Light lowered in the sky as they walked beside the river, keeping close
to the rocky edge and brushing away vines that strung into the water
from hanging limbs. Urson broke down a branch as thick as his wrist and
as tall as himself and smote the water with it, playfully. "That should
put a welt on anyone's head who wants to bother us." He raised the
stick from the water and drops ran along the bark, moving sparks at the
ends of dark lines.
"We'll have to turn into the woods for food soon," said Iimmi, "unless
we wait for animals who come down to drink."
Urson tugged at another branch, and it twisted loose from fibrous white
pulp. "Here," he handed it to Iimmi. "I'll have one for you in a moment,
Geo."
"And maybe we could explore a little, before it gets dark," Geo
suggested.
Urson handed him the third staff. "There's not much here I want to see,"
he muttered.
"Well, we can't sleep on the bank. We've got to find a place hidden in
the trees."
"Can you see what that is through there?" Iimmi asked.
"Where?" asked Geo. "Huh...?" Through the thick growth was a rising
shadow. "A rock or a cliff?" he suggested.
"Maybe," mused Urson, "but it's awfully regular."
Geo started off into the underbrush, and the others followed. Their goal
was further and larger than it had looked from the river. Once they
passed across a section of ten or twelve stones, rectangular and side by
side, like paving. Small trees had pushed up between some of them, but
for thirty feet, before the edge sank beneath the soft jungle floor it
was easier going. Suddenly the growth became thin again and they were at
the edge of a relatively clear area. Before them loomed the ruins of a
great building. Six girders cleared the highest wall, implying an
original height of eighteen or twenty stories. One wall was completely
sheared away and fragments of it chunked the ground. The revealed dark
caves of broken rooms and cubicles suggested an injured granite hive.
They approached slowly.
To one side a great metal cylinder lay askew a heap of rubbish. A flat
blade of metal transversed it, one side twisting into the ground where
skeletal girders shown beneath ripped plating. A row of windows like
dark eyes lined the body, and a door gaped in an idiotic oval halfway
along its length.
Fascinated, they turned toward the injured wreck. As they neared, a
sound came from inside the door. They stopped, and their staves leapt a
protective inch from the ground. In the shadow of the door, ten feet
from the ground, another shadow moved, resolving itself into an animal
head, long, muzzled, gray. Then they could see the forelegs. It looked
like an immense dog, and it was carrying a smaller animal, obviously
dead, in its mouth. It saw them, watched them, was still.
"Dinner," Urson said softly. "Come on." They moved forward again. Then
they stopped.
Suddenly the beast sprang from the doorway. Shadow and distance had made
them completely underestimate its size. Along the sprung arc flowed a
canine body nearly five feet long. Urson struck up at it and knocked it
from its flight with his stick. As it fell, Iimmi and Geo were upon it
with theirs, clubbing its chest and head. For six blows it staggered and
could not gain its feet. Then, as it threatened to heave to standing,
Urson rushed forward and brought his stave straight down on the chest:
bones snapped and tore through the brown pelt, only to have their blue
sheen covered a moment later by a well of blood. It howled, kicked its
hind feet at the stake with which Urson held it to the ground, and then
stretched out its limbs and quivered. The front legs stretched, and
stretched, while the torso seemed to pull in on itself, shrinking in the
death agonies. The long mouth, which had dropped its prey, gaped open as
the head flopped from side to side, the pink tongue lolling, shrinking.
"My God," said Geo.
The sharp muzzle blunted now and the claws in the padded paw stretched,
opened into human fingers and a thumb. The hairlessness of the
under-belly had spread to the entire carcass. Hind legs lengthened,
joints reversed themselves, and bare knees bent as human feet dragged
themselves through fragments of brown leaves over the ground and a human
thigh gave a final contraction, stilled, and then one leg fell out
straight again. A shaggy, black-haired man lay still on the ground, his
chest caved and bloody. In one last throw, he flung his hands up to
grasp the stake and pull it from his chest, but too weak, they slipped
down as his lips curled back from his mouth revealing a row of
perfectly white, blunt teeth.
Urson stepped back, and then back again. The stave fell, pulled loose
with a sucking explosion from the ruined mess of lung. The bear man had
raised his hand to his own chest and seized his triple, gold token. "In
the name of the Goddess," he finally said.
Iimmi walked forward now, picked up the carcass of the smaller animal
that had been dropped, and turned away. "Well," he said, "I guess dinner
isn't going to be as big as we thought."
"I guess not," Geo said.
They walked back to the ruined building, away from the corpse.
"Hey, Urson," Geo said at last to the big man who was still holding his
coins, "Snap out of it. What's the matter?"
"The only man I've ever seen whose body was that broken in that way," he
said slowly, "was one whose side struck into by a ship's spar."
* * * * *
They decided to settle that evening at the corner of one of the
building's ruined walls. They produced fire with a rock against a
section of slightly rusted girder. And after much sawing on a jagged
metal blade protruding from a pile of rubble, they managed to quarter
the animal and rip most of the pelt from its red body. With thin
branches to hold the meat, they did a passable job of roasting. Although
partially burned, partially raw, and without seasoning, they ate it, and
their hunger ceased. As they sat huddled by the wall, ripping red juicy
fibers from the last bones with their teeth, night swelled through the
jungle, imprisoning them in the shell of orange flicking from their
fire.
"Shall we leave it going?" asked Urson.
"Fire keeps animals away," Iimmi said.
On leaves piled together now they stretched out by the wall of the
broken building. There was quiet--an insect hum, no un-namable
chitterings, except for the comforting rush of the river's water.
Geo was first to awake, his eyes filled with silver. The entire clearing
had been flooded by white light from the huge disk of the moon that sat
on the rim of the trees. Iimmi and Urson beside him looked uncomfortably
corpse-like, and he was about to reach over and touch Iimmi's
outstretched arm when there was a noise behind him, like beaten cloth.
He jerked his head around, and was staring at the gray wall by which
they had camped. He looked up at the spreading plane that tore off
raggedly against the night. Fatigue had washed into something unpleasant
and hard in his belly that had little to do with tiredness. He stretched
his arm in the leaves once more and put his cheek down on the cool flesh
of his shoulder.
The beating sound came again and continued for a few seconds. He rolled
his face up and stared at the sky. Something crossed on the moon. It
seemed to expand a moment, spread its wings, and draw them in again.
He reached out, his arm over the leaves like thunder, and grabbed
Iimmi's black shoulder. Iimmi grunted, started, then rolled over on his
back, and opened his eyes. Geo saw the black chest drop with expelled
breath, the only recognition given. A few seconds later the chest rose
again. Iimmi turned his face to Geo and raised his finger to his lips.
Then he turned his face back up to the night. Three more times the
flapping sounded behind them, behind the wall, Geo realized. Once he
glanced down again and saw that Iimmi had raised his arm and put it over
his eyes.
They passed years that way. Then a flock suddenly leapt from the wall.
Some of them fell twenty feet before their wings filled with air and
they rose again. They circled wider and before they returned, another
flock dropped off into the night.
As they fell this time, Geo suddenly grabbed Iimmi's arm and pulled it
down from his eyes. The figures dropped through the dark like kites,
sixty feet above them, forty feet, thirty; then there was a thin,
piercing shriek. Iimmi was up on his feet in a second, and Geo beside
him, their staffs in hand.
"Here it comes," breathed Iimmi. He kicked at Urson, but the big man
was already on his knees, and then feet. The wings beat insistently and
darkly before them as they stood against the wall. The figures flew
toward them and at the terrifying distance of five feet, reversed. "I
don't think they can get in at the wall," said Iimmi.
"I hope the hell they can't," Urson said.
The figures dropped to the ground, black wings crumpling to their bodies
in the moonlight. In the growing hoard of shadow in front of them, light
snagged on a metal blade.
Then two of the creatures detached from the others and hurled themselves
forward, swords arcing suddenly above their heads.
They swung their staffs as hard as they could, catching both beasts on
the chest. They fell backwards in a sudden expansion of rubbery wings,
as though they had stumbled into billowing dark canvas.
Three more now leapt over the fallen ones, shrieking. As they came,
Urson looked up and jammed his staff into the belly of a fourth monster
who was about to fall on them from above. One got past Iimmi's whistling
staff and Geo had to stop swinging and grab a furry arm. He pulled it to
the side, overbalancing the huge, sailed creature. It dropped its sword
as it lay for a moment, struggling on its back. Geo grabbed the blade
and brought it straight from the ground up into the gut of another of
the creatures who spread open its wings and staggered back. He wrested
the blade free, and then turned it down into the body of the fallen one;
it made a thick sound like a crushed sponge. As the blade came out again
and he hacked into a shadow on his left, a voice suddenly sounded, but
inside his head.
_The ... jewels ..._
"Snake!" bawled Geo. "Where the hell are you?" He was still holding his
staff, and now he flung it forward, spear-like, into the face of an
advancing beast. Struck, it opened up like a black parachute, knocking
away three of its companions, before it fell.
In the view, cleared for an instant, Geo saw a slight, spidery form,
dart from the jungle edge into the clearing. With his free hand Geo
ripped the jewels from his neck and flung the confused handful of thong
and chain over the heads of the shrieking beasts. The beads made a
double eye in the light at the top of their arc before they fell on the
leaves beyond. Snake picked them up and held them above his head.
Fire leapt from the boy's hands in a double bolt that converged in the
center of the dark bodies. A red flair silhouetted the jagged edge of a
wing. A wing flamed, waved flame, and the burning beast tried to take
air before it fell, splashing fire about it. Orange light caught sharp
on brown faces chiseled with shadow, caught in the terrified red bead of
an eye or along double fangs behind dark lips.
Burning wings withered on the ground; dead leaves had sparked now, and
whips of light ran on the clearing floor. The beasts retreated and the
three men stood against the wall, panting.
"Watch out!" Iimmi suddenly called.
Snake looked up as the great wings tented over him, hiding him
momentarily. Red flared beneath them, and suddenly the beasts fell away,
their sails sweeping over the dead leaves, moved by wind or life, Geo
couldn't tell. Dark flappings rose on the moon, grew further away, and
were gone.
Away from the wall, they saw the fire had blown up against the wall and
was dying. They ran quickly toward the edge of the forest. "Snake," said
Geo when they stopped. "This is Iimmi, this is Snake. We told you about
him."
Iimmi extended his hand. "Glad to meet you."
"Look," said Geo, "he can read your mind, so if you still think he's a
spy ..."
Iimmi grinned. "Remember the general rule? If he is a spy, it's going to
get much too complicated trying to figure why he saved us like that."
Urson scratched his head. "If it's a choice between Snake and nothing,
we better take Snake. Hey, Four Arms, I owe you a thrashing." He paused,
then laughed. "I hope some day I get a chance to give it to you."
"Where have you been, anyway?" Geo asked. He put his hand on the boy's
shoulder. "You're wet."
"Our water friends again?" suggested Urson.
"Probably," said Geo.
Snake now held one hand toward Geo.
"What's that? Oh, you don't want to keep them?"
Snake shook his head.
"All right," said Geo. He took one jewel and put it around his neck.
Geo took the wrought chain with the platinum claw from his neck and hung
it around Iimmi's. The white eye shown on his dark chest in the
moonlight. Now Snake beckoned them to follow him back across the
clearing. They came, stopping to pick up swords from the shriveled
darknesses on the ground about the clearing. As they passed around the
edge of the broken building, Geo looked for the corpse they had left
there, but it was gone.
"Where are we going?" asked Urson.
Snake only motioned them onward. They neared the broken cylinder and
Snake scrambled up the rubble under the dark hole through which the
man-wolf had leaped earlier that evening.
At the door, Snake turned and lifted the jewel from Geo's neck, and held
it aloft. The jewel glowed now, with a blue-green light that seeped into
the corners and crevices of the ruined entrance. Shreds of cloth hung at
the windows, most of which were broken. Twigs and rubbish littered the
metal floor. They walked between double seats toward a door at the far
end. Effaced signs still hung on the walls.
N .. SM .. K .. G
The door at the end was ajar, and Snake opened it all the way. Something
scuttered through a cracked window. The jewel's light showed two seats
broken from their fixtures. Vines covered the front window in which only
a few splinters of glass hung on the rim. Draped in rotten fabric, a few
metal rings about wrists and ankles, two skeletons with silver helmets
had fallen from the seats. Snake pointed to a row of smashed glass disks
in front of the broken seats.
_Radio_ ... they heard in their minds.
Now he reached down into the mess on the floor and dislodged a chunk of
rusted metal. _Gun_, he said, showing it to Geo.
The three men examined it. "What's it good for?" asked Urson.
Snake shrugged.
"Are there any electricities, or diodes around?" asked Geo, remembering
the words from before.
Snake shrugged again.
"Why did you want to show us all this?" Geo asked.
The boy only turned and started back toward the door. When they were
standing in the oval entrance, about to climb down, Iimmi pointed to the
ruins of the building ahead of them. "Do you know what that building was
called?"
_Barracks_, Snake said.
"I know that word," said Geo.
"So do I," said Iimmi. "It means a place where they used to keep
soldiers all together. It's from one of the old languages."
"Where to now?" Urson asked Snake.
The boy climbed back down into the clearing and they followed him into
the denser wood where only pearls of light scattered through the trees.
They emerged at a broad ribbon of silver, the river, broken by rocks.
"We were right the first time," Geo said. "We should have stayed here."
The sound of rippling, sloshing, the full whisper of leaves and foliage
along the edges of the forest--these accompanied them as they lay down
on the dried moss behind the larger rocks. And with the heaviness of
release on them, they dropped, like stones down a well, the bright pool
of sleep.
* * * * *
_The bright pool of silver grew and spread and wrinkled into the
familiar shapes of mast, the rail of the deck, and the whiteness of the
sea beyond the ship. The scene moved down the deck, until another gaunt
figure approached from the other direction. The features, though
strangely distorted by whiteness and pulled to grotesquerie, were
recognizable as those of the captain as he drew near._
_"Oh, mate," said the captain._
_Silence, while the mate gave an answer they couldn't hear._
_"Yes," answered the captain. "I wonder what she wants, too." His voice
was hollow, etiolated like a flower grown in darkness. The captain
turned and knocked on Argo's cabin door. It opened, and they stepped
in._
_The hand that opened the door for them was thin as winter twigs. The
walls of the room seemed draped in spider webs and hangings
insubstantial as layered dust. The great desk seemed spindly, grotesque,
and the papers on top of it were tissue thin, threatening to scutter and
crumble with a breath. The chandelier above gave more languishing white
smoke than light, and the arms, branches, and complexed array of oil
cups looked like a convocation of spiders._
_Argo spoke in a pale white voice that sounded like the whisper of thin
fingers tearing webs._
_"So," she said. "We will stay at least another seven days."_
_"But why?" asked the captain._
_"I have received a sign from the sea."_
_"I do not wish to question your authority, Priestess," began the
captain._
_"Then do not," interrupted Argo._
_"My mate has raised the objection that ..."_
_"Your mate has raised his hand to me once," stated the Priestess. "It
is only in my benevolence ..." Here she paused, and her voice became
more unsure, "... that I do not destroy him where he stands." Beneath,
her veil, a face could be made out that might have belonged to a dried
skull._
_"But," began the captain._
_"We wait here by the island of Aptor another seven days," commanded
Argo. She looked away from the captain now, in a direction that must
have been straight into the eyes of the mate. From behind the veil, hate
welled like living liquid from the seemingly empty sockets. They turned
to go, and once more on deck, they stopped to watch the sea. Near the
indistinct horizon, a sharp tongue of land outlined itself with
mountains. The cliffs were chalky on one side, then streaked with red
and blue clays on the other. There was a reddish glow beyond one
mountain, like the shimmering of a volcano. And dark as most of it was,
it was a distinct darkness, backed with purple, or broken by the warm,
differing grays of individual rocks. Even through the night, at this
distance, beyond the silver crescent of the beach, the jungle looked
rich, green even in the darkness, redolently full and quiveringly heavy
with life._
* * * * *
And then the thin screams ...