THE SEA HAG(27)

CHAPTER 13




The rain continued. The canopy didn't stop it; instead, the drops collected on the tips of leaves, then overbalanced and dropped to the trail in individual cupfuls.

Dennis felt cold and wet and nothing at all of a hero.

"Even in a blameless life," said the robot, "there are good days and bad days."

"Chester, how far have we come?"

Dennis held the scabbard with his left hand. If he let the sword swing as he walked, his belt chafed the skin over his right hip. He was pretty sure he'd rubbed himself raw before he realized what was happening.

"We have come four miles, three hundred and twenty—one yards, Dennis."

"Are there—" Dennis began. He grimaced to himself, then asked instead, "Do the lizard people have villages?"

"The lizardfolk have villages, Dennis," the little robot agreed. "But there are no villages nearby."

"Oh."

A vine with spikes like a warclub caught at his head, right at the hairline. Dennis squealed with frustration—stopped—and freed himself by ducking carefully while his hand disengaged the thorns from his scalp.

The fresh pain was too minor to affect Dennis' general feeling of discomfort. His head was throbbing. He thought the pulses of heat and pressure were centered on his swollen cheek, but he couldn't be sure even of that. Maybe some of the thorns that tore him had been poisonous.

Maybe he'd feel better if he ate something.

Dennis stepped close to a tree whose vine-knotted trunk at least pretended to offer shelter. "Give me the food," he ordered curtly.

The sword shifted. The scabbard-tip rapped his left ankle hard enough to hurt.

Chester obediently offered the shopping bag. He'd been carrying it beneath his carapace, but the robot's body was too small to provide much protection.

Wincing in anticipation, Dennis reached in for a loaf of bread. It squished.

He thrust his hand down fiercely, hoping that at least some of the bread would still be dry.

It was all soaked through, a mass of soggy paste.

"All the sausages are gone!" he shouted. "Did you have to throw all the sausages?"

"I did not have to throw any of the sausages, Dennis," the robot said mildly.

Dennis hurled the embroidered bag into the jungle. It caught in the vegetation less than a yard from where it left his hand.

For a moment Dennis breathed hard. Chester remained silent, and the rain spattered them both. Then a bucketful of water from the tree's disturbed heights cascaded down on the companions.

"Patience is the gods' greatest gift," Chester said.

"We may as well keep going," said Dennis, lifting the sheathed sword again with his left hand. The rain would clean the bread mush off his right hand soon enough.

The sword would probably be rusting. And—

"Chester, will you rust?"

"In this rain alone, I do not think that I will rust, Dennis," the robot replied, leading the way as they walked because the trail was too narrow for them to go side by side.

"That's good," Dennis said.

"And I'm sorry," he added, but he couldn't be sure that he spoke those words aloud. He was plodding forward, step after step, and the monotony of even the pain was a defense against the misery he felt.

Things had to get better soon. Things had to get better soon. Things had to get...





CHAPTER 14




Dennis wasn't sure how long they'd been walking when he saw the light. It was a soft gleam, yellowish orange, not far off the trail.

"There, what's that light?" he said excitedly.

When Chester replied, his voice held as much puzzlement as the robot was capable of feeling: "There is no light that I see, Dennis."

"Right over here," the youth insisted.

He plunged into the undergrowth, waddling as he forced his way through the brush that grew most thickly at the fringes of the trail. The light flickered, but it was too saturated to be merely a will-o'-the-wisp—rotting wood or gas glowing as it drifted from fallen vegetation. It looked like firelight; and when it was raining like this, a fire meant there was shelter as well.

He'd half feared that the light would somehow slip away; but as Dennis fought his way onward, the orange warmth grew clear enough to have shape through the angles of tree-boles and writhing vine stems.

There was a cabin hidden here in the jungle, and a wedge of light from its fireplace glowed through its half-open door.

"Oh, thank goodness!" Dennis cried as he freed his swordhilt from the loop of vine that caught it. "I knew something would turn up!"

The cabin appeared perfectly normal, built of logs like those of the trees all around; but there was no path to the door, just tangled jungle like that through which Dennis had thrust his way. Dennis paused. "Is this...?" he began. "Ah, Chester? Who lives here?"