holiday.'
'Later, maybe.' He sent the raft higher. 'Keep watch now. We don't want to be caught by surprise.'
A reminder she could have done without, but she lifted the guns and checked their loading and set one beside him as she cradled her own. Ahead the sun flared with brightening splendor and below writhed the wendings of a valley laced with the silver of running water. Hills loomed and she caught the glint of crystal but the air was empty aside from one fountain of shimmering wings which lifted far to one side and to the north.
'Why, Earl? Why keep that thing in the ship?'
'The angel? I've my reasons.'
'If there's another attack you'll be blamed, you know that? You're keeping a captive. If they come to secure it and people die they'll swear you are responsible.'
'And you?'
'I'm not the Ypsheim.'
Dumarest said, 'If they hope to survive they must get along with the angels. Both races could help each other but before that can happen there has to be understanding. I'm hoping Andre can establish communication.'
'Why bother? Once we leave we can forget the whole damned mess.' Then, correcting herself, she said, 'No. I'm forgetting. They could be able to tell you what happened here. Guide you home, maybe.' She looked over the edge of the raft at the unrolling landscape below. 'Home, the place where you were born.' Her voice rose a little. 'Earl! Down there! To your right! See?'
A jumble of masonry; brick, stone, a lattice of metal sprawled in a declivity between rounded hills. A broken tower, roofless dwellings, the tracery of streets.
Ruins!
Once it had been a village, a small community on the edge of becoming a town, but now it was nothing but desolation. Dumarest paused in what could have been the square, wiping sweat from his face and neck, his tunic grimed with a greyish powder. Dust from rotten mortar, crumbling brick and decaying plaster. The very air held the taint of ancient dissolution.
'Nothing.' Ysanne's voice was flat as she came toward him. Dust had made her ghostlike; grey of face and hair, the ornamented leather she wore dulled and made drab. 'Nothing,' she said again. 'No furniture, no stores or books or anything to show who lived here. The entire place has been swept clean.'
Of goods and mementos and the traces of those who had built and lived in the dwellings. Dumarest turned, surveying the hills, the flat reaches beyond the village. If they had once been cultivated they had long been overgrown.
'It's crazy.' Ysanne stared from side to side, eyes narrowed, brow creased in puzzlement. 'If they had just up and left surely something would have been discarded or forgotten. And if they died, from plague, maybe, then everything would be as they left it. But there's nothing, no bones, no bodies, not even piles of rubbish.' She shivered a little despite the afternoon heat. 'When did it happen, Earl? How long ago?'
He shook his head, unable to answer.
'Centuries,' she whispered. 'Longer-or did something happen? The angels, maybe? Civil war? Slavers? But why is there nothing left?'
'There could be,' said Dumarest. 'Buried under the rubble. The rest could have been taken.'
'The angels?'
'Materials to build their nests. Or they could have been curious.' Or doing their best to eliminate the presence of others; destroy a man's possessions and you symbolically destroy the man. Time and weather would take care of the rest. That and the tiny scavengers always to be found on any world. Dumarest said, 'We'll make a final check. You go to the left toward the market and I'll head toward the tower. Take no chances.'
'If I see anything, I'll shoot.' Ysanne lifted her gun, twin to that Dumarest carried. 'Yell out if you come near.'
A warning he would observe; tense, she would blast at anything which startled her. Dust rose beneath his boots as he headed toward the broken tower, its shadow sprawled in a bizarre pattern on the street. Another joined it, one which moved, and he looked up to see the soaring shape of an angel. A male, dark-winged, wheeling like a harbinger of death. It rose as he watched to become a tiny mote in the west.
The tower proved another disappointment. A square obelisk-like structure, one side crumbled to reveal interior chambers, all of them empty. The summit bore a platform on which men could have been stationed to watch the skies and surrounding area. Above it the pointed roof showed jagged holes and a litter of shattered tiles lay in the street below. A door gaped open; beyond lay dimness and a mound of rubble; broken shards covered with dust. Something fell as Dumarest stepped inside and more dust rose in a minute plume. Freezing, he looked toward it, seeing nothing but the dust, the path of the brick which had fallen. Another followed it and he stepped back, cautiously, aware of delicate balances which a tread could disturb. If anything lay buried beneath the rubble he had no way of finding it. To try would bring down the sagging roof above, the tiled walls to either side.
'Ysanne!' She turned, gun lifted as he called her name, lowering as she saw him. 'Nothing.' He answered her unspoken question. 'Just empty ruins.'
'Like these.' She gestured to the buildings around, roofless, gaping, places which had once been shops, arcades which had once held stalls. To one end reared the bulk of what must have once been a warehouse now as dilapidated as the rest. 'Empty,' she said. 'Gutted, swept clean.' She scowled at the warehouse. 'Damn them! Why didn't they leave us a clue? Damn them all to hell!'
The gun lifted in her arms to explode in noise and flame and a blast of missiles. Frustration vented in a sudden rage; the attribute of a barbarian who destroyed what could not be understood. Stone showered beneath the impact of bullets, a small avalanche which turned one corner into piled debris. Beyond the opening created, half-buried beneath rubble, showed something firm and rectangular.
'A box!' The gun fell silent as Ysanne stared. 'Earl! It's a box!'
One shaped like a coffin but far too large for any normal burial. The lid and sides were ornamented with a profusion of esoteric symbols. Signs Dumarest had seen before.
'It was buried, cleared by the fall.' Ysanne lunged toward it. 'Maybe we can pull it free.'
'No!' He reached her as she touched the box, grabbing an arm, jerking her back and away from the sudden flood of rubble which roared from above to fill the air with dust.
Rolling, coughing on the ground where the fall had thrown them, she said, 'The damned thing's buried again. We'll need help to dig it out.'
'Leave it.'
'Are you crazy?' She rose, eyes furious in the dust-covered mask of her face. 'Earl, that thing could hold treasure! We've got-'
'It's a box,' he said. 'One made by the Terridae. All you'd find in it would be pieces of equipment.' And perhaps a body, one long since dead. A point he didn't mention. 'Stop worrying about it.'
'The Terridae,' she said. 'Like those people on Zabul. The ones you got the mnemonic from.' She looked around at the crumbling ruins. 'They were here, Earl. What more proof do you need? This has to be their home world. Has to be Earth. Remember the mnemonic?' She began to repeat it. 'Thirty-two, forty, sixty-seven-that's the way to get to Heaven. Earth, Earl-where else?'
Dumarest said, 'Let's get back.'
They arrived at sunset when the air was golden with the beauty of a dying day, enhanced by the bright shimmer of wings as soaring clusters wheeled and turned high above the settlement. Aerial phalanxes ignored Dumarest as he guided the raft beneath them to a point near in the ship.
Belkner came running as the vehicle touched the ground. 'Earl! You've got to help us! Those angels-'
'Are gathering for the attack.' Farnham, his face ugly, shouted the other down. 'You want more of us killed? Give us shelter or guns!'
'Go to the woods,' said Dumarest. 'Cut long branches. Point them to make lances. Set them in the ground and stay among them. Nothing in its right mind will swoop down on a forest of needles.'
'Guns-'
'Guns,' snapped Dumarest. 'And what happens when the ammunition runs out? And remember what I told you-attack the ship and you won't do it twice.'
Belkner said quietly, 'The ship won't be attacked. But at least get rid of that male you're holding.'
'I'll take care of the male.'
