IV

Moonlight silvered white the inner crater when they reached the Aarth

city. The gates were closed and Kern Rensom said they would not be

opened until the dawn. He guided them to a hunting estate owned by his

older brother, a well-to-do Aarthman farmer, that was not far from the

upper sea's rim and there they left him.

That night they slept in a soft mound of hastily gathered Wetland moss,

the thick wetness of the upper sea closing about them like a warm

blanket. And for long Hardan lay awake, his blood singing with the

knowledge that Ylda's love was his.

Their escape from the penned-in monster, the Drylanders' fabled Thog

Molog, had broken through the barriers of her false pride and she had

confessed that she loved him. And she had explained to him that she was

really the daughter of a noble landowner who had been courted by the

aging Serid Jern against her parents' wishes. She had disguised herself

as a sarif girl and joined the priestesses as a novice to reach Lake

Gron and her husband-to-be.

"But I am glad I met you, Hardan," she had whispered, "before I mated

with him. I could not have really loved him; only the glamour of his

wild frontier kingdom attracted me.

"Nor will my father object to my marrying a sarif. He holds that the

man himself is of more importance than his rank."

Hardan smiled, before he went to sleep, at the reversal in his

position. Now he was the sarif, rather than Ylda. Nor did he intend

to tell her of his equal rank until they stood together before her

father....

With morning they left the upper sea and with the Aarthman made their

way to the city. Here the diminutive men and women made much of them,

feting and dining them, and learning all they could of the Wetland

civilization they had never before contacted.

Kern Rensom showed them the buildings where the corroded tools of their

ancestors were stored so carefully, and he took them inside the twisted

wreckage of the space ship on the slope above the city. Most of all was

Hardan interested in the metallic-leaved books and stacks of circular

containers of record tape. Here was the secret of the Aarthmen if they

but had the key of written words to unlock it.

The pictures interested him as well. The Aarthmen owned several worlds:

cloud-swathed, green-clad continents and vurthless broad seas, and a

dying red world of deserts. And their sun was a tiny red ball without

the least sign of an outer solar ring. How much more beautiful was

Osar's generous ringed luminary, thought the Wetlander.

So it was that they spent day after day in the peaceful valley of the

Aarthmen, cementing the bonds of friendship that Hardan hoped would

release the forgotten knowledge of Aarth for both races. Almost had he

forgotten the toiling caravan of huge six-wheeled wagons that even now

must be traveling through the waterless desolation of the passes of the

Blue Malsalm Range to the north.

"You should be told, Hardan," Kern Rensom said, as the mounted

messenger rode off down the broad paved street, "that the wagon train

you guided has halted less than a day's journey to the north. And the

evil-brained sarif, Nitka Porn, has laid a trap for the small party of

soldiers who pursue them."

Hardan's eyes flashed. It was not enough that Nitka Porn had taken

over control of the train. Now he must slaughter more Wetlanders

instead of attempting escape. He realized that he must kill the

huge-bodied sarif before he could cause any more bloodshed and misery.

Perhaps there was yet time to rescue the doomed warriors.

"One of our hunters crept close enough to the wagon train to catch the

thoughts of Nitka Porn," the little man was saying. "The attack is to

be late today or in the morning."

"Kern Rensom!" cried Hardan, "could you get me a guide and maars to

take me to the soldiers?"

"I can do better," grinned the Aarthman. "I can come along. And bring a

score of warriors as well."

Hardan took his sword-belts down from their pegs and buckled them on.

He looked to his bow and replaced the somewhat frayed string. Then

he strode out the door to where the maars they had ridden earlier

in the morning were kept. And with him walked the little Aarthman,

clean-shaven now and dandified in embroidered blouse and wide-bottomed

trousers of woven blue fabric. He too was hooking on his harness of

knives, arrow quiver, and throwing club.

They mounted, pulling their desert robes from behind the saddles--this

last was an Aarth invention that shielded them from sunglare and

stinging sand flurries--and rode toward the poorer section of Smeth

City where hunters and warriors lived. Nor were they long in recruiting

a force of thirty mounted men and leaving the city behind.

Yet as they reached the great gate in the towering outer wall, the wall

that barred the lower crater to any but Aarthmen, a wide-hatted rider

with desert robes high about his face, awaited them. And as they filed

through the narrow slot the sliding gate-slab permitted this rider to

join the party.

Hardan rode close to the stranger and uncovered the shielded features.

He shrugged and shouted across to Kern Rensom.

"I might have known," he laughed. "It is Ylda."

"Why should I not go?" she demanded. "Perhaps it is my father or my

brother who commands the soldiers. They were to be assigned to the Aba

River command this term."

"So!" Hardan nodded. "You tire of us and wish to go with them. Or

perhaps you wish to find them so we can mate."

The high color that flooded Ylda's downy haired cheeks was answer

enough. Her chin elevated proudly, but she said nothing. And Hardan too

hoped her father was serving his year, every sixth year a Consar was

supposed to enter the armed forces of Tarn, for that much the sooner

could they be mated.

* * * * *

Through the gate they rode and up increasingly dry barren slopes until

they reached the jumbled hell of ridges, splintered crevices, and

ragged gorges that lay above the crater's rim. They rode through the

midday heat, pausing but once to soak their dehydrated garments of

padded vurth in a cave-hidden pool, and then onward again until the

shadows on their right grew long and dark.

"It is near," the Aarthman who guided them said. He dismounted. "Here

we must leave our maars and proceed on foot if we are to surprise the

sarifs."

The little party obeyed, glad of the opportunity to stretch cramped

stiff limbs. They followed along a narrow shallow gorge to where it

opened into a larger sunken pass. Down there, in a rock-strewn boxlike

cavity, they saw movement.

"We are too late," Hardan muttered to Ylda. "Shiny leather shells and

metal caps are those of Wetland soldiers. It is they who are trapped in

that hollow."

Now they could see the sarifs just below their own vantage point. They

clustered at either end of the cliff-walled trap, their arrows and the

jagged boulders they had collected effectively barring any attempt

by the soldiers to cut their way through. Already more than half the

Tarnish fighting men were down, and it was but a matter of time until

the last of them died.

Further to the east, in a stream-watered little park, the wagons were

bulked in a rude circle. They were fewer now, less than thirty were

left of the original train, and they were patched and travel-stained.

"We had better divide, Kern Rensom," said Hardan thoughtfully. "You

take ten men and take cover above the western party. I will take the

others to capture the wagons and the other party."

"Good," agreed the little man from Aarth, and he started issuing orders

at once.

Taking advantage of whatever cover the broken nature of the uplands

afforded, the Aarthmen and the Wetlanders slipped downward toward the

sarifs. Nor were they detected before they had reached a bulging ridge

of flinty red rock twenty feet above them.

Hardan cupped his hands and shouted down at the fifteen ragged men

below, "Throw down your weapons, sarifs. You are surrounded."

The men turned, startled, to look upward into the eyes of twenty

strange little men and the two Wetlanders. Nor could they fail to see

the arrows that centered on their vitals. One by one they loosed their

bows and spears, their nerveless fingers twitching.

Nowhere could Hardan see Nitka Porn, though he counted five of the

rebel sarifs immediate underlings in the group.

"Where is Nitka Porn?" he demanded.

The sarifs stirred uneasily, their sullen green eyes shifting and

their tongues dabbing at blackened cracked lips. They were a hopeless,

stupid-looking crowd. From them the Drylands had sapped their strength

and sucked dry their brains. Nor had the browbeating of Nitka Porn been

without influence in this final result.

One of them, a broken-toothed oldster who feared the rebel sarif the

less because he was so near to death, stepped clumsily forward.

"He is at the wagons, Hardan." The reedy old voice trembled. "So

securely were the soldiers trapped that he knew they must die. He went

for wagons to carry the loot."

"Good, Vesko Rok," said Hardan. "Now I would ask you more. Come aside

with me."

The old sarif shuffled after Hardan out of earshot of the others.

Quickly he demanded the names of all the sarifs loyal to Nitka Porn in

this and the other group. Then he gave orders to separate the prisoners.

"Nolson," he said to one of the sturdy little men of Aarth, "I want you

to remain here with ten men. Guard well these seven sarifs."

The Aarthman's blue eyes were bright. "They will not escape," he said.

"The others we are taking back to the wagon train," Hardan told him,

and set out along the rugged path down toward the camp.

* * * * *

Nitka Porn came riding out of the camp with two others of his men. They

were all three fat and healthy-looking. They had fared better than the

rest of the party, riding much of the day in the tank baths of the

wagons and eating the best of the food.

Behind them rolled three wagons, the teams of bony maars pulling them

driven by women. Apparently all the able-bodied sarif males had been

forced to join the ambushers.

When they came opposite the Aarthmen and the sarif prisoners stepped

out from their concealing boulders and rocks, the show of weapons by

the little hairless men of Aarth sufficient to make the whole force

seem armed.

"I want you, Nitka Porn." Hardan's voice was slow, his pent-up rage

well under control.

The huge sarif's freckled face was mottled with fear and hatred. His

yellowish-green eyes were baleful as he swung down from the saddle.

Hardan's ears heard a rush of feet and then a ghastly series of shrieks

and thuddings, and from the corner of his eye saw the other two horses

were now riderless. The sarifs were trampling at something underfoot

and the Aarthmen were turning away pale sickened faces from what was

there.

Ylda's hand was on his arm. "Take him prisoner," she begged. "Tarnish

justice will punish him. And he is so big, so brutal--you will be

killed!"

Hardan pushed gently at her arm. Nitka Porn was a spear's length away

now and his swords were drawn. Then, before Hardan could stop her, Ylda

had stepped between them.

"Surrender your weapons, Nitka Porn," she commanded imperiously, "and

you will live to see Aba."

Nitka's flat-nosed simian face snarled. "Surrender and be torn apart as

were they?" His head nodded toward the mumbling knot of crazed sarifs

beside the terrified maars. He laughed hoarsely, and with one great arm

swept the girl close.

One of his swords now pressed against the breast of Ylda, ready to

plunge deep into her vitals. He backed again toward his maar.

"At the first sign of attack," he told Hardan, "the woman dies."

He prepared to climb into the saddle, to ride away into the eastern

uplands that led toward the Desert of Niid and the Bitter Sea that had

been their goal. And then it was that Hardan remembered the strange

power of the Aarthmen.

No sooner had the thought been born in his brain than the little men

chuckled and their dejected faces brightened. Nitka Porn's body froze

immobile and slowly he spread his arms so the girl stepped free.

"Enough," Hardan called. "Release him and let him fight for his life."

"Better that we should make him slice his own throat," muttered one of

the Aarthmen, but unwillingly they complied.

And after a moment the dazed sarif picked up his dropped swords and

faced the unmoving Wetlander's gauntness. Trapped at last he was and

like a cornered sorap with broken wings he launched himself at Hardan.

Their swords met, clashed and sparks flew from their slithering blades.

They broke and circled again, each wary for an opening that the other

could not parry. Again and again the four swords rasped, yet from

neither man was any blood drawn, so evenly were they matched. Nitka

Porn's reach was the longer, but his bulk slowed down his speed, and it

was here that Hardan saw his advantage.

Slowly he must wear down the big man, and the dry air that the huge

Wetlander was not yet accustomed to breathing would do the rest. He

would weaken, grow clumsy, and then his blade would find an opening.

But this Nitka Porn must have sensed. He swung his swords in a

veritable hurricane of chopping steel and bore Hardan back against the

rearing maars of the foremost wagon. A maar's forefoot lashed out,

numbing Hardan's left shoulder, and the apish sarif's face glowed with

devilish satisfaction. The success of his strategy so pleased him that

he dropped his guard momentarily.

It was the opening Hardan needed. Gritting his teeth against the pain

and numbness of his bruised shoulder he lunged upward with his left

sword and his other blade darted in lightning strokes at the sarif's

middle. His left hand jarred limply from the sword grip, but Nitka Porn

staggered backward dying, the sword piercing deep into his eye-socket.

"Well done!" a hearty voice cried, and he turned to face a

leather-husked captain of the Tarnish Guard with his remaining five men.

Ylda gave a little cry and in a moment was in the soldier's arms. A hot

wave of jealousy burned within Hardan and then was gone.

"It is my father!" she cried gladly....

* * * * *

The sun was high overhead when they rode toward the crater valley of

the Aarthmen where they were to spend another hand of days before

guiding the wagon train on its way to the Bitter Sea. And now their

purpose was to establish a treaty between Aarthmen and Wetlanders.

Nor did Hardan fear that his small friends would receive any but fair

treatment--their ability to read minds guarded them against that common

failing of expanding races, to take what they wanted by treachery.

"We will guide the train to the Bitter Sea," he told Ylda as he loosed

her from her bonds. "Some day all the Wetlands will be ours, and the

men of Aarth will rule the Drylands, and ships-that-fly will link us

together.

"But until then the trek must go on. Along this trail we are marking

out other wagons will follow until a great road stretches here. There

will be lakes and underground hostels along the way, and our children

will travel in vurth-insulated wagons without maars, wagons faster than

the wind.

"It was so on Aarth, their legends declare, and so it will be with us."

Ylda pouted. "What do we care about Aarth and treks?" she demanded. She

nestled closer and her eyes closed contentedly.