Nightmare journey

and on top of you before you had a chance to run very far,” he growled.
    Jask nodded despairingly, dropped his smaller sack, and entered the drain after it.
    The bruin put the stone shield in place.
    He said, “Come on, then. We have quite an arduous journey ahead of us, my friend.”
    Jask followed in the mutant's tracks, the fungus-coated walls close, the water splashing under foot, the odor almost overwhelming him. He was behind the creature, and he had a knife: two interesting facts that jelled into one crisp, violent notion in his mind. He should be able to kill it. Yet he knew that if he had the skill and strength to jam the blade into the bruin's back, he would find himself half-strangled in those brawny hands before he had time to twist it.
    “You're perfectly correct, friend,” the bruin muttered. “And unless you place that blade in one of two vulnerable spots, I'd hardly notice the pain.”
    “I must have privacy in my own mind!” Jask snapped.
    “So that you can plot against me?” the mutant inquired, chuckling loudly, clearly enjoying the exchange and not the least bit frightened by the Pure's momentary thought of murder.
    Jask said nothing at all, plodded on, miserable.
    Something danced across his foot, squeaking loudly, terrified. He jumped, shivered at the thought of having been touched by the tainted creature. He was thankful, now, that the tunnel was in complete darkness. The bruin, if he had heard the tiny creature, gave no indication of concern.
    The mutant chuckled again and said, “By the way, I do have a name. I'm getting weary of seeing myself referred to so vaguely in your thoughts-mutant, tainted creature, quasi-man, bruin, bear-man. I'd prefer to be called Tedesco. It's the name I was born with.” A bit farther along the drain he said, “We've got a long, long journey ahead of us, Jask. It's best that we call each other by the right names and learn a bit of tolerance, if we can.”
    Heresy, Jask thought.
    An animal had no name, no personality.
    “The name's Tedesco,'' the bruin said. “And I'm no animal. I'm a man.”
    6
    THE reluctant Pure was led into the presence of his General, where the great man rested on his power sledge beneath a giant, sprawling oak tree in the main square of the tainted village. The sun had fully risen now and had seared away the last floury clouds of white fog, baking the town like a muffin in an oven. The white cliffs reflected the sun like a mirror and nearly blinded the eye if one looked in that direction. The buildings, on all sides of the square, made of stone, thatch, hand-hewn timbers and poorly formed glass, lay silent and heavy beneath the oppressively warm blanket of air. Beneath the oak tree, the shadows were cool and deep, the silence even more complete than in the waiting streets. The oak and the General seemed to complement each other, two examples of Lady Nature's power, though the oak was almost certainly not a pure species. The Pure soldier, aware of the sin he had committed, trembled visibly in the company of oak and General, devoutly wishing he were dead.
    “You are the coward?” the General inquired, nothing in his tone but disdain.
    The Pure soldier nodded, unable to look at the great man or at any of those who had accompanied him here.
    “You were sent with Dyson Prider to investigate one arm of the storm drains. You knew that your mission was essential to the capture of these two espers.”
    “Yes,” the accused said.
    A slight breeze rustled the leaves of the oak, only for a moment, died away again, as if it were Lady Nature's own comment on his lack of courage.
    “You panicked and turned back,” the General said, adjusting his cloak as he spoke, “forcing your companion, Dyson Prider, also to abandon the hunt in that arm of the drains.”
    “Yes.”
    “What is your name?”
    “Ribbert Keene, Your Excellency.”
    “Are you an animal, Keene?”
    For the first time the Pure soldier looked up, a glint of defiance in his eye. “I am a man. I have a fine family history with no trace of genetic damage.”
    “Would a man have turned back from a mission he knew to be of the utmost concern to his race and his enclave?” The General was not even looking at the accused, but upward into the thickly interlaced branches of the tree, as if he found it physically painful to direct his gaze on such a morally bankrupt man.
    “The drains are pitch black, Your Excellency,” Ribbert Keene complained.
    “You had torches.”
    “Which dispelled the darkness only for a