"No thank you."
"Afraid?" laughed the harp-shepherd. "You're tired. It will give you
new life. You're next."
* * * * *
Starke hesitated only a moment. Then he let the tide drift him rapidly
out. He was afraid. Damned afraid. A belch of fire caught him as he
arrived in the core of the ravine. He was wrapped in layers of ecstasy.
Beudag pressed against him. It was her consuming hair that netted him
and branded him. It was her warmth that crept up his body into his
chest and into his head. Somebody yelled somewhere in animal delight
and unbearable passion. Somebody danced and threw out his hands and
crushed that solar warmth deeper into his huge body. Somebody felt
all tiredness, oldness flumed away, a whole new feeling of warmth and
strength inserted.
That somebody was Starke.
Waiting on the other side of the ravine were a thousand men of Falga.
What sounded like a thousand harps began playing now, and as Starke
reached the other side, the harps began marching, and the warriors
marched with them. They were still dead, but you would never know
it. There were no minds inside those bodies. The bodies were being
activated from outside. But you would never know it.
They left the city behind. In embering ranks, the soldier-fighters
were led by golden hounds and distant harps to a place where a huge
intra-coastal tide swept by.
They got on the tide for a free ride. Linnl beside him, using his harp,
Starke felt himself sucked down through a deep where strange monsters
sprawled. They looked at Starke with hungry eyes. But the harp wall
swept them back.
[Illustration: _The dead warriors of Falga moved silently to battle._]
Starke glanced about at the men. They don't know what they're doing, he
thought. Going home to kill their parents and their children, to set
the flame to Falga, and they don't know it. Their alive-but-dead faces
tilted up, always upward, as though visions of Rann's citadel were
there.
Rann. Starke let the wrath simmer in him. He let it cool. Then it was
cold. Rann hadn't bothered him now for hours. Was there a chance she'd
read his thought in the midst of that fighting nightmare? Did she know
this plan for Falga? Was that an explanation for her silence now?
He sent his mind ahead, subtly. _Rann. Rann._ The only answer was the
move of silver bodies through the fiery deeps.
Just before dawn they broke the surface of the sea.
Falga drowsed in the red-smeared fog silence. Its slave streets were
empty and dew-covered. High up, the first light was bathing Rann's
gardens and setting her citadel aglow.
Linnl lay in the shallows beside Starke. They both were smiling
half-cruel smiles. They had waited long for this.
Linnl nodded. "This is the day of the carnival. Fruit, wine and love
will be offered the returned soldiers of Rann. In the streets there'll
be dancing."
Far over to the right lay a rise of mountain. At its blunt peak--Starke
stared at it intently--rested a body of a little, scrawny Earthman,
with flame-birds clustered on it. He'd climb that mountain later. When
it was over and there was time.
"What are you searching for?" asked Linnl.