WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(89)

His grin.

"—I wouldn't care to have gone swimming with that one."

"Yes, that's probably true," Adele said.

The contrast between her dour feelings of defeat and the cheerful optimism Daniel shared with his sailors suddenly amused her. She chuckled also. Daniel was genuinely glad to have observed a creature of previously unknown size. It had almost killed him and his companions; it had almost wrecked his plans to escape Kostroma—

But "almost" was the key word with Daniel Leary. He didn't worry about things that were past; it was at least an open question in Adele's mind whether he worried about the future either. Though she wasn't about to call him a simple man. . . .

Daniel and Woetjans were discussing food and water. Daniel nodded to the sailor's queries and clipped another ripe nut as he listened.

Adele walked past Lamsoe and Sun, stepping carefully so that the wind didn't blow sand particles from her soles over the dismantled weapons. Hogg, cleaning sap from his knife with a fibrous leaf, nodded to her, then grimaced.

Hogg had a bad bruise on the right side of his head. A film of ointment closed the scrapes and the cut above his temple, but Adele was afraid he needed better medical attention than was available here.

She stepped between Hogg and Dasi, facing the group of former prisoners. They stopped their low-voiced conversations and looked at her with a mixture of emotions. A sort of bestial hunger was part of the brew she saw now in the thugs' eyes.

Adele smiled. It was her usual version, an expression nobody could mistake for good-humored.

"You'll have noticed that all the guns were soaked when the boat was wrecked," Adele said. "You may believe that they won't work until they're properly cleaned, probably cleaned better than is possible here on this island."

"Mistress!" Dasi blurted in horror behind her. In the corner of her eye Adele saw Hogg move, putting a restraining hand on his companion.

Adele drew her own pistol from her jacket pocket. She fired off-hand. A bell-shaped fruit exploded on a branch twenty feet in the air, spraying pulp and seeds down onto the Kostromans. Ganser shouted and covered his bald scalp with his hands.

"My gun was made on Cinnabar," she said. "It works quite well."

Adele slid the weapon back into her pocket. "And so do I," she added over her shoulder as she returned to Daniel's side.



Sunlight awakened Daniel. It filtered through the shelter of leaves and saplings his ratings must have built around him while he was asleep.

"Why didn't—" Daniel said as he sprang upright. Every muscle in his body, particularly the big ones in his thighs and shoulders, grabbed him simultaneously. It was like being attacked by a platoon of madmen with icepicks.

"Mary Mother of God!" Daniel cried tightly. His mouth would have been content to scream instead.

Overwhelming pain had made his eyes blink closed. Memory painted across the inside of his eyelids an image of himself forty feet in the air, wrapped around the shuddering gun mount.

Daniel Leary had done amazing things yesterday, he'd tell the world he had, but exertion like that came with a price tag. He was paying it now.

"We thought you could use your beauty sleep, sir," said Woetjans, seated with her back to the shelter's end post. She stood easily and offered Daniel her hand.

"I'm not proud," he muttered. He took Woetjans's callused grip as a brace to hold him as his legs levered him upright.

After the first instant, it wasn't too bad. The first instant felt like the madmen had exchanged their icepicks for flensing knives.

He laughed at Woetjans's concerned expression. "Remind me to get into shape before the next time I go out for trapeze," he said. "I'll be all right, I'm just stiff."

Very carefully Daniel stretched, locking his fingers behind his neck and arching his spine backward. He'd moved the detachment into a natural clearing formed by a protrusion of the igneous rock around which the island had grown. The ground cover was low-growing and soft. The hard rock wouldn't support larger vegetation, and the canopies of surrounding trees shaded but didn't cover the sky.

"Ganser's lot buggered off in the night," Woetjans said. "I don't guess that's much loss. They took a case or two of rations, but we had all the guns under guard with us."

"I wonder where they think they're going to go?" Daniel said with a frown. He didn't understand the situation, so it worried him. The Kostroman thugs had scarcely seemed the sort who'd be ashamed to take charity from a Cinnabar contingent which was obviously more competent at living rough.

"I told the crew to make sure they're always two together, even if they're just going around the next tree to take a leak," Woetjans said. "If anybody runs into a problem with the wogs, then I guess we'll finish things the way we could've done back on Kostroma."