on the settlement from the
northeast."
"Smart," Paul said. "To drive us into the kaksma hills?"
"The kaksma hills." Spearman's gray eyes squinted in a sort of
laughter. "They're not so bad. The critters may be all they say, after
dark, but--I'd better own up: I've gone that way on my last three solo
trips. Safe enough in daylight, when they're half blind. I killed a
few today."