Free The Adversary - 4 by Julian May Page A

down and soothed the four helladotheria in the team. They stamped their feet and swivelled their tufted ears. When the solar-powered lantern went on, Jim hunkered down and inspected the broken wheel. "Too bad we can't make our armour glow from mindpower, like Lord Ochal an' the other op'rants. Be handy in a sitch-ashun like this."
    "You don't glow unless you got the power," said Vilkas.
    "The psychoactive microbes sandwiched in the glass armour laminations don't light up for grunts like you and me." He paused, then added pointedly, "Or for golds like Lord Yoshimitsu, who aren't genuine latents."
    "But who nevertheless earned their privileges," Yosh said.
    "If the King had kept his promise, all of us humans would be wearing gold!" The Lithuanian's voice was bitter.
    Jim looked up at Vilkas and winked. "Hey-I like my grey torc just fine. Specially on lonely nights!" To Yosh he said, "Chief, we gone need a PK-head to lift this sumbitch wagon outa the dirt. A human-not some Tanu 'ristocat who'll screw up. And you'd best bespeak ol' Maggers to bring us a spare wheel."
    Yosh nodded. "Get the team unhitched. I'll ask Lord Raimo to give us a hand."
    He guided his chaliko back behind the wagon a few metres, dismounted, and said, "Matte, Kiku. Good girl." The great animal was like a dappled statue in the vaporous dusk. Standing on tiptoe, Yosh opened a saddlebag and took out the kawanawa, a stout rope joined to a set of wickedly sharp ganghooks.
    Returning to the wagon, he summoned Vilkas and indicated the stunned bear-dogs still bunched over the canted bed. "We'll have to drag these brutes away and finish them off. One of those hellads that Jim's uncoupling can do the hauling. But you'll have to crawl under and make fast."
    Vilkas groaned. His tans had been fresh that morning and his bronze and green-glass cuirass and greaves freshly polished. For an instant, he hesitated, a mutinous protest on the tip of his tongue. And then he felt the faintest pulse of electricity in the metal at his throat.
    "Yes, Yoshi-sama."
    "Thank you, Vilkas." Yosh turned away to deal with the hellad while Vilkas dropped to his knees in the bloody dust and crept under the Conestoga with the hook end of the rope. The stunned and badly slashed brutes were all in a tangle. One had voided with the shock of the stun-beam. Retching, Vilkas sank the big barbs into the creature's shoulder.
    "Ready?" Yosh sang out.
    "Ready." Without the slave-torc's amplification, the Lithuanian's reply would have been inaudible. Fortunately for him, his samurai master was unable to decipher the deeper nuances of the telepathic message.
    Vilkas hauled himself out from under the wagon as the rope tightened and the first amphicyon body began to move.
    Standing, he cursed with revulsion. Bloody mud and excrement stained his arms and legs.
    Jim tried to sympathize. "Wot th' hey, guy-leastways we ain' fightin' for our lives upriver at Bardy-Town. Things could be lots worse."
    "They will be. Just wait!"
    Yosh reappeared out of the fog leading the draft hellad.
    "Monku, monku, monku," he chided, handing the hooks back to Vilkas. "That's enough bitching. Down you go again, my man. I'll program extra goodies for you on the torc tonight to compensate."
    "Thank you, Yoshi-sama." Vilkas' manner was completely civil. He ducked back under the wagon, took a firm grip on the kawa-nawa, and drove the daggerlike points into the throat of the next bear-dog.

    CHAPTER TWO
    The convoy of fourplex modular ATVs, its number reduced to fifteen after the disaster with the freight hauler back in the Rif Mountains, crept along in the brassy African sunset enveloped in dust, ion-defiant midges, and anticipatory elation.
    The Mediterranean rim was less than 90 kilometres away.
    And the Great Waterfall.
    For more than two months, ever since they had dared to leave the camp on the Moroccan shore to which they had been diverted by their elders, the runaway adult children of Ocala Island had fled northeast by north