"Sounds good," Jack agreed. He hadn't had a chance yet to tell her about the change in their travel plans, but there would be time for that once they'd gotten past this cliff. "Go ahead and check it out. I'll bring Greenie and follow—"
"Jack?" Colonel Frost's voice came suddenly from his left shoulder. "Can you hear me?"
"Don't answer," Alison said sharply.
"I know," Jack said, double-checking that the comm clip's transmitter was still off.
"I know you can hear me Jack," Frost went on. "I'm sorry about your uncle—I really am. Please believe me when I say that we really did want him alive. But he took one gamble too many. I'm afraid he and your ship are both gone."
Jack set his teeth firmly down on his tongue. Frost was trying to goad him into talking, he knew, hoping for some anguished cry of anger or denial or defiance that could be traced.
But he wasn't going to fall for it. Draycos's trick had worked, he told himself firmly, and the Essenay was safe. It had to be.
"Just one of the many hazards of carrying missiles aboard a ship that was never designed for them," Frost said. "Those were highly illegal for you to have, by the way."
Jack looked surreptitiously at Alison. She was gazing back at him, a thoughtful look on her face that he didn't care for at all.
"Sadly, there's nothing any of us can do about that now," Frost said. "Except, of course, to make sure you and your K'da don't suffer his same fate."
"Better turn it off," Alison said. "Out here in the middle of nowhere, even electronics as small as a comm clip can sometimes be detected."
"Yeah, that part of Sergeant Grisko's training I remember," Jack said. He switched off the comm clip, cutting Frost off in midsentence. "We'd better get out of here."
"Right," Alison said. "You take Greenie and get everybody moving down the path. I'll hang back a ways and play rear guard."
Beneath Jack's shirt, K'da claws brushed lightly but urgency at Jack's skin. "Better idea: you take them," he said, thinking fast. "Now that we're out of the main Erassva stomping grounds, I can go ahead and set that booby trap I was going to use earlier."
A slight frown creased her forehead, but she nodded. "Okay, but don't be too long," she said. Getting a grip on the green K'da's crest, she turned him around and started maneuvering her way back though the crowd of K'da and Erassvas that had gathered behind them.
"Is something wrong?" Hren asked as Alison and Greenie reached the side trail and started along it. He didn't seem particularly worried, merely curious.
"A small change in direction," Jack assured him as he passed the other. "Stay with Alison and help her keep the Phookas together."
"I will," Hren promised.
Jack reached the back of the crowd and continued on. A wide S-curve later he was out of their sight. "Okay, buddy, we're on," he murmured.
There was a surge of weight against his shoulders, and Draycos leaped out of his shirt. "What is the plan?" the dragon asked, his gold scales glistening in the sunlight filtering through the mass of branches high above them.
"The plan is to keep Frost and his band of pirates from catching us," Jack told him grimly. "I just wish I really had something to use as a booby trap, like Alison thinks I have."
"You do," Draycos said. "You have me."
"Yeah, I figured you'd say that," Jack said grimly. "Problem is, they know about you now. That means no more sneak attacks."
"Perhaps," Draycos said calmly. He rose partially up on his hind legs, his neck stretching upward as he tried to look past the bushes and branches. His tongue flicked in and out of his mouth a few times as he smelled the air. "I may yet have a few surprises for them. What will you do while I am gone?"
Jack made a face at the other's implied order that he stay back here where it would be safer. But Draycos was right. He hardly needed Jack's help at this sort of thing, and the boy would just be in the way. "I thought I'd try to hide the spot where we left the path," he said.
"Good," Draycos said. "I will be as quick as I can."
Turning, he headed back toward the clearing, moving like a whisper of breeze through the grass and bushes.
Taking a deep breath, Jack moved to the side of the path and began gathering loose branches and small shrubs to hide their path. "Warrior's luck," he murmured to the empty air.
CHAPTER 9
Like most forests Draycos had seen, the ground here was covered with grasses, reeds, and dead leaves. Even Jack and Alison, who were trying to be quiet, had made considerable noise as they'd worked their way through the undergrowth. The Erassvas, who seemed to have no concept of the danger they were in, had sounded more like a set of brush-clearing machines.
Draycos himself knew several techniques for moving quietly. Trouble was, most of them involved slow stalking and right now he needed speed as much as he did silence.
Fortunately, with the trees as close together as these were, there were ways of traveling that would allow him to have both.
He leaped straight upward, grabbing onto the trunk of the nearest tree with his claws. His next leap cleared a row of bushes and landed him on a thick branch two trees over. He trotted along that branch to the trunk, then out again along another even thicker branch until he had a clear path to the next tree.
Two minutes and eleven leaps later, he had made it back to the edge of the clearing.
He was just in time. At the far side, six men in combat suits were marching in a two-by-two formation along the path Jack and Alison had first taken into the forest. As they reached the clearing, their guns swept warningly across the lounging Erassvas. Fortunately, the aliens made no sudden moves, hostile or otherwise. A few of them gazed curiously at the invaders, but most ignored them completely.
Draycos eased his way a little farther around the side of the tree trunk he was clinging to, studying the mercenaries as they headed for the clearing's center. They were walking openly, almost carelessly, with no attempt at caution or concealment.
Yet Arthur Neverlin knew Draycos had survived the Iota Klestis ambush. More than that, he'd seen the K'da poet-warrior in action. Could he have failed to warn Colonel Frost?
Draycos's jaws cracked open in a tight smile. No, of course Frost knew. Those six soldiers marching across the clearing weren't the attack force at all.
They were the bait.
Draycos took another, more careful look. This time he saw them: two pairs of camouflaged soldiers slipping quietly through the forest a few feet outside the edges of the clearing, one pair on each flank. An attacker careless enough to throw himself at the men in the clearing would find himself in a deadly crossfire.
The six mercenaries reached the center of the clearing and stopped, looking around and quietly talking among themselves. The two outrider pairs stopped, too, standing back-to-back and watching for trouble.
Back-to-back was a good defensive formation. Unfortunately for them, Draycos also knew how to deal with that one. Fixing their locations in his mind, he started to climb farther up the tree.
And then, from behind him came a soft crunch of leaves.
He twisted his head around, legs tensing for a powerful thrust that would shove him away from the tree and out of the line of fire.
But it wasn't a Malison Ring soldier back there. Nor was it Jack or Alison.
It was one of the K'da.
Draycos hissed between his teeth. He'd noticed this particular K'da the minute Jack had entered the clearing earlier. She was beautiful and graceful, with the gray scales he'd always wished he'd been born with. She reminded him strongly of one of his best friends when he was growing up, a friend named Taneem who had later died in a Valahgua attack.
But Taneem had been smart and funny and kind. The bright silver eyes now turned up toward him held none of those qualities.
He took another look around the side of the tree. The soldiers were still talking together, but he knew that wouldn't last much longer. If he didn't go now, he wouldn't have time to get into position once they all st
arted moving again.
He turned back to the gray K'da. She was still watching him, her head cocked slightly to the side as if trying to work out why in the world this golden stranger was hanging on to a tree when all the really tasty grubs were on the ground. If Draycos headed off to the attack, the main group of soldiers would reach her before he could get back.
And bait or not, they certainly had live ammunition in their weapons.
Perhaps they would be better off dead. Draycos had said that earlier to Jack, and he was still wincing at the callousness of his words. If they had been any other species of nonsentient animal, he would certainly have treated them with compassion and care. How could he do less for his own people?
Even if they were his people in name only?
Climbing down the tree, he padded as quietly as he could to the silver female's side. "We have to go," he said.
Her silver eyes blinked at him, but otherwise there was no response. "We have to go," Draycos tried again, switching this time to the K'da language. Still nothing.
With a sigh, he flipped his slender tail up to catch her at the spot behind her crest that he'd shown Jack. "Come," he said, and started down the path.
He'd expected her to resist. To his mild surprise, she followed him willingly.
Early in their relationship, before Draycos had discouraged such talk. Jack had occasionally referred to him as his pet dragon. Now, it seemed, Draycos had picked up a pet dragon of his own.
They reached the left-hand path where Alison had taken the group, to find that the opening had vanished behind a wall of freshly cut bushes supported by a few large branches. Clearly, Jack had been busy in his absence.
Still, a good woodland tracker would have little trouble spotting the camouflage. Draycos would have to do something about that. "Go—over the top," he instructed the silver K'da, unhooking his tail from her crest. "Go on—jump."
She frowned, peering closely at his eyes. "Jump over the barrier and join the others," he repeated, fighting hard to keep his voice steady. The clock was counting down here, and he still had a lot of work to do. "Go on. Go."
Her frown cleared. With an effortless bound, she leaped over Jack's barrier, landing beyond it with a crunch of grass and leaves that made Draycos wince. But at least she was gone.
A few feet down the main path another side path headed off to the right. Draycos moved a couple of paces down it and sliced off a pair of good-sized bushes. Dragging them back to the opening, he propped them up to block the path. He interwove some branches through them to keep them from falling over, then arranged some leaves at their bases to hide the slashed ends.
The Malison Ring soldiers were probably smart enough to spot Jack's camouflage. But they were also probably smart enough to be suspicious of it. With this second and considerably less obvious barrier a few feet farther along, they might conclude that Jack's was merely a decoy.
Draycos put a few more finishing touches on his camouflage, making sure it was better than Jack's but still detectable if they looked closely enough. Then, leaping into the trees, he headed back to the clearing.
The soldiers had finished their consultation and were on the move again. Unfortunately, whether through luck or tracking skill, they were heading straight for the path the group of K'da and Erassvas had taken. Even with the barriers he and Jack had erected, it wouldn't take the soldiers long to catch up to the refugees.
Draycos would just have to slow them down a bit.
The main force paused as they reached the entrance to the path, giving the two pairs of outriders time to work their way into new flanking positions. Then, guns held ready across their chests, they headed in.
For a moment Draycos studied their movements. The outriders were moving through the undergrowth nearly as quietly as a K'da warrior could have, keeping in sight of both the main force and each other. The second of each pair seemed to be trying to walk in the footsteps of the first, minimizing the chances of snapping a dry branch hidden beneath the leaves.
Each pair was also staying far enough apart that a K'da dropping on them from above couldn't take out both with a single attack. Clearly, they were well trained and well-informed.
But they weren't informed quite well enough. Easing down from his tree, Draycos headed into the forest to prepare his attack.
He was curled out of sight beneath a fan-shaped group of wide-leaf ferns when the two left-flank outriders arrived.
He let the first pass him by without interference. Then, as the second stepped into range, he reached out a paw and stabbed a claw neatly through the heel of the soldier's left boot.
The man gave a strangled gasp as his leg collapsed beneath him. "What?" his companion demanded quietly, hurrying back to his side.
"My ankle," the first ground out, crouching down to clutch at his heel. "Something bit me, right through my boot."
"You mean like a snake?" the other said, starting to take a hasty step back.
But he was too late. Reaching behind him, Draycos jabbed him in the same spot.
Either this one didn't handle pain as well as his companion or else Draycos's claw had found a more sensitive spot. Instead of a stifled gasp, the man let loose with a full-bodied bellow as he dropped to one knee.
"Alki, you idiot," someone snapped from the path. "Shut up—
"We got trouble, Lieutenant," the first outrider called back, his voice taut with pain. "Snake or something. We both been bit."
The lieutenant swore. "Get back here," he ordered. "Imre, Quars—go help them."
Two of the main force left the path and pushed their way through the bushes. They reached the injured men and slung their weapons over their shoulders to leave their hands free to help them up.
And as they did, Draycos leaped straight up through the concealing ferns into view.
There was just enough time for the soldiers' eyes to widen in shock; and then K'da paws slapped hard against the sides of their necks beneath their helmets, dropping them unconscious to the ground. Draycos slapped his tail across the throat of one of the two men he'd first hit, sending him flying, then paw-slapped the other.
But quiet or not, his attack hadn't gone unnoticed. "There!" one of the remaining four soldiers in the main group shouted as Draycos landed back on the ground. "There he is!"
"Fire!" the lieutenant snapped.
And as the four men swung their weapons around toward him, Draycos deftly inserted the tip of his tail through the trigger guard of the nearest fallen soldier's gun and squeezed the trigger.
The gun wasn't aimed at anything in particular, certainly not at any of the remaining men. But to soldiers with trained combat reflexes, the sound of nearby gunfire was all it took. As the first chattering salvo of slugs tore into the landscape, the remaining soldiers of the main group forgot their own weapons and dived for cover. Draycos fired a second salvo, just to encourage them to keep down, then unhooked his tail and slipped away into the forest.
He'd made it perhaps ten yards before the soldiers behind him pulled themselves together enough to begin raking the forest with fire of their own. But the shots were wild, and none of them even came close.
If they followed immediately, he knew, they would have a good chance of catching both him and the rest of the group ahead. But he also knew that they probably wouldn't. Four of their number were down, two of them with ankle injuries serious enough to put them out of action for days or possibly weeks.
And even people bent on genocide wouldn't be foolish enough to go charging madly into a dense forest full of unknown dangers and proven enemies. They would deal with their injured, regroup, and rethink their strategy. Only then would they try again.
He'd bought Jack and Uncle Virge some time. Hopefully, it would be enough.
A few yards beyond the low cliff they'd had to detour around, the band of tightly packed bushes began to thin out. By the time Jack caught up with Alison, the brush had cleared out enough that the group no longer had to travel in single file.
/> Of course, that also meant anyone coming up from behind would see them from a lot farther away. Trying not to think about the eyes—and guns—that might be lining up on his back, he passed through the throng of Erassvas and K'da to the front.
Alison looked back as he came up beside her. "Well?"
Jack shrugged. "Did my best. We'll see what happens."
"I guess." She measured him with her eyes. "So what exactly are these Erassvas and Phookas to you, anyway?"
It was a question Jack had known she would eventually ask. Unfortunately; he still didn't have a good answer to it. "What do you mean?" he stalled.
"What do you mean, what do I mean?" she retorted crossly. "You and I would be twice as far along right now if we weren't dragging these lotus-eaters and their entertainment herd along with us. I repeat: what are they to you?"
"I wish I could explain," Jack said with a sigh. "But I can't." He hesitated. "You don't have to stay if you don't want to."
He kept walking, his eyes forward, not looking at her. But he could feel her gaze on him. "Don't think I'm not tempted," she said at last. "But I saw how you handled forest duty back on Sunright. You wouldn't last an hour out here without me." She gestured over her shoulder. "Especially not with a transport full of Malison Ring soldiers on your—"
She broke off as a stutter of gunfire erupted from somewhere behind them.
Jack spun around, his heart seizing up. But there was no sign of pursuit. A second bunt sounded through the trees and bushes, followed by a much longer sustained chatter of fire.
Finally, almost reluctantly he thought, the weapons fell silent again. This time, they stayed that way.
"Mother-of-pearl," Alison breathed. "What kind of trap did you set back there?"
"Like I said, I did my best," Jack said, trying to keep his voice steady. If Draycos had been killed . . . but he wasn't going to think about that. "You were saying something about me not lasting an hour out here?"
He had the immense satisfaction of seeing some actual embarrassment flicker across her face. "Okay, so maybe I was wrong," she admitted. "In that case, how about you take Greenie here for a while, while I go back and take rear guard?"