They clattered out into a burned area where the black stain of a vast, devouring fire had not faded. There were flowers growing there among the sooty stones, yellow, white, and blue. And a ragged, red-leafed weed overran old cellars. Cat and horse moved slowly through the desolation, testing their footing.
On the far edge of the burned space they found the scene of that night battle. Black birds whirred up from almost under their feet, birds which had been feasting on scraps more powerful scavengers had left them. Fors dismounted and limped up to the trampled grass, reluctant to make investigation.
Two well-picked piles of bones lay on the bloodstained ground. But the skulls were not those of his own race. Those long narrow heads with the cruel yellow teeth he had never seen before. Then the glint of metal caught his eyes and he picked up a broken spear, the shaft snapped raggedly off not far from the head. And that spear he had seen before! It belonged to the fisherman of the islet.
Fors moved around the circle of the battlefield. He came across one more of the strange skeletons, but, save for the spear, there was no other trace of the hunter. Lura exhibited a violent distaste for the bones—as if the odd scent which clung to them was utterly offensive. And now she stood on her hind legs and sniffed inquiringly up the side of a heap of bricks and stone.
So that was what had happened! The hunter had not been overwhelmed by a rush out of the dark. He had had time to clamber up where the night-running things could not attack in force, had been able from above to fight them off and leave the wounded and dead to the tearing teeth of their own companions. And he must have escaped—since his bones were not in evidence.
Fors kicked through the underbrush a last time just to be sure. Something round and brown rolled away from his toe. He reached for a small, well-polished drum fashioned of dark wood, the stretched head of hide cured to an almost metallic smoothness. The signal drum! Impulsively he tapped the head, and started at the low throbbing note which echoed through the ruins.
When he rode on the drum went with him. Why he did not know, except that he was fascinated by such a message-sending device unknown to his own people.
Within a half hour the ruins lay behind. Fors was glad to be out in the clean freedom of the country again. All morning he rode at a leisurely pace, watching for any signs which the hunter might leave. He was sure that the man was striking north with almost as definite a purpose as the one which drew him in that direction. And, with the drum gone, there would be no more signals.
The next two days were quiet. There was no indication that the Plainsmen had ever ventured into this territory and the land was a hunters’ paradise teeming with game. Fors wasted none of his precious arrows but left the chase to Lura who enjoyed every moment of it. And he varied his diet with berries and the ripe grain which grew wild in the ancient fields.
They avoided two more small towns, cutting around when they saw the first ruins. The dank, moldy places had little appeal and Fors had once or twice speculated as to what might have happened that night had he been the one caught in the open by the hunting pack, too crippled to climb to the safety the unknown had found. Now his leg was less painful, he walked a part of each day, stretching the muscles and toughening tender flesh. Most of the ache was gone and soon he would be able to move as freely as ever.
On the morning of the fourth day they came out upon a waste of sand- and wind-carved dunes and saw the great lake of legend. There was no end to the gray-blue expanse of water—it must be almost as large as the distant sea. High piles of bleached driftwood lay along the shore. There must have been a recent storm for the bodies of fish lay there too. Fors’ nose wrinkled as he plowed through the sand, the mare sinking deeply as she followed him. Lura, investigating the fish, strayed some yards behind.
So—this much Was true—this was the lake. And somewhere along its shore must lie the city his father had sought. Right or left, east or west—that was the question. He found shelter from the wind behind a dune and squatted down to consult the scrap of map. When they had avoided that last town they had gone west—so now- east. He would keep to the shore and see-It was hard to travel in the sand, and after some time he gave up in disgust and edged inland to the more solid earth. Within two yards he was on a roadl And, since the roadway hugged the shoreline, he held to it. Shortly the familiar mounds of debris closed in. But this was the remains of no small town. Even in his inexperience he could judge that. In the morning sun far ahead he saw battered towers rising in the sky. This was one of the cities, the great cities of huge sky-reaching towers! And it was not a “blue” one either. He would have seen the sign of that taint on the sky in the night.
His city—all his! Langdon had been right—this was an untouched storehouse waiting to be looted for the benefit of the Eyrie. Fors allowed the mare to amble on at her own pace as he tried to recall all the training rules. Libraries—those were what one was to look for—and shops, especially those which had stores of hardware or paper or kindred supplies. One was not to touch food—no matter if it was found in unbroken containers. Experimentation of that kind had brought death by poisoning too many times in the past. Hospital supplies were best of all, but those had to be selected by the trained expert. Danger lay too in unknown drugs.
For his looting he had best take only samples of what was to be found—books, writing supplies, maps, anything which would prove that he knew how to select intelligently. And with the mare he ought to be able to pack out quite a lot.
Here were signs of fire, too. He rode across a bare stretch where the rough footing was all black ash. But the towers stood taller and they did not appear to be too badly damaged. If this city had been bombed, would they be standing at all? Maybe this was one of the places which had perished in the plagues which followed the war. Maybe it had died slowly with the ebbing life of its people—and not suddenly in explosion.
The road they had been following was now a narrow gorge between tall ranks of broken buildings, the upper stories of which had fallen into the street in mounds which almost blocked it completely at places. Here were numerous surface machines in which the Old Ones had ridden in comfort. And here, also, were bones. That single skull he had found in the old bank had had the power to shake him a little, but here lay a nation of dead and soon he ceased to notice them at all, even when the mare trod on brittle ribs or kicked rolling skulls aside. Yes, now it was very apparent that the men of this city had died of plague, or gas, or even of the radiation sickness. But sun and wind and animals had cleared away the foulness of that death, leaving only a framework without power to harm.
As yet Fors did not attempt to explore those caverns which had once been the lower floors of the buildings. Now he only wanted to get on into the very heart of the place, to the foundations of those towers which had guided him all morning. But before he could reach that goal a barrier was laid across his road.
There was a gash breaking the city in two, a deep valley which nursed a twisted river in its middle. Bridges spanned it. He came to the lip of one such span and he could see two others. But before him was a mass of rusting wreckage piled into a fantastic wall. Machines—not in ones and twos or even in tens, but in hundreds—were packed as they must have crashed and telescoped into one another, driven by men who feared some danger behind enough to drive in crazy flight. The bridge was now one gigantic crack-up. Fors might be able to scramble across but the mare could not. It would be best to descend into the valley and cross there^because as far as he could see the other bridges were also choked with rust-eaten metal.
There was a side road down into the valley, and machines filled it too. Men had taken that same trail when the bridge jammed. But the three of them—horse, cat and man—worked their way through to reach the river level. Tracks were rust-red lines and on them were trains—the first he had ever seen. Two had crashed together, the engine of one plowing into the other. Those who had tried to escape by train had been little better off than their brothers in the stalled cars above. It was difficult for Fors to imagine what that last wild day of flight must have been—the trains, the machines. He knew of them only from the old books. But the youngsters of the Eyrie sometimes stirred up nests of black ants and watched them boil up and out. So this city must have boiled—but few had been able to win out.
And those who had—what became of them in the end?
What could help a handful of panic-stricken refugees scattered over a countryside, perhaps dropping dead of the plague as they fled? Fors shivered as he picked his way along beside the wrecked trains. But when he found a narrow path through the jumble he was in luck. There had been barges on the river and they had drifted and sunk to form a shaky bridge across the water. Horse, man, and cat started over it, testing each step. There was a gap in the middle through which the stream still fought its way. But the mare, under the urging of Fors’ heels in her ribs, jumped it and Lura went sailing over with her usual agility.
More dark streets with blank-eyed buildings lining them, and then there was a road leading up at a sharp angle. They took it to find themselves at last close to the towers. Birds wheeled overhead, crying out in thin sharp
