"She is nothing to you, Pakriaa? Then Sears chose a poor student.
Brodaa would have spoken to her. I ask you to tell her the war is over
and she is among friends."
"Friends? She is Vestoian." Pakriaa approached Wright, who did not
look up. "Tocwright--I must speak to the Vestoian kaksma? I owe you my
life--will obey you."
He groaned: "I do not want you to obey me. If there is nothing inside
to tell you what you should do, then I have nothing to say to you."
Pakriaa flung up her arm across her eyes as if struck. Tejron
muttered, "I can't restrain her much longer without hurting her." It
was Nisana who gave the Vestoian the message in the pygmy tongue, a
ripple of sound that must have conveyed some reassurance, for the
struggling ceased.
"Look!" Paul dug his fingers in Wright's shoulder. "Over there--"
The dark spot under starlight was surely the floating shield; behind
it, another purposeful splashing, rise and fall of a driving arm.
"Mijok!" Wright was on his feet. "This way! A little upstream--"
Both giants were bleeding from small double stab wounds of the kaksma
teeth. There were four pygmies on Mijok's shield. Elis had carried
Brodaa and another in his arms and one on his back; they had clung to
his fur as he swam the river. Mijok plucked a sodden thing from his
thigh; its jaws had clenched in flesh when he smashed its body. He
flipped the ratty thing into the water and remarked like a Charin,
"Damned if I could ever care for 'em."
"The others--"
"We tried to help them into the trees," said Elis. "Could be some
safety in that if the swarm passes by. But most of them ran blindly,
so--beyond that, Doc, don't ever ask us. We must forget some things.
We've all done what we could, so--let's rest a while and go on."
"Oh, we go on," Wright said. "Chaos, or maybe a little bit of light
from time to time. What--sixteen of us now...? Which way was the swarm
going?"
"North. Our flight was west. I think this place is safe."