Krasna intervened. "Your loyalty is touching--but I fear sadly
misplaced," she said quietly.
Furious words surged to Eldon's lips, but Krasna refused to argue. She
treated him like a sickly and petulant child. Enraged self-pity filled
Eldon's mind. If he had both arms he'd show that big oaf a thing or two.
"Don't be a fool, sister, even if you have made a pet of this thing,"
Bolan said with brutal abruptness. "Get rid of him."
Krasna's mouth set in a stubborn line and her eyes flashed. Bolan
shrugged, knowing the signs.
"There's a raiding party near," he changed the subject. "I'm going to
try an ambush."
At once the girl brightened. "I'm going too," she announced, gathering
her weapons.
Bolan looked startled, then worried, and finally actually frightened.
"Don't worry," Krasna reassured him bitterly. "I'll go alone. I have no
desire to be seen with you and make you an exile too."
"You know I don't believe--" her brother protested.
"Perhaps not. But the Council does."
Bolan went out first. Krasna followed a few minutes later with the
lemur-creature riding upon her shoulder. Eldon was left alone with his
own very unpleasant thoughts.
* * * * *
He slept, and was awakened by a skittering sound in the room. Silently
he touched the nearest wall and _thought_ light, and as the glow
flashed he grabbed up the dagger he had placed near. His breath went
out in a sigh of relief, for it was only Tikta, and then with a shock
he knew something was wrong.
He tried to catch the agile little creature, but it eluded him easily.
Then he remembered Krasna's lessons about the power of thought. He sat
down again and concentrated on the idea that he meant it no harm.
At last, with desperation overcoming shyness, Tikta made a leap to his
shoulder. It had never come near him before. He sat perfectly still as
the handlike little paws moved to his head, remembering how he had seen
it communicate with Krasna.
The room was gone. A forest glade blurred, cleared, blurred again,
shifted from colors to colorblind tones of grey, widened, narrowed, as
though seen through changing sets of eyes, finally settled.
Krasna was there, writhing in the grasp of a pair of lumpy grey
creatures who towered above her. Luvans. One was using a device that
Eldon guessed was calling an aircraft to pick up the prisoner.
He pulled Tikta's paws away and instantly was back in the underground
room. Tikta glared at him reproachfully as he sat on the side of
the couch. His heart was pounding and he was caught in the grip of
uncertainty.
Finally he rose and fumbled in one of the wall cupboards for the extra
blast rod Krasna had left behind. He knew he had to at least try, no
matter what the odds, but he moved reluctantly.
Tikta pulled at his trouser leg to attract attention, and Eldon
remembered with a gasp of dismay. Power weapons such as the blast rod
were worse than useless against Luvans. They backfired. Slowly he
picked up the heavy sword the lemur-creature had laboriously dragged to
the middle of the floor.
Tikta's chattering reached a frantic pitch. It leaped to Eldon's
shoulder, clinging to his collar with one paw and pointing the way with
the other in a manner almost human. The naked blade felt clumsy in his
unpracticed right hand. All his life he had been left-handed, and he
was no swordsman, and he was frankly frightened. But he had to at least
try.
Huge butterflies flitted among the gigantic trees of the forest and
rainbow-hued lizards raced over the rough bark, but Eldon hardly
noticed. He was haunted by the vision of Krasna.
Tikta guided him straight to the clearing. It was not far. The two
Luvans, indistinguishable duplicates of each other, still held the
struggling Rebel girl between them.
Tikta leaped down in shrill, gibbering rage and raced ahead of Eldon to
the defense of its mistress. One of the Luvans looked up unperturbed
as Eldon tensed his muscles and forced himself to charge with sword
swinging. One of them brought his knife hilt crashing down on Krasna's
skull, and as she dropped unconscious both turned toward the Earthman.
Eldon staggered in mid-stride as his knees went rubbery with a
chilling, unearthly fear surpassing his worst nightmares. His wrist
drooped and his fingers were lax on the sword hilt. For an instant he
came to a complete standstill, his body swinging involuntarily to run,
and he knew himself as an arrant coward.
But, as he hesitated, through his terror seeped an impression of
cynical _amusement_.
Then Eldon knew. Rage burned away panic. And with the rage came relief.
He himself was not afraid--at least not that desperately afraid. The
Luvans were using a mental weapon against him, a lance of fear.
He took an unsteady step forward. Another. The third was easier,
although his entire body still trembled. But now that he knew its cause
the fear was less effective.
An expression that might have been amazement crossed the pasty grey
features of the Luvans.
Eldon's sword slashed in a hissing arc, and as one Luvan moved
sluggishly back it stumbled over Krasna's prostrate form. With a savage
bellow Eldon leaped. His backswing bit deep. The Luvan's shapeless
mouth opened soundlessly as blue-black fluid gushed from the wound.
[Illustration: _With a savage bellow Eldon leaped._]
Eldon's blade flashed bright in the sunlight as he brought it down
again with all the strength of his arm. Then it was no longer bright
and the ugly grey body collapsed slowly.
But the second Luvan had prepared. One splayed hand held a dagger while
the other grasped an evil-looking whip tipped with a cluster of hooked
blades.
The Earthman almost sprawled as projected fear gave way to a
momentarily successful attempt to confuse the coordination of his leg
muscles. Then he screamed aloud as his body burst into flames and he
had the illusion that mile upon mile of empty space lay between him
and the Luvan. But with an effort of will he plunged ahead, heartened
by the growing sense of consternation he could read in the monster's
thoughts. Any creature of Varda would have shriveled and died under
the Luvan's psychic barrage. But not the cripple from the Closed World
of Earth.
The metal whip licked out faster than eye could follow. The blades of
its tip grated against the bone of Eldon's forehead and a gush of blood
poured into his single eye. He lowered his sword momentarily to clear
his vision with the back of his single hand, and in that defenseless
instant the Luvan struck.
He felt the dagger snick against a rib and plunge deep into his chest.
Automatically his foot came up in a tremendous kick that sent the Luvan
reeling back, unhurt but thrown off balance.
Eldon knew he was bleeding internally but as yet his shocked nerves
refused to transmit the full story of pain to his mind. Minutes to
live. Something clogged his throat as he panted, and he spat a gobbet
of red-tinged foam onto the moss underfoot. Punctured lung.
He swung in a wide, clumsy lunge that missed by feet. And then he
staggered, sagged, barely saved himself from falling. His sword point
dropped weakly.
He felt the wave of triumphant, cruel gloating as the alien creature
stepped in for the kill. And that had been the Earthman's last
desperate hope, that the thing's inherent bestiality would not allow it
to stand back and wait for him to fall. His time was short.
With a supreme, final effort he brought the sword up in a whistling
uppercut. And struck. The point bit into the Luvan's chest. Into its
throat. Snagged against the creature's jaw. Eldon stiffened his arm and
let his body fall forward. The double-edged blade sliced through flesh
and cartilage, then met with lessened resistance as the point emerged.
Eldon fell, blood from his wounds showering upon the obscene carcass,
but he went down with the elation of the kill still in his mind.
* * * * *
Krasna moaned and opened her eyes as three men in blue-green emerged
from the trees. "Bolan!" she gasped.
Her brother took one shocked look at the carnage, misunderstood, raised
his sword above Eldon's bloody head.
There was no time to argue or explain. The sword was descending even as
she snatched out her blast rod and fired.
Orange fire blazed. The sword went spinning away, torn from Bolan's
fingers. But power weapons used near Luvans--even hacked and bleeding
Luvans--invariably backfired, and where Krasna's right hand had been
there was only a shapeless mass of mangled, heat-seared flesh. For an
eternity everyone remained frozen by the unexpectedness of the blast
rod's discharge.
"The exile!" one of the men whispered fearfully. "She is truly a
Sasso-creature! Kill her!"
"Wait!" Bolan spoke as though dazed. "Why did you--?"
Krasna did not answer. Instead she seized the Luvan's dagger in her
uninjured hand and carved a gaping cross-shaped gash in the chest of
the carcass beside her. Through glazing eyes Eldon watched as she
plunged her hand into the slimy, quivering mess and felt disgusted at
her exhibition of rank savagery.
She brought her arm out, fouled and defiled to the elbow with the
Luvan's evil-smelling blood. In her hand was a tiny glittering capsule.
She tossed it to the ground. "Smash it!" she said weakly.
Uncomprehendingly one of the men crushed it beneath his heel. Instantly
the bloated, obscene, mangled carcass vanished as though it had never
existed. Even its spilled blood was gone. The men drew unsteady breaths
and a look of awed understanding appeared on their faces.
"The other one!" Krasna writhed as pain from her blasted hand
penetrated her consciousness. "I--can't."
Eager swords hacked at the remaining monster and eager hands pawed
among the filth of its body.
"We have killed a Luvan!" One of the men shouted exultantly as the
second capsule shattered under his foot and the second carcass
disappeared. "We know their secret now."
Bolan had recovered from his stupefaction. "The Chamber!" he ordered.
"Be quick!"
"But it is forbidden," a man objected. "She is an exile. The Council--"
"Damn the Council!" Bolan picked up his sword and brandished it. "To
the Chamber!" he repeated. The man looked to where the two Luvans had
been and nodded.
"Take--him." Krasna spoke with great effort. "He--must--be--El-ve-don."
"Both!" Bolan decided instantly. He whistled and three more Forest
People emerged from the trees. One was a tall, rawboned woman who took
charge of administering first aid while the men prepared makeshift
litters.
Eldon knew he was dying, but he tried to speak.
"Be still!" the woman ordered without rancor, continuing her
ministrations.
One of the men picked up a small furry bundle and deposited it tenderly
beside Krasna. The lemur-thing whined softly and snuggled against her.
Eldon felt no pain as he was rolled onto a stretcher. He was too far
gone for that. As everything grew dark Krasna was looking at him, and
now for the first time there was no pity in her glance. Instead there
was dawning admiration. Her thought reached him, bypassing his ears and
entering his brain as a telepathic whisper.
"Call me. I will be near."