"Anina, how far is it to Tao's city from where we landed?"
"The Lone City? A day, going fast."
"But they won't go fast, will they? Some of them are pretty badly hurt."
"Two days for them," the girl agreed.
Mercer then told her what an error we had made. She listened quietly, but he knew she understood, not only his words, but the whole situation as he viewed it then.
"Most bad," she said solemnly when he paused.
"That's what I want to tell you; it's bad," he declared. "We've got to head them off some way; stop them somehow. I don't see how we're going to capture them again—ten of them against me. But we've got to do something."
Then he asked her about the lay of the country between the shore of the sea and the Lone City.
Anina's English was put to severe test by her explanation; but she knew far many more words than she had ever used, and now, with the interest of what she had to say, she lost much of the diffidence which before had restrained her.
She told him that the trail led back through the forest for some distance, and then ran parallel with a swift flowing river. This river, she explained, emptied into the Narrow Sea a few miles below the end of the trail. It was the direct water route to the Lone City.