March Upcountry

by David Weber

  The being bowed in a nearly proper fashion and gabbled at him in a strange guttural tongue. It was different from the words which had been spoken between the beings.

  "I seek the one who killed the flar beast," he answered, gesturing at the aggressive herbivore. The beasts burrowed during the day in the dry hills, and he'd been blinded by the light of Artac shining off the sands, beaten down by the heat and dryness and, truth to tell, feeling his age. He hadn't noticed the depression around the snorkel at the surface, and he'd survived only because it had been a rogue bull with no herd mates to help it kill him. And because of the altruistic act of a stranger.

  Damn him.

  The slight one at the fore spoke again.

  " . . . kill . . . flor . . ."

  Cord spoke very slowly this time.

  "I . . . seek . . . the . . . one . . . who . . . killed . . . the . . . flar . . . beast. That rogue bull over there, you ignorant little basik."

  * * *

  "I need the second person, damn it," Eleanora gritted through her teeth. She touched her chest. "I . . . Eleanora." She pointed at the Mardukan, hoping it would understand.

  The scummy gobbled and clacked at her again. It seemed to be becoming agitated. As well it should, for it was terribly hot and dry out here for it. Which brought up an idea.

  "Captain Pahner," she turned to the CO. "This is going to take a while. Could we set up some sort of shelter from the sun?"

  Pahner looked up at the height of the sun and consulted his toot.

  "We've got three more hours of daylight. We shouldn't stop for the night."

  Eleanora started to protest, but Roger held up a hand at her, and turned to Pahner.

  "We need to communicate with these people," he said, gesturing at the scummy with his chin. "We can't do that if this guy dies of heatstroke."

  Pahner took a breath and looked around as he suddenly realized that the comment was coming in on the command frequency. Apparently the prince had listened to the previous lecture about debating in front of the troops. But he was still wrong.

  "If we take too long, we'll run out of water. We only have so much supply. We need to get into the lowlands where there's resupply."

  "We need to communicate," Roger said definitely. "We take as much time for that as Eleanora needs."

  "Is that an order, Your Highness?" Pahner asked.

  "No, it's a strong suggestion."

  "Excuse me." Eleanora couldn't hear them, but she could tell that they were debating and thought she ought to make a point. "I'm not talking about all night. If I can get this guy into some shade and get him a little water and humidity, this will probably go fairly fast."

  Roger and Pahner turned to glance at her, then turned featureless faceshield to featureless faceshield and debated some more. Finally, Pahner turned back to her.

  "Okay."

  A couple of privates, impossible to tell apart in identical uniforms and camouflage helmets, came forward and rapidly erected a large tent. The temperature inside wasn't going to be all that wonderful, but they sprayed a few milliliters of water around on the inside of the walls, and the evaporation both cooled it a bit and raised the humidity. The relief would be brief, but it would help the Mardukan.

  * * *

  Cord stepped inside the structure and sighed. It was not only cooler, it was not so dry. His dinshon exercises had prevented complete desiccation, but the experience had been anything but pleasant. This was still far too arid for permanent survival, but it was a welcome respite. He nodded to the small interpreter (such as he was) and the two slightly larger beings in their strange hard coats like stang beetles.

  "My thanks. This is much better."

  He also noted the two additional beings in the background. Their strange weapons weren't pointed at him, but he'd seen bodyguards enough among the city magnates to recognize them for what they were. He wondered which of them was the leader.

  * * *

  "I'm Eleanora," O'Casey said, gesturing at herself. Then she pointed, carefully, at the Mardukan. Pointing in some cultures was an insult.

  "D'Nal Cord . . ." The rest was a senseless gabble.

  "Flar beast?" she asked, hoping to get more context.

  "I . . . knowledge . . . flar beast . . . kill."

  "You want to know how the beast was killed?" she said in the best approximation of the local dialect her toot could create. The known words were increasing, and she felt that the toot would soon have a full kernel. But understanding was still elusive.

  "No," the Mardukan said. " . . . killed the flar beast? You?"

  "Oh," Eleanora said. "No," she answered, gesturing at Roger. "It was Roger." She stopped as she realized that she'd just pointed out the prince for retribution if the act was considered hostile.

  Roger tapped a control and cleared his visor of its concealing distortion.

  "It was I," he said. His toot had been loaded with the same program, and he'd been following Eleanora's progress. For that matter, his toot had considerably more processor capability than hers, and he suspected that his own program might have made more progress than hers. He was pretty sure, for example, that he was further along on the Mardukan's body language. The individual seemed at least partially unhappy, but not really angry. More like resigned.

  The Mardukan, Cord, stepped toward Roger, but paused as the two Marines in the background hefted their weapons. He reached out, carefully, and placed his hand on Roger's shoulder. There was a gabble of syllables.

  " . . . brother . . . life . . . owe . . . debt . . ."

  "Oh, shit," Eleanora said.

  "What?" Roger asked.

  "I think," she said with a snort, "that he just said the something like you saved his life and that makes you his blood-brother."

  "Oh, hell," Pahner said.

  "What?" Roger repeated. "What's wrong with that?"

  "Maybe nothing, Your Highness," Pahner said sourly. "But in most cultures like this, those things are taken seriously. And sometimes it means the brother has to join the tribe. On pain of pain."

  "Well, we're probably heading in the direction of his tribe," Roger pointed out. "I'll drink the deer's blood, or whatever, and then we'll pass on through. Nice story to tell at the club, and all that."

  Eleanora shook her head.

  "And what happens if you have to stay with the tribe or it's going to be a big problem?"

  "Oh," Roger said. Then, "Oh."

  "This is why you don't shoot until you have to," Pahner told him on the side circuit.

  "Let me see if I can talk our way out of this," O'Casey said.

  "Fat chance," Pahner muttered.

  * * *

  " . . . Chief Roger . . . regrets . . . honor. Travel . . . way . . . pass . . ."

  Cord laughed.

  "Well, I'm not all that happy about it, either. I was on a very important spirit quest when he had the temerity to save my life. Don't you people have any couth? Never mind. That doesn't matter a rid fly's fart. I still have to follow him around like a demon-spawned nex for the rest of my life. Oh well. Maybe it will be short."

  He watched the little spokesman working through the translation, and finally gestured impatiently.

  "This tent is nice, but if we hurry we can reach my village before the yaden arise. Unless you have skin like a flar beast, we'd best be under cover. I suppose you can cut up the flar and use it for cover, but it would take time. Time we might not have."

  * * *

  "I think he said—"

  "Tough noogies," Roger finished with a laugh. "He said we're just going to have to live with it. And something about hurrying."

  "I didn't get that full a translation," Eleanora said with a shake of her head. "And there was more than the basic cultural background. There's something definitely sticky about this translation. I got a real gender malfunction, at first. It's settled down to male though."

  She glanced at the naked Mardukan and then away.

  "Of course, I don't see how it could possi
bly mistake the gender," she added with a smile.

  "I got most of it," Roger said. "I think I'm more attuned with him or something. He also says we'd better get moving or something nasty is going to happen."

  "Did he indicate what?" Pahner asked.

  "He called it the yaden. No context. I think it's related to night." He turned to the Mardukan and tried the toot's voice control function. "What are the yaden?"

  Roger discovered that the software was giving him images in response to some form of subcommunication involving his background, the gestures of the Mardukan, and known words. In cases where it had clear translations, it shut down the direct auditory feed and substituted the "translated" words. But in this case, it obviously had no clear translation, so it was giving ephemeral images of possible translations, and the general outline, although startling, was clear. He almost laughed.

  "He says the yaden are vampires."

  "Oh," Pahner said blandly.

  "He's very emphatic about it, though," Elenora said, nodding in agreement. "Yes, I get that, too, now. Vampires. You're good with this, Roger."

  Roger smiled in pleasure at the rare compliment.

  "You know I like languages."

  "So the scummy thinks we should move out?" Pahner asked, just to keep things straight.

  "Yes," Roger said, somewhat coldly. He was beginning to develop a distaste for the epithet. "He has a problem with something that apparently comes out only at night. He wants to hurry to make it to his village before whatever it is comes out."

  "That's going to be tough," Pahner said consideringly. "We've got a pass to cross, then quite a bit of jungle. We'll barely make it up to the top of the ridge before dark."

  "He seems to think we ought to be able to make it before dark without too much trouble," Eleanora put in.

  "He may be right," Pahner responded. "But if he is, then his village has to be a lot closer than I think he's suggesting."

  "Then I suggest that we'd better get moving," Roger said.

  "No question there," Pahner agreed. "First we've got to get this tent taken down, though."

  "Hang on." Roger pulled his drinking tube down. "Here," he said, gesturing with it to the Mardukan. "Water."

  They didn't have that word yet, so he used Standard. To demonstrate, he took a drink out of it and dribbled a few drops onto his hand to show the Mardukan what it was. Cord leaned forward and took a swig off of the tube. He nodded at Roger in thanks, then gestured to leave the tent.

  "Yeah," Roger said with a laugh. "I guess we're all on the same sheet of music."

  But playing in different keys.

  * * *

  It quickly became apparent to Roger where the disconnect between Cord's and Pahner's estimated travel times lay. Cord's giant legs drove him forward at a far quicker pace than humans were able to maintain. The Marines, had they been less heavily encumbered, could have jogged and kept up with the Mardukan, but Matsugae, O'Casey, and the Navy pilots were unable to make anything like the same rate of movement. As the sun set behind the mountains and the alluvial outflow narrowed into a mountain gorge, the Mardukan became more and more voluble in his worries, and translations became clearer and clearer.

  "Prince Roger," Cord said, "we must hurry. The yaden will suck us dry if they find us. I'm the only one with a cover cloth." He gestured to his leather cape. "Unless you have those 'tents' for everyone?"

  "No," Roger said. He grasped a boulder and pulled himself up onto it. The vantage point gave him a clear view of the company scattered up and down the narrow defile. The tail of the unit was just starting up the narrow, steep canyon while the head was nearing the top. As mountain canyons went, it wasn't much, but it was slowing them as the heavily laden troopers struggled up the ravine, pulling themselves from boulder to boulder. They blended into the background well, but for the flash of solar panels on the rucksacks and the occasional reflection off a weapon's barrel. The parties with the stretchers were in particularly bad straits, wrestling their heavy and cumbersome loads over rocks and around corners. All in all, the company was moving very slowly.

  "No, we don't have enough large tents for everyone. But we have other covers, and everyone has a personal bivy tent. How large and fierce are these yaden?"

  Cord mulled over a few of the words that obviously weren't quite right.

  "They are neither large nor fierce. They are stealthy. They will slip into a camp full of warriors and select one or two. Then they overcome them and suck them dry."

  Roger shuddered slightly. He supposed that it could be superstition, but the description was too precise.

  "In that case, we're just going to have to post a good guard."

  "This valley is thick with them," Cord said, gesturing around. "It is a well-known fact," he finished simply.

  "Oh, great." Roger jumped nimbly down off the boulder. "We're in the Valley of the Vampires."

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The wind was constant and enervating. It blew through the pass incessantly, funneling from the high-pressure upland desert to the lower pressure jungles. It dried the surroundings here at the head of the pass, creating one last patch of arid ground before the all-enveloping triple-canopy rain forest barely a hundred meters below.

  Captain Pahner looked down at that canopy and, for the sixth time, reconsidered his decision to stop in the pass itself. Cord hadn't cared one way or the other; he insisted that anything short of returning to his village was a veritable death sentence, and now he sat by a fire as the cold settled in. Pahner didn't blame him a bit; the cold-blooded scummy would be virtually somnolent once the full cold hit.

  The Marine scratched his chin for a moment, pondering what they'd so far learned from the native. He was forced to admit, albeit grudgingly, that Roger had had a point about the need to acquire the ability to communicate with the locals as quickly as they could. And the delay for the initial conversation probably hadn't mattered all that much in the end. Not that Pahner intended to say anything of the sort to Roger . . . or even to O'Casey. There could be only one commander, especially in a situation as extreme as this, and whatever the official table of organization might have said, "Colonel" His Royal Highness Prince Roger wasn't fit to be trusted with the organization of a bottle party in a brewery.

  Now that the moment of pure, incandescent rage which had possessed him when the young jackass went right ahead and killed the flar beast had passed, the captain rather regretted his language. Not because he hadn't meant it, and not because it hadn't needed saying—not even, or perhaps especially, because of the potential impact their little tête-à-tête might have upon the future career of one Captain Armand Pahner (assuming the captain in question survived to worry about career moves). No, he regretted it because it had been unprofessional.

  On the other hand, it seemed to have finally started making an impression on the sheer arrogance and carelessness which seemed to be two of the prince's more pronounced characteristics. Which was the reason Pahner had no intention of admitting that this time the kid might have had a point. The last thing they needed was for the prince to feel justified in continuing to butt heads with the professional who was his only chance of getting home alive.

  Setting that consideration aside, however, it was beginning to look as if Cord might prove very valuable indeed, at least in the short run, and the debt he felt he owed to Roger might actually work out in the company's favor. It appeared that the Mardukan was a chief or shaman of the tribe whose territory they were about to enter, and that suggested that Roger might just have secured the best introduction and intermediary they could hope for.

  Exactly why he'd been headed towards the lakebed remained less clear. He insisted that he'd been on some sort of vision quest, and it seemed evident that whatever problem he'd been seeking answers to must be pressing to drive him into such a hostile environment, but just what that problem was remained elusive despite his efforts to explain it. On the other hand, his conversations with Roger and Eleanora during the hike to
this first camp had nearly completed the task of gathering a workable kernel for the language program. By tomorrow, translations should be as clear as the software could make them.

  Pahner allowed himself a few more seconds to hope that would be the case—it would be really nice to have something break their way—and then put that particular problem away in favor of more immediate concerns. He turned and walked back through the camp perimeter, running one last personal visual check. Everything was in place: directional mines set, laser detectors on sweep, thermal detectors up and watching. If anything tried to get through those defenses, it had better be invisible or smaller than a goat. He completed his check and crossed to where Sergeant Major Kosutic waited with the portable master panel slung over her shoulder.

  "Turn it on," he said, and she nodded and hit the trip switch. Icons flashed on the panel as the sensors came online and the weapons went live, and he watched her eyes move as she ran the visual checklist. Then she looked up at him and nodded again.

  "Okay, everybody," Pahner announced, using both his external suit speakers and the all-hands frequency. "We're live. If you have to take a dump or a piss, do it in the latrine."

  The latrines, like everything else about the camp, met the guidelines for a temporary camp in hostile territory. The latrines had been set up on the jungle side of the camp, and were dug to regulation depth and width. Inside the sensor parameter, each two-man team had dug in its own foxhole, and most of the party would sleep in them. The two-meter trenches were uncomfortable, but they were also safe. Those who weren't assigned to a fire team, like the Navy personnel (or Roger), had erected temporary shelters with their one-man "bivy" tents within the perimeter enclosed by the foxholes, and the company would maintain fifty percent watch all night long, with one trooper covering the other as he or she slept. It was a technique which had kept armies relatively safe on multiple worlds and through thousands of wars.