brush.
Seeing this the mountaineer relaxed. Luck had brought them to the one place which would save them. And he was not the only living thing to believe that.
An antlered buck swam in circles near them, its pronged head high. And smaller creatures were arriving by the dozens to clamber over each other up the sides of the lodges to safety. Arskane gave a violent exclamation of disgust and jerked back his hand as a snake wriggled across it.
As the fire crept along the shore, making the water as ruddy as blood, the creatures in the water and on the lodges seemed to cower, sniffing in the cindery hot breath of the flames reluctantly. A bird dropped out of the air, struck Fors shoulder, and plumped into the water leaving a puff of burned feather stench behind it. The mountaineer dropped his head down on his hands, holding his mouth and nose only an inch or so above the water, feeling the blistering heat whip across his shoulders.
How long they remained there, their bodies floating in the water, their fingers dug into the stuff of the lodges, they never knew. But when the crackle of the fire diminished Fors raised his head again. The first of the blaze was gone. Here and there the stump of a tree still showed stubborn coals. It would be some time before they would dare walk over that still smoking ground. The water must continue to give them passage.
Fors fended off the body of a deer which had taken too late to refuge and worked his way to the next lodge and so on to the dam. Here the fire had eaten a hole, taken a good bite out, so that water was spilling freely into the old channel of the stream.
By the light of smoldering roots he could make out the course for some distance ahead.
“Holla!”
A moment later, Arskane joined him.
“So we follow the water, eh?” The southerner applauded. “Well, with the fire behind us we shall not worry about pursuit. Perhaps good fortune journeys on our right hand tonight, my brother.”
Fors grunted, climbing over the rough surface of the dam. Again they could keep their feet. The water was only waistdeep here. But the stones in the course made slippery footing and they crept along fearing a disastrous fall.
When they were at last well away from the fire glow in the sky Fors stopped and studied the stars, looking for the familiar clusters which were the unchanging guides he had been taught. They were heading south-but from a westerly direction and this was unknown territory.
“Will we hear the drums now?” he asked.
“Do not count on it. The tribe probably believes me as dead as Noraton and sounds the call no longer.”
Fors shivered, perhaps just from the long immersion in the chill water. “This is a wide land, without a guide we may miss them—”
“More likely to since this is war and my people will conceal what they may of the camp. But, brother, it is in my mind that we could not have won free so easily from this night’s captivity had there not been a mission set upon us. Head south and let us hope that the same power will bring us to what we seek. At least your mountains will not move themselves from their root and we can turn to them if nothing better offers—”
But Fors refused to answer that, giving his attention again to the stars.
For the present they kept to the stream, stumbling between water-worn boulders and over gravel. At length they came into a ravine where walls of gray rock closed in as if they were entering the narrow throat of a trap. Here they pulled out on a flat ledge to rest.
Fors dozed uneasily. The mosquitoes settled and feasted in spite of his slaps. But at last his heavy head went flat and he could no longer fight off the deep sleep of a worn-out body and fatigue-dulled mind.
The murmur of water awoke him at last and he lay listening to it before he forced open puffy eyelids. He rubbed an itching, bite-swollen face as he focused dazedly upon moss-green rock and brown water. Then he sat up with a snap. It must be mid-morning at least!
Arskane still lay belly down beside him, his head pillowed on an arm. There was an angry red brand left by a’burn on his shoulder-a drifting piece of wood must have struck there. And beyond Fors could see floating on the current other evidence of the fire-half-consumed sticks, the battered body of a squirrel with the fur charred from its back.
Fors retrieved that before the water bore it on. Half-burned squirrel was a rare banquet when a man’s stomach was making a too intimate acquaintance with his backbone. He laid it out on the rock and worried off the skin with the point of the spear he had clung to through the night.
When he had completed that gory task he shook Arskane awake. The big man rolled over on his back with a sleepy protest, lay staring a moment into the sky, and then sat up. In the light of the day his battered face was almost a monster’s mask mottled with purple brown. But he managed a lopsided grin as he reached for the bits of half-raw meat Fors held out to him.
“Food-and a clear day for traveling ahead of us—”
“Half a day only,” Fors corrected him, measuring the length of sun and shadow around them.
“Well, then, half a day-but a man can cover a good number of miles even in a half day. And it seems that we cannot be stopped, we two—”
Fors thought back over the wild activity of the past days. He had lost accurate count of time long since. There was no way of knowing how many days it had been since he had left the Eyrie. But there was a certain point of truth in what Arskane had just said-they had not yet been stopped-in spite of Beast Things, and Lizard folk, and the Plainsmen. Even fire or the Blow-Up land had not proved barriers-
“Do you remember what once I said to you, brother-back there when we stood on the field of the flying machines? Never again must man come to warfare with his own kind-for if he does, then shall man vanish utterly from the earth. The Old Ones began it with their wicked rain of death from the sky-if we continue-then are we lost and damned!”
“I remember.”
“Now it lies in my mind,” the big man continued slowly, “that we have been shown certain things, you and I, shown these things that we may in turn show others. These Plainsmen ride to war with my people-yet in them, too, is the thirst for the knowledge that the Old Ones in their stupid waste threw away. They breed seekers such as the man Marphy-with whom I find it in my heart to wish friendship. There is also you, who are mountain bred-yet you feel no hatred for me or for Marphy of the Plains. In all tribes we find men of good will—”
Fors licked his lips. “And if such men of good will could sit down together in common council—”
Arskane’s battered face lit up. “My own thoughts spoken from your lips, brother! We must rid this land of war or we shall in the end eat each other up and what was begun long and long ago with the eggs of death laid by our fathers from the sky shall end in swords and spears running sticky red-leaving the land to the Beast Things. And that foulness I shall not believe!”
“Cantrul said that his people must fight or die—”
“So? Well, there are different kinds of warfare. In the desert my people fought each day, but their enemies were sand and heat, the barren land itself. And if we had not lost the ancient learning perhaps we might even have tamed the burning mountains! Yes, man must fight or he becomes a soft nothing-but let him fight to build instead of to destroy. I would see my people trading wares and learning with those born in tents, sitting at council fires with the men of the mountain clans. Now is the time we must act to save that dream. For if the people of the tents march south in war they shall light such a fire as we or no living man may put out again. And in that fire we shall be as the trees and grass of the fields-utterly consumed.”
Fors’ answer was a grim stretch of ash-powdered skin which in no way resembled a smile. “We be but two, Arskane, and doubtless I am proclaimed outlaw, if the men of the Eyrie have noted my flight at all. My chance the Beast Things when they burned my city records. And you—?”
“There is thus much, brother. I am a son of a Wearer of the Wings-though I am youngest and least of the family clan. So perhaps some will listen to me, if only for a space. But we must reach the tribe before the Plainsmen do.”
Fors tossed a cleaned bone into the water below. “Heigh-ho! Then it is foot slogging again. I wish that we might have brought one of those high-stepping pacers out of the herds. Four legs are better than two when there is speed to consider.”
“Afoot we go.” But Arskane could not suppress an exclamation of pain as he got to>his feet and Fors could see that he favored the side where the shoulder wound still showed red. However, neither made any complaint as
