Wild Country (21 page)

He had seen small boar leap backward, but never a trophy animal. He brought the lancehead in with its point a trifle high, hoping that a lightning thrust inward and down would at least draw blood.

It brought blood, all right.

Ba'al waited as if carved from limestone until he saw the lancehead arrowing down to his flesh, and then jerked backward as he flicked his head. He intended to bind the lance between his tusks and disarm this maniac, then send him packing. After all. when boar fought boar, losing was punishment enough. The winner seldom killed, and this man seemed happy to Tight in the manner of a boar. But Ba'al had not counted on the lancehead dropping so much, so abruptly.

Wardrop knew joy, and battle lust, as the lancehead entered the boar's mouth. He wrenched hard to free the point, seeing bright blood on the razor edge as he looked back; by that time the boar was behind him.

Ba'al realized the lancehead was between his jaws; clamped down; felt the steel's cruel passage through the soft flesh of his underlip. He did not release the pressure of his jaws but felt the slick, shiny steel slide from his teeth anyway. His own foamy saliva had reduced friction to almost nothing, but Wardrop was lucky to wrench the lance away without being unhorsed.

And now the boar did charge. He charged with a suddenness that put him alongside the harried little barb before it could turn, and while Wardrop was twisting from the waist to bring the lancehead around. He lowered the great head almost to the ground, flicked his head to the side, and delivered a terrible slash that could have taken Wardrop's leg off at the ankle.

Wardrop saw the move, kicked backward and up without losing the stirrup, and felt the cinch give way, sliced like cheese. In the same instant the barb felt the ivory scimitar enter its flank and screamed again, staggering. With the cinch flopping loose, Wardrop's saddle slipped from the barb like soap on tile. He managed to free himself from the stirrups, hit the ground standing, and rolled free, still grasping his lance as the barb went down.

Wardrop had seen a Masai with a four-meter assegai lion spear, using his foot to ground the spear butt against the ground to impale a lion as it leaped. Now, using his knee to secure the weighted butt of his lance, he waited for this devil to rush him.

Ba'al saw the man drop to one knee, two lance lengths away. He saw the barb and heard it, too, an agony that was not pleasant to hear, and now that he was taller than both of them he felt that dominance had been won. His sudden murderous furies of earlier times failed to take hold. Tasting his own blood and that of the barb as it ran down his right tusk, he considered the matter and decided it had been settled. Neither member of
this
team seemed in condition to challenge him again.

Alec Wardrop watched the huge boar bounce away, pink foam jouncing from its mouth like flecks of cotton candy, and knew that he had not seriously wounded the creature. At the moment he was damned glad of it. Ba'al moved like something on springs, in a distance-eating canter that took him out of sight. He was bleeding more than he knew, but he would know it when he had lost a few quarts of blood. Of that, Wardrop was certain. He moved over to the savaged little Spanish Barb, avoiding the forehoof that pawed pathetically back and forth. At least he still had the VHP radio in the pocket of his bush jacket.

Sandy's journal, Sun. IS Oct. '06

Childe has finally cried herself to sleep. Wish I could do that but am all cried out, mostly in anger, some of it misdirected at Ted. On lonely reflection I agree he was right not to call, but to rush straight to us as soon as that berserk Brit was airlifted to WCS with his bloodstained spear. Nothing I could have done anyway, and Ted was here for support when he told us the bad news. Can it be true that my old protector is bleeding to death somewhere on Garner spread?

Wonder where Ted is, this moment. Told me his WCS hovercycle was borrowed, but more likely he simply rustled it. Did he also borrow that vet kit with permission? An even bet that Ba'al will not allow him near enough to use it. Dam it, why did Ted refuse to let me call old Mr. Garner? Only good manners to tell a neighbor when you must follow your stock onto his land. Part of my moral code, yet I let Ted talk me out of it.

Damn our moral codes anyway, they are the razors we wield against our own fulfillments, shaving away each pleasure one thin, transparent curl at a time. If taken too far, this process leaves us jumbled and juiceless piles of severed joys, baked crisp as dry leaves in the autumn of life. I have learned, at least, to remove my code before lovemaking. Half of amorality is armor… and I would not be straying into this line of though, if Ted had made love to me last night. Perhaps the mother of invention was not necessity, but simple frustration.

Childe's mind is subtle. Or perhaps just pragmatic; she had never told me Ba'al survived poison three years ago. Claims she alone can find the old shanty and creek where he recovered out on the Garner spread. Insists Ba'al is certain to return there if badly hurt. Still, I'm sure Ted is right, he must search alone. Wild Country is no place for a little girl at night unless she is riding the neck of Ba'al.

To be out of this mess I would give everything I own, or expect to own. Still no word on reward for that stupid amulet. Ted talks vaguely of large sums, but even $50,000 would not buy a spread big enough to contain my old friend. Only consolation tonight is that Ted is no longer in gov't service and can gallivant off like this whenever he likes without mortal danger.

Will brew agarita tea and try to sleep now…

Quantrill kept to the valleys when he could, mindful of the possibility of radar and other sensors. The hovercycle was not one of the government's stealth models with kapton plastic and special coatings, but simply the first one he could hotwire at Wild Country Safari. It was a Curran, a fast courier job with good mufflers and a recliner you could sleep in. He had left Sandy's place before dawn and crossed Mul Garner's fenceline shortly after first light, trusting the map because it was a duplicate of Wardrop's. It was one of the few things about this fool's errand that he
could
trust.

He couldn't trust Garner's men not to shoot him on sight. If the boar's injury was less severe than Wardrop claimed, Quantrill couldn't trust the animal not to charge him. And though he had brought the Nelson rifle with its tranquilizers, he could not trust it to deliver the right dose to pacify Ba'al without killing him. He couldn't even trust the creeks he had tried to follow. Several times this day, he had whirred down a sluggish limestone-bedded brook watching for the signs Childe had described, suddenly to find himself following a dry creekbed or even, in one case, circling a sinkhole. In South Texas, creeks around Edwards Plateau were just as likely to flow underground as above it.

Quantrill did not see deer, peccary, or anything else larger than a rabbit on this morning. He and the cycle were the only big things moving across that part of Garner land. And that made it easier for motion sensors on a nearby hilltop to follow his progress.

Now, with the late morning sun promising to blister him later in the day, Quantrill settled the cycle near a scatter of discarded plastic bags and killed the engine. Wardrop's distress call had been satellite-relayed to Kerrville, the nearest

Search & Rescue outfit, and they'd actually lifted that poor little Spanish Barb back to Marrow in a sling under a chopper. Having spent several years with S & R teams, Quantrill recognized the flimsy clear wraps in which virtually all equipment was packed.

In any self-respecting place, the breeze in mid-October would be cool and the sky overcast. But this little piece of Wild Country was hot enough to boil a man's brains, and it promised to get worse. Tomorrow it might play host to snowflakes or a tornado, but today Quantrill cursed its heat, sighed, and found a bulb of Pearl Light in the cycle storage pannier.

A careful scan of the shrubby area told him much. Those discarded bags began to degrade with the help of dry-packed enzymes as soon as they were opened, especially in warm weather. They were still in fair condition, so the bags had been opened within the past twenty-four hours or so. Several long scuff marks on the hardpan revealed where the chopper had landed. Scarcely ten meters away was a rust-brown stain on the earth, already sun-blackening and worshiped by a squadron of biting flies. The barb must have lost quarts of blood on that spot; a wonder it had survived at all.

Labels on the empty bags said someone had used a medical stapler, a hammock sling, and a hell of a lot of tape. Quantrill spotted several crescent-shaped heelmarks—Wardrop's, for the S & R crews left caulked patterns—and then, swigging his beer, let his glance slide up a nearby animal trail.

He said an ugly short word and strode forward, seeing the sharp incisions in the earth where a huge boar had spun, parried, and charged. Without any question, it was Ba'al that Wardrop had met: and thanks to his training at the hands of Jess Marrow, Quantrill had become a passable tracker. He needed little time to find where Ba'al's blood trail began, but he was encouraged; Ba'al had not been bleeding all that much. He considered calling Sandy on the cycle's VHP set to tell her the good news but did not want to risk giving away his position in case Garner's people had direction finders. He had no way of knowing that someone already had located his path and was moving toward cover near a point he would soon pass.

Briefly, he lost the trail in the creek. He found where Ba'al had entered the creek earlier, judging from the way the prints were oriented—and then dropped to his knees. A moment later he stood up, dusting off his knees and grinning.

Marrow was not as good a tracker as, say, an Apache; but he had taught Quantrill about print incisions. When running, a hoofed animal digs the fore tip of his hoof into the soil, and more loose soil is found behind the rear hoofprint than behind the front. It took Quantrill a moment to realize what he was looking at: the dewclaws at the rear of each hoof had dug in, and the loose soil was ahead of the prints. Ba'al hadn't
entered
the creek there; he had
left
it! Striding backward, probably at a trot to judge from the spacing.

And if he'd taken that much trouble with his tracks, he probably was not badly injured. Silently, Quantrill lifted his bulb of Pearl aloft and toasted the unseen Ba'al.

Still, most of his findings were guesswork, and he had not come this far to let his imagination draw his conclusions. Quantrill copied Sandy's "all clear; come in" whistle as well as he could. If he could whistle the big devil up, at least he could take back the news that Ba'al still reigned in his corner of hell.

No response. Nor in the next ravine, either, a narrow cleft so choked with brush that its real contours were hard to see. But Quantrill saw a sunglint from water between cedars, where the ravine widened some distance away, and took the cycle along the ridge for at least one moment too many. He never knew how many rounds were fired toward him in that first burst, but one slug gashed his windscreen and another shattered the engine's injector pump in the same instant. That meant several snipers, or one with an assault rifle, or both. Quantrill took the only evasive action he could.

A hovercycle's fans were designed to give gyroscopic stability and a low center of gravity as well, so they were heavy enough to continue free-wheeling for several seconds after the engine stopped. This feature was a real bacon-saver when an engine seized while the cycle was waist high over deep water or broken countryside. You came down quickly, but you had time to get ready. Quantrill needed two seconds to release his harness and a third to roll out of the cockpit. By this time the cycle was bouncing not far from the lip of the ravine, rebounding from a long limestone outcrop. Quantrill scrambled into the shadow of the outcrop as his vehicle crashed onto its side and rolled over with what seemed agonizing slowness.

Then silence, broken only by faint pings as the engine began to cool. Quantrill replayed the attack in his head and knew that the slug through his windscreen had come from his right. That meant the ambush had not been set in the ravine, but from the flat prairie above it. The ravine was a possible escape route, then—but he did not enjoy giving up the high ground and would have to cross several meters of open territory. The outcrop stretched for five meters parallel to the ravine but was not high enough to let him rise to his knees. He could not reach into the inverted cockpit to toggle the VHP set for help without exposing himself as a clear target. If only he had brought a weapon!

Well, he had, after a fashion. The Nelson rifle and its tranquilizers lay in his cargo pannier with the beer. That pannier hatch lay almost within arm's reach. He inched out from the limestone, hoping he was hidden by the inverted cycle, ducking back expecting more gunfire. Nothing.

He slid on his belly again, reached the pannier hatch, and opened it. Instantly, a distant burst of fire hammered a half dozen slugs into the cycle and Quantrill rolled back to the outcrop. Success, and fresh trouble, too; the rifle fell from the open hatch onto the ground, but now diesel fuel began to gurgle into the engine compartment and to trickle from there to the dirt. Snaking one arm out to retrieve the rifle. Quantrill saw his last bulb of Pearl near the hatch lip. Like an idiot, he had brought no other drinkables, depending on the filter straw in his survival kit for water on the open range. And that kit was still strapped into the cockpit. Like the VHP set, it might as well be half a world away.

A single shot impacted somewhere on the cycle. Now the stink of diesel fuel was rank in his nostrils, ten gallons of it at least, and if the damned cycle caught fire, he would be showered with blazing liquid when the tank blew. He shrugged his jacket off, poked the barrel of the rifle against it, then eased it forward as he crawled along the base of the outcrop away from the cycle. The jacket did not draw fire until he had crawled to the end of the outcrop, but whoever it was, the sharpshooter was quick and accurate. Quantrill reviewed his options furiously.