Curses ran through his mind while he clambered around the pod to put it between himself and the harpoons. He was still approaching the trunk. Others were there first. Carthers were using lineholds about the clustered buildings to dodge the feathered harpoons or tearing up sheets of bark for shields. The copsik runners preferred to fire on them from the sky, where their limbs were free to work their huge bows.

Anthon and a dozen warriors were firing at the carrier, using the curve of the trunk as cover.

Merril's pod struck a wooden hut with Merril behind it. She'd used the pod as a shock absorber: good technique. Some of the copsik runners were trying to reach that building. Merril shot two from behind the building, then abandoned the shelter when the rest came too close.

Something valuable in that building? The copsik runners seemed to want it. Clave put an arrow among them and thought he hit someone's foot.

They wanted the carrier more. Clave could see it now: they were all over it, hanging on the nets and the bark.

Most of the Carther warriors had reached the trunk. Clave would touch down inward from the battle, presently. For now he could only watch. From the chaos of battle, patterns began to form:

The copsik runners were outnumbered. They hung back, for that reason and another. In close work they couldn't use the bows. They had swords, and so did the Carthers; but the taller Carthers had more reach. They won such encounters.

The copsik runners had small jet pods, the kind that would grow on an integral tree. They preferred to stay in the sky.

Clave watched Carthers leap into an eight-man gust of blue ponchos. The copsik runners used their jet pods, left Carthers floundering in the sky behind them, and fired back with the footbows. Then two Carthers were among them, slaying, and two more joined them. In free-fall the

copsik runners fought like children. The Carthers robbed the corpses of their jet pods.

Clave drifted, and Carther States was winning without him!

In along the trunk, a wooden box was rising slowly. It spilled reinforcements: six blue-clad footbowman and a bulky silver creature.

There was a terrible familiarity to that shape . . . but they wouldn't

arrive for a kilobreath yet.

A copsik runner spotted Clave, a sitting target. He carefully fired a harpoon through Clave's pod, then moved in along the trunk. He'd have a clear shot when Clave came nearer. Clave fired at him. No good, the copsik runner dodged and waited. Clave could see his grin.

The grin vanished when Merril shot him from behind. The bolt protruded below the kidney. He could have fought on . . . but his face was a silent scream; he clawed at the bolt, then went into convulsions. That poison-fern brew must be terrible stuff~