13
The man cannot have had a moment’s doubt who we were, for even as he saw us he dropped his reins and snatched his bow from his shoulder. Before he had a shaft on the string we had loosed at him.
The motion of the great-horse was unfamiliar, and we both shot wide. He did better. His arrow passed between us, skinning our horse’s head. Again I missed, but Rosalind’s second shot took his horse in the chest. It reared, almost unseating him, then turned and started to bolt away ahead of us. I sent another arrow after it, and took it in the buttock. It leapt sideways, catapulting the man into the bushes, and then sped off down the track as hard as it could go.
We passed the thrown man without checking. He cringed aside as the huge hoofs clumped by within a couple of feet of his head. At the next turn we looked back to see him sitting up, feeling his bruises. The least satisfactory part of the incident was that there was now a wounded, riderless horse spreading an alarm ahead of us.
A couple of miles further on the stretch of forest came to an abrupt end, and we found ourselves looking across a narrow, cultivated valley. There was about a mile and a half of open country before the trees began again on the far side. Most of the land was pasture, with sheep and cattle behind rail and post fences. One of the few arable fields was immediately to our left. The young crop there looked as if it might be oats, but it deviated to an extent which would have caused it to be burnt long ago at home.
The sight of it encouraged us, for it could only mean that we had reached almost to Wild Country where stock could not be kept pure.
The track led at a gentle slope down to a farm which was little better than a cluster of huts and sheds. In the open space among them which served for a yard we could see four or five women and a couple of men gathered round a horse. They were examining it, and we had little doubt what horse it was. Evidently it had only just arrived, and they were still arguing about it. We decided to go on, rather than give them time to arm and come in search of us.
So absorbed were they in their inspection of the horse that we had covered half the distance from the trees before any of them noticed us. Then one glanced up, and the rest, too, turned to stare. They can never have seen a great-horse before, and the sight of two bearing down upon them at a canter with a thunderous rumble of horse- beats struck them momentarily rigid with astonishment. It was the horse in their midst that broke up the tableau; it reared, whinnied, and made off, scattering them.
There was no need to shoot. The whole group scuttled for the shelter of various doorways, and we pounded through their yard unmolested.
The track bore off to the left, but Rosalind held the great-horse on a straight line ahead, towards the next stretch of forest. The rails flew aside like twigs, and we kept going at a lumbering canter across the fields, leaving a trail of broken fences behind us.
At the edge of the trees, I looked back. The people at the farm had emerged from shelter and stood gesticulating and staring after us.
Three or four miles farther on we came out into more open country, but not like any region we had seen before. It was dotted with bushes, and brakes, and thickets. Most of the grass was coarse and large-leafed: in some places it was monstrous, growing into giant tufts where the sharp-edged blades stood eight or ten feet high.
We wound our way among them, keeping generally south-west, for another couple of hours. Then we pushed into a copse of queer but fair-sized trees. It offered a good hiding-place, and inside were several open spaces where there grew a more ordinary kind of grass which looked as if it might make suitable fodder. We decided to rest awhile there and sleep.
I hobbled the horses while Rosalind unrolled the blankets, and presently we were eating hungrily. It was pleasantly peaceful until Petra put one of her blinding communications so abruptly that I bit my tongue.
Rosalind screwed up her eyes, and put a hand to her head.
‘For heaven’s sake, child!’ she protested.
‘Sorry. I forgot,’ said Petra perfunctorily.
She sat with her head a little on one side for a minute, then she told us:
‘She wants to talk to one of you. She says will you all try to hear her while she thinks her loudest.’
‘All right,’ we agreed, ‘but you keep quiet, or you’ll blind us.’
I tried my very hardest, straining sensitivity to its utmost, but there was nothing — or as near nothing as the shimmer of a heat-haze.
We relaxed again.
‘No good,’ I said, ‘you’ll have to tell her we can’t reach her, Petra. Look out, everyone.’
We did our best to damp out the exchange that followed, then Petra brought down the force of her thoughts below the dazzle level, and started to relay those she was receiving. They had to be in very simple form so that she could copy them even when she did not understand them; in consequence, they reached us rather like baby-talk, and with many repeats to make sure that we grasped them. It is scarcely possible to give any idea in words of the way it came across, but it was the overall impression that mattered, and that reached us clearly enough.
The urgent emphasis was on importance — the importance not of us, but of Petra. At all costs she must be protected. Such a power of projection as she had was unheard of without special training — she was a discovery of the utmost importance. Help was already on the way, but until it could reach us we must play for time and safety — Petra’s safety, it seemed, not our own — at all costs.
There was quite a lot more that was less clear, muddled up with it, but that main point was quite unmistakable.
‘Did you get it?’ I asked of the others, when it had finished.
They had. Michael responded: ‘This is very confusing. There is no doubt that Petra’s power of projection is remarkable compared with ours, anyway — but what she seemed to me to be putting across was that she was particularly surprised to find it among primitive people, did you notice that? It looked almost as if she were meaning us.’
‘She was,’ confirmed Rosalind. ‘Not a shadow of doubt about it.’
‘There must be some misunderstanding,’ I put in. ‘Probably Petra somehow gave her the impression we were Fringes people. As for—’ I was suddenly blotted out for a moment by Petra’s indignant denial. I did my best to disregard it, and went on: ‘As for help, there must be a misunderstanding there, too. She’s somewhere south-west, and everybody knows that there are miles and miles of Badlands that way. Even if they do come to an end and she’s on the other side of them, how can she possibly help?’
Rosalind refused to argue about that.
‘Let’s wait and find out,’ she suggested. ‘Just now all I want is sleep.’
I felt the same way, and since Petra had slept most of the time in the pannier, we told her to keep a sharp look-out and wake us at once if she heard or saw anything suspicious. Both Rosalind and I fell asleep almost before we laid our heads down.
I awoke with Petra shaking my shoulder, and saw that the sun was not far off setting.
‘Michael,’ she explained.
I cleared my mind for him.
‘They’ve picked up your trail again. A small farm on the edge of Wild Country. You galloped through it. Remember?’
I did. He went on:
‘There’s a party converging there now. They’ll start to follow your tracks as soon as it’s light. Better get moving soon. I don’t know how it is in front of you, but there may be some men cutting across from the west to head you off. If there are, my bet is that they’ll keep in smallish groups for the night. They can’t risk a cordon of single sentries because there are known to be Fringes people scouting around. So, with luck, you should be able to sneak through.’
‘All right,’ I agreed wearily. Then a question I had meant to ask before occurred to me. ‘What’s happened to Sally and Katherine?’
‘I don’t know. No answer. The range is getting rather long now. Does any one know?’
