leagues away, if not further. At their feet, cliffs fell sheer to indecipherable depths where thunder rolled, where shadows walked, where strange clouds of purple, umber and orange lumbered out of clefts and chasms, spitting lightning.
'How do we get down?' said Miphon.
'Easy,' said Hearst. 'Jump.'
They shuddered, stepping back from the edge.
'Somehow,' said Blackwood, 'I can't imagine Garash scratching his way down a cliff. Yet he got down there somehow. There has to be an easy way.'
'Or,' said Hearst, 'at least a way which isn't quite suicidal.'
Without further ado, they began to walk round the Dry Pit, but found no way down. They camped for the night; waking the next morning, they found the tracks of a large, multi-clawed animal which had come close to their campsite in the night.
'What is it?' said Blackwood.
'No comment,' said Hearst, who, frankly, didn't know.
As they marched on, they became aware that there were carrion birds circling over a spot some distance ahead. Something was lying out there, dying.
'If it was dead,' said Hearst, 'the birds would have come down already.'
They debated the merits of waiting. Their waterskins were mostly empty, and that, in the end, decided them: they could not afford to wait. Advancing, they began to make out low mounds lying on the barren ground. The mounds slowly resolved themselves into corpses – and low-slung animals which were tearing at these corpses. It was the animals, obviously, which were keeping the birds at bay.
They dared their way forward.
The animals, big lizard-style creatures, turned tail and fled, scuttling over the rim of the Dry Pit and disappearing into the depths. Reaching the bodies, they read the tracks.
'A walking rock was here,' said Miphon, pointing to a huge furrow which had ploughed up some drifting sand, and to scratches on bare lava. 'The bodies… well, you can see for yourself.'
'Here's our path,' said Hearst, looking over the edge of the cliff.
A narrow trail wound downwards into the depths.
'Shall we start now?' said Blackwood.
'Eat, first,' said Hearst, pointing to the bodies. i,' said Miphon, a little stiffly, 'am not a cannibal.'
'You,' said Hearst, 'are not really hungry yet. No – relax, friend. I'm not suggesting we break out their marrow for a feast. Not yet, at any rate. Weil try their packs, first.'
'Oh,' said Miphon.
Miphon had thought of the dead bodies in terms of human tragedy; Hearst, still very much a Rovac warrior in spite of all the revelations he had experienced, thought of them in terms of loot (and, if necessary, flesh for the pot).
Without the slightest qualm, Hearst rummaged the dead, rock-mangled lizard-chewed bodies, tearing away the wreckage of clothing, uncovering, with pride, a few bits of hardtack, a twist of tobacco and some dates.
Miphon and Blackwood searched the packs. Some had been smashed by the walking rock, but others were entirely uninjured. Clearly none of the dead had been wearing their packs when attacked, which suggested they had been camping – sleeping by night, perhaps -and not on the march.
Turning out one pack, Miphon found a load of maps and manuscripts. Then a tinder box, in much better repair than his own. Then a fire-iron, of the kind wizards of Arl sometimes used for lighting fires. Then a flimsy cotton shirt, which might be good for bandages. Then – 'Skalakala!' screamed Miphon.
It was a cry right out of his childhood. It had served his ancestors both as a warcry and as a shout of surpassing delight. He raised his hand, exhibiting his trophy.
The dead men had already been to the depths of the Dry Pit. They had already risked its dangers. And what Miphon held in his hand now was… a death-stone.
It kicked in his hand, like a living heart, and he let it fall. If he had held it any longer without using it, it would have killed him.
CHAPTER SIXTY
They marched from the Dry Pit without delay, carrying the death-stone with them. Their triumph was shortlived; they were acutely aware of the immense distances they had to cover.
By now, the Swarms would already have spread most of the distance up the western coast of Argan. Nobody would say for certain how fast the Swarms would move, but the travellers knew that the distance from Drangsturm to the Dry Pit was roughly equivalent to the distance from Drangsturm to the land of Estar.
If the Skull of the Deep South had sent the Swarms north as fast as they could go, then there was probably no hope whatsoever of the travellers cutting them off at the southern border of Estar. On the other hand, if the Swarms had stopped to kill out each human community they came across, there was still some hope.
A faint hope.
That day, they marched due west from the Dry Pit, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and its unknown and half-known dangers. They camped that evening beside a marginal trickle of water, which – like the dates and hardtack they shared between them – was sweet luxury.
That 'evening, they began to argue over which route to take. Having at least half-expected to die in the Dry Pit, they had never really talked it out before.
Estar lay north-west, but a direct journey, north-west as the eagle flies, would have meant crossing the Shackle Mountains, dragon country near the Araconch Waters, the Broken Lands, the Spine Mountains and the Ironband Mountains. Such an expedition was out of the question – they would have needed maps, guides, food, pack animals and cold-weather clothing for the mountain crossings.
And it would have been slow beyond endurance.
Their fastest route to Estar, if they walked, lay southwest down the barren and almost waterless coast of the Sponge Sea, then due west across the Marbin Erg to Veda – or, to be accurate, the ruins of Veda – then north along the Salt Road.
'That's if we walk,' said Hearst. 'But I favour the sea.'
'And maybe it favours you,' said Blackwood. 'But there's no way west from the Sponge Sea to the Central Ocean.'
'We wouldn't go that way,' said Hearst. 'Returning to our canoe, we'd go the other way. We'd sail out through Seagate, then travel along the coast all the way to Skua. The sea has its dangers – but I'd rather contend with storms off the Bitterwater Coast than with monsters from the Swarms on the Salt Road.'
In the end, Hearst won.
They would go by sea.
That night, Blackwood dreamt of Loosehead Robert, the mad revolutionary who, according to the children's stories of Estar, came to grief when he was caught in a cave in the hills. Blackwood's dream became a tangled nightmare in which hooks, claws and devouring spiders tore apart Robert's body.
In the dream, Robert bled. Not blood, but long words: stochastic, phenomenological, epistemological. In the dream, of course, the words had the full glory of their High Speech avatars: jonmarakaralarajodo, ena- konazavnetzyltrakolii, zeq-telejenzeq. Bleeding, Robert fled down the hill, with the hooks, claws and spiders rampaging after him on a glissando of blue milk.
At first it seemed he would escape. And then:
The hill itself began to move.
'No!' screamed Blackwood.
And woke himself with his scream.
He blinked at dawnlight, at the lava-dark barrens, at his two startled companions.
'Bad dreams?' said Hearst. i was chased by a hill,' said Blackwood.
'You're lucky it wasn't a mountain,' said Hearst, carelessly. i don't think mountains can move,' said Blackwood.
