They found a hut, deserted, a small garden unkempt, plants choked with weeds. Another that had been burned, gray ash thick on the stone. Two more, roofs sagging, doors open, to reveal naked interiors. The embers of a fire over which stood a tripod of thin metal struts. Dumarest touched them, felt the dead ashes and found them warm. Word of their coming had preceded them; whoever had lived here had taken their possessions and run.
A man said sharply, 'Over there! See?'
His rifle lifted, aiming. Dumarest reached him and slammed down the weapon. 'No firing! You heard my order!'
'I was just-'
'You don't need a gun to point What did you see?'
'Something over on that ridge. It's watching us. There!'
Dumarest followed the pointing hand and saw nothing but a tree, stunted, branches like arms, a patch of lighter coloring that, to a nervous man, could have looked like a face.
'There's nothing there. Don't be so quick with that gun the next time. Lieutenant!'
'Sir?'
'Any further reports on movement within this area?'
There were three. Heat-radiating masses, which could have been men, moving invisibly in the vegetation, coming from the north and east.
'We could have rafts track them, sir,' suggested the officer. 'So that if they start anything they wouldn't have the chance to get away.'
'If you were of the Ayutha and saw rafts heading in, what would you think? That we were bait to set a trap, maybe?' Dumarest shrugged. 'We're here to contact them, not kill them.' To the guide he said, 'All right, Ven, lead on.'
An hour later they were attacked.
It happened as the guide topped a rise, standing for a moment silhouetted against the sky, passing on into the valley beyond. Captain Conn followed him, his rifle, despite orders, clenched in his hands. Dumarest saw him pause, the gun lifting, aiming, firing as he shouted.
'Captain! No!'
The flat report of the shot rolled from the flanking hills, repeated as the captain fired again. Ven Taykor appeared, running back over the rise, hands lifted, face contorted behind his mask.
'Earl! We're surrounded! That crazy fool-'?
Captain Conn dissolved into a pillar of flame.
It happened almost too fast to see. One moment he was standing firing; the next, something had touched him and turned him into a living torch, Dumarest snatched at his rifle, lifted it, fired, sending a bullet into the shrieking mass. As the captain fell in merciful death, he yelled, 'Scatter! Down! Stay under cover! No firing!'
He caught the guide as he passed and threw him down as something cut the air with a vicious hiss. Together they rolled to the side of the boulder, crouching as more arrows splintered against the stone. To one side a man rose, firing, turning, to fall with a shaft of wood penetrating his chest. Shots blasted, hysterical fingers jammed against triggers, firing at the air, the trees, the rocks all around. More flame burst around diem, ugly patches edged with smoke, filling the air with tiny motes of swirling soot.
'Flame bombs,' gasped Taykor. 'They'll burn us alive!'
Ten yards behind, broken stone formed a rough circle, slabs and fissures giving protection. Dumarest sprang to his feet and raced toward it, shouting orders over the din.
'Retreat! Form defensive positions. Stop firing. Stop firing, damn you!'
A man snarled as he tumbled over the rocks. 'You killed the captain. One of your own men. Whose damn side are you on?'
'Would you have left him to roast?' Taykor tried to spit, remembered his mask, tore it free with a savage gesture. 'The fool started all this. If he hadn't fired, we could have made contact. They were waiting for us.'
'He still killed the captain.'
There had been nothing else to do. Conn had been seared, blinded, already dying; it had been an act of mercy to save him further agony. Dumarest glanced around the crude fort. The stone gave protection only while they hugged the rocks; once they left it, they would be exposed to hidden snipers. Behind them, three men lay where they had fallen. As he watched, another gulped, threw up his hands, and fell backward, a hole between his eyes, blood gushing from the back of his shattered skull.
'They've got us,' said Taykor grimly. 'All they have to do is wait. Once we start to move, well be helpless.' He lifted his head, squinting. 'They must have been following us all along. They're out there now, hidden, waiting until we show ourselves.'
Lieutenant Paran came crawling toward where they crouched. His face was taut, strained, his eyes a little wild.
'The rafts,' he said. 'Let me call them in.'
Dumarest was cold. 'To do what?'
'Burn the area. Send those devils running so they can land and take us aloft.'
'Abort the mission, you mean? Lieutenant, we came here to do a job. We'll leave when it's done or when I decide that it is impossible to do. Report on the casualties.'
The snap of his tone restored military obedience. The officer blinked, then said flatly, 'Five dead, sir, including the captain. Four injured, two seriously.'
It could have been a lot worse, and Dumarest wondered why it hadn't been. A disciplined force could have almost eliminated them at the first attack, but arrows had been used, not the rifles they must possess, flame bombs instead of the lasers they must have captured.
He said, 'Thank you, lieutenant Tell the men to hold their fire. Have some take care of the wounded-all to remain alert and under cover.'
'He's young,' said Taykor as he inched away. 'But he'll learn-maybe.'
Dumarest ignored the implication. 'Those Ayutha you saw waiting for us. Were they in plain sight?'
'A score of them at least!'
'Armed?'
'I didn't see any weapons, but I didn't have much time to look.' Taykor raised his mask and spat. 'That damned fool cut loose too soon. I guess he was thinking of his family, but he should have waited. They must have had men watching from under cover.'
'Never mind that.' Dumarest had no patience for listening to the obvious. 'The Ayutha were in plain sight, you say. No weapons visible that you could see. That means they were ready to meet us.' He frowned. Conn was dead, the damage done. The problem now was to lessen the danger of the situation.
He raised his head over the edge of the rock and looked around. The trail they had followed was deserted aside from the bodies they had left. The ridge ahead was naked against the sky, but the flame bombs must have been fired from launchers, and they could bathe the ring of stone with fire at any moment He wondered why it hadn't already been done.
'Lieutenant, you have a spare communicator. Let me have it.'
As he handed it over, the officer said, 'What do you intend to do, sir?'
'The only thing there is to do. The thing we came here for.' Dumarest rose, standing clear against the sky. 'I'm going to talk to the Ayutha.'
Chapter Eleven
It was like walking through a nest of sleeping, venomous serpents, knowing that the slightest touch, the smallest noise, would waken them and cost him his life. Above, the sun beat down with eye-stinging brilliance, the vegetation seeming to rustle from the impact of invisible shapes. Dumarest moved steadily from the circle of stone, the communicator at his belt, both hands raised and empty, in the universal sign of peace.
An arrow splintered on the ground five feet to his left. He ignored it, moving steadily toward the ridge. Another shattered on the rocks to his right, a third stood quivering in the ground directly ahead. A warning not to proceed? A test to see if he would break and run for cover while behind him the men opened fire? Or perhaps it was a
