Worlds That Weren't

Although I think Miss Head-on-Fire believes me somewhat, because she wants to, King thought, conscious of her shining eyes. And you, as well, Robre Hunter, because you’re no fool and can listen and add two and two.

The clansman had noted the direction of Sonjuh’s eyes, as well, and was half-scowling. Jealous? King thought. The big clansman hadn’t shown much interest in the girl himself…but a man often didn’t discover he wanted a woman until she turned to another, and that was as true among natives as among the sahib-log, as natural in a nighted forest about an open fire as in the blazing jeweled halls of the Palace of the Lion Throne in Delhi.

King smiled again, and had one of the kegs of New Zealand whiskey brought and set out on a stump near one of the other cooking fires. It was a bit of a waste, being finest Dunedin single-malt, but such gestures never hurt; and what was the point of being wealthy if you couldn’t indulge yourself now and then? The local hirelings clustered about it eagerly; it was enough like their own raw corn-liquor to be familiar, and enough better that they recognized the difference. Robre brought three mugs over to where King sat and Sonjuh sprawled beside her villainous-looking guardian. He handed one to the girl-for a barbarian, his manners were almost courtly, in a rough-hewn way-and one to King.

“Sounds like a place worth seeing, your Empire,” the clansman said.

“It’s not a place, it’s a world,” King replied.

“Jeroo,” Sonjuh said with a sigh. “Seems the world’s a bigger place than we thought. Went to San Antwoin oncet with Pa, ’n’ that was a wonder-stone walls, ’n’ twice a hand of thousands within ’em. Sounds like that’s no more than Dannulsford Fair next to your home, Empire-Jefe. But I’d like to see it.”

King thought of her alone and bewildered and friendless on the docks of Bombay, or worse, Capetown, and winced slightly. Furthermore, she was just crazy enough to try getting passage on some tramp windjammer out of Galveston. She’d be a sensation at court if some wild chance took her that far, but that was no fate for a human being.

“That…that really wouldn’t be a very good idea, my dear,” he said. “A foreign land is more dangerous than these forests.”

Robre nodded. “Bare is your back without clan to guard it,” he said, with the air of someone quoting a proverb, which he probably was. “Cold is a heart among strangers.”

The redhead pouted slightly, and he went on a little hastily: “They’ll be a lot of sore heads tomorrow, if you were thinkin’ of moving on, Jefe.”

His nod took in the rowdy scene around the keg. Not everyone was there, of course; Ranjit Singh and the garrison troopers were standing picket tonight by turns. King might have trusted that duty to Robre, if none of the others, but the Sikh wouldn’t hear of anyone not in the Queen-Empress’s service doing guard duty.

“I was thinking of moving on,” King said, taking a little more of the whiskey and sighing satisfaction. The transplanted Scots of the South Island’s bleak Antarctic-facing shores had kept their ancestors’ skills alive. “I want a crack at those tigers before I go. But we can’t take the full caravan with us there.”

“No, true enough,” Robre said. “Not enough fodder for that many horses, either. And”-he flicked his eyes to Sonjuh-“that’s mighty close to the Black River. Swamp-devils prowl there.”

“Hmmm,” King said, stroking his mustache. “How much of a problem are they likely to be?”

“Not so bad, if you’re careful,” Robre said. “Mostly they live farther south ’n’ east, down in the Big Thicket country ’n’ the Sabyn river swamps. You mostly won’t see more ’n three, four of ’em together, grown bucks, that is, for all that there’s a lot of them down there. Also they’re short of real weapons, not hardly; they hate each other poison-bad, ’n’ who’d trade with them?”

King nodded. That was the common way of things, with those who’d kept up the cannibal ways that brought their ancestors through the terrible years of hunger and death after the Fall. When men hunted each other to eat, there could be no trust, and trust was what let even the wildest men work together. Usually man-eaters had no groupings larger than an extended family, and often they barely retained the use of speech and fire. Human beings were not meant to live like that; only the hammer from the skies and the planetwide die-off could have warped so many of the survivors so bitterly.

Sonjuh stirred. “There was twenty in the gang that hit our place,” she said. “Pa ’n’ me ’n’ the others, we killed four-they caught us by surprise. The posse got most of the rest, but a few escaped. ’N’ they all had iron.”

Of course, they can change, King thought. A lot of the European savages are organized enough to be dangerous. Not to mention the Russians, who are deadly dangerous.

Robre shook his head. “That was a freak, Head-on-Fire. There’s not been a raid that size in…well, not since Fast-Foot Jowan ’n’ his sons were killed, what, three years ago?”