Every plant seemed to be in bloom just now, their arms and stems bedecked with big waxy flowers in every conceivable shape, each of which had its own species of bothersome insect. The whole place was full of bugs. Everything he’d seen in Lael’s specimen collection didn’t amount to a fair sample of all the different types he could count, even without slowing down. At his pace, he couldn’t go three steps without crushing some undiscovered species underfoot.

Jean-Claude’s lungs burned and his legs ached. Still distant behind him bayed the hounds, and with them the whoops and hollers of the beating party, trying to spook him. Somewhere on the wings of the formation would be the scouts, quick men with keen eyes and a hunger for the chase.

Fortunately, Jean-Claude did not have far to go, assuming he didn’t miss his turn. There was a flat-topped hill, the tallest one in the first rampart of ridges facing Travers’s camp. There was no way to avoid exposure on the boulder-strewn face, and sure enough the horns sounded to announce he’d been spotted. Down below, the bushes rattled and a mob of men came on. He tried to look every way at once, but he still hadn’t seen the flankers. Hopefully they hadn’t gotten ahead of him. He scrambled over the narrow ridge that formed a saddle between two peaks and set out toward the left one. His lungs burned and his muscles quivered. Old he was. Old and fat.

Solo Aria ought to be around here somewhere.

He reached the huge hill-cresting boulder where they’d planned to meet. He knew it was the right one by the rock scratches he’d made before he left.

“Where’s my husband?” Aria said, emerging from behind the stone.

Still out of breath, Jean-Claude wiped his brow with his sleeve and said, “Hasdrubal has him. Taking him to the Conquest wreck.”

“You useless lout,” Aria said. “You says you gets him free.”

“I got him out of Travers’s camp,” Jean-Claude said. “That’s half the job done. Now we only have Hasdrubal to deal with.”

Pebbles skittered by Aria’s feet. A lizard scampering by … but there were no lizards here.

Fear jolted Jean-Claude. He dove to shove Aria aside even as the lizard exploded into the size and shape of a bear, if a bear had armored plates and claws like scimitars. With a horrible crack Aria’s head flopped forward like a rag doll’s and she landed in a sprawl, lifeless eyes staring at the sky. Jean-Claude reached for his cutlass and dagger, but Hasdrubal swatted him with a backhand that lifted him from the ground, knocked the air from his lungs, and sent him tumbling down the hillside.

CHAPTER

Thirty