“I know.” The answer was calm. “Keep still—”
Arskane hissed for the third time. The lizards drew back, leaving their leader alone, alert and on guard. Then Arskane was there, stooping to slash the bonds of both captives. Fors tried to lever himself up with dead arms which refused to obey him.
“Can—not—make—it—”
But Arskane was rubbing at the puffed and swollen ankles and the torture of reviving circulation was almost more than the mountaineer could bear without screaming. It seemed only a second before Arskane hauled him to his feet and pushed him toward the back slope.
“Get up there—”
That order had an urgency which made Fors climb in spite of himself, Lura dragging up ahead. He dared not waste the time to look back, he could only put all his strength to the task of getting up to the top.
If the way had been steeper he might never have made it. And as it was Arskane caught up to him and pulled him along the last few steps. From the southerner’s arm hung Fors’ knife belt with knife and sword both in their sheaths—he had waited to retrieve that.
along with the larger grass under his feet and then he slumped down where water sprayed his parched skin. He did not know how much time passed before he roused enough to know that Arskane was trying to pour some broth down his throat. He swallowed eagerly until his eyes closed against his will and he drifted off again. “How did you get us out?” Fors lay at ease, hours later. Under him a mat of ferns and leaves seemed almost unbelievably soft and Arskane hunched on the other side of the fire fashioning a shaft for a short hunting spear. “It was easy enough—with the Beast Things gone. I will tell you this with a straight and truthful tongue, brother.” The southerner’s teeth flashed white and amused in his dark face. “Had those yet breathed, then this venture might well have ended otherwise.
“When I awoke in this wood and found you gone I at first thought that you were hunting—for food or water or both. But I was not happy in my mind—not happy at all. I ate—here are rabbits, fat and foolish and without fear. And yonder there in the brook. So did my unease grow, for with food and drink so near I knew that you would not have gone from me and remained so long a time. So I went back along our trail—”
Fors studied the hands lumped on his chest, the hands which were still purplish and blue and which hurt with a nagging pain. What would have happened if Arskane had not gone back?
“That trail was very easy to follow. And along it I found the place where the Beast Things had lain in hiding to strike you down. They did nothing to cover their tracks. It is in my mind that they fear very little and see small need for caution. So came I at last to the valley of the lizards—”
“But how did you stop their attack?” Arskane was examining a pile of stones he had culled out of the brook, weighing them in his hands and separating them into two piles. The smoothed spear shaft he had set aside.
“The lizard folk I have seen before. In my own land— or the land we held before the shaking of the mouuntains drove us forth—there was such a colony. They marched across the desert from the west one year and made a settlement in a gulch a half day’s journey from the village of my people. We were curious about them and often watched them from a distance. At last we even traded— giving them bits of metal in return for blue stones they grubbed out of the earth—our women having a liking for necklaces. I do not know what I said back there—I think it was only that my imitation of their speech surprised them so that they let us go.
“But it was well we got out of that place with all speed. The poison ball is their greatest weapon. I have seen them use it against coyote and snake. They wish only to be left alone.”
“But—but they are almost—almost human—” Fors told of the gleaners and the sacrifice they had made for their clan.
Arskane laid out three stones of equal size and girth. “Can we then deny that they have a right to their valley? Could we show equal courage, I wonder?” He became busy with some thin strips of rabbit skin, weaving them into a net around each rock. Fors watched him, puzzled.
Just overhead there was a break in the mass of tree tops and as he lay back flat he could see blue sky and part of a drifting white cloud. But this morning there was a chill tooth to the wind—summer was going. He must get back to the Eyrie soon-Then he remembered what had happened to the Star pouch and his puffy fingers dug into the stuff he lay upon. There was no use in returning to the mountain hold now. When the Beast Things had destroyed his proof they had finished his chance of buying his way back into the clan. He had nothing left except what Arskane had brought out of the lizard valley for him—his knife and sword.
“Good!”
Fors was too sunk to turn his head and see what had brought that note of satisfaction into his companion’s voice. Arskane did not have anything to worry about. He would go south and find his tribe, take his place among them again—
“Now we shall have food for the pot, brother—” Fors frowned but he did look around. The southerner stood there tall and straight and around his head he whirled a queer contraption that, to the mountaineer, seemed of no use at all. The three stones in their rabbit skin nets had been fastened to thongs of hide and the three thongs tied together with one central knot. This knot Arskane gripped between his fingers as he sent the stones skimming in a circle. Having tested it he laughed at Fors’ bewilderment.
“We shall be moving south, brother, and in the level fields this will do very well, as I shall show you. Ha, and here now is dinner—”
Lura walked up to the fire carrying a young pig. She dropped her burden and with an almost human sigh plumped down beside the kill to watch Arskane butcher it skillfully.
Fors ate roasted pork and began to wonder if his lot was as hopeless as he had thought it to be. The Beast Things were dead. He might lie up until his full strength returned and then make a second visit to the city. Or if he did not dally there would still be time to reach the Eyrie and lead an expedition before winter closed in. He licked rich grease from his fingers and planned. Arskane sang the tune of mournful notes Fors had heard him hum at the fishing lake. Lura purred and washed her paws. It was all very peaceful.
“There faces us now,” Arskane said suddenly, “the problem of clothes for you—”
“It faces me,” Fors corrected him sleepily. “Unfortunately my wardrobe was left to amaze the lizards. And, strangely enough, I do not find in me any desire to reclaim it from them—”
Arskane tightened the knots on the ball and cord weapon. “There you may be wrong, my friend. A visit to the lizard valley—keeping to a safe distance, of course-might serve us very well.”
Fors sat up. “How?”
“Five of the Beast Things died there. But how many followed us into the Blow-Up land?”
Fors tried to remember the size of the party he had spied upon. How large had it been? He could not truthfully say now, but he did have a disconcerting suspicion that there had been more than five in it. If that were so— why were they lingering here so close to the edge of the Blow-Up? His feet were good enough to enable him to put some miles between himself and the desolate waste which now lay only a half mile beyond them.
“Do you think that the lizards may have added to their bag?”
Arskane shrugged. “Now that they have been warned, perhaps they have. But we need the spoil they took. Your bow is gone, but those arrowheads would be useful—”
“Useful to the extent of daring the thorns?”
“Maybe.” And Arskane fell to cross questioning him as to how much of his equipment the Beast Things had destroyed.
“Everything of value to me!” Fors’ old feeling of helpless inadequacy closed in upon him. “They ripped the Star pouch to shreds and burned my notes and may—”
“There are the arrowheads,” persisted Arskane. “Those were not burned.”
Since he seemed to mean it when he urged such an expedition Fors began to believe that the southerner had some purpose of his own in mind. He himself saw no reason to return to the lizard valley. And he was still protesting within him when they came to the top of the rise down which Arskane had gone to the rescue. Lura had refused to accompany them any farther than the edge of the Blow-Up and they had left her there pacing back and forth, her flattened ears and moving tail emphatic arguments against such foolishness.
They stood looking down at a wild scene which almost turned Fors’ stomach. He gulped and balled his puffed fingers into fists, so that the pain took his attention. The lizards might live upon the grass of the terraces but it appeared that they were also meat eaters and they were now making sure of the supply chance had brought them.
