She mimed the walking movement, then traced the star down to the horizon and pointed around her. X'tung'a nodded vehemently, then made scowling grimaces and drew the Nantucketer bowie knife at his waist to make a cutting gesture next to his own throat.

"Tartessians," Marian said.

X'tung'a nodded again; he couldn't pronounce the word in any fashion an English-speaking ear found meaningful, but he did recognize it.

"Kawaka," Swindapa said softly behind her. "Shit," in Fiernan- not normally an oath in that language. She'd picked the usage up from speaking English so long.

"Goddam right there, 'dapa," Marian muttered. This part's going to be tricky. She pointed southward.

"Ba'ad many how many?" she asked, and opened and closed her fingers repeatedly.

X'tung'a shrugged and stood, pointing all around to the camp, then opening and closing his fingers in imitation of her gesture. About as many as you, maybe more, she translated mentally.

The problem was that the San just didn't count the way twentieth-century Westerners did, or the way Fiernans did, either. X'tung'a could probably describe every antelope in a herd of dozens after a single glance, but as far as she could tell, the concept of a number as an arbitrary symbol applicable to anything-a hundred men, or zebras, or trees-was utterly foreign to him. Each object in the universe was unique.

Marian Alston sighed and rose, smiling and gesturing thanks. "All right," she said. "As near as I can tell, we've got a serious problem. A group of Tartessians-almost certainly the ones we saw-is headed this way and they'll be here at dawn or a little before. X'tung'a thinks there are at least as many of them as there are of us. It's suspiciously well timed; they're arriving just the day before we planned to launch the ship-the cannon are mostly down on the beach."

Jenkins swore. "How'd they know that?" he said. "To get that close-"

"With a good telescope, they wouldn't have to get that close. There's high ground all around here." She held up a hand for silence, lost in thought.

Then she smiled. Swindapa sighed at the carnivore expression; she was a fighter herself at need, but she kept the Fiernan distaste for it. X'tung'a grinned back. His people didn't practice war, but they were no strangers to feud and vendetta, and the Tartessians had managed to pile up what she thought was a formidable store of bad karma in their visits to the region. The Bad Ones were about to get a nasty surprise.

"We can stand them off easily enough, now that we're warned," Jenkins said.

Swindapa shook her head. "No, Lieutenant. I don't think that's what the commodore has in mind."

"No, indeed," Marian chuckled. "And have them hanging about, sniping at the camp, harassing us while we relaunch the Chamberlain!" Sniping at a camp with my daughters in it, she added to herself.

Orders began to form in her mind. The hardest part would be getting across to X'tung'a exactly what was required.

"Lieutenant Commander, Lieutenant Jenkins, I want the camp turned out, but quietly. No lights, no alarms. Then-"

"Mnbununtu! How much further?"

The man the Tartessian captain called Mnbununtu winced in his mind at the hail, although his face might have been cut from scarred obsidian.

There were two reasons for his discomfort. The first was an old, niggling one-Mnbununtu wasn't his name. In the language spoken six thousand miles to the northwest, that word just meant "man" or "person." It was the word he'd used when the strangers landed on the beach where he'd been hunting and made an interrogative noise while pointing at his chest. Of course he'd said he was "a man." How could he have known they were human beings too? He'd thought they were teloshokunne, ghost-spirits; the tribe name "Tartessian" sounded like that. The word had stuck, though.

The second reason was an instinctive anger at the noise his companions were making. Blind, log-footed buffalo, he thought. Then: No. That is an insult to all buffalo.

Tanchewa-the name meant "leopard" in his tribe's language- turned and trotted back down the trail. The Tartessians had mostly been farmers or fishermen before they became sailors, and they were lost and frightened in this alien wilderness; many of them flinched at his swift, noiseless passage. He considered himself a peaceable man, on the whole, but he'd demonstrated more than once to the Tartessian crewmen that he wasn't to be trifled with. That memory remained.

Alantethol was in the middle of the sweating huddle of sailors. Not from fear-Tanchewa would never have followed him, no matter what the gifts, if he was a coward. It was the best position from which to command if something went wrong. Plans usually did, in his experience.

"Quiet, Captain," Tanchewa said flatly. He obeyed willingly on the ship, where Alantethol was the skilled one. The woods were a different matter. "We are close. But I am not easy in my liver."

"Why? The wild men?"

"The mnbuil" he said. The little brown hunters here were not exactly like the pygmies who dwelt near his village far to the northwest, but he thought of them as essentially similar. After all, they did not grow yams or keep goats, and those were the marks of civilization.

"Yes, them."

Tanchewa shrugged. "Perhaps. They are good trackers and hide well. But it is…" He stopped. Tartessian wasn't a good language to describe what he felt. "… something that makes my liver curl. We should go quietly, and swiftly, to fall on the strangers. Let me scout ahead first."

"Go, then. The Jester hold his hand from you, and the Lady of Tartessos protect."

Word passed down the line of sailors from the Stormwind and the Sun Dancer. They sank gratefully to their haunches, silent under the ferocious gaze of the quartermasters and steersmen, but taking pulls at their water bottles and scratching at itches. Tanchewa trotted back down the trail to the south, landing softly on the balls of his feet as he moved. As he put the head of the column behind him he slowed, drifting into the side of the trail that offered most shelter. The long killing spear was ready in his right hand, the small rhino-hide shield held in his left. Over his shoulder was his war bow, the same one he used to hunt elephant, and a dozen arrows the length of his leg.

Alone in the woods, he could feel the irritation and jangling of the crowd dropping away. These were not his woods; the woods of home were denser, hotter, with larger trees and many great rivers rich in hippo and crocodile, but he was still Tanchewa the Leopard, greatest hunter of all the People. He felt the night wind and took a deep breath of its scents, strong and rank with growing things and their decay. Sounds flowed past his ears; he did not consciously attempt to listen, instead sensing the patterns in the small tickings and rustlings, the squalls and creaks. In a little clearing he moved through the tall grass in a slow crouch, bent nearly double. You couldn't see detail at night, not even if you were Tanchewa, but always the patterns showed if they were disturbed.

He stopped, his eyes flaring wide. Then he turned and ran back northward with all his speed, hurdling obstacles with a long, raking stride, careless of noise. His lungs filled and he shouted, a long, high, carrying yell.

The Tartessians leaped to their feet. The weird yell coming from the south seemed to mean something to them; Marian Alston could hear officers calling orders. Maybe it's Tarzan, she thought. Sounds like him. She bared her teeth in harsh amusement at the thought; just the sort of thing the damned interfering bare-assed bukra of Burroughs's imagination would do.

"Now!" she shouted.

The mortar team dropped their round into the stubby barrel of the weapon. Shoonk, and a blade of fire speared man-high into the night.

Alston came up on one knee and raked back the hammers of her pistol with the pink-palmed heel of her hand.