Leely ran to him, hugged the bitten leg, effectively tripping the ex-king, so that he fell heavily and was unable to get up. Leely kissed the bites, then hugged the ex-king once more.
“Jiacare Lostre, ex-King of Kamir,” cried Leely. “Poor Jiacare!”
“Can you walk on it?” demanded Leelson, heaving Jiacare to his feet.
“If I have to.” He stood up, took one experimental step, and groaned.
“Mitigan!” demanded Snark once more.
“He’s either coming or he’s dead,” grated Leelson.
“Where are we going?” Jiacare smiled as he asked the question, a thin, fatalistic smile.
“Wherever we’re allowed to go,” Leelson muttered.
Mitigan appeared at the entrance to the rockfall, staggering toward the others. His face and arms were covered with bites. “Hard to kill,” he muttered. “Oh, they’re hard to kill.”
He fell. Leely looked at his wounds, then at Leelson. “Dananana,” he said, uninterested.
Leelson thrust his fingers into Leely’s mouth, then rubbed the wet fingers onto Mitigan’s wounds. The assassin gasped, as though in sudden agony.
“Mitigan Mitigan of the Asenagi,” Leely said in a tone of disapproval. “Mitigan fought the snakes.”
Where Mitigan had emerged from the rocks was now a darker shadow. They stared at it, trying to find in it the coils of a serpent, the twining shape of the snake. It wasn’t a snake. Something deep inside them told them that. Snakes to flush them out, but something else to drive them.
Eyes reflected the light from the lamp Leelson carried. A wavering howl split the air.
“Wolves,” Lutha breathed. “It’s wolves.” How many times had she seen them, recreated in story, remembered in myth? How many times?
As though answering to their name, lithe forms spewed from the rock pile. Some of them loped up the slope toward the camp, others made a line to the north. The way was open south or west, but in no other direction. They were not all wolves. Some of them were other things, shamblers, gigglers, mutterers, throat growlers.
Mitigan stumbled to his feet. He and the ex-king staggered up the slope, the rest following. As they went the bitten men gained strength. They crested the ridge, walking almost normally, then stopped. Across the narrow valley the wolves had made a line barring the way to the south. The only open way was the valley, the crescent of gravel that was the beach. They were being forced toward the sea.
“Make a stand,” muttered Mitigan. “Get into one of the storm caverns and make a stand.”
“No,” said Leelson. “Let’s just go along for the moment. See what’s intended.”
Lutha stared blindly into the dark. Even Leely could not live in this place without food, without shelter. What was intended was eradication. What was intended was that no one of them should return to Alliance to tell men what they knew.
The stories of Old-earth are shared among the people of Old-earth. Even I, Saluez, can identify elephant and whale, ostrich and eagle, serpent and wolf, though they exist no longer. I know that they were and now are not, because of mankind. So, when I wakened under the stone on Perdur Alas to a terror not dreamed but real, I recognized the creatures bringing it upon us.
Snark and Lutha heaved me up, one on either side, and they supported me as we fled. Lutha seemed lost in some apocalyptic vision, concentrated on senses I did not share. Not so Snark. Nothing quenched her insatiable interest, or her avid commentary on each thing it touched.
“Old Tempter,” she said as we fled down the valley toward the beach. “Old Tempter sent ’em. Wanted to be sure, he did, we knew what was coming. Righteous vengeance, that’s what they’re after!”
Her words rang like the gong by the House Without a Name, awaking dissonant echoes, evoking monsters! The Kachis had also been sent by the tempter. They, too, had been a cacophony of bestial noises and the gleam of fangs!
“You notice Mitigan?” Snark muttered. “Mad! That man is so rageous he’s about to kindle. Sure never figured he’d get beat by snakes! High-and-mighty Asenagi, with Leely spit all that’s keeping him living. Has to be hard for a proud man!”
The fact that she could notice such things while we fled for our lives cut through my panic. If Snark could keep her senses during this wildness, then so could I. I concentrated all my thought and energy on calm, on focus, on breathing slowly, moving deliberately, on noticing what was happening.
It actually helped. It took me out of myself to look at the others, imagining what they felt. Mitigan, as Snark had said, was blazingly angry. So was Leelson, though probably for a different reason. Fastigats like to make sense out of what happens, but Leelson couldn’t get beyond his Firster viewpoint to make sense of this! Jiacare Lostre wore a thin smile, like a seer who knows what is happening, perhaps, or someone who thinks it doesn’t matter. Lutha, of course, wasn’t with us at all. She stared into the distance like one ensorcelled, an inhabitant of some other world.
We halted on the beach, hemmed in on three sides by creatures, on the other by ocean. There we gasped, waiting for what would happen next. I drew the night air deep into my lungs, amazed at the feeling of it, the scent of it! Like the air of a new world! The wind came wildly fresh, with a keening mist and a bluster of cloud.
Snark leaned close against me, supporting either me or herself. Her face was ecstatic as she murmured, “Oooh, they’re lovely. Like flowing gold, snakes.”
She meant it! Inexplicably, she was enraptured!
She nudged me, pointing. “And see the wolves—it’s like I can see them better in the starlight than even in full sun. Look at their fur, Saluez! Soft as clouds, full and sleek. Teeth silver sharp in those laughing jaws. Eyes two smoky mirrors full of
