“Stop and Trade?” Pearl wondered.
“Maybe they’re friendly … and again, maybe not. Would you like to gamble? And why would that many warriors carry darts? No, I say we run like mad.”
“At times, you demonstrate surprising logic, Trader,” Black Skull noted.
Otter gauged Wave Dancer’& rate of progress. They were flying along the shore, headed right into the bloody orb of the sun that barely broke the straightedge of the horizon. The pursuers paddled smaller boats, with more warriors—but they were cutting across the angle. He was running the Khota race all over again.
“We’re not going to make it,” Otter declared.
“Then we must string them out,” Black Skull called. “One against one, we’ve got a chance.”
Otter threw a glance over his shoulder, guessing the distance of the pursuers. By the time the sun hung a finger’s breadth above the horizon, they’d be within range. He managed a fresh burst of energy.
They passed another cove, and to Otter’s dismay, three more canoes came racing out to join the chase. The cries of the wild men carried on the wind: joyous ululations.
“This isn’t going to be good,” Otter growled. “Pearl, I wish you’d stayed with Trout.”
“Well, I didn’t. Keep paddling.”
Green Spider turned and said very seriously, “If she hadn’t stayed with Trout, she’d be here to save us right now.”
Nonsense? At a time like this? “Paddle!” Otter ordered, and to his dismay, the Contrary shrugged and laid his paddle down on the pack. “All right! Don’t paddle.” After Green Spider had returned to work, Otter muttered, “There are times when he makes me want to cry.” “Save us how?” Pearl asked, shaking her head slightly as she puzzled on it. The wind was whipping her hair around, but she didn’t take time to fix it. “Green Spider? How can I save us?” “You know,” the Contrary told her without losing his rhythm. “These river men would never think of it.”
“Does he mean I’m really going to save us … or kill us all?”
Pearl wondered.
“Just paddle!” Otter urged.
He’d plotted the intercept course about right. The sun hung big and red. If Otter could have spared a finger, if would have fit between the horizon and the sun’s bottom.
The first dart arched out of the sky to strike the water behind them with an odd thooshing sound. He didn’t need to look over his shoulder to see it bobbing in the waves.’ It would float point-down, the nock up in the air where a hand could retrieve it.
“We’re being shot at!” Otter called. He would have liked to redouble his efforts, but his reserves of stamina were depleted.
He panted now, his skin sticky with sweat—as was Pearl’s. Only Black Skull’s tremendous strength carried them forward.
Another dart thooshed into the water no more than a man’s length to the right of Wave Dancer’s hull. Before the shaft bobbed up, Otter idly noted the white stream of bubbles that marked the location.
Black Skull stood in the bow, looking back. “That lead canoe is well within my limit.”
The warrior nocked a long dart in his atlatl. Bracing himself against the axis of the canoe, he waited, dart poised into the wind. Wave Dancer continued to rise and fall as she coasted over the rolling swells. Black Skull’s release shivered the~big canoe.
The deadly missile soared up, caught the wind, and fell short of its mark. Howls of glee erupted from the hunters.
“This wind!” Black Skull growled, reaching for another of his darts. “When they cast, it carries their missiles to us. Me, I have to try to throw past them, gauge the amount of drop.” And he did, grunting with the effort. >
Otter glanced back, chewing on his Up as he watched that slender dart winging through the rouged morning sky to whistle downward.
Black Skull whooped as it thunked home into the dugout’s wood. The answering cries betrayed outrage this time, but the pursuers dropped back.
“Good cast!” Otter called, and Black Skull returned to his paddle, having brought them a short reprieve.
The lead canoe might be holding back, but the others were catching up, and Otter closed his ears to the jabber of orders called back and forth behind them.
Black Skull gritted his teeth. “They’re not going to give us the opportunity to kill them one at a time. They’ve figured out that they can outrun us.”
Otter’s gut squirmed -when he looked back and saw the war622 Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear riors paddling their canoes wide, spreading out to encircle them.
“Time appears to be on their side.”