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Then there was a warmer recognition in Thorvald's expression. "Lantee!" The younger man might just have come into sight. "What are you doing here?" Shann tightened his belt. "Just about what you are." He was still aloof, giving no acknowledgment of difference in rank now. "Running around in this fog hunting the way out."
Shann found the wolverines and patiently coaxed and wheedled them into coming with him over a circuitous route which kept them away from both ships. Thorvald went up the cliff, swung down again, a supply bag slung over one shoulder. He stood watching as Shann brought the animals in. Then Thorvald's arm swept out, his fingers closing possessively about the barrel of the blaster.
And another small point fell into place to furnish the beginning of a pattern. "I was asleep on the raft when I dreamed about that skullmountain," he said slowly, wondering if he were making sense. Thorvald's head came up with the alert stance of Taggi on a strong game scent. "Yes, on the raft you dreamed of a skull-rock. And I of a cavern with a green veil.
To his great embarrassment, Shann found himself flushing. "I heard you, the day you left for Headquarters," he admitted, and then added in his own defense, "Probably half the camp did, too." Thorvald's gathering frown flickered away. He gave a snort of laughter. "Yes, I guess we did rather get to the bellowing point that morning.
"Lantee?" "Here. And there's a tunnel right behind you. The wolverines went that way...." To his surprise there was a thin ghost of a smile on Thorvald's usually straight-lipped mouth. "And we'd better be away before visitors arrive?" So he, too, must have thought his way through the sequence of past action to the same conclusion concerning the Throg movements. "Can you see, Lantee?"
Yet just now I know none such whom I would wish to hold my place when I am gone. Moreover, it is spread far and wide throughout the land that my daughter is to be wed to Thorvald's son, and it matters little to which son. At least, I will not have it said that she has been given the go-by. Therefore, let this Olaf take her, if she will have him.
Especially now, as Shann weighed an unsupported theory against that ache in his shoulders, the possibility of being marooned on the inhospitable shore ahead, against the fifty probable dangers he could total up with very little expenditure of effort. A small nagging doubt of Thorvald's obsession began to grow in his mind.
"They could have an officer of the beetle-heads under wraps over there. Could we use him to bargain with the rest?" Thorvald's frown did not lighten. "We've never been able to establish any form of contact in the past, though our best qualified minds, reinforced by training, have tried...."
"Taggi ?" His voice sounded rusty in his own ears, as if some of the moisture thick in the air about them had affected his vocal cords. "Hunting." Thorvald's answer was clipped. He was gathering a handful of sticks from the back of their lean-to, where the protection of their own bodies had kept that kindling dry. Shann snapped a length between his hands, dropped it into the pit.
He had to locate and return them before Fadakar made his morning inspection; Garth Thorvald's attempt to get him into bad trouble had saved his life. Shann cowered back, striving to make his huddled body as small as possible. One of the Throg flyers appeared silently out of the misty amber of the morning sky, hovering over the silent camp.
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