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manage a pointed rod of metal enough like a spear to make no difference. Finished bows and arrows
were impossible, but she discovered through trial and error that she could produce a tapered and flexible
stave that Faro could notch, something strong enough to serve as bowstring, and thin dowels that
worked well as arrow-shafts. That, together with the arrowheads she had gleaned, gave them each two
real arrows-and when Faro sharpened the dowels they, too, served as cruder arrows. Slings, of course,
were easy; a length of leather-like substance and a couple of thongs, and every man was armed. There
were few stones suitable, but she could conjure with no problems the kind of leaden shot that made a
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good slinger so effective-all she had to do was concentrate on making small bits of "lead" and the
conjured metal appeared in rounded globules. She could still create their shelters and defenses each
night, albeit more slowly than before, and the fuel for the fires to warm them and cook their food. Water
could be a problem; they only had three waterskins among them, and unless they found water each
night, they might run short fairly quickly. Food itself would quickly grow to be a problem unless they
could find good hunting on the way; the food they had found and scavenged would not last that long,
divided among so many.
But there was no hope of turning back. Not only would that be an admission of defeat, but it might not
even be possible at this point. None of the men said anything about giving up-and Xylina had the feeling
that they knew as well as she did that the road behind them was as hazardous as that ahead. She did not
think they would be able to survive the country of the tentacle-beasts as poorly armed as they were now.
Assuming that when they turned back, they actually found that country there! It was entirely possible
that the border itself would now reveal an entirely new and deadly realm, for Ware had not expected to
find this realm here, and that meant that the boundaries were changing more frequently than he had
thought. More than that, Ware knew the country here, and that should help them.
At roughly noon, they set off again, this time afoot. Ware scouted ahead, seemingly indefatigable,
covering the ground with a tireless stride that Xylina could not help but envy. She had gotten used to
riding; she had thought she was inured to the hardships of this trek, but to her chagrin, she found herself
coping with aching legs, and cramps in unexpected places, by the time they made their first halt.
Fortunately for her aching legs, their progress was slowed by the need to hunt. Of the three experienced
campaigners, Tron and Jerig were the best with slings, and so they ranged to either side of the rest,
hoping to bag something scared up by the passage of the larger group.
By the third halt-at a tiny stream, which gave them all a chance to slake their thirst-the hunters still had
come up empty-handed. "You know," Horn said to her at one halt, "if we have to, we can always eat
them hoppers. Bugs ain't bad toasted, and there sure are a lot of 'em."
Xylina gave him a sideways look, uncertain if he was trying to make a joke. His expression convinced
her he was serious. He was an experienced cook, and he did know the secrets of surviving on campaign,
where supplies might be captured or destroyed by the enemy. But that was one trick she had never heard
of.
The "hoppers" were thumb-sized insects, shaped like the tiny leaf-hoppers of Mazonia, but much larger.
They had been scaring these creatures up all along the trek, dozens of them with every step, and until
this moment Xylina had not considered them as a food-source. She probably would not have considered
Horn's proposition seriously, except that she knew from personal experience that there were a great
many things that one would eat if one became hungry enough. There had been several times when she
had made cakes of flour full of weevils, and told herself that if the weevils were eating her flour, she
might as well eat them. She had certainly come to no harm from the experience.
The hoppers were convenient, and they seemed easy to catch, but they were very small. It would take a
lot of them to make up a meal-and while they seemed easy to catch now, if the group hoped to make a
supper of them, it might prove a lot more difficult than it looked to scoop up enough of them. And while
they were catching bugs, they would not be making any progress. All things considered, unless they
were starting to starve, it would probably take far more time to catch a meal of hoppers than it was
worth devoting to catching them.
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She wondered briefly if there were any other resources in this grassland that she had overlooked. She
was, after all, a child of the city, and unused to scavenging her own food. There did not appear to be any
edible grasses here; no seed-heads, at any rate, and she was relatively certain that if Ware knew some of
the plants could be eaten, he would say something. Perhaps they should do some experimenting with
boiling the roots of the grasses, or trying the stems of larger plants. On the other hand, she had no idea
what was poisonous and what was safe.
Besides, the time to gather such things would be when they halted for the night.
Still-Horn's observation proved to her that this was not a hopeless trek into nowhere. The men were
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