They ate a brief meal from the pack. The grouse even Gorm now disdained, and it was hurled away, but antelope steak, pemeekan, and biscuit were a whole lot better than nothing, and five of the great snapper eggs were yet unbroken in their packing. The bear and each human ate one. Then Hiero and the girl cleaned the saddlebags, washed out the squashed egg, and aired the rest of the contents. A little before noon, they were on their way again.
All the rest of the day, they followed the shore eastward. Occasionally, a rocky outcrop would make them turn inland, but they seldom deviated much from their course.
Hiero was pleased with his capture, though at intervals his mind would grapple with the gloomy realization that he had no idea what to do with her and that she was in no sense supposed to be a part of his mission. In fact, he thought in one of these moments of clarity, by distracting him, she was probably a positive danger! Still, she was from the very area to which he had been sent, she was a mine of information on the people, customs, and political makeup of her land, and besides—there was no obvious alternative!
Once they came to a place where a series of long sandbars, strewn with logs and other storm wrack, lay in the sea, just off the mouth of a small creek. On these bars, some of the great snappers, their dark gray shells crusted with growth and algae, lay basking and sunning themselves. They hardly blinked their evil eyes, however, as the little party went on by along the beach and splashed their way across the stream.
“Do you have those in your country?” the priest asked as they watched the comatose monsters warily.
“Yes, and much worse things,” was the answer. It seemed that the very sewers had to be screened with great iron bars and grills of massive stonework, even in her own proud city. Otherwise, foul things, water-borne and avid, emerged at night to devour whatever and whomever they could. Bridges, too, had to be covered with strong barriers and roads near streams strongly stockaded when possible. Even with all that, heavily armed, mounted patrols went continually about on regular beats, looking for intrusive jungle creatures and repelling incursions of Leemutes. Hiero was used to a life of fairly constant strife, but he began to feel that he had always lived in peace and quiet after hearing about everyday existence in distant D’alwah.
That night they camped on a high, rocky knoll, from which, at early evening, Hiero could see well inland to the beginning of the Palood, its night mists rising in the still air. Far on the distant air, as he watched, came the faint bellow of one of the monster amphibians, a grim warning not to venture back into the great marsh.
