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If that wasn’t bad enough, there was now enough light coming through the greenroof for him to see that his death and ingestion would have an
audience. It wasn’t yet bright enough for him to make out the faces of the watchers, and for this Tim was miserably glad. Their slumped, semihuman
shapes were bad enough. They stood on the nearest bank, seventy or eighty yards away. He could make out half a dozen, but thought there were
more. The dim and misty light made it hard to tell for sure. Their shoulders were rounded, their shaggy heads thrust forward. The tatters hanging
from their indistinct bodies might have been remnants of clothing or ribbons of moss like those hanging from the branches. To Tim they looked like
a small tribe of mudmen who had risen from the watery floor of the swamp just to watch the swimmers first tease and then take their prey.
What does it matter? I’m a goner whether they watch or not.
One of the circling reptiles broke from the pack and drove at the tussock, tail lashing the water, prehistoric head raised, jaws split in a grin that
looked longer than Tim’s whole body. It struck below the place where Tim stood, and hard enough to make the tussock shiver like jelly. On the bank,
several of the watching mudmen hooted. Tim thought they were like spectators at a Saturday-afternoon Points match.
The idea was so infuriating that it drove his fear out. What rushed in to fill the place where it had been was fury. Would the water-beasts have
him? He saw no way they would not. Yet if the four-shot the Widow had given him hadn’t taken too much of a wetting, he might be able to make at
least one of them pay for its breakfast.
And if it doesn’t fire, I’ll turn it around and club the beast with the butt end until it tears my arm off my shoulder.
The thing was crawling out of the water now, the claws at the ends of its stubby front legs tearing away clumps of reed and weed, leaving black
gashes that quickly filled up with water. Its tail—blackish-green on top, white as a dead man’s belly beneath—drove it ever forward and upward,
slapping at the water and throwing fans of muddy filth in all directions. Above its snout was a nest of eyes that pulsed and bulged, pulsed and
bulged. They never left Tim’s face. The long jaws gnashed; the teeth sounded like stones driven together.
On the shore—seventy yards or a thousand wheels, it made no difference—the mudmen called again, seeming to cheer the monster on.
Tim opened the cotton sack. His hands were steady and his fingers sure, although the thing had hauled half its length onto the little island and
there was now only three feet between Tim’s sodden boots and those clicking teeth.
He pulled back one of the hammers as the Widow had shown him, curled his finger around the trigger, and dropped to one knee. Now he and the
approaching horror were on the same level. Tim could smell its rich carrion breath and see deep into its pulsing pink gullet. Yet Tim was smiling. He
felt it stretching his lips, and he was glad. It was good to smile in one’s final moments, so it was. He only wished it was the barony tax collector
crawling up the bank, with his treacherous green familiar on his shoulder.
“Let’s see how’ee like this, cully,” Tim murmured, and pulled the trigger.
There was such a huge bang that Tim at first believed the four-shot had exploded in his hand. Yet it wasn’t the gun that exploded, but the reptile’s
hideous nest of eyes. They splattered blackish-red ichor. The creature uttered an agonized roar and curled backward on its tail. Its short forelegs
pawed the air. It fell into the water, thrashed, then rolled over, displaying its belly. A red cloud began to grow around its partially submerged head. Its
hungry ancient grin had become a death rictus. In the trees, rudely awakened birds flapped and chattered and screamed down abuse.
Still wrapped in that coldness (and still smiling, although he wasn’t aware of it), Tim broke open the four-shot and removed the spent casing. It
was smoking and warm to the touch. He grabbed the half-loaf, stuck the bread-plug in his mouth, and thumbed one of the spare loads into the
empty chamber. He snapped the pistol closed, then spat out the plug, which now had an oily taste.
“Come on!” he shouted to the reptiles that were now swimming back and forth in agitated fashion (the hump marking the top of the submerged
dragon had disappeared). “Come have some more!”
Nor was this bravado. Tim discovered he actually wanted them to come. Nothing—not even his father’s ax, which he still carried in his belt—had
ever felt so divinely right to him as did the heavy weight of the four-shot in his left hand.
From the shore came a sound Tim could not at first identify, not because it was strange but because it ran counter to all the assumptions he had
made about those watching. The mudmen were clapping.
When he turned to face them, the smoking gun still in his hand, they dropped to their knees, fisted their foreheads, and spoke the only word of
which they seemed capable. That word was hile, one of the few which is exactly the same in both low and high speech, the one the Manni called fin-
Gan, or the first word; the one that set the world spinning.
Is it possible . . .
Tim Ross, son of Jack, looked from the kneeling mudmen on the bank to the antique (but very effective) weapon he still held.
Is it possible they think . . .
It was possible. More than possible, in fact.
These people of the Fagonard believed he was a gunslinger.
For several moments he was too stunned to move. He stared at them from the tussock where he had fought for his life (and might yet
lose it); they knelt in high green reeds and oozy mud seventy yards away, fisted hands to their shaggy heads, and stared back.
Finally some semblance of reason began to reassert itself, and Tim understood that he must use their belief while he still could. He groped for the
stories his mama and his da’ had told him, and those the Widow Smack had read to her pupils from her precious books. Nothing quite seemed to
fit the situation, however, until he recalled a fragment of an old story he’d heard from Splinter Harry, one of the codgers who worked part-time at the
sawmill. Half-foolish was Old Splint, apt to point a finger-gun at you and pretend to pull the trigger, also prone to babbling nonsense in what he
claimed was the high speech. He loved nothing better than talking about the men from Gilead who carried the big irons and went forth on quests.
Oh, Harry, I only hope it was ka that put me in earshot on that particular noonrest.
“Hile, bondsmen!” he cried to the mudmen on the bank. “I see you very well! Rise in love and service!”
For a long moment, nothing happened. Then they rose and stood staring at him from deep-socketed and fundamentally exhausted eyes. Their
sloping jaws hung almost to their breastbones in identical expressions of wonder. Tim saw that some carried primitive bows; others had bludgeons
strapped to their sunken chests with woven vines.
What do I say now?
Sometimes, Tim thought, only the bald truth would do.
“Get me off this fucking island!” he shouted.
At first the mudmen only gaped at him. Then they drew together and palavered in a mixture of grunts, clicks, and unsettling growls. Just
when Tim was beginning to believe the conference would go on forever, several of the tribesmen turned and sprinted off. Another, the tallest, turned
to Tim and held out both of his hands. They were hands, although there were too many fingers on them and the palms were green with some mossy
substance. The gesture they made was clear and emphatic: Stay put.