II

His body soaked luxuriously in the shady pool beyond a looming jut of

reddish granite. Were his lungs drinking in the moist richness of the

Upper Sea, the vurth-maintained mistiness above the true seas of Osar,

he might have thought he was back in Tarn.

The Wetlands of Tarn were a handful of islands and a narrow

thirty-mile-wide strip of foggy tropical plains and forests along the

true sea of Tarn. Over the sea and back over the mainland extended the

upper sea, a false sea of floating aerophyte growth, tenuous and frothy

as spun threads of silvery moonbeams; yet capable of retaining a vast

amount of moisture and warmth.

For almost a mile it extended upward, its delicate tendrils touching

the restless sea and the fertile moistness of the land alike to draw

life from them. It offered no resistance to the passage of men or

ships; yet it shielded them from the harshness of the vast ringed sun

of Osar.

And here four million Wetlanders lived and built their dank

massive-walled cities. Half of them were Tarns, ruled by the Council

of Consars, and across the vastness of the Tarn Sea four other

smaller kingdoms fought and squabbled over their narrow strips of

vurth-shielded Wetland.

The land was overcrowded and so it came about that a few hardy

adventurers pushed out into the Drylands. At first they followed the

rivers, their bodies slowly toughening to the actinic rays of the

direct sunlight, and later they struck out into the unknown dryness of

grassy plains and deserts. They fought the huge apish Drylanders and

ate the hairless horned ulfo of the plains and the woolly bladts of the

barren hills.... And they found Lake Gron, where a large central island

offered new homes for thousands of impoverished Consars and their

sarifs.

So it was that endless series of wagon trains, drawn by domesticated

Dryland beasts, maars and ulfos, pushed up the Aba River, and the Gron

River beyond the dam at Aba, to the upland lake. And the hardy men

of the frontier guided them--even as Earthmen ten centuries before,

and a thousand light-years distant, had guided their effete Eastern

countrymen into the Rockies and beyond....

Hardan stirred at last and climbed, refreshed, from his pool. Darkness

had come and a dozen fires blazed merrily within the ringed double

walls of the roofed wagons. He gathered up his weapons and clothing,

wearing only the thin inner jerkin and trunks against the dryness of

the night air, and went to the wagons.

Before dawn the wheels were rumbling and grinding up over the

rock-strewn ridge above the river headed out into the eastern

grasslands. The sleeping tanks, where the Wetlanders slept on moist

elevated pads of vurth, were full and the spare water tanks were loaded

as well. A dry trek of three, possibly four, days lay ahead of them

before they could reach the eastward branching of the Aba River.

Hardan and three of the young sarifs stayed behind as the train moved

away, readying the ten oldest wagons and the discarded equipment

for the fire that was to help cover their tracks. Later parties

of Wetlanders would find the ashes of wagons and the fire-blasted

skeletons of men beside the trail and presume this had been a massacre

by the apish barbarians of the plains.

"I wish the council of sarifs had ordered the death of Nitka Porn last

night," said a blocky young sarif uneasily. "If they escape during the

night there will be trouble."

Hardan touched his torch to the wagon they approached. The others were

already ablaze. Together they swung into the saddles of their snorting

maars. Only then did he speak.

"Yes, Malth Jed," he agreed. "It seemed to me that the council feared

Nitka's wrath even though he was a prisoner. For that reason I advised

Dandu Mot to double the guard."

"There was light from the fires last night," argued Malth Jed. "Why

wait for daylight to slice their necks?"

"I do not believe all Porn's followers are prisoners," Hardan said

grimly. "They may hope to free Nitka Porn and recapture the wagon

train. Any delay would help that plot."

"Fools," grunted Malth Jed shortly. "The red-bearded one would turn on

them even as he turned on the Consars."

By this time the other two sarifs had joined them on the rim of the

bluff above the river. The wagons blazed up brightly, their sun-dried

wood and cloth burning fiercely. With the morning sun only a smoking

huddle of ashes and twisted metal would remain.

Hardan reined away from the bluff. They made too perfect targets

against the illumination of the fire. But suddenly he arrested the

little party's advance with a hiss of warning.

* * * * *

From the pale darkness before them the sound of distant shouts and

shrieks came to them. The caravan was being attacked--or the outlaw

sarifs had been freed!

"Spread out," Hardan commanded tensely, "as we reach the wagons. That

way we will present a poorer target."

He dug his heels into the maar's sleek sides and they galloped forward

along the rutted broad track of the wagon train.

The fighting had ended by the time they traversed the half mile gap

that lay between them. The wagons were halted in a jumbled confused

S-shaped tangle in the growing dawn. Only a sullen silence greeted

them, but they saw dark movement against the slant-roofed bulk of the

wagons.

"Hold!" warned Hardan. "Let me ride forward. It may be a trap."

And then, from a clump of wagons further along the snaking train, a

maar and rider pounded out into the grasslands and headed in their

direction. A man shouted something, and a confused chorus of yells

answered him. After the lone rider a dozen other mounted men raced.

"It's a woman!" Malth Jed grunted, his bow ready in his thick fingers.

"The white-robed novice of Zo Aldan Ra."

"Then they've overcome Dandu Mot and freed the red-bearded one," Hardan

muttered, readying his own weapons.

The girl rode swiftly closer. The four riders went to meet her, their

swords loosened in their sheaths and their spears in their hands.

Only Malth Jed relied on his heavy hunting bow as a weapon; the others

preferred throwing spears and swords.

"Hardan!" shrieked Ylda, "behind you!"

The frontiersman twisted in his saddle, a throwing spear grazed his

vurth-padded shoulder, and he found himself facing the hate-twisted

features of the two sarifs who had accompanied him. The strength of

Nitka Porn in the wagon train must have been considerable, he thought

ruefully, as he crossed swords with the lanky sarif on his left.

The sarif was no swordsman, the cowardly spear had been his only hope,

and even as he turned his terrified eyes briefly toward his fellow an

arrow bristled from the other sarif's throat. He shrieked and hurled

his sword at Hardan even as he dug his heels into the maar's flanks. He

went racing away, blood streaming from his sword-pierced upper arm.

Malth Jed reined closer. "Wound you?" Hardan shook his head.

"They killed Dandu Mot--many others--one of the holy healers who

rebuked them--and now they loot the wagons." The girl's lips quivered

as she spoke breathlessly.

"I guess you get your wish now, Ylda Rusla," he said grimly. "We ride

back to Aba to ask for troops to pursue Nitka Porn."

Further conversation was impossible. The first pursuers, augmented now

by a score or more of men on foot, were upon them. Spears and arrows

were dropping around them as they wheeled their maars about to escape.

Ylda's maar went down, squealing horribly, a spear in her belly, and

the girl was hurled over her mount's head into the tangled coarseness

of the yellow ulfo grass. Before Hardan could swing back to scoop the

unconscious body of Ylda from the ground their pursuers had reached her

and surrounded her.

Hardan rode into them, hewing and slashing with his twin swords,

letting his maar move as she willed. Blood splashed and spurted before

his maddened blows, and the rebellious sarifs fell back momentarily.

Ylda screamed. He saw a sarif on foot hoist the girl's struggling form

to a mounted man, a huge-bodied redbeard, and the rider's fist smashing

down at the juncture of rounded neck and fragile jaw.

Ylda went limp as Nitka Porn's blow landed and then the outlaw rode

away, waving a derisive fist at Hardan across the bulwark of mounted

men and attacking sarifs on foot.

He was battling for his life a second later. A spear found his body,

and then another. Arrows hailed upward at him, piercing his padded

limbs and drawing blood. In a moment he would be over-powered. Yet he

fought on, trying to break through the press of rebel sarifs to pursue

Ylda's captor.

"Hardan," a terrible voice roared above the shouts of his attackers,

"escape.... Outnumbered!"

A spark of sanity remained in his weary brain. And the words of Malth

Jed fanned it into life. His swords hissed, carving out a momentary

gap, and he sent his maar plunging back the way they had come. He

saw Malth Jed, sagging in his saddle, racing before him, and even

as he watched a feathered shaft jutted abruptly from between his

shoulderblades.

The stocky sarif slumped forward, clinging in his death agony to

the saddle, and so they rode away into the growing daylight of the

Drylands--a wounded cursing Wetlander and a jouncing bundle of dead

sinews and bone that had once been a man....

* * * * *

Two hands of days had passed before Hardan dared leave the sheltered

cave beside the Gron River not far from the ashes of the abandoned

wagons. The two maars had pastured in a grassy hidden ravine and there

too had he buried the stocky body of Malth Jed.

Then he had taken up the trail of the wagons again, and, despite the

soreness of his half-healed wounds, come up with them in a matter of

three days riding. He found them camped at the Isr River junction.

So now he lay on his belly in the early twilight, peering down into the

rough circle of wagons, his eyes searching for the white-robed form of

the girl he loved.

At last he saw her with one of the priests and a priestess sitting

beside a small cooking fire apart from the others. But she no longer

wore the garb of a novice. Instead she wore the green cloak of a Consar

over her bulky vurth-stuffed coverings. A moment later he saw that her

legs were linked by a short length of chain, riveted to either ankle by

a cuff of metal. And across the fire squatted an armed man, a guard.

Hardan was puzzled at her change of garb, but his blood pounded with

joy as he saw her apparently unharmed and well-fed. With the coming of

darkness he could rescue her, and, Ung Roth willing, the priests and

their wives as well.

So he set out looking for a concealed pathway to the river's edge and a

thousand feet further downstream came upon a sheer gorge cut into the

clay and soft gray rock of the bluff. Down this he lowered himself and

in the increasing gloom made his way to the river and submerged.

He swam upstream, silent as a hunting _prel_, his only weapons his two

swords. His spear and the excess garments he had left on the little

sunken bowl of grass where his maars grazed.

Like a great Dryland Ape of the woodlands he crept up from the water at

last, his only shelter the waist-high clumps of ulfo grass that dotted

the river's shingly bank. And he won at last inside the carelessly

guarded ring of wagons to the small fire where Ylda sat silently and

stared into the flames.

From the shelter of a great double-spoked wheel he studied the camp.

Well for the fleeing sarifs, he thought, that no raiding party of

Drylanders had come to attack. He heard them quarreling and shouting

drunkenly, and saw their swords and other weapons heaped carelessly

beside the fires as they ate and caroused.

The guard spat impatiently into the fire and ran a dry tongue over his

parched lips. Longingly he studied the growing excitement at the center

of the encampment. There was nothing to do here, only the priest and

priestess discussing the strange healing property of a vegetable mold

recently discovered in Tarn. He slapped his hip, cursed roughly, and

climbed to his feet.

"Don't stir from the fire," he ordered Ylda fiercely. His tongue poked

thirstily at his lips.

The guard swaggered away from the fire toward the curtain-hung rear of

the wagon just ahead. This wheeled canvas-and-wood shack had a sagging

roof sloping from a central ridge to either end of the box so that a

sort of awning covered the low rear entrance. He reached inside and

when his arm emerged a basket-woven jar was in his hand, its inner

earthware lining containing a sloshing fluid.

Hardan scented the raw reek of alcohol, of _garack_, as he crept

closer. The guard's thick lips smacked, he rubbed a rasping fist across

his mouth and snorted appreciatively. Then the jar tilted again,

gurgled.

The guide sprang, his fingers clamping about the startled throat of the

sarif. He squeezed hard, choking back the gasp of terror, and the jug

crashed to the hard ground. Then his fist chopped in a short vicious

punch to the sarif's neck that felled the man.

He trussed the sarif swiftly with his own filthy brown cape, stuffing a

generous handful into the gaping mouth, before he crossed to the fire

and squatted in the guard's place.

Ylda came to her feet, hand to her mouth.

"Hardan!" She came toward him jerkily, the chain making her take

mincing, careful steps.

"Sit down," he told her. "And warn your friends to keep their places."

The priest and the priestess smiled quietly.

"Fear nothing from us," they told him. "Our calling is to heal the

bodies and minds of the sick. It was for that mighty Ung Roth Ka came

from the greater of the four moons to dwell among men. We care nothing

for the quarrels and jealousies of men."

"Though," added the priestess, "as a woman and not a servant of Zo

Aldan Ra, I hope you escape safely."

The priest nodded, his eyes twinkling. "We are yet only human. Though

we will not use violence yet we can give advice and appeal to our

mighty master in your behalf."

Hardan bowed, his hand making the respectful sign of a believer on the

great god of healing. "I will bind you before we leave," he said,

"unless you will come with us."

The priest shook his head. "There are many sick and fearful in the

train," he said, "we remain to aid them."

Hardan turned to Ylda. "After I break your chain slip beneath the wagon

and through the grass to the river. I will follow."

He arose and came over to her as though to examine her bonds. His hands

clamped the chain and he tested the hand-forged links. One of them

twisted and spread apart. Quickly he wrapped a strip of her green cape

around either length of chain and her leg.

Ylda slipped away. Hardan busied himself binding the priest and

priestess of the only gods and then followed. Almost he had reached

the river when the silvery light of the four moons of Osar shone from

beneath a pear-shaped cloud above the distant eastern hills.

Instantly the river flats were lighted bright as their beloved

Wetlands. And a guard, rousing from his half-sleep in the white

brilliance, saw Hardan's moving shape. He cried a warning.

* * * * *

Hardan knew the need for stealth was gone now. He ran to the river

bank where Ylda waited, took her hand, and flung himself out into the

sluggish muddy stream. He swam directly across and there, taking her

in his arms, headed into the vine-tangled growth of scrub _ossa_ and

knotty _brel_. And at its edge he halted long enough to send a shout of

defiance back at the clustering sarifs.

After that he wasted no more breath. Downstream he threaded his way

until a crook in the river piled a welcome wall of blue clay and shale

between the camp and them. Here he again took to the river and a few

minutes later they were running breathlessly across the moonlit plain

beyond toward the hidden maars.

"Tricked them that time," chuckled Hardan, saddling their mounts.

"We'll circle eastward toward the Blue Malsalms and then head back

toward Aba."

Ylda put her slim fingers on Hardan's arm and squeezed. It told him,

more than words, that she was happy to have escaped and that as yet she

was breathless.

He lifted her into the saddle and then mounted himself. It was so easy

now--a day's ride away from the river and then a southward swing until

they could head directly westward back toward Aba and the river trail

to the Wetlands....

* * * * *

The rocky escarpment loomed closer and closer as they drove their

lathered maars up the boulder-strewn slope. Ylda turned for a hasty

glance backward.

"They're gaining, Hardan," she shouted.

"It'll be night soon," Hardan called back, "and the Drylanders fear

darkness." But his eyes probed vainly for a way of escape ahead.

His mouth twisted wryly as he recalled his plan of the preceding

night. At midday a mounted party of the giant Drylanders, savage

yellow-haired, apish brutes, had sighted them and for the last five

hours they had found safety only in swift flight. Now, unless a gorge

or pass opened in the looming grayness of the brown-splotched cliffs,

they were trapped at its base.

Already the triumphant scrawling of the Drylanders sounded in their

ears as the ape-things fanned out on either hand. Once that curved line

pinned them against the cliff they were trapped, to be killed or, if

captured alive, saved for sacrifice to the foul god of the Drylands,

Thog Molog.

The sheer escarpment loomed higher and more forbidding as they neared

it. Hardan felt his chest grow hollow as the last prospect of escape

dwindled. All that remained now was to find a vantage point above their

pursuers and sell their lives dearly. To be taken alive was unthinkable.

A huge flat-topped boulder shouldered the cliff, its rim twenty feet

above the sandy soil, and toward this Hardan led the way. It was a

natural fort that they might hold until darkness clamped down.

Hardan rode his maar close up to the rock, where a crevice split

several feet diagonally down the face of the boulder, and swung up from

the saddle. A moment later he was crouched on the rock helping Ylda to

his side.

Their maars moved away only a few paces and started grazing on the

sparse-leaved clumps of ossa and brel at the cliff's base. Hardan

turned, facing the cliff, and now he saw an opening in the cliff wall

where the boulder's flat rim touched it. It was a low oval of darkness

going back deep into the cliff's heart, a cave entrance hid by the

great rock.

"In, quickly," he ordered Ylda, "before the Drylanders arrive."

And hardly had they reached that welcome shelter than the huge warriors

came thundering up to the cliff.

At sight of the empty saddles the Drylanders growled their amazement,

their guttural meager speech carrying excited overtones of

superstitious terror. Hardan understood enough of their brutish gabble

to learn that they believed their monster god, Thog Molog, had carried

them away.

Then keen tiny eyes discovered the flat-roofed boulder and a moment

later their shadowy hiding place was discovered. Instantly the hushed

mutterings and moans of awe changed to roars of rage. They came

swarming up over the rock.

Hardan met them with arrows and spears. The first wave of attackers

fell back, only to launch a second and more powerful assault. This time

they swung up to the boulder-top together and the Wetlander dropped

back into the cave-mouth, his twin swords bared.

The apish giants crouched down and came raging at him, only to be

spitted on his flashing blades until the opening was choked with bloody

chilling flesh. Their comrades dragged the bodies backward and once the

orifice was cleared flung themselves at him again.

His swords bit deep, drinking the life of Drylander after Drylander

until at last the assault ceased. Darkness had fallen and the great

brutes had lost their stomach for further battle. So they withdrew,

taking their dead with them, and built three fires of dry brush and

cactus about the uprear of the huge rock.

[Illustration: _His swords bit deep, drinking their lives._]

"And that's that tonight," panted Hardan, wiping his swords

mechanically of the blood that smirched their keen blades.

In the darkness Ylda's soft hands ran over his arms and chest searching

for wounds. His blood ran hot as her soft flesh met his.

"You're untouched!" she cried, unbelieving.

"Had all the advantage," Hardan scoffed. "But if we're here when the

sun rises again--we won't be so lucky."

Ylda peered out, her eyes reading the purpose of the three fires.

Placed so they effectively ruled out any escape in the darkness, the

Drylanders on guard would see instantly any movement atop the rock. Her

breath caught in her throat and she clung to Hardan's sweat-damp body.

"We'll try the cave," Hardan told her thickly, very conscious of her

intimate nearness. "It may have another entrance higher or beyond the

cliff."

Roughly he broke away from the girl and started back into the darkness,

his swords probing the gloom. And behind him he heard the girl

following. The floor was uneven, rough patches of rock, and so, she

stumbled before she had come a dozen paces.

After that her hand clung to his crossed sword-belts as the way climbed

gradually higher.

Echoes of their passage grew more distant. The cavern roof and walls

must be drawing away on all sides. Hardan licked his dry lips and the

parched dryness of his vurth-padded body sapped his strength. They

halted for a moment to finish the last of their water bags and munch a

tough strip of dried ulfo meat before pushing on.

"We must find water soon," whispered Ylda faintly, "or I am finished."

And a short distance further along Hardan felt her fingers slip from

their grip on his belt. She lay silent and limp on the rocky floor,

her soft skin harsh and dry as the Dryland hills, and her cracked lips

moaning.

He lifted her and staggered onward. His years in the Drylands had

toughened his flesh and lungs to withstand the arid violence of the

grasslands for several hours, but even yet he must sleep in or near

water at night. He suffered mightily, his lungs on fire and his throat

a dust-rasping channel. Like a man in a grotesque nightmare of torture

he felt his wooden limbs move uncertainly far below him.

Only when the stars were above him and he felt the welcome fluidity

of water about his parched ankles did he halt and lower the girl. The

water was chill but his thirsty body sucked at it greedily.