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"Is there any good news?" he asked.
"There probably aren't Grogs around."
"Where's Jarvis?"
"Keeping an eye on the camp and the trail they left, to see if they reverse course."
"Let's try to swing round in their wake," Valentine decided.
"They're nothing to mess with, sir," Scheier said. "Don't let the spears and arrowheads fool you."
After it was all over, Jarvis tried to make Valentine feel better by telling him that the Scrubmen had probably spotted their party the day before and overnight, and left the cold camp in their path to gauge their reaction. The only way they might have frightened them off was to take off headlong along the trail like a pack of wolves. The Scrubmen might have assumed they were an advance party for a larger force that way and avoided contact.
As it was, Valentine's decision to dodge them solidified whatever ideas the Scrubman chief had been making.
They executed the ambush admirably, rising out of an open field at the shrill imitated cry of a Cooper's hawk as the file passed through a horseshoe-shaped bowl in the land.
A hedge of spears and drawn slingshots appeared all around. Valentine heard the creaking sound of bows being drawn from the brush. Valentine didn't count spear points, his brain guessed thirty and left it at that. They were well-made, simple weapons, their brutal effect proven since men were slaying each other with jawbones.
Valentine edged closer to Pellwell. "When the fighting starts," he said out of the side of his mouth, "drop. Get behind one of the Wolves and don't get up unless you see the rest of us running."
The Scrubmen dripped with mud and willow tresses. Valentine had seen some atavistic figures before, but the Scrubmen were like something out of early human history. They wore bits and bobs of Grog jewelry-probably tokens of friendship with certain tribes- shell casing necklaces, dog tails, and in one potbellied oldster's case, an old Kevlar army helmet.
It was their eyes that interested Valentine. Tough, hungry eyes, looking this way and that, these men were of, by, and for their pack. All it would take would be a nose twitch for spears and arrows to start flying.
"Yours guns, nows," the helmeted leader said.
"Gets good prices, yesses? Sweets-likkers-juices!"
Valentine called out: "Everybody, keep calm now."
"Guns! Down!"
Ahn-Kha dropped his machine gun directly in front of his long-toed feet, raised his arms in surrender. The Scrubmen had picked the wrong day to point a weapon at Ahn-Kha. The Golden One didn't let out a battle roar, he simply brought both mighty fists down on the spears in front of him. Wood shattered, knife tips dug into dirt. With his fists planted, he swung out with both long-toed feet and kicked the two Scrubmen facing him toward Iowa.
In later years it was said that they fell just short of Burlington.
Valentine drew his legworm pick and borrowed parang. He jumped back from the extended spears, heard a pellet buzz by. His enemies, off-balance and overextended in their lunge, turned it into a charge.
Valentine heard motion behind and dropped to the ground, rolling. Two ranks of spears clattered against each other. Valentine heard the snick of a blade sinking home as the Scrubmen met.
He lashed out at an ankle with his parang, pinned a foot to the turf with his pick, let it lie and rose, lifting and twisting a spear.
"Looksee!" "Watch hims!"
A four-armed blur. The Brushmen had never fought Cats before.
He saw a Scrubman go down, weighted by ratbits biting at the tender flesh behind his knee and on the inner thigh. The scratching, pulling furies came away with tendon and other terrible trophies clamped between paired front incisors.
Valentine had read somewhere or other that, given time, rats could gnaw through concrete and some thinner types of conduit. These were a good deal larger and had obviously learned exactly where a man was vulnerable.
The Scrubmen valued survival rather than honor. They took to the brush with alacrity, sending pellets whizzing overhead to cover their retreat.
What the Wolves did with the wounded, Valentine didn't know and didn't want to know. The cries were brief, and for that he was thankful.
Frat's head appeared at the top of the crest of the horseshoe.
"Major, looks like they left a few things behind," Frat called.
