Champions Of The Gods

Blade shook his head. «It is not a new trick, but part of the same trick that makes the mountains burn. The mountains burn, and the animals run to the south. More animals means more meat for the Gudki than ever before. So to hunt this meat more of them come north of the river than ever before. That is all there is to it.»

Blade knew he was right, but after a while he wasn't sure he'd been right to say it. More often than before, he caught the Hunters and warriors looking strangely at him. He and Katerina started taking turns watching and sleeping at night. Early one morning, a spear thudded into a tree near where Blade lay asleep, missing Katerina by inches. It was a Gudki spear, yet there had been no signs of the Gudki all the day before and there were none the day after. Blade kept his mouth shut and his eyes even more wide open than before.

For two more days they marched through jungle that grew thi

There were only two ways the Ganthi would get across it. Blade saw that at once. They could cross on rafts, which would take weeks. Or they could find a place where the river was shallow, and ford it. Even that would take time and much care, and they would certainly lose both people and animals. But it would take days rather than weeks.

Fords existed on the river-or so the stories said. Nobody seemed to know where any of them were, however. Blade decided to divide the scouting party in half, sending one group up the river and the other down it. Katerina wondered if it was wise to divide the scouts this way, with the Hairy People roaming the woods in such great numbers.

«Normally I'd agree with you,» said Blade. «But we don't have much time.» He pointed at the sky. Even this far south, the northern horizon was dark with the clouds from the volcanoes. «The ashes may already be falling on Thessu.»

The scouting party camped that night on the north bank of the Great River, sentries out and alert. Three times they saw the faint flickering orange glows of Gudki campfires, far away in the darkness on the south bank. But the jungle around them was quiet.

The next morning the scouts split, and Blade and Katerina led their group down the river. They kept as close as they could to the bank all that day and the next, never losing sight of the water. Every few hundred yards they stopped and tested the depth of the water with poles. They found only one place where it was at all shallow enough, and there the bottom dropped off steeply a few hundred yards out.

They found signs of the Gudki in many places. Blade took care to make camp in places well clear of the trees, and he ordered that a third of the men should always be awake with spears in hand. They obeyed him without complaining. They might think him an offense against the gods, but no one wanted to end up as a meal for the Hairy People by defying him.

All of the third day they marched along a stretch of rapids where the river boiled whitely over great slabs of rock. It was dropping down through a range of heavily wooded hills, and Blade began to wonder if there was any possible crossing place for many days' march ahead. He didn't like the idea. Even if there was a ford far ahead, fifty thousand people could never march far into these hills to reach it.

Luck was with him, though. At about noon on the next day they reached a spot where the river broke its fall in a broad level stretch. The river ran fast there, so fast that the water was white with foam. But it also ran shallow, and the shallows seemed to extend clear across to the opposite bank. Blade waded out several hundred yards without finding water more than waist-deep.

The strong current would be a problem, of course. Just below the shallows an ugly stretch of rapids began. It would mean certain death for anyone swept off his feet and carried away downstream. Children, the old and sick, and the animals would have to be passed across almost from hand to hand. That would not be hard, though, since the bottom was firm.

Unless the party going upriver found something better, this was the ford. This was where the Ganthi would cross the Great River to their new homeland. That night Blade and Katerina slept soundly for the first time in several days.

The next morning Blade and Katerina led the scouts down to the bank and into the water. They had to make absolutely sure that the shallow water and the firm bottom extended clear across to the other bank. They were all going, since Blade didn't want to divide the party again.

One by one the warriors and Hunters followed Blade and Katerina into the water. The shorter men staggered as the rushing water rose toward their chests. Their comrades grabbed their hands, their hair, their spears, anything to keep them from being swept away. Good luck and quick work kept anyone from being knocked down and carried off. Slowly but steadily, one cautious step at a time, they pushed across the foaming river toward the far bank.

Blade held one spear out at arm's length, probing the water ahead of him before taking each step. Behind him Katerina followed in his footsteps, spending most of her time looking back along the file of scouts. She watched to see that they kept up, and she also watched for any sort of trouble-a man swept away, or a spear coming at Blade's back.

Nothing happened. The shadows of the trees on the far bank reached slowly out across the water toward Blade. He sca

Now the water bubbled and churned around Blade's knees. Then he was out of the main current, pushing through patches of scum and clots of dead leaves whirling slowly in eddies. He felt the bottom under his feet turn from gravel to mud, and he climbed up onto dry land. Katerina was just behind him. They stood back to back, Blade watching the forest, Katerina watching the river and the men climbing out of it. Two, three, four, five men followed them out onto dry land. Blade and Katerina moved a few yards inland, away from the bank.

The next scout was just climbing up onto the bank when a chorus of deep-throated howls split the air. A second later two well-thrown spears skewered the man. He screamed and fell backward into the water, one spear in his chest and another in his belly. The next scout and all those behind him froze where they were.

It was a well-laid ambush by the Gudki. Before Blade could do more than turn around, more than fifty of the Hairy People came swarming out of the jungle. They leaped down from the branches, sprang out from behind trees and under bushes, came ru

That could mean disaster. Surrounded, they could and would be overwhelmed and cut down by sheer weight of numbers. Blade smashed a spear butt into the face of an attacker, shouted to Katerina to guard his back, and turned to shout to the men still in the water. If those men pushed forward through the Gudki, Blade and his group could still make a safe retreat.

The men were not pushing forward, to close with the Gudki or do anything else. They were moving hastily away, out into the river, out of range of Gudki spears and away from any chance of helping Blade.

Blade cursed them at the top of his lungs. If he hadn't needed his spears he would have thrown them at the retreating men. They weren't retreating in panic or fear, either. They were splashing away in good order, spears on their shoulders, not even looking back at the fight on the bank. They were abandoning him and Katerina and their comrades to the Gudki. They were abandoning the High Chief who had brought down the wrath of the gods on the Ganthi.