At last Riyannah stopped posing, got dressed, and sat down on a boulder with her rifle across her knees. Blade's rifle rested muzzle up against the boulder. Blade stripped off his clothes, except for the knife in a sheath on his right ankle, and plunged into the stream.

The biting chill took his breath away, as it always did at first. He went deep, letting the current carry him downstream, then swept upward toward the sunlight and the air.

As his head broke surface, Riyannah screamed. Blade shot half clear of the water like a leaping dolphin, then turned toward Riyannah.

Three bat-cats were gliding out of the sky at her. Their tails were rigid, their membranes fully spread, their forepaws reaching out, and their eyes fixed hungrily. Blade was twenty yards downstream from Riyannah and nearly on the opposite bank. The bat-cats were too intent on Riyannah to care about any other prey. He ducked under and churned toward the woman.

Her rifle went off, the sound distorted by the water, a bat-cat screamed, and the rifle fired three more times. Blade surfaced, and a bat-cat plunged into the stream almost on top of him. He drew his knife, then saw that half the beast's head was blown away by Riyannah's bullets.

Then the rifle jammed. As the second bat-cat came at her, Riyannah thrust at it with the bayonet. The bat-cat saw what was waiting for it, tried to twist aside in midair, and failed. A hundred and fifty pounds of fur and claws, bone and sinew impaled itself on Riyannah's bayonet. The bat-cat screamed and spat and hissed more like a snake than an animal. It thrashed frantically, foam on its lips. Riyannah screamed as the dying bat-cat's writhing tore the rifle out of her hands. Then she screamed again as it rolled into the stream, taking the rifle with it.

Riyannah spent one second too long screaming. She lunged toward Blade's rifle leaning against the rock. The third bat-cat landed right on top of the rock, knocking the rifle to the ground. Riyannah jumped back as sharp claws flailed at her, slashing her trousers without breaking the skin underneath. She sprang backward, tripped over a root, and went down. The bat-cat's growl drowned out Riyannah's next scream. The beast let out a hiss and gathered itself to spring.

Then three more bat-cats sailed down out of the sky, landing beyond the boulder. The first bat-cat checked the spring which could have torn Riyannah to shreds in the next second. Before anything else could happen, Blade leaped out of the water with a yell.

He put all his lungpower into that yell, and it paralyzed all four bat-cats for a moment. Blade swung up onto the bank, pivoted on one foot, and smashed the other into the side of the first bat-cat. One of Blade's back kicks could crack a brick wall. The bat-cat flew off the top of the boulder, smashed into a tree ten feet away, and fell to the ground as limp as an empty balloon.

Blade dove for the rifle, but another bat-cat launched its spring first. Blade swerved and ducked in the same movement, so that the bat-cat's spring brought it down inches from his left foot. He leaped high and came down with both feet on the beast's neck before it could realize what was happening. Then he jumped to the ground, picked up the dead body by the tail, and hurled it into the faces of the other two bat-cats. They backed away, snarling and hissing defiantly. Then they dug in their hind feet and got ready to leap at Blade together.

A moment's hesitation had nearly been fatal to Riyannah. Now it was fatal to the bat-cats. Blade snatched up the rifle, snapped off the safety, and switched the selector to automatic. He squeezed the trigger as the bat cats soared into the air, and the burst raked them from heads to bellies. They seemed to bounce backward as if they'd struck a wall of rubber, then collapsed on the ground. One of them writhed briefly, but that ended when Blade jabbed a bayonet into the base of its skull. Then there was silence in the forest except for the faint plok-plok-plok of water dripping off Blade.

Blade snapped on the safety and turned to Riyannah. She'd managed to struggle to her feet, but her face was still a pale coffee color under the dirt. He held the rifle out to her.

«Take this and watch for more bat-cats. I'm going to dive into the stream and try to get the other rifle back.»

«Blade, do you think we need it so badly that you should put yourself in danger again?»

«I don't think there's any real danger. If more bat-cats come, try to get up into a tree before you start shooting. I imagine they can climb trees, but they'll be better targets for you while they're climbing.»

Riyannah nodded and her hands steadied as they closed on the rifle. Blade turned away and plunged into the stream again.

He could only guess where the rifle might be and what could have happened to it, but luck was with him. The rifle not only stayed in the bat-cat's body, it weighted the body down enough to make it sink quietly to the bottom of the stream. On his third dive Blade saw the rifle sticking up like a flagpole. On the fourth dive he got his hands on it, and on the fifth he jerked it free. He came to the surface, gulped in air, then scrambled out onto the bank and began drying himself.

Riyannah didn't seem to be hurt at all, but she walked slowly on the way back to camp. Blade let her set the pace, though his feet itched to break into a run and his fingers itched to strip and oil the salvaged rifle. It was half their arsenal, and he was quite sure they hadn't seen the last of the bat-cats.

They reached camp without seeing or hearing any more of the beasts. Blade quickly built the fire up to a roaring blaze, spread a blanket on the ground beside it, then started laying out the parts of the rifle.

«Riyannah, there's a can of oil in your pack. Get it out, will you?» Blade spoke without raising his eyes from his work. When silence followed his words, he looked up. She was nowhere in sight.

«Riyannah?» He started to get up. Then she stepped out of the shelter, wrapped from shoulders to knees in her blanket.

«Riyannah, did you get the-?»

He broke off as she shrugged her shoulders and let the blanket slip to the ground. Then she stepped toward him, naked and laughing, with a glow in her eyes that seemed to flow down and light up her skin as well. Slowly Blade put the rifle bolt down on the blanket. Then he rose to his feet and opened his arms to Riyannah.

She came up to him, then laughed and pressed both palms against his chest. «Blade, your clothes!»

«You're right.» He knelt and began unlacing his boots. As he did, he was very much aware of Riyannah's soft breath on his cheek and in his ear, and her breasts almost in his face as she bent over him.

Blade finished with his boots and stood up. Riyannah knelt, unbuckled his belt with one hand, and unzipped his trousers with the other hand. This time when Riyannah's lips drifted down onto his flesh, they stayed there.

They stayed there until the warmth in Blade's groin became heat, then a form of delicious agony he couldn't have described to save his life. Half his mind and body wanted those lips to continue their work until the agony came to an end in fierce release. The other half of his mind and body wanted her to leave him for a moment while he stripped off the rest of his clothes.

Riyannah got the message. Her hands met his at the waist of his trousers, and all four hands together pushed Blade's pants down his legs. He stripped off his shirt and flung it high and far, careless of where it might land. Riyannah pressed herself hard against him and he felt the warm dampness between her legs and the firm points of her nipples. She groaned, and something seemed to stop Blade's breath in his throat. His head was swimming and the world spun around him as he lifted Riyannah in his arms and carried her into the shelter.