"You're groggy," Martha's voice said, sounding far away. "Come on—fast. Man, that was a great ex-plosion!"
She towed him through the woods and underbrush—fast. As long as he hung on to her he didn't stumble or run into a tree once. Irrationally embarrassed by his dependence on a child, he tried letting go for a short time—very short—and was quickly battered into changing his mind. He thought dizzily of the spearmen trying to follow through the dark and could almost laugh again.
Their trek to the coast was marked by desperate speed. For twenty-four hours, they stopped only to gnaw at their rations or snatch a drink at a stream. Charles kept moving because it was unendurable to let a ten-year-old girl exceed him in stamina. Both of them paid terribly for the murderous pace they kept. The child's face became skull-like and her eyes red; her lips dried and cracked. He gasped at her as they pulled their way up a bramble-covered 45-degree slope: "How do you do it? Isn't this ever going to end?"
"Ends soon," she croaked at him. "You know we dodged 'em three times?"
He could only shake his head.
She stared at him with burning red eyes. "This ain't hard," she croaked. "You do this with a gut-full of poison, that's hard."
"Did you?"
She grinned crookedly and chanted something he did not understand:
"Nine moons times thirteen is the daughter's age
When she drinks the death-cup.
Three leagues times three she must race and rage
Down hills and up—"